Lord Snaevar spoke, “Now has come the time when we must address the declaration made by the Armies in the field. Nobles, Ealdormen, and your most exalted Majesties, hear me. We all acclaimed King Sigurd to be King over all of the Tervingian tribes. There are many other tribes which speak our language, albeit with a different accent, such as the Teutons, Hagobards and the Vandals, but who are not of the Tervingian alliance. They are Gomerians, but we remain separate, due to their unwillingness to come and help us in our hour of need. This includes King Klug and the Hagobards and his failure now to render aid shows us his true colours. I am, as you know, First Minister of the Gepids and served Great Osrik with honour. My Lord King was killed during the Battle of Prairie’s Flame, as was King Agnar of the Massagetae Tribe, and we heard his wish, knowing that all his heirs had been butchered by these Slaughter-Wolves, that you, King Sigurd, lead his people. Alas, we know not the fate of little Princess Gnita, King Osrik’s six-year-old daughter. If she still lives, we can bring her home, and unite her with the Getic house by marriage. Also, I myself heard the last words of King Agnar, as did Lord Volsung. King Agnar’s wish was the same, since even his family has been senselessly butchered, and we know that King Tane of the noble Thyssagetae Tribe and Queen Ida were scattered and destroyed by the Scythians. Their royal house was destroyed and the refugees fled here to you, King Sigurd. A large number of warriors survived, led by Lord Radagaisus, who is right over there in this room with us tonight and is commander of the Mounted Long Bowmen. Also here is noble Sinfjotli, last Thyssagetae General. What say you, Lord Sinfjotli?”
The hard scrabble old warlord rose to his feet in the royal audience chamber and King Sigurd said, “We all here pay you honour and respect. We honour you, great warrior of our people. Here, here now! Give cheers to Sinfjotli of the Thyssagetae! Tanman has brought us abundant mead this evening, so let us lift our steins and horns to Lord Sinfjotli. Prost!”
Everyone there lifted their steins and drinking horns and responded, “Prost! All hail Lord Sinfjotli!”
As the cheering died down, the old Thyssagetae Lord spoke. His face was etched with lines and his hair and beard were grey from decades of being swept by the winds of the great steppes of Midgard. “Great King Sigurd, I speak now for our tribe. We here precious few that are left know that King Tane trusted you and the beautiful Warrior Queen with every ounce of his being. I do not wish the crown of our tribe. I am too old to be a king now, and my sons are slain. I have now my daughter and my little grandchildren. There comes a time, my Lords, when the gold loses its lustre and the jewels cease to sparkle, and when the age for glory has passed. When that time comes, what is left is what is truly important.” He looked over at his widowed daughter Inge, who sat quietly in a black dress with her hair tied up under a scarf. On her lap were her year-old daughter Kora and her three-year-old son Kort.
The Queen looked at the twenty-four-year-old woman and saw her look of anguished silence and knew that she would befriend her. Lord Sinfjotli continued to speak, saying, “When that time comes, Lords, what is left is the love of a father for his daughter and his grandchildren, and he wants to live out the rest of the time he has been given with those he loves around his fireside, and we here of the Thyssagetae look now to you, Sigurd, as our new King, and to you, honourable Gwynnalyn, as our Queen.” He returned to his place next to his family and Lord Radagaisus and said, “I give now ear to Lord Volsung.”
Lord Radagaisus and Princess Greta had been looking at one another from across the room and exchanging smiles and batting eyes, all of which was not lost upon the Queen Mother, but who took it all in with some concern, as this Radagaisus had a reputation of drinking and gambling. “How sad that Prince Rognir was gone, who had been Greta’s first suitor,” thought Gerda.
Lord Volsung could see it as well, but now it was his turn to address the Witena Gemot. “Your Majesties and nobles of Tervingia and Gomeria, let us speak of our brothers, the Issedones Tribe, who have met the same fate as the two former tribes. King Grunewald died without an heir to the throne. Survivors led by Lord Hodbrodd, First Minister to the late King Grunewald, together with Lord Hjalprek, guided the refugees to King Sigurd and our Alliance. What say you, Lord Hodbrodd?”
