Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (33 page)

All night we had seen lights on the shore, among the islands. It was the night of the Midsummer fires. The men and the maidens leapt over the flames. Only the dead leapt the flames of Asgard.

Here by Sweyn Halffoot’s house, all was still dead quiet in the dawn. Even the grinders of the corn had not yet started their daily task. I pushed the boat as far up the beach as I could move it.

I left Scyld still sleeping on the shield. When he awoke, I knew, he would have a headache. He was a strong and a determined child, the loudest baby I have ever heard. There was no chance, when he woke up hungry, that he would be overlooked.

On the leather of the shield, I scratched in Runes with Gungnir’s point,

‘I am Scyld, Votan-born.’

I left him there. My arms and my treasure I left to him. Only Gungnir, Joy’s spear, I took.

I laid the spear on my shoulder and walked on. When I went from island to island, I took boats as I pleased. On the mainland I walked when I wished to walk, and when I wanted to ride, I took what horse I pleased. No man forbade me. No one denied me anything. I spoke to no one. They gave me food and drink and shelter, the peasants of the German plain, and told me all that went on.

‘The Vandals,’ they told me, ‘have a King. After Tyr fell in the battle, and Adils, and Hermod, they followed a Marcoman, named Occa, that came into their country. Yet he is not their King, but his wife’s son, Gerda’s son, for the child is Votan-born.’

‘The Lombards,’ they said, ‘have two Kings. One is rich and powerful, and he has wealth and gold beyond all telling, and his heirs are Votan-born. But the other Lombard King is poor, and wears his clothes patched, because he did not fight in the Battle.’

‘In the Hall of the rich Lombard King,’ I heard, ‘lives Bragi, who may no longer be a smith or a carpenter now that he cannot bend his elbow, hurt in the Battle. But now he sings all the songs of Votan, of how he brought men the arts of writing and poetry, and how he gave them the magic Honeydew to drink, and how his ravens flew to bring him news of all that happened on the earth, and how his magic ship sailed where he wished whatever the wind.’

‘The Burgundians,’ they said, ‘are destroyed, and their name will soon be forgotten. Those who did not go to the Battle are returned to their allegiance and call themselves the East Goths. Yet a few still cling to the House of the Volsungs, and they hide in the great forest, and their King is Sigurd Sigmundson who is a child.’

‘The Cat King will not last long,’ they told me. ‘The Cheruscan King and the King of the Thuringians have allied against the Chatti, and the Cheruscan King has married the Thuringian King’s sister, and his heir is her son, who is Votan-born. But it is that woman, the She-Bear, who rules over both nations already.’

‘Edwin the King is dead,’ they said, ‘and Cutha is regent for his grandson Harald, for he is Votan-born. And the Saxons are
ready to march to take back the salt beaches, and they say the Danes cannot be protected by the Treaty, for they did not come in time to the Battle; but the Danes say the Saxons cannot be protected by the Treaty, for their King did not come himself to the Battle while Sweyn sailed in his ships.’

So I went from farm to farm and from house to house, and never a prince or a noble did I see. The peasants gave me food and shelter, and I paid for my food with healing of sprains and bruises and broken bones and running sores and boils, and all the charms that I knew I taught to anyone without payment. And no one ever asked who I was that went one-eyed and grey-haired in a grey cloak.

At last, at the end of the summer, I came into a land where the rivers flowed south. One day, a little before sunset I came out of the wood, the scrubby patchy stuff you get near a river, into an open space. In the middle there was an oak, a very old oak, dead, blasted, and scarred by lightning. Around it were scattered horse skulls and bits of cloth held down by stones.

I went to the tree, and thrust Gungnir’s point into a dead limb. I walked down to the river, and I washed my face.

When I looked up, the Most Holy One stood before me, as he stands in the Sanctuary. His cloak was of scarlet, and his hair hung about his shoulders. After a time I asked him,

‘Father Apollo, Paeon, Joy, Bergelmir, which are you?’

He answered,

‘I am all of these, and none of them. I sent you into the north, and my own spear I laid upon your shoulder that all men might know that you came from me.’

I asked,

‘My Father, have I done your will?’

‘All that I laid on you to do, as I laid my spear on you, you have done. Njord, that brought Loki to drive me out, is dead. Loki is dead. Mymir that watched me go is dead. Vikar that gave Mymir a ship to bring him to the Holy Island alive is dead, and
his son, Skazi’s son, is dead, and all Skazi’s children that should have been my children are dead, but the one that shall bring misery to all the land of Italy in her own time. The Amber peace is broken, and the Amber road is closed, and the rule of the Asers, the Amber Lords, is over.

‘Now I take my load from your shoulder, as I took the light from your eye. No one-eyed man, no man who lives in the flat world of half light, can serve the unconquered sun. From my worship for ever you are free.’

