‘I’VE NEVER SEEN the like of this hall, Gunderic,’ Hagan said as they walked along the tiled floor.
Unlike the musty, smoky air of many feasting halls he had been in all over the north, the atmosphere in Gunderic’s was clear. The smoke from the torches in the wall brackets and the large fires that burned in the floor hearths rose into the apex of the roof but was then filtered out of the building somehow. Nor was it gloomy: light from the torches and lamps reached up to the lofty beams that held the stout wooden roof in place. There was one detail that puzzled Hagan however.
‘But why the tree?’ he said, nodding towards the thick trunk of what looked like an ash that sprouted from the midst of the tiled floor.
‘When we took possession of this hall it was a sorry sight,’ Gunderic said with a smile. ‘It had been abandoned for years and was falling down. The roof had fallen in and that tree had taken root in the broken floor. When we rebuilt the place I was going to cut it down but then I thought we should leave it. It struck me as symbolic. The rootless tree falls in a storm, but we Burgundars have strong roots. Even though – like this tree – we are now planted in a place where we should not be, we still grow and flourish.’
‘I heard you’ve only been in this land for a few years,’ Hagan said. ‘You’ve done a lot of work already.’
‘It’s been hard work, Hagan,’ Gunderic said. ‘And the restoration of this hall is just a reflection of what we have been doing with the people. We have been rebuilding the folk, bringing them back together, giving them back their songs, their tales, their customs – and their gods.’
‘It must have cost a fortune in gold,’ Hagan said.
The king shot a sharp glance at Hagan.
‘What does that matter?’ he said, eyes narrowing.
‘I just mean you’ve done well,’ Hagan said, disconcerted by the sharp change in his old friend’s demeanour and deciding to change the subject.
‘I could not have done it without this man,’ Gunderic said, laying a hand on the shoulder of Wodnas. ‘I’m glad you have already met Wodnas. He’s a marvel. He has helped us build up our army, taught them tactics and strategies and made them a fighting force. One to be feared!’
‘They need to be,’ Wodnas said. ‘They will be outnumbered in any war that comes to this realm. They will need to kill four men for every one of ours who falls.’
‘And they will,’ Gunderic said. ‘The Alemanni have already felt the sting of our blades on a few raids. But Wodnas is not just a war leader. He has taught us the value of our own gods – the old gods – and he and his people have taught us, reminded us, of how we honoured them once. He has become so important in the birth of our new nation that the ordinary people call him the Spirit and the Breath.’
Hagan cast a wary glance at the one-eyed old man who returned his look with an enigmatic smile.
‘We are about to ride to the Thingwas,’ Gunderic said. ‘You must come with us. You will meet the rest of my councillors. Are you still good at hunting?’
‘I suppose so. I enjoy it, anyway,’ Hagan said with a shrug.
‘I have a need for a new Hunt Master,’ Gunderic said. ‘The last one… let me down.’
He turned and strode off down the hall towards the door. Everyone else followed.
Returning out into the night air, Hagan saw that the crowd thronging the square outside had thinned a bit, and a steady stream of people were now heading towards the street that led to the city gate.
A band of warriors led horses for the king and the others into the square. Their leader was tall and heavily muscled. He wore a black cloak around his shoulders that bore the symbol of the Sun Wheel. He walked up to Gunderic and saluted him.
‘Allow me to introduce Geic,’ Gunderic said, slapping a hand down on the man’s meaty shoulder. ‘He is my personal bodyguard and makes sure I am safe wherever I go. Not that I have any enemies within my realm. He is also leader of a special company of men within our war horde you will be very interested to meet.’
The warrior smiled and held out his arm for Hagan to grasp.
‘Hagan here is a long-lost brother Burgundar,’ Gunderic said, laying a hand on Hagan’s shoulder. ‘He is the son of Godegisil, the last Champion of the Burgundars from the time before.’
Geic’s eyes widened with excitement.
‘We sing the old songs about the great deeds of Godegisil,’ he said. ‘You must come and see the lads. It would be an honour indeed.’
Hagan smiled and nodded. He wondered how they would all feel if he revealed the truth about his parentage.
They all mounted, including Hagan. Then the company made its way across the square, moving with the people down the street towards the gate. Two columns of mounted warriors formed up and rode on either side of them, keeping the mob away from the king and his chosen advisors. The ordinary folk did not seem hostile to Gunderic, indeed they waved, smiled and shouted as he rode past, but, Hagan supposed, it was best not to take any chances. If a foreign enemy wanted the king dead, the press of a crowd would be a good way to get close to him.
