The Boat of a Million Years

by Poul Anderson

  The huge man shifted about. “What would you of me?” he growled uneasily.

  “First I would ask for the tale of your life. Some of the stories I heard were wild.”

  “You’re a news-greedy one.”

  “I have sought knowledge throughout the world. M-m-m ... how shall a storyteller repay a night’s lodging or a skald make staves for chieftains, unless he have something word-worthy behind his teeth?”

  Starkadh had unbuckled his sword, but dropped hand to knife. “Is this the beginning of witchcraft? Uncanny are you, Gest.”

  The wanderer locked gaze with the warrior and answered, “I swear to cast no spell. What I am after is more strange than that.”

  Starkadh quelled a shiver. As if charging at fear to trample it underfoot, he said in a rush: “What I have done is well known, though belike no man save me knows all of it. But sooth it is, wild and sometimes ugly tales have mushroomed over the years. I am not of Jotun birth. That’s old wives’ chatter. My father was a yeoman in the north of Zealand, my mother came of honest fisher folk, and they had other children who grew up, lived like anybody else, grew fold, and were laid in howe, those that battle or sickness or the sea had spared—also like anybody else.”

  “How long have they lain in the earth?” Gest asked softly.

  Starkadh ignored the question. “I was big and strong, as you see. From childhood I lacked wish to muck and plow the fields or haul nets full of stinking fish. Twelve years old, I went off in viking. Some neighborhood men had a ship in common. They met with other ships and harried a while along the Norse shores. When they went back for hay harvest, I stayed behind. I sought out a skipper who was going to stay the winter; and thereafter my fame waxed fast.

  “Shall I tell you of battles, reavings, burnings, feasts, hunger, cold, shipmates, women, offerings to the gods, strife against storm and bad luck when the gods grew angry with us, kings we served and kings we overthrew? The years lie jumbled and awash in me like flotsam on a skerry.

  “Frodhi, king at Hleidhra, took me in after I suffered shipwreck. He made me the head of his household troops, and I made him the greatest of lords in his day. But his son Ingjald proved a weakling, sluggard, glutton. I upbraided him and quit the land in disgust. Yet from time to time I have been back and wielded blade for worthier men of the Skjoldung house. Harald was the best of them, he became first among kings through all of Denmark and Gautland and well into Sweden; but now Harald is fallen, and his work broken, and I am alone again.”

  He cleared his throat and spat. That may have been his way of not weeping.

  “They told me Harald was aged,” Gest said. “He must ride to Bravellir in a wagon, and was well-nigh blind.”

  “He died like a man!”

  Gest nodded and spoke no further, but busied himself with the food. They ate wordlessly. Afterward they slaked their thirst anew at the spring and went aside, left and right, to piss. When Starkadh came back to the fire he found Gest already there, squatting on his haunches. The night was wholly upon them. Thor’s Wain gleamed enormous, barely over treetops, the North Star higher like a spearpoint.

  Starkadh loomed above the fire, legs astraddle, fists on hips, and nearly snarled, “Too long have you slyly fended me off, you. What do you want? Out with it, or I’ll hew you down.”

  Gest looked up. The light slipped to and fro along the shadows in his face. “A last question,” he said. “Then you shall know. When were you born, Starkadh?”

  The giant coughed forth a curse. “You ask and ask and ask, and naught do you give! What kind of being are you? You sit on your hams like a Finnish warlock.”

  Gest shook his head. “I learned this much farther east,” he replied mildly, “and many things else, but none of them are wizardry.”

  “You learned womanishness, you who took care to arrive late at the battlefield and stood by while I fought six men!”

  Gest rose, straightened his back, stared across the flames, and said in a voice like steel sliding from sheath: “That was no war of mine, nor would I have hunted men who boded me no further harm.” In the dim and restless light, under the stars and Winter Road, suddenly he seemed of a tallness with the warrior, or in some way taller still. “A thing I heard said about you is that though you be foremost in battle, you are doomed to do ill deeds, nithing’s work, over and over and over. They say Thor laid this on you because he hates you. They say the god who bears you good will is Odin, father of witchcraft. Could this be true?”

