Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (6 page)

Donar and Occa came and sat by me and told me how it must have happened.

‘It is our custom, all over Germany,’ said Donar, ‘that when a man is going out on some desperate journey from which there is no returning, if he goes to join the cavalry, or to do a murder, or to his death …’

‘Or to his marriage.’ Occa, in middle age, was a bachelor.

‘… he will take a weapon, a knife or an axe, or a spear, and he will thrust it into a tree …’

‘And he will make an offering to the God, don’t forget the offering. This one made the horse sacrifice.’

That was the most magnificent and most expensive sacrifice of all, and this had been the most costly: a mare.

‘Then every man who passes must try to draw the weapon out of the tree, and only the man for whom the God intends it will be able to take it. That spear was meant for you, Photinus.’

The rust was almost all gone. I showed the ferrule just below the head to Donar.

‘What are these marks below the crosspiece?’ For it had a crosspiece like a boar spear, and that was not usual.

They both looked at it closely. I know that many people think that the Germans have no writing, but I have the best of reasons for knowing better. Certainly you cannot write German words in Greek or Latin letters, that would be against all reason, but there is a way of writing German in German letters, which are called Runes. This was the first time I had seen Runes, and in my innocence I thought that any German could read them. This time I heard nothing to disturb my delusion, for Occa took one glance and said,

‘That means Joy. Joy left that spear. Joy left you his spear. That is why he sought you at the ferry.’

A few days later I asked Donar to take his punches and strike my name into the iron on the other side of the socket. So now Votan lies for ever in the iron with Joy. But only Donar could read it, for in those days in the North every man made his own runes.

A few days later we were coming out of the land of no people, the bare mountains, into a land of scattered farms and shepherds. And then, in a few more days, the farms were more frequent, the population thickened, concentrated, condensed almost, out of a cloud of precarious settlers into a vortex, a constellation of permanent farms, hamlets, villages almost, little clusters of houses and barns.

We came to the farm of one of Occa’s clansmen, Haro, a man of power and influence in the region. He was, I had been told, Otho’s agent among the Marcomen, but he said that Otho was his agent among the Romans. He came himself and unbarred the gates of his stockade – they had been shut specially for the purpose – to let us in. The farmyard was built up feet above the plain on the dung and rubbish of generations. Inside the stockade, the main farmhouse was a great hall, the frame of whole trees, the walls filled in with wattle and daub, the roof thatched with wheat straw. It was twenty paces long, inside, and ten wide. The door was in the middle of the long side, and the hearth at one end, sure sign that Haro had only lately dispensed with the company of his cows at night. They now slept, in winter, in the huts scattered around the yard. At least in some of the huts; we three were put into one, and bidden be ready for a feast that night.

There was a group of women around a fire outside one hut, and I went over and asked for some hot water. They sent the youngest to bring it over, and she set down the pot by the door, and walked away with serious face, steady and erect like a grown-up, she hoped, though it was obvious that one word would have set her giggling, and scurrying back.

We washed the dust away, and I put on my best tunic. Then
we sat outside the door and watched the other guests arrive, big proud men, chiefs with their war bands, or at least the pick of their war bands. They all went into the hall. At last, Occa decided dignity would let us appear, and in we went. This was the first time I had been the guest of a German, other than Otho with his Spanish butler and his Syrian cook, and his nearly Roman dining-room with its three tables and couches. This room had three tables, too, one across the width of the hall farthest from the door, and the others at right angles down the sides. Haro met us and offered us that sweet Spanish wine, which those Germans are so keen on as an appetiser. It was very precious there, so no more than one glass was offered, and that a very small one. There was not so much as an eggspoonful of sea water or resin there to blend in it, so I was not sorry that the main drink of the evening was to be beer.

