Andrew J. Offutt - Cormac 02 - The Tower of Death

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Eirrin. Love of the greater gods, Eirrin. It’s liquid music the name was. A name that called up, that meant, the
world’s bravest and fairest men and women, thick-maned horses, red and brindle cattle, rivers like molten
silver with gold shining in their beds, and great forests old as time. Poets and craftsmen Eirrin produced,
whose work vied with that of nature; learned men and women of supernatural wisdom and power. Splendour,
and wealth, and delights. Eirrin. All barred to him—because of the treachery of kings...
In vengeance and bitterness and hatred did the reiver Cormac savage the shores of Gol’s kingdom. Mothers
frightened miscreant youngsters with stories of Captain Partha, Captain Wolf, the scarred raider with eyes
cold and grey and glittering as the metal of his sword. Cormac an-Chluin he was: Cormac the Wolf.
The Cormac mac Art Series
THE MISTS OF DOOM by Andrew J. Offutt
THE TOWER OF DEATH by Andrew J. Offutt & Keith Taylor
WHEN DEATH BIRDS FLY by Andrew J. Offutt & Keith Taylor
TIGERS OF THE SEA by Robert E. Howard
THE SWORD OF THE GAEL by Andrew J. Offutt
THE UNDYING WIZARD by Andrew J. Offutt
THE SIGN OF THE MOONBOW by Andrew J. Offutt & Keith Taylor
War of the Gods on Earth Series by Andrew J. Offutt
THE IRON LORDS
SHADOW OUT OF HELL
THE LADY OF THE SNOWMIST
THE TOWER OF DEATH
Son of an Irish king, in bitter exile from the land of his
birth and the woman of his heart, Cormac mac Art
has made a life and a name for himself with his wits
and his strength and his bright, deadly sword.
In The Tower of Death Andrew J. Offutt and Keith
Taylor bring to life the young Cormac, newly exiled,
filled with the grim determination to prove his
manhood on the treacherous sea lanes of fifth
century Europe. Along with Wulfhere the Dane, whose
name is as feared as Cormac’s own, the Irish prince
turns pirate and is too successful at his chosen
vocation for his own good...
ROBERT E. HOWARD’S
OTHER GREAT HERO
CORMAC MAC ART
THE TOWER OF DEATH
An Ace Fantasy Book / published by arrangement with
the Estate of Robert E. Howard
PRINTING HISTORY
First printing / August 1982
Second printing / February 1984
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1982 by Andrew J. Offutt; Keith Taylor; and Glenn Lord
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.
ISBN: 0-441-81925-7
Ace Fantasy Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Contents
Introduction:
The Cormac mac Art Cycle
Prologue
One
Trap for a Pirate
Two
Two Pirates, A Trap, and Clodia
Three
The Bay of Treachery
Four
The Horror in the Lighthouse
Five
Irnic Break-ax
Six
The King of Galacia
Seven
Bargain in Silver
Eight
A Bargain with Pirates
Nine
Zarabas of Palmyra
Ten
Night of the Demon-Weed
Eleven
The Sirens
Twelve
A Lovely Afternoon for a Murder
Thirteen
Lucanor of Antioch
Fourteen
The sea-spawn
Fifteen
The Last Monster
The Tower of Death
ANDREW J. OFFUTT
AND
KIETH TAYLOR
ACE FANTASY BOOKS
NEW YORK
Introduction:
The Cormac Mac Art Cycle
Robert E. Howard began the recounting of the fifth century Irish hero’s exploits in Tigers of the Sea, which
Ace has reprinted. They and the keeper of the REH papers and the Howard literary agent then asked me to
continue the cycle (none of which was printed during Howard’s lifetime).
My first three novels followed Tigers chronologically. The fourth went back to recount the treachery-born
events that led to Cormac’s becoming outlaw, then exile from Erin. Later forced also to flee
Alba/Caledonia/Scotland, he bitterly took to the sea as a reiver or reaver: pirate. He met the giant Wulfhere
the Dane in prison. Later still Cormac became the only Gael aboard Raven, a Wulfhere-commanded ship
crewed by Danes. Some of their exploits formed the four stories in Howard’s Tigers.
This is the fifth of the novels I have written, but the second in chronological order. It precedes Tigers by a few
years. Herein the mac Art is younger—indeed, he lies about his age because of that embarrassment of youth
we have all experienced. An exile, he has not forgotten her he left behind: Samaire. He loved her as he loved
their mutual land: Erin or Eirrin.
He is a grim and sombre fellow. He is to become less so only in later years, when he re-meets Samaire and
gains purpose and goal—and Irish shores. With Keith Taylor, this chronicle returns to that Cormac of less
optimism and more dourness, and a different part of the world. Cormac is the exiled pirate among foreigners,
crafty and untrusting.
