The First Heroes Read online

  Daemagh and I return to the high seat. “Are you well?” she murmurs.

  “I am again,” I reply, also softly. “I went . . . dreamy for a span, but that’s over with.”

  Her forefinger draws the branching sign of Mother Yortha. “May it never come upon you again. I was afraid for you.”

  “I don’t believe it was anything to fear,” I tell her and myself. “This is a good midsummer. Not like those our forebears knew, but better than many we’ve seen. We can hope it bodes well.”

  We take our seat, side by side. Our guests bench themselves along the walls, cheerful and expectant. Their gifts have been laid there, often wrapped in cloth, and now most of them take these things onto their laps. Serving wenches go about refilling their horns. Manservants bring mine in and stand holding them. I say my words, Daemagh says hers, and the giving begins. One by one, in order of rank or, for equal rank, age, the heads of households come up for their little speeches and their presentations, amber lumps, pelts, hides, carved tokens, meaning that a horse or a cow is tethered outside—no surprises, merely the best they can offer in these lean times. Mine to them are likewise traditional, bronze knives and ornaments, cloaks, tunics, well-made harness, a goblet from abroad that the dwindling trade has carried this far—the best I too can bestow, meager though my father would have reckoned it. So do we renew the ties that have held us together from of old.

  Meanwhile the humbler folk have gathered outside. My steward steps forth to let them know it is their turn. By twos and threes, some shyly, some brashly, they come in, stand before me, utter a few awkward words, and set down whatever they are carrying. I say thanks, Daemagh gives each one her smile, and I beckon a servant to pick the thing up and another to fetch over whatever I deem is a fair exchange—for a ham, a useful bronze tool; for a sheepskin, a small brooch; for a straw basket full of hazelnuts, a comb—It goes on. Making so many quick judgments is not quite easy. But it is part of being a lord.

  All the while, I am inwardly wondering what Ernu will bring, and why, and how I shall deal with it. If he gives me, say, a foxskin, a crock of honey would be a generous return, maybe overgenerous. But Conomar is with him—

  How I wish I had kept better track of them. I did at first, inquiring of peat carters and suchlike men when they came by. Ernu had taken a strange and dangerous slave into his hut. If Conomar did anything untoward, I wanted to know, and set matters right, hunting him down if I must. But the word was that he had settled in, seemingly without the men of the bog having to break him with beatings, and the two of them worked together. There were rumors of witchcraft, and presently news of a second hut built nearby. Others shunned the place. However, Ernu had never been very neighborly, and after his voyage he kept more and more to himself. He raised his brood to do the same. When they did meet with other folk, they talked surlily and no more than was needful. Yet the bog dwellers suffered no worse ills—sickness, injury, and the like—than they had always done. Whatever wizardry Conomar tried, and Ernu tried to learn, was either harmless or lacking in force at this distance from its homeland. As for that new hut, it was known that Ernu had given him a daughter early on, and it was said he got the others too when they became fit, if they lived. Anyhow, Ernu never turned them over to anyone else. So maybe Conomar had cast a spell on him, at least.

  I disliked hearing of such things, they posed no threat that I could see, and the gods knew how much else was pressing itself on my heed. After a while I stopped inquiring, then well-nigh forgot about it.

  Now, all at once—

  The last and lowliest of my people gives his gift, takes his gift, and leaves us. Ernu’s bulk darkens the doorway. He shambles forward, bold as a bear. Conomar strides beside him. Both have gone gray and lost teeth. Well, so have I, and even my Daemagh. The bones stand sharp in Conomar’s face above a thicket of beard. His eyes are the same wintry blue, defying me.

  The hall goes silent. A breath of strangeness has blown through it, and everyone sits taut, watching. The pair stop before the high seat.

  “Welcome again,” I say lamely. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Have you missed us, lord?” asks Conomar in our own language—mocking me, but I had better not respond. It would look as though I were afraid of him. Breath hisses between Daemagh’s lips. Otherwise we keep still and wait.

  “Well, we took a long time making a thing for you,” says Ernu. “The two of us. We wanted it should be great.” He holds it to his breast, bundled in a mildewy hide.

