The Sorrow of Odin the Goth tp-7

by Poul Anderson

  “I am no evil demon,” I said. Was it truly me looming over him, lean, gray, cloaked, doomed and resigned to foreknowledge—yon figure out of darkness and the wind? On this night, one and a half thousand years after that night, I felt as if it were somebody else, Wodan indeed, the forever homeless.

  Ulfilas’ fervor burned at him: “Then you will not fear to debate.”

  “What use, priest? You know well that the Goths are not a people of the Book. They would offer to Christ in his lands; they often do. But you never offer to Tiwaz in his.”

  “No, for God has forbidden that we bow down to any save him. It is only God the Father who may be worshipped. To the Son, let men give due reverence, yes; but the nature of Christ—” And Ulfilas was off on a sermon.

  It was not a rant. He knew better. He spoke calmly, sensibly, even good-humoredly. He did not hesitate to employ pagan imagery, nor did he try to lay more than a groundwork of ideas before he let conversation go elsewhere. I saw men of mine nodding thoughtfully. Arianism better fitted their traditions and temperament than did a Catholicism of which they had no knowledge anyway. It would be the form of Christianity that all Goths finally took; and from this would spring centuries of trouble.

  I had not made a particularly good showing. But then, how could I in honesty have argued for a heathenism in which I had no belief and which I knew was going under? For that matter, how could I in honesty have argued for Christ?

  My eyes, 1858, sought Tharasmund. Much lingered in his young countenance of Jorith’s dear features…

  —“And how goes the literary research?” Ganz asked when my scene was done.

  “Quite well.” I escaped into facts. “New poems; lines in them that definitely look ancestral to lines in Widsith and Walt here. To be specific, since the battle at Dnieper side—” That hurt, but I brought forth my notes and recordings, and plowed ahead.

  344–347

  In the same year that Tharasmund returned to Heorot and took up chieftainship over the Teurings, Geberic died in the hall of his fathers, on a peak of the High Tatra. His son Ermanaric became king of the Ostrogoths.

  Late in the next year Ulrica, daughter of Visi-gothic Athanaric, came to her betrothed Tharasmund, at the head of a great and rich retinue. Their marriage was a feast long remembered, a week where food, drink, gifts, games, merriment, and brags went unstinted for hundreds of guests.

  Because his grandson had asked him to, the Wanderer himself hallowed the pair, and by torchlight led the bride to the loft where the groom awaited her.

  There were those, not of the Teuring tribe, who muttered that Tharasmund seemed overweening, as though he would fain be more than his king’s handfast man.

  Shortly after the wedding he must hasten off. The Heruls were out and the marches aflame. To beat them back and lay waste some of their own country became a winter’s work. No sooner was it done but Ermanaric sent word that he wanted all heads of tribes to meet with him in the motherland.

  This proved worthwhile. Plans got hammered out for conquests and other things that needed doing. Ermanaric shifted his court south to where the bulk of his people were. Besides many of his Greutungs, the tribal chiefs and their warriors went along. It was a splendid trek, on which bards lavished words that the Wanderer soon heard chanted.

  Therefore Ulrica was late in becoming fruitful. However, after Tharasmund met her again, he soon filled her belly for her, and mightily well. She said to her women that of course it would be a man-child, and live to become as renowned as his forebears.

  She gave him birth one winter night—some said easily, some said scornful of any pains. Heorot rejoiced. The father sent word around that he would hold a naming feast.

  This was a welcome break in the season’s murk, added to the Yuletide gatherings. People flocked thither. Among them were men who thought it might be a chance to draw Tharasmund aside for a word or two. They bore grudges against King Ermanaric.

  The hall was bedight with evergreen boughs, weavings, burnished metal, Roman glass. Though day reigned yet over snowfields outside, lamps brightened the long room. Clad in their best, the leading yeomen and wives among the Teurings ringed the high seat, where rested crib and babe. Lesser folk, children, hounds crowded along the walls. Sweetness of pine and mead filled air and heads.

  Tharasmund stepped forth. In his hand was a holy ax, to hold above his son while he called down Donar’s blessing. From her side Ulrica bore water out of Frija’s well. None there had witnessed anything like this erenow, save for the firstborn of a royal house.

