The Sorrow of Odin the Goth tp-7

by Poul Anderson

  “We must risk that. Else we’ll be whipped piecemeal.” Winnithar grew silent. The longfires leaped and flickered. Outside, wind hooted and rain dashed against walls. His gaze sought Carl’s. “We have no helmet or mail that would fit you. Maybe you can fetch gear for yourself from” wherever you get things.”

  The outsider sat stiff. Lines deepened in his face.

  Winnithar’s shoulders slumped. “Well, this is no fight of yours, is it?” he sighed. “You’re no Teuring.”

  “Carl, oh, Carl!” Jorith came out from among the women.

  For a while that reached onward, she and the gray man looked at each other. Then he shook himself, turned to Winnithar, and said: “Fear not. I’ll abide by my friends. But it must be in my own way, and you must follow my redes, whether or not you understand them. Are you willing to that?”

  Nobody cheered. A sound like the wind passed down the shadowy length of the hall.

  Winnithar mustered heart. “Yes,” he said. “Now let riders of ours take war-arrows around. But the rest of us shall feast.”

  —What happened in the next few weeks was never really known. Men fared, pitched camp, fought, came home afterward or did not. Those who did, which was most of them, often had wild tales to tell. They spoke of a blue-cloaked spearman who rode through the sky on a mount that was not a horse. They spoke of dreadful monsters charging at Vandal ranks, and eerie lights in the dark, and blind fear coming upon the foe, until he cast his weapons from him and fled screaming. They spoke of somehow always finding a Vandal gang before it had quite reached a Gothic thorp, and putting it to flight, making sheer lack of loot cause clan after clan to give up and trek off. They spoke of victory.

  Their chiefs could say slightly more. It was the Wanderer who had told them where to go, what to await, how best to form array for battle. It was he who outsped the gale as he brought warning and summons, he who got Greutung and Taifal and Amaling help, he who overawed the haughty till they worked side by side as he ordered.

  These stories faded away in the course of the following lifetime or two. They were so strange. Rather, they sank back among the older stories of their kind. Anses, Wanes, trolls, wizards, ghosts, had not such beings again and again joined the quarrels of men? What mattered was that for a half-score years, the Goths along the upper Vistula knew peace. Let us get on with the harvest, said they: or whatever else they wanted to do with their lives.

  But Carl came back to Jorith as the rescuer.

  —He could not really wed her. He had no acknowledged kin. Yet men who could afford it had always taken lemans; the Goths held that to be no shame, if the man provided well for woman and children. Besides, Carl was no mere swain, thane, or king. Salvalindis herself brought Jorith to him, where he waited in a flower-decked loft-room, after a feast at which splendid gifts passed to and fro.

  Winnithar had timber cut and ferried across the river, and a goodly house raised for the two. Carl wanted some odd things in the building, such as a bedroom by itself. There was also another room, kept locked save when he went in alone. He was never there long, and no more did he go off to Tiwaz’s Shaw.

  Men said between themselves that he made far too much of Jorith. They were apt to swap looks, or walk away from others, like some fuzz-cheeked boy and a thrall girl. However… she ran her home well enough, and anyway, who dared mock at him?

  He himself left most of a husband’s tasks to a steward. He did bring in the goods that the household needed, or the wherewithal to trade for them. And he became a great trader. These years of peace were not years of listlessness. No, they brought more chapmen than ever before, carrying amber, furs, honey, tallow from the North, wine, glass, metalwork, cloth, fine pottery from the South and West. Ever eager to meet somebody new, Carl guested passersby lavishly, and went to the fairs as well as the folkmoots.

  In those moots he, who was not a tribesman, only watched; but after the day’s talk, things would get lively around his booth.

  Nonetheless, men wondered, and women too. Word trickled back that a man, gray but hale, whom nobody formerly knew, was often seen among other Gothic tribes…

  It may be that those absences of his were the reason why Jorith was not at once with child; or it may be that she was rather young, just sixteen winters, when she came to his bed. A year had gone by before the signs were unmistakable.

