When Death Birds Fly cma-3 Page 12

  “Ah. Confidence upon this matter? Good, then!” Again Sigebert waved a’ hand, for he had slain one man this day, and bested two others, and reduced this one. He sat his chair as though enthroned. “Mayhap now you should rest, and later eat your fill and wash it down with good wine without water. You will have need of restoring your strength.”

  The utterance gave warning to Cathula, who was listening at the door.

  Swiftly, silently and with her heart apound, she fled away with hardly a rustle of her new clothing. Was the second time she had eavesdropped on the demonic master of this nightmare house to which he’d brought her. She had been listening the night before when the monstrous black owl appeared in his privy chamber, and she had managed to gain a glimpse of it as it flew away. Cathula neither knew what it was nor had aught of deep thoughts on the subject, having understood little of what she had heard. She was a peasant, and not of this land, and not yet fifteen. She assumed merely that the creature was Sigebert’s familiar demon, and that they challenged each other. She had heard of such; that preternatural forces were hard to control, and endangered the person who sought that control.

  What mattered to her was that she now knew names that belonged to deadly enemies of the scarfaced Frank, her mother’s murderer; the names of two pirates.

  Wulfhere the Skull-splitter and Cormac mac Art.

  11

  When Vengeance Reigns

  “She will do, Wolf!”

  The ship was a ponto, flat-bottomed and therefore shallow of draught. This gave advantage in some ways, although a strong wind might blow her sideways across the waves like a scudding wooden tray. None the less, she was sturdy and well rigged, with the same effective iron anchors Raven was equipped with. Indeed, Cormac had discovered the value of iron anchors on these same coasts in his days with the reivers of Eirrin, and shared the knowledge with Wulfhere later.

  The latter appeared well satisfied. “Aye,” he went on. “There be ample room in her belly to hide us all, and harmless she looks, a mere trader. Were we to fare in one of the prince’s corsair galleys we’d have closer inspection to face!”

  “So thought I,” Cormac said, “and despite our friendship, one of Howel’s galleys had been much to ask. He loves them as his children.”

  “They be sweet vessels,” Wulfhere agreed, and added in duty-bound chauvinism, “for southern ships.”

  Turning, he tramped down the timber jetty where the ponto was moored, her wooden fenders squealing with friction as she rocked forward and back. Huge, immense of height and thew, with his fiery mane and beard, his mail shirt and weapons and his golden jewelery, he resembled some great autumnal tree that, hung with sacrifices of battle-gear, had heaved up its roots and taken to walking about.

  Beside him, Cormac walked with tigerish litheness. Wulfhere’s Gaelic battle-brother was one of the few men who did not show meanly by comparison with the hulking Dane. Part of the reason lay in the extreme contrast they made.

  Where Wulfhere was massive, Cormac’s form was lean and rangy, yet instinct with savage vitality-like the wolf he was called. On him were no glittering, flashing ornaments of gold. His black mesh-mail shirt, and the helmet unadorned save for its crest of horsehair, sorted well with the grimness of his dark face. Thin-lipped it was, shaven and marked by a number of scars. Set in that somber mask, his cold, narrow grey eyes had a peculiarly sinister look.

  Prince Howel awaited them on the beach. Morfydd stood beside him, her long black hair blowing wild in the sea-wind. Nine Bretons were there as well, the air of seamen bred about them.

  “What think you?” Howel asked.

  “She’s a good choice for the work,” Wulfhere said. “I’m indebted to ye, prince.”

  “It’s little enow.”

  Howel indicated the foremost of the Armorican seamen, a smallish, hard-bitten man with a seamed face mostly nose. Was a nose that seemed to have been violently struck once at least from every direction. Shrewd eyes nestled close to it, seemingly for shelter, looking with tough-minded appraisal from beneath sandy brows.

  “This is Odathi,” the prince told them. “He and his men are to take the ship into Nantes for you-and bring you safely out again when you have your vengeance.”

  Cormac remembered Odathi of old. He couldn’t have asked a better man for his purpose. The Armorican was a skilled mariner, and able to hold his tongue. He merely nodded by way of greeting.

  “We will come out again,” Wulfhere said confidently. He turned to his Danes. “Look ye, blood-spillers, there is our ship! And since it’s ours she is for this little time and this one purpose, I’ll be naming her anew. This voyage, her name is Norn!”

