"03 - King and Emperor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

"All right, all right," Brand conceded. "Maybe he's not mad, just strange, he always has been. But you know what I mean all the same. He has won many battles and survived many strange events. But each one seems to take something out of him. And it isn't put back."
The other three considered the matter: Hund the leech, priest of Ithun and Englishman, Thorvin the smith, priest of Thor and Dane, Farman the visionary, a man whose race was by now forgotten.
"He lost something when he killed Sigurth," volunteered Hund. "He lost that lance. None of us knows how he came by it, exactly, but he valued it for some reason or another. They say it is the lance the new Emperor always carries with him, and Hagbarth says he saw the two fight, and Bruno run off with it. Maybe it is the good luck sign that the Christians call it, and that is what he has lost."
Brand shook his head decisively. "No. We have experts on luck here, and he has not lost that. He is as lucky as he ever was. No, it is something else. Something to do with how he feels about himself."
"He lost friends that day at the Braethraborg also," Hund suggested again. "The young man from the Ditmarsh, and Cuthred the champion. Could he feelЧguilty, maybe, because he lived and they did not?"
Brand, the veteran warrior, chewed on the thought, not much liking the taste of it. "I have known things like that," he conceded eventually. "But I don't think that's it. To tell the truth"Чhe looked round before going on. "I think it's to do with that damned woman."
"Godive, Alfred's wife?" said Hund, shocked. He had known them both since all three were small children.
"Yes, her. She talks to him as if he was a dog, and he flinches like one that has been beaten too often. But not just her. There was the other one too, Ragnhild, the queen in Norway. She took something from him. He did not kill her, but he caused her death, and her son's. If he feels guilty it is not about the men he has hurt, but about the women. That's why he will not take another one."
A silence. This time it was Hund's turn to chew on a thought and not relish the taste of it.
"Talks to him like a dog," he said in the end. "My name means 'dog,' as you know. My master, Shef's stepfather, thought that was all I would ever be to him. But he gave Shef a dog's name too, in hatred. We see new folk smile all the time when they hear us say 'King Shef,' as if we were saying 'King Bowlegs' or 'King Fang.' Norsemen cannot even pronounce it. You know Alfred has asked him several times to take another name, one that both English and Norse could say and honor: Offa or Atli, some hero-name from the past. Yet you say his is a hero-name, Thorvin? Perhaps it is time you explained that to us. For I feel whatever is happening here is the gods' business as well as ours. Tell us the whole story. And tell us why the Way has accepted him in the end, as the One who is to come. The three of us here, after all, know more of his story than anyone else in the world. And Farman is our guide to the gods. Maybe between the four of us we can judge it."
Thorvin nodded, but hesitated a while, to organize his thoughts.
"It's like this," he said in the end. "There is a very old story the Danes tell. It has never been turned into a poem, and it is not part of our holy books, or not one that all accept. I used to think little of it as well. But the more I reflect on it, the more it seems to me that it has a ring about it, a stink of old age. I believe it is a true story, and that it has meaning in the same way that the lays of VЎlund or of dead Balder do.
"One way that it is told is this. Many years agoЧabout the time that Christians say their Christ was bornЧthe Danes found themselves without a king. They had driven out the last of their royal line, that Hermoth who is said to be the favorite warrior of Othin in Valhalla, for his cruelties. But without a king the cruelties grew even worse. It was an age when brother slew brother and no man's life was safe except when he had weapons in hand.
"Then one day, on the shore of the sea, they found a shield washed up, and in the shield there was a baby boy. His head was resting on a sheaf of barley, but other than that he had nothing. They took him in and reared him, and in time he became the mightiest king the North has ever known. He was so warlike that he made peace across the North. In his time, they say, a virgin could walk unescorted from one end of the North to the other, with gold on every finger and a bag of it at her girdle, and no man would stay her or offer her so much as a foul word. Danish kings still claim, some of them, to be of his line, the SkjЎldungar, the Shieldings, for he was called SkjЎld after the shield they found him in.
"That is one story," Thorvin went on, "and you can see it makes a kind of sense. The shield gives the name, the Shieldings. And because the boy came from nowhere men say that the gods sent him, because they saw the misery of the Danes and pitied it.
"But in other ways it does not make much sense, and that is why I think it is genuine. Yes, Brand, I see you raise your eyebrows, but what I am telling you is that the good sense of the gods is not the same as the good sense of men. Consider: the gods pitied the misery of the Danes? Since when do our gods pity anything? We would not worship them if they did. And anyway, what about this sheaf? It is always in the story, but no one knows why. I think that is the key to understanding.
