by John James
I thought of the two Polyani. I had given Olen my blue tunic because he hadn’t got one at all, but his trousers were all right. I got a suit for Tawalz, nothing fancy, but tough, and boots for the pair of them. Then I added a few iron fish hooks and a dozen iron arrow points. You know, they were used to going in after boar with bone-tipped arrows, and they haven’t got the penetration to slow the beast up at all.
Then I was down to my last few silver pieces again. But at least I was respectable. With three silver pieces I could start again. I had a set of loaded dice in my bag. There were two or three likely prospects I’d marked down. There was even one who might go for a gold brick – or would it be a silver one up here? That could wait till an emergency. Did I tell you, once in Alexandria I sold the Pharos to three different people in one day, and another day, the whole Library?
9
So, decent, we went into the hall. And though they firmly settled Olen near the door, the Vandals put Tawalz fairly well up, and me, of course, they led to sit with Loki at the top table.
No, Loki told me, he wasn’t a Vandal. He seemed pleased to talk to me, to have somebody new to talk to must have been rare. He said he was an Aser.
‘Yes, I came out here some years ago, and I took Outgard over completely when my uncle Bergelmir … left. It’s a bit lonely, but quite comfortable.’
Loki was comfortable. On the top table we had silver-mounted drinking horns, and silver plate. And we had wine to drink, only Italian of course, but still better than beer. I was telling Loki how much better the wine would be with a lacing of sea-water, when a big man, rather drunk, but not so drunk he wasn’t nasty, stood in front of us and threw down his cloak on the floor. That, I knew, was a challenge to fight any man in the house. I tried to ignore it, but he didn’t ignore me. There were no takers – the man on my right whispered that Grude was a notorious bully – so he leant on the top table and taunted me with cowardice, age, and stupidity. None of which was true. I don’t like to say that Loki had arranged this, but there would have been no fight in his hall without his approval, and it was an attractive chance of getting rid of two nuisances at once.
Grude leant over and leaned his elbows on the table and breathed beer all over me with a stream of insults that would have withered the whiskers off a boar. When I sat there like a log, Loki helped by sneering:
‘You’ll be all right, I’ll lend you a mail shirt.’
Of course, I was fool enough to say, ‘I have no sword,’ and at once there was a Vandal at my elbow with a whole bundle of them which their owners had deposited with him at the door for safe keeping. He offered me the hilts, and I shut my eyes and took one at random.
The God guided my hand. There was a roar of laughter in the hall, and Grude snatched the weapon away from me. It was his own sword. For a moment he looked as if he were going to throw it away, but then he must have felt a bit sheepish and he kept it. Still, it unsettled him for the evening, and I think it was really the death of him.
I turned my head away again, and took another, and again the God guided me. This was no German sword, I thought, this was a Greek Kopis like my own, not too long, pointed, one edge sharp, the other finger-thick, the bone breaker. I had heard that they had been once in fashion all over Germany. Now they only lingered in the far west.
This I could use. The weight of the blade was a little far forward for my liking, but otherwise the balance was perfect. I passed it from hand to hand, tossed it up and caught it, and tried a few wrist flicks. It was then that some people began to realise that this was a real contest, and I heard the odds shorten. I looked around to get a few denarii on before it came down to evens, but somebody got in the way, holding out an oilstone and saying,
‘Make her sharp, make my little Jutta sharp.’ He was a middle-aged man with a thick north-western accent. ‘Treat her well, she is thirsty, my sax.’
It was obvious that he was a little afraid of having the costly blade damaged.
‘She’ll be all right,’ I told him. ‘I shed no blood.’
He caught my eye and my meaning. With the look of one craftsman meeting another, he held the sword up and breathed on the blade, below the hilt.
‘Look, a snake sword,’ and, sure enough, in the torchlight little snakes twisted in the iron.
I held Jutta comfortably and stood on a stain at one corner of the cloak. I kept my back to Loki; I didn’t want those eyes on mine. Someone gave me a shield, and I threw it away. This gave Grude first stroke, although he was the challenger, but it forced him to throw away his shield too. He wasn’t used to fighting like that, but I was, and what use are rules if you can’t use them?