  The giant gasped. It was as if he shrank back. He raised hands and thrust at air. “Empty talk,” he groaned. “Naught more.”

  Gest’s words tramped against him. “But you have done treacheries. How many, in those lifetimes that have been yours?”

  “Hold your jaw!” Starkadh bellowed. “What know you of being ageless? Be still, ere I smite you like the dayfly you are!”

  “That might not be so easy,” Gest purred. “I too have lived a long rime. Far longer than you, my friend.”

  The breath rattled in Starkadh’s throat. He could merely gape.

  Gest’s tone went dry. “Well, nobody in these parts would keep count of years, as they do in the South or the East. What I heard was that you have lived three men’s lifetimes. That must mean simply that folk remember their grandfathers telling of you. A hundred years is a good enough guess.”

  “I—have thought—it was more.”

  Again Gest’s eyes caught Starkadh’s and held them. His voice softened but bleakened, trembled the least bit, like a night breeze. “I know not myself how old I am. But when I was a boy, they did not yet ken metal in these lands. Of stone did we make our knives, our axheads and spearheads and arrowheads, our burial chambers. It was not Jotuns who raised those dolmens that brood over the land. It was us, your own forebears, laying our dead to rest and offering to our gods. Though ‘we’ are no more. I have outlived them, I alone, as I have outlived all the generations of men after— until today, Starkadh.”

  “You have grayed,” said the warrior in a kind of sob, as if that could be a denial.

  “I went gray in my young manhood. Some do, you know. Otherwise I have not changed. I have never been sick, and wounds heal swiftly, without scars. When my teeth wear out, new ones grow. Is it the same for you?”

  Starkadh gulped and nodded.

  “Belike you’ve taken more hurts than me, such a life as you’ve led,” said Gest thoughtfully. “Myself, I’ve been as peaceful as men let me be, and as careful as a roamer may. When the charioteers rolled into what these days we call Denmark—“ He scowled. “That is forgotten, their wars and their deeds and their very speech. Wisdom lasts. It is what I have sought across the world.”

  Starkadh shuddered. “Gest,” he mumbled. “I remember now, in my own youth there went tales of a wayfarer who— Nomagest. Are you he? I thought be was but a story.”

  “Often have I left the North for hundreds of years. Always it called me home again. My last stay here ended maybe fourscore years ago. Less of an absence than formerly, but—“ Once more Gest sighed. “I feel myself grow ever wearier of roving the earth among the winds. So folk remembered me for a while, did they?”

  Starkadh shook his head dazedly. “And to think that I, I was alive then. But I must have been faring about. ... Is it true that the Norns told your mother you would die when a candle burned down, and she snuffed it out and you carry it still?”

  Gest grinned. “Do you yourself believe you have your lifespan from Odin?”

  He turned grave: “I know not what has made us twain what we are. That is a riddle as dark as the death of all other mankind. Norns or gods in truth? The hunger to know drove me to the far ends of the world, that and the hope of finding more tike myself. Oh, seeing a beloved wife wither into the grave, and seeing our children follow her— But nowhere did I come on any else whom time spares, nor did I come on any answer. Rather, I heard too many answers, I met too many gods. Abroad they call on Christ, but if you fare southward long enough it is Muhamm
ad; and eastward it is Gautama Buddha, save where they say the world is a dream of Brahm, or offer to a host of gods and ghosts and elves like ours hi these Northlands, And almost every man I asked told me that His folk know the truth while the rest are benighted. Could I but hear a word I felt even half sure of—”

  “Fret not yourself about that,” said Starkadh, boldness rising anew in him. “Things are whatever they are, and no man shuns his doom. His freedom is to leave a high name behind him.”

