“A nexus, then, is it not?” Floris whispered.
Everard nodded heavily. Somehow he preserved outward calm. “Patrol units are concentrated on guarding Palestine. You can well imagine what emotions are engaged, through how many centuries. Fanatics or freeboaters who want to change what took place in Jerusalem, researchers crowding in and multiplying the chances of a fatal blunder, and the situation itself, the near-infinity of causes radiating into that episode and effects radiating out from it. . . . I don’t pretend to understand the physics, but I can sure believe what I’ve been taught, that the continuum is especially vulnerable around such moments. As far away as barbarian Germany, reality is unstable.”
“But what could have shifted it?”
“That’s what we’ve got to find out. Could be somebody taking advantage of the Patrol’s preoccupation. Or could be accident, could be—I don’t know. Maybe a Danellian could spell out the possibilities. Our job—” Everard drew breath. “Since they don’t have some improbable but safe explanation, like a forgery, these two variant texts are . . . a warning. An early sign, a ripple of change, something that may have had consequences which caused history to flow into a different channel till at last you and I and everything around us never existed—unless we heed the warning and take steps to see that this did not happen—Oh, Lord, we had better talk Temporal.”
Floris stared into her cup. “Can that wait?” she asked, barely audibly. “I need to think about this, to assimilate it. It was never more than theory to me. I did my fieldwork like, oh, a nineteenth-century explorer in darkest Africa. There were precautions to take, yes, but I was told that the pattern of events is not easily disturbed and that whatever I did, within reason, would ‘always’ have been a part of the past. Today it is as if earth dissolved beneath my feet.”
“I know.” How nightmarishly well I know. The Second Punic War—” Sure, take your time.” Time! “Collect your wits.” His smile surprised him by its genuineness. “Mine are still kind of scattered too. Look, suppose we relax and gab freely, whether about the subject on hand or anything else. In a while, let’s go out for a drink and dinner, enjoy ourselves, start getting acquainted. Tomorrow we can buckle down in earnest.”
“Thank you.” She passed a hand over the thick yellow braids coiled around her head. He recalled that ancient Germanic tribes women wore their hair long. As if she felt that magic which folk around the world laid to the human mane, strength rang anew: “Yes, tomorrow we shall cope.”
3
Winter brought rain, snow, rain again, flogged by harsh winds, weather that raged on into the springtime. Rivers ran gorged, meadows flooded, swamps overflowed. Men doled out what grain they still had stored, killed more of their huddled and shivering livestock than they wished, went hunting oftener and with less gain than they had been wont. They wondered whether the gods had wearied of last year’s drought but not of harrowing earth.
Maybe it was a hopeful sign that the night when the Bructeri met at their halidom was clear, though cold. Rags of cloud flew on the wind, ghost-white next to the full moon that sped among them. A few stars flickered wan. Trees of the grove were huge darknesses, formless save where boughs nearly bare tossed against heaven. Their creakings went like an unknown tongue, answers to the skirl and snarl of the wind.
The balefire roared. Flames leaped red and yellow from its white heart. Sparks whirled aloft to mock the stars and die. Light barely touched the great boles around the glade and made them seem to stir, uneasy as the shadows. It gleamed off the spears and eyeballs of the gathered men, brought grim faces forth out of gloom, but lost itself in their beards and shaggy coats.
Behind the fire loomed the images, rough-hewn from whole logs. Woen, Tiw, and Donar were cracked and gray, begrown with moss and toadstools. Nerha was newer, freshly painted to shine beneath the moon, and the skill of a slave from the Southlands had gone into the carving of her. In the restless glow, she might have been alive, the goddess herself. The wild boar roasting over the coals had been killed more to her than to the others.
They were not many, the men, nor were any but a few young. All who could had followed their chiefs across the Rhine last summer, to fight with Burhmund the Batavian against the Romans. They were there yet, and sorely missed at home. Wael-Edh had sent word around that the heads of households among the Bructeri should meet this night, make offering, and hear her.
The breath soughed between their teeth as she trod into sight. Her garb was moon-white, trimmed with dark fur, a necklace of raw amber aglow over her bosom. The wind made waves in her skirts and her cloak fluttered like great wings. Who knew what thoughts laired within its hood? She raised her arms, the gold rings coiled upon them shimmered snakish, and every spear dipped to her.
Heidhin, who had led in readying the boar, stood nearest the fire, apart from the others. He drew his knife, lifted blade to lips, sheathed it again. “Welcome, lady of ours,” he greeted. “Behold, they are come as you bade, they who speak for the folk, that through you the gods may speak to them. If you will, say forth.”
Edh lowered her hands. While not loud, her voice struck to its mark past the noises of the night. More than Heidhin’s, it kept an outland tone, a rise and fall like surf beating on some far shore. Maybe from this came a little of the awesomeness that forever enwrapped her.
“Hear me, sons of Brucht, for great are my tidings. The sword is aloft, the wolves and ravens eat well, the witches of Nerha fly free. Hail to the heroes!
“Let me first give you the older truth. When I called you hither, my wish was only to hearten you. The time has been long, homes guest hunger, and still the foe has stood fast. Many among you begin to wonder why we are allied with our kin beyond the river. We have shames to avenge but no yoke to cast off. We have a kingdom to build together with them but cannot if they fail.
“Yes, tribes among the Gauls have risen too, but they are a flighty lot. Yes, Burhmund has ravaged among the Ubii, those dogs of Rome, but the Romans have wasted the country of our friends the Gugernes. Yes, we have laid Moguntiacum and Castra Vetera under siege, but from the first we had to withdraw and the second has held out month after month. Yes, we have had our victories on the field, but we have had our defeats too, and always our losses were heavy. Therefore would I renew my promise to you, that Rome shall fall, the bones of the legions lie strewn and the red cock crow on every Roman roof—the vengeance of Nerha. We have but to fight on.
“Then, only today, surely by the will of the goddess, a rider reached me from Burhmund himself. Castra Vetera, the Old Camp of the enemy, has yielded. Vocula the legate, victor of Moguntiacum, is dead, and Novesium, where he died, has likewise surrendered. Colonia Agrippinensis, proud city among the Ubii, asks for terms.
“Nerha keeps faith, sons of Brucht. This is the beginning of the pledge she will wholly redeem. Rome shall fall!”
Their yells tore at the sky.
She harangued them longer, though not much longer, and ended quietly: “When at last your warriors come home, Nerha will bless their loins and they will father men to bestride the world. Now feast before her, and tomorrow bring hope to your women.” She lifted a hand. Once more they lowered their spears. She took a brand from the fire to light her way and departed into the darkness.
Heidhin led them as they pulled the offering off the grill, carved it, and devoured the smellsome flesh. However, he said little while they talked into each other’s mouths of the wonder told them. Often such a silent spell came upon him. Folk had grown used to it. Enough that he was Wael-Edh’s trusty man and, in his own right, a shrewd, swift leader. He was lean, with narrow features, white streaks in the blackness of hair and close-trimmed beard.