The Centurions

by The Centurions (retail) (epub)

  When he had finally wrested agreement for that much, Nyall assigned the Black Forest warriors among the new lords, taking into account those who had been sworn to certain lords before, as well as those leaderless ones, such as Arni’s group, who had asked permission to swear to one new lord in particular.

  And then the debates began. Each holder, new and old, shouted to be heard over the rest and over the thunder that was booming above the hold, while the dogs added their howls to each new thunderclap. If an adopted lord of the tribe was killed, did it carry the same blood-price as a birthright lord? And what about existing feuds between hold and hold – did the new lord make good his predecessor’s quarrel? And if not, what recompense to the other aggrieved party? And what of marriage, and of daughters sent to wed new holders? Did blood-right apply? And what of dead holders’ widows, dead holders’ sons? What rights there?

  Slowly, and with much dispute, Nyall sorted the questions out, giving each an answer, some anticipated, some thought out in haste, and every single one argued with from all sides by anyone who could think of anything to say.

  After that came the peace-making, the settlement of quarrels and lawsuits arisen since the last Council, done amid the usual protests that the chieftain did not have the right to intervene unless he was requested to. Fortunately, someone involved in the tangle could generally be found to make that request, and once the chieftain was asked to decide, his judgment was final. It was all done amid much shouting and banging of tables while Asuin thumped his staff and shouted for order.

  Finally, when the last judgment had been made and the Council lords were glaring balefully at each other, but were quiet, Nyall stood up, put hands on his hips, and glared at them all himself.

  “We are the Free People!” he said with a fine, cutting scorn in his voice. “We make a Council and spend it arguing over precedence and cattle-rights, while the Romans build their eagle-forts in the lands we have lost!”

  They sat up and looked at him. These other matters were important, as important as war with the Roman-kind, maybe more. They touched on a man’s honor.

  “We cannot raid the Roman-kind again until spring,” pointed out Hauk, a square-faced lord with heavy bull’s shoulders, whose holding lay to the east on the edge of the Semnone lands.

  “We do not ‘raid’ the Roman-kind again at all,” Nyall said flatly, and they stared at him again. “We make a war, a Roman war. I have been thinking while the Council has been quarreling, and now I will tell you what I have thought, and for this there will be no argument!”

  There were mutterings. Argument was always the privilege of the Council.

  “Silence and hear me!” Nyall’s gray eyes were dangerous. “The rights of the Free People will be the death of the Free People if they do not learn to use them wisely! The commander of the Eagles said to me that he commanded soldiers, not warriors, and there was much in what he said. It is why he beat us. He had an army that marched when he gave the word, while my war band hid their heads in their cloaks for a full month because a priest and a few warriors of our allies” – he spat out the word – “made large talk and were listened to!”

  “Not by all of us!” Ranvig jumped up, his bright, slightly askew eyes fixed on Ingald, whose own anger was rising.

  “By enough of you,” Nyall said grimly. “Ranvig, I know your loyalties, sit down.”

  “The dead must be—” Ingald said.

  ‘Those dead are still unburied!” Thrain snapped, He had a thin face with a healing scar on one cheek, and a look of Fiorgyn about him. “I listened to that talk, and it cost me my land!”

  Hauk nodded, but another lord, Koll, shook his head dubiously. “Let the chieftain explain to me,” he said gruffly, drawing bushy gray brows together in a frown. “I am thinking that I do not understand where this talk is going.”

  “It is simple,” Nyall said. “We must stand together against the Romans, or go down, divided, as the Gauls did. So unless you are liking the idea of that, this time I will be obeyed! There will be no more alliances and no priests telling me when I may or may not make war. And no man will answer to any other man but me.”

  “Plain enough,” Koll said. ‘Tell me this, young chieftain, before I swear this obedience – can we conquer Rome?”

  “No,” Nyall said flatly. “We cannot. But we can make it so great a trouble for Rome to conquer us that we are not worth the effort of it.”

  “How do we know Rome will try to conquer us?” Ingald asked quietly.

  After a moment of heavy silence, Nyall said, “They will come. If not next year, the year after. Would you wait and see? And when they come what will you do? Maybe throw rocks at them on the doorstep?”

