The Songweaver's Vow

by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

  “Great philosophers?” he repeated. “Who are they?”

  “Philosophers, lovers of wisdom,” she said. “We had many renowned philosophers in our land, long ago. They are famed for speaking great words.”

  “Great words.” He sounded amused. “I have heard of great deeds, of great works, of great leaders, of great battles, of great victories, of great peace. I have not heard of any man made great merely by his words.”

  She considered. “I believe it is that the great words can make possible the great works.”

  “If they have made the great works possible, then why not perform them instead of merely speaking about them?” He snorted gently. “No wonder your land has produced such weak men, who would sell their daughters to save themselves.”

  The words struck her hard, and yet she could not argue their truth. Perhaps the wisdom she had been taught to revere was not as profound as she had been told. No sophistry had come to her aid when the beast-headed ships carried her away up the river.

  “But that is no reflection upon you,” he continued. “Your land is full of weak men, but that is not your doing. You were, by all the accounts I have heard, a brave and tearless sacrifice.”

  She did not know how to answer this. “We have warriors in our blood, too,” she said. “And not cowardly men like my father, men who hide behind the title and then do nothing themselves, but mighty warriors whose deeds have been told for centuries.”

  “Oh?” He sounded skeptical. “Tell me, Euthalia, what mighty warriors you once had.”

  She considered what might impress a god of the fierce Northmen, who loved battle and honor and courage. Not the story of the horse at Troy, no; that would smell to him of trickery rather than valor. But she knew another tale. “I could tell you of three hundred men who stood alone against one hundred thousand and held them off for days.”

  He half-turned on the trunk. “But no, that is a story for children. Even the songs of our most valiant are not so bold in their claims, and we speak not of mild Greeks but of the renowned Danes, greatest of warriors.”

  She had his interest now, she knew it; his denial proved it. “Let me tell you of Sparta’s valiant defense against the invading army of Xerxes the Persian.”

  He shifted, setting his back to the wall, and she thought he crossed his arms. “Tell me, then.”

  “It was more than a thousand years ago, and three hundred years more,” she began. “Xerxes the king of Persia grew hungry for Greek lands. He was a greedy man, for his empire stretched already over three continents, and yet he was not satisfied with what he had. And so he raised an army of one hundred thousand men, for he knew he would need every spear of them to take the lands of the Thespians, of the Thebes, of the Spartans.”

  “You speak as if they were warriors to be feared,” rumbled her unseen husband, skeptical.

  “The Spartans were the most brutal warriors ever to walk this earth,” she said, “and I believe even your precious Northmen would be hard put to fight them. A Spartan boy could not become a man until he had killed.”

  “Hm. Continue.”

  “Sparta was, as I said, one of the strongest of the states, with the fiercest fighters. They agreed to defend the pass of Thermopylae, where the land forced a narrow passage and the Persians would not be able to sweep over them in broad ranks, but must come in narrow bands of men.”

  He grunted approval.

  “But the Persian army was slow to come, and they arrived at a time when Sparta owed obeisance to their gods, and the Spartans did not wish to put off the rituals and not give the gods their due.” She hoped this part would please him. “And so, in place of sending their entire army, as they had intended, their king Leonidas took three hundred veteran warriors and three hundred Helots, or slave warriors.”

  This intrigued him. “They armed their slaves? To fight?”

  Euthalia tried to remember her history. “These were slaves to war. Their purpose was to fight for their Spartan masters.”

  He considered this. “So then they were not three hundred only, as you said.”

  In truth, they were not three hundred alone, but three hundred Spartans along with at least four thousand men more, from the various city-states threatened by the Persian advance, but while that was still an impressively disparate number to counter the hundred thousand Persians, it was not quite so eloquent off the tongue as three hundred. She countered, “Does my lord husband consider a slave worthy of claiming victory?”

  He chuckled. “A thrall who fights well should be recognized and honored—but if a man were a worthy warrior, he would not become a thrall, so I will grant your point. So what came of these three hundred warriors and their three hundred fighting slaves?”

  “The Persians came to Thermopylae, where the Spartans had made their defense, and offered free passage to those who wished to surrender or retreat. Leonidas refused. The Persians then pointed out their superior numbers and called for the defenders to put down their weapons. The Spartans replied, ‘Come and take them.’”

  He made a sound of grudging approval.

  “On the fifth day, the Persians attacked. For two full days and nights, Xerxes sent first his common soldiers and then his elite Immortals against the Spartan defense, and for two days and nights they were turned back and destroyed. While the Persians sent fresh wave after fresh wave—”

  “The Spartans held their shield wall and defended one another and their land.” His voice was pleased. “And they endured. Excellent. I am impressed, I will confess.” He shifted against the wall. “But after the two days?”

  “It was not weakness which undid them, but treachery.” She had him now, like a fish on a hook, and she had to play him in carefully. “There was a secret, small path over the pass at Thermopylae, and one weak-hearted man sold this secret to the Persians. The Immortals, the greatest of Xerxes’ warriors, wound through this passage—by night, because they so feared the Spartans—and prepared to flank Leonidas and crush the defenders in a pincer.”

