For a harrowing moment that seemed to last a day, Baldemar made no move to defend himself, striding on confidently, seeming resigned to death.
Odberht galloped alongside Baldemar. The heavy blade slashed down.
Baldemar spun round so swiftly he might have been a ghost on the wind. No one saw him draw his sword, though he must have as he turned, for in the next instant he brought it upward with such force that Odberht felt as if his own blade struck a wall of stone.
There followed a penetrating clang that might have shattered the skull of an ox, and a great shower of sparks. The impact nearly unseated Odberht. The throng of three thousand stood mute, transfixed; none dared interfere.
Odberht was thrown back onto the rump of his mount but quickly righted himself by grasping the horse’s mane. Then he resumed the attack with frenzied energy, emboldened by the seeresses’ words, You will not die by the sword—the shield he carried always. He executed a rapid series of savage down-cuts aimed at Baldemar’s head. But Baldemar blocked each stroke with careless ease, as a father might contain the tantrum of a child who thrashes out blindly. Soon, to the amazement of the crowd, Baldemar forced both Odberht and his horse back, step by step. Hearty cheers broke out among Baldemar’s Companions; it was a sight that would feed many winters’ tales.
Then with one neat stroke Baldemar cut the right rein. Odberht’s horse wheeled to the left, following the pressure of the remaining rein, and simultaneously Baldemar lunged forward, surprising Odberht on his shield side. He grasped the young man’s left leg and pulled him from the horse.
Coarse laughter mingled with moans of despair. Wido covered his eyes and wailed unheard, “Now I have no sons! One the gods made a simpleton, the other, a treacherous and false-hearted fool.”
Odberht fell hard on his side, raising a dust cloud. But rage brought him up at once and he charged like a dazed boar, swaying slightly, sword held low as if to disembowel his foe. Baldemar sprang forward to meet him, and blade crashed against blade; then came the furious, erratic rhythm of iron on iron as the tempo of the death dance whipped into ecstatic speed. Odberht’s feints and parries were crude and blunt with the clumsiness of youth, and for a short time he held his own. But most eyes were on Baldemar.
Was there ever another like him, Witgern wondered. Love of fighting was evident in his every leap and strike; each move blended artfulness and calm with the animal smoothness of the galloping horse, the darting stag. It was like watching a musician of great skill who gets wondrous effects from the barest touch of the hands upon the strings, set against one who compensates for his awkwardness by striking louder notes.
A dark stain appeared on Odberht’s tunic. He was quickly driven to the edge of the crowd, forced to his knees, and then to the ground.
“Baldemar! Greatest of chiefs!” his Companions began to chant. Many of Wido’s followers thought in that moment—age has not slowed Baldemar. Wido is a dead man.
Baldemar pressed the point of his longsword to Odberht’s neck.
“Kill him…kill him,” came a dry, whistling voice behind him, a voice like wind hissing round rocks. At first Baldemar heard only his own heaving breath and thought the words some trick of his mind. Then he realized that Athaleiea, the ancient seeress who followed the army, had scuttled close to him. Her sun-browned face was turned to the sky, her eyes were closed, and she was prophesying. Had she added the words “…or die in your turn,” or had he imagined them? In coming days those words would prowl the recesses of his mind like revenants, dread presences threading in and out of consciousness, felt but never quite seen.
Odberht, poised between death and life, watched him, glassy eyes begging silently. Were their positions reversed, Baldemar knew, Odberht would have finished him without pause. Baldemar had a mind to slay him just to disprove that irritating augury Odberht was always quoting, which had led him into such mischief. But Baldemar found he could not. What stayed his hand was a memory of his own youth—when he was no older than Odberht, he himself had been spared when he foolishly challenged Hrodowulf, a master swordsman.
But I did not strike Hrodowulf from behind, Baldemar thought, as though an Assembly in his mind debated the case. And this is hardly a young man. He is closer to the fox, the wolf, the worm.
But there was a strain of sentiment in Baldemar that showed itself when someone young and unschooled in the harshness of life was utterly at his mercy. It is a greater punishment to let him live on a while, knowing what he has done.