Once through the gates they rode along a path that ran between the harbour and the walls that surrounded the city. A gallows, like the one at the border, was set up and several bodies swung below it, suspended from nooses.
The thrill of nostalgic familiarity returned to Hagan’s heart. The tradition of the Burgundar Thingwas gathering went back beyond memory. At the appointed time every year the folk – the free ones at least – would all gather in one place. Decisions that affected the whole people were debated and concluded, law courts would hear disputes, important marriages would be arranged, and markets were held, as well the chance for much socialising, dancing and feasting. A large part of the Thingwas also involved religious customs and as they rode Hagan wondered what would happen here. From the age of nine to the fall of Vorbetomagus every Thingwas he had been to had been presided over by Bishop Ulfius. Who would lead the prayers here, and to whom would those prayers be offered?
Despite these slight misgivings he felt glad. Even though this was a strange land, it felt reassuring that the familiar customs he thought were lost forever were still being upheld.
They rode through woods, then a little way from the city the path opened onto a wide clearing in the trees. It was abuzz with activity. The roughly oval clearing was perhaps three hundred paces long and two hundred across. It was lit by many fires. Three large bonfires were ablaze, one in the centre of the clearing and one at either edge, while hundreds of torches were set in the ground all around the perimeter. Many among the crowd of people there also bore torches in their hands. At one end of the clearing was a large earthen mound. It was devoid of grass, making Hagan conclude the mound had been raised for the purpose of the gathering.
At the far end of the clearing three statues towered. They were wooden, each one carved from the single trunk of a mighty tree to resemble a human figure. No, not a human figure, Hagan remembered – a god. The statue on the right depicted Thunerass with his stark, glaring, always angry eyes, his long beard and the stone axe with which he ground out thunder and smashed all his enemies, grasped before him in huge fists.
The figure on the left was Ingwass, the one sometimes just called ‘the Lord’, the god who made the earth fertile. Hagan noted with a smirk that he had been carved in the old fashion, with a huge, erect male member. He wondered what Bishop Ulfius would have made of all this.
The figure in the middle was taller than the other two, as befitted the status of the supreme god, Tiwass. The huge figure was carved in his war gear: helmet, mail shirt, and with his mighty sword, the legendary Tyrfing, held before him. Tiwass the mighty, Tiwass the brave. The god who protected the Burgundars and inspired their warriors to victory. Who kept the wolf from the door.
There was no need for a representation of the fourth deity, Nerthus, for she was all around. She was the earth from whom the crops grew and who covered the dead in their graves.
The sight of the flame-lit effigies was both thrilling and frightening. Hagan felt something primal, savage and beast-like awake deep within his heart. These were the stern images of the Gods of his folk. From his childhood he remembered some of the old ones say that the Gods actually entered the statues and lived in them. Yet Bishop Ulfius had been just as stern and only a hard ruler like Gundahar could have succeeded in pushing the new faith on the tribe. Hagan could still remember the severed heads of those who refused baptism decorating the walls of Vorbetomagus. Ulfius had said the old gods were demons and now, looking at their images in the eerie light of the bonfires, Hagan could understand the sentiment.
Horns blasted and an expectant hush fell on the gathered crowd. The only sound was the crackling of the fires. All attention turned to the mound. There was a man climbing up it with stiff, arthritic strides. He reminded Hagan of a goat. He was very thin, scrawny even, and his pointed beard and long hair were white with age. He was clad in a long white robe that reached to his feet. For a long moment he looked out at the sea of faces below him, then he placed a hand across his chest and closed his eyes.
Every Thingwas began in the same way. The Law Speaker, a wise man of the tribe, recited the laws of the people from memory. Law was what held the people together and no one was supposed to be above it. The Law was the Law. It was the foundation of the land and without it the realm would fall apart.
The goat-like man began pronouncing the laws in a loud, resonant voice that was surprising, given the decrepit frame it was delivered from.
‘This is Forsetti,’ Gunderic said to Hagan from the side of his mouth. ‘He is our Law Speaker. He came to us along with Wodnas and he knows all of the laws and recites them before the district courts sit. He advises all our judges and chieftains on matters of the law.’
‘Is there no Burgundar who could be Law Speaker?’ Hagan said.
‘Alas, my father’s Law Speaker was the last Burgundar to hold the position,’ Gunderic said. ‘And he died at Vorbetomagus. As did his son. If it wasn’t for Forsetti to teach us the laws again we’d have lost them forever.’
