Maroboodus: A Novel of Germania (The Goth Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  He frowned and stopped writing. ‘What is this word?’

  ‘Has my son,’ I asked spitefully, ‘not spoken with you about wyrd? He has wept how bad a father I was, but—’

  ‘You assume your son knows I am here and that I …’ he began, but noticed how my eyes twitched aggressively and smiled instead. ‘No, lord. He told me nothing. Not a thing, really, unless what I might expect from you and he cursed you as a father and a man. He told me to be careful with you.’

  ‘Careful?’

  He fidgeted. ‘He said you might crush my skull on the floor tiles, but I think you are lonely, my lord, and wish to have this slightest of chances to get your story told, and told out there.’

  ‘My story won’t leave some moldy archive,’ I stated bluntly.

  He nodded and gave a small, dry laugh. He leaned forward. ‘Of course, we know that is so. There are rooms in the Tabularium none enter, and this will end up there. I know what happened with you and my lord Tiberius. I know what you did and for whom, and Tiberius has not forgotten. Our lord will never forget what happened to Nero Claudius Drusus and I half think he is still hoping to understand the events that so changed his life to what he considers Hades, and wishes to hear the story. From your lips, my lord. But he doesn’t wish to see you.’

  ‘I thank him for that!’ I said. ‘But if these texts are forgotten, left to molder in a room full of such confessions, it might be so that one day …’ my voice trailed off, as I wondered how much I wanted to have my tale told.

  ‘Who knows, my lord?’ he answered dutifully. ‘Anything can happen, I suppose.’

  ‘Wyrd,’ I said, happy with his explanation, ‘means fate. Like you Romans, we think our souls a loan from the gods to inhabit Midgard. We are bound … our story woven as we speak, and our choices will determine what kind of tapestry we will see when we die. It might be dark and short cloth, coarse to the touch, but it might also be long, and full of knots of a life lived, with misery and happiness both. Few are fine and rich with no ugly marks of sorrow. Some parts of the tapestry will be dark, black, badly knotted and thus bear marks of our worse decisions. And Gothonia, the north in general is a place to make such terrible decision. Hunger, lord, forces men to act, often harshly, with no hope of success. Lords grasp at power, adelings to gain fame, and men who would serve them. Yes, it’s a sad land, it certainly is and I am its man, no matter my later travels. The Gothoni lands made me a harsher man. And broke my heart, indeed.’ I smiled and thought of the deep, magical woods far, far in the north, the snow banks under the gray, low-hanging sky, and the impossibly long, deadly winters and the sometimes scorching, but so very brief summers filled with mosquitoes. Men warred there, it was true. Men warred everywhere, that was also true, but there the tribes were many, the available land few, and hunger gave the war an edge of ferociousness that was lacking elsewhere I had seen. You took the land, or you kept the land and damn the rest. The winners ate juicy cow and appetizing gruel and the losers ate each other. The Goths were sea-people of the islands of Gothonia, where the giants had once erected stones to guard the beach, and gods created Aaska and Esla, but the people grew many, too many and sailed to claim land in the east and the west and settled in. Svearna, the strange Germani occupying the lands in the north and west shores of Mare Gothonium were pushed back and god Woden be thanked they were as quarrelsome and feuding as we were, or we would have stayed sea-people. My tribe, the Suebi Goths were unwanted guests in the land I was born in. The Gothoni ruled the islands and the coasts, but the various tribes of the woods and hills envied them the sea they had once owned and so there was much strife as soon as the crops had been sown each year. Svearna were the strange people of the east, and the Semnones, the Langobardi, and the Saxones of the south raided them and us over the sea. And our tribes, the ones who left Gothonia? We had an enemy, our old relative, the Boat-Lord and thiuda of Gothonia, who envied our new land its trade. I smiled. Trade was good. Farming was not. Even the land itself was as harsh as the wine I drank. Harsher.

  ‘Your lord,’ the man said carefully, ‘would know his enemy’s past … wyrd, and so please, tell me what you did, and why, and how you ended up with the Marcomanni, so far from the Gothoni. Would you consider telling this tale, lord? I have time as I told you. I can write it up. I know your hands hurt and I am happy to help. I will not change a word after we are done. Not one. I promise. This is for the Princeps, who—like you—is sick and dying. I think he is tying up loose knots, so to speak. He wishes to know who you were, one of the greatest allies to Rome, and one of its worst enemies.’