“Get up,” he said softly. Odberht, who already counted himself well on his way into the gloomy vales of Hel, stared at him, not comprehending. “Arise,” Baldemar repeated. “I will not foul my blade with your blood.”
Odberht seemed to peel himself from the ground. It took a few moments. Finally he gathered the strength to muster a fresh look of contempt. “I could have killed you, trickster.”
Baldemar regarded him quietly for a moment. The Odberhts, he thought, are more dangerous than the Romans, because the Romans do not really know us or our country. Honor is such a fragile thing, difficult to nurture even in easy times. Young men like this are bred when a people begin dying.
“Yes,” Baldemar said softly. “You may kill us all. Get along with you. You’re Wido’s problem, thank all the gods, not mine.”
The chant, “Baldemar! Lead us out!” was a joyous shout thrown up to the sky.
Wido rode up to his beaten son. Looking down at Odberht, he shouted over the people’s cries, “All the world should lament with me for being cursed with such a son. It makes me sick in heart to even look at you. If you touch a well, you will pollute it. Any mead you sip is poisoned by you. Get off from me.”
And Wido caught the rein of Odberht’s horse, then cantered off, leaving his son on foot among his enemies. For long, Odberht could not move; the humiliation was so great his joints seemed fused, his muscles rigid as a dead man’s. His whole mind was afire. In that moment was born in him a hatred for his father that was vigorous and raw, and more powerful than his loathing of Baldemar because once he had struggled for his father’s love. There stirred in him a lust to plunge his sword into his father’s back, a thought that opened a black well of horror, for the killing of parents was a crime so great all believed the Fates would rend such an offender apart before any earthly judge could condemn him.
“Take this bridle—it has two reins!” Witgern called out to Odberht, grinning broadly.
“Ha! He’d do better with no reins—a horse has a better sense of where not to tread,” Sigwulf called out gaily.
“Next time you strike a man from behind make sure he’s falling drunk and bound in chains! Why take needless chances?” Thorgild joined in, laughing.
Odberht limped past, thinking, one day I will see every last man of them on a skewer.
In the stillest part of the night Baldemar ordered a guard to rouse Witgern and Sigwulf.
Why is he not sleeping? Witgern wondered irritably as he entered the tent. In a short time dawn comes, and he will be fighting for his life.
“I have dreadful tidings,” Baldemar began in a low voice when they sat before him. “I know now who Branhard is. In a dream I saw him as he was, and when I awakened, I knew the day I saw him last. It has been seven years, you see, and he’s done much to change his aspect.”
Witgern felt a lurch of nausea, for he had a dim foreknowledge of what Baldemar would tell them next. Baldemar paused to gather his words, taking up a bull’s hide boot and brushing the caked mud from it, leaving them sitting expectantly, their eyes riveted on him.
He does this on purpose, Sigwulf thought. He likes to let us stew in our impatience.
“I saw him before, friends, in the Governor’s fortress, where the Rhine meets the Main. Branhard stood next to Marcus Arrius Julianus, and he was garbed as a Roman officer.”
The silence that followed was foul, akin to the quiet that falls at the end of a ghost tale as all move closer to the fire.
“I hear the words you s
peak, but it cannot be true,” Witgern said.
“Sadly, it is.” As Baldemar gazed into the dark recesses of the tent, the Governor rose before him like some specter. That day so long ago was the only time he and his great enemy, Marcus Arrius Julianus, Governor of the province of Upper Germania, had ever looked upon one another. Baldemar told them the tale in a few stark measured words, but as he spoke, he relived vividly what had passed on that day.
He felt again the stony chill of the grand Praesidium, the massive hall where the Roman war leader had his enemies brought before him. Seven years, and still he smelled the sickly scent of some spiced water in which the Governor washed himself mingling with the sweet odor of the costly oils in the many lamps, saw the pockets of flesh under the Governor’s eyes, the thickness of his girth from letting others fight for him. He had about him that peculiar combination of softness of body and hardness of mind one often found in Romans. In those days they made treaties still—and they had just concluded the one that was to be their last. Baldemar was ready to depart when Julianus motioned him closer. He had sharp little eyes that saw all the vastness of the world not as it was, but as a part of himself, another common feature of his people.
