Raptor (112 page)

She bridled as if insulted, saying loudly, “Sigurd
still
lives!”

The master was grinning again and shaking his head in denial, so I did not pursue that. I asked, “Good Hildr, do you perhaps remember any other
names
of those times? Besides Sigurd and Berig?”

“Akh, ja.” Her one eye now gave me a measuring look, and she chewed for a while before continuing. I had not yet said anything to her about history, but surprisingly she did. “If you would know the very beginning of things, you must cast back… beyond history… beyond Sigurd and Beowa and Berig… back to where you touch the night of time. There you would find no Goths, no people, no human beings at all, but only the Aesir—the family of the Old Gods—Wotan and Thor and Tiw and all the rest.”

When she paused to tear off another bite of meat, I said encouragingly, “Those names I know, ja.”

She nodded and swallowed. “Back there in the night of time, the Aesir appointed one of their minor kinfolk to become the father of the first human beings. His name was Gaut, and he dutifully sired the Gautar, the Many Peoples. Over the ages, they took various names. Here in the north, the Svear, the Rugii, the Seaxe, the Iutar, the Danisk…”

When she paused for a swig at the beerskin, I said, “I see. All the Germanic peoples. In the south they took the names Alamanni, Franks, Burgunds, Vandals—”

“Notice!” she interrupted, pointing the skin’s spout at me. “Of all those peoples, only we Goths have kept our first father’s name through the centuries since. It changed some, ja—from Gautar to Gutans and finally to Goths—but we kept the name.”

Well, that was the single most antique piece of historical information I had been given yet. I may be thought slightly mad myself to have taken that as worth recording, coming as it did from a madwoman. But Hildr sounded sane enough on this subject, and she certainly
looked
old enough to have been present in person at what she called “the beginning of things.”

Now, rending the meat again, she said through a mouthful of it, “Good… tastes good…” And that obviously reminded her of something. She swallowed quickly so she could tell me, “It was also from our original father’s name of Gaut that all the Many Peoples derived the word ‘good.’ “

Then she laid aside the meat and the beerskin, saying, “Come, my lords. I will take you to Sigurd.” She picked up a brand from the fire, blew it to flame and, carrying it for a torch, shuffled into the cave mouth behind us.

Frido, looking just a little apprehensive, asked the ship’s master, “You say you have seen her Sigurd?”

He grinned again. “I have. My father saw. My grandfather must have seen. Go see for yourselves. Old Hildr is only deranged, not dangerous.”

I had to stoop to get inside the cave. It was not very deep, and at the farther end of it the aged woman was holding her torch with one hand, using the other to scrabble at a heap of damp seaweed until she uncovered a long, pale object lying on the rough stone floor.

“Sigurd,” she said, pointing a withered finger.

Frido and I went closer, and saw that the object was a solid block of ice, as big as a sarcophagus. I motioned for old Hildr to hold the torch closer, but she croaked an objection.

“I must not risk melting the ice. That is why I keep it in here the year around, and keep it covered with weed, so it melts not even by a fraction.”

As our eyes adjusted to the dim, flickering torchlight, we could see that the ice block truly
was
a sarcophagus, and the crone truly did possess a “Sigurd”—or at least a preserved male human being. Although the ice block’s irregular surface blurred our view of him, we could make out that he was clad in rude leather garments, and that in life he had been tall and muscular. Squinting more closely, I saw that he had clear young skin, an abundance of yellow hair, and that his still-open, surprised-looking eyes were a bright blue. His features were those of a peasant youth, somewhat slack and stupid. But, all in all, he had been a handsome young fellow, and still was. Meanwhile, old Hildr went on talking and, now that she was not chewing, her speech was again getting indistinct, so that I could catch only disconnected words and phrases:

“Many, many years ago… a bitter winter day. Sigurd went… with Beowa… Wiglaf… Heigila… in fishing boat. Sigurd overboard… among the toross. Companions dredged him out… encased in ice… brought him ashore thus… thus he has been ever since…”

“How tragic,” murmured Frido. “Was he perhaps your son? Your grandson?”

Her reply was slurred, but it was unmistakably indignant. “Sigurd… my
husband!”

I said, “Oh vái. Many years ago, indeed. We sincerely condole in your grief, Widuwo Hildr. And we admire your devoted caretaking of Sigurd. You must have loved him very much.”