  I snorted. ‘They remember Armin, Arminius the Cherusci was its greatest Germani enemy. Both my service to Rome and animosity for it later have been long forgotten.’

  ‘Then let us remedy that, my lord,’ Marcus said with a smile. ‘Even if it will end up in a closed archive. Let us tie it up, right here, right now.’

  I stared at him and rubbed my feet together. They were bloated and pained and I decided against fetching more wine by myself. I also struggled against the insistent voice that kept telling me the water could wash down the aftertaste of the acrid, if good, wine. I addressed Marcus. ‘Augustus killed my Roman son,’ I said softly. ‘The man who should have been the Princeps is dead at his hand. Perhaps it was Tiberius and not Augustus who gave the order? It was, wasn’t it? And I should do him favors? Tiberius was always out to kill me. He gave me the death sentence, didn’t he? Will you promise to hold these words safe?’

  ‘It is true much blood has flowed in this circle of yours, my lord,’ said Marcus. ‘But consider this your last word. Your legacy. I will guard it.’

  ‘I would have my last words over Tiberius’s corpse,’ I snickered and rubbed my hand across the goblet and saw my face on its surface. Gods, help, but I was old. Once, I had been handsome, my hair red as fire, my body full of heavy muscle. I had been wily as a night-hunting fox, fearless as a cornered wolverine and I had–briefly–been a king of people who do not want kings. Is that not an accomplishment? I looked up to the roof. Now I was fat, sick, and gray and I lost the kingdom and I lost my sons and live as a prisoner. My one remaining son hates me. Hraban. He loathes me. He had me under his sword once, the father who abandoned him to death and ignominy, and I told him not to judge me for my Roman ways. He had no idea what life was like in Rome, for a man who had been in love and promised the stars.

  ‘Lord, I—’ Marcus began gently.

  I lifted my hand and he went quiet. How easily that happened. A king should be able to lift his hand and people should heed him. Now, I usually could not command a slave to move out of the way. None would see my hand, and if they did, they would laugh at it. Perhaps that could be changed, by some miracle of the written word I grunted and nodded. Hraban. He might learn of the past of the family as well. ‘You will make one copy for Tiberius. Then one that you guard.’ He nodded warily. ‘Make a copy for my son as well,’ I told him softly. ‘And bring more of this wine. Every day we do this, there will be wine.’

  Marcus smiled and he bowed. ‘I will, lord. Where shall we begin? And shall we begin today?’

  I smiled. ‘I’ll begin from the beginning, of course. And you already started, didn’t you?’

  He frowned. ‘I do not know if master wishes to hear of your youth. Your childhood, lord, might bore him.’

  ‘How would you know it was boring?’ I grinned. ‘Fetch me more wine and I’ll tell you of the Goth who lived west from the islands of Gothonia and what we suffered. I’ll skip the childhood. I’ll tell you of the time I was eighteen, and I’ll start with how I killed my first man and fell in love. Her name was Saxa.’

  I told him my story, and tried to figure out how to escape him while I did.

  BOOK 1: THE GATHERING STORM

  ‘Shall we burn and bury my great brother? And then we have things to decide. Important things, my friends. And changes to be made, I think.’

  Hughnot to Hulderic and Bero

  CHAPTER 1

&nb
sp; The wind was terrible, its raging power awesome. While we were relatively safe from its worst brunt, the tops of the pine trees around the hillside were bent, swaying back and forth, and some had fallen already, snapping like twigs. The sea the Romans called Mare Gothonium was a brutal enemy, especially so during the winter, when it was iced over for much of its length. During the long springs and yellow-leaf falls, when such storms made it nearly impossible to navigate across it, you would have to endure snot and dampness, no matter if you holed up inside the best of halls or a crummy hut. This one was one of the early fall storms, and it was still daytime, but the heavy banks of spirit-borne clouds were racing across the sky, very low, nearly low enough for a good warrior to lob a spear into them. A pair of young vitka, wearing fox furs and strange feathers in their greasy hair were on their haunches, looking balefully at the clouds, and as the Germani gods live in the ground and the spirits of the air were our enemies, the vitka were not happy. Neither were the chiefs and the champions. The priests had spent an hour trying to dispel the worst of the clouds, but had failed utterly. They had demanded a horse as a sacrifice, but Grandfather had denied them that. ‘We need them for the butchery, not to be butchered,’ he had rumbled.

