Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS)

by John James

  I had brought quite a lot of food up from Gaul. The fruit went quite well, figs, and dried plums from Illyria. Nobody else liked the olives, though, and I ate them myself, the whole barrel, as the winter went on. It took me all that time, too, to teach Freda how to fry in decent oil instead of in pig fat.

  The Honeydew was a great success. I had flavoured the mash with juniper berries, which improves the taste a great deal. We gave a big cup to the minstrel, who was churning out one of the traditional stories. But under the spell of the Honeydew he, being a Batavian, gave us a highly original version of how the brave Batavians won the great Battle of the Wood, while Herman and the Thuringians only came up after all was over.

  Then the Cheruscan king sang us the descent of the Lord Mithras, for he had gone as far as the Dog, but only because you couldn’t get promotion any other way.

  Jokuhai-inen sang and danced, beating on a little drum, hung with silver bells. None of the others knew what it meant, but I had been watching what he had been refusing, and I knew that he was dancing the Death of the Bear. For his people, once in three years only do they sacrifice the bear in truth, but they may dance the sacrifice on any great occasion when they need good fortune.

  Tyr gave us again the song of how he lost his hand. He had now added a great deal of personal and genealogical material on Aristarchos, some of which was to my knowledge untrue, and the rest of which may have been no more than wishful thinking.

  Then they called for me to sing, and I think I gave them more than they expected. I sang them of how the Lord Apollo brought to men the gifts of song and music and writing, and when they were all entranced I ended,

  Now I can impart the art of writing

  Not only for Latin or Greek or Egyptian

  But for the God’s language, your own tongue, the German,

  Let each King leave a man to stay through the winter

  And learn of Votan the secret of writing

  To return in the spring and teach all the nobles

  The signs of the Gods, the Runes of Valhall.

  And so they all agreed, and each of them left behind a noble, except the two Lombard kings, who stayed themselves to save themselves the cost of their keep through the winter, as well as to watch each other. One of them offered to hire out his wife to Jokuhai-inen for the wedding night, and was furious when he found the Scrawling king had already made arrangements with the other. But his rival was even more furious to find that Jokuhai-inen had sublet her to Sweyn and not only enjoyed her himself but made a profit on the transaction.

  When all had agreed that a standard runic writing was desirable, and we had drunk all the Honeydew, and the minstrel had been mutton-boned, we went in procession to my house, lit by kings as torchbearers. Signy went in to deck Freda for the bridal bed, while the men made me drink a last horn of ale, and they had a final contest among themselves as to who could drain the biggest horn at one draft. It says a lot for Siggeir’s naivety that he thought he could pass me a horn half full of beer and half of Honeydew without my noticing, but I managed to exchange horns with a Lombard king, and he was so naive he drank it, and he was fearfully ill later in the night. So in the end only six kings saw me to my bed.

  But as to what happened there, you may learn across the Styx. Whatever Ursa, or Gerda, or any of the others were, remember that Freda was my wife, and my first wife. So don’t expect to hear any more about that. In spite of what came after.

  Lands Beyond Asgard

  1

  That first year of my marriage to Freda, the first year of my first marriage, was the best whole year of my life, complete and without flaw. Perhaps I was in the virginity of my powers. Perhaps it was the effect of that first bitter northern winter, cooped up on our pile-based deck above the frozen marsh. It was in that year that I learned how to command kings, how to send kings to their death and kingdoms to destruction. Hear then what I did.

  First, in that winter I taught men to write. Asers and kings (even if only Lombard kings) and nobles and traders all sat down before me every morning through the winter, and learnt of me how to write. Of course I could not teach them how to write in Latin, for they cannot learn Latin, their tongues are too short. So I had to make an alphabet that would fit the German sounds. It was only then that I found out how many different kinds of the German language there are, and how many sounds. And, of course, I could not think of using wax tablets. I had to make letters that could be scratched on limewood panels across the grain.

  Njord never learnt the trick at all. One of the Lombard kings was nearly as bad. The other learnt very quickly; his name was Hoenir. He had very little to do but work, for his wife, having tasted the sweets of wealth with Sweyn and Jokuhai-inen, had gone off with the Cheruscan king. He passed her on to other military friends, and when I saw her again a few years later, in Rome, she was mistress to a captain in the Praetorian Guard, and doing well on selling permits to beg around the Milvian bridge.

