“That clash is inescapable. Isn’t it? In the selfsame tales and poems you went back to study.”
I shrugged. “Tales. Poems. How much fact is in them? Oh, yes, history knows what became of Ermanaric at the end. But did Swanhild, Hatha-wulf, Solbern die as the saga says? If anything of the kind ever happened—if it isn’t just a romantic imaginihg, centuries later, that a chronicler chanced to take seriously—did it necessarily happen to them?” I cleared my stiffened throat. “My job in the Patrol is to help discover what the events really were that it exists to preserve.”
“Dearest, dearest,” she sighed, “you’re hurting so much. It’s twisting your judgment. Think. I’ve thought—oh, but I’ve thought—and of course I haven’t been there myself, but maybe that’s given me a perspective you… you’ve chosen not to have. Everything you’ve reported, throughout this whole affair, everything shows events driving toward a single goal. If you, as a god, could have bluffed the king into reconciliation, you would have, surely. But no, that isn’t the shape of the continuum.”
“It flexes, though! What difference can a few barbarians’ lives make?”
“You’re raving, Carl, and you know it. I… lie awake a lot myself, afraid of what you might blunder into. You’re too close again to what is forbidden. Maybe you’ve already crossed the threshold.”
“The time lines would adjust. They always do.”
“If that were true, we wouldn’t need a Patrol. You must understand the risk you’ve been running.”
I did. I made myself confront it. Nexus points do occur, where it matters how the dice fell. They aren’t oftenest the obvious ones, either.
An example bobbed into my memory, like a drowned corpse rising to the surface. An instructor at the Academy had given it as being suitable for cadets out of my milieu.
Enormous consequences flowed from the Second World War. Foremost was that it left the Soviets in control of half Europe. (Nuclear weapons were indirect; they would have come into being at approximately that time regardless, since the principles were known.) Ultimately, that military-political situation led to happenings which affected the destiny of humankind for hundreds of years afterward—therefore forever, because those centuries had their own nexuses.
And yet Winston Churchill was right when he called the struggle of 1939-1945 “the Unnecessary War.” The weakness of the democracies was important in bringing it on, true. Nonetheless, there would not have been a threat to make them quail, had Nazism not taken control of Germany. And that movement, originally small and scoffed at, later chastised (though far too mildly) by the Weimar authorities—that movement would not, could not have come to power in the country of Bach and Goethe, except through the unique genius of Adolf Hitler. And Hitler’s father had been born as Alois Schicklgruber, illegitimate, result of a chance affair between an Austrian bourgeois and a housemaid of his…
But if you headed off that liaison, which you could easily have done without harming anybody, then you aborted all history that followed. By 1935, say, the world would already be different. Maybe it would become better than the original (in some respects; for a while) or maybe it would become worse. I could imagine, for example, that humans never got into space. Surely they would not have done it anywhere near as soon; it might well have occurred too late to rescue a gutted Earth. I could not imagine that any peaceful Utopia would have resulted.
No matter. If things back in Roman times changed significantly because of me, I’d still be there; but when I returned to this year, my whole civilization would never have existed. Laurie would never have.
“I… don’t agree I was taking risks,” I argued. “My superiors read my reports, honest reports they are. They’ll let me know if I’m going off the track.”
Honest? I wondered. Well, yes, they related what I observed and did, without any lies or concealment, though in spare style. But the Patrol didn’t want emotional breastbeating, did it? And I wasn’t expected to render every last trivial detail, was I? Impossible to do, anyway.
I drew breath. “Look,” I said, “I know my place. I’m simply a literary and linguistic scholar. But wherever I can help—wherever I safely can—I’ve got to. Don’t I?”
“You’re you, Carl.”
We walked on. Presently she exclaimed, “Hey, man, you’re on furlough, vacation, remember? We’re supposed to relax and enjoy life. I’ve been making plans for us. Just listen.”
I saw tears in her eyes, and did my best to return the cheerfulness she laid over them.
366–372
Tharasmund led his men back to Heorot. There they disbanded and sought their own homes. The Wanderer bade farewell. “Do not rush into action,” was his counsel. “Bide your time. Who knows what may happen?”
“I think you do,” said Tharasmund.
“I am no god.”
“You have told me that more than once, but naught else. What are you, then?”
“I may not unhood it. But if this house owes me anything for what I have done over the years, I claim the debt now, and lay upon you that you gang slowly and warily.”
Tharasmund nodded. “I would in any case. It will take time and skill to bring enough men into a brotherhood that Ermanaric cannot stand against. After all, most would rather sit on their farms and hope trouble passes them by, whoever else it may strike. Meanwhile, the king will likeliest not risk an open breach before he feels he is ready. I must keep ahead of him, but I know full well that a man can walk farther than he can run.”
The Wanderer took his hand, made as if to speak, but blinked hard, wheeled, strode off. The last sight Tharasmund had of him was his hat, cloak, and spear, away down the winter road.
Randwar settled into Heorot, a living remembrance of wrongs. Yet he was too young and full of life to brood very long. Soon he, Hathawulf, and Solbern were fast friends, together in hunt, sports, games, every kind of merriment. He likewise saw much of their sister Swanhild.
Equinox brought melting ice, bud, blossom, and leaf. During the cold season Tharasmund had gone widely around among the Teurings and beyond, to speak in private with leading men. In spring he stayed home and busied himself with work upon his lands; and every night he and Erelieva had joy of each other.
The day came when he cried cheerily: “We’ve plowed and sown, cleaned and rebuilt, midwifed our kine and sent them to pasture. Let’s be free for a while! Tomorrow we hunt.”
On that dawn he kissed Erelieva in front of all the men who were going with him, before he sprang to the saddle and led them off. Hounds bayed, horses whinnied, hoofs thudded, horns lowed. At the edge of sight, where the road swung around a shaw, he turned about to wave at her.
She saw him again that eventide, but then he was a reddened lich.
The men who bore him indoors, on a litter made of a cloak lashed to two spearshafts, told in dulled voices what had happened. Entering the forest that began several miles hence, they found the trace of a wild boar and set off after it. Long was the chase before they caught up to the beast. It was a mighty one, silvery-bristled, tusks like curved daggerblades. Tharasmund roared his glee. But the heart in this swine was as great as its body. It did not stand while some hunters got down and others goaded it to charge. At once it attacked. Tharasmund’s horse screamed, knocked off its feet, belly gashed open. The chief fell heavily. The boar saw, and was upon him. Tusks ripped, amidst monstrous grunts. Blood spurted.
Though the men did soon kill the brute, they muttered that it might well have been a demon, or bewitched—a sending of Ermanaric’s, or of his cunning counselor Sibicho? However that was, Tharasmund’s wounds were too deep to stanch. He had barely time to reach up and take the hands of his sons.