When the bones were cast aside onto the midden and the fire was guttering low, on behalf of everyone he bade the gods good night. Men sought the lodge nearby, where they would rest before starting back in the morning. Heidhin went a different way. His torch helped him along a dim trail until he came out from under the trees to a broad clearing, where he dropped it to die. Here the moon ran above western woodland, amidst the wind and the witchy clouds.
Before him hunched a house. Frost glistened on thatch. Within it, he knew, kine slept along one wall, folk along the other, mingled with their stores and tools, as they might anywhere else; but these served Wael-Edh. Her tower hulked beyond, heavy-timbered, iron-bound, raised for her to dwell in alone with her dreams. Heidhin walked onward.
A man stepped into his path, slanted spear, and cried, “Halt!”—then, peering through the moonlight: “Oh, you, my lord. Do you want a doss?”
“No,” Heidhin said. “Dawn’s nigh, and I’ve a horse at the lodge to bear me home. First I would call on the lady.”
The guard stood unsure. “You’d not wake her, would you?”
“I do not think she has slept,” Heidhin said. Helpless, the man let him go by.
He knocked on the door of the tower. A thrall girl woke and drew the bolt. Seeing him, she held a pine splinter to her clay lamp and used it to light a second, which he took. He climbed the ladder to the loft-room.
As he awaited—they had known one another so long—Edh sat on her high stool, staring into the shadows cast by her own lamp. They wavered big and ill-formed among the beams, the chests, the pelts and hides, the things of witchcraft and the things brought along from her wanderings. In the chill she kept her cloak wrapped around her, the hood up; when she looked his way he saw her face nighted. “Hail,” she said low. A wraith out of her lips glimmered in the dull light.
Heidhin sat down on the floor, leaning back against the panel of the shut-bed. “You should rest,” he said.
“You knew I could not, this soon.”
He nodded. “Nevertheless, you should. You grind yourself thin.”
He thought he glimpsed a half smile. “I have been doing that for many years, and am still above ground.”
Heidhin shrugged. “Well, then, sleep when you can.” It would be fitfully. “What have you been thinking of?”
“Everything, of course,” she said wearily. “What these victories mean. What we should do next.”
He sighed. “I thought so. But why? It is clear.”
The hood crinkled and uncrinkled, shadowful, as she took her head. “It is not. I understand you, Heidhin. A Roman host has fallen into our hands, and you believe we should do what warriors of old did, give everything to the gods. Cut throats, break weapons, smash wagons, cast all into a bog, that Tiw be slaked.”
“A mighty offering. It would quicken the blood in our men.”
“And enrage the Romans.”
Heidhin grinned. “I know the Romans better than you, my Edh.” Did she wince? He hastened on: “I mean, I have dealt with them and theirs, I, a war chieftain. The goddess says little to you about such everyday things, does she? I say the Romans are not like our kind. They are coldly forethoughtful—”
“Therefore you understand them well.”
“Men do call me cunning,” he said, unabashed. “Then let us make use of my wits. I tell you a slaughter will rouse the tribes and bring new warriors to us, more than it will set the foe on vengeance.” He donned gravity. “Also, the gods themselves will be glad. They will remember.”
“I have thought on this,” she told him. “The word from Burhmund is that he means to spare their men—”
Heidhin stiffened. “Ha,” he said. “Thus. He, half Roman.”
“Only in knowing them still better than you. He deems a butchery unwise. It could well enrage them into bringing their full strength against us, whatever that costs them elsewhere in their realm.” Edh raised a palm. “But wait. He also knows what the gods may want—what we here at home may think the gods want. He is sending a headman of theirs to me.”
Heidhin sat straight. “Well, that’s something!”
“Burhmund’s word is that we may kill the man in the halidom if we must, but his rede is that we stay our hands. A hostage, to swap for something worth more—” She was still for a bit. “I have spent this while mutely calling on Niaerdh. Does she want yon blood or no? She has given me no sign. I believe that means no.”
“The Anses—”
Seated above him, Edh said with sudden stiffness: “Let Woen and the rest grumble at Niaerdh, Nerha, if they like. I serve her. The captive shall live.”
He scowled at the floor and gnawed his lip.
“You know I am foe to Rome, and why,” she went on. “But this talk of bringing it down in wreck—more and more, as the war wears on, I come to see that as mere rant. It is not truly what the goddess bade me say, it is what I have told myself she wants me to say. I must needs utter it again tonight, or the gathering would have been bewildered and shaken. Yet can we really win anything but Roman withdrawal from these lands?”
“Can we gain even that much if we forsake the gods?” he blurted.
“Or is it your hopes of power and fame that we may have to forgo?” she snapped.
He glared. “From none but you would I brook that.”
She left the stool. Her voice went soft. “Heidhin, old friend, I am sorry. I meant no hurt. We should never lie at odds, we twain.”
He rose too. “I did swear once . . . I would follow you.”
She took both his hands in hers. “And well you have. How very well.” When she threw her head back to look at him, the hood fell off and he saw her face lamplit. Shadows filled the furrows in it and underlined the cheekbones but masked the gray in the brown tresses. “We’ve fared far together.”
“I did not swear I would blindly obey,” he muttered. Nor had he done so. Sometimes he went dead against her wishes. Afterward he showed her he had been right.
“Far and far,” she whispered as though she had not heard. Hazel eyes sought the murk behind him. “Did we end here, east of the great river, because the years and miles had worn us out? We should have wandered on, maybe to the Batavi. Their land opens onto the sea.”
“The Bructeri made us wholly welcome. They did everything for you that you asked.”
“Oh, yes. I was thankful. I am. But someday—a single kingdom of all the tribes—and I shall again watch the star of Niaerdh shine above the sea.”
“No such kingdom can be unless first we bleed Rome dry.”
“Do not talk of that. Later we shall have to. Now let us remember gentle things.”
Sunrise reddened heaven when he bade her farewell. Dew sheened on the mud outside. Black above it, he passed the holy grove, bound for the lodge and his horse. Peace had been on her brow, she was ready for sleep, but his fingers drew taut around the hilt of his knife.
4
Castra Vetera, Old Camp, stood near the Rhine, about where Xanten in Germany did when Everard and Floris were born. But the whole of this land in this age was Germany—Germania, reaching across upper Europe from the North Sea to the Baltic, from the River Scheldt to the Vistula, and south to the Danube. Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the German state would arise out of it in the course of almost two thousand years. Today it was wilderness broken here and there by cultivation, grazing, villages, steadings, held by tribes that came and went in war, migration, eternal turbulence.
Westward, in what would be France, Belgium, Luxembourg, much of the Rhineland, the dwellers were Gauls, of Celtic language and Celtic ways. With a high culture and military capability, they had dominated the Germans with whom they were in contact—though the distinction was never absolute, and blurred in the border country—until Caesar conquered them. That was not so long ago, assimilation was not yet so far along, that memory of the old free days had died out of everyone.