"I think that the story as we have it has been told wrong, over the years. I think the name of the king was once heard as SkjЎld Skjefing, or in English Scyld Sceafing. Some storyteller somewhere took the name and made a story out of it. He said the king was called 'Shield' becauseЧwhy, because he had floated to land on a shield. And he was called 'Sheafing' becauseЧbecause there must have been a sheaf with him. The names came from the things. Even the story about floating to land came from the idea of the hollow shield. Now, I do not think any of that was true.
"Instead I think there was a real king called 'Shield.' Many of us have names like that. Your name, Brand, means 'sword.' I have met men called Geirr, 'spear,' or Franki, 'battle-axe.' There was a king called Shield. He was called Sheafing not because of having his head on a sheaf, but because he was the son of Sheaf. Or Shef."
Thorvin seemed to think he had finished his explanation.
After a while Hund prompted him further. "But what does this story, this old story, mean?"

Thorvin fingered his hammer pendant. "In my viewЧand this is not shared by others of the College, indeed some would call me a heretic if they heard me say it, Farman, as well you know. In my view it means three things. One, these kings were remembered, or invented, for a reason. I think the reason is that they set our world on a track, a track it had not gone before. I think the war-king who made peace, Shield, he was the one who organized men into nations and gave the North law: law better than the strife of brother against brother that they had had before. I think the peace-king, Sheaf, gave us barley and crops and fields, and turned us from the ways of our ancestors, who lived like the Finns, hunting in the waste. Or like your cousins the Huldu-folk, Brand. Meat-eaters and wanderers.
"Two, I think the track they set us on was the right track, and men have never quite forgotten it. But since then we have climbed back onto the wrong track: the track of Hermoth, Othin's favorite. War and piracy. We give it proud names and call it drengskapr, the hermanna vegr, gallantry, the warriors' way. You do that, Brand, I know. But it comes down to the strong robbing the weak."
"I prefer to rob the strong," growled Brand, but Thorvin ignored him.
"I think King Shef has been sent here to return us to the right track. But that track is not the track of Hermoth, or of Othin. Indeed I think our king bears Othin's enmity. He will not sacrifice to him. He will not take his token.
"And now I come to what some would call heresy. I cannot help remembering that all this was supposed to happen at the same time as the Christians say their White Christ came. And why did he come? Why did Sheaf and Shield come? I can only say this, and it is the third opinion I hold.
"I think the world at some time endured some great maim, some great wound that could not be cured. Balder died, we say, and the light went out of the world. The Christians have their foolish story of an apple and a serpent, but it comes to the same point: the world was maimed, and it needed a healer.
A healer from outside. The Christians say the healer was the Christ and the healing is done, and so we can all sit on our backsides and wait for rescue. Hah! We say maybeЧor we used to sayЧthat two kings came, to start us on our way. Then we lost it. It is my view that the king we have, not called Shef by chance, has come to set us on the right way again, like his many times grandsire. For I think that both he and his ancient namesake are the begetting of a god, the god Rig. Not older, maybe, than Othin, but wiser."
After a pause Hund said, fingering his Ithun-pendant, "I cannot see where the heresy lies in that, Thorvin. Not that we are Christians in any case to tell men what to think."
Thorvin stared into the distance, out across road and fields. "I am beginning to suggest that the Way-stories and the Christ-story are of the same kind. Both false, both garbled. Or, it may be, both true. But true fragments of a greater whole."
Brand laughed, suddenly. "And you may be right, Thorvin! But while you may persuade me, and Hund here, and even the council of the priests of the Way if you talk to them long enough, I doubt you will get far in persuading the Pope of the Christians in Rome to go along with you. And agree that maybe the Way has some truth on its side too!"
Thorvin laughed with him. "No, I shall not go to Rome and ask for an audience to put my point of view. Nor will I forget that whatever one thinks of the Christians, the Church remains our deadly enemy. And the Empire now that supports it. They say our king had Bruno the German in the sights of his crossbow that day. He should have pulled trigger."
For the first time Farman spoke, the pale thin face unaffected by emotion. "The maim," he repeated. "The maim the world has suffered, that this second Shef, or second Savior, has been sent to heal. In our myth that is the death of Balder, brought about by the tricks of Loki. But we all know that Othin tried to have Balder released from Hel, and failed, and chained Loki beneath serpent-fangs in vengeance. Vengeance may be good, but how can one see any cure?"
"If there is a cure," said Thorvin, "it will come about through something mere sense cannot predict. But our friend ShefЧhe is wise, but often good sense is not in him."
"And so we are back to our real question," Hund concluded. "Whether he is man or half-god, crazy or driven, what are we to do with him?"
