The Sorrow of Odin the Goth

300–302

Winter descended and then slowly, in surges of wind, snow, icy rain, drew back. For those who dwelt in the thorp by the river, and soon for their neighbors, the dreariness of the season was lightened that year. Carl abode among them.

At first the mystery surrounding him roused fear in many; but they came to see that he bore neither ill will nor bad luck. The awe of him did not dwindle. Rather, it grew. From the beginning, Winnithar said that for such a guest to sleep on a bench, like a common thane, was unfitting, and turned a shut-bed over to him. He offered Carl the pick of the thrall women to warm it, but the stranger made refusal, in mannerly wise. He did accept food and drink, and he did bathe and seek the outhouse. However, the whisper went about that maybe these things were not needful for him, save as a show of being mortal.

Carl was soft-spoken and friendly, in a somewhat lofty way. He could laugh, crack a joke, tell a funny tale. He went forth afoot or ahorse, in company, to hunt or call on the nearer yeomen or join in offerings to the Anses and in the feasting that followed. He took part in contests such as shooting or wrestling, until it had become clear that no man could best him. When he played at knucklebones or board games, he did not always win, though the idea arose that this was because he chose not to make folk afraid of witchcraft. He would talk to anybody, from Winnithar to the lowliest thrall or littlest toddler, and listen with care; indeed, he drew them out, and was kindly toward underlings and animals.

But as for his own inward self, that remained hidden.

This did not mean that he sat sullen. No, he made words and music come forth asparkle as none had ever done before. Eager to hear songs, lays, stories, saws, everything that went about, he gave overflowing measure in return. For he seemed to know all the world, as if he had wandered it himself for longer than a lifetime.

He told of Rome, the mighty and troubled, of rts lord Diocletian, his wars and his stern laws. He answered questions about the new god, him of the Cross, of whom the Goths had heard a bit from traders or from slaves sold this far north. He told of the Romans’ great foes, the Persians, and what wonders they had wrought. Onward his words ranged, evening after evening—on southward to lands where it was always hot, and people had black skins, and beasts prowled that were akin to lynxes but the size of bears. Other beasts did he show them, drawing pictures in charcoal on slabs of wood, and they cried aloud in their astonishment; set beside an elephant, an aurochs or even a troll-steed was nothing! Near the ends of the East, he said, lay a realm larger, older, more marvelous than Rome or Persia. Its dwellers were of a hue like wan amber, and had eyes that appeared to be aslant. Plagued by wild tribes north of them, they had built a wall as long as a mountain range, and had since then been striking back out of that redoubt. This was why the Huns had come west. They, who had broken the Alans and were vexing the Goths, were only a rabble in the slanting gaze of Khitai. And all this vastness was not all there was. If you traveled westward till you had crossed the Roman holding called Gaul, you would come to the World Sea of which you had heard fables, and if there you took ship—but craft such as plied the rivers were not big enough—and sailed on and on, you would find the home of the wise and wealthy Mayas…

Tales Carl also had of men, women, and their deeds—Samson the strong, Deirdre the fair and unhappy, Crockett the hunter…

Jorith, daughter of Winnithar, forgot she was of age to be wedded. She would sit among the children on the floor, at Carl’s feet, and hearken while her eyes caught firelight and became suns.

He was not steadily on hand. Often he would say he must be by himself, and stride off out of sight. Once a lad, brash but skilled at stalking, followed him unseen, unless it was that Carl deigned not to heed him. The boy came back white and ashudder, to stammer forth that the graybeard had gone into Tiwaz’s Shaw. None went under those darkling pines save on Midwinter Eve, when three blood offerings—horse, hound, and slave—were made so that the Binder of the Wolf would bid darkness and cold begone. The boy’s father flogged him, and thereafter nobody spoke openly of it. If the gods allowed it to happen, best not ask into their reasons.

Carl would return in a few days, freshly clothed and bearing gifts. Those were small things, but beyond price, be it a knife whose steel held an edge uncommonly long, a scarf of lustrous foreign fabric, a mirror outdoing buffed brass or a still pond—the treasures arrived and arrived, until everybody of any standing, man or woman, had gotten at least one. About this he said merely, “I know the makers.”