  There was a murmuring of agreement to that, especially from the Black Forest lords. Ingald, seeing how the wind blew, said nothing further. He lounged forward on the table, chin in hand, his handsome face devoid of any expression but polite attention. Ranvig, who possessed no such subtlety, turned toward him to speak, but Kari, wrapped in his blanket by the chieftain’s chair, caught Ranvig’s eye and shook his head slightly.

  “You have heard my thinking,” Nyall said. “Does anyone wish to make challenge to it?” His voice was soft, but there was a tinge of menace in it that was well noted. “If so, do it now. Because I will kill the man who does it on the war trail.”

  No one moved. Kari held his breath. Then Koll stood up and said: “I vote with the chieftain.”

  “And I.” Hauk heaved his bull shoulders up out of his seat, a giant of a man dwarfing even the big men beside him.

  “I also!” Ranvig leaped up lightly, followed by Arni, Thrain, and Sigurd.

  Kari let out his breath slowly as the rest followed – one-eyed Geir; Steinvar, the lean, scarred holder from the south; and the landed lords of the Companions’ troop, Svan, Starkad, Asgrim, and Gilli the Lame, who fought better with a limp than most men with two good legs. Ingald gave his vote also, and Valgerd and Asuin solemnly swore obedience with their hands clasped on the sun-disks of their staffs. Kari pushed his blanket back and stood, still weaving a little on his feet, to add his voice. He drew a snort of amusement from Geir, who was keeping track of the vote with his tally sticks. Kari would have ridden through Hellgate and back if Nyall had asked it.

  Nyall stood with thumbs hooked in his belt, rocking lightly on his heels and watching until the last lord had spoken. Then he sat back in his chair, strong hands on the oaken arms, and looked each man in the eye. “You have sworn to keep your peace with me in this. So. Now I say that you will also keep it with each other. When we make Council again in spring, it will be a Council of War, and there will be no feuds and grievances to settle, and no dead men to make the war band one spear lighter. That you understand this law clearly, I tell you now that I will put curse on the man who breaks it.”

  They eyed Nyall with a wary respect at that; even Asuin was impressed. The chieftain’s curse was stronger even than a priest’s curse; and it killed always – the man who was cursed, and sometimes also the chieftain who had set it. The last chieftain who had invoked that curse was only in ancient Hero Songs, but that did not lighten its strength.

  “So,” Nyall said into their silence, while the rain poured down outside and the fire spat in protest, “it is done. There will be a gathering at midwinter, for those who are not snow-held, and a Council at first thaw. Now let us leave the hall to the thralls.”

  The smell of roasting meat had begun to drift in on the wet wind, and there was a scurrying of footsteps and voices outside the doors as thralls waited with trestle tables and armloads of green branches to begin decking the hall for Harvestnight as soon as the lords had gone.

  Nyall paused for a brief, quiet talk with Geir and Kari, and then made his way to his own chamber where he flopped wearily down in a chair and watched his wife’s woman dress her hair.

  “That will do, Hallgerd,” Fiorgyn said, waving the girl away as she knotted the last of the little gold balls into the ends of Fiorgyn’s b
raids and held a bronze mirror up for her mistress to see. “Go and make ready yourself.”

  Hallgerd pattered away and Fiorgyn pulled her chair around to face her husband. She looked very bright in her Harvestnight finery, with a gold collar glowing against her pale braids, and gold bands on her arms. Her gown was of three shades of blue, pale at the top, and deepening in wide bands to the midnight-colored hem. It was a rare pattern, difficult to dye, and it had been part of Nyall’s bride-gift to her. The hem was sewn with twining vines in gold thread with the berries picked out in red. She rested her blue-slippered feet on the warm hearthstone and looked at her husband thoughtfully.

  “And have you whistled your hounds to order?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Nyall said, “but I carried a large whip to do it.” He tugged off his boots and began to pull the laces from his trousers. His Harvestnight clothes lay spread on the bearskin blanket on the bed.

  “And my people?”