Farman looked out at the shape of a speeding coach on the road, trailed by a plume of dust and thirty galloping horses. "I cannot be sure," he said. "I have seen nothing in my dreams of this. But from all I have heard, I would say that this man has unfinished business with the gods. Maybe it is his destiny to regain the Holy Lance, maybe to burn the gates of Rome, I do not know. But while he sits here he is rejecting it, turning his gaze away."
"Fretting about women he left behind many years ago," agreed Brand.
"It may be he needed the chance to draw breath, even to grow to be a man," Farman went on. "But he will grow no more if he stays here playing muddy games with yokels."
"We must get him on board a ship," said Thorvin. "Maybe it will take him where the gods mean him to be, like the naked child floating on the shield in the story."
"But this time he must not go alone," said Farman. "You are his friends. You must go with him. As for meЧI will wait for clearer guidance."
From outside the notes of the bagpipe squealed their discordant warning.

Chapter Four
Ghaniya, half-brother to the Caliph of Cordova, well understood the importance of his mission to the North, to the savage, half-naked, fire-worshiping majus, the devil-people, as he thought of them. That did not prevent him from hating every moment of it. He was a man of certain and unquestioned loyalty. If he had not been, of course, he would not have survived his brother's succession to the divan, the cushioned throne of Cordova. His brother might be called, in honor of his great ancestor, Abd er-Rahman, the Servant of the Compassionate One, but there was no compassion in his nature. When he succeeded to his father, the sword and the bowstring had been busy. The male children of his father's harem had been considered carefully and attentively. The children of true Arabs, descendants of the Quraysh, had died soon: they might have been centers for future rebellion. The descendants of Christian slave-women had died also, if they seemed unusable: some of the best had been given posts in exile, under supervision, often on the frontier against the feeble Christian princedoms and dukedoms of the mountainous North of Spain. Ghaniya, however, had been the son of a Berber woman. His blood not pure enough to attract supporters, yet he was the child of no mustarib either, no would-be-Arab, as they contemptuously called the children of Christians who had converted to Islam for food, or advancement.
Ghaniya knew he was good enough to be used. Not good enough to be feared. It satisfied his ambition, at least for the time. He had no intention of risking once again the leather carpet that stood before the divan, with by it the giant slaves with their scimitars forever drawn.
It was a good sign also that he had been sent on this mission. He knew how seriously his half-brother took it, as he had taken the news from Mallorca and from Sicily. Not that a Caliph of Cordova could fear the activities of the Christians, whether Greek or Frank. The city of Cordova in the year 875 had fully half a million inhabitants: more than the villages of Rome and Byzantium and all the capitals of all the Franks put together. Every day three thousand minarets called the faithful to prayer. Every day a thousand carts rolled into the city with food for the citizens, drawn from the immensely fertile valley of the Guadalquivir, and all of Andalusia beyond it. The Christians could not reach Cordova if all the Faithful did was merely to stand before them to block their way.
And yet er-Rahman his brother had listened with great care to the account of Mu'atiyah, the pupil of bin-Firnas: as he had also to the reports of his merchants returning from Egypt and reporting on the panic and fear among the Tulunids there. He had condescended even to explain his thoughts to his half-brother.
"We need the islands," he had said. "They guard our traders, they guard our shores. Also," he went on, "a caliph must think of the future. For many years we have pressed back the unbelievers, from the day our ancestor landed on the shore at Jeb el-Tarik, and told his men the sea was behind them and the enemy in front, and there was nothing for them but victory or death. Now we come upon a check. Is it a check, or is it the moment when the balance tilts?" Er-Rahman, knowing only a tideless sea, had no idea of the image of the tide turning, but if he had he would have used it. "If our enemies even think the balance is tilting," he concluded, "they will gain heart. We must thrust them back once more.
"And another thing. We have always known the Christians our inferiors in all the arts of civilization. Where have they such a man as bin-Firnas"Чhe stretched a hand to his listening pupilЧ"and yet now they come on our shores with weapons we cannot match. We must know more. Our enemies will not tell us. Yet our enemies have enemies too, or so we hear. The news came years ago of the defeat of a great host of the ferengis, the Franks, at the hands of those who were not Christians. Seek them out, my brother. Find what they know. Bring us help, or knowledge. Take with you the pupil of bin-Firnas, to report on whatever mechanic arts the savages have been able to learn."
He had waved a hand. And by doing so he had sent Ghaniya with his guards and his companions, and his adviser the pupil of bin-Firnas, on this terrible expedition into the land of everlasting wind and cold.