When the wine was drunk with the usual exchange of healths, we guests of honour went to sit on the long benches behind the top table, our backs to the hearth, our faces to a brazier. I moved to the seat to which Haro waved me, and as I sat down, he bellowed, as if introducing the only stranger:

‘Photinus the Greek, from the sea and the islands. Far has he travelled, to the lands of the spices. He left behind comfort to sleep in the forest, left behind women, silks, sauces and silver. He overcame Joy to come on this journey, Greek vowed to his God he goes to the Northlands. Spear on shoulder he rides through the mountains, over the plains to the Kings of the Amber.’

I thought this a bit unwise if we were supposed to be going in secret, but Occa assured me that we had only the Cat King to fear, and that all present were Marcomen and Quadi, enemies of the Cat people. So I sat down, and watched what we would have for supper. I must say there was more order and ceremony at this banquet than at any other barbarian feast I ever went to. Each of us was given a pair of silver mounted drinking horns – on the top table, that is; farther down they brought their own. The retainers were crammed together; at least we had room to move our elbows.

First the servants brought salt fish, to give us a thirst, and then filled the horns, one with barley beer, the other with mead. After
the fish, gross hunks of roast meat were placed on the table, with loaves of rye bread. My neighbour, with a great effort at courtesy, cut me thick slabs of pig and deer mixed together. He wore a cloak of wolf pelts, with a wolf’s head hanging down behind. On a golden chain round his neck were wolf’s teeth, dozens of them. He made a sport, he told me, a trade, a livelihood, of wolf hunting, with spear, with bow, with trap, even with poison, winter and summer. His own name he himself had almost forgotten. Everyone now called him Wolf. I could no more applaud his pursuit of wolves than I could approve of Occa’s attack on the bear, but in his name I found an omen. He had a healthy respect for his wolves, in spite of the fifty tails sewn on the hem of his cloak.

‘Only two good things about wolves. They make good cloaks and they can’t climb trees. Bear climbs trees, but not wolf. If you ever want to cheat them, get up a tree. Stay there. Stay there till they go. Hours, days, maybe, but stay there.’

His main topic, that night, was the indignity of having to come, at Haro’s insistence, unarmed into the hall. He proudly showed a scar across his scalp, from front to back.

‘I got that at a feast, up with the Thuringians, big man he was, good fellow, know him well. Got some of the best wolf hunting this side of the great forest. I’ll take you up there one day, great sport. What? The scar? Yes, well, that was after the dinner, we can’t remember why, but he hit me with a bench. No swords, but it didn’t stop us fighting.’

‘If it had been a sword,’ my other neighbour observed – his name was Lothar, and, he was delighted to tell me, he had been across the border twice, once on a cattle raid and once into Carnuntum to market – ‘if it had been a sword, where would you be now?’

He rolled up his shirt to show a fine scar across his stomach.

‘
That
was a sword. It was my wedding feast and my brand new brother-in-law did it. It kept me in bed three weeks – quiet, Wolf, we haven’t all got minds like yours. But there, if we’d all been hit on the heads with benches … Here, our guest’s plate is empty. Pass the beef – no, try this, a real local delicacy. What? Oh, bulls’ testicles, raw.’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t eat them,’ said Wolf in an interested way. ‘Oh, yes, he does, though. All right, they always taste like that at first, really. Try some more mead. Go on, drain it! Boy! More mead!’

The mead finished me. The next thing I knew I was struggling out into the courtyard. I don’t know how I managed to reach fresh air without disgracing myself. Wolf was at my elbow, not jeering as I feared but bitterly regretting his own lack of capacity.

‘Small bladder, that’s my trouble, always has been. I can stand up to the liquor itself, strong head I’ve got, but once over the gallon and a half, out I’ve got to come. That’s right, boy, get it up, get rid of it, you’ll feel better then. Only good thing about the south, there’s not so much bulk to wine. All right? Let’s get back then, there’s still some cold roast pork left, and plenty of crackling. There, there, get it up. I thought you were finished for a moment, but … here’s some water, clear your taste. What,
over
your head? Are you sure? Well, all right then. No, better not go to lie down, it isn’t etiquette. Back we go, I’ll make sure they don’t press you to any more. Takes a bit of getting used to, I suppose.