  “The lords are all hold-settled, and their men with them. That was the easiest part. For the rest, they are oath-sworn not to question my commands by so much as a whisper – there will be no repeat of Jorunnshold this spring.” He flung his boots and trousers into a corner for a thrall to pick up. “And I have put threat of the chieftain’s curse on them that they are not to raid each other this winter.”

  Fiorgyn’s sky-colored eyes narrowed. “They will not bide still all winter. They will raid in other tribes’ land.”

  Nyall chuckled from beneath the folds of his shirt as he pulled it off over his head. “And that will make the other tribes… amenable, when Geir takes the green branch to their chieftains.”

  Nyall threw the shirt in the corner with the rest and stretched, naked, by the fire, turning his hands outward with a crack of knuckles.

  “Do the Council lords know this?”

  “No,” Nyall said. “They don’t need to. It is enough that they will be hunting where I wish them to.”

  Fiorgyn nodded. He looked pleased with himself. He had maneuvered his Council with a ruthlessness that would have done credit to a Roman. And when Nyall had used their raids to hammer the other tribes of the Suevi into agreement with an alliance, and told his own lords that now they couldn’t raid there anymore, either – it would be too late for them to argue with him. Then they would have two months, she thought, penned in and restless, to turn all their energies to thinking about what they were going to do to the Romans. Sufficient time to build up a good fury, though short enough not to break peace before Nyall was ready. Suddenly she laughed. She began to see how a man so young had held the greatest tribe of the Suevi to his hand. And now he would call the rest to him also. Fiorgyn’s face turned thoughtful again.

  “Why did you not tell your Council that you intend to make alliance?” she asked. “Surely they will see the need for it if they are not fools?”

  Nyall began to dress, not in his usual forest-green color, but in a shirt and trousers of autumn russet, like his hair, with a gold embroidery running like fire around the hem and sleeves. “They are not fools, and they will see the need when they have thought of it.” His face was more sober now. “It was plain enough that we hadn’t the men to make war properly, even before Jorunnshold. I underestimated the Roman-kind. It is not a mistake I will be making again.”

  She watched him quietly, hands in her lap, and he came unexpectedly, shirt and trousers still in his hand, to sit in the clean rushes beside her.

  “Fiorgyn, I am tired.” He leaned his back against her knee while she ran her hands over his bare shoulders, rubbing the tension from them and from the nape of his neck where the bright hair ran upward into the warrior’s knot on the right-hand side. “I am tired with fighting the Roman-kind and my own kind as well. I did not tell them of the need for alliance because they need to learn a lesson: that I command. I rule. You cannot fight a war from a Council chamber. That is something your father never learned.”

  “Why do you think I asked to be given to you?” Fiorgyn said quietly. “It also occurs to me that if your own lords have no say in this alliance, it will make it easier for the other chieftains to swallow their pride and come oath-bound to you. It is not exactly alliance that you want, is it? You want complete obedience.”

  Nyall twisted his head around to look at her over his shoulder. “You are no fool either, are you? No, wise one, the others also will come oath-bound, and for that I put a little fear in them first. I learned that from Jorunn. May the gods take his prideful soul to Valhalla, anyway.” He shifted his shoulders and Fiorgyn’s hands slipped over them, down across his bare, scarred chest. He caught them in his own, and looked up at her, his head still twisted sideways like an owl. “Tell me, was that the only reason you asked for me?”

  It was an old joke between them now and she bent to kiss him, but stood up before he could pull her down on the floor with him. She chuckled at his obvious intent and dropped his clothes in his lap over the evidence.

  “Go and dress before we make ourselves late for the feast.”

  He thought about saying that he didn’t care, but she called a thrall in to help him dress and watched with a wicked little smile on her face as the thrall retrieved his boots from the corner and brushed the dust from the russet shirt. Nyall stood docilely while his cloak was pinned on with the huge amber-studded pin. Then, as they paced side by side up the hall to the High Table, he put his arm around her waist and whispered something in her ear that made her blush and laugh.