  He named the three women of Northlands belief; harsh goddesses who wove on the loom of Fate, and whose decrees not even Odin could reverse.

  “I call her that,” Wulfhere said loudly, in a moment of fancy unusual for him, “because she’s to be the instrument that brings Sigebert One-ear’s weird upon him!”

  The Danes roared with laughter, shaking their spears and clashing swords or ax-heads on their shields of linden-wood. Was the sort of fierce joke they appreciated.

  Cormac said quietly to Morfydd, “No Sight to offer us? No prophecy as to the outcome?”

  Morfydd smiled with a kind of tranquil compassion. “Suppose I had, Wolf of the blue sea? Suppose my prophecy were evil? Would you or your friend or any of your men abandon your vengeance because of it?”

  Cormac shook his black head.

  “What if I prophesied success? Could that add the faintest aught to your determination?”

  Again the reiver shook his head.

  “Then I should not speak but to wish you good fortune-as I do, Cormac Art’s son, from my heart.”

  Cormac looked at her for a moment, and for no reason he could name he thought of Samaire of Leinster in Eirrin. Then he must clasp Morfydd’s hand and Prince Howel’s, and lead the tramping Danes aboard Norn, for it was time to go.

  The weather was clouded this day, and turbulently windy. Standing on Norn’s high stern, Cormac and Wulfhere watched the waves lashed to a running waste of foam, while the sails of thin dressed leather were strained taut as drumheads. The masts creaked. Wulfhere’s great beard streamed before him like a flame.

  “Two days,” he said softly, fondling the haft of his beloved ax. “Two days at most will bring us there, Cormac.”

  “Aye,” the Gael agreed absently. He’d been gazing at the sky, thinking how dark it had suddenly turned. A strange note rode the wind… a storm brewing? Or a squall about to strike! He turned his gaze upward again, and felt his body shudder.

  “Wulfhere!” he said hoarsely.

  The Dane followed his line of sight. For a moment, he saw only dark clouds tumbling before the strong wind. Then they parted, and terrible shapes swept out of the murk to fill the great empty spaces of the sky.

  Women rode naked on wild-maned horses. Their arms, holding the reins, were red to the elbows with blood. Their eyes looked eastward, alight with exultation at some greater slaughter that only they could see. Dreadful laughter twisted their mouths. Black flocks of carrion birds kept pace with them, hungry and expectant.

  Such were the precursors. Behind them, huger even than they, rode a lone horseman. Although a wide-brimmed hat obscured his face, one icy eye glittered from its shadow, merciless and forbidding as the spear he carried. Loping like hounds by the feet of his eight-legged steed were two wolves. Even as he watched, Wulfhere saw the nearer throw high its head to howl. The second shivered between the ragged clouds.

  Then they were gone, rushing eastward.

  “Hel’s teeth!” Wulfhere croaked. “Battle-brother, tell me, even if ye lie, that I’ve not been stricken with madness! Tell me that ye also saw! “

  “I saw,” Cormac muttered, shaken as few had seen him. He breathed hard, and swallowed with effort. “I saw right enow, and I’m thinking that this be no wise time to mention the name of your Hel of the death-demesne.”

  “A
true word. Yon bloody-handed hags might be her very daughters.” Wulfhere laughed harshly, and stopped the noise short when he heard how it sounded. “To think the foolish poets make them honest, virtuous war-maidens, those Valkyrior! I’ll break the back of the next who chants such stuff in my presence.”

  Cormac stared. “Wulfhere-”

  “What is it?”

  “What is it? A pertinent question! Of what be ye talking?”

  “Eh? Cormac, was yourself showed them to me. Ye saw them first! Valkyrs, their arms dripping gore, riding the sky along with the birds of battle-death, and their father Odin behind them attended by his wolves. It’s a portent. Some great battle is brewing over eastward. The Father of Victories doesn’t ride abroad for little things.”

  Cormac mac Art continued staring.