‘If he came with Wodnas, won’t they be foreign laws?’ Hagan said. ‘The Aesir are related to the Goths and Vandals and followed their laws. We Burgundars had our own.’
‘Burgundars, Goths and Vandals are cousins,’ Gunderic said. ‘Both Ostrogoths and Visigoths. Our folk and the Goths are both descendants of Mannus, who first gave laws to men. Their laws are our laws.’
Hagan frowned and looked away. Something bothered him about this. The unbroken line of Burgundar Law Speakers that had stretched from the distant ancestor, Mannus, had been broken. This was the start of a new line, not the continuation of the old. He began to wonder what else had changed.
As the goat man droned on, a sorry-looking column of nine men were hustled and prodded into the clearing to stand before the statues of the Gods. They were stripped to the waist, their hands bound before them and their legs joined by chains. Hagan felt a growing sense of dread at the sight of them. He had never enjoyed this part of the opening of the Thingwas.
‘Slaves?’ he said.
‘Law-breakers,’ Gunderic said, his voice cold with evident distaste. ‘Some perverts and a few foreigners we caught who had entered the realm without permission. They are the worst. They say they are merchants but secretly they are spies, working for Rome to overthrow me or steal my gold.’
After a while Forsetti came to the end of his chanting. He raised his arms in the air and pronounced the Thingwas open. Horns blew again and folk cheered.
Then Hagan saw a line of women enter the clearing from the woods. There were ten of them, dressed in long hooded dark blue robes that sparkled and glittered in the firelight from the little seashells and pieces of glass sewn into their material. Each bore a long metal wand in the shape of a spinning distaff. The lead woman was followed by a large cat.
‘You have brought back the hellrūnes!’ Hagan said. The witches who had guided the magic rituals of the Burgundars had been the first to go when the new faith was introduced. ‘You’ll be telling me next the Swan Maidens are coming!’
He was grinning with nostalgic delight, but his grin faded when he saw the looks of sadness and dismay on the faces of the king and his sister.
‘Alas, no,’ Gunhild said. ‘They are all gone except for me.’
‘And there is something else also missing, old friend,’ Gunderic said. ‘You will see soon enough but you must prepare yourself.’
The witches took their hoods down and Hagan saw that their leader was the pretty young woman he had seen in Gunderic’s feasting hall earlier.
‘This is the Lady Freya,’ Gunderic said. ‘She is also one of the easterners who came here with Wodnas. She now leads religious practice in our land. Like Forsetti she sits on my personal council.’
Hagan raised his eyebrows at the thought that here was another foreigner of the Aesir in such a key position in the realm but he said nothing.
Men and women with drums, flutes and pipes stood behind the hellrūnes and began a pounding, rhythmical tune that the women in the long blue robes started to gyrate to. As they did so they began chanting, howling galdrass – holy prayers to the spirits and the Gods – to the night sky. Some of the crowd joined in. As the song continued it got louder and louder, and the witches spun faster and faster, their long unbound hair trailing through the air as they turned round and round. As they themselves spun, they also began to step around in a circle that ringed the captive men before the statues.
After several verses the galdrass finished with a great, final shout. As the last word echoed through the trees the hellrūnes ceased spinning almost as one. Hagan was astonished that they did not collapse onto the grass, dizzy, in a heap.
The sudden hush that fell on the clearing was almost a shock. It was broken by the whimpering of one of the bound men. Like everyone else he knew what would come next. A stream of urine ran down the leg of the prisoner beside him.
The warriors guarding the captives forced each one to turn so he faced the three towering images of the Gods. The witches gathered into three groups of three. Each group approached a different prisoner.
Freya screeched some inarticulate cry to the statue of Tiwass, then the witches fell upon the men before them. From each group of three, one woman snaked a noose made of animal pelt around his neck and hauled it tight. As he began to choke a second hellrūne struck the prisoner on the crown of the head with a stone axe. As he crumpled to his knees the third woman sliced his throat open with a knife.
‘The threefold death,’ Hagan said in a hoarse voice. ‘I have not seen this since I was a boy.’
‘The fitting way to open the Thingwas,’ Gunderic said, puffing out his chest. ‘Sacrifice to the Gods to give thanks and ask they bless us in the time to come.’
The hellrūnes moved to the next three prisoners and killed them the same way. Then the final three.
‘Your father only used to kill one,’ Hagan said.