  I suppose we were lucky our enemies were Germani like we were, and even the vitka finally agreed the gods would have no favorites in the coming battle. They scuttled up the hill again to Grandfather Friednot, where the old, nearly neckless, very thick warrior scratched under his greasy ring mail and nodded at the two men with bare civility. Instead, he gave more attention to a pair of men on lathered horses, who also whipped their beasts towards him. He leaned down from his shaggy horse to listen to the two, and spat in anger at their words while pointing the vitka away.

  ‘They are delayed,’ Aldbert said miserably. The scrawny poet held a shield and a spear, but nobody expected him to do more than observe. He had lived in our hall since he was a boy, and I had befriended him even if he could not defend himself. I don’t know why. He was not … brave? He was strange, and sang to himself, but he also had a great sense of humor and so I used to fight his fights for him. He was an odd sight amidst Father’s grizzled men. He had his role, I thought. Timberscar and the surrounding villages had sent a good number of sturdy Goths to serve under Father’s bear claws banner, but Aldbert would make a song of the battle later, and he would remember every man that was there. He would bring glory to all the standards on that hill, and the lords that owned them. He’d honor some, who weren’t there, if they were influential enough.

  ‘Delayed?’ I asked him, eying Grandfather who was spitting new orders to some of his warlords, but especially to Ludovicus and Osgar, his champions and warlords. ‘No shit? Did anyone tell them we are expecting them to be on time?’

  Aldbert snickered dutifully, and so did many of the oaths men of Father’s champions and the champions themselves. Dubbe, the rotund terror of a shieldwall quaffed and nearly choked on some watery mead, and Sigmundr and Harmod both rolled their eyes while they enjoyed the nervous, clumsy joke. I liked the champions, men who led Hulderic’s war bands on raids and reprisals, and they liked me.

  The Saxons were late, indeed. But that was better than early when it came to battle.

  The chosen men of the three warlords shivered, draped in animal skins, double layers of tunics and trousers. The shields that were oblong and rectangular were glistening with water and some had paint running on the surface, creating strange looking puddles of red and yellow at their feet. Even the spears, mostly thin, iron tipped framae, that was a useful weapon for both throwing and melee, looked sad and slick in the brawny hands that clutched them. ‘Do they move?’ Dubbe asked, growling the question for eleventh time, and meant the half-hidden scouts below in the wooded valley.

  ‘They are picking asses, still,’ Sigmundr stated laconically.

  ‘Each other’s?’ Harmod spat.

  ‘Yes, of course, still,’ Sigmundr said, as he had the best eyesight. ‘They are using their spears.’

  ‘I hope it’s spears,’ Hulderic, father and second son of Friednot stated. His wide shoulders heaved with silent laughter as his champions mocked the simple scouts deployed down in the shrubs and his eyes flashed at me from under a helmet of leather and chain that hung on his shoulders. ‘Patience. We won’t remember this misery when they bleed at our feet.’

  ‘Shit terrible to fight in this damned weather,’ I breathed to myself.

  ‘They’ll be fine, the men,’ Father rumbled and winked me over. I sighed and picked my way to him, at the end of the line, not far. He was right. The men had an impatient, but deadly glint in their eyes as I reached Father, sitting on a sturdy warhorse with a shaggy mane. His beard was blond where mine was red, and I shaved my beard, but we resembled each other in face and mood. His bear hide armor stank and steamed as he ruffled it. ‘The Saxons won’t mind the weather. It’s an opportunity for them. Always has been. They love this shit. But there is no need to mention that to the men. If you would lead them, always give them a good amount of hope.’

  ‘We outnumber them,’ I allowed. ‘They’ll bleed like pigs.’