Howard clearly indicated that mac Art’s activities were hardly confined to the area of the British Isles. Rome
had withdrawn from Britannia after four centuries of interference and domination. Britons were dying to
invading Saxons and Jutes and Angles who would give the land its new name: Angle-land or Angle-terre:
England. (Strangely, some Britons had fled from the continent whence came the conquerors. There they
founded lesser Britain—Brittany—and clung to it.)
On that continent, the legacy of Rome’s pomp and paraphernalia of governance were more evident. The land
was already in division among many lords. Soon there would be a king in Italy! Though Frank-land, France,
did not exist, the Franks were on the rise with their terrible throwing-axes so like a pre-charge artillery
barrage. The Roman title comes remained. It would become the French comte, which we call count. And
though no Count has ever held demesne in my Kentucky, this state is divided into 120 count-ies.
A new age was aborning, in Europe. With the importation of the concept of stirrups, the age of
chivalry—cheval-ry or horse-ry—would grow out of the chaos left by Rome’s fall, and endure until some fool
went and invented gunpowder. (Surely not Hank, protagonist of Mark Twain’s sf-hf novel!)
In the A.D. 480s, Cormac and Wulfhere were raiding along the coast of what would become France, and soon
they had to cross the treacherous Bay of Biscay to northwestern Spain—and honest employment!
Keith Taylor knows about twice as much about that area at that time as Andrew Offutt. That’s why he is
needed as cohort in this novel and its direct sequel, When Death Birds Fly, and the others we have outlined,
leading all the way to Wulfhere’s homeland, Danemark. Without Keith Taylor, this novel would be about half
as good.
We have never met. We live precisely halfway around this planet from each other. Yet there are few lines in
this book that are pure Taylor or pure Offutt. When we collaborate, we collaborate. (How? Expensively,
between here and Australia!)
Sir Keith has worked out and sent over a fascinating astrological compilation for both Cormac and Wulfhere.
Maybe it is pure imagination and maybe it isn’t. What do you think their signs are? (Well actually, no, I didn’t
say that we are believers—or that we are not.)
The zodiacal signs of these two troublesome seawolves are of no concern to Emperor Zeno over in
Constantin-opolis, or to his comes of Burdigala, the Count of Bordeaux. The Dane and the Irisher have been
raiding all too successfully, and are about to be in big trouble.
—Andrew Offutt
Kentucky, U.S.A.
PROLOGUE
“D’ye command war-galleys or wash-tubs? And are they fighting men at your orders-—or babes messing their
swaddling linen?”
Harshly the demand was snapped out, and harsh was the mood of the speaker. Count Guntram of Burdigala*
had lately come in for scathing rebuke on the grounds that he’d let his master’s law be flouted. Not a man to
suffer in silence was milord Count, or to deny his underlings their just share of the king’s anger. In truth he
had just vented but a tiny measure of his frustration on the stolid officer before him.
*Bordeaux
Athanagild Beric’s son looked back at the count levelly. “My men are warriors, by God! As for the ships—”
Athanagild shrugged and the movement brought a twinkling flash from the silver-gilt brooch that pinned his
long green cloak to his shoulder. “My lord has inspected them himself. There are not enough, and they are
old, and no others abuilding. You said it yourself, so don’t tell me I’m scrabbling for excuses.”
Guntram scowled and his face worked, but he told the officer no such thing. The man was right. Rome was a
dying Colossus and the world it had created was coming apart all around the deathbed.
The count turned, still scowling, to stare out the unshuttered window at the courtyard of his mansion. The
softly playing fountain, the colonnaded walk, the tiled roofs; all boasted silently of Roman architecture, and at
least a hundred years old. The fountain leaped and shimmered prettily—and if it stopped Guntram of
Burdigala knew it would hardly be worthwhile trying to have it repaired. The matter of warships was
comparable.
But no, he mused, not quite; the matter of constructing and repairing warships was not quite the same.
Proculus, head of the municipal curia (who had brought two shrewd members of that body with him) coughed.
Guntram turned slowly back, wearing a sour and challenging expression.
“My lord Comes,” Proculus said primly, “it is not that shipwrights cannot be had. There are enough and to
spare, it would seem, to knock merchant vessels together.” He stressed the one word with distaste, while
blandly ignoring the men of commerce also present in the chamber. “Fashioning warcraft, no doubt, is a
different matter, and the men able to do it fewer—”
“And most of them,” Athanagild put in, for he commanded the royal fleet based in the Garonne, “would liefer
work for shares in pirate loot.”
The comes or count banged a sword-strengthened fist on his oaken table. Objects jumped, and so did his
secretary, who was sorely needed since my lord Count could neither read nor write. The count did not notice
how he’d disrupted the poor man—or paid no mind, at any rate.
“Pirates!” he roared. “By the heart of Arius, I’ve gone through reports of pirates all morning until I’m fairly
sickened. That shipping isn’t safe is ill enow. That these northern thieves have dared pillage ashore is enough
to make me—me, a man who followed king Euric into battle after battle—wish for Judgment Day!”