  The hall was now ablaze with torchlight and hung with pine branches; the withy shutters were pulled close against the rain and whatever else might be about on the night of the dead. The storm howled in the courtyard, but inside it was warm and comforting. The men and women came running through the rain from the buildings that ringed the yard, hurrying into the welcoming safety of human companionship. They shook off by the fire and made their way to their places at the tables that ran the whole length of the hall. The thralls came around with food and beer, and strong, sweet mead was ladled into pitchers from the vats in the storehouse.

  The walls were hung not only with pine branches, but with wheat sheaves, onions, sweet herbs, and the few fruits that grew in these parts. (It was bad country for orchards, although the Romans had begun to cultivate grapes in terraced vineyards on their side of the Rhenus.) When they had eaten and wiped the hot fat from their hands in the rushes on the floor, the pitchers went around again, and laughter and tall tales flowed with it, as did a new kind of hunger, born of the heady harvest mead on a night when all things were possible. Harvestnight was an older festival than even the solstice gatherings, and it honored an older god – Frey, lord of fruitfulness and increase, who lay with the Goddess in her winter form to quicken the seed that would make the land green again in spring.

  Kari took up his harp and began to make music, not a battle music now, but a song of joining and new beginnings. The men and women of the tribe, carried on the music and the need to shut out the dead that battered with the rain against the shutters, drew closer together. Nyall gazed at his wife. She dropped her eyes, but he could tell that the Harvestnight magic was running in her blood, too. He also saw that Kari, lost in his music with his dark eyes closed and his thin hands rippling on the harp strings, was oblivious to the girl Hallgerd who had crept up to sit in the rushes at his feet. He nudged Fiorgyn and pointed, and she smiled.

  Kari began to sing the Song of Frey’s Wooing. The men of the tribe, with their arms around their women, settled themselves to listen. The man who could read was rare, and in any case the runic script was for magic, not for stories. The only tie they had to the lives of the gods and the history of their people was a skald’s songs. Kari had learned to fit Gaulish harp music to the old songs, and to new ones of his own devising.

  The tale was familiar, but they listened intently nonetheless, perhaps gaining in persistence from the example of Frey’s servant Skirnir, the Bright One, sent to woo the giant’s cold daughter Gerda, in his master’s stead. First
he offered her the eleven golden apples of immortality, then the magic arm ring, Draupnir, which produced eight rings like itself on every ninth night. These were scorned, and Skirnir resorted to threats. He would cut off her head and her father’s too, to set them on poles at the gates of Asgard. Gerda spat at him. A giant’s daughter had no fear of gods. Skirnir fell back on curses: Gerda would waste away and her flesh become evil to all men. She would lust after monsters. At that she relented finally and agreed to wed the longing Frey who had seen her when he looked out over the world from Wuotan’s throne. In nine nights she would meet him and lie with him in the windless barley field.

  The song ended with Frey’s lament at the delay, and a sad acceptance of the great price he had paid for his bride:

  One night is long and three are longer;

  How can I endure for nine?

  Often a month has seemed to me shorter

  Than the thrice three nights I pine.

  Frey had won his bride, but lost his magic sword to Skirnir as the price of his silver-tongued wooing. And at the last battle of the gods, at Ragnarok, the price would come home to him. There was always a price.

  Kari drew a last note from the harp strings, and as it died away there was a murmur of approval and calls for other favorites. Kari waited until the commotion died down and then took up another song, also the Song of Frey, the golden lord who danced in the sun and rain while the fields swelled where his feet had touched. Still unnoticed, Hallgerd snuggled against Kari’s knee, and Nyall began to laugh.

  A few couples were slipping from the hall now, hand in hand, for their beds in the guest chambers, or for the warm straw of the stables. Thrain had pulled the young widow of his new holding close to him, and she seemed content enough; even Morgian felt the magic of Harvestnight as she lifted her still unlined face to smile at Steinvar’s lean, scarred one as it bent above her. In the ordinary way, the Germans counted the passions of men and women strictly – a matter for marriage and alliance and not to be taken lightly. But things done on Harvestnight were the god’s affairs and never questioned afterward. It was as well, Nyall thought, looking at a hall too full of women, even though many of the lords had left their own behind them in their holds. There were too many women in the aftermath of war. It was not right that they should always walk lonely.