  Loki came at Yule. He learnt to read in three weeks. This is their winter festival, when their custom is to burn a tree. This was difficult in Asgard, living as we did on a wooden deck above the swamp, in wooden houses, but I had Bragi make a great tray of bronze and we piled a heap of earth to put it on and we burnt the tree in that.

  We gave Loki his spear, and he was very pleased. He made no comment on the thrones, or on the marriage, till midway through the Yule dinner, when he produced a complete set of silver plate, cups, dishes, wine strainers, bowls, two of everything, all Syrian by the workmanship, and not more than ten years old by the style. I often wondered where he stole it. Still, it was a magnificent gift.

  When the banquet was well under way, he tried to feed Hoogin and Moonin with crumbs. Then he got maudlin over the maidens on Freda’s chair, and called them his little Greek girls. And he used the Greek word too, Kyria, and then he called them Valhall Kyria, and the name stuck.

  2

  Among the men who had come in the ships with Sweyn was a noble named Starkadder. He stayed to learn the Runes, having nowhere else to go that winter but Sweyn’s hall, and ours was as good. He was a landless man, having lost his farm at dice, as so often happens. One night, in the hall, I sang the tale of Scylla and Charybdis, translating Homer as best I could. Starkadder was most impressed by my description of an octopus, for they do not live in the seas of the north.

  He went away next day, and repainted his shield, which before had had the usual simple design of an eagle or a boar or some such thing. He painted on it what he thought an octopus might be. There was a human face, and from it there came out in all directions eight human arms, and each of these arms carried a weapon, one a sword, another a hammer, another an axe, and so on. The result was most distinctive, and ever after he was known as Starkadder Eightarms.

  He came to me and said,

  ‘Votan Whitehair, that came out of the forest with your spear on your shoulder and now sit in Asgard a Lord of the Amber Road, tell me how I too may win wealth.’

  ‘First,’ I told him, ‘remember you are not Votan Spearbearer.’

  ‘True,’ he answered, ‘but I do not wish to be as wealthy as you.’

  Therefore I told him how he might become a wealthy man, and I lent him silver, for there is little you can do without capital unless you are the manifestation of some God. What I told him, and how he did it, you shall hear, but it was about this time, in the winter, that I began to learn my power over kings and nations.

  3

  Donar came in March. He just walked into Valhall one evening just as we sat down to dinner. He came in through the door, and bellowed,

  ‘I am Donar. I bring the sword I promised.’

  He walked up the hall and laid the blade on the table in front of me. Then he went around to the seat on the other side of Njord, where Loki usually sat, and settled down in it comfortably. Nobody said a word against him. He never gave any explanation of why he had come.

  The sword he brought was, of course, not a whole sword but only a
blade, and the tang of the hilt. Donar and Bragi worked together on the hilt, carving it in beechwood to fit my hand, and balancing it to suit my grip exactly. However I would not let them make any rings or healing stones for it. I told them,

  ‘There will be no healing of any blow that I strike with Votan’s sword.’

  Yet the blade never tasted blood but the one time, while I had it.

  Donar also had for me my old sword, my Kopis. He was not very polite about the quality of the blade. I didn’t know what to do with it, and in the end I gave it away, to Sigmund, when he came for a few days in the spring, trying to get credit in corn against the winter’s Amber sales. He was very grateful, the blockhead, incredulous that I should give him my own sword, a sword of Votan’s for his own.

  I asked Donar how he had got it, indeed how he had got here at all.

  ‘When you shouted,’ he told me, ‘I went into the woods. I heard one horse go off after a bit, and that must have been you. There was a lot of noise, and a great deal of cursing when they tried to scrape the burning wood out of the hut, and sort through it for the silver. After a bit lying watching them I found out there was someone alongside me. It was Occa. He had gone back a few hours, and met Wolf, who was coming up behind, as, apparently, had already been arranged. I knew there’d be somebody, but they didn’t tell me. Wolf had a crowd of men, Vandals as well as Quadi, and his son-in-law too.’

