“Correct. Let me give you the Icelandic tale. Atli enticed Gudrun’s brothers to him because he wanted the Rhinegold. She tried to warn them, but they came anyway under pledge of safe conduct. When they wouldn’t surrender the hoard or tell Atli where it was, he had them put to death. Gudrun got even for that. She butchered the sons she’d borne him and served them to him as ordinary food. Later she stabbed him as he slept, set his hall afire, and left Hunland. With her she took Svanhild, her daughter by Sigurd.”
Everard frowned, concentrating. It couldn’t be easy to keep track of these characters.
“Gudrun came to the country of the Goths,” I said. “There she married again and had two sons, Hamther and Sorli. The king of the Goths is called Jormunrek in the saga and in the Eddie poems, but there is no doubt that he was Ermanaric, who is a real if shadowy figure around the middle and late fourth century. Accounts differ whether he married Svanhild and she was falsely accused of infidelity, or she married somebody else whom the king caught plotting against him and hanged. In either case, he had poor Svanhild trampled to death by horses.
“By this time, Gudrun’s boys, Hamther and Sorli, were young men. She egged them on to kill Jormunrek in vengeance for Svanhild. Along the way they met their half-brother Erp, who offered to accompany them. They cut him down. The manuscripts are vague as to the reason why. My guess is he was their father’s child by a concubine and there was bad blood between them and him.
“They proceeded to Jormunrek’s headquarters and the attack. They were two alone, but invulnerable to steel, so they slew men right and left, reached the king, and wounded him severely. Before they could finish the job, though, Hamther let slip that stones could hurt them. Or, according to the saga, Odin suddenly appeared, in the guise of an old man with one eye, and betrayed this information. Jormunrek called to his remaining warriors to stone the brothers, and that is how they died. There the tale ends.”
“Grim, hey?” said Everard. He pondered for a minute. “But it seems to me that whole last episode—Gudrun in Gothland—must’ve been tacked on at a much later date. The anachronisms have gotten completely out of hand.”
“Of course,” I agreed. “That very commonly happens in folklore. An important story will attract lesser ones to it. Even in trifling ways. For instance, it wasn’t W. C. Fields who said that a man who hates children and dogs can’t be all bad. It was somebody else, I forget who, introducing Fields at a banquet.”
Everard laughed. “Don’t tell me the Patrol should monitor Hollywood history!” He grew serious again. “If that sanguinary little yarn doesn’t really belong in the Nibelung canon, why do you want to trace it? Why does Ganz want you to?”
“Well, it did reach Scandinavia, where it did inspire a couple of pretty good poems—if those weren’t just redactions of something earlier—and did hook up to the Volsung saga. The connections, the whole evolution, interest us. Also, Ermanaric gets mention elsewhere—in certain Old English lays, for instance. So he must have figured in a lot of legend and bardic work that was since forgotten. He was powerful in his day, though apparently not a very nice man himself. The lost Ermanaric cycle might well be as important and brilliant as anything that has come down to us from the West and the North. It may have influenced Germanic literature in scores of unsuspected ways.”
“Do you intend to go straight to his court? I wouldn’t recommend that, Carl. Too many field agents get killed because they got careless.”
“Oh, no. Something horrible happened, from which stories sprang and traveled far, even reaching into historical chronicles. I think I can bracket when it happened, too, within about ten years. But I mean to familiarize myself thoroughly with the whole milieu before I venture into that episode.”
“Good. What is your plan?”
“I’ll take an electronic cram in the Gothic language. I can read it already, but want to speak it fluently, though doubtless my accent will be odd. I’ll also want a cram on what little is known about customs, beliefs, et cetera. That’ll be very little. The Ostrogoths, if not the Visigoths, were still on the bare fringes of Roman awareness. Surely they changed considerably before they moved west.
“So I’ll begin well downtime of my target dates; somewhat arbitrarily, I’m thinking of 300 AD. I’ll get acquainted with people. Next I’ll reappear at intervals and learn what’s been going on in my absence. In short, I’ll keep track of events as they march toward the event. When it finally comes, I shouldn’t be caught by surprise. Afterward I’ll drop in here and there, from time to time, and listen to the poets and storytellers, and get their words on a concealed recorder.”
Everard scowled. “Um-m, that kind of procedure—Well, we can discuss the possible complications. You’ll move around a fair amount geographically too, won’t you?”
“Yes. According to what traditions of theirs got written down in the Roman Empire, the Goths originated in what’s now central Sweden. I don’t believe that numerous a breed could have come from that limited an area, even allowing for natural increase, but it may have furnished leaders and organization, the way the Scandinavians did for the nascent Russian state in the ninth century.
“I’d say the bulk of the Goths started as dwellers along the southern Baltic littoral. They were the easternmost of the Germanic peoples. Not that they were ever a single nation. By the time they reached western Europe, they were separated into the Ostrogoths, who took over Italy, and the Visigoths, who took over Iberia. Gave those regions fairly good government, by the way, the best government they’d had for a long while. Eventually the invaders were overrun in their turn, and vanished into the general populations.”
“But earlier?”
“Historians make unclear mention of tribes. By 300 AD, Goths were firmly established along the Vistula, in the middle of what’s currently Poland. Before the end of that century, the Ostrogoths were in the Ukraine and the Visigoths just north of the Danube, the Roman frontier. A great folk migration, apparently, over the course of generations, because they seem at last to have abandoned the North entirely; there, Slavic tribes moved in. Ermanaric was an Ostrogoth, so that’s the branch I mean to follow.”
“Ambitious,” Everard said doubtfully. “And you a new chum.”
“I’ll gain experience as I go along, uh, Manse. You admitted yourself, the Patrol is shorthanded. Moreover, I’ll be acquiring a lot of that history which you want.”
He smiled. “You should, at that.” Rising: “Come on, finish your drink and let’s go eat. We’ll need a change of clothes, but it’ll be worth the trouble. I know a local saloon, back in the 1890’s, that sets out a magnificent free lunch.”
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.