  At last he said, “Suppose I tell ye what it is I am after seeing. A hunting pack of pure white hounds, Wulfhere. The dazzle of them like new snow in the sun or bright foam on the sea. And their ears a burning-scarlet, and their jaws as red, open and baying. They ran as if they’d run down the world and make it their prey! I saw not your Father of Victories looming behind them. Was a figure of Vastness all cloaked in grey shadow, riding a grey horse. Upon the rider’s head were twelve-tined royal antlers, and the pale death-fire played over them like slow lightning. His face I could not see, and by the gods, it’s glad of it I am!”

  Wulfhere was staring at his blood-brother as if the Gael had come up daft.

  “Wulfhere, it was him we call the Grey Man, the lord of death and rebirth. Among the Britons it’s as Arawn the Hunter he’s known, and it’s Cernunnos also he has been named: the Antlered God. Nigh as many names and titles he has with him as your Odin! Yet it’s him I saw, not the Father of Victories.”

  Baffled and angry, Wulfhere struggled not to say aught he’d regret, such as giving Cormac the lie to his face. The dark Gael was not lying. Even Wulfhere, whose perceptions were far from subtle, could see that Cormac was in earnest. He’d seen what he claimed to have seen. Yet-Wulfhere knew what he had witnessed.

  “Ye must have been mistaken, Wolf,” he said at last. “This death-lord of yours… ye took the One-eyed All-father for him, that’s all.”

  “Since when,” Cormac snapped, “does the One-eyed have an antlered head and bear a hunting horn jewelled with black stars?”

  “Oh, he bore a hunting horn gemmed with stars now, did he? That’s a thing ye forgot to mention the first time around!”

  Cormac opened his mouth, was struck by the argument’s absurdity, and shut it with an audible click of teeth. Glancing into Norn’s midship deck, he saw that which turned his mind swiftly to practical matters.

  “Wulfhere,” he said, “let us agree that each of us saw something, and it was a dark omen, whate’er the details. But by all the gods, it’s down there we’d best go and take control at once, or the Armoricans and our Danes will be panicked together. Look at them!”

  The Skull-splitter did. Three of Odathi’s mariners were yammering in his face whilst the rest were attending but poorly to ship’s duties, and the reivers’ two-and-thirty Danes were muttering among themselves with every sign of unease.

  “Right you are,” Wulfhere growled, clambering down from the high sterncastle. “Do you handle the Bretons, Wolf. You are closer to them by language and race.”

  He himself confronted his own men, glaring. “What be this havering?”

  “We’ve seen the valkyrs riding,” muttered Einar. “This venture’s accursed. Best we turn back and try another time!”

  “Not for all the valkyrie that ever stirred up war!” thundered his leader. “Why do ye suppose they ride for us? I say they ride to fetch Sigebert One-ear, and I’ll show ye how right I am when we reach Nantes! Turn back? Now there’s a thought, Einar. And we could do so; beg these Britons to take us the way we’ve come, and us barely a few hours out of the Mor-bihan, because we saw spectres in the clouds! Aye. That’d be a fine explanation to make the man who loaned us this ship. No dishonour therein at all. We could still hold up our heads.”

  Wulfhere’s heavy sarcasm had the desired effect. Men glanced sheepishly at each other. Some looked to the now empty sky. None spoke further of turning back.

  When Wulfhere turned around, he saw the Armorican seamen back at work. He didn’t ask how Cormac and Odathi had managed it. Mayhap they had simply convinced the crew that the Danes would slaughter them all, did they falter.

  What they had seen, they did not dwell on. The vengeful hunger was in them to rend the guts of Sigebert One-ear, and each sea-mile brought them nearer to Nantes. The wind held. By nightfall they had reached the mouth of the Loire. Another day’s sailing up the wide estuary would bring them to the port.

  “We’ll go on by night an ye wish,” Odathi said. “Will be slower, more careful going, but what of it? Thirty-odd Danish seamen there be, to work the ship while mine sleep, and none will spy them from the river-bank in the dark.”

  “It’s well!” Wulfhere said eagerly. “That will see us at the city’s docks i’ the forenoon.”

  “Let’s be having the smallest noise we may, then,” Cormac advised. “It’s far voices carry across water at night and there just may be someone listening somewhere who knows Danish when he hears it.”

  Thus Norn moved up-river through the short summer night, a shadow of vengeance ghosting over the waters.

  At last, false dawn lightened the sky.