  ‘Who’s Wolf’s son-in-law?’

  ‘Tyr, of course. Didn’t you know, Fenris Wolf cut off his hand? Well, we came up in a circle and rushed them about dawn, but of course we couldn’t hold the Vandals back and they killed the lot. We got the silver out and traded it through Tyr, and shipped a fair amount of Amber back to Otho.’

  ‘Do you mean to say that Tyr knew I was coming?’

  ‘Well, we heard some things from the Polyani. The real worry was in case you got to Outgard before Tyr, and you did, but we hear you took care of yourself.’

  ‘And who else knows all this besides Tyr?’

  ‘And what should Tyr know, other than that you are Votan Spearbearer Spearbringer, the marked of Joy?’

  No more would he say. And as always around everything I did, everywhere I went in the north, there was the strange feeling that I was expected, that all was prepared, that I was playing a part in a piece I had not written, no, nor yet read.

  Donar settled down, as I said, and not only in that seat, but in Asgard. He put up a smithy by the Honeydew sheds, where twenty men watched the pots, and he began to make swords, snake swords. Ingelri left Bragi and went to work under Donar, learning how to make the long ribbons of iron, and interlace them, beating them in the heat of the charcoal. So much charcoal did we need for this that the Lombard axes began to eat visibly into the edge of the great forest. Ingelri became a great swordsmith, and his swords became as famous as Donar’s. More famous, because Ingelri, and all his clan, marked the blades with his name, while Donar never learned my Runes.

  Donar’s own sword was a Sax, a lovely thing. Instead of Runes, he inlaid the blade with patterns in silver and copper wire.

  4

  One day I went into the hall and Njord said to me,

  ‘Learn now how hard it is to be an Aser. See here these men who come from Sweyn. They say that the Saxons are seizing their saltpans and driving them from their pastures, and Sweyn wishes me to stop trading with the Saxons. And these men come from Edwin the Saxon King, and they say that the Black Danes are seizing their saltpans and driving them from their pastures; and Edwin wishes me to stop trading with the Danes. What then shall I do?’

  ‘Go to your kings,’ I told the envoys, ‘and tell them that in three weeks from today they will meet me at – are there any sacred places in Denmark?’

  ‘Dozens,’ said Hoenir the Lombard, and named one at random.

  ‘Then in three weeks King Hoenir and I will meet King Sweyn and King Edwin there, and we will come to an agreement. And you, Hoenir, will bring fifty of your axemen, and you will stand as witness of any agreement and guard us all while we talk.’

  And Njord did not object though I said all this without consulting him in the slightest. He merely said later that he was glad I was going, since he was no longer able to ride, and he did not want Asgard full of kings all through the summer.

  I went with Hoenir and fifty of his Lombards, all riding horses borrowed from the Aser stables, much to the dissatisfaction of Tyr who protested that he could not see how to plan the summer’s packtrains if he were fifty horses short.

  These were hungry men with hungry axes, who left behind hungry wives and hungry children, and who, now the ploughing was over, rode with me to save the food at home, and live on the Asers. We went across the hungry land and we lived on the dry bread and bacon in our saddle bags, and we came to the meeting place.

  It was some way from the edge of the woods. There was, of course, a sacred tree, and a little way from it there was a bog. The Lombards cut down young trees and made houses thatched with the green leaves. All the time I was there until the last night I ate no food that a Lombard had not prepared, and drank nothing but water from a spring that trickled down into the bog, and spoke to no one except in Hoenir’s hearing.

  Three days before the appointed time there came two parties, of Black Danes and of Saxons, and each party brought wagon loads of ready cut timber to build a hall, and the first task I had, and that a hard one, was to persuade them to put all the wood together and build one hall, and not two.

  On the appointed day, all the common people went away, except two nobles, one a Black Dane and one a Saxon, who stayed to be witness, and the Lombards took their swords from them, and then spread out in a great circle around to keep the kings safe.

  Midway through the morning we saw the kings coming, from opposite directions. Edwin the Saxon King came on horseback, and he was forced to ride in circles to waste time and not arrive before Sweyn, who sat in an ox cart. Edwin was an old man, as old as Njord, and frail.