Here we grow up on it. Just sit still a bit. Lothar! pass me the pork.’

I only wish now that I could recover from a drinking bout the way I could then. A slab of rye bread and a draught of beer, not the rich dark stuff I had been drinking, but the ordinary thin bitter brew, well beer we used to call it, and I was able to watch what was happening again. There was a minstrel now, standing by the fire and singing away, some long involved song about a hero who was killing a dragon, very slowly. For line after monotonous line the sword slid past one scale after another. I must have looked bored, for Haro leant across and said to me:

‘Good, isn’t he? But what does Greek sound like?’

Now, when people say that to you, as they often do abroad, it’s no use saying something like ‘No, thank you’, because they always want a translation. I had to think of something to suit the company. This was hardly the time or the place for Sappho. Homer, in contrast, was both too near and too far away from them in spirit. I took something which would show them both
how near the Greek mood could come to theirs, and at the same time how foreign to them was its precision. I spoke the two lines of the epitaph on the Spartans at Thermopylae:

‘And what does it mean?’ they all shouted together.

‘Give me some quiet and I will tell you,’ I said. Now was the moment to see if I really could make verse in German. Wolf, with excellent aim after the amount of beer he had taken, threw a mutton bone at the bard, who fell into the brazier, and while some people poured beer over him to put the flames out, and others poured beer into him to revive him, Haro passed me his harp. I tried a few chords. It was not too different from a lyre, provided I only used it to beat out the rhythm. Anyone brought up on hexameters should find German verse easy, I thought, drunk or sober. Whether I was right or wrong is not for me to say, but as far as I remember this is what I sang:

It didn’t leave a dry eye in the place. Men were weeping for their lost comrades, for their own lost youth, for the days when they too might have stood to die in a shield wall, not gone home as soon as they were outnumbered, like sensible married men. To break the ocean of sobbing, Haro shouted:

‘Bring a cloak, put down a cloak, let’s have a cloak and a couple of them on it.’

Two of the retainers came forward with a cloak, an old thing, stained and torn, but a big one, a horseman’s cloak like mine.
They spread it on the floor between the brazier and the top table. Out of the confusion at the bottom of the hall, two men were pushed, half reluctant, to stand on the cloak. Each had a shield, one daubed with an eagle, one with a bear. Somebody brought them their swords.

You may not have seen a German sword, not to handle. They are different from ours. Ours have a point; the legionary’s is short and stiff, the cavalry trooper’s sword is long and springy, but each has a point, and you use them on the move, putting all your own fifteen stone or the speed of your horse behind it, to drive through leather or mail.

Germans, on the contrary, like to fight standing still. They depend on the strength of their arms and the weight of their weapons to do the damage, and so their swords are two-edged, but rounded at the tip, not pointed. The sword is always long, four fingers broad at the hilt, and two fingers at the tip. Down from hilt to tip, on each side, there runs a groove, some say to collect the blood, some say to make the blade stronger, some say because blades were always made that way. The hilts they hang round with charms and rings, and they usually keep them covered with little leather bags to protect the finery.

These two men, Bear-shield and Bird-shield, stood on the cloak. The shields were of limewood, covered with leather, and strengthened with iron. The fight they made was nothing you’ll ever see at the games; it was too slow, no audience would ever pay to see it. They stood face to face, on the cloak, a pace apart. When Haro shouted ‘Start!’ each began to move crabwise to his left, keeping his shield between himself and his opponent. Then Bear-shield struck, a wide slashing blow, and the other turned it on the edge of his shield. They crabbed again, and then Bird-shield had a cut, the weight of that long blade far forward. He leaned forward too far, and almost overbalanced, and I waited for Bear-shield to go for the back of the knee and hamstring him, but no, the idiot stood aside and let his opponent recover. Then they went around again, and Bear-shield had a go, and again the blow was turned. They went on like that, turn and turn about to cut, for what seemed to me like hours, always careful to keep their feet on the cloak.