  “Time ye were all getting below,” Odathi said. “I’ll awaken the lads, and we will bring the ship to the docks.”

  “Aye,” Cormac said curtly. He disliked this part of the scheme. It had on it too much the smell of placing his fate in another’s hands. “Leave yon hatch open, Odathi. We’d suffocate were it closed and battened.”

  Wulfhere descended into Norn’s capacious hold, grumbling. “It likes me not, to skulk down here!”

  “Nor I,” Cormac said. “Knud, and yourself, Half-a-man-do off your armour and look as much like common seamen as ye can.”

  “What?” Halfdan Half-a-man, so-called by reason of his shortness, did not see the necessity. “To what purpose?”

  “So that ye both may keep watch above decks when Odathi goes ashore. Odathi I’m inclined to trust, but he has eight seamen by my count, and… it requires only one traitor savouring reward for our heads to ruin all. Ye’re to take a fighting knife each, and if any Briton save the sailing master and whoe’er chooses to go with him should try to leave the ship-prevent it! No wish is on me to be trapped in this hold by Sigebert’s soldiers.”

  “Sound sense,” Wulfhere nodded. “How certain be ye that ye may trust Odathi?”

  “I’m not. Naught in this world is certain, but that we must chance. Someone has to go ashore, and it’s too conspicuous we both be. And the rest of us here be too clearly warrior Danes.”

  Tensely they waited, in the creaking gloom of the hold.

  Not long after dawn, someone called that Norn was approaching the docks of Nantes. Wulfhere sent Halfdan and Knud on deck, and sweated. The business of mooring followed, and after that, more of waiting. And sweating.

  At last, Odathi came down the ladder.

  “Chieftain,” he said, as one who knows what the answer will be but asks for form’s sake, “this enemy of yours; be he brown of hair, with Romish dress and manners? One who erst was handsome but is no longer?”

  “Ye have seen him?” Wulfhere demanded, thrusting his face forward.

  “He’s in the custom-house yonder. He is there, now. I spoke to him and answered his questions. There be sword-scars upon his face that he hasn’t had for long; not so long as a year, surely.”

  “Sigebert!” Cormac breathed. “Why should it astonish us, after all? Chief customs assessor is the office he holds. Why should he not be there?”

  “Within our reach!” Wulfhere shouted joyously. The hold reverberated to his voice. “Here on the waterfront! Cormac, we can slay him now! ’Tis needless to wait for night and attack his manse!” />
  “The place is aswarm with Frankish soldiers,” Odathi warned.

  “The worse for them. It needn’t deter us. So would his mansion be!”

  Cormac was thinking quickly. Wulfhere’s impetuosity, oft had much to commend it. Their original plan had been to wait, and seek the Frank’s house after dark, although that left the entire day for some unforeseen little thing to betray them. Now they could strike quickly from Norn, retreat to her as quickly after slaying Sigebert, and make escape.

  Against that was to be weighed the seeming madness of an attack in full daylight. Cormac considered it, briefly. He decided it was no real objection. The very audacity of the notion gave it promise. Besides-holding back Wulfhere now were bull-wrestling.

  “True for you, Bush-face,” he said with a savage grin. “It’s better Black Thorfinn’s ghost will rest this night. Let’s be at them!”

  That morning was spoken of on the Nantes waterfront for years thereafter. Nigh three dozen fighting men appeared as from nowhere, to spill over the decks of an ordinary trader and charge down the gangplank, yelling. Many did not wait, but sprang to the rail off the ship and thence to the dockside, drawing swords as they landed. Steel blades and helms flashed in the sunlight like silver and flame. Their beards and bright helms announced them. Folk scattered before them on the crowded waterfront.

  “Saxons! The Saxons are here!”

  “Follow me to Sigebert’s heart! Wulfhere roared, striding through the panicked rout. He did not trouble to smite such unarmed folk as inadvertently got in his way. He simply shoved or shouldered them aside or dealt the merest love-taps with the flat of his ax. Cormac, beside him, acted similarly. Behind and about them their men widened the path their leaders had opened, with battering shields and jabbing spears.

  “There’s the custom-house!” Cormac snarled, pointing with his sword to a powerful stone building. “Behl and Crom! It might be a little fortress!”