Poul Anderson - Star of the Sea

Everard rubbed his chin. “Then she’s invented preaching, religious fervor, independently,” he said. “How? Why?”

“We must find out,” Floris responded.

“What are these new myths?” Everard inquired.

Ulstrup frowned into the distance. “It will take me long to tell you everything I have learned. And it is inchoate, not a neat theological system, you realize. And I doubt I have heard all of it, listening to her or at second hand. Certainly I have not heard what will develop as time goes on.

“But—well, she does not say it outright, perhaps she herself is not conscious of it, but she is making her goddess into a being at least as powerful, as . . . cosmic . . . as any. Naerdha is not exactly usurping Wotan’s authority over the dead, but she too receives them in her hall, she too leads them in a hunt through heaven. She is becoming as much a deity of war as Tiwaz, and the destined destroyer of Rome. Like Thonar, she commands elemental forces, weather, storm, together with the sea, rivers, lakes, all water. Hers is the moon—”

“Hecate,” Everard muttered.

“But she keeps her ancient precedence over begetting and birth,” Ulstrup finished. “Women who die in childbed go directly to her, like fallen warriors to the Eddic Odin.”

“That must appeal to women,” Floris said.

“It does, it does,” Ulstrup agreed. “Not that they have a separate faith—mystery cults, and sects for that matter, are unknown among the Germans—but here is a, a special devotion for them.”

Everard paced to and fro in the glen. His fist beat his palm. “Yeah,” he said. “That was important to the success of Christianity, in both the South and the North. It had more for women than any paganism did, even the Magna Mater. They might not convert their husbands, but they’d sure influence their children.”

“Men can behold visions too.” Ulstrup regarded Floris. “Do you see the same possibility that I do?”

“Yes,” she answered, not quite steadily. “It could happen. Tacitus Two . . . Veleda went back into free Germany after Civilis was crushed, bearing her message, and a new religion spread among the barbarians. . . . It could grow and develop onward after her death. It would have no real competition. Oh, it would not become monotheistic or anything like that. But this goddess would be the supreme figure, around whom everything gathered. She would give folk as much, spiritually, or almost as much, as Christ could. Few would ever join the Church.”

“The more so if they lacked political reason to,” Everard added. “I watched the process in viking Scandinavia. Baptism was the admission ticket to civilization, with all its commercial and cultural advantages. But a collapsed West Roman Empire won’t be anywhere near that attractive, and Byzantium is a long ways off.”

“True,” Ulstrup said. “Quite conceivably the Nerthus faith can become the seed and core of a Germanic civilization—not barbarism but a civilization, however turbulent—which has the inner richness to resist Christendom, as Zoroastrian Persia will. Already they are not mere woods-runners here, you know. They are aware of an outside world, they interact with it. When the Langobardi intervened in the dynastic quarrels of the Cherusci, it was to restore a king who had been overthrown because he was Roman-reared and sent by request from Rome. Not that the Langobardi are cat’s-paws; it was a Machiavellian move. Trade with the South increases year by year. Roman or Gallo-Roman ships sometimes ply as far as Scandinavia. The archaeologists of our time will speak of a Roman Iron Age, followed by a Germanic Iron Age. Yes, they are learning, these barbarians. They are assimilating what they find useful. It does not follow that they must inevitably be assimilated themselves.”

His voice dropped. “Of course, if they are not it will be a different future. Our twentieth century will never exist.”

“That’s what we’re trying to head off,” Everard said harshly.

A silence fell. Wind lulled, leaves rustled, sunlight skipped on the ruffled stream. The peacefulness made the landscape feel unreal.

“But we’ve got to learn how this deviation started, before we can do anything about it,” Everard went on. “Did you find where Veleda hails from?”

“I am afraid not,” Ulstrup confessed. “Poor communications, vast reaches of wilderness—and Edh does not talk about her past, nor does her associate Heidhin. He may feel a little more at ease with himself twenty-one years hence, when he mentions the Alvarings to you, whoever they are. Even then, I think, it would be dangerous to ask him for details. At present he and she are totally reticent.

“However, I did hear that she appeared first among the Rugii on the Baltic littoral, five or six years ago as nearly as I can determine from the vague accounts. They say she came in a ship, as befits the prophetess of a sea deity. That and her accent suggest to me a Scandinavian origin. I’m sorry I cannot do better for you.”

“It’ll serve,” Everard replied. “You did okay, buddy. With patience and instruments, maybe occasional inquiries on the ground, we’ll track down the place and moment of her landing.”

“And then—” Floris’s words trailed away. She gazed past the river and the forest beyond, northeasterly toward an unseen shore.

Right and left the strand reached, sand rising into dunes where stiff grass grew, until haze blurred sight. Kelp, shells, bones of fish and birds lay sparsely strewn on the darker stretch below the high-water line. A few gulls rode the wind. It whistled raw-cold. A taste of salt was on it, and smells from the deeps. Waves washed low onto the shore, hissed back down, came again a little higher up. Farther out they ran strong, hollowly booming, white-capped above steely gray, to a horizon that likewise lost itself in the sky. It pressed in on the world, did that sky, hueless as the sea. Tatters of cloud scudded murky beneath it. Rain walked in the west.

Inland, sedge swayed around pools whose algal green was the only lightness. Forest gloomed in the distance. A brook seeped through the marsh to the beach. Doubtless the dwellers used it to move whatever boats they owned. Their hamlet lay a mile from the coast, some wattle—and-daub cabins hunched below turf roofs. Smoke blew out of louvers, otherwise nothing stirred.

The ship brought abrupt vividness. She was a beauty, long and lean, clinker-built, stem- and sternposts curving high, mastless but swiftly driven by thirty oars. Though her red paint had weathered, the oak remained stout. To the chant of the helmsman, her crew brought her aground, leaped over the sides, and hauled her partway out.

Everard approached. They waited for him in restrained wariness. Nearing, they had seen that he stood alone. He drew close and put the butt of his spearshaft on the sand. “Hail,” he greeted.

A grizzled, scarred fellow who must be the captain asked, “Are you from yon houses?” His dialect would have been hard to understand had Everard and Floris not received an imprint. (It was of a Danish tongue four centuries uptime, the closest available. Fortunately, early Nordic languages didn’t change fast. However, the agents could not hope to pass for natives, either of the ship’s home or of this region.)

“No, I am a wayfarer. I was bound for there, wanting shelter tonight, but spied you and thought I would hear your tale first. It should be better than aught that any homefast hinds can tell. I hight Maring.”

Ordinarily the Patrolman would just have said, “Everard,” which sounded like a name in some other patois. But he’d be using it uptime when he met Heidhin, whom he hoped to buttonhole this day. He couldn’t afford recognition then—another shift in reality, with unguessable consequences. Floris had suggested this monicker, authentically southern German. She had also assisted him with a flowing blond wig and false beard, plus a Jimmy Durante nose that would keep attention off the rest of him. Given the fading of memory with years, that should serve.