“It is apt to be the way of kings.” The Wanderer’s tone was like iron given a voice. “What is your part in the business?”
“My… my father was also a son of Aiulf, who died young. My uncle Embrica and his wife raised me. I’d been on a long hunting trip. When I came back, the steading was an ash heap. Folk told me how Ermanaric’s men had had their way with my foster mother before they slit her throat. She… was kin to this house: I sought hither.”
He sank back in his chair, struggled not to sob, tossed off his beaker of wine.
“Aye,” Tharasmund said heavily, “she, Matha-swentha was my cousin. You know that high families often marry across tribal lines. Randwar here is more distant kin to me; nonetheless, we share some of that blood which has been spilt. Also, he knows where the treasure is, sunken beneath the Dnieper. It is well that Weard sent him off just then and so spared him from capture. That gold would buy the king too much might.”
Liuderis shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he muttered. “After everything I’ve heard, I still don’t. Why does Ermanaric behave thus? Has a fiend possessed him? Or is he only mad?”
“I think he is neither,” Tharasmund said. “I think in some measure his counselor Sibicho – not even a Goth, but a Vandal in his service – Sibicho has hissed evil into his ear. But Ermanaric was always ready to listen, oh, yes.” To the Wanderer: “For years has he been raising the scot we must pay, and calling free-born women to his bed whether they will or no, and otherwise riding roughshod over the folk. I think he means to break the will of those chieftains who have withstood him. If we yield to this latest thing, we will be the readier to yield to the next.”
The Wanderer nodded. “Yes, you’re doubtless right. I would say, besides, that Ermanaric envies the power of the Roman Emperor, and wants the same for himself over the Ostrogoths. Moreover, he hears of Frithigern rising to oppose Athanaric among the Visigoths, and means to scotch any such rival in his kingdom.”
“We ride to demand justice,” Tharasmund said. “He must pay double weregild, and at the Great Moot vow upon the Stone of Tiwaz to abide henceforward by olden law and right. Else I will raise the whole country against him.”
“He has many on his side,” the Wanderer warned: “some for troth given him, some for greed or fear, some who feel you must have a strong king to keep your borders, now when the Huns are gathering themselves together like a snake coiling to strike.”
“Yes, but that king need not be Ermanaric!” blazed from Randwar.
Hope kindled in Tharasmund. “Lord,” he said to the Wanderer, “you who smote the Vandals, will you stand by your kindred again?”
Trouble freighted the answer. “I… cannot fight in your battles. Weard will not have it so.”
Tharasmund was mute for a space. At last he asked, “Will you at least come with us? Surely the king will heed you.”
The Wanderer was wordless longer, until there dragged from him: “Yes, I will see what I can do. But I make no promises. Do you hear me? I make no promises.”
And thus he fared off beside the others, at the head of the band.
Ermanaric kept dwellings throughout the realm. He and his guards, wisemen, servants traveled between them. News was that soon after the killings he had boldly moved to within three days’ ride, of Heorot.
Those were three days of scant cheer. Snow lay in a crust over the lands. It creaked beneath hoofs. The sky was low and flat gray, the air still and raw. Houses huddled under thatch. Trees stood bare, save where firs made a gloom. Nobody said much or sang at all, not even around the campfire before crawling into sleeping bags. But when they saw their goal, Tharasmund winded his horn and they arrived at a full gallop. Cobblestones rang, horses neighed as the Teur-ings drew rein in the royal courtyard. Guards to about the same number stood ranked before the hall, spearheads agleam though pennons adroop. “We will have speech with your master!” Tharasmund roared.