I had to think of tactics. I couldn’t try to tire him out, I was still weak from the tree. I didn’t want to go moving around over the mutton bones. I knew what to do, but a lot of people were shouting advice, and examples of excellent wit like, ‘Show him your stuffing, Votan.’ Nobody seemed to be shouting for Grude, and it was just as well, the whole thing didn’t last long.
We took guard, Loki shouted, ‘Ready!’, and Grude tried a downward cut. He was a bit clumsy, and I just pushed his sword away and instead of cutting myself I carried the parry on into a jab-jab-jab at his eyes. I thought I might force him off the cloak, but he’d met this before, and now he tried a cut, roundarm, almost horizontal. So nothing was easier than to counter by bringing the blunt edge of Jutta down on to his wrist, so that we heard the bone crack. The sword went flying and I followed through with all my might on to his kneecap.
He went down like a log, and lay there screaming, which drew some comment, but you will admit that a broken wrist and a smashed kneecap together are rather painful. And then I found out the kind of people I was living with.
A couple of Vandals picked Grude up.
‘How is he?’ asked Loki.
‘His wrist is smashed, and he’ll never walk straight again.’
‘What use is that to us?’ Loki said, and they heaved him up over a bench and somebody cut off his head with his own sword. I believe Loki got hold of his farm after that. They carted out the body and threw sawdust on the floor to stop the dogs licking the blood.
They brought me Grude’s belongings, as was right. There was quite a lot of silver coin and a few pieces of gold in a wallet, some scraps of Amber, a gold neck chain, and a gold ring with a big yellow stone in it. Next day, I took Cutha, who owned Jutta, to a goldsmith and he opened the ring and closed it again tightly around the grip, so that shapely sword at last had some adornment. I recited twenty lines of Homer over it, Hector’s speech to Andromache which seemed appropriate, and scratched my name in the soft gold, so that Cutha thought Jutta had a real healing stone at last.
But that night, most of the western Germans crowded around me, laughing and shouting congratulations, and so did some of the Vandals. Some of the others said I had not acted fairly in going straight from a parry into a stroke without waiting, but nobody now dared say it close enough for me to hear.
They brought me Grude’s sword and shield. I said I didn’t want them, though I did keep the belt, which was better than the one I had bought. When I pushed Grude’s sword away, Cutha offered me Jutta in exchange, saying, ‘She likes you, she’ll go with you,’ but he was quite drunk, so I said I would have no sword till Donar made me one. At this, some of the Vandals laughed, as if Donar, some Donar, was dead and done for, but the westerners looked very impressed.
In the end I gave Grude’s sword, and the shield, to Tawalz. He was the first of all the Polyani to bear arms like a free man, and the first to make his authority felt over more than one band. Trouble and blood came of that gift and little else.
The chain and the silver I used to buy more gifts for the Polyani, spear heads and axes and iron pots, and bolts of linen and woollen cloth. No pottery or glass, which they would dearly have loved, since there was little chance of their getting all the way back unbroken; but I did send bronze brooches for the old ladies who had nursed me, and a bronze mirror that t
hey might see what one looked like.
The return for the furs Tawalz took in grain and beer. This was little in comparison to the furs, and he decided to leave the rest till later in the year. Loki not only did not allow him interest on this debt, but even charged him a fee for storage. He would have done well in Alexandria.
I gave the belt I’d bought to Tawalz. So I had little gain from the bloody affair, indeed I lost, for no one now would fight with me, and there was no chance of persuading anyone that I was qualified to sell him the Amber mines, or wherever they got the stuff. (I never did find out how you get it, and I think someone must have had a fine time telling Tacitus that tale about picking it up on the sea shore.) So it was as a dangerous man and a well-known one that I left Outgard. And through the Vandals and their wives who lived in the village over the ridge, and through the traders who were there that night, all Germany soon knew of the white-haired man from the tree who had come out of the forest.