“Their numbers alone make them difficult to destroy as rats, my lord.” The smooth, rather soft voice came
from Philip the Syrian, a swarthy man and pockmarked. He blinked heavy eyelids. “The noble Commander
Athanagild must cope with Breton corsairs, Saxons and Jutes out of Britain—King Hengist notable among
them—aye, and their cousins settled in the Charente, upon his very doorstep as it were—”
“And the Frisians,” Count Guntram snarled, “and the Heruls, the Danes—that whole damned boiling sea of
North Sea robbers! Not to speak of the Scoti who sometimes take the notion that our coasts are the very
place for a happy little junket, and Vandals up from the south to try their luck! Hooves of the Devil! I live here
too, merchant! Their numbers are greater than rats!” The count’s big hand, which bore heavy gold rings and
dirty nails in almost equal numbers, lifted to stroke his pepper-and-salt beard. His face softened to an almost
ludicrous contrast; his little bright blue eyes glittered.
“Nay,” he said almost softly, “with pirates on the water in such numbers, I know not why you are not ruined.
I’d like to know how you manage.”
Philip’s eyes, dark as garnets, flickered and went suddenly as hard. His brocaded tunic and soft Cordoban
shoes, no less than the shining gems scintillant on his person, did indeed suggest that he was managing
very well indeed. The other merchant, Desiderius Crispus, in a simple dress-tunic long out of date and a
wholly false air of patrician hauteur, looked more austere. And the count was too well informed to credit that
sham.
Philip said, “If I may speak for us both, my colleague? I believe, my lord Comes, that it is because the bulk of
our trade goes by land or river. For myself, what goods I ship are brought from the east to Narbo Martius, and
then hither. I should not dream of trusting my wealth on the western seas at matters ar now.”
“You slimy, lying serpent!”
Guntram gripped the underside of his much-abused table and heaved it over. Ink, reports, quills and fine
blotting sand were scattered like trash. The secretary, who had been seated at one end, rolled backward and
betook himself out of the way. A corner of the table had banged Proculus on the knees; the phrases he
hissed between his teeth as he rubbed were hardly in keeping with the dignity of his position. He stared
silently at the count as if wishing the big soldier were small enough to stamp.
The Count of Burdigala was amove; he seized Philip by the throat and choked him until his bulging eyes saw
the stark face of Death. Then Guntram flung him down among the papers and ink to get his breath.
“D’you think I’m a fool?” Guntram roared. “Or that my spies waste their time? From Narbo is it, with tolls and
levies each mile of the way? Pah! And you,” he snarled, rounding on Desiderius. “Traitor! I’ll not bore ye with
all I know. It was full eighty swords of Spanish forging, the best there is this side of Damascus, that found
their way into Hengist’s grasping hands—not so? Not so? And paid for in gold from a looted church! Ahhh!
And you, Philip of Syria. Captain Ticilo may not be your man for speaking publicly of, but I know what he did
in Massilia last year, and what Vandal galley gave him escort the length of the Spanish coast. And raided
Lusitania on its way home, to such profit that it must have had advance information to guide him. What last I
heard, Lusitania is part of our Gothic realms as much as this city—which means, Syrian, that these dealings
were no common sharp practice or thieving. They rank as treason!” He looked at Proculus. “Be that not so,
sir?”
“Beyond doubt, if there is proof,” the municipal prefect said, with stiffness. “It would merit the severest death
the law can award.”
Philip had not risen from his knees; Desiderius now joined him there.
Both merchants wailed for mercy. They had been moved, they avowed nigh fearfully, to do what they did out
of desperation for the losses these same pirates had inflicted upon them. If the menace could be abated, the
seas cleared or rendered so that a merchantman had so much as even odds, would be their dearest wish
come true. Let the Count of Burdigala but state his desires. And so forth.
Guntram was not listening. Proculus had his ear at the moment, and Proculus was waxing condemnatory. He
straightened, lean in his robes through with a growing pot. His thin-lipped mouth was twisted. Pain from his
smitten knee and disgust at the exhibition he’d been forced to watch were in equal measure the cause of it.
“My lord Count,” he snapped, “this disgraces me! Here is neither a court of law nor a wharfside
grog-shop—though just now, one might well take the one for the latter. Let these men be arraigned for their
crimes in due form, and let the civic questioner be the one to lay hands on them. I give you good day.”
“Hold!”
Guntram’s crisp order stopped Proculus in his tracks. He gazed at the bleak-faced count, frozen in motion.
“My sons are beyond that door,” Guntram of Burdigala said, all in one deadly tone. “They have swords, and
will cut to pieces any one who leaves afore I have told him he may. Anybody, sir. An ye have complaints, you
can make them later, in that due form you love so well—but by God you’ll stomach it for now! This is urgent
business, should it chance that ye’ve not yet grasped it!”
The prefect looked stricken. No fleshy, high-coloured, wine-loving old Visigoth he faced now, baffled by law
and literacy and intent only on secure comfort in his declining years. Nay, this was Guntram the war-man
who had reddened his sword on a score of battlefields in doing his part to turn back Attila’s Huns and conquer
Hispania. The cheerful ruthlessness on the old soldier’s face was warrant that the threatened murders would
be performed.