Spring stole northward, snow melted, buds burst into leaf and flower, the river brawled in spate. Homebound birds filled heaven with wings and clamor. Lambs, calves, foals tottered across paddocks. Folk came forth, blinking in sudden brightness; they aired out their houses, garments, and souls. The Spring Queen drove Frija’s image from farm to farm to bless the plowing and sowing, while garlanded youths and maidens danced around her oxcart. Longings quickened.

Carl went away still, but now he would be back on the same evening. More and more were he and Jorith together. They would even stroll into woods, down blossoming lanes, over meadows, out of everybody else’s ken. She walked as though lost in dreams. Salvalindis her mother scolded her about unseemliness—did she care naught for her good name?—until Winnithar quelled his wife. The chieftain was a shrewd reckoner. As for Jorith’s brothers, they glowed.

At length Salvalindis took her daughter aside. They sought an outbuilding where the household’s women met to weave and sew when there was no other work for them. There was now, so that these two were alone in its dimness. Salvalindis put Jorith between herself and the broad, stone-weighted loom, as if to trap her, and asked bluntly, “Have you been less idle with that man Carl than you’ve become at home? Has he had you?”

The maiden flushed, twisted fingers together, stared downward. “No,” she breathed. “He can, whenever he wants. How I wish he would. But we’ve only held hands, kissed a little, and—and—”

“And what?”

“Talked. Sung songs. Laughed. Been grave. Oh, mother, he’s not aloof. With me, he’s kinder and, and sweeter than… than I knew a man could be. He talks to me as he would to somebody who can think, not just be a wife—”

Salvalindis’ lips pinched. “I never stopped thinking when I married. Your father may see a powerful ally in Carl. But I see in him a man without land or kin, belike a warlock but rootless, rootless. What gain can our house have of linking with him? Goods, aye; knowledge; but what use are those when foemen threaten? What would he leave to his sons? What would bind him to you after the freshness is gone? Girl, you’re being a fool.”

Jorith clenched her fists, stamped her foot, and yelled through tears that were more of rage than woe: “Hold your tongue, old crone!” At once she shrank back, as aghast as Salvalindis.

“You speak thus to your mother?” the latter said. “Aye, a warlock he is, who’s cast a spell on you. Throw that brooch he gave you into the river, do you hear?” She turned and left the room. Her skirts made an angry rustling.

Jorith wept, but did not obey.

And soon everything changed.

On a day when rain blew like spears, while Donar’s wagon boomed aloft and the flash of his ax blinded heaven, a man galloped into the thorp. He sagged in the saddle, and his horse was near falling from weariness. Nevertheless he shook an arrow on high and shrilled to those who had come out through the mud to meet him: “War! The Vandals draw nigh!”

Brought into the hall, he said before Winnithar: “My word is from my father, Aefli of Staghorn Dale. He had it from a man of Dagalaif Nevittas-son, who fled the slaughter at Elkford so as to carry warning. But already we at Aefli’s had marked a ruddiness on the skyline, where surely farmsteads were afire.”

“Two bands of them, then,” Winnithar muttered. “At least. Belike more. They’re out early this year, and in strength.”

“How could they leave their grounds untended in seeding time?” asked a son of his.

Winnithar gusted a sigh. “They’ve bred more hands than they need for work. Besides, I hear of a King Hildaric, who’s brought their clans beneath him. Thus they can field greater hosts than erstwhile, which move faster and under a better plan than we’re able. Aye, could be Hildaric means to rid these lands of us, for the good of his own overflowing realm.”

“What shall we do?” an iron-steady old warrior wanted to know.

“Gather the neighborhood men and go to meet as many others as time allows, like Aefli’s, if he hasn’t already been overrun. At the Rock of the Twin Horsemen as aforetime, eh? It may be that, together, we’ll not hit a Vandal troop too big for us.”

Carl stirred where he sat. “But what of your homes?” he asked. “Raiders could outflank you, unbeknownst, and fall on steadings like yours.” He left the rest unspoken: plunder, burning, women in their best years borne off, everybody else cut down.