  ‘That’s my boy,’ he chortled. ‘But stay close when it begins. You’ve never fought in a shieldwall. It’s going to be different from hunting cow thieves in the woods. There will be widows, and let’s hope most will weep across the straits this coming week.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ I stated with a neutral voice. There was something about Father that always bothered me, the weighty mantle of a leader he carried, a trait that I hated, and that was the great care he always gave to decisions regarding feuds, war, life in general. He carefully weighed many ills against the good, and often left me desperate for action. I think I knew he was wise, but sometimes, I thought, such wisdom made us look weak. Especially since his brother Bero wore Draupnir’s Spawn, the family’s ancient ring, a golden, flower-etched treasure the god Woden had given to Aska and Esla when they were born, long before in the island shore of Green Gothonia, the island where the Boat-Lord held sway, always looking enviously our way, though they never told us why. He was old, terrible, a relative, though I didn’t know how, and he was rumored fearful of Draupnir’s Spawn, as many Goth Thiuda would be. Friednot and Hughnot carried it away in their youth, and Friednot wore it, until Bero married. But the Boat-Lord had not given them his blessing to leave the land and he feared, despite his vast might. Should we so wish, we might call men of the old families to call us the lords and many would answer, having respect for the golden thing.

  And yet, I was unhappy.

  Bero held it, I cursed in my mind, because he married a day before Hulderic. It went to the boy who married first. And sometimes, often, I thought Father had wanted to dodge the great treasure Friednot had passed down to his first son. It would have fitted Father’s finger well, I thought. Very well. And ultimately, I thought, mine.

  Instead, it was held by an uncle, the strangely twisted, crooked-backed fool with jet-black hair and a scraggly beard. The champions, even Bero’s own champions Danr and the dog-master Gasto especially, secretly thought him incapable of leading. I looked that way and saw Gasto’s great blond halo of a hair in the fog, as the man was stroking one of his famed hounds, while one of his daughters tended another behind the line. They had told of their unhappiness to Aldbert once, drunk. I stood next to my father and could only frown at the thought. The ring, the fine, indeed hallowed thing was not ours, never would be, unless Bero died, but then the vermin son of Bero should die as well.

  And speaking of the vermin, it spoke.

  ‘Father says they slither like snakes and swim like damned seals,’ Maino, my cousin said as he jumped over a jagged rock not far. Maino was a restless soul and was stalking the mossy boulders between all our men, as if the man but a year older than I was in charge of the coming battle, checking that everything is just right. Hulderic grunted, not really fond of Maino, either. The fool was red-faced from too much ale and bloated from hot air and arrogance. We had receive
d our shields the same time, in the Yule feast Thing the year past, but he had a reputation for going berserk in battle, and men respected him, like they would anyone so loved by Woden. I was still the least of Hulderic’s men, which was something I resented, but in my heart I knew I had not deserved a place like the others, or even Maino.

  I had never killed.

  I had never been in a true battle, ever. I had chased after cow thieves, rowed the boat when we went after men who burned a hall of Hulderic’s oaths man, and did well enough, but I had never been shuddering with fear, guarding a man’s side with my shield, pushing against a snarling visage of a killer who wanted to push his weapon inside my skull.

  Maino had. He had killed four Svearna on a terrible raid to their closest village, one we had previously traded fox furs with, but who had cheated our traders and killed two men. Maino had danced before the spear wall, laughed at the vitka of the Svearna, challenged the biggest bastard to come out and fight and he had killed him with a single spear strike. And that feat was a song now, the poets and bards reciting it to my discomfort even in our hall. To hear them admire the idiot and then see Father reward them for the song? It left me gagging with rage. Grandmother would come to me, whisper words of calm in my ear, but I had a hard time calming myself when the gods seemed determined to keep my face under a pond, and deep inside I feared I’d be a disappointment to Hulderic. Father’s fame was of his own making, a fierce fighter, a clever lord, a ring-giver and a gracious host, but what would our family be like, should he die?

  I eyed Dubbe, Sigmundr, and Harmod. They would give back the weapons Hulderic gave them, and they would find new lords. They would not bow to me. They liked me, but I was a … nothing. That made me burn with rage, it did.