Proculus gathered what dignity he could, and returned to his place in that temper-littered room.
“Better; tha-at’s better,” Guntram said, nigh purring. “Now attend, all of you. I spoke of an inland raid. The
report is amid this litter somewhere...” Guntram looked hopelessly round himself. “Well, the gist of it is that a
pack-train carrying oil, white salt and fine glassware from Italy, was ambushed and robbed on a forest road...
full twenty mile from the coast! The robbers were Danish pirates; their leader was recognized. There cannot
be two men of that size, accoutred so, and with beards so red and axes so huge. For that it was on me the
king’s anger fell. The stolen goods, y’see, were meant for the royal court. An I cannot deal a sharp blow to
these pirates within the year, there may be a new Count of Burdigala... and a new commander of the fleet.”
Guntram’s eyes wandered to Athanagild; Guntram glowered about at them all before he went on:
“Certain it is that there will be two less merchants in this city! And the new man, whoever he may be, will
have words whispered to him about the municipal curia... bribes and such, you know; the king cheated of his
taxes and the like. Think on it. Given our king’s the sort who’s apt to dismiss an old soldier who served his
father thirty years and feels his wounds every night—to dismiss such a one over the matter of the royal table
salt, what can you expect? Eh? And it’s written proof I have, and witnesses, mark me! Your fates depend on
mine, all of you. You had better be convinced of that.”
Guntram had gone to purring again; was worse and more menacing, those men thought, than his shout and
bluster.
“I’m with you, my lord Count,” Proculus assured him. “A loyal subject should do all he can to put down
pirates. But how can I be of aid to you? I am no sailor or fighting man.”
“You can help with counsel,” he was told, “and ere we’re done there may well be a few little legal matters that
need smoothing over. The Syrian was not merely gabbling when he said pirates are too many, but we have no
need of sinking them by the dozens. Athanagild! Say that you knew where to find them, just where to find
them, man, and what their movements would be?”
The younger Goth’s eyes sparkled. “My lord! I’d lay a couple of the greatest among them by the heels. We’d
set some examples to give pause to the rest.”
“And gladden the king’s heart,” Guntram said, and he well nigh beamed. “He might then listen to me when I
urge him to march his war-host into the Charente, to subdue or destroy those serpentish Saxons there! The
damned place is a home away from home for Hengist and his throat-cutting captains! There’d be glory in it for
you too, man. You’d have to strike from the sea at the same time.”
“Trap your specimen pirates first,” Proculus advised with wise cynicism.
“Right you are. I want Wulfhere and Cormac mac Art!”
“Merciful Saviour,” Philip the Syrian whispered.
Fleet Commander Athanagild grinned broadly.
“My lord Count, your pardon,” one of the curiales said. “I know little of individual pirate captains. Of these two I
have not heard.”
“By God,” Athanagild grunted, “had you my job, you’d know their names! Or were you trader, or seaman or
pirate of any sort. My lord?”
“By all means tell him.”
“Wulfhere of the Danes is a giant. He’s all of a foot taller than I, with the bones of an ox, a chest like a wall,
and a crimson beard to cover half of it. Hausakliufr is he nicknamed in his own language—the Skull-splitter,
and not for compliment’s sake. Battle is the greatest joy of this colossus’s life—the plunder’s but an excuse.
His fellow Danes are hardly a weak-kneed lot, but they outlawed him because he was too dangerous to have
around. Somewhat more to the point, there’s no bolder or more expert sailor on the northern seas.”
“You sound, sir, as though you had encountered the man.”
“I’ve seen him,” Athanagild owned, and the words came betwixt clenched teeth. “Aye, and heard him laugh at
me through a gale. None would make a better display on a gibbet.”
“And the other?”
“Cormac? That one’s an exile from Hibernia, one of the few reivers wild enough to sail with Wulfhere. He’s
dark as the Skull-splitter is red, a master of the sword, and subtle-brained. Wulfhere loves him for his
battle-prowess and relies on him for his crafty advice. No snakes in Hibernia, eh? This Cormac mauled our
coasts with a Celtic crew of his own, some years agone. One ship these two have, and sixty followers, and
with that they’ve raked Britain and Gaul and Spain as if there were naught to oppose them but wax men with
paper weapons.”
“I want them!” Guntram said harshly, and was momentarily nonplussed with no table to bang. “With all their
fame, they’ve but one ship and none to avenge them. What’s more, it was these very two lifted the king’s
pretties from the pack train.”
The disparaging scorn in his last phrase rang clear. Too canny to say it out in such words, or indeed in any
words, Guntram despised his king. Alaric the Second, King of all the Visigoths, the old soldier considered a
disgrace to his father’s name. Despite his rage at the piratical activity along his shores—and inland—the
young king preferred to buy erotically skilled women from Egypt and the Levant to beguile his nights, rather
than warships to patrol his coast. Guntram almost snorted, thinking of it; indeed, his nostrils flared.
