When Death Birds Fly cma-3 Page 4

  Usconvets laughed. “You mean that every wave flings up their drowned corpses on the strand! Others may dare the sea yonder, Lucanor; we, and only we, know it. The Cantabrian Sea belongs to us because we belong to it. My people will still be here when the Saxons, the Heruli and those others are a memory!”

  So softly Lucanor said, “What of the Suevi?”

  Those he named were a Germanic tribe, like the stronger Vandals; they were Suebi to the Basques. They had come into Spain with the Vandals and had stayed behind when the Vandals under their ruthless, crafty king crossed the strait to Africa. Now the Suevi held the northwest of Hispania for their own, despite the Goths who raided the rest of the peninsula-except, of course, for the demesne of the Basques.

  “What of them? We will be here long after they have gone, also! Besides, we are speaking of the sea. The Suebi do not fare asea. They are landsmen utterly.”

  “Praemonitus, praemunitus,” Lucanor said. “Their king plans to make them a sea power.” The man’s sunken eyes flamed with a consuming hatred; Usconvets noted. “He has hired men to help him do so. The Vandals did as much, remember, under a strong king who knew what he was about! And in the end the Vandals sacked Rome. The Suevi are first cousins to the Vandals.”

  Usconvets nodded slowly. “Forewarned,” he said, “is as you said forearmed. What men has he hired, this first among the Sueves?”

  Shivering with the force of his enmity, Lucanor said, “Wulfhere Splitter of Skulls, and Cormac mac Art.”

  “Ahh…”

  Usconvets well knew those names. No man plying the pirate’s trade along the western shores of Gaul could fail to know them. The Suevic king’s plans had seemed laughable, at first. Now the firelight danced on Usconvets’s face to show its concern, and Lucanor noted.

  “Were you to slay them,” the dark-faced mage said, “the matter would end aborning. I can aid you to do this thing.” His eyes were black. They pierced.

  Tenil swore hotly. “My man, will you listen to this trouble-maker? He hates the Dane and the Hivernian, that’s clear, and would make you the tool of his spite. Could be no plainer! What be his squabbles to us?”

  “Naught,” Usconvets said nodding, and shortly. “Naught in any way, woman. Yet an he speaks the truth in these other matters… aye, I will listen.”

  “You are in error,” Kuicho warned him.

  “By the Sun above me! I will decide that! Continue, stranger.”

  Lucanor’s I have him! was a fleeting smirk. “These red swine are sailing from Brigantium, in quest of shipbuilders for King Veremund. They will find them. Unless… They will befoul these waters with their accursed presence within five days at most. Best it would be for yourself and all Vascones, sea-chieftain, did they never leave them. And is not Cormac mac Art’s race the ancient enemy of your own? The man is a Gael of Hivernia. Blood of Atlantis and Cimmeria runs in his body-”

  “Not of Atlantis!” Kuicho snapped, bristling, betraying his understanding of Latin. “We are the race of sunken Atlantis, we and no others.”

  This Kuicho believed, for it was the tradition of his people. Lucanor knew better. The Basque race had its origin in the Pictish Isles west of Atlantis, in those ancient days before two awful cataclysms had changed the shape of the world. It did not astonish, that millenia of word-of-mouth repetition had confused the Pictish Isles with Atlantis itself.

  “So you say,” the mage said sharply. “None the less, were Cimmerians and Picts as brothers in the long ago? Were the Gaels and Basques as brothers, here in Hispania? Is not the blood debt between them and you ancient, and heavy, and scarlet? The Danish Skull-splitter and Cormac mac Art are coming here, with one ship and scarce forty men! Slay them all, sea-chieftain, for the sake of what was and to prevent what may be!”

  Lucanor stopped himself. Though he panted with passion, his cunning told him he had said enow. To harangue the pirate further would be to lose so proud and willful a man. He stood and watched, thinking hatred, while Usconvets considered the scheme without making reply.

  Usconvets was tempted by the prospect of a good rousing fight, and who knew what rich plunder might be aboard the Raven of the Skullsplitter and mac Art? Besides, it was certainly true that he did not wish the Suevic kingdom to grow powerful asea. Yet-Tenil and Kuicho had much of right with them, too. Usconvets neither liked this stranger nor cared to be, used in his machinations.

  “Now I will speak!” Kuicho cried. “I know you, Lucanor, you who worship the Black Gods of R’lyeh, accursed and banished since before there were men! I know also this man you speak of, aye who he is and who he was as well, this Cormac mac Art. I too have my powers, lackey of Cthulhu, and ways of knowing what other men cannot. In former lives he was friend to my people, this undying ka that is presently Cormac mac Art. In times to come he will be our friend again.”