I would have expected the hag to sniffle or simper or give some other such widowly response. But old Hildr seemed much more emotionally moved. She flailed her torch about, and flaffed her fish-skin rags, and screeched so that the cave echoed, and Frido shrank back against the rock wall in fright. But I was able, just barely, to comprehend the wretched old crone’s words of angry lament.

“Grief?… Love?… With all my heart, I
hate
the spiteful Sigurd! Just look, my lords! Look at my husband, then look at me. I ask you, is that fair? Is it
fair?”

As we boarded the ship again, the master said affably, “Since we came so far, and are here now, we need be in no hurry to leave. You can go ashore as often as you like.”

And Frido said hopefully, “Saio Thorn, we could ascend the cliffs and go roaming the island’s interior.”

“Ne,” I said. “Thags izvis, master, but you may raise anchor as soon as you are ready. Take us back to Pomore.” So he went off shouting orders, and I said to the prince, “Here ends my questing. Surely the history of the Goths cannot go further back than what we heard from old mad Hildr. I need see no more of this Gutaland and Skandza and the frozen far north. I appreciate your enterprise, young Frido, but winter travel on foot is hard enough even in less forbidding lands than these. I will not hazard your health, and have your queen-mother flog me to ribbons.”

There was a short silence. This was the moment in which I would commit myself to sinning against the laws of both kinship and hospitality. However remote might be the Gothic kinship between Queen Giso and myself, I was about to be disloyal to it. However grudging had been her welcome of me, it
had
been hospitality, and I was about to repay it with treachery. But I waited, trusting that Prince Frido would broach the idea and save my suggesting it.

He finally said, “What
will
you do now, Saio Thorn?”

“Go south,” I said airily, but still taking care to choose my words ambiguously. “Rejoin King Theodoric. Then go into battle with him—and with your own king-father—when the war commences.”

“How will you go south? The river Viswa will not thaw for two months yet.”

“Akh, I have a good mount. Winter travel is not impossibly difficult on horseback.”

There was another short silence. Again I waited.

He said hopefully, “I too have a good mount.”

I let his words hang there between us for a moment, then said, but not sternly, “You would flout the command of your queen-mother?”

“I believe… what you said… that war is not the province of mothers. I shall tell her that, to her face, and then—”

“Hold, Frido. I recommend that you forgo any confrontation.”

In counseling furtiveness, I was but being practical, for I had seen how the boy quailed in that woman’s overbearing presence. “We have with us all our traveling needs. When we dock at Pomore, you have only to order one of your companion guards to go and fetch our saddled horses, as if you wished us to make triumphal entry at the palace. We fling our packs on the horses and… simply gallop out of town.”

“Then I
am
going with you?” he cried, beaming brightly.

“You are. I look forward to presenting you to your king-father. That is, if we do not get waylaid. Your queen-mother is bound to send her guards galloping in pursuit of us.”

“Akh!” He laughed disdainfully. “You and I can outgallop all those lumpish, grumbly, dice-playing, beer-bellied old men! Right, friend Thorn?”

“Right, friend Frido!” I said, and clapped him on the shoulder. His smile got even broader, and he pointed upward. “See? An omen of good augury.”

For the first time during the voyage, the leaden clouds were parting, showing patches of crystalline blue sky, and rays of sunlight came down to gild Gutaland’s cliffs and the deck we stood on and the toross ice all around us. The crewmen were now hauling sails aloft on the two high masts, and the canvas billowed out as bright as cloth of gold in that new radiance, and the ship gave a jaunty forward bound as if it too was eager and happy to be returning southward.

But that night, when Gutaland was again below the horizon, there came another seeming omen, one that I might have regarded as foreboding, if I put any credence at all in omens. The sky was by then completely free of clouds, a clear blue-black instead of dirty gray, and full of brilliant stars. Under full sail, the ship was running briskly before the wind—actually putting a bow wave and wake of pearly white lace on the sullen Sarmatic waters—coursing due south and jinking only now and then to left or right to avoid the bigger toross packs. I was standing at the stern, admiring the deft work of the steersmen and being glad to see the north star Phoenice directly behind us—when, in a matter of a moment, Phoenice was obscured from my sight.