Honest Gothic lasses with broad hips for bearing, and no knowledge of degenerate tricks; these had been
good enow for Alaric’s father Euric—and aurochs horns to drink from. No question, the race was declining.
The younger generation would never carry it to century’s end, but fourteen years off.
Well... business.
“I want them!” he repeated, and glared at the merchants. “And you objects are going to help me take them.
Do not think elsewise!”
“Impossible, my lord!” Desiderius Crispus cried. “I do not deal with these men, nor does the Syrian. I keep
myself informed. Did they barter their loot in Burdigala at all, I would know of it.”
“True, it’s true, my good lord!” The confirmation burst eagerly from Philip. “Their buyer is in Nantes, in the
Roman kingdom.”
“Nantes,” the count growled. “And the name of their buyer?”
“I do not know, my lord. By Saint Martin, it’s the truth!”
Though Guntram eyed them narrowly, he did not hector them the further. He’d sharper pins than that to jab
these two with.
He said sharply, “Your oath in a saint’s name settles it. It must be true. The part about Nantes is right, in any
event, and it’s fortunate for you that I happen to know. I’ve had a spy there of late; the same that uncovered
your own shifty dealings, so y’see he knows his word. He traced the man through a customs official he found
to be corrupt. The Dane and his partner deal with one Balsus Ammian. Know you aught of him?”
“My lord Count, I do.” Desiderius said, and Guntram saw his surprise was real enow. “But it would seem...
not so much as I did think.” He watched the count make an impatient gesture; Guntram had not fetched in
Desiderius to flatter his choice of spies. “Aye. Balsus Ammian dwells by the waterfront and makes great
affectation of being one step from poverty, but in truth he’s no less rich than—”
The merchant stopped suddenly.
“Than you are?” Guntram suggested. “Aye, that tallies with my man’s description. We talked until late last
night.”
The merchants’ mutual thought was easy to guess: I must learn who this spy of Guntram’s is. Which, of
course, was why he was not present at this meeting they now knew Guntram had planned, and planned well.
“An I find ferrets of yours within sniffing distance of his name,” the count said genially, “I’ll see your bones
picked bare and rattling in the wind. Understood?”
Under those innocently staring blue eyes, they did assurance on him that they understood.
“So. Let’s get on, then. These piratical swine have shown that they too keep themselves informed. I mean to
tempt ’em with a cargo they can scarce resist. Wine, for the most part, but with a treasure of lighter goods,
and none of the dangers of fakery; the lading will be true. It will sail from Narbo, and around Hispania hither.
Word will be let fall. The Dane and the Gael, if I judge them aright, will not waylay the ship off the Hispanic
coast. They will choose to take it within comfortable distance of their market—and Athanagild will be
waiting.”
Guntram paused but long enough to glance at Athanagild; the commander nodded with enthusiasm.
“And do you, sirs, know the best part of all?” Guntram went amiably on. “It is you who will public-spiritedly
provide the bait, and at your own cost.”
The merchants broke into a babble of protest. Proculus silenced them by gazing dreamily at the ceiling and
murmuring, “Treason. The knives. The clamps. The hot lead.”
Count Guntram nodded approval. This Proculus fellow might be snobbish and finicky, but once he got into the
spirit of things the man was downright useful.
“But my lord,” Desiderius bleated, “they may succeed after all!”
“In which case you will have to take your losses, now won’t you? But aye, it’s a thought. I should like them to
have a nasty surprise awaiting then in Nantes, in the event they do. It requires thought. But you have more to
tell me yet. You may not traffic with Wulfhere and Cormac, but you are to betray to the full measure of your
grimy knowledge the pirates you do buy from. Either they are taken and executed within the year—hooves of
the Devil, within the season!—or you, dear sirs, suffer in their places. Well, sirs, I am waiting.”
They did not force the noble count to wait overlong.
CHAPTER ONE: Trap for A Pirate
At the mouth of a reedy creek perched a raven with whetted beak and talons flexing. Dark was the predator,
with sharp eyes for that which would feed her. Yet this raven was no bird, but a ship. And unlike her
namesake, Raven was no scavenger of corpses, unless it were the great sprawling corpse of Rome’s empire
in the west. She was a fighting bird.
Two men stood in her bow in the morning light. Athanagild had described them without error, save in one
point only. Yet still he had not conveyed their presence; to accomplish that would require a bard aflight on the
inspiration of his demon.
Wulfhere was immense, and no less; a man huge of height and thew, with fire-blue eyes under thickets of
brow and a beard like a conflagration. Though he was restless with waiting, he moved not save to fondle the
great ax he held across the front of his body and, once in a while, to sigh. At such times his scale byrnie
expanded as if it were hard put to contain him. That was but illusion, though a remarkable one. On the Danish
giant gleamed heavy golden buckles, studs, and armlets. His war-gear was adequate and more. In his belt
gleamed the whalebone hilt of the broad-bladed dagger sheathed there, and a smaller ax was tucked through
that same broad thick belt at his other hip. Against his knee leaned a shield like a scarred moon of battle.
