Гарри Тертлдав - The First Heroes

A laugh like a crow's broke from me. I drew my blade; Gairwarth lowered the spear he had taken again as I started off. Ernu clambered to his feet, grabbed the iron sword, and lurched aside. Yes, flashed through me, Gairwarth was right, he does have a yokelish canniness.

The Boian croaked and sat up. We peered. He was somewhat shorter than most of those we had fought, a little bandy-legged, but his upper body and arms were heavily thewed. Blanket, sandals, and a scabbard hung slantwise across his back were his only garb. Ruddy hair was braided behind a round head. A mustache of the same hue bristled on a long upper lip below a snub nose. Blue eyes glared. His neck was badly bruised, and at first he could barely utter a few hoarse words.

"He'd attack us and die like a warrior if h e had strength," Gairwarth explained. "Instead, he asks us to kill him. Nothing less than death— his, since he can't give us ours—will make good the indignity he's suffered."

Ernu half raised the iron sword. "Want me to do it, lord?" he rumbled with a leer. "I'd like to try this thing." "No," I decided. "Better we keep him and question him. Our undertaking was—is for the sake of learning about his folk."

"Safer to keep a wolf or a wild boar," Gairwarth warned.

"I know—now." My thoughts had sharpened themselves afresh. They were as bleak as our winters have become. "Tell him this. We'll hobble his wrists and ankles with thongs. We'll tie a rope around his waist and secure the other end about a thwart, so if he jumps overboard we can at once haul him back. If he nonetheless misbehaves, we won't kill him, we'll blind and geld him."

Ernu slapped his thigh. "Haa, good!" he guffawed.

Gairwarth was more troubled. "That does not seem much like you, Havakh."

I stared aft. We had spread bedrolls over our dead. I had myself set Herut's head straight, closed the eyes, washed the body. Yet there he lay, and others with him, and already it was clear that one of the gravely wounded would soon die. As for our second boat, I could merely hope that Athalberh and the rest had fallen. Yet it was not hatred that replied, it was will. "I swore to do what I can." Now, though, entering the hall of my fathers, I think it was also a foreshadowing of the cruel years ahead.

Gairwarth grimaced, then shrugged. "Well, I understand. But I'll have to put it to him less bluntly, not all at once. What may I offer him?"

"Oh, if nothing else, a livelihood among us after we're home, if he's behaved himself," I answered indifferently. "Maybe someday his freedom, if he somehow earns it. Take charge of him. See to his needs. And question him. Belike I'll think of questions of my own later, but do you begin." I paused. "I suppose you can deem how trustworthy he is."

"It'll take time and patience to draw him out," said Gairwarth, "and maybe a few small kindnesses. However, I see no reason why he should lie, and indeed that's unbefitting a Celtic warrior." "I'll tell off men to stand by as guards." I turned to go. Bone-tired I might be, but so were my crew, and I had become their skipper. I stopped. "Give me that sword, Ernu." The bog dweller handed it over. "A good thing to have, hey, lord?" A slight whine slipped into his growl. "I didn't do so bad by you, did I?" "No," I acknowledged. "You saved my life, and afterward you were useful. You shall have the reward I promised when we return home. And more," honor made me add. "My kinsmen, lord? They didn't start that squabble, nor me. It was Kleggu and his breed, lord. And they're off to hell now."

I frowned at the unseemly gloating. He swallowed it. "Yes," I felt I must give him. "We'll pay your kinsmen too." I cut off his thanks—can a bear fawn?—and sent him back to work. Thereafter I set about discovering duties of my own.

We camped briefly that night, with sentries posted, and surely everyone's sleep was uneasy and dream-haunted. At dawn we swallowed some food and paddled onward. Again things blur together for me. It is enough that we went onward.

And that when we came to the clearing where folk had lived, we drew ashore, gathered brushwood, cut logs, and burned our dead: for this was right, rather than they bloat and stink, waiting to be set free. We did it as properly as we were able, bearing in mind that we were few and must keep watchmen out and be ready to escape pursuit. Those who could danced around and around the blaze while I, for lack of anyone and anything better, cast amber and sweet herbs into it and bade the souls a joyous faring home to the sun. We stayed overnight, letting the ashes cool, then in the morning gathered what pieces of bone we could find and buried them.

And onward.

Meanwhile Gairwarth dealt with our prisoner. He continued after we reached Suwebburh, where we rested a while—and burned and buried two more men—with increasing success. He learned that there was no danger of an invasion anytime soon. The raids in the south had been simply that, spillover from widespread violence, gangs with their fierceness kindled who had nowhere else to take the fire until the next real war. A fresh wave of wandering was going through the Celts. Tribes eastward, fast-breeding, hungry for new land, pushed west. This stirred no few of those who had settled ahead of them and were, after all, themselves becoming many, to move on. It was not peaceful. Wars went like backflows in an incoming, wind-driven tide. But the tide itself was sweeping ever higher, it still is, and I know not when or where it will finally ebb.

Our captive hight Conomar, as nearly as I can voice the name. I never troubled to remember the names of his father or his . . . clan? In everyday life he was only a grazier, but he boasted that his brother was a smith and that he had sometimes helped that highly respected, slightly feared man.

When I studied his sword, I myself could well-nigh believe there are unhuman powers in iron that touch those who work it. Long, lean— gaunt, I almost thought—and darkly shining, the weapon weighed less for its size than mine, as if the more ready to leap. Where the fight had left mine battered and blunted, in need of hammer and file, this thing seemed well-nigh untouched, the keenness barely off the edge at a few places where it had hit something hard. The guard did not curve down, it was straight; the pommel was not much rounded or decorated; the grip was riveted oakwood, which I could see had often been clutched in a sweaty hand.

I tested it a number of times, as did several other of our well-born, hewing at a block or, after duly begging pardon, a tree. But we gained no skill. That would have taken years and been of scant use when we had only the one and nothing of the mysterious art that had gone into the making.

Most of what new knowledge we got was from Conomar, after we continued our journey. Having found that his home would be safe, Gairwarth was willing, for pay, to keep on with us as far as the river mouth. He earned that pay. Sullen, snarling, at first the Celt refused food. Among his people, if a man has no other way of getting justice or revenge, he can lay terrible shame on his enemy by starving himself to death. Gairwarth patiently—and, I am sure, cunningly—brought him to see that this means was always open to him but before thus giving up all hope of release it would be better, yes, manlier to bide his time, watchful for any opening. Thereafter, bit by bit, he coaxed more of an account forth. He told me he did it oftenest by provoking boasts and threats.

"Not that Conomar is witless or unwitting," he said. "I begin to think that behind that fiery, hasty heart is a mind with depths I cannot sound. However, the Celts are a talkative as well as proud race, two strings from which notes may be plucked." He shook his head. "I'm glad, though, that he's in bonds." They whom we had thought of as merely wild are in reality a people of much accomplishment. Their priests are living storehouses of lore. They honor their poets almost as highly, and the lowliest herdsman has a share in that heritage, however small. Some of the wonderfully made things that had reached us in the North were from their own craftsmen; this had been forgotten or misunderstood over the long trade routes. When 1 looked closely, I saw that Conomar's blanket was finely enough woven to be worthy of a king among us.