Slowly, slowly but majestically, there came dropping from the zenith to the horizon in all directions great luminous swathes of drapery and curtains and veils, translucent and coldly colored pale green, pale blue, pale lavender. They waved and fluttered about the heavens, but only lazily, dreamily, in dead silence, like goose-summer cloth stirred by a gentle breeze—not by the north wind that was still blowing a gale down here on the world’s surface. The sight was unutterably beautiful, but it stopped my breath because, had I been a superstitious person, a believer in gods, I could only have supposed that those gods had all died, and that these spectral draperies must be their
shrouds.
Fortunately, before I could do or say anything foolish, I looked to the steersmen, and saw them not transfixed as I was, but only cheerily regarding the show above and exchanging apparently untroubled comments on it.

I went to see if young Frido had been unsettled by this cosmic event, and found him just as cheerful as the steersmen. Indeed, when I mumbled to him something about heavenly omens, he perceived my concealment of my own concern. As if I had been the child and Frido the adult, he good-humoredly assured me, “If it is an omen, Thorn, it cannot portend much, for it is common in our skies, particularly in the wintertime. It is only what we Rugii call the murgtanzern, the merry dancers.”

Well, that did not explain what the merry dancers
were,
or why they danced—and no one else has ever given me an explanation either—but I could hardly go on being concerned about a phenomenon so innocuous that it was called merry. So I ceased being so, and merely stayed awake to enjoy the spectacle during the remainder of that night. I am glad I did, because the morning brought back the low-hanging gray clouds, and I have never seen the murgtanzern again in all my life.

The homecoming voyage was not so tedious and uncomfortable as the outgoing, because, with the wind behind us, we made it in about half the time. When we raised Pomore one forenoon, and the seamen slipped the sails and the ship slid toward the docks, slowing as it neared them, I saw someone excitedly waving from there. I had rather dreaded that Queen Giso would have arranged for advance notice of our approach and would be skulking in wait. But this was not the queen; it was my whilom companion Maghib. So I said to Prince Frido:

“It may be that we can elaborate our plan somewhat, and better assure our safe escape.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am not sure yet. But hearken to me. The ship’s master seems well disposed to obey your commands. Tell him not to make fast to the dock, but to tether the ship only loosely, and to have his oarsmen at the ready. Then, as we planned, order one of the guards to go and saddle and bring our mounts. But order him to do that
in secret,
to tell no one at the palace of our arrival, because you wish to surprise your mother. By the time he gets back here with our horses, I will know better what we might do next. Meanwhile, you wait here on board.”

Frido proceeded unquestioningly to do as I suggested. As soon as the ship touched the dockside, I leapt ashore and ran to greet and embrace the joyously grinning Armenian. We thumped one another on the back and I said:

“It is good to see you, Maghib. I trust you are fully recovered.”

“Ja, fráuja. I wish I could have recovered and come here sooner, to inform you that the Rugian army passed through Lviv only shortly after you left there. But I assume you must know that by now.”

“I do. Have you any other news? Anything from Meirus? From Theodoric?”

“Ne, fráuja. Only travelers’ reports—that both Theodoric and Strabo are preparing their forces for a clash in the spring.”

“Hardly news, that.” I was keeping an eye on the ship, and now saw one of the queen’s guards step ashore and go off at a shuffling trot toward the palace. “Well, I have some small news for you, Maghib. Your injury has been avenged, and the dastardly Thor will never assail you or anyone again.” He started an Armenianly wordy spate of thanks and undying gratitude, but I cut him short, asking, “What inspired you to meet this particular vessel this morning?”

“My lady Queen Giso told me that you and her son had gone a-voyaging on it, and that it was the only merchant ship at sea right now. So I have come down here to the docks each day.”

“Your lady told you?” I said, wondering.

“As you know, I came to Pomore bearing the fráuja Meirus’s letter accrediting me as his amber agent. I was advised to present that to the queen. It seems she oversees every mercantile matter here, however insignificant. So I gained audience with her, and told her of my acquaintance with you, and also mentioned having seen her royal husband pass through Lviv at the head of his troops. She most graciously gave me lodging in what had been your quarters at the palace. I am still installed there, and I am very much enjoying the luxurious accommodations, except that I begin to find the unvarying meals of fish rather—”