Athanagild’s one mistake had been in saying that the Skull-splitter overtowered him by a foot. It was half a
foot only, though the high bull’s horns adorning the Dane’s helmet made it seem the more; Wulfhere affected
the style of his ancestors. But then Athanagild’s one sight of Wulfhere Hausakliufr had been from a distance.
The which was confirmed by the fact that Athanagild Beric’s son was yet alive. Wulfhere was only five inches
over six feet...
The man at his side was equally still, and seemed more at his ease in that moveless waiting. Leanly
muscular in his shirt of black link-mail, Cormac mac Art of Eirrin wore no ornaments on his darkish skin.
Strange this was, in one of a race whose men loved to adorn themselves, and never more splendidly then
when they went forth to fight. This Gaelic Celt, though, had ceased long since to care for show. He was all
stark professionalism as he scanned the nearby sea, casting an occasional searching glance into the reeds
behind him. Had they moved contrary to the light sea breeze, he’d have issued a warning. For copper-beaked
Raven lay in ambush here as in the jaws of a bear—hopefully a sleeping one.
Cormac, Wulfhere, and their crew of Danes lurked in no less than the home waters of the Visigothic
kingdom’s Garonne fleet. In truth, from where he stood at Raven’s bow, Cormac mac Art might have hurled a
stone into the River Garonne’s estuary. Moreover, just the other side of that great estuary nestled Saxon
settlements, and Saxon pirate ships along with some few thousand Saxon fighting men under a dozen
independent chieftains—and every one was willing to be known as friend to Wulfhere’s greatest enemy,
Hengist the Jute, King of Kent over in Britain.
Four nights agone they had lowered Raven’s sail, unstepped her mast and rowed softly in with muffled oars.
Since then they had eaten cold food only, spoken almost never, and then not above whispers. They had
endured the mosquitoes and midges. As Cormac seemed scarcely to notice them, someone had murmured
low that any gnat biting the sombre Gael knew it would die horribly.
Waiting strained them sore, and chafed men of action. They endured. They exercised as best they could by
arm-wrestling on the oar benches, and straining betwixt them with braced feet and backs.
Rather nearby, other men than they were weary of waiting.
On the estuary’s northern side, two galleys of the Visigothic royal fleet lay tucked behind a woody point of
land. Athanagild Beric’s son, treading the deck of one ship, tugged his heavy moustache and frowned at his
marines, who were eating their supplies at a deplorable rate. Had he known the men he’d been ordered to
capture had been almost within shouting distance for days, unseen and undreamed of, Fleet Commander
Athanagild might have suffered a seizure.
The while, beating up the coast from Bayonne in the merchant tub Thetis, came one Gervase, a plain sea
captain. He squinted brown eyes northward, and then at the coast; Gervase was both fearful of Saxon
war-boats and hoping for a Gothic galley on patrol.
My luck, he thought morosely, to meet the Saxon pirates so near safe harbouring!
An odd sort of voyage, too; the whole distance around Spain, and having to pay toll to the Vandals on the
way. Curious. He spat to landward, with the wind. It wasn’t long since those towheaded heretical bastards
would have taken the whole cargo, and slaughtered the crew for being Orthodox. A lot of them still would, and
did. But Gaiseric was the man who had made their seapower, and he was a decade in hell.
The Vandals were not the terror of all the Mediterranean any longer, but only the western half... and learning
that one did not kill a cow for its milk. Still, they were unchancy, and it had been good to see the Pillars of
Hercules fade into distance.
It was strange, though, the way the backers had insisted on this route. They had brassed up so readily, too,
with the Vandal’s toll. Not like them at all. From Narbo to Toulouse by road, and then down the river to
Burdigala by barge, that was the proper route! Simpler and the Devil of a lot safer.
Aye, but the royal court was at Toulouse. The Gothic king might have decided to buy the lot—at his price.
Likely enough the backers had decided the Vandals were a better risk. In any case the danger money was
coming to Gervase for it.
Had he known that his backers and the Count of Burdigala had of a purpose set him out as bait for pirates, he
might well have dropped in a fit at the same time as Athanagild. Both men were thus protected by lack of
knowledge.
At the creek-mouth, a fox barked twice.
Sudden fierce eagerness filled Wulfhere’s Danes; not often did foxes bark from treetops. One of their own,
called Halfdan Half-a-man for his short stature, swung nimbly down from branch to branch to soggy earth and
made for the ship. An oar swept out over Raven’s strakes. The blade grounded on the creek-bank and Halfdan
walked up it, a stocky personification of delight. He took shield and ax without having to think on it the while
he moved forward to give word to his chieftain.
His grin told the news ere his tongue could form it. “It’s the one! Or if not, there be two corbitos for Burdigala
under brown canvas with a pale three-sided patch!”
“How does she ride?”