The treaty was typical. One mile of land was to be left uncultivated between the territories of the tribes and the territory of the Romans. The Chattians were not to cross the Rhine at night. Baldemar could not imagine what else the Governor might have to say to him.
“Baldemar,” he said, speaking through a native interpreter. His tone had shifted; he sounded now more like an indulgent father. “I have a better way to solve our differences.”
And he remembered the vast silence, broken only by the whine of a fly, the patient scratching of scribes’ pens. Among these people the more powerful a man is, the quieter it is about him. Among our people it is the opposite.
“I am offering you a partnership with me. It means a chance to bring stable order to your people and an end to our ceaseless warring. I know well that a mold has eaten your crop, and many of your people are starving,” the Governor went on. “I will give you rich seasonal payments in silver so you can barter for food when your fields fail—and I’ll see every man obedient to you supplied with a longsword, finely made, and enough cattle to make him strong among you. You will be able to build your miserable little band of Companions into a king’s army. Before long, not only your Companions but all your people will be at your bidding.
“And in return,” Julianus said, “I require so little of you. All you must do is keep the power in your hands—and your head on your shoulders—while you give me occasional reports of your people’s movements and plans. And it shall bring to you wealth and kingly pleasures such as you scarce know exist. Of course, your people, for your own protection, must catch no scent of your cooperation with me.”
“So I will be a king, and at the same time, your slave.”
“All the peoples of the civilized world are our slaves, as you say. Who are you to be proud? Now this man here”—he pointed to a man behind him with sand-colored hair, broad face, morose blue eyes—Branhard—“will go with you, garbed as one of your Companions. His name is Sextus Curtius and he is fluent in both languages. We will speak to you through him. As you can see, he is of strapping size—in a season’s time, if he does not cut his hair or shave his beard, he will look more Chattian than you do.
“I offer you a chance to be your people’s savior. Know this well—if we continue thus, you will one day goad us into annihilating you.”
Baldemar still remembered, amused, how his reply soured that avuncular smile.
“You study us and think you know us, clever man. You learn just enough of our ways to know how to best entrap us, but you will never know our souls. To know that you would need to live with us and starve with us. Give me a brief life of starvation that is free, rather than a long and comfortable one as your pet dog.”
Baldemar returned his attention to the two men before him in his tent.
“The offer I spurned,” he said quietly, “Wido could not resist.”
“By Hel,” Witgern whispered, shaking his head. “Wido has sold us to the Governor like so many cattle.”
“And the raiders…” Baldemar continued, “my guess is that they were Wido’s own men.”
“What will you do?” Sigwulf asked, black eyes ignited.
“Denounce him when he meets me at dawn,” Baldemar replied. “It may well be my last chance.”
“You will set the people against all Wido’s well-armed Companions.”
“They are set against each other now. It might as well be brought out into the full light of the sun.”
“Wido’s rewarded his men so richly that they just might choose not to believe it,” Sigwulf protested. “And you can be sure Branhard isn’t alone—where there’s one rat there’s usually a nest. Romans have no honor in these matters. They may well murder you at once to silence you. You stood against one Odberht. Can you stand against a hundred?”
“Honor leaves but one way—to denounce him.”
“It will tear the tribe in two. It will mean war, our own against our own, kinsmen slaying kinsmen, a battle no one will win.”
“Should you find as many reasons as there are stars in the heavens, you will not alter my course. I ask one thing of you—stand with me at dawn.”
CHAPTER V
THRUSNELDA’S OAKWOOD LODGE LAY AMONG THE shadows of oaks below the Village of the Boar. A gentle-featured young novice put a steaming compress of snakeroot and marigold to Athelinda’s sword wound while reciting the words of a healing charm. The maid’s big hands were clumsier than usual; she was uneasy treating so noble a patient. Auriane looked on, quietly fighting the growing alarm she felt: In the last days her mother’s spirit had not healed. Athelinda watched her with stagnant eyes. Her mother had washed herself a dozen times in the waters carried in from the temple’s well—a source said to contain Fria’s own blood—but still she thought she could smell her attacker’s flesh.
