Poul Anderson - Star of the Sea

The boy looked downward. He bit his lip, reddened, whitened, reddened again. “That’s less easy than you think,” he grated.

“Yet I must know—eh?—ere I can plight faith.” Everard clapped the stooped shoulder before him. “Take your time, but tell me the whole of it.”

“Edh—She should—She will decide—”

“What is it about her that makes you, a man, wait on her word?” Show plenty of respect. “Is she a spaewife, she, a girl to behold? That would be a mighty thing.”

Heidhin looked up. He trembled. “Yes, that and more than that. The goddess came to her and, and now she is Niaerdh’s, she shall bear Niaerdh’s wrath across the world.”

“What? At whom is the goddess angry?”

“The folk of Romaburh!”

“Why, what harm have they done?” In these distant parts.

“They—they—No, this is too holy to speak of. Wait till you meet her. She will make you as wise as she deems needful.”

“This is asking much of me,” Everard protested reasonably, as a practical-minded hobo would. “You say naught of what has happened aforetime, naught of whither you would fare or why, though you’d have me ward with my life a maiden who’ll rouse lust in any rover, greed in any slaver—”

Heidhin screamed. His sword flashed from the sheath. “You dare!” The blade whirred down.

Drilled-in reflex saved Everard. He brought his spear aslant fast enough to block. Iron slammed deep. The seasoned ash did not quite break. Heidhin whipped the blade high again. Everard swept his weapon quarterstaff style. Mustn’t kill him, he’s alive in the future, and anyway he’s just a kid—Impact thudded. The blow to the head would have knocked Heidhin woozy, had the shaft not snapped. As was, he lurched.

“Hold off, you murderous lout!” Everard roared. Alarm and rage buzzed in his skull. What the hell is going on? “D’you want men for your girl or not?”

Yowling, Heidhin sprang at him. This sword slash was weak, easily sidestepped. Everard dropped the spear, got in close, grasped the tunic, took the moving body on his hip, and sent Heidhin asprawl six feet away.

The youth crawled to his feet. He fumbled for the knife at his belt. Got to end this. Everard delivered a karate kick to the solar plexus. He kept it mild. Heidhin doubled over, collapsed, lay heaving for breath. Everard hunkered down to make sure there was no serious damage or choking on vomit or any such thing.

“ Wat drommel —What is this?” Floris cried in dismay.

Everard straightened. “I dunno,” he answered dully, “except that somehow, in my ignorance, I touched the wrong, inflamed nerve. He must’ve been overwrought, maybe after days or weeks of brooding. He’s very young, remember. Something I said or did triggered a hysterical break. In this culture, you know, among males, that’s apt to take the form of a killing frenzy.”

“I don’t suppose . . . you can . . . mend the situation.”

“Nope. Especially as precarious as the whole business is.” Everard looked down the beach. Edh was a dwindled bit of fluttering darkness, half lost in the sea mist, into which she drifted onward. Wrapped in her dreams, or nightmares, or whatever they were, she had not noticed the fight. “I’d better clear out. The sailors will accept that I’m bewildered—true enough, huh?—but unwilling to cut Heidhin’s throat while he’s helpless, or chance him cutting mine later, or bother negotiating a reconciliation. He’s nothing to me, I’ll say, and walk off.”

He picked up his spearhead, as Maring would, and started in the direction of the ship. They’ll be disappointed, he thought wryly. Gossip from afar is a rare treasure. Well, I’m spared rehashing that elaborate story we concocted.

“Then we may as well go straight to Öland,” said Floris, equally toneless.

“Hm?”

“Edh’s home. The captain identified it unmistakably. It is a long, narrow island off the Baltic coast of Sweden. The city of Kalmar will be built opposite it. I was there once on holiday.” The voice became wistful. “It was, will be, quite charming. Old windmills everywhere, ancient barrows, snuggled villages, and at either tip a lighthouse overlooking a sea where sailboats bob along—But that is then.”

“Sounds like a place I’d visit to visit myself,” Everard said. “Then.” Maybe. Depends on what memories I bring back from it now, nineteen hundred years earlier. He trudged on up the beach.

Hlavagast Unvod’s son was king of the Alvarings. His wife was Godhahild. They dwelt in Laikian, the biggest thorp their tribe had, more than a score of houses within a wall of dry-laid stone. Around it reached heath, where only sheep could thrive. Neither, though, could foemen fall on it without being seen from afar. The walk was short to the eastern strand, nor much longer to the western, and there timber grew. Southward, also, one soon found good grazing and cropland, which went for some ways before it came to its own shore.

Once the Alvarings held all the Eyn, until Geats crossed over from the mainland and, in the course of lifetimes, overran the richer northern half. At last the Alvarings fought them to a standstill. Many among the Geats said the south was not worth taking; many among the Alvarings said the fear of Niaerdh had gripped them. The Alvarings still paid her as much worship as they did the Anses, or more, whereas the Geats gave the goddess only a cow in springtime. Be that as it may, since then the two tribes had done more trading than warring.

Both had men who rowed cargoes over the sea to swap, as far as the Rugii southward or the Anglii westward. The Geats of the Eyn also held a yearly market at Kaupavik haven, which drew traffickers from widely about. To this, Alvarings brought their woolen goods, salt fish, sealskins, blubber oil, feathers and down, amber when a storm had left a hoard of it on their coast. Now and then a young man of theirs joined the crew of an outland ship; if he lived, he would come home with tales of strange countries.

Hlavagast and Godhahild lost three children early on. Then he vowed that if Niaerdh saved those who came after, when the first of them had shed all its milk teeth he would give her a man—not the two thralls, usually old and sick, that she got when she had blessed the fields, but a hale youth. A girl was born. He named her Edh, Oath, to keep the goddess reminded. The sons for whom he hoped followed her.

When the time was ripe, he took a ship and warriors across the channel. Not to stir up the mainland Geats, he fared north well beyond them and fell on a Skridhfennian camp. Of the captives he brought back, he slaughtered the choicest one in Niaerdh’s grove. The rest he sold in Kaupavik. Otherwise Hlavagast did not go warlike abroad, for he was a mild and thoughtful man.

Maybe because of her beginnings, maybe because she had only brothers, Edh grew up a quiet, withdrawn child. She had friends among the others in the thorp, but none close, and when they played together she was always at the rim of it. She was quick to learn her tasks and carried them out faithfully, but was best at those, such as weaving, that she could do by herself. She seldom chattered or giggled.

Yet when she spoke freely, girls listened. After a while boys did, and sometimes the full-grown: for she could make stories. These became more wonderful as the years passed, and she began to put verses into them, almost like a skald. They were of wide-faring men, lovely maidens, wizards, witches, talking animals, merfolk, lands beyond the sea where anything could happen. Ofttimes Niaerdh came into them, a counselor or rescuer. At first Hlavagast feared the goddess might wax wroth; but no ill smote, so he did not forbid it. After all, his daughter had a certain tie to her.