“We must risk that. Else we’ll be whipped piecemeal.” Winnithar grew silent. The longfires leaped and flickered. Outside, wind hooted and rain dashed against walls. His gaze sought Carl’s. “We have no helmet or mail that would fit you. Maybe you can fetch gear for yourself from” wherever you get things.”

The outsider sat stiff. Lines deepened in his face.

Winnithar’s shoulders slumped. “Well, this is no fight of yours, is it?” he sighed. “You’re no Teuring.”

“Carl, oh, Carl!” Jorith came out from among the women.

For a while that reached onward, she and the gray man looked at each other. Then he shook himself, turned to Winnithar, and said: “Fear not. I’ll abide by my friends. But it must be in my own way, and you must follow my redes, whether or not you understand them. Are you willing to that?”

Nobody cheered. A sound like the wind passed down the shadowy length of the hall.

Winnithar mustered heart. “Yes,” he said. “Now let riders of ours take war-arrows around. But the rest of us shall feast.”

—What happened in the next few weeks was never really known. Men fared, pitched camp, fought, came home afterward or did not. Those who did, which was most of them, often had wild tales to tell. They spoke of a blue-cloaked spearman who rode through the sky on a mount that was not a horse. They spoke of dreadful monsters charging at Vandal ranks, and eerie lights in the dark, and blind fear coming upon the foe, until he cast his weapons from him and fled screaming. They spoke of somehow always finding a Vandal gang before it had quite reached a Gothic thorp, and putting it to flight, making sheer lack of loot cause clan after clan to give up and trek off. They spoke of victory.

Their chiefs could say slightly more. It was the Wanderer who had told them where to go, what to await, how best to form array for battle. It was he who outsped the gale as he brought warning and summons, he who got Greutung and Taifal and Amaling help, he who overawed the haughty till they worked side by side as he ordered.

These stories faded away in the course of the following lifetime or two. They were so strange. Rather, they sank back among the older stories of their kind. Anses, Wanes, trolls, wizards, ghosts, had not such beings again and again joined the quarrels of men? What mattered was that for a half-score years, the Goths along the upper Vistula knew peace. Let us get on with the harvest, said they: or whatever else they wanted to do with their lives.

But Carl came back to Jorith as the rescuer.

—He could not really wed her. He had no acknowledged kin. Yet men who could afford it had always taken lemans; the Goths held that to be no shame, if the man provided well for woman and children. Besides, Carl was no mere swain, thane, or king. Salvalindis herself brought Jorith to him, where he waited in a flower-decked loft-room, after a feast at which splendid gifts passed to and fro.

Winnithar had timber cut and ferried across the river, and a goodly house raised for the two. Carl wanted some odd things in the building, such as a bedroom by itself. There was also another room, kept locked save when he went in alone. He was never there long, and no more did he go off to Tiwaz’s Shaw.

Men said between themselves that he made far too much of Jorith. They were apt to swap looks, or walk away from others, like some fuzz-cheeked boy and a thrall girl. However… she ran her home well enough, and anyway, who dared mock at him?

He himself left most of a husband’s tasks to a steward. He did bring in the goods that the household needed, or the wherewithal to trade for them. And he became a great trader. These years of peace were not years of listlessness. No, they brought more chapmen than ever before, carrying amber, furs, honey, tallow from the North, wine, glass, metalwork, cloth, fine pottery from the South and West. Ever eager to meet somebody new, Carl guested passersby lavishly, and went to the fairs as well as the folkmoots.

In those moots he, who was not a tribesman, only watched; but after the day’s talk, things would get lively around his booth.

Nonetheless, men wondered, and women too. Word trickled back that a man, gray but hale, whom nobody formerly knew, was often seen among other Gothic tribes…

It may be that those absences of his were the reason why Jorith was not at once with child; or it may be that she was rather young, just sixteen winters, when she came to his bed. A year had gone by before the signs were unmistakable.