  “We are met—” Tharasmund broke off. All eyes swung doorward, and breath went like a wave. “Oh, I hoped! Be welcome!”

  Spear slowly thumping floor, the Wanderer neared. He bent his grayness over the child.

  “Will you, lord, bestow his name?” Tharasmund asked.

  “What shall it be?”

  “From his mother’s kin, to bind us closer to the West Goths, Hathawulf.”

  The Wanderer stood altogether still for a while that went on and on. At last he lifted his head. The hatbrim shadowed his face. “Hathawulf,” he said low, as if to himself. “Oh, yes. I understand now.” A little louder: “Weard will have it so. Well, then, so be it. I will give him his name.”

  1934

  I came out of the New York base into the cold and early darkness of December, and went uptown afoot. Lights and window displays threw Christmas at me, but shoppers were not many. On street corners in the wind, Salvation Army musicians blatted or Santa Clauses rang bells at their kettles for charity, while sad vendors offered this or that. They didn’t have a Depression among the Goths, I thought. But the Goths had less to lose. Materially, anyway. Spiritually—who could tell? Not I, no matter how much history I had seen or would ever see.

  Laurie heard my tread on the landing and flung our apartment door wide. We had set the date beforehand for my latest return, after she’d be back from Chicago, where she had a show. She embraced me hard.

  As we went on inside, her joy dimmed. We stopped in the middle of the living room. She took both my hands in hers, regarded me for a mute spell, and asked low, “What stabbed you… this trip?”

  “Nothing I shouldn’t have foreseen,” I answered, hearing my voice as dull as my soul. “Uh, how’d the exhibition go?”

  “Fine,” she replied efficiently. “In fact, two pictures have already sold for a nice sum.” Concern welled forth: “With that out of the way, sit down. Let me bring you a drink. God, you look blackjacked.”

  “I’m all right. No need to wait on me.”

  “Maybe I feel a need to. Ever think of that?” Laurie hustled me into my usual armchair. I slumped down in it and stared out the window. Lights afar made a hectic glimmer along the sill, at the feet of night. The radio was tuned to a program of carols. “O little town of Bethlehem—”

  “Kick off your shoes,” Laurie advised from the kitchen. I did, and it was as if that were the real act of homecoming, like a Goth unbuckling his sword belt.

  She brought in a pair of stiff Scotch-and-lemons, and brushed lips across my brow before settling herself in the chair opposite. “Welcome,” she said. “Welcome always.” We raised glasses and drank.

  She waited quietly for me to be ready.

  I got it out in a rush: “Hamther has been born.”

  “Who?”

  “Hamther. He and his brother Sorli died trying to avenge their sister.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “Oh, Carl, darling.”

  “First child of Tharasmund and Ulrica. The name is actually Hathawulf, but it’s easy to see how that got elided to Hamther as the story flowed north over centuries. And they want to call their next son Solbern. The timing is right, too. Those will be young men—will have been—when—” I couldn’t go on.

  She leaned forward just long enough that a touch of her hand reached my awareness.

  Afterward, her tone stark, she said: “You don’t have to go through with this. Do you, Carl?”

 
“What?” Astonishment made me stop hurting for an instant. “Of course I do. My job, my duty.”

  “Your job is to trace out whatever people put into verses and stories. Not what they actually did. Skip forward, dear. Let… Hathawulf be safely dead when next you return there.”

  “No!”

  I realized I’d shouted, took a deep and warming draught, made myself confront her and state levelly: “I’ve thought about that. Believe me, I have. And I can’t. Can’t abandon them.”

  “Can’t help them, either. It’s predestined, everything.”

  “We don’t know just what will… did happen. Or how I might be able to—No, Laurie, please don’t say any more about that.”

  She sighed. “Well, I can understand. You’ve been with generations of them, as they grew and lived and suffered and died; but to you it hasn’t been so long.” To you, she did not say, Jorith is a very near memory. “Yes, do what you must, Carl, while you must.”

  I had no words, because I could feel her own pain.