  Although her sicknesses grew harsh, joy shone from her. Again his behavior was strange, for he seemed to care less about his get” that she bore than about her own well-being. He even oversaw what she ate, providing her with things like out-land fruits regardless of season though forbidding her as much salt as she was wont to. She obeyed gladly, saying this showed he loved her.

  Meanwhile life went on in the neighborhood, and death. At the burials and grave-ales, nobody made bold to speak freely with Carl; he was too close to the unknown. On the other hand, the heads of household who had chosen him were taken aback when he refused the honor of being the man hereabouts who would swive the next Spring Queen.

  Remembering what else he had done and was doing on their behalf, they got over that.

  Warmth; harvest; bleakness; rebirth; summer again; and Jorith was brought to her childbed.

  Long was her toil. She suffered the pains bravely, but the women who attended her became very glum.

  The elves would not have liked it had a man seen her during that time. Bad enough how Carl had demanded unheard-of cleanliness. They could only hope that he knew what he was about.

  He waited it out in the main room of his house. When callers came, he had mead and drink set forth as was right, but stayed curt in his speech.

  When they left at nightfall, he did not sleep but sat alone in the dark until sunrise. Now and then the midwife or a helper would shuffle out to tell him how the birth was going. By the light of the lamp she bore, she saw how his glance sought the door he kept locked.

  Late in the second day, the midwife found him among his friends. Silence fell upon them. Then that which she bore in her arms let out a wail—and Winnithar a shout. Carl rose, his nostrils white.

  The woman knelt before him, unfolded the blanket, and on the earthen floor, at the father’s feet, laid a man-child, still bloody but lustily sprattling and crying. If Carl did not take the babe up onto his knee, she would carry it into the woods and leave it for the wolves. He never stopped to see if aught might be wrong with it. He snatched the wee form to him while he croaked, “Jorith, how fares Jorith?”

  “Weak,” said the midwife. “Go to her now if you will.”

  Carl gave her back his son and hastened to the bedroom. The women who were there stood aside. He bent over Jorith. She lay white, sweat-clammy, hollowed out. But when she saw her man, she reached feebly upward and smiled the ghost of a smile. “Dagobert,” she whispered. That was the name, old in her family, that she had wished for, were this a boy.

  “Dagobert, yes,” Carl said low. Unseemly though it was in sight of the rest, he bent to kiss her.

  She lowered her lids and sank back onto the straw. “Thank you,” came from her throat, barely to be heard. “The son of a god.”

  “No-”

  Suddenly Jorith shuddered. For a moment she clutched at her brow. Her eyes opened again. The pupils were fixed and wide. She grew bonelessly limp. Breath rattled in and out.

  Carl straightened, whirled, and sped from the room. At the locked door, he took forth his key and went inside. It banged behind him.

  Salvalindis moved to her daughter’s side. “She is dying,” she said flatly. “Can his witchcraft save her? Should it?”

  The forbidden door swung back. Carl came out, and another. He forgot to close it. Men glimpsed a thing of metal. Some remembered what he had ridden who flew above the battlefields. They huddled close, gripped amulets or drew signs in the air.

  Carl’s companion was a woman, though clad in rainbow-shimmery breeks and tunic. Her countenance was of a kind never seen before—broad and high in the cheekbones like a Hun’s, but short o
f nose, coppery-golden of hue, beneath straight blue-black hair. She held a box by its handle.

  The two dashed to the bedroom. “Out, out!” Carl roared, and chased the Gothic women before him like leaves before a storm.

  He followed them, and now remembered to shut the door on his steed. Turning around, he saw how everybody stared at him, while they shrank away. “Be not afraid,” he said thickly. “No harm is here. I have but fetched a wise-woman to help Jorith.”

  For a while they all stood in stillness and gathering murk.

  The stranger trod forth and beckoned to Carl. There was that about her which drew a groan from him. He stumbled to her, and she led him by the elbow into the bedroom. Silence welled out of it.

  After another while folk heard voices, his full of fury and anguish, hers calm and ruthless. Nobody understood that tongue.

  They returned. Carl’s face looked aged. “She is sped,” he told the others. “I have closed her eyes. Make ready her burial and feast, Winnithar. I will be back for that.”