In the adjoining room Thrusnelda boiled chamomile in a bronze cauldron; the pungent mellow steam filled all three rooms of the lodge. From the ceiling bundles of dried herbs were hung, resembling a curious inverted forest. The apprentices in their long tunics of undyed wool moved languidly about their tasks, exchanging close, conspiratorial glances and tales that brought frequent laughter. There was a gaiety in the life of the Oak Lodges that carried on, Auriane heard it said, from generation to generation. When these apprentices learned all Thrusnelda had to teach, they would wear the gray robe of an Oak Priestess. Some ground herbs to powder with a mortar and pestle; others mixed the powder with lard to make ointments or baked moon cakes and braided bread loaves for the coming midsummer festival. One incised magical markings in the wet clay of an urn to be used to receive the ashes of a smith who had just died in the village. All the while Thrusnelda called out for various plants and roots as she needed them. A dried toad, a charm to repel evil, hung in the connecting doorway; it swung gently to and fro as the novices brushed past it.
“The battle is done,” Athelinda was whispering to Auriane. “Others know…and I who am his wife do not.” Athelinda wore a necklet made of the delicate spinal bones of a hare, a potent charm against fever. But not potent enough, Auriane thought, judging from that dazed but intense look in her mother’s eyes.
“I’m certain the messenger rides without halt,” Auriane said with all the authority she could muster. “Baldemar is victor. Wido is dead. How could it be otherwise? Vengeance is the god’s own voice.”
But Athelinda was not comforted; her eyes filmed with a pain no herb could relieve. “Have the rites been performed for our dead?”
Auriane nodded, her voice pale. “Yes…and beautifully.”
“And…my baby?”
Auriane paused, grappling for the right words. “All the Holy Ones agreed…he is happy where he is.”
“And yesterday’s message? It sounded like nothing good.”
“It was about Sisinand.” Sisinand was Baldemar’s sister. “Armed men came to her gate, demanding me. They said they came from Wido. But that was strange, because Sisinand did not know any of them. They tore her cattle shed apart and desecrated her mead house.”
“By Hel, Wido’s bent on that marriage! Sisinand will bring a case, of course, before the Assembly.”
“Mother, you live in times past. No one has dared bring a case against Wido for many seasons. Witnesses against him never manage to survive to the day of the Assembly.”
Athelinda shut her eyes. “Once treachery was a Roman disease. I wish I had not lived so long.”
They were silenced by a clatter of hooves from behind the lodge, and laughter and shouts from the children playing in the dirt nearby. The messenger, Auriane thought. She peered through a crack between the oak logs. Yes, he was one of Baldemar’s—it was young Ganax on his black mare. Whatever he had to tell, he had blurted out already; she saw a somber look on the face of the apprentice who greeted him. Auriane felt a wintry coldness in her chest. The children—who were the apprentices’ own, the god-begotten fruit of the rites of spring—heard it, too, as they played with knucklebones in the dust, and their chatter carried to her.
“…and how many will fight for Wido, do you think?” one asked brightly.
Athelinda heard it too. Will fight for Wido.
Wido was alive. Then Baldemar must be dead.
The dark stains on Athelinda’s bandages began to grow. Her eyes became senseless and wild.
Ganax’s shadow fell across the entranceway. In a rapid monotone he recited to Thrusnelda, “Messages for the noble Athelinda, daughter of Gandrida the Wise in Council, daughter of Avenahar the Seeress, out of noble ancestresses back to Embla…I ask leave to pass.” Auriane felt her whole body prepare for grief.
Ganax was a half-grown boy plastered in mud up to his thighs. He threaded his way through the herb bundles—they hung too low for him—and stood before them with his flushed, eager boy’s face. He felt ungainly in their presence and folded his arms in an unconscious effort to make himself smaller. Reverently he inclined his head.
B007IIXYQY EBOK Page 13