  Usconvets, like Lucanor, stared at his old companion Kuicho, and when he felt Tenil’s hand slip into his he was not loath to press it.

  “Once he was King Kull of Valusia,” Kuicho was saying, his eyes seeming to flash like polished gems in the firelight. “Then his war-companion and blood-brother was Brule the Spear-slayer and his ally the chieftain Ka-nu. His ancestor in the body he now habits was Cormac, Prince of Connacht, ally in battle to Bran Mak Morn who was the last great king of the British Picts. I see; I know. Kull is Kormak the Kelt!”

  For a moment later Kuicho stared at Lucanor, and then he rounded on Usconvets. “And this too I see! Follow the counsels of this man and he will lead you to disaster, Usconvets!”

  The pirate was troubled, and showed it. “Well, you say one thing, old friend. This… Luke says another. You both claim powers common men do not have. Suppose you strive together? I shall be guided by the advice of the victor.”

  Although he spoke it slowly, as a thought said aloud and a suggestion only, the savage laughter in his eyes belied that. Both Lucanor and Kuicho knew that refusing was not among their choices. Usconvets ruled, by being Usconvets. He amplified that fact by making a sweeping gesture that said it plain: Get ye at it, both!

  Basque and Graeco-Roman faced each other; the tall lean man in the unkempt robe and the tall stringy one in nothing much; a stark figure of humankind with roots running back thousands of years-and full consciousness of those ties to past times and lives.

  They faced each other in the firelight, and that swiftly it began.

  The Basque diviner seemed inhumanly tall and straight, his leanly muscled lines nigh unbroken by clothing and the firelight playing upon him. Yet about the other man’s rumpled, insignificant figure the shadows thickened and swirled. Only the sounds of the surf disrupted the stillness-and something seemed to perch on Lucanor’s shoulders or to erupt from his body. Partially merged with that robed form, a part of him, it seemed to ruffle vast black wings. Tenil’s face paled, and it was from the grip of Usconvets’s fingers on her hand. They stared, and she was of no mind to beg for release. Usconvets would have taken his oath that the stranger’s eyes blazed yellow as candle-fire or the stone called topaz. The pirate’s bold heart chilled within him. Tenil turned her face away from Lucanor, into her man’s bulgey chest.

  The villagers were silent. Many had surreptitiously fled or slipped away into the darkness. Fearsome sorcery hovered over their village, and the air was laden with a miasma of the preternatural.

  All knew that forces strove just as had there been the clash of steel on iron and wood and the grunt of striving warriors. Two stares met and clashed and challenged. Kuicho’s eyes, stretched wide in his masklike face, mirrored the stars that seemed to stumble as they were called on to feed the power that mage turned on mage. Lucanor’s eyes had narrowed. Their abnormal, xanthic, lambent glow might have been some trick of the firelight… but Usconvets did not believe it.

  He felt it, palpable as heavy fog or low clouds: mighty forces surged between these two and no two weapon-men ever strove the harder with sharpened steel.

  Both men’s faces gleamed and then they were swea
ting huge drops, though they stood motionless. They strove mightily, without moving from where they stood and without so much as raising their arms. Kuicho’s bare long limbs could be seen to tremble with effort, with focused energies.

  The very air between the moveless combatants sang and vibrated with unseen forces. Usconvets knew that he watched war, eerie and of the shadow-world with powers drawn from the minds and those breathless gulfs between the stars, and that combat was no less than the striving one against the other of two enemy ships on stormy waters. Did he know doubts then, at having pitted his old companion against the newcomer whose appearance was obviously deceiving, as a long, lean rangy man could be strong as one with muscles like stones?

  He had cause to be. As abruptly as it had begun, it ended. Kuicho shrieked, shook and twitched like an aspen in a gale, clutched at his eyes-and crumpled to the sand.

  Instantly Lucanor reeled as with release of some mighty tension, and the illusion of the great winged thing surmounting and sharing his body vanished. Yet he fell not. Too, he no longer seemed aught save a most ordinary man. Breathing in great gasps, he stared at Usconvets.

  “Vici,” he croaked; I conquered.

  Usconvets swallowed again so that his voice emerged strong. “What of Kuicho? Is he dead? By Orko, if he has died our bargain is void-and your life as well, stranger among Basques!”

  “He lives,” Lucanor said thickly; another short Latin word. “He will… be ill for many days, however. