The minstrel smiled and said, “Call me Vagi then, Good Sire, if you wish, though as you know I can never sing my name, lest I curse my songs to disappear forever from the world that lies beyond the ears of you who harken my happy harping.”
One of the young nobles nearby looked at the old man and snorted. “This song is no fare fit to fill the heads of children,” he retorted. “Children may be led to believe such foolishness true! Ha! Stories of women warriors for instance, what tripe! I nearly fell out laughing when your Vagi sang about Brynhild defending her maidenhood from her new husband by besting him at the wrestle, then tying him up and hanging him from a nail in the wall! It’s utter burlesque! Women have never been more than weakness incarnate: frailty in the body, in mind and in will. Witness Eve in Eden, or Helen of Troy or the inconstant heathen Cleopatra!”
A thin waif of a girl beside him, his very young wife likely less than the speaker’s own age, wondered aloud, “Were not there gigantic warrior women in the land, in days of yore?”
The nobleman looked ready to slap the girl before the oldster responded with an unexpected and entertaining distraction.
“You’d be quite surprised!” He laughed before turning fully toward the girl beside him. “And so would you, milady!” He sniggered, sending his still-gleaming greasy fingers to clutch roughly at one of her massive globular bosoms through the silk of her dress, which nearly tore away from the bruising flesh as she yelped and pulled away, slapping at him. Shocked laughter rang out throughout the hall at their sudden display.
Count Etzel, Lord of the manor, bellowed across the room to his elderly uncle that was enough. The chagrined, yet still grinning, old man replaced his hands complacently in his lap before nodded at the minstrel to keep on singing. The girl he had groped, whom the minstrel suspected to be his long-unmarried niece, slapped her hand out at his head. Though she missed all but a few of his flying grey locks, so that they stuck out away from his head, he rounded on her with a face as vicious as a wounded dog’s. “Slag, there were in days gone by ladies that might have done a lot worse by me bodily and got away with it because they was fierce and true women of substance, but I’ll take none of that from such as you. Try at me again and I’ll cut the nose from your face!” He brandished a table knife at her and she, seeing how sincerely he meant his business, cowed away.
Count Etzel observed them for a few moments more, clearly entertained, before deciding he would not be denied the finish of the tale before the cock’s crow. “Peace please, nuncle, and let us hear the rest!”
“Even so!” said the old man, slamming the knife before him deep in the table. There was a murmuring at the gesture, but the old man looked again with eager eyen toward the minstrel and gestured. “Say on, singer! Say how Hogni and his warriors came to fight with the Huns!”
The meistersinger again took up his citole and played each string to determine its satisfactory tuning. Then he caused it to cant, and the cadence of his ancient lay danced across his tongue and soared out of his chest like notes played on the horn of the mighty wisent, echoing off the cold stone walls. The dark firelight luridly painted his face, and where the red light splashed across one cheek from just below the eye, he resembled nothing less than one of the blood-spattered berserkers of whom he sang so masterfully.
Alternating between his citole and his pipe, the Vagi told of the bloody conflict in the hall between the estranged kin of the queen, lured by her invitation into a foreign land so that she might wreak her wrath upon them all for the treachery they committed in the murder of her husband, Siegfried, many years before, and then the theft of all his treasure, her own rightful property as his widow. Full of hatred and venom, Queen Guthrin became a very She-Devil, sacrificing even her own young son in order to commence a conflict which she hoped would conclude with the death of her mighty one-eyed monster of a brother, Hogni of Trychneck. Once the hostilities were begun, she enticed the frightened warriors about her to attack and to kill her gargantuan brother, and she would give them red-hued hunks of gold, and countless precious gems, enough to fill their shields, and yet more splendid favors.
Rothinger, one of her most true-hearted vassals, had married one of his daughters to a man from amongst the Burgundians, so he was loth to fight the man, and it was a great sorrow to his fellows when the sword of his own son-in-law cleaved apart Rothinger’s helmet so that the blood spurted out of the wound and obscured all the shine of the helmet’s polished metal. Then were many others slain by fearsome Hogni and his compatriot in battle, the indestructible warrior-minstrel Folkher. Folkher was so swift with a sword, the weapon could scarcely be seen in the air above the brows of the fighters who attacked him, like the string of a bow that fiddles overhead, falling to sing against the steel of their helmets and armor. Javelins shot across the hall, destroying warriors but also others who were only watching, with no means of egress from the fray. The sounds of women and children screaming filled the heights to the ceiling, while lower down the head-splitting war cries of the brutal men in combat were heard. He sang:
Great Gunther, caught, is carted; in a serpents’ pit he’s pitched,
Turning yellow-hearted, trapped inside the hissing ditch.
With gnashing fangs they near as by his bonds he forms
A harp he hopes to here-with lull these lustful worms.
Molding sweet melodious scales and chords and modes,
Snakes even so odious may slumber to these odes.
Sleeping soft as Gunther sings, one alone won’t close her eyes
She imparts her poison sting unto his heart—thus Gunther dies.
Meanwhile, warlike Hogni with his warriors garbed in gore
Sought a doubtful victory, fought with feet drowned on a floor
Flooded by the fallen’s blood thick and tiding as the sea—
This is why the Wormez rocks stayed red-stained in that city.
Where they fought the stones are still 'sanguined by Burgundians slain,
Atil’s hall with such blood filled damming it would be in vain.
Foulest feast had been prepared by that dam, the vengeful Queen,
Which announced, ‘Let none be spared! Let my clan of them be clean!’
Bidden by her, brands were brought. Torches touched the corner posts.
In infernos on they fought, bravely, the Burgundian hosts,
Barely able to break out from the hall whence fire gouts,
Eyes as fiery, glowing hot, blood is dripping from their mouths.
War for days in streets was raged, and when the sun shined high
Guthrin’s Huns, now ádvantaged, would win with light thereby,
For weak at highest day were they of Niphelungland
Bút at súnset they held sway and got the upper hand.
News of Gunther’s murder comes to the ears of Hogni’s knights
While sunset swirls and swoons inside the Rhine, instating night.
So bitter they bemoaned his loss they battled in the blackness
Vicious, nigh victorious, unto the end of darkness.
But when above the Rhine the gold-ringed sun came rising
Guthrin grinned. ‘This fight is mine!” And sent her vassal Iring,
Who with Waskh, his blade, slashed he—as one at board cuts ham
A piece of Hogni’s thigh. ‘Now stand you half the man
You were, Hogni hatespitter! Just desserts for treachery
That you so bitterly have served my liege and my lady!
Hogni yet was not unmanned, though madness bridled him
Then, bit with his teeth and poor Iring, naught could save him.
Hogni thrust a thousand strokes for each that Iring tried.
Neither shield, hauberk nor hopes could spare Iring ere he died.
Severe the stabs he suffered, the screams with gasps between;
Scarce left alive he stumbled, fell at the feet of the queen.
‘Mourn not for me milady,’ moaned he. ‘What difference
Would it make? E'en as I say so, I die… but thy service
That I no more may do, thy highness true to tell,
This is what I, dying, rue: I’m stayed from serving you. Farewell.’
When horrid Hogni at long last was bound by iron bands,
Word was got to Guthrin. ‘Cut and set inside my hands
The beating heart of Hogni!’ the devil-dam demands.
But loath they were to make die the most valiant in their lands.
Hjalle, terrified, a cook, they caught him up instead,
From his hefty body took his heart and left him dead.
They brought the quaking organ to Guthrin on a plate.
She laughed. ‘No coward’s heart could ever make my hate sedate.’
Hogni’s laughter spattered as his heart was carved and placed
On a platter, staid and stalwart, still courageously it raced.
On his dripping massive heart, while life within him lasted,
Hogni stared. From his black beard his tongue wormed through to taste it.
Then he fell and all the earth felt tremors at his fall,
Got Queen Guthrin, with great mirth, the heart of her archrival.
Rejoicing, she received it. A dark red, raucous grin
Flashed from her mad face and lit upon the fearful court within.
So offended and incensed got Hildebrant when he had seen
What befell the Trychneck prince at the behest of Guthrin Queen.
Old Hildebrant, Guthrin’s own guard, his sword he seizes.
Going thence unto the throne, he hews her into pieces.
The many dead quiet lie long after others had looked and
Had gone, only the flies left to surmise toward what end
Those proud many flew so fast. So it always ever goes:
All great glory comes at last in the end to greater woes.
The banquet hall also was deadly quiet, until the girl beside the old man ducked her head below the level of the table and began making a sick noise. Seconds later, after the sound of her spitting on the floor, she sat up and wiped at her mouth, her eyes nearly rolling, her face somehow more blanched than before, even to the most inflamed of her spots. The old man had been laughing joyously to himself, his wormy mouth agape, the only sound of it his hoarse breath escaping a dry throat, but then he put voice to it and his laughs became commending affirmations accompanied by his clapping hands.
“Ja! Ja, ja! Great, very great! The best I have heard in my entire life!”
The young lad also began to clap, very hard, the sounds of his hands ringing off the walls like clashes of ghostly armies.
Several other pairs of hands clapped, though more uncertainly, their eyes searching one another in their bewilderment. The meistersinger took his bow and standing upright once more, all were astounded at how great and gaunt he was, an ancient craggy turret of a man. He had not seemed nearly so tall before. Now, it was as though he were that great warrior minstrel himself, Folkher, the one of whom he had sung, who had fought bravely beside Hogni and his Niphelung warriors, whom he had claimed had died in their fighting. But the young lad had another idea and his eyes grew round and thrilling! He ran to his mother and in urgent yet whispering tones, begged and pleaded, until finally she rendered to him his desire, and he approached the singer with a heavy bracelet of gleaming red gold.
“I wish I could learn to be a sagamaker, like you,” the boy offered.
The meistersinger looked down his large nose and past his heavy dark beard at the boy and said to him only a single word. “Practice.”
