Poul Anderson - Star of the Sea

Heidhin caught his breath. His finger leaped to point. “Look!” he cried.

Edh squinted north against the brightness. Her voice wavered. “What is it?”

“A ship,” he said, “bound this way. A big, big ship.”

“No, it can’t be. That thing above it—”

“I’ve heard about such. Men who’ve been abroad have sometimes seen them. They catch the wind and push the hull along. Yon’s the Roman ship, Edh, it has to be, headed home from Kaupavik, and we came right in time to behold!”

Rapt, they stared, forgetting all else. The vessel glided nigh. Indeed she was a wonder. Black with gold trim, she was no longer than a large Northern craft, but much wider, round-bellied to hold an untellable freight of treasures. She was decked over, men standing high above the hold. They seemed a swarm, plenty to fight off any rovers. The stempost curved grandly up and aft, while the carving of a giant swan’s neck lifted at the stern. Between them rested a wooden house. No oars drove this ship. From a great pole with a crosspiece swelled a cloth as broad as the beam. She moved along noiseless, a wave at her bow and wake aswirl behind the double steering blades.

“Surely they are beloved of Niaerdh,” Edh breathed.

“Now I can see how they clutch half the world,” Heidhin said shakenly. “What can withstand them?”

The ship changed course, nearer to the island. Youth and maiden saw crewmen peer their way. A hail rang faintly in their ears. “Why, I, I do think it’s us they look at,” Edh stammered. “What could they want?”

“Maybe . . . they would like me to join them,” Heidhin said. “I’ve heard from travelers to western parts that the Romans will take tribesmen into their war-hosts. If those are shorthanded because of sickness or something—”

Edh cast him a stricken glance. “Would you go with them?”

“No, never!” Her fingers closed tight around his. He squeezed back. “But let’s hear them out anyway, if they do land. They may want something else, and pay us well for our help.” A pulse throbbed in his throat.

The yard rattled down. What must be an anchor, though it was not a stone but a hook, went out at the end of a line. A boat trailed on another line. Sailors hauled it alongside and lowered a rope ladder. Men climbed down and seated themselves on the thwarts. Their mates handed them oars. One stood up and flapped a fine cloak he carried. “He smiles and beckons,” said Heidhin. “Yes, they have a wish they hope we can grant.”

“How beautiful, that garment,” Edh murmured. “I think Niaerdh wears the like when she visits the other gods.”

“Maybe ere sundown it will be yours.”

“Oh, I dare not ask.”

“Ho, there!” bawled a man in the boat. He was the biggest, fair-haired, doubtless a German-born interpreter. The rest were a mixed lot, some also light of hue, some darker than Heidhin. But of course the Romans had many different folk to draw on. All wore knee-length tunics over bare legs. Edh flushed and kept her gaze from the ship, where most went naked.

“Be not afraid,” the German called. “We’d fain deal with you.”

Heidhin reddened too. “An Alvaring knows no fear,” he shouted. As his voice cracked he grew redder yet.

The Romans rowed in. The two ashore waited, blood loud in their heads. The boat grounded. A man jumped forth and made fast. The one with the cloak led them up the strand. He smiled and smiled.

Heidhin clasped hard his spear. “Edh,” he said, “I like not the look of them. I think we’d be wisest if we kept out of reach—”

He was too late. The leader yelled an order. His followers dashed forward. Before Heidhin could raise his weapon, new hands grabbed it. A man stepped behind him and caught his arms in a wrestler’s lock. He struggled, screeching. A short stick, to which he had paid no heed—the gang was unarmed save for knives—struck his nape. That was a skillful blow, to stun without real harm. He sagged, and they bound him.

Edh had whirled to run. A sailor caught her hair. Two more closed in. They flung her down on the grass. She screamed and kicked. Another pair grabbed her ankles. The leader knelt between her spraddled legs. He grinned. Spit ran from a corner of his mouth. He hiked up her skirt.

“You trolls, you dog turds, I’ll kill you,” Heidhin raged weakly, out of the pain that stabbed through his skull. “I swear by every god of war, no peace shall your breed ever have with me. Your Romaburh shall burn—” Nobody listened. Where Edh lay pinned, the thing went on and on.

Tracing Vagnio’s voyage back to his departure from Öland was easy. With skill and persistence, it was possible to find that a boy and a girl had walked to his home from a village about twenty miles south. But what happened earlier? Some cautious inquiries on the ground were in order. First, though, Everard and Floris planned an aerial survey over the previous several months. The more clues they collected in advance, the better. Vagnio would not necessarily hear of an event such as a murder; perhaps the family could hush it up. Or he and his men might keep silent about it before a stranger. Or Everard might simply get no chance to ask before circumstances forced him from the camp on the beach.

Leaving behind their van and horses, the agents flitted off together on separate hoppers. Their search pattern was a set of leaps from point to point of a precalculated space-time grid. If they spied anything unusual, they would take as close a look through as long a duration as needful. The procedure wasn’t guaranteed to pay off, but it was better than nothing and they didn’t have infinite lifespan to spend here.

A mile above the village, they flashed from midsummer balefires to a couple of weeks later and hung in an enormous blue. Wind whittered thin and cold. The view wheeled over a sunlit Baltic Sea, Sweden’s hills and forests to the west, Öland a straitness mottled with heather, grass, woods, rock, sand—names no dweller would speak for unchronicled centuries to come.

Everard swept his scanner around. Abruptly he stiffened. “Yonder!” he exclaimed into the transmitter at his neck. “About seven o’clock—see?”

Floris whistled. “Yes. A Roman ship, is it not, anchored offshore?” Thoughtfully: “Gallo-Roman, most likely, out of some such port as Bordeaux or Boulogne, rather than the Mediterranean. They never had a regular trade directly with Scandinavia, you know, but records mention a few official visits, and occasional entrepreneurs sail to Denmark and beyond, bypassing the long chain of middlemen. Amber, especially.”

“This might be significant for us. Let’s check.” Everard increased magnification.

Floris had already done it. She screamed.

“Oh, my God,” Everard choked.

Floris swooped downward. Cloven air boomed behind her.

“Stop, you fool!” Everard yelled. “Come back!”

Floris ignored him, her popping ears, everything but that which was ahead of her dive. Still her shriek trailed after. So might a plunging hawk scream, or a wrathful Valkyrie. Everard struck fist on control console, cursed, and grimly, all but helplessly, trailed at a slower pace. He halted a few hundred feet aloft, keeping the sun at his back.

The men, clustered to watch the show or wait their turns, heard. They looked up and saw the death-horse bound for them. They wailed and scrambled in every direction. The one on the girl pulled from her, got to his knees, yanked out his knife. Maybe he meant to kill her, maybe it was only defensive reflex. No matter. A sapphire-blue energy bolt smote him through the mouth. He crumpled at her feet. From a hole in the back of his skull curled the smoke off his brain.