Poul Anderson - Star of the Sea

“No, it’s unknown whence she came at the first. She fared hither from among the Cherusci, and I’ve heard that ere then she abode for a time with the Langobardi. . . . I think this Nerha goddess of hers is of the Wanes, not the Anses . . . unless it’s another name for Mother Fricka. And yet . . . they say Nerha is as terrible in her rage as Tiw himself. . . . There’s something about a star and the sea, but I know nothing of that, we’re inlanders here. . . . She reached us soon after the Romans withdrew. The king guests her. He bade men come and hearken. That must have been at her wish. He would hardly gainsay it. . . .”

Floris led him on. What he told would much help her plan the next step in the search. Edh herself, the Patrol agents had better avoid meeting. Until they had more knowledge of her and whatever the forces were that she was unleashing, they would be crazy to interfere.

Late in the afternoon they arrived at a cleared vale, fields and pastures, the king’s main estate. He was basically a landholder, not above joining his tenants, hirelings, and slaves in the farm work. He presided over councils and the great seasonal sacrifices, he took command in war, but law and tradition bound him as fast as anyone else; his often riotous folk would overrule or overthrow him if that was their mood, and any scion of the royal house had a claim to the post that was as good as the fighting men he could muster to support it. No wonder these Germans can’t overcome Rome, Everard reflected. They never will, either. When their descendants—Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Lombards, Saxons, and the rest—take over, it’ll be by default, because the Empire has crumbled from within. And besides, it’ll have taken them over before then—spiritually, by converting them to Christianity, so that the new Western civilization comes to birth where the old Classical one did, on the Mediterranean shore, not along the Rhine or the gray North Sea.

It was a flitting thought at the back of his mind, repeating what he well knew, gone again as his attention focused ahead.

The king and his household dwelt in a long, thatch-roofed timber hall. Sheds, barns, a pair of hovels where the lowly slept, and other outbuildings formed, with it, a square. A way behind it loomed a grove of ancient trees, the halidom, where the gods received their offerings and gave their omens. Most arrivals pitched camp in front, filling a meadow. Nearby, calves and swine roasted over big fires, while servants dished up horns or wooden cups of beer for all. Lavish hospitality was essential to maintaining a lord’s reputation, on which his life might well depend.

Everard and Floris established themselves inconspicuously offside and mingled with the crowd. Passing a gap between the buildings, they got a look into the courtyard. Rudely cobbled, at present it was occupied by the horses of the important visitors, who would stay in the royal house. Amidst them stood four white oxen and the wagon they had surely drawn. It was an extraordinary vehicle, beautifully carpentered, elaborately carved. Behind a driver’s seat, windowless sides rose to a shake roof. “A van,” Everard murmured. “Got to be Veleda’s—Edh’s. I wonder, does she sleep in it on the road?”

“Doubtless,” Floris said. “To preserve dignity and mystery. I suspect an image of the goddess is in there too.”

“M-m, Gundicar mentioned several men who travel with her. She may not need an armed guard, if the tribes respect her as much as I gather, but it’s impressive, and besides, somebody has to do the chores. Though I suppose being her attendants makes them heap big medicine, and they’re putting up in the sachem’s lodge along with his braves and the local chiefs. She too, do you think?”

“Certainly not. She, to lie on a bench among a lot of snoring men? Either she will use her car or the king has arranged some kind of private room for her.”

“How does she do it, anyway? What gives her that power?”

“We are trying to learn what.”

The sun slipped below western treetops. Dusk began to rise in the vale. A wind slithered chilly. Now that the guests were fed, it smelled only of woodsmoke and forest deeps. Thralls stoked the fires; flames flickered aloft, growled, spat. Overhead winged nest-bound crows and darting swallows, runes changeably scrawled on a sky gone purple in the east, cold green in the west. The evening star trembled into sight.

Horns sounded. Warriors trod from the hall, through the courtyard, onto the trampled ground outside. Their spearheads caught the dying daylight. Before them went a man in a richly patterned tunic, gold helices entwining his arms, the king. Breath hissed in the shadowed gathering until, silent, men waited. The heart knocked in Everard’s breast.

The king spoke loudly but gravely. Everard thought that, underneath, he was shaken. To them from afar, he said, had come Edh, of whose wonderworking all had heard. She wanted to prophesy for the Tencteri. In honor to her and the goddess who fared with her, he had therefore bidden the nearest dwellers tell the next, and thus across the land. In these unhappy times, whatever signs the gods sent must be carefully weighed. He warned that the words of Edh would hurt. Bear them manfully, as one bears the setting of a broken bone. Think what it meant, and what folk could or should do hereafter.

The king stood aside. Two women—wives of his?—bore out a high, three-legged stool. Edh came forth and seated herself on it.

Everard strained through the gloaming. How he wished he could use his optical to help this uneasy firelight! What he saw surprised him. He had half expected a ragged hag. She was well clad, in a short-sleeved long-skirted gown of plain white wool, a fur-trimmed blue cloak held with a gilt bronze brooch, thin leather shoes. Her head was bare, like a maiden’s, but the long brown hair hung in braids, rather than loosely, beneath a snakeskin fillet. Tall, full-boned but thin, she moved just a little awkwardly, as if she and her body were not quite one. Big eyes glowed in a long, handsomely sculptured face. When she opened her mouth, what appeared to be a full set of teeth flashed white. Why, she’s young, he thought; and: No. Mid-thirties, I’d guess. That’s middle-aged here. She could be a grandmother, though actually they say she’s never married.

His gaze left her for an instant and, with a start, he recognized the man who had accompanied her and stood at her side, dark, saturnine, somberly garbed. Heidhin. Of course. Ten years younger than when I first saw him. He doesn’t look it, or, rather, he already looks as old as then.

Edh spoke. She made no gestures, kept hands on lap, and her voice, a husky contralto, stayed soft. It carried, though; and steel was in it, and winter winds.

“Hear me and heed ye,” she uttered, eyes turned beyond them toward the evenstar, “highborn or lowborn, still in your strength or stumbling graveward, doomed to death and dreeing the weird boldly or badly. I bid ye hearken. When life is lost, alone is left, for yourself and your sons, what is said of you. Doughty deeds shall never die, but in minds of men remain forever-night and nothingness for the names of cravens! No good the gods will give to traitors, nor aught but anger unto the slothful. Who fears to fight will lose his freedom, will cringe and crawl to get moldy crusts, his children chafing in chains and shame. Hauled into whoredom, helplessly, his women weep. These woes are his. Better a brand should burn his home while he, the hero, harvests foemen till he falls defiant and fares on skyward.

“Hoofs in heaven heavily ring. Lightning leaps, blazing lances. All the earth resounds with anger. Seas in surges smite the shores. Now will Nerha naught more suffer. Wrathful she rides to bring down Rome, the war gods with her, the wolves and ravens.”