He wrapped his citole carefully in skins, which he then slung over his shoulder to carry away. Again bowing to the whole company, he graciously wished them all many days full of good health, and safe nights for sleeping and he thanked them for inviting him into their home and welcoming his walking feet on the soil of their lush Rheinside demesne. There were murmurs and mumbles, even a muttered jest or two as he reached the far side of the hall and was escorted out by a butler, who took his huge arm and led him to his quarters, advising where he should duck his head to avoid lintels far too low for a man of his stature.
Guided through a long corridor and a heavy wooden door clasped in cold ironwork, the meistersinger was left at a narrow ascending stairwell to the upper level, where his room had been readied. The butler lifted a cold torch out of the sconce on a nearby wall; igniting it with his own torch, gave it to the tall blind man to light his warming fires with. The minstrel thanked him and continued alone up the damp stone steps. The butler then retired toward the dining hall, ready to assist with the staggering task of cleaning up after the banquet. He did not see the shadow move within the shadows secreted in one of the alcoves which he strode past.
The minstrel found his room, cold and damp, and hanging the torch carefully from a ring in the wall, one not very dissimilar, in fact, from the one by which the witch Brynhild had suspended her humiliated husband King Gunther after he had failed to deflower her in their conjugal bed. By the flickering light of the torch, the singer began to ready the hearth to receive a fire. Once prepared, he lowered the torch into the combustibles and soon pulsing warmth begin to dissipate the darkness and cold that surrounded him.
A sudden knock sounded. Turning, he again set the torch in its place and made his way back to the chamber’s door. He undid the fastening and pulled it open to reveal the anxious, wide white gaze of the young lad from the dining hall.
“Yes?” came the deep voice of the minstrel, his dark-knowing eyes fixed far over the head of the boy, into the equal darkness beyond.
“I wanted to ask if…” The boy paused, as though summoning all his courage to go through with the asking. The man’s enormous head rolled downward to look at him with the glistening stones of his eyes. “I came to ask if I could be your apprentice.”
“What, you? A nobleman’s boy?”
“A fig for that!” snapped the passionate adolescent hastily. “That is nothing. What could be nobler than to raise such song as you have done tonight? It is my chosen art, I am certain, and I would never be satisfied unless I could learn it from you. Therefore, as no mere student would I be, but a very liegeman and bondsman, nay, even your slave in all things, if you will only bend your heart toward teaching me to do as you do.”
The minstrel looked surprised, then sardonically amused.
The boy sighed, hanging his head, not looking up at the man he asked to be his master. He knew what the silence meant.
“Would you like to come inside with me?” asked the meistersinger.
The boy snapped to attention again, surprised, ill prepared to receive or believe his good fortune. “You mean…? You mean, you’ll really…?”
The man did not answer. Long, pale fingers, calloused fingers, beckoned from the end of a bough-long arm. The boy stepped inside.
The man gestured to a box set on the floor beside the door. “Will you sit?” he invited.
The boy did so, shivering a little in the cold, damp atmosphere of the room.
The blind man seemed to look at him, then commented, “You are cold. Here. Stand.”
As the boy stood, the man lifted the heavy wooden box with ease and placed it beside a chair of his nearest the growing fire. The boy rubbed his hands and held them out to the flames until he could hardly take the heat so close.
“If you are to be my apprentice, you will require great fortitude against the cold. And you will have to travel great distances through dangerous lands in between the places where we will play, and our traveling will be often done at night.”
The boy shivered at the thought. “Did you come from far?”
The meistersinger nodded. “The night before this one, I traveled countless paces through the Forest Murkvið, vast and pathless.”
“Were you not afraid of brigands and cutthroats in those unvisited glooms?” The boy looked vicariously terrified, but the minstrel merely shook his shaggy head.
“No. I go by the uninviting
, pathless routes between places so that none know that I come. No robbers await vulnerable company in those places, for there are no paths through which they could ride to reach the thieves’ territory and there be disburdened of their treasures. The only ones a thief might find to rob would be the fearsome, blood-hungry wolves, the bear, the deer, the wisent and wild boar.”
“Are there no dragons? No chimeras or unicorns?” he asked the man, who smiled.
“There are many things.”
Looking around the bare room, the boy asked the singer, “Had you any time for repast?”
The minstrel shook his great wooly head. “There was no time for that. The Lay of Hogni is a long song. Every moment is precious. There was no time for eating or drinking tonight.”
The boy stood, concerned. “You worked so hard, with so much passion. I think that you must be starved!”
The man shook his head and gestured toward a lumpy pile of his belongings. “I have provisions. Skins full of good things to drink and there is meat to eat. I shall not long go without.”
“Nay, but you are here as my guest. I must see that you are provided for!”
Again the man smiled at the boy. “I am certain that you will, but at present, I am content.” He sat down in his chair near the fire and gave a pleased sigh through his thick beard.
The boy appeared restless. “I am weary nigh to death just from the heights you have brought me to tonight, with all your great stories and your music. I cannot understand how you are not exhausted, also famished, after the hours through which you strove to play that great epic entire.”
The man bellowed laughter at that.
Dark Light Book Three (Dark Light Anthology) Page 7