10
I had two nights at Outgard. The second evening was quiet, perhaps because I spent most of the day leaning on my spear in front of Loki’s booth, and just looking at him as he worked. This unsettled him so much that, in plain language, he offered me a horse to go away to Asgard and annoy somebody else. So I went.
I went in company with the Saxons who had been at the first dinner. They had a packtrain, and a packmaster, a big man with one hand; he had lost his right hand, and carried his shield on his forearm, and his spear in his left. They had been waiting for him to arrive; he came in the day after the fight. As we went the Saxons told me about the Asers. They appeared not sure whether to expect from me omniscience or universal ignorance.
I found out a lot that would have been useful to Otho. The Asers were the lords of the Amber roads. The Polyani lived beyond the river. Beyond them, and to the north-east lived the Scrawlings. North again, across the shallow seas, lived the Goths, who were Germans. It was these peoples who brought in the furs and the Amber. They would only trade with the Asers. The Asers held immense stocks of all they wanted, close to the river and the sea, so that we, if we tried, could never outbid the Asers. All trade had to be through the Asers.
On the other hand, to the traders the Asers supplied packtrains and escorts at low prices, and on the roads between the three great Aser posts, at Outgard, Asgard and Westgard toward the Rhine, they had stopping places for the packtrains.
At one of these we stopped the first night. We rode into a palisade, and there were men to take the horses and stable them, and Vandals to check every bale and put it into the stores. We went into a hall, and we stood in line to receive great platters of stewed meat and vegetables, and bread, and each man his horn of beer. There was as much food as you could eat, as often as you returned for more, but extra beer you had to buy at a counter in the corner. I sat with Cutha and asked, ‘Is Loki an Aser?’
‘Some say he is, and some say he isn’t. He came from Asgard, sure enough, and Njord sent him. And it wasn’t long before he drove out Bergelmir, the old man, now he really was an Aser. Where Bergelmir went no one knows, but he strode away vowing vengeance on Njord and Loki and all the Aser house. But Tyr, there, the packtrain leader, now he is an Aser. Look, he’s going to tell one of his tales; up on the table, there he goes.’
And up Tyr stood indeed, to give what was always a popular piece, though this was the first time of many that I ever heard it. He had a sausage in his hand, and as he recited he alternately took bites and made obscene gestures.
‘It fell, a couple of years ago, at the end of a long wet summer, that Ulla and Hermod and I went to forage down in Thuringia. The pickings weren’t very good, not enough to live through the winter, just a few furs and some girls, that we sold off cheap to the Marcomen. All those goods that went straight down, to Carnuntum and Vindabonum, they sold for silver and glass and wine, and all we got was some sausage.’
‘What, sausage?’ shouted the audience, they weren’t subtle and this was the traditional response to Tyr.
‘Yes, sausage,’ and the one he had was as long as your arm and as thick as your wrist.
‘Well, the girls weren’t up to much, and we very soon finished the sausage. We hadn’t as much as a roof to our heads, when the leaves were beginning to fall. My trousers were full of enormous holes, and Ulla was hardly decent, so Hermod, who was respectable then, said we ought to go on into Dacia. There we’d meet no one who knew us before, and bring no disgrace to our families. At worst we’d beg bread from the peasants and slaves, and we might find a chieftain to feast us.’
‘But the people of Dacia are crafty and mean, the crows starve to death in their cornfields. The rags of my bottom were beating my brains out, and the cold struck chill to my liver …’
‘To your liver?’ and they all cheered.
‘To my liver. For a good square meal, I’d have gone past the river to ride for a soldier in Britain. It was then that Hermod found us a horse, a fine black horse with a saddle. The man who rode it was drunk in a ditch, he left us never a penny, and his trousers wouldn’t fit any of us, so we went on east by the river. We slept that night in a hole in a ditch, and the horse we hobbled and tethered. We slept in a ditch as beggars do, and that night a Roman robbed us!’
‘Robbed you?’