‘We have much to be thankful for,’ the king said. ‘Perhaps if my father had been more generous and not forsaken the Gods he would not have perished at Vorbetomagus. Now come! You shall meet the rest of my council of the realm.’
He led Hagan, Gunhild and Sigurd up onto the mound where Forsetti waited and by now a line of folding chairs had been set out. The seat in the middle of the row was much grander than the others, with gold and silver threads embroidering twisting beasts on the back and sides. Gunderic sat in it. Gunhild took the seat on his left. Wodnas, still barefoot, padded up after them and sat to Gunderic’s right. Several others climbed up the mound as well, each one stopping to pay respects to the king as they passed to take their own seats.
First came a thin man with a long grey beard. He was old, older than Wodnas, and had lost a lot of the hair on the top of his head. His eyes were bright though and he looked at Hagan with a curious expression on his intelligent looking face.
‘This is Kvasir,’ Gunderic said. ‘He has been re-teaching our poets and bards the songs of olden times and the sagas of the Gods that were lost when my father made us Christians. He runs a school here in Geneva so the knowledge will never be lost again. While the Thingwas is running he will meet with poets and bards from the rest of the realm and they will exchange more songs.’
The man nodded then went off to take his seat further down the row.
‘You have a poet on your council of the realm?’ Hagan said in a quiet voice, frowning.
‘This is a council of the leaders of the people, not just war,’ Gunderic said. ‘In all decisions that affect everyone it is imperative that all parts of our society are represented and have a say. Then all will support the action taken. Wodnas has taught me this.’
‘Has he?’ Hagan said, glancing at the one-eyed man and beginning to wonder just who really ran this new kingdom of the Burgundars.
Next came another man in a brown cloak. His long, straight hair was so blond it was almost white, though he was middle-aged and his hair could well have been changing to that colour. He had no beard and a smooth complexion that was almost like a woman’s. He regarded Hagan with an enigmatic smile that was not unlike the one Wodnas often wore.
‘This is my old travelling companion, Lokke,’ Wodnas said, laying a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘He’s a devious bastard and great at telling stories. That sometimes gets the better of him so be careful which of his words you believe.’
‘Go and ride yourself, Wodnas,’ Lokke said, still smiling.
‘Like I said, he’s an old friend,’ Wodnas said.
‘Lokke looks after knowledge,’ Gunderic said. ‘Along with Wodnas’ Raven Warriors he gathers information on what our enemies are up to so we cannot be surprised again as we were at Vorbetomagus.’
Hagan nodded, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible. What did this man Lokke know of the plans of Aetius towards the treasure? Was this all just a sham and all these people already knew he had been to Ravenna? Perhaps it was best to admit everything before it was too late, and to Hell with whatever they did with the dwarf.
Lokke took a seat as Freya, fresh from her religious duties, arrived at the top of the mound. She bobbed a curtsey in the king’s direction then regarded Hagan with a beguiling smile and quite enchanting eyes. For a moment Hagan felt captivated by her gaze until he noticed the splatters of fresh blood on her cheeks and hands.
This was a strange collection for a council of the realm, a far cry from the band of burly heroes who Gunderic’s father would have had in a similar conference. At times of crisis Gundahar had gathered together the hardest men of the tribe and those most experienced in war – noblemen who were the elders of their clans. Gunderic’s had a poet, three strange men and two women, all of them, except Gunhild, foreigners.
‘And in case you think our folk are now just led by strangers,’ Gunderic said, as if reading Hagan’s mind, ‘the rest of the council is made up of the Lords of the Burgundar clans. Sigurd, Lord of the Volsungs, you have already met. My sister and I represent the Nibelungs.’
The two men who arrived at the top of the mound next wore black cloaks like Gunderic, Gunhild and Sigurd. The first was a sallow-faced, balding man in his thirties with a long white scar down his left cheek and a lightning symbol embroidered on his cloak. The second was a young man who had a Sun Wheel on his shoulder. These were the representatives of the Leuhtung and the Solung Burgundar clans.
‘This is Brenwic, Lord of the Leuhtungs,’ Gunderic introduced the first man. ‘And this is Guntram, Lord of the Solungs.’
Both men nodded then took seats.
‘It seems all the clans are represented,’ Hagan said, his voice becoming hoarse. ‘Except one.’
He turned to the king; his eyes glittered in the light of the fires.
‘Be strong, old friend,’ Gunderic said. ‘I have some sad news to tell you.’