Raptor (101 page)

“You may also find use for some of the things in Swanilda’s packs. Her sleeping furs, her winter traveling cloak. You are not much bigger than she is—than she was. There are some cooking utensils in there, too.”

“Pardon, fráuja,” Maggot said meekly. “I do not know how to cook.”

“That
much, Thor knows,” I said, wickedly implying that Thor might know little else, and it gave me some satisfaction to see Thor bridle with indignation. I added my first command as leader of this company, “Thor will do the cooking for us during this journey.”

I bent to give Swanilda one last kiss, earning another indignant look from Thor. But I kissed only the dead girl’s hand, because the face of a person who has strangled to death is too terrible to kiss. And I said a silent farewell to her, and made a silent promise: that if I survived the journey and completed the Gothic history, and wrote it down for others to read, I would inscribe its dedication to Swanilda.

After Maggot had packed his own belongings behind his saddle, we rode three abreast out of Noviodunum. I did not again let the Armenian ride my Velox, deciding that he might as well start learning some horsemanship unaided by the foot-rope. Also I figured that, since we were getting a late start and so would be only half a day in the saddle, he should not be too sore and stiff to recuperate overnight, and then be able to ride again the next day.

Because I had already seen quite enough of the delta’s monotonous grasslands, I was glad that Maggot chose not to direct us straight northward. We went upstream along the Danuvius, back toward the west. In two days or so, said Maggot, we would find a tributary river flowing into the Danuvius from the north, the Pyretus, and we would turn upstream along that. So we would be traveling northward through a fairly well-wooded river valley, with a pleasantly verdant landscape to look at and a variety of forest game to feed on.

One thing I noticed. Although Maggot rode his horse with all the jouncing gracelessness of a sackful of assorted sticks, and had not the least ability to keep his mount to a comfortably even gait, he did somehow manage always to be riding beside me, with me between him and Thor. Maggot’s obvious avoidance of our companion made me speculate on this Thor who rode with us—or, rather, on what little I knew of Thor.

And that little was hardly commendatory. Here was an impudently upjumped commoner, totally self-regarding, brazen enough to
boast
of ignorance and presumptuous enough to have assumed the name of a deity. Here was a self-confessed thief, devoid of simple decency, disrespectful of authority and law and custom, contemptuous of others’ property and rights and feelings. Here was a person of a physical comeliness that should have made a friend of every stranger, but of a manner so ungracious as to ward off any friendliness. I was gradually having to admit that no one seemed to
like
this person Thor. Could even I say that I liked this person Thor?

As if having heard me utter the name aloud, Thor spoke up, saying conversationally:

“On this journey so far, I have found my god-name most useful. It seems to awe other men. Not once have I been beset by robbers during my travels, or plagued by thieves, or even cheated by a gasts-razn landlord. And I can only suppose that it was because my dread name went before me. As I have told you, I try to put every least thing to good use. Perhaps, Thorn, we ought now to send Maggot riding out ahead of us, to herald to all people the approach of Thor. It might prevent our having any untoward encounters.”

I declined the suggestion. “I have journeyed many times, and across much of this continent, without the need of any such safeguard. I think we can do without it, Thor, and spare Maggot the humiliation of playing our slave.”

Thor sniffed loudly and looked vexed, but did not press the issue, and I went on with my meditations.

Thor’s personality was uninviting to others, including myself. I was not fond of this person Thor. But I had to admit to myself that, even had I found Thor thoroughly repellent of character, I would not have severed our association. And my reason for that reflects little credit on my own character. Like a drunkard or the old hermit Galindo—who would surely profess no fondness for cheap wine and foul weed, but only for the effects they produced—I could no more give up Thor than they could quit the wineskin or the smoke. However meretricious Thor’s beauty, however questionable Thor’s morals, I was enslaved by my lust for the gratifications that Thor, alone of all the persons in the world, could provide. Indeed, at this moment, I was rather regretting
not
having commanded Maggot to ride ahead of us. I was reluctant to waste a single night of embrace with Thor, but I did not want Maggot to see or overhear us. I soon learned, though, that Thor was nowise inhibited by such considerations.