When the cheering had subsided, the same honour which King Sigurd had given to Lord Sinfjotli was now extended by the King to Lord Hodbrodd, the middle-age man who bore a sword scar across his face which intersected with his mouth and caused him to look as if he had a sneer on his face all of the time. His hair had fallen out long ago and so he shaved his head bald and wore a black patch over his left eye, which had been poked out by a goblin dagger in a fight at a tavern called the Dragon’s Lair twenty years before. He wore deerskin trousers and shirt and big leather boots and was armed to the teeth with six daggers and a short sword in a sheath on his side. “Hear me, everyone, I will not rest until the Slaughter-Wolves are destroyed to the last mother’s son of them! As for their Ogre, Goblin and Gargoyle allies, what is needed for those animals, those sub-human beasts, is cruel, unrelenting warfare, killing every last dog of them, until every mountain and every valley sends to high heaven the grateful incense of festering and rotting Scythian corpses! For this cause, we Issedones acknowledge you, Sigurd, as King of all Tervingians, until such time in the future when we can stand up on our own feet again. Long live King Sigurd!” Deep in his heart, Hodbrodd resented the proclamation of Sigurd as King.
A cheer went up in the council, but Queen Gwynnalyn leaned towards her husband and quietly said, “I do not trust Lord Hodbrodd, my King. Listen close to what he said, my Lord, because I feel that he will become a danger to the new Kingdom we have established.”
He replied, “Maybe my Heart, but for now we need him and the loyalty of his tribe.”
Lord Hodbrodd concluded by saying, “I now yield the floor to Lord Fridigern of the Gutthiuda.”
Fridigern, who was thirty-two years old, was the last remaining Ealdorman of his nation. The rest had been killed outright or tortured to death at the time that their King and Queen were alledged to have been turned into trees by Hister. His wife was thirty-year-old Lady Ynghildr, a Gutthiuda Priestess and healer, and their child was a boy age eight named Elrik. Like his wife and child, Fridigern had red hair which was shoulder-length. His wife and child had really curly hair, but hers was very long, dropping to her waist and tied in a thick ponytail. He dressed much as Lord Hodbrodd and was similarly armed. His voice was solemn as he spoke.
“Great King and Queen, I come from a torn and broken land where our people have been enslaved. Had it not been for Sergeant Baldr and his warriors, none of us would be here. They managed to evade capture or death, and continue the fight against the Slaughter-Wolves and the Gargoyles by hit-and-run, and it was Baldr who broke us free, killing fifteen Gargoyles and thirty Gnomes in the process. We had heard that our brethren here in the east had raised an army and were fighting hard. The word came to us in the quarries that a Shield Maiden was Queen, and had slain men by the bushel and made of them eunuchs.”
Queen Gwynnalyn got a chuckle out of that. It seemed that her favourite threat to men had been translated by rumour-control as true fact and was spreading all over the steppes, that when the Getic Shield Maiden fought and slew men, she completed the kill by cutting away certain male parts. None of this was true, but who was she to stand in the way of a story that might have a negative psychological impact upon the Slaughter-Wolves?
The King was amused as well as everyone else, but Sigmund had no idea what it all meant as he heard it, as he was sitting at a table with Eileza and a large group of children and young folks. He turned to the Dwarf Princess and asked, “What does he mean, ‘make of them a eunuch’, and why does my sister say that when she threatens the men around here?”
Eileza knew exactly what it meant and she blushed red in her tanned face and replied, “ Well Siggy, that is when you take a dagger or knife to a man’s.” Realising what she was about to say, Eileza stopped herself in mid
-sentence and said, “Siggy now’s not the time for gross stuff. Besides, you better ask you father that question.”
Fridigern continued to speak, saying, “You have heard that the evil Wizard of Dakkia, that son of a cave witch, turned our King and Queen into trees. Yes, it is terribly true and he took the Princess Heike to wife, and it is said that she will bear his child. That would make the child of Adawulf Hister the heir to the Gutthiuda throne. This we will not accept! Heike has betrayed our people and now gives consent to her marriage to that Son of a Cave Witch and our people will not accept her as Queen over Helmgard, though she has that right by blood. I am the last of the Gutthiuda Ealdormen because Dragos slaughtered the entire Witena. I was only spared because my identity was concealed from Dragos and his Gargoyles! It was the Gargoyle they call Rameses who cut the heads off of my father and mother and my cousins and uncles. Now I speak for the Gutthiuda and I give you, King Sigurd and Queen Gwynnalyn, the loyalty of our people. We need to all be one Tervingian Nation now, and I ask that you take over the royal household of the Gutthiuda. Let the word go forth that the Princess Heike is a traitor and a witch and is deposed from the throne! Neither she nor the spawn of Hister will sit upon the throne of Helmgard! Long live King Sigurd and Queen Gwynnalyn! I now yield to Lord Hjalprek.” The assembly was nodding and grunting in agreement with what he had said.