  He and the wise-woman entered the secret room. From the midwife’s arms, Dagobert howled.

  2319

  I’d flitted uptime to 1930’s New York, because I knew that base and its personnel. The young fellow on duty tried to make a fuss about regulations, but him I could browbeat. He put through an emergency call for a top-flight medic. It happened to be Kwei-fei Mendoza who had the opportunity to respond, though we’d never met. She asked no more questions than were needful before she joined me on my hopper and we were off to Gothland. Later, however, she wanted us both at her hospital, on the moon in the twenty-fourth century. I was in no shape to protest.

  She had me take a kettle-hot bath and sent me to bed. An electronic skullcap gave me many hours of sleep.

  Eventually I received clean clothes, something to eat (I didn’t notice what), and guidance to her office. Seated behind an enormous desk, she waved me to take a chair. Neither of us spoke for a minute or three.

  Evading hers, my gaze shifted around. The artificial gravity that kept my weight as usual did nothing to make the place homelike for me. Not that it wasn’t quite beautiful, in its fashion. The air bore a tinge of roses and new-mown hay. The carpet was a deep violet in which star-points twinkled. Subtle colors swirled over the walls. A big window, if window it was, showed the grandeur of mountains, a craterscape in the distance, heaven black but reigned over by an Earth nearly full. I lost myself in the sight of that glorious white-swirled blueness. Jorith had lost herself there, two thousand years ago.

  “Well, Agent Farness,” Mendoza said at length in Temporal, the Patrol language, “how do you feel?”

  “Dazed but clear-headed,” I muttered. “No. Like a murderer.”

  “You should certainly have left that child alone.” I forced my attention toward her and replied, “She wasn’t a child. Not in her society, or in most throughout history. The relationship helped me a lot in getting the trust of the community, therefore in furthering my mission. Not that I was cold-blooded about it, please believe me. We were in love.”

  “What has your wife to say on that subject? Or did you never tell her?”

  My defense had left me too exhausted to resent what might else have seemed nosiness. “Yes, I did. I… asked her if she’d mind. She thought it over and decided not. We’d spent our younger days in the 1960’s and ’70’s, remember… No, you’d scarcely have heard, but that was a period of revolution in sexual mores.”

  Mendoza smiled rather grimly. “Fashions come and go.”

  “We’d stayed monogamous, my wife and I, but more out of preference than principle. And look, I always kept visiting her. I love her, I really do.”

  “And she doubtless reckoned it best to let you have your middle-aged fling,” Mendoza snapped.

  That stung. “It wasn’t! I tell you, I loved Jorith, the Gothic girl, I loved her too.” Grief took me by the throat. “Was there absolutely nothing you could do?”

  Mendoza shook her head. Her hands rested quietly on the desk. Her tone softened. “I told you already. I’ll tell you in detail if you wish. The instruments—no matter how they work, but they showed an aneurysm of the anterior cerebral artery. It hadn’t been bad enough to produce symptoms, but the stress of a long and difficult primiparous labor caused it to rupture. No kindness to revive her, after such extensive brain damage.”

  “You couldn’t repair that?”

  “Well, we could have brought the body uptime, restarted the heart and lungs, and used neuron cloning techniques to produce a person that resembled her, but who would have had to learn almost everything over from the beginning. My corps does not do that sort of operation, Agent Farness. It isn’t that we lack compassion, it’s simply that we have too many calls on us already, to help Patrol personnel and their… proper families. If ever we started making exceptions, we’d be swamped. Nor would you have gotten your sweetheart back, you realize. She would not have gotten herself back.”

  I rallied what force of will was left me. “Suppose we went downtime of her pregnancy,” I said. “We could bring her here, fix that artery, blank her memories of the whole trip, and return her to—live out a healthy life.”

  “That’s your wishfulness speaking. The Patrol does not change what has been. It preserves it.” I sank deeper into my chair. Variable contours sought in vain to comfort me.

  Mendoza relented. “But don’t feel too much guilt, you,” she said. “You couldn’t have known. If the girl had married somebody else, as she surely would have, the end would have been the same. I get the impression you made her happier than most females of her era.”