“Vái,” Thor said disdainfully when we stopped to camp and I mentioned my apprehensions. “Let the lout be scandalized. He is only an Armenian. And I would refuse to forgo my pleasures if he were a bishop.”

“You, ja,” I muttered, “but I still am concerned to remain anonymous. Surely you know how Armenians love to talk.”

“Then let me be the one to cast away disguise, at least partially. While Maggot is tending the horses yonder, I shall dress in my Genovefa garments, and wear them henceforward as long as he is with us. We can tell him that it was only for secret state reasons that I passed as a man until now.” It seemed a clever notion, and I thought it a most generous gesture, until Thor added sardonically, “You appointed me the cook of this company. I might as well dress the part, and behave as obsequiously as befits a great marshal’s mere underling.”

I tried to make a jest of that, saying, “Well, after dark we will take turns at being the overling.” But neither of us laughed at that poor sally, and I immediately felt ashamed of my stooping to vulgarity.

Still, the ruse worked well enough. When Maggot came, carrying an armload of wood with which to lay a fire, he evinced only mild surprise at finding me in converse with a young woman instead of Thor. He nodded courteously when I introduced “Genovefa,” and if he had any doubts of the story we had confected, he did not voice them. He said only:

“Since none of us killed any game today, not even having seen any, you may be pleased to know—fráuja Thorn and fráujin Genovefa—that I took the precaution of bringing along some smoked meat and salt fish from the fráuja Meirus’s kitchen.”

We both expressed gladness and thanks for his thoughtfulness, and Genovefa even set to her cookery work with a will, taking a pot down to the river to get water for boiling the fare. Neither she nor Maggot chided or derided me, their leader, for having neglected to provide trail food myself. But I, realizing that this lapse was one more sign of my now fuddled intellect, resolved to be less preoccupied with my new companion, from now on, and to give more attention to my responsibilities.

When we had eaten our rude meal, and Genovefa had sand-scoured our few utensils, and I had banked the fire for the night, we each began to lay out sleeping furs—and Maggot took his a respectful distance off along the riverbank, well out of sight of us. I doubt, though, that he was out of hearing, for Genovefa-Thor and Thorn-Veleda made many loud and blithesome cries in the course of that night.

The next day, and all the days thereafter—during the daylight hours, at least—Thor remained in the guise of Genovefa, and Maggot addressed her always as fráujin, and I as Genovefa. I came to regard her as exclusively female—during the daylight hours, at least—and found that, in my thoughts as well as in my spoken words, I was referring to her
as
a “her.” Until now, neither in speech nor in my mind had I employed “he” or “she” or “it” or
any
kind of referent pronoun, because there simply does not exist—in the Old Language or in Latin or Greek or, as far as I know, in any other language—a pronoun suitable to a mannamavi.

As I well knew from having come down this stretch of the Danuvius, it did so much twisting and turning hereabout, and split so often into divergent channels, and was flanked by so many lakes and meres, that I might not have recognized the tributary river we were headed for, but Maggot did when we reached it. Though less imposing than the mighty Danuvius that it flowed into, the Pyretus was no inconsiderable stream itself. It bore a fair traffic of transport barges and, at open intervals in the woods that lined its banks, there were thriving farmsteads and now and again a village, sometimes of respectable size. The river was rich with fish, and Maggot proved adept at catching them. The woods were rich with game, and I could almost choose which meat I would bring down for us to eat each night.

This country north of the Danuvius was called Old Dacia and was considered, by all the Roman citizens south of the Danuvius, to be a primeval, trackless fastness populated only by savage barbarians. But I had early learned that “barbarians are everyone else,” so I did not much fear meeting veritable wild men. And in fact I now discovered that most of the people of these lands, while they lacked many of the amenities and graces of civilization, had made domesticated islands in the wilderness, where they lived peaceably, productively and more or less contentedly. Akh, here and there we did encounter
real
barbarians, nomad families and tribes that merely wandered about and lived by hunting and gathering. They were remnants of the people called Avars and Kutriguri, clearly relatives of the Huns, for they were yellowish of skin, pouchy of eyes, hairy, filthy and verminous. None of those we met gave us any trouble beyond importunate begging—not for money, but just for salt or spare clothes or scraps from our kills of game.