Lord Hjalprek rose and said, “I am the last Ealdorman and officer of the Massagetae people. We are few in number now, but will grow as a people again, strong and united under you, King Sigurd.” He sat back in his seat with an approving nod from his dear old friend, Ealdormen, Genersarik, Last High Councilor of the Massagetae.
Queen Gwynnalyn spoke, saying, “We must not meet the fate of the Gutthiuda Tribe. We have to be united as one Tervingian people. We must set aside tribal squabbles and jealousies, or become the Gutthiuda we will! For anyone who does not know the story, let me tell it to you. Lord Fridigern’s tribe was led by King Snorri and Queen Utgerda. Their one child was the Princess Heike. These Tervingians lived far to the west, dwelling between Myrkvidr and the Mountains of Dakkia. They were conquered by the Scythians and their allies the Cimmerians and the Sarmatians. As Fridigern said, it is said that the King and Queen were turned into trees by Hister and Heike forced to marry the evil wizard! The tribe was put to forced labour, working the building projects of the Dark Wizard of Dakkia. These Thralls are overseen by Gargoyles led by King Dragos the Green. Very few have escaped and those that have are now safe with us: Ealdorman Fridigern and their four hundred souls. What is the next order of business, my King?”
“What decision has the Witan arrived at regarding the Princess Gnita?” asked King Sigurd.
The First Minister of the Gepids rose from the table and spoke, “Good King Sigurd and Queen Gwynnalyn. The Gepids are all of one mind in this. We know not whether the Child Princess Gnita lives or not. We know that she was taken while she was on a hunt with King Osrik, by the Ogres and has not been seen since. And until we determine her fate, we will not remove the family of the Great Osrik, Son of the Mighty King Kord, from their royal position. There are others among the Gepids who have right by distant kinship. But if this issue were to come now, we fear that a civil war would start and tear us apart in the face of the Slaughter-Wolves. Therefore we all concur, as we declared on the battlefield, that you, King Sigurd, should become our ruler and unite the tribes. As we have all said, we ask you to unite our bands as one people. Then, if the Princess Gnita can be found, and returned to her people, then a young prince or Lord from the Getic can be wed to her. We ask that it be Sigmund, the Mammoth Rider, should she be found.”
Little Lord Sigmund was shocked when he heard that. In fact, so was everyone else. His jaw dropped open.
Lilia turned her little blonde head and said, “No, big brother can’t leave us for her! She’s not even here, Momma Gerda.”
“Don’t worry, darling child, if it happens it won’t be for many years, baby.”
Eileza was shocked herself and, in fact, her heart fell down. “But, Siggy,” was all that she could manage, and a lump filled her throat.
The Dowager Queen and her ladies tried to no avail to stop her, as the Dwarf Princess left the Mead Hall and went to the royal stables. There she drew her short sword and began crying and hacking at a hitching rail, sobbing. Dowager Queen Rutia was very pleased to hear this plan of an arranged marriage for Sigmund, and breathed a sigh of satisfaction, feeling that now Eileza would fall out of love with the little Tervingian wretch and she would consent to wed Prince Atatork of Tubal.
King Sigurd and Queen Gwynnalyn looked at each other and their eyes locked in a gaze. They nodded at each other and, turning back to address the council, the King replied, “Then we accept the decision of the Witena Gemot. Until this crisis abates and until which time the fate of Princess Gnita can be determined, then a united Monarchy we shall have. Each tribe will have a Witena as always, who shall choose delegates for the Witena Gemot of the Kingdom of Tervingia. There shall be not a dual monarchy but a united one, with a grand council as we have here today, and when the war is over, Dukes and Jarls will be chosen to lead each individual tribe, and to rebuild all of our fallen Mead Halls” The King looked at Lord Volsung and asked, “My Father-in-law, what say you concerning this matter of your son, Little Lord Sigmund?”
“Sire, I too am part of this Witena Gemot, and have given my consent to this.”
King Sigurd looked over at his Queen and her eyes were wide and, while nodding her head yes, the look she gave the King was all but certain. In fact, it was an astonished look of, “I am not so sure about this.” She looked at their First Minister, the Scap Rolf and asked, “What say ye to this First Minister?” The old Time Keeper replied, “I must concur with my colleagues. We must form a United Kingdom, and this marriage will help to do so, and hopefully smooth over those with ruffled feathers.”