  “Curse the traitor-coward!” growled the unseen figure. “Who would do such a thing?”

  Euthalia could not remember the man’s name, nor the reason for his betrayal, and she did not want to lose the thread of his interest in the Spartan warriors. “King Leonidas sent away the bulk of the defending soldiers, and he remained himself with his own warriors and fighting slaves, and some of the men from the other city-states. Leonidas and the Spartans were ultimately killed in the final battle, but a year later, the Persians were defeated and driven out of Greece.”

  “A good death in battle, and ultimate victory,” her husband observed. “Yes, you are right, these men were not cowards or weaklings. There is good blood in your land, even if it has been diluted.”

  She took that for the best compliment her people were likely to receive at this time.

  “Do you have other stories of your people’s brave fighting?”

  “I have many stories. We delight in stories, and we keep them in poems and in plays.”

  “Plays?”

  “Staged performances where trained men reenact events and comment upon them. Like storytelling, but with many people working together to tell the story.”

  “That sounds curious. Will you tell me another story tomorrow night?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. I shall look forward to it.” He leaned toward her. “Now—” he took her head in his hands, and her heart leapt into her throat—“I will bid you goodnight.” And his breath brushed her forehead, nearly a kiss but without contact, and he withdrew and stood.

  She looked up at him, as if she could see him in the dark instead of merely feel his presence. She felt she should say something, but surprise stole her words.

  “I will come to you again tomorrow night,” he said. And he went past her to the door and out into the dark night.

  Euthalia sat for a moment, trying to decide if she were relieved that he had left her untouched or worried that she had offended or dis
pleased him. But he did not seem offended or displeased; she thought he had enjoyed the story. Better to be grateful, even if she did not understand.

  It was late, for she had waited a long while before he had come, and she was tired with the past days’ worries. She went to the bed of soft sheepskins and wrapped herself in their woolly comfort, and she slept.

  CHAPTER SIX

  He came again the next night.

  Again he sat on the chest beside her. “I have thought about the story you told last night. It is a Greek story?”

  She nodded. “My father is a Serb, but I was named after the way of my mother, and she told me the old Greek stories.”

  “Then my statement remains, that his people are weak. He is not a descendant of those valiant three hundred.” He sniffed. “Your father is a disgrace to whatever people might have spawned him. I would call him a dog, but that would be unkind to the worthy creatures who protect farm and flock.”

  Euthalia wasn’t sure how to respond to this. “He… he is my father.”

  “He is the man who bartered you away.”

  That was true. And yet—he was her father. Even if he had intended to sell her into matrimony for profit, had in fact sold her for his own safety, he was still her father. He was the giant figure in her limited world.

  Perhaps that was it. She had left home only once, to go with him to Byzantium to be found a merchant husband to enhance Tikhomir’s trade network, and the entire experience had been one long disillusionment regarding her father’s position and power and character. Perhaps—

  “What is it?” her strange husband asked.

  She swallowed. “I was just thinking… perhaps this was why he kept me always at home, so that I could never judge for myself and find him wanting.”

  He nodded slowly, considering. “You don’t think it was for your protection?”

  “Protection is one thing,” she said. “But ignorance is not protection. Ignorance protects only him.”

  He chuckled. “That may be so.” He leaned back against the wall. “Do you have a story for me tonight?”

  “What kind of story?”

  “Another tale of your people as warriors? Or one of your legends?”

  Euthalia had spent much of the day sifting stories from her memory, trying to guess what would be fantastic enough and valiant enough to please him. “Shall I tell you how Odysseus escaped the dread one-eyed Cyclops which daily devoured his ship’s men?”

  She told him the story, and the bloodthirsty tale intrigued him as she had thought it might. But when Odysseus bound the sheep into woolly rafts and escaped the blinded Cyclops, she sensed her strange husband’s disapproval. “So then he did not fight the monster,” he protested. “He did not test his strength against him, did not avenge his fallen men. What sort of hero is this?”

  “Odysseus had not come to kill the Cyclops,” she said. “He led his surviving men to freedom and to continue their voyage; that was his purpose. To stay and fight would have further endangered his men.”

  “Still, it does not seem right that he should flee by trickery.”

  “I am sorry the story does not please you. I will think of another for you the next time.”

  “I did not say the story did not please me.” He reached for her hands and turned them over, and she felt two large cool objects pressed into her palms. They were metal, and engraved by the feel of them. “A gift,” he said. “For you to think of me by day.”

  “Oh, but I do think of you,” she said. “How could I not?”

  “Nonetheless, take them,” he answered. He leaned close and kissed her forehead. “And I will come again tomorrow night.”

  “Will you—” Euthalia caught herself. She had almost asked if he would stay, but she realized what that would mean to him.

  He was still a moment, as if waiting for her to complete the question, and then he rose as if she had said nothing. “Good night, Euthalia.”

  When he had gone, she wondered if she should have asked him to stay. She could not guess her own mind, and that frightened her a little.