The settled communities that we came upon were variously inhabited: by Slovenes, or by Goths of one of the three lineages, or by people of some other Germanic ancestry. But most were the villages of a people descended from the ancient Dacians, the original natives of these parts, who had long ago intermarried with Roman colonists and retired Roman soldiers. The descendants now spoke a corrupt but comprehensible Latin and called themselves Rumani. (By their Slovene and Germanic neighbors they were called a more derogatory name: the Walachi, meaning “babble-speakers.”) Every community of any size, of course, also had its sprinkling of Greeks and Syrians and Jews. They were invariably the richest residents, for they were the traders dealing in the goods that accounted for the Pyretus River’s barge traffic.

We three journeyers seldom paused for long in the Slovene villages, because, if any of them had a travelers’ lodging place at all, it would be only an unlovely krchma. The Germanic communities always had a passable gasts-razn, and the Ruman ones usually had a tolerable hospitium (called “ospitun” in the Ruman dialect), sometimes even including a rudimentary bathing house. I myself would not have stopped overnight in so
many
such places, but Genovefa insisted on having a respite, as often as possible, from “the rigors of the outdoors.” So I would engage a chamber for us—Maggot of course sleeping out in the stable with the horses. However, I did stoutly resist Genovefa’s frequent attempts to
keep
us loitering and lolling in any one place, though she might prettily plead and implore or—like a genuine woman-wife of the Xantippe sort—berate me in angry tantrum.

Anyway, the time we spent in gasts-razna and ospitune was not all wasted, for in several of them I collected new items for my historical compilation. Any lodging place for travelers is of course situated on a well-traveled road, and generally has been there for as long as that road has
been
a road, and generally has been in the same family for all that time. Since the proprietor of such an establishment does not himself ever go anywhere, and has very little to occupy him besides routine chores, his sole entertainment is listening to the tales that his lodgers tell. Then he tells the stories to other people, including the sons who will succeed him as keepers of the family establishment. Consequently, any such person has an enormous stock of tales and gossip and anecdote, some of it recently acquired, but much of it old—even ancient—handed down from his father’s father, perhaps through countless generations. And if the bored, moss-grown stay-at-home enjoys anything more than listening to other people, it is talking to them, so I was easily able to elicit from every Gothic and Ruman landlord whole spates of recital, recounting and recollection.

Not everything I heard could be considered strictly historical, and some of it was not entirely believable, and several of the stories I had heard before. Nevertheless, I would sometimes get so enthralled by some long-winded landlord that I would sit with him beside the ospitun hearth fire for hours after nightfall, until Genovefa would get restless and peevish, and would interrupt our host to say:

“That story has nothing to do with our quest, and it is long past midnight. Do come to bed, Thorn.”

And I would have to tear myself away. But I did not necessarily miss much of value in so doing, because Genovefa frequently was right. Many of those Ruman narrators merely told variant versions of ancient pagan myths and fables. At one ospitun, the landlord solemnly assured me, “If you live always in virtue, young man, upon your death you will go to the Fortunate Isles of Avalonnis, and there you will dwell in bliss. But it is ordained that, after a time, you must be born again into this world in a new body. Naturally, no sensible man would willingly forsake the joys of the Fortunate Isles to do that. So you will be given a drink from the river Lethe, the water of forgetfulness. That will make you lose all memory of the happiness you enjoyed in Avalonnis, so you will be content to return to earth and suffer the innumerable tribulations of yet another mortal lifetime.”

“Avalonnis,
bah!”
grunted the Gothic keeper of a gasts-razn. “That is only a Roman—and Ruman—perversion of the Gothic afterworld, Walis-Halla, Wotan’s ‘hall of the chosen.’ And, as pagans still believe, the chosen Walr are those warriors who die bravely in battle. They are lifted up by the awesomely fierce but beautiful maidens called Walis-karja, ‘the carers for the slain,’ and are borne in honor to Walis-Halla.”