  She smiled shakily. “You’ve got a furlough now, though,” she said. “Put your work aside. I went out today and brought back a small Christmas tree. How’d you like if we trimmed it this evening, after I’ve fixed a gourmet dinner?”

  “ ‘Peace on the earth, good will to men, From Heav’n’s all-gracious King—’ ”

  348–366

  Athanaric, king of the West Goths, hated Christ. Besides holding fast to the gods of his fathers, he feared the Church as a sly agent of the Empire. Let it gnaw away long enough, he said, and folk would find themselves bending the knee to Roman overlords. Therefore he egged men on against it, thwarted the kin of murdered Christians when they sought weregild, at last rammed laws through his Great Moot that left them open to wholesale slaughter as soon as some happening made tempers flare. Or so he thought. For their part, the baptized Goths, who by now were not few, drew together and spoke of letting the Lord God of Hosts decide the outcome.

  Bishop Ulfilas called them unwise. Martyrs became saints, he agreed, but it was the body of the faithful that kept the Word alive on earth. He sought and obtained permission from Emperor Constantius for his flock to move into Moesia. Leading them across the Danube, he saw them settled under the Haemus Mountains. There they became a peaceable lot of herdsmen and farmers.

  When this news reached Heorot, Ulrica laughed aloud. “Then my father is rid of them!”

  She cried that too soon. For the next thirty years and more, Ulfilas worked on in his vineyard. Not every Christian Visigoth had followed him south. Some remained, among them chieftains strong enough to protect themselves and their underlings. These received missionaries, whose labors bore fruit. Athanaric’s persecutions caused the Christians to seek a leader of their own. They found one in Frithigern, also of the royal house. While it never came to open war between the factions, there were clashes aplenty. Younger, soon wealthier than his rival because of being favored by traders from the Empire, Frithigern brought many West Goths to join the Church as the years wore on, merely because that seemed a promising thing to do.

  It touched the Ostrogoths little. The number of Christians among them did swell, but slowly and without rousing undue trouble. King Ermanaric cared naught about gods of any sort or about the next world. He was too busy seizing as much as he could of this one.

  Up and down eastern Europe his wars raged. In several seasons’ fierce campaigning he broke the Heruls. Those who did not submit moved off to join westerly tribes bearing the same name. Aestii and Vendi were easier prey for Ermanaric. Unsated, he took his armies north, beyond the lands that his father had made tributary. In the end, a sweep of earth from the Elbe River to the Dnieper mouth acknowledged him overlord.

  In these farings Tharasmund gained renown and booty. Yet he liked not the king’s harshness. Often in the moots he stood up not only for his own tribe but for others, on behalf of their ancient rights. Then Ermanaric must needs back down, however sullenly. The Teurings were as yet too powerful, or he not powerful enough, for him to make foemen of. This was the more true since many Goths would have feared to draw blade against a house whose strange forebear still guested it from time to time.

  The Wanderer was there when they gave name to the third child of Tharasmund and Ulrica, Solbern. The second had died in its crib, but Solbern, like his brother, grew up strong and handsome. The fourth child was a girl, whom they called Swanhild. For her, too, the Wanderer appeared, but fleetingly, and thereafter he was not seen for years. Swanhild became very fair to look upon, and of a sweet and merry nature.

  Ulrica bore three more children. They were far apart and none lived long. Tharasmund was mostly away from home, fighting, trading, taking counsel with men of worth, leading his Teurings in their common business. Upon his returns he was apt to sleep with Erelieva, the leman he had taken soon after Swanhild’s birth.

  She was neither slave nor base-born, but the daughter of a well-to-do yeoman. Indeed, on the distaff side she too descended from Winnithar and Salvalindis. Tharasmund met her while he rode about among the tribesfolk, as was his yearly wont when he was abroad, to hear whatever they had on their minds. He lengthened his stay at that home, and they two were much in each other’s company. Later he sent messengers to ask if she would come to him. They brought rich gifts for her parents, as well as promises of honor for her and bonds between the families. This was no offer to refuse lightly, and the lass was eager, so erelong she went off with Tharasmund’s men.