  She slept with the two metal objects lying beside her. In the morning, she took them out and examined them in the sunlight. They were gold brooches, each the size of her palm, engraved with figures and what she supposed were runes. She could not guess the meaning of the runes or the figures, but the brooches were a gift from her husband, a raft of hope in her sea of displacement, and that gave them value beyond their precious metal.

  Birna did most of the heavy chores, and Euthalia occupied herself with others, picking vegetables and shaping candles from honeycomb taken from the hives and spinning flax and wondering after her peculiar situation.

  The candles fit well in the lantern she found in the house, a wooden holder with shades of rawhide to soften the light and protect the flame. The flax she stored in a chest, and Birna promised to show her how to weave during the long winter. Each day Birna brought a small quantity of berries and nuts, carried in their own tiny basket. The storage boxes were always full of vegetables and grain, despite the lack of a grain field within sight, and Euthalia wondered if Birna were producing it from some secret place or if the box supplied itself.

  By night, he came, and they talked. Euthalia told him stories, histories of her mother’s people and tales of their gods and the little fables to teach lessons. Each night he listened, he laughed, he debated or acknowledged a point, and then left before the dawn.

  One afternoon Birna started fussing with Euthalia’s clothing, twitching at it and straightening where it was not crooked. “We must dress you well, lady,” she said. “This evening you will feast with the gods in Odin’s hall.”

  Euthalia was not yet fully accustomed to thinking of her nominal husband, as yet a husband in name only and not in deed, as a god. She had gleaned a few facts about this place and its gods, from Birna’s chatter or her husband’s conversation or stories she had once heard among Slavic traders of the fearsome Northmen and their ways, but she was still fitting them into a full picture of her new life. To hear that she would be greeting other gods and dining with them, and in particular such a famous one as Odin himself, gave her a moment of pause. “I—to the hall? With Odin?”

  “Your husband has told them of your beauty and your stories,” Birna said, “and they are anxious to judge for themselves.”

  “My beauty?” repeated Euthalia. “But how can he know anything of my appearance, for he comes only by night?”

  “Oh, lady, you see him only at night,” Birna said with a knowing smile. “But he saw you before you left Midgard, of course. That is how the people of Aros knew you would be an acceptable sacrifice.”

  Euthalia frowned at this. “He chose me to be sacrificed?!”

  “No, no, lady, it was your people who did that. He named you as acceptable. There is a difference.”

  Euthalia couldn’t see the difference just yet, but Birna seemed to understand more of all this than Euthalia did thus far. And it made no difference how she had come, if she had found herself here now, and Birna did not seem to say anything which reflected poorly upon Euthalia’s unseen husband. She would not have told Euthalia of the sacrifice if she thought it would offend.

  Euthalia dressed herself in the freshly-washed linen shift and the pinafore of wool expensively dyed with indigo. The two brooches of gold he had given her held the pinafore in place, and she found herself hoping he would notice that she wore them. The scarlet cape with fox-fur trim came next, again bright with expensive dye. Euthalia felt extremely wealthy as she dressed, and then she recalled that she was the wife of a god. She wondered if she had dressed well enough to do him honor before his friends and fellow gods.

  She combed and combed her hair with the carved antler, running her hands over it to make sure it was clean and smooth. At last Birna looked on her with an air of accomplishment. “You’re ready.”

  Euthalia thought differently, but she did not argue.

  She left her house and looked out upon t
he empty village. It was less empty now, though; she could hear the sounds of activity nearby, the carrying of water or the thump of crates and the swish of cloth being hung. Had she returned to Aros? Had someone else come to the village?

  The sound was loudest from the longhouse, the great building like an enormous overturned ship. She looked at it, trying to summon her courage to cross the village toward it.

  “Are you Euthalia, then?”

  She turned and saw a woman a dozen paces away. A woman, at least, in that she was not a man, but beyond that she was unlike any woman Euthalia had ever seen. She stood fully a head and more over Euthalia, and she was muscled in a way that showed through her man’s tunic. She held a spear like a tall pine, thick like a young tree and trimmed with barbed points.

  Euthalia swallowed. Was this a goddess? “I am Euthalia,” she said. “I have been invited to the hall tonight.”

  “So I have heard.” The enormous woman planted the butt of the spear into the ground and twisted it in her great hand. “I am to bring you.” She nodded toward the hall. “It is not so far that you cannot find it, but it can be a dangerous place. I am to bring you safely inside.”

  “Would a guest be in danger during the dinner?” Euthalia was curious and a bit scandalized. Even the most barbarous understood and respected the sacred duties of hospitality. A guest’s safety was inviolate during a meal.

  “In deliberate danger? No. But when a human dines with gods, there is danger, even if the gods mean no harm.”

  Euthalia nodded. “And you are a goddess, I presume? I must apologize, for I do not know you.”

  The woman laughed. “I, a goddess? I am no Æsir, nor even Vanir, though I will forgive your insult because of your ignorance. I am a Jötunn, and I am called Skathi.”

  Euthalia nodded, though she had no idea what any of this meant. “I am sorry if I gave offense, Skathi. My husband has given me little instruction yet.”

  Skathi sniffed. “It is typical of the Æsir to think only of themselves.”