  “That is . . . well thought of.” Unless this be a curse. “Both of you?” I know no cause for Ernu to love me, but neither for him to hate me. Conomar, though—

  The Boian takes the word. While his speech is rough, bog-dweller speech, it flows, and a Celtic lilt is in it. “Lord Havakh, once we fought, and you fought bravely yourself. It’s bad luck that caught me, and you did not do as ill by me as you might have. You passed me on to a man who’s become my friend, and sure but the friend of my friend must be mine too.”

  Does he mean that? I wonder.

  Daemagh knows the story, of course. As often erstwhile, she asks the right question. “Has it not been a poor and lonely life for you?”

  “That it has, my lady.” His smile and his tone charm, but the eyes are unwavering. “Yet it could have been worse. When Ernu here and his house listened to my tales, poems, songs, I was no longer alone, not really. Homesick I have been, but not alone like a fish caught and thrown on the riverbank to wait for the beheading.”

  This has made it easier for them to keep their backs to the outside world, I understand. They’ve had a bard with them. And what else was he, is he? Oh, indeed I have underreckoned both the warrior and the bogman.

  “And he listened to more than that,” Conomar goes on. “We’ve come to work well together, the pair of us.”

  “I’m . . . glad to hear this,” I say for lack of better.

  Ernu sweeps a hand through the air. He fairly swells with his own importance—which is not just in his head, I know now. “At last, lord, we can bring you a worthy gift,” he booms. “You remember that sword we—you took when we fared yonder?”

  I can only nod. I gave it to the king when he came through on his yearly procession, and I believe he has kept it in his treasury. Since then, I also believe, some few iron knives and the like have trickled to the North, though I have not seen them.

  “Well, lord,” Ernu says, “this’n’s not so good, not yet, but it’s ours what we made for you, and there’ll be better to come.”

  He unrolls the bundle, tosses the skin to the floor, and reaches the thing up to me. It is an iron sword.

  Crudely done, yes. Already, holding it, staring at it, while gasps and mutters go through the hall, I can see it’s inferior to a good bronze blade, less sharp, dull-hued, the marks of the hammer everywhere on it—but it is long, a weapon not to thrust with but to hew with; it is iron.

  “Where did you get the metal?” is all I can find to ask.

  “From the bog, lord, the bog,” Ernu tells me victoriously. “Conomar knew to poke down with a stick and find the lumps of, of, uh, ore. He knew to make a kiln, and heat the stuff and pound it and, uh, quench it—He didn’t know the whole thing, lord. We worked it out together, year by year, the how of it. There’s much yet to work out, yes, I won’t say otherwise, but I will work it out, and already I can do tools and things worth swapping for. Already I’m a blacksmith.”

  And thereby a man of power, a man who may reforge our world.

  I force the eerie thought aside. Is it not high time that we in the North began to gain these skills? First, however—“This is a great gift,” I hear myself saying. “It’s hard to know what I can give back.”

  “We’ve thought on that—” he begins.

  “My freedom, my freedom,” Conomar croons. “A boat that takes me to the mainland, a weapon, a little gold or amber so I can pay when I need to, and I’ll make my way home. Is that too much, lord?”

  “No. You
shall have it,” I must say. “And you, Ernu, shall have honor and a home here,” he and his family and their uncouthness, well rewarded for each new discovery he makes, because he is now a blacksmith. I can only hope that soon there will be more.

  Yes, they thought far ahead, these two.

  I should be glad. Why do I find vengeful joy in Conomar’s eyes? He is a poet, it seems, and poets are seers. What foreknowledge may he have?

  I woke instantly, but lay for minutes bewildered. So much, so much—Rennie sat by the bed. The sight of him and of the objects around us, chairs, a desk, a computer, an Ansel Adams landscape framed and hung on the wall, a floor lamp lighted against the dusk gathering in the windows, those gave me back my reality. I was again the one I had always been. Jane and Myrtis were waiting for me at home.

  It was not like rousing from a dream, though. I remembered what I had been as clearly as I remembered them, with none of the vagueness and illogic of dreams. I loved them, but I had lived longer with Daemagh and she had borne me more children.

  No. She was Havakh’s. I must be clear about that.

  “Are you all right?” Rennie asked quietly.

  “Yes.” I got up. My feet were steady. “Just, well, overwhelmed.”

  “To be expected. Come on downstairs and relax awhile, start sorting your experiences out, then we’ll call either your wife or a taxi.” He had advised me not to drive here.

  Already my scientist thoughts were busy. Yet sorrow was rising and rising. When he poured me a glass of wine, I drained it indecently fast. Doubtless I wasn’t unique, for he had left the bottle on the table and gave me a refill without commenting. Instead, he let me brood while I sipped more slowly and the alcohol began to ease me a little.

  “Was your experience helpful?” he asked at last.

  “I learned a lot,” I mumbled.

  “I’d be fascinated to know. You’re not obliged, of course, and in fact you’ll probably take weeks to assimilate and organize your memories enough to write them up in even a preliminary fashion. But if you’re willing to send me a copy, I assure you it’ll have one mighty interested reader.”

  His commonplace words were exactly the sort I had want of. I realized that he knew it. “Sure, be happy to.” He must also know that need as well as courtesy would make me tell him a bit here and now. “I did enter the Northern Bronze Age. Not its glory days, the way I hoped. Its decline. The beginning of the end, in fact.”

  “I’m sorry. You know the system is poorly calibrated.”

  “Yeah. A matter of luck. And I know you won’t let me try again.” I managed a smile of sorts. To absolve him was a comfort to me, a slight easing of my sadness. “Not that I’d apply. You’re right about the risks.”

  “History isn’t melodrama. It’s tragedy,” Rennie said low. I had the impression that that was a quote. “And prehistory. Was your experience terrible?”

  I shook my head and slid more wine over my tongue, down my throat. “No, actually not. That is, while I was there I, uh, remembered some pretty grim events. But—” The knowledge surprised me; I hadn’t thought of it before “—to the ancestor I shared the mind of, they’d happened long ago, and to him, in his culture, they weren’t, well, they weren’t shocking. Regrettable, but not, uh, traumatic. Kind of like a veteran nowadays recalling combat. The actual hours I spent were quite peaceful.”

  His look sharpened, though his tone remained gentle. “Just the same, it’s touched you rather deeply, hasn’t it?”

  I sighed. “Yes. More and more, the more I hark back. I saw the end of a thousand wonderful years.”

  He sipped from his own glass while he arranged his words. “Not to push you, Mr. Larsen, especially right now. Explain at your leisure, if you like. In spite of studying your application, I’m afraid I’m basically ignorant in this area.”

  How good it was for me to go prosaic. “Oh, infinitely complicated, like every other subject. Still, I can give you a rough outline, what you’ll find in popular books.”

  I drew breath. “Copper and tin aren’t too easy to come by. Anyhow, they weren’t in the far past. So bronze was expensive. Not very many families could afford a full panoply of up-to-date arms and armor for a fighting man. They became the aristocrats. That didn’t necessarily mean tyranny. Sometimes they maintained a reasonably just rule of law. Minoan Crete seems to have been pretty happy, for instance. Like, later on, when the technology had gotten there, Bronze Age Scandinavia.

  “Iron, though, iron’s everywhere. It’s harder to extract and work on, but once you know how, anybody can. Barbarians learned, and swarmed forth. They brought Mycenean Greece, for instance, down into a long dark age.

  “When the Celts learned, they came out of their Danubian homeland and overran central and southern Europe, as far as Galatia in Turkey, Cisalpine Gaul in Italy, France, Spain, and the British Isles. Meanwhile they developed quite a remarkable culture. At last the Germans stopped them, later the Romans conquered most of them.

  “But I—I was back sometime in, I guess, the late sixth or early fifth century B.C. The Celts were cutting off the trade routes and the climate was going bad. Then the arts of ironworking reached Scandinavia. Danish bog iron isn’t awfully good, but it was a start, and Sweden has first-class ores. Eventually a peasant could have weapons almost as good as a noble’s. Between them, these changes spelled the death of the old order. For better or worse. I’m not saying which. The Celtic influence became so strong in the North that archaeologists define a Celtic Iron Age, before the Roman and the Germanic ones. Certainly some magnificent artwork got created. For a while, society was at least a bit more democratic, the Thing meetings and such. But—it was an age of upheaval, violence, even human sacrifice. And the violence went on and on and on, for two thousand years and more.”

  I stopped, exhausted, drained my glass again, and slumped, staring into it. “I see,” Rennie murmured. “Or half see. Let’s call for your ride home.”

  I nodded. Yes, best to get back and begin coming to terms with my grief. It was not Havakh’s, it was mine. He never really knew what was coming. But I had been him, and I did.