  He kept his word and cherished her. When she bore him a son, Alawin, he gave as lavish a feast as he had done for Hatljawulf and Solbern. She had few further children, and sickness took them away early on, but he did not care for her the less.

  Ulrica grew bitter. It was not that Tharasmund kept another woman. Most men who could afford it did that, and he had gone through more than his share. What galled Ulrica was the standing he gave Erelieva—second only to her own in the household, and above it in his heart. She was too proud to start a fight she would be bound to lose, but her feelings were plain. Toward Tharasmund she became cold, even when he sought her bed. This made him do so seldom, and merely in hopes of more offspring.

  During his lengthy absences, Ulrica went out of her way to scorn Erelieva and say barbed words about her. The younger woman flushed but bore it quietly. She had won her friends. It was Ulrica the overbearing who grew lonely. Therefore she gave much heed to her sons; they grew closely bound to her.

  Withal, they were mettlesome lads, quick to learn everything that beseemed a man, well-liked wherever they fared. They were unlike, Hathawulf the hotter, Solbern the more thoughtful, but fondness linked them. As for their sister Swanhild, all the Teurings—Erelieva and Alawin among them—loved her.

  Throughout that time, years passed between visits by the Wanderer, and then they were short. This brought folk still more into awe of him. When his craggy form came striding over the hills, men blew a call on horns, and from Heorot riders galloped forth to greet and escort him. He was even quieter than of yore. It was as if some secret grief weighed upon him, though none dared ask what. This showed most sharply whenever Swanhild passed by in her budding loveliness, or came prideful and atremble if her mother had allowed her to bring the guest his wine, or sat among the other youngsters at his feet while he told tales and uttered wise sayings. Once he sighed to her father, “She is like her great-grandmother.” The hardy warrior shivered a little in his coat. How long had that woman lain dead?

  At an earlier guesting the Wanderer showed surprise. Since his last appearance, Erelieva had come to Heorot and had borne her son. Shyly, she brought the babe to show the Elder. He sat unspeaking for many heartbeats before he asked, “What is his name?”

  “Alawin, lord,” she answered.

  “Alawin!” The Wanderer laid hand over brow. “Alawin?” After another while, almost in a whisper: “But you are Erelieva. Erelieva—Erp—yes, maybe that’s how you’ll be remembered, my dear.” Nobody understood what he meant.

&n
bsp; —The years blew by. Throughout, the might of King Ermanaric waxed. Likewise did his greed and cruelty.

  When he and Tharasmund were in their fortieth winter, the Wanderer called again. Those who met him were grim of face and curt of speech. Heorot was aswarm with armed men. Tharasmund greeted the guest in a bleak gladness. “Forefather and lord, have you come to our help—you who once drove the Vandals from olden Gothland?”

  The Wanderer stood as if graven in stone. “Best you tell me from the beginning what this is about,” he said at last.

  “So that we may make it clear in our own heads? But it is. Well… your will be done.” Tharasmund pondered. “Let me send for two more.”

  Those proved an odd pair. Liuderis, stout and grizzled, was the chieftain’s trustiest man. He served as steward of Tharasmund’s lands and as captain of fighters when Tharasmund was not there himself. The second was a red-haired youth of fifteen, beardless but strong, with a wrath beyond his years in the green eyes. Tharasmund named him as Randwar, son of Guthric, not a Teuring but a Greutung.

  The four withdrew to a loftroom where they could talk unheard. A short winter day was drawing to its close. Lamps gave light to see by and a brazier some warmth, though men sat wrapped in furs and their breath smoked white through gloominess. It was a room richly furnished, with Roman chairs and a table where mother-of-pearl was inlaid. Tapestries hung on walls and carvings were on the shutters across the windows. Servants had brought a flagon of wine and glass goblets from which to drink it. Sounds of the life everywhere around boomed up through an oak floor. Well had the son and the grandson of the Wanderer done for themselves.

  Yet Tharasmund scowled, shifted about in his seat, ran fingers through unkempt brown locks and over close-cropped beard, before he could turn to his visitor and rasp: “We ride to the king, five hundred strong. His latest outrage is more than anyone may bear. We will have justice for the slain, or else the red cock shall crow on his roof.”