  Her tone gathered strength: “You, though, you’ve given yourself a wound that will take long to scar over. It never will, unless you resist the supreme temptation—to keep going back to her lifetime, seeing her, being with her. That is forbidden, under severe penalties, and not only because of the risks it might pose to the time-stream. You’d wreck your spirit, even your mind. And we need you. Your wife needs you.”

  “Yes,” I achieved saying.

  “Hard enough will be watching your descendants and hers endure what they must. I wonder if you should not transfer entirely from your project.”

  “No. Please.”

  “Why not?” she flung at me. “Because I—I can’t just abandon them—as if Jorith had lived and died for nothing.”

  “That will be for your superiors to decide. You’ll get a stiff reprimand at the very least, as close to the black hole as you’ve orbited. Never again may you interfere to the degree you did.” Mendoza paused, glanced from me, stroked her chin, and murmured, “Unless certain actions prove necessary to restore equilibrium… But that is not my province.”

  Her look returned to my misery. Abruptly she leaned forward over the desk, made a reaching gesture, and said:

  “Listen, Carl Farness. I’m going to be asked for my opinion of your case. That’s why I brought you here, and why I want to keep you a week or two—to get a better idea. But already—you’re not unique, my friend, in a million years of Patrol operations!—already I’ve begun to see you as a decent sort, who may have blundered but largely through inexperience.

  “It happens, has happened, will happen, over and over. Isolation, in spite of furloughs at home and liaisons with prosaic fellow members like me. Bewilderment, in spite of advance preparation; culture shock; human shock. You witnessed what to you were wretchedness, poverty, squalor, ignorance, needless tragedy—worse, callousness, brutality, injustice, wanton manslaughter—You couldn’t encounter that without it hurting you. You had to assure yourself that your Goths were no worse than you are, merely different; and you had to seek past that difference to the underlying identity; and then you had to try to help, and if along the way you suddenly found a door open on something dear and wonderful—

  “Yes, inevitably, time travelers, including Patrollers—many of them form ties. They perform actions, and sometimes those are intimate. It doesn’t normally pose a threat. What matte
rs the precise, the obscure and remote, ancestry of even a key figure? The continuum yields but rebounds. If its stress limits aren’t exceeded, why, the question becomes unanswerable, meaningless, whether such minor doings change the past, or have ‘always’ been a part of it.

  “Do not feel too guilty, Farness,” she ended, most quietly. “I would also like to start you recovering from that, and from your grief. You are a field agent of the Time Patrol; this is not the last mourning you will ever have reason to do.”

  302–330

  Carl kept his word. Stone-silent, he leaned on his spear and watched while her kinfolk laid Jorith in the earth and heaped a barrow above her. Afterward he and her father honored her by an arval to which they bade the whole neighborhood come, and which lasted three days. There he spoke only when spoken to, though at those times polite enough in his lordly way. While he did not seek to dampen anybody’s merriment, that feast was quieter than most.

  When guests had departed, and Carl sat alone by his hearth save for Winnithar, he told the chieftain: “Tomorrow I go too. You will not see me often again.”

  “Have you then done whatever you came for?”

  “No, not yet.”

  Winnithar did not ask what it was. Carl sighed and added: “As far as Weard allows, I mean to watch over your house. But that may not be so far.”

  At dawn he bade farewell and strode off. Mists lay heavy and chill, soon hiding him from the sight of men.

  In years that followed, tales grew. Some thought they had glimpsed his tall form by twilight, entering the grave-mound as if by a door. Others said no; he had led her away by the hand. Their memories of him slowly lost humanness.

  Dagobert’s grandparents took the babe in, found a wet nurse, and raised him like their own. Despite his uncanny begetting, he was not shunned nor let run wild. Instead, folk reckoned his friendship well worth having, for he must be destined to mighty deeds—on which account, he should learn honor and seemly ways, as well as the skills of a warrior, hunter, and husbandman. Children of gods were not unheard of. They became heroes, or women passing wise and fair, but were nonetheless mortal.