‘Aye, robbed us. We woke in the morning, our horse was gone, and our trousers were hung in a treetop. The thief left his runes in the bark of a tree, Aristarchos the son of Demos. Let Romans rob beggars as much as they like, but they ought to stay in their own country. We weren’t going to let them do it again, so we went north in a hurry. North we went in hunger and cold, for the snow had come and the winter, till up in the mountains we came to a hall that belonged to a noble named Fenris.’
‘Named Fenris?’ they all bawled.
‘Yes, Fenris. We told him the tale of how we’d been robbed by Romans down by the river. They’d taken our horses, our silver, our gold, they’d taken our horns and our trousers. Only our swords that we slept on at night were left to show we were noble. They’d driven us out in hunger and cold to trudge our way home through the mountains, when all that we wanted was freedom to go, to the east to try Scythian women. But we’ll never see Scythian women now, the Polyani have got all the traffic.
‘Fenris was warm-hearted and generous, the fool, and he took us into his household. He had seven fine daughters and seven strapping sons, though these last had gone off to … forage.’
‘To forage?’
‘Yes, to forage.’ They passed Tyr up another sausage, he’d finished the first one.
‘Now old Fenris lived well, with Amber and bronzes, wine, furs and salt fishes, with silver and salt. He lived on the Asers, though little they knew it. He bribed men and bought men, he raided, he cheated, he swam across rivers and emptied the trap lines, and all that he got he sent down to the Romans, he passed it through Otho to sell at cut prices. No, he had no morals and no sense of beauty, no rings or cartels could appeal to his soul. And so he grew wealthy on crumbs from the table of great Njord Borsson, the Lord of the Asers. Drink all to the Asers, drink to great Njord Borsson.’
Everyone drank, and then of course they went back to the counter for more beer.
‘Fenris had one daughter, a lass called Hedwiga, a tall wench and strapping, with skin smooth as marble. Her hair that hung braided in two yellow pigtails hung thick long and fragrant clear down to her bottom. They swayed and they bounced as she walked in the rickyard, her hips swaged, her breasts shimmered, a sight for the starving. I knew she’d come, the way she looked at me, once alone in the barn we’d soon have got … friendly.’
‘What, friendly?’
‘Yes, friendly. Another loved Ulla, and one wanted Hermod, we’d soon have been talking if not for their father. He had eyes where we had backbones, he had ears where we have toenails, he could hear the sun arising, he could see the grass a-growing, seven daughters on the rampage he could watch and never miss one. How then do you bed a woman when her father watches daily,
when her father listens nightly, when she sleeps behind the hangings, and his bed’s across the doorway?
‘Then Hermod had a brainwave, he always was a genius, we’d get the old man drunk and pass him where he lay. Don’t ever drink with Fenris, it really isn’t worth it, his legs and feet are hollow, and the beer just drains away. So even drinking three to one, he had us on the floor.
‘Then Hermod had a brainwave, he always was a genius, we’d tie the old man up, and let him sleep upon the floor. And we said that night to Fenris, when the ale horns were half empty, “Fenris, we know you are a mighty man. You walk the forest with a giant’s strength. Oak trees your fingers pluck from out the earth. The winter wind is not more powerful. Has no one ever tried to bind your arms?” “Many have tried,” said Fenris, “none succeeded. Tie up my arms with any cord you like and I will break it.”
‘So we tied him up first with a short length of fish line, thin light and strong – he broke it at once. Then we took twine that we use for the corn sheaves, doubled, re-doubled, an eightfold cord. He strained for a moment, then jerked, and behold it, the eightfold cord was snapped clean away.
‘Now Fenris was fuddled and hazy with drinking, so we took some boat line as thick as my thumb. We tied him and wrapped him to look like a parcel, and all was set fair to get into bed. Then Hermod had a brainwave, he always was a genius, said, “Let’s put him out, let him sit in the cold for the wolves to eat him,” and when he said wolves, old Fenris went mad. He stretched and he strained, he wrenched and he wriggled, his face it went red and his wrists they went white. We three men stopped laughing, the girls they stopped giggling, and then in the silence we heard the knots burst!’