Although her sicknesses grew harsh, joy shone from her. Again his behavior was strange, for he seemed to care less about his get” that she bore than about her own well-being. He even oversaw what she ate, providing her with things like out-land fruits regardless of season though forbidding her as much salt as she was wont to. She obeyed gladly, saying this showed he loved her.

Meanwhile life went on in the neighborhood, and death. At the burials and grave-ales, nobody made bold to speak freely with Carl; he was too close to the unknown. On the other hand, the heads of household who had chosen him were taken aback when he refused the honor of being the man hereabouts who would swive the next Spring Queen.

Remembering what else he had done and was doing on their behalf, they got over that.

Warmth; harvest; bleakness; rebirth; summer again; and Jorith was brought to her childbed.

Long was her toil. She suffered the pains bravely, but the women who attended her became very glum.

The elves would not have liked it had a man seen her during that time. Bad enough how Carl had demanded unheard-of cleanliness. They could only hope that he knew what he was about.

He waited it out in the main room of his house. When callers came, he had mead and drink set forth as was right, but stayed curt in his speech.

When they left at nightfall, he did not sleep but sat alone in the dark until sunrise. Now and then the midwife or a helper would shuffle out to tell him how the birth was going. By the light of the lamp she bore, she saw how his glance sought the door he kept locked.

Late in the second day, the midwife found him among his friends. Silence fell upon them. Then that which she bore in her arms let out a wail—and Winnithar a shout. Carl rose, his nostrils white.

The woman knelt before him, unfolded the blanket, and on the earthen floor, at the father’s feet, laid a man-child, still bloody but lustily sprattling and crying. If Carl did not take the babe up onto his knee, she would carry it into the woods and leave it for the wolves. He never stopped to see if aught might be wrong with it. He snatched the wee form to him while he croaked, “Jorith, how fares Jorith?”

“Weak,” said the midwife. “Go to her now if you will.”

Carl gave her back his son and hastened to the bedroom. The women who were there stood aside. He bent over Jorith. She lay white, sweat-clammy, hollowed out. But when she saw her man, she reached feebly upward and smiled the ghost of a smile. “Dagobert,” she whispered. That was the name, old in her family, that she had wished for, were this a boy.

“Dagobert, yes,” Carl said low. Unseemly though it was in sight of the rest, he bent to kiss her.

She lowered her lids and sank back onto the straw. “Thank you,” came from her throat, barely to be heard. “The son of a god.”

“No-”

Suddenly Jorith shuddered. For a moment she clutched at her brow. Her eyes opened again. The pupils were fixed and wide. She grew bonelessly limp. Breath rattled in and out.

Carl straightened, whirled, and sped from the room. At the locked door, he took forth his key and went inside. It banged behind him.

Salvalindis moved to her daughter’s side. “She is dying,” she said flatly. “Can his witchcraft save her? Should it?”

The forbidden door swung back. Carl came out, and another. He forgot to close it. Men glimpsed a thing of metal. Some remembered what he had ridden who flew above the battlefields. They huddled close, gripped amulets or drew signs in the air.

Carl’s companion was a woman, though clad in rainbow-shimmery breeks and tunic. Her countenance was of a kind never seen before—broad and high in the cheekbones like a Hun’s, but short of nose, coppery-golden of hue, beneath straight blue-black hair. She held a box by its handle.

The two dashed to the bedroom. “Out, out!” Carl roared, and chased the Gothic women before him like leaves before a storm.

He followed them, and now remembered to shut the door on his steed. Turning around, he saw how everybody stared at him, while they shrank away. “Be not afraid,” he said thickly. “No harm is here. I have but fetched a wise-woman to help Jorith.”

For a while they all stood in stillness and gathering murk.

The stranger trod forth and beckoned to Carl. There was that about her which drew a groan from him. He stumbled to her, and she led him by the elbow into the bedroom. Silence welled out of it.

After another while folk heard voices, his full of fury and anguish, hers calm and ruthless. Nobody understood that tongue.

They returned. Carl’s face looked aged. “She is sped,” he told the others. “I have closed her eyes. Make ready her burial and feast, Winnithar. I will be back for that.”

He and the wise-woman entered the secret room. From the midwife’s arms, Dagobert howled.