He held Gungnir in his hand. He walked away into the forest. I knelt by the river, and I cut short my hair and my beard with my knife, the knife that Joy spun on the tavern table, the knife that had killed the Catman beneath the tree, that had killed Mymir on the Holy Island. I left the knife embedded in the ground, and I threw the hair into the river, as a sign that henceforward I worshipped the Gods of Earth and Water, and not of Fire. And I walked toward the Danube.

I came to the ferry. I chatted to two cavalrymen. They were not very happy.

‘We’ve got a new Cavalry Commander at Vindabonum,’ they said. ‘He’s called Aristarchos. He’s always getting us on stunts across the river, he keeps on talking about learning how to melt into the ground, how to move quietly. That’s not what we joined the army for, that’s how the barbarians fight. We joined to ride in line, with shields and plumes, the way the girls like to hear about it.

‘He’s brought a lot of Brits in, too. The sergeant-major’s a terror, the killer type, and so fussy about his food, always wanting cheese …’

I wondered about the sentries at the landing stage. When I got off the ferry Gwalchmai took my arm and led me straight past.

‘Taliesin’s looking for you,’ he said. ‘He can’t get the pots to work.’

‘I’m not surprised. How’s my bigamous wife?’

‘That was an ill-advised thing that we did. Upset the whole social system of the Picts we have. Bithig’s still married to you, she can’t have another husband. But they gave the boy a new surname, Votadinus, to show whose son he is. Unusual, that is. Did you know your father’s gone home? Amnesty, there was.’

I went round to Otho’s house. The porter wouldn’t let me in, but I made so much noise it woke the Spanish butler from his mid-morning nap, and he remembered me. He brought me in, and they gave me a bath, with plenty of oil. They scraped me down and got off all the pig fat of the year. The butler brought in clothes, my own clothes.

‘Your father left them here when he went back, sir, to the south. He sold up all the slaves, we took one or two over, and we closed up the house.’

‘What happened to Ursa?’

‘Oh, her brothers came, just after you left, and wanted to buy her back, but your father let her go, for nothing. I heard that she was royal, whatever that may mean, among the Thuringians, but I don’t know anything about that.’

I put on my own clothes. It was wonderful to walk with bare legs, like a real human being. I went down to Rudi’s tavern. He had prospered, he now had three rooms, different prices, and the terrace outside was for the select customers only. His number five wife was serving. Otho was there, and Aristarchos, and Polycleites, and a young officer named Bion – he was killed the next year, trying to steal horses from Fenris Wolf. I sat down with them, as usual, no greeting. I asked Aristarchos,

‘Were those Picts really going to eat me?’

‘It was the possibility that mattered, and not the actuality,’ he replied. Learning British had had a dreadful effect on his conversation. ‘But it made you start moving out, didn’t it?’

‘What are Amber prices going to do?’ asked Otho.

‘Up.’ I answered. ‘There won’t be any coming back this year, or for years to come. What you’ve got, hold on to.’

The girl came with beer and sausages, but I waved her away.

‘It’s never the same down here as it is out there. Bring me some stuffed olives and wine, real Chian with resin in it, while I make up my mind.’

‘All that Amber you sent me back through Fenris in the Spring, I’ve never seen anything like it,’ went on Otho. ‘Wagon loads of Amber, worked and unworked, and furs, too. Where did you get it?’

I was ordering. A civilised meal, bread dipped in oil, thin slices of veal fried in oil, roast skylarks on a spit, green beans, fresh figs.

‘Not too difficult. Just walk around the villages a bit, you can get it if you pay for it.’

‘What are they like, the villages?’ asked Bion. ‘Are they like this?’ He waved his arm at the orderly streets of Vindabonum’s German quarter. They were clean, there were no dead dogs in the streets, no piles of manure at the very doors of the houses. I thought of the bustle of a palisade full of Vandals and Saxons and all their horses, of Edwin’s hall with the fish nets always drying, of Asgard.

‘Yes, just like that, more or less.’

I started on dormice in honey, something I had particularly missed. Aristarchos was silent. Otho went back to the Amber.

‘What were prices like? Did you pay much for the Amber?’

I stared into my wine, real island stuff. I saw them all in the cup. I saw the Polyani pour out the beer before the tree. I saw Grude heaved across the bench. I saw the Goth ships row in, and I saw Jokuhai-inen dance the Bear Sacrifice, and I saw the Saxons play the head game. I saw a Vandal packtrain on the road, and I saw the Vandal wedges go up the ridge at the trot. I saw the painted Picts dance for no cause, and I saw the gagged Scrawlings make the Honeydew in the Black Sheds. I saw Edith in the Mother’s Cart, and I saw Gambara, furious, seize Hoenir’s sword. I saw Bithig in her chariot. I saw Loki at the Table of the Dead and I saw Donar stand between the teeth of the World Serpent.

And I saw Freda, Golden Freda, Freda Goldlover, sit among her maidens in the red and yellow firelight. The wine clouded before my eye, and I saw the smoke from burning Asgard roll foul across my life.

‘A fair price,’ I said. I closed my good eye too. ‘A fair price. I paid it all.’

Not For All the Gold in Ireland

John James

www.sfgateway.com