“Heavy! By Aegir the bountiful, there’s wine in her hold, as ye were assured! And outrun Raven such a’
round-bellied seagoing walnut could not, even were she riding light!” Halfdan smacked his lips. “We will drink
tonight.”
“Ahh,” Wulfhere gusted, in a bliss of anticipation. “Push out, then, ye thirsty sons of Dane-mark! Reward is
ours!”
Cormac said naught, and his grin was a bare skinning of teeth as he drew his sword. Dark and
smooth-shaven was his face, of a sinister cast not amended by the scars upon it, or the cold narrow eyes
grey as his weapon-steel. His visage was fitly framed in the cheek-pieces of his helmet, a hard leather
casque strengthened with plaques of black iron. Its flowing horsehair crest was the nearest thing to ornament
he had on him, and even that to a purpose; was a lasting taunt to Hengist’s Jutes, for the White Horse was
the badge of their royal house, and they fought under a standard of white horsetails.
Held vertically, oars thrust down into the creek-bed, poling Raven forward.
As she slid lithely out to where she had more waterroom, the poling men seated themselves and ran their
oars out horizontally. Their two-score benchmates did the same. The blades dipped raggedly, cut into water,
and fifty strong men pulled back against its resistance.
Raven sprang forth on a bright sea glittering with scales of hot gold.
Knud the Swift, in the stern, called staves for his comrades to row by, and they rowed hard. Water peeled
back white from Raven’s copper-sheathed prow. It hissed by the strakes. Oars lifted shining, swept back,
dipped, and men drove them forward again, revelling in the free use of muscles too long cramped. Work?
Naught of the kind! A touch of healthy exercise to get the kinks out before they bathed their weapons!
“Brightly flash the oar-blades,
Washing in the whale’s bath,
Dipping in the salty
Ale of Aegir’s daughters.
Better is the brew there,
Casked in yonder cargo,
Where the wine of Eastland
Waits for Wulfhere’s killers.
“Ye that row to steerboard,
Raise your oars and rest them,
While the wights a-portside
Turn us to the grappling.
See, the southron sailors,
White with terror-madness,
Hunch like hunted conies
With the stoats among them.”
In truth, it was not such a large brag. The crew of Thetis was more than two to one outnumbered, and every
man able plainly to see it. Nor might they have stood against the wild slayers out of the north, even at level
odds. As for an attempt at flight... Raven was making three ship’s lengths to the fat corbito’s one. It was
unfair, so close to home—and mad and raving mad the pirates must be, to be trying it! Demons from the
reddest pits of hell they seemed, a-glimmer with metal scales and bosses and horned like Satan, their dark
ship a dragon fit to carry such creatures.
The voyage had been hard and weary, and this to be its ending! Unfair.
Raven was so close now that Gervase could see the Danish leader’s face, aye, and his henchman’s, too.
Gervase knew them at once. Not a seaman on these coasts but had heard of the ruddy giant with his ax and
burning beard, and the dark-visaged sworder in black mail.
The heart of Gervase turned cold. Yet at the same time he felt hope stirring, for it was said that these twain
were not given to wanton slaying of the helpless. And helpless he was, and all his crew.
Captain Gervase licked his lips and shouted through cupped hands, “Quarter!”
Wulfhere loosed a roar of laughter. “O-ho-ho-ho-ho! Quarter ye’re asking? Oh, little man, little man! You cheat
us of a good fight!”
“Not such a good fight as that,” Gervase called wryly back, considering the aspect of his men. “But such as
we can put up, unless you promise us our lives, we will give you. And more than that!” he added in sudden
inspiration. “We’ve casks and casks of good wine below. Do you board us bent on slaughter, I’ll take two men
and smash them open myself!”
The Skull-splitter ceased to laugh. “Ye be a monster!” he bellowed. “A black-hearted monster!”
Cormac mac Art laughed. It was untrue that he never did so, and he did like grit.
“Let him have his way, Wulfhere,” he advised. “I’ve a notion how this can be turned to our account. Let me be
having his ear.”
“I had rather let you have his whole head,” Wulfhere grumbled.
“Ahoy, trader! Do but these things and we grant ye life. Be ye running your tub ashore, and that swiftly, then
set your crew to loading your cargo aboard us. Swiftly, ye hear? Swifter than the like was ever done
aforetime! And remember the price, do ye fail!”
Gervase looked once at the dark, scarred face, and turned to scan again his disheartened crew. None but a
madman on the breast of the sea would have opted for resistance.
“Done!” he said.
And done it was. A spear’s cast from the nearby white beach, Thetis let down both iron anchors and Raven
grappled to her. Cormac was first on her deck, with four men eager at his back, among them Knud the Swift
and one warrior with hair black as the Gael’s own, a rare sight among northerners.
“The lighter stuff first, and most costly,” said Cormac. “It’s silk ye have aboard, and rare gems and spices.
There is ivory too, balsams and jewellery that’s after being looted from Egypt’s king-graves. It’s unwise ye’d
be for attempting to deny it. Show me.”