King Sigurd then addressed the council, “”So let it be written, so let it be done. Let Quest Warriors go forth this very day to determine the fate of the Princess Gnita. If she be held captive, then let them give her rescue. If she be dead, then let her body be found and returned to us here. If returned here alive, then she and our little Brother Sigmund shall be duly wed here in this audience chamber to unite the families, so that the blood of Mighty Osrik shall not fail from out of Midgard.”
Sigmund was only thirteen. He had a look of crestfallen horror on his face as he walked over to where his mother and Greta were sitting. He took a seat next to her and very quietly said, “But, mamma, I don’t know this Gepid girl and I don’t love her. Why did father do this to me?”
Gerda replied, “My Siggy, he thinks that it will stop a civil war and unite our peoples. But I wish he hadn’t done it on your back. Only time will tell, son. Only time will tell. Oh, I love you so much, my darling child,” said his mother has she calmed his fears, rocking him in a loving embrace. Siggy returned to the table where his friends were, and before Gustav could comment, Sigmund stopped it with a fierce glare.
King Sigurd smiled and extended his sceptre, saying, “I now call forth the forge master Thonan.” Thonan was well known and liked and he was a master artisan. He was a sword and weapons maker, who longed for the return of Master Teobalf from Assyria with the secret of steel. He had quite a large family and several of his children were the close friends of Siggy and Eileza. Thonan was married to Kunegunde, the love of his life, and together they had fifteen children:
Monika (daughter), age twenty-four. Married to Kurt the potter, with infant Daughter Olga
Kersten (daughter), age twenty-two. Newlywed to Sven the hunter, and with child on the way
Fritz, age twenty. Married to second Cousin Marta, with child on the way
Wenaslaz, age eighteen
Inka (daughter), age sixteen
Klara (daughter), age fourteen
Gustav, age twelve
Lars, age twelve, twin brother of Gustav
Rexor, age ten
Olaf, age eight
Beda (daughter), age six
Rakel (daughter), age four
Bror, age two
Sonja (daughter), newborn.
All of these children were present there in the Mead Hall. Siggy, and Lilia were with them at their table and heard the horns blaring, which announced that Thonan was coming forward to receive an honourable and most noble commission from King Sigurd.
Thonan was not sure what all the fuss was about, only that Lord Gauron had come to him that morning as he was repairing his blacksmith shop, informing them that the presence of he and his entire family was required that night at the Witena Gemot, by order of the King and Queen. Thonan and his entire family had bathed and dressed in their finest attire. After leaving the blacksmith shop, Captain Gauron went to seek out the Artisan Otr Hreidmarsson.
Master Thonan walked forward from his table and, as he stood up, his beloved wife Kunegunde squeezed his hand. Their little son Bror tried to follow his father, but blonde little Rakel grabbed hold of him and pulled him back, saying, “No, baby brother. Momma says stay here!”
Master Thonan walked forward towards the King, who had extended his sceptre out to his most trusted arms-maker.
Thonan bowed down to one knee and said, “Hail King Sigurd and Queen Gwynnalyn.”
The King replied, “Rise, my old friend. You have been the Master swordmaker and artisan, and blacksmith of the Gepids since the Queen and I were children. You have served since the reign of the Mighty King Kord and aided my father King Rothgar as well. You have served King Osrik, noble son of King Kord, well and also myself, since Master Teobalf has been away in Assyria learning the Secret of Steel. We are uniting our peoples, Master Thonan. We shall keep all our tribal identities and traditions, but the Kingdom shall be one. Therefore, Thonan, I give thee a commission to produce the news crowns for the King of Tervingia and Queen of Tervingia. Use all your skill given to you from Asgard. Take the finest of gold and silver, diamonds and all manner of jewels, and with these, fashion the crowns of our United Kingdom of Greater Tervingia. Make pairs of crowns to be passed down from us, to the heads of our children and their children and let this crown serve to put our enemies on notice, that we are no longer a part of the Scythian Empire! Let both Idanthrsus and Adawulf Hister know that there is a true King in Tervingia, and that the Barbarians of Midgard, as the Hellenes call us, are a free nation! What say you, Master Thonan? Will you be the Craftsman who will form the first jewelled crowns of a united Tervingian Kingdom?”
Visigothic_The Barbarians Of Midgard Page 23