  “I wondered if I was altogether alone, and my deathlessness a curse laid on me for some horrible guilt I have forgotten,” Gest went on. “That seemed wrong, though. Strange births do happen. Oftenest they are weak or crippled, but now and then something springs up that can flourish, like a clover with four leaves. Could we ageless be such? We would be very few. Most could well die of war or mischance before discovering they are different. Others could well be slain by neighbors who come to fear they are witches. Or they may flee, take new names, learn how to hide what they are. I have mostly done this, seldom abiding at length in any single place. Once in a while I have met folk who were willing to take me for what I am—wise men in the East, or raw backwoods dwellers like my Northerners—but in the end there was always too much sorrow, too heavy a freight of memories, and I must leave them also.

  “Never did I find my own sort. Many and many a trail did I follow, sometimes for years, but each led to naught. At last hope faded out of me, and I turned my footsteps homeward. At least the Northern springtime is forever young.

  “And then I heard about you.”

  Gest came around the fire. He reached to lay hands on Starkadh’s shoulders. “Here my quest ends, where it began,” he said. Tears trembled on his lashes. “Now we are two, no more alone. And by this we know there must be more, women among them. Together, helping and heartening each other, we can search till we begin to find. Starkadh, my brother!”

  The warrior stood unmoving before he said, “This ... comes ... suddenly.”

  Gest let go. “It does that. I’ve had the whole while to think since the first word I got about you. Well, take your time. We have more time than most men, you and I.”

  Starkadh stared off into the dark. “I thought someday I must grow old and strengthless like Harald,” he breathed. “Unless first I fell in battle, and I thought I would see to it that I did ... But you tell me I shall always be young. Always.”

  “A load that on me has often felt well-nigh unbearable,” Gest told him. “Shared, though, it will be light.”

  Starkadh clenched oak-burl fists. “What shall we do with it?”

  “Ward the gift well. It may, after all, be from Beyond, and those who bear it singled out for deeds that will change the world.”

  “Yes.” Glee began to throb in Starkadh’s voice. “Fame undying, and I alive to enjoy it. War-hosts to rally round me, kingdoms to take, royal houses to found.”

  “Hold, hold,” said Gest. “We’re not gods, you know. We can be slain, drowned, burned, starved like any other men. I’ve stayed on earth these uncounted years by ganging warily.”

  Starkadh gave him a cold look. Scorn snorted: “I understand that. Do you understand honor?”

  “I don’t mean we should skulk. Let us make sure of our safety, both in strength and in boltholes, lest luck go awry. After that we can make known what we are, piece by piece, to such folk as we can trust. Then- awe of us will help, but that is not enough; to lead, we must serve, we must give.”

  “How can we give unless we have gold, treasures, a hoard such as deathless vikings can heap up?”

  Gest frowned. “We draw near to quarreling. Best we speak no further tonight, but sleep on it. Tomorrow, refreshed, we’ll think more clearly.”

  “You can sleep—after this?”

  “What, are you not worn out?”

  Starkadh laughed. “After reaping a goodly harvest.” He failed to see how Gest winced. “As you wish. To bed.”

  However, in the shelter he thrashed and muttered and flung his arms around. Finally Gest slipped back outside.

  He found a dry spot close to the spring, but decided he would take his rest in meditation rather than sleep. Having assumed the lotus position, he raised calm within himself. That came easily. He had far surpassed his gurus in lands east of the sunrises over Denmark: for he had had centuries to practice the disciplines of mind and body that they taught. Yet without those teachings, he doubted he could have endured his lot. How fared those masters, those fellow chetas? Had Nadha or Lobsang at last won free of the Wheel?

  Would he ever? Hope bound him. He could never quite bring himself to loosen it. Did that mean he spurned the faith? “Om mani padme hum.” No such words had seized him by the soul; but was that because he would not let them? Could he only find a God to Whom he could yield —

  At least he had become like the sages in control of the body and its passions. Rather, in this he had won to the power for which they had striven. Breath and heartbeat dwindled at his command until he was unaware of them. Chill ceased to be a thing invading his skin; he was of it, he was the night world, he became the stave that unfolded.

  “Slowly the moon Slides aloft.

  Keen is its edge, Cutting the dark.

  Stars and frost,

  As still as the dead,

  Warn of another Waning year.”

  A noise recalled him. Hours had passed. The east stood gray above the trees. Dew spread the only brightness in a hueless half-light. Mists smoked above it and along men’s breath. The clear gurgle of the spring sounded much louder than it was.

