He stood on a clifftop overlooking the stream and the fleet. It was beneath the dignity of a shipowner to haul on cables or lug bales; and he had three vessels by now, not bad for a boy who in birchbark leggings had run traplines through northern woods. His skippers could oversee the work. But sentries were needed. Not that anyone expected bandits; however, the furs, hides, amber, tallow, beeswax being transported would fetch a price down south that just might draw many masterless landloupers together for a single swoop.
“To you, Ekaterina Borisovna,” Oleg said, raising his cup. It was for traveling, wooden, albeit silver-trimmed to show the world that he was a man of consequence at home in Novgorod.
While the thin sour beer went down, he was thinking less of his wife or, for that matter, various slave and servant girls, than of a tricksy little minx at journey’s end last year. Would Zoe again be, available? If so, that gave him an added reason, besides extending his connections among the foreign merchants resident in Constantinople, for wintering there. Though Zoe,—hm, over several months Zoe might prove painfully expensive.
Bees hummed in clover, cornflowers blazed blue as the overarching, sun-spilling sky. Below Oleg, men swarmed about the bright-hued swan—and dragon-headed ships. They must be longing for the Black Sea: in oars and up mast, loaf and let the wind carry you on, never thinking about the currents, never caring that that was when the poor devil of an owner must worry most about a wreck. Their shouts and oaths were lost across a mile or two, blent into the clangor of great Father Dnieper. These heights knew quietness, heat, sweat trickling down ribs and soaking into the quilted padding beneath the chainmail coat, which began to drag on the shoulders, but high, high overhead a lark chanted, and the joy floated earthward while a mild buzzing from the beer rose to meet it....
Oleg smiled at everything which lay in his tomorrows.
And the vortex took him.
Winters were less strong here than on the plains over which Uldin’s forebears went drifting and storming. Here snowfall was scant, most years, and a man had no need to grease his face against the cold. But he could nevertheless lose livestock to hunger and weather if he did not ride the range and take care of his beasts—especially when lambing time drew near.
Uldin’s followers numbered only half a dozen, including two unarmed slaves. The East Goths had fled into a Roman realm which would not likely prove hospitable. Some stayed, of course, the slain and those who were captured and beaten into meekness. For the past three years the Huns had lived in peace, settling into their newly conquered land.
It lay white beneath low gray clouds. Here and there stood leafless trees. The snags of a garth sacked and burnt were the last sign of farming. Fences had been torn down for firewood and grain had yielded to grass. Breath smoked on a raw wind. The hoofs of the ponies plopped in snow, clattered on ground frozen hard. Saddle leather squeaked and bits jingled.
Uldin’s son Oktar edged alongside. He was barely old enough to ride along, his father being young, but already he showed in height and pale skin the Manic blood of his mother. She had been Uldin’s first woman, a slave given him by his own father when he reached an age to enjoy her. He finally lost her, gambling with a man of another tribe at a Sun Festival meeting, and didn’t know what her life became afterward, though for a while he had idly wondered,
“We can reach camp tonight if we push hard,” the boy said importantly. Uldin half raised his quirt and Oktar added in haste, “Honored sire.”
“We won’t,” Uldin answered. “I’ll not weary horses for you to sleep earlier in a warm yurt. We’ll stretch our bags at—” he made a nomad’s quick estimate—“one Place.” Oktar’s eyes widened and he gulped. Uldin barked a laugh. “What, afraid of wolf-scattered Gothic skeletons? If they alive couldn’t stop us slaughtering them, who fears their thin ghosts? Say boo to them.” He jerked his head in dismissal and Oktar fell behind with the rest.
Uldin would, in truth, also have liked to make the main encampment. Riding the range at this season was no sport. In summer the entire tribe traveled with their herds, and a man could nearly always be home at eventide after a day’s work or hunt. That was good: creaking ox-drawn wagons; smells of smoke, roasting meat, live horseflesh, fellow-men’s sweat, dung and piss, closeness within the huge grass-rippling horizon, beneath huge hawk-hunted heaven; noise, laughter, gluttonous eating; after nightfall, gatherings about the fires, flames whirling and crackling aloft, picking the faces of trusty friends out of unrestful shadows; talk, perhaps thoughtful or perhaps bragging, maybe a lay of heroic times to inspire the young, ancient times when the Middle Kingdom itself feared the thannish Empire, or maybe a jolly bawdy song, howled forth to the thutter of drums and tweedle of flutes while men stamped a ring-dance; and kumiss, bowl after bowl of rich fermented mare’s milk until a man became a stallion and sought his yurt and his women.... Yes, barring lightning storms (Uldin made a hasty sign against demons, taught him by the shaman at his initiation), summer was good, and to arrive home now would be to have a foretaste of it.
However, no softness could be allowed. It was bad for discipline if nothing else, and what was a tribe without discipline? Uldin drew from beneath his saddlegirth the tally stick on which he had recorded the size of his flocks, and made a show of studying it.
Not small. Nor big. He was no clan chief, just the head of a household, so-and-so many younger sons and the like who had given him their pledge, together with their dependents and his own children, wives, concubines, hirelings, slaves, horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, wagons, gear, and plunder.
Plunder. He had won little of that when the Huns were overrunning the Alans east of the Don River, for in those years he was but a youth learning the trade of war. The sack of the Gothic holdings had enriched him somewhat. Now, when grazing had been made ample, he would do best to trade silver and silks for livestock and let natural increase bring him the only wealth that was really real.
But his gaze drifted westward. Beyond this rolling plain, he had heard, were mountains, and beyond the mountains were the Romans, and it was said they paved their streets with gold. A man might carve himself an empire there, great as the ancestors’, so that folk a thousand years hence would tremble at his name.
No, that chance would hardly come in Uldin’s lifetime. The Huns had no reason to conquer further nor would until their numbers waxed too large. To be sure, without some battle the skills of war would rust and the tribes become easy prey; hence the West Goths and others would at least be raided pretty often, which could bring, opportunities.
Abide, he told himself. Honor the Powers and the ancestors, stand by your Shanyti and do his will as you expect your household to do yours, steer your affairs wisely. Then who knows what may come your way?
And the vortex took him.
Again Erissa must, seek the heights alone.
She did not know what sent her forth. It might be the whisper of the Goddess or, if this was too bold a thought, a lesser Being; but no vision had ever come to her on those pilgrimages. It might be nothing deeper than a wish to be, for a while, one with the moon, with sun, stars, winds, distances, and memories. At such times the house, Dagonas, yes, even the wide fields and woods that were hers, even the dear tyranny of her children, became another slave kennel to escape from. So relentlessly was she driven that she seldom believed there was nothing of the divine about it. Surely this was a sacrament she must receive, over and over, until she was purified for the reunion promised her these four and twenty years ago.
“Tomorrow dawn I leave,” she told Dagonas.
Though he had learned the uselessness of protest, he did answer in his mild way, “Deukalion could well return meanwhile.”