Betrayed! Gervase thought bitterly. But who could have done it in such detail? None surely, but the factor who
directed the lading. And Gervase promised himself that he’d see the man torn by bears—if he survived this
day.
For the pirate’s list was true to the item. The bolts of cloth the sailors threw down to Wulfhere were not all of
silk; some were Egyptian cotton loomed so fine and shining that the difference was not evident at a glance,
and nigh as rare as silk, here in the west. They were stowed in the bow, with the boxes and packets that
came also from Alexandria, the incense and pepper and the all but priceless sugar.
And Wulfhere, thirsty Wulfhere, had scarcely a glance for any of it.
“The wine!” he demanded.
The wine was brought forth. Sailors levered oaken casks from their cradles in the hold, and trundled them to
the hatchway. Ropes were knotted about them with a fearful care to make them secure, and brawny men
drew them on deck, flashing uneasy sidewise stares the while. The casks were lowered over Thetis’s side
and received with joy by the wild crew of Raven. Swiftly those men lashed their prizes firmly to bench-ends
with a proper eye to balance and distribution so that Raven should continue to ride the sea well.
All was accomplished with a will and speed that no stevedore on Burdigala’s docks had ever approached.
Since Raven was both a leaner vessel than Thetis, and shallower of draught, she could not take the entire
load. Still, by canny stowing the Danes made a fair shift towards it.
No more than an hour later, the Danish galley carried twenty-three casks of red Falernian; three were lashed
crosswise in a row in the stern with ten more on their sides along each row of oar benches, so positioned as
not to impede the oarsmen—and them sitting appreciably closer to the sea than they had been.
Cormac and his four sword-comrades added their weight to the load.
“Now if ye’ll be casting off our grapnel-irons,” he said, “it’s farewell we’ll be bidding ye, with due thanks for
your hospitality—and a caution not to raise your anchors whilst we be in sight.”
Gervase nodded glumly. The grapnels were prised loose to thud down aboard the galley. The Danes raised an
ironical cheer as they pushed off from Thetis’s plump side. Gervase’s square wind-burned face darkened;
anger got the best of caution.
“Laugh when you’re out of Count Guntram’s reach!” he yelled after them.
None aboard Raven had Latin but Cormac and Wulfhere, and only the former was fluent. No Latin was
required, however, to recognize the name Guntram. The Danes replied with laughter, boos and rude gestures.
Then they settled to rowing.
Gervase, watching them go, gripped the timber of his ship’s rail till his knuckles showed the colour of the
bone beneath.
Raven’s oars marched smoothly, like the jointless legs of some strange water-centipede, yet this time they
imparted speed but gradually. Out and out across Garonne-mouth moved the pirate craft, turning for a
nor’westerly course.
Not the least of Gervase’s warring feelings was wonder that he lived.
His passions were to be further moved, and that in moments. For while the corbito rolled at anchor, he
saw—beyond the departing Raven, on the estuary’s north side—shapes move and emerge. With bulging eyes
he recognised them as biremes of the Garonne fleet. They too had their masts unstepped and their decks
clear for fighting.
Master Gervase struck his fist on the rail in explosive joy.
That was his first response, but then he was not the swiftest of thinkers.
Two warships! Raven captured or sunk! The cargo recovered! Such pirates as survived hanging on a gibbet,
after appropriate tortures!
Then it struck him.
They must ha’ seen the whole business, from first to last! Why—blight ’em with boils from where they lay,
they couldn’t ha’ helped it!
Why didn’t they appear sooner?
The answer became obvious as soon as the question was posed.
They wanted the pirate heavy laden. Easy meat. They let us be robbed for that—and killed to a man for aught
they knew, had we not received quarter!
Our fine overlords. Our bloody Gothic protector!
Gervase’s hands had slackened. Now they gripped anew, with the insensate pressure of vises. A vein beat
and coiled in his temple like a frenzied blue worm. The battling furies in his heart found expression in eight
words.
“Carve ’em like mutton! Give ’em hot hell!”
Which side he meant to encourage was known only to his god.
The Danes saw the warcraft appear with no dismay, and even no particular surprise. The very madness of
waylaying a ship at the mouth of the Garonne, when Cormac had suggested it, had made it irresistible. They
had known the risk. Wulfhere had shouted for very delight, called the Gael sword-brother, and dealt him a
clap on the back to have staggered a lesser man. He was unaffectedly happy now as he had been then.
“Will ye give look at that?” he rumbled. “Wolf, we are not to be cheated of battle after all.”
Cormac answered only a nod, but he was not unhappy about that prospect.
The biremes rushed on, driven each by two banks of oars to Raven’s one, and thrice fifty rowers to Raven’s
three score, and them sentenced criminals urged to their work by ropes’ ends—knotted. Each warship had a
barnacled bronze-tipped ram jutting from her prow below the water-line, and a hundred Gothic marines on her
deck.
Tough-handed war-men they were, in hard leather cuirasses studded with iron, and round iron caps, armed
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