Maroboodus: A Novel of Germania (The Goth Chronicles Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

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
    T he 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