  Starkadh hunched at the shelter. He had knocked it apart, blundering out. He carried the sheathed sword that had lain across his doffed mail. A bloodshot and darkrimmed gaze jumped about until it landed on Gest. He grunted and stalked that way.

  Gest rose. “Good morning,” he greeted.

  “Did you spend the night sitting?” Starkadh wondered. His voice grated. “Sleep fled me too.”

  “I hope you got some rest anyway. I’ll go see what’s in the snares.”

  “Wait. Ere I take more at your hands—”

  Cold pierced Gest from within. “What’s wrong?”

  “You. Your slippery tongue. I tossed as in a nightmare, righting to grasp what you meant yesterday. Now you’ll make it plain to me.”

  “Why, I thought I did. We are two ageless men. Our loneliness is at an end. But there must be others, women among them, for us to find and ... and hold dear. For this, we’ll swear oaths, become brothers—”

  “Of what kind?” rasped Starkadh. “I the chieftain, later the king; you my skald and redesman— But that’s not what you said!” He swallowed. “Or do you also want to be a king?” Brightening: “Surely! We can divide the world between us.”

  “We would die trying.”

  “Our fame will never die.”

  “Or worse, we would fall out with each other. How shall two stay together when always they deal in death and betrayal?”

  At once Gest saw his mistake. He had intended to say that such was the nature of power. Seizing it and holding it were alike filthy. But before he could go on, Starkadh clapped hand to hilt. The rocky face went dawn-pale. “So you besmirch my honor,” he said from the bottom of his gullet.

  Gest lifted a hand, palm outward. “No. Let me explain.”

  Starkadh leaned close. His nostrils flared. “What have you heard about me? Spew it out!”

  Gest knew starkly that he must. “They tell how you took one small king captive and hanged him for an offering to Odin, after you had promised him his life. They tell how you murdered another in his bath house, for pay. But—”

  “I had to!” Starkadh yelled. “Ever was I an outsider. The rest were, were too young, and—“ He uttered a bawl like an aurochs bull’s.

  “And your loneliness lashed you till you struck back, blindly,” Gest said. “I understand. I did when first I heard about you. How often have I felt thus? I remember deeds of mine that hurt me worse than fire. I
t’s merely that I am not a killer.”

  Starkadh spat on the ground. “Right. You’ve hugged your years to you like a crone wrapping herself in her blanket.”

  “But don’t you see,” Gest cried, “things have changed for us both? Now we’ve better work to do than attack folk who never harmed us. It was the lust for fame, wealth, power that brought you to dishonor.”

  Starkadh screamed. His sword flew free. He hewed.

  Gest shifted like a shadow. Nonetheless the edge ripped down his left arm. Blood poured forth, drenched the cloth, dripped into the streamlet that ran from the spring.

  He drifted back, drew his knife, halted hi half a crouch. Starkadh stood fast. “I should ... chop you in twain ... for what you said,” he panted. Gulping air: “But I think you will die soon enough of that stroke.” Laughter clanked. “A shame. I did hope you’d be a friend. The first real friend of my life. Well, the Norns will it otherwise.”

  Our natures do, Gest thought. And: How easily I could kill you. How open you stand to a hundred martial tricks I know.

  “Instead, I shall have to go on as erstwhile,” said Starkadh, “alone.”

  Let it be so, thought Gest.

  With the fingers of his right hand he searched below his torn shirt and pushed together the lips of his wound. Pain he made into something apart from himself, like the mists that broke under the strengthening light. He gave his mind to the blood flow.

  Starkadh kicked the shelter aside, fetched his mail, drew it over the underpadding in which he had spent the night. He donned coif and helmet, belted on sword, picked up shield. When he was ready to leave, he stared in astonishment at the other man. “What, are you still on your feet?” he said. “Shall I make an end of you?”

  Had he tried that, it would have been the end of him. But he stopped, shivered, turned away. “No,” he mumbled. “This is all too spooky. I’m off to my own doom, Nornagest.”