  There was a table and benches. I sat at the head, with Sweyn at my left hand and Edwin at my right. Hoenir sat at the foot, and the Danish noble between him and Edwin, and the Saxon noble opposite him. And I faced to the north-west, so that each king faced his own kingdom.

  I avoided any question of priority in speech. I made them throw dice. Sweyn threw a five and a two against two threes, and launched into an oration. It was long and flowery, and he had obviously taken notice of Siggeir’s style. He spoke for two hours, and at the end I said,

  ‘Hoenir has written down in Runes what this great king has said. Let us hear it.’

  Hoenir cleared his throat and read,

  ‘King Sweyn said the salt beaches were empty when the Danes came. The pastures have paid homage to the Danes from time immemorial.’

  King Edwin took the hint. He only spoke for twenty minutes. Hoenir read from his tablets,

  ‘King Edwin said the pastures were empty when the Saxons came. The Saxons have made salt on the beaches from time immemorial.’

  I began to question the Kings. How much salt came from the beaches? Whence came the wood to burn to make it? How many cattle grazed the pastures? Who sold the hides, and to whom? How many men? What service? What duty? What protection?

  When Hoenir had everything written on his tablets I clapped my hands and a Lombard came with six silver cups and a jug of Honeydew. I poured a drop, a notional gesture, into each cup. We drank, after I had spilled a little on the table in the face of the sun. Then Hoenir and I went apart to another table. I took the jug.

  We read the tablets. We talked in whispers. We drank. The others watched us in silence, their tongues hanging out. When I was satisfied, Hoenir wrote down my judgment, three times. Then we went back taking our two full cups. I left the jug.

  ‘Hear my judgment,’ I told them. ‘Hoenir has written it three times, once for Danes, once for Saxons, once for himself as a witness. Tonight I will read it to all your nobles at the feast.’

  ‘No feast,�
� said Sweyn. ‘He killed two of my brothers.’

  ‘No feast,’ said Edwin. ‘He killed my only son.’

  I sniffed the liquor in my cup. I breathed drink at them.

  ‘There will be no more killing of kings’ sons, or of kings’ brothers, or of anyone else. Here is a treaty that will keep peace in the north for a thousand years.’

  The two kings looked at the jug. They said they would accept my judgment.

  ‘Hear this! The salt beaches belong to Edwin. Sweyn’s men may make salt there. Edwin shall send a noble to watch, and one-tenth of all the salt shall be Edwin’s, and he may take it, or Sweyn may redeem it for silver.

  ‘The pastures belong to Sweyn. The Saxons shall graze them. Four years in five shall they pay tribute in hides and men to Edwin, and one year in five to Sweyn, but never shall they march to war for Dane against Saxon, or for Saxon against Black Dane.’

  Because this judgment was complex and gave each king the shadow of his ancient title, though the substance was gone, they hailed it as a work of genius. We stood and collected the cups and I poured out the Honeydew, full cups this time, and we all drank to the treaty.

  Then the Saxons and Danes came and passed the axe ring and brought sacrifices to seal the treaty. Silver and Amber and furs and bronze they brought, and they threw it all into the bog. They brought two men that had been shipwrecked, the Saxons had a Friesian and the Danes a Goth, and these first they hanged from the tree, and then threw still choking into the bog. And, most magnificent of all, each side brought two white mares, and the four they drove into the bog, and cut their throats as they struggled, and their blood poured out on the ground, and their breath mingled with the wind.

  Then, as evening came on, tables were set up for a feast, for both sides had come prepared for a feast, however the kings had objected. I set Hoenir at the head of the high table, with the other kings seated on the sides toward their own kingdoms, and I sat opposite Hoenir, and we ate, and drank beer and Honeydew. And later I moved around among the other nobles, and I learnt many things. Sweyn wanted salt beaches so that he need no longer pay the Saxons for his salt herrings, but sell them himself to the Goths and take Edwin’s trade. Edwin wanted the pastures, not for cattle, but so that Cutha Cuthson his man could raise more horses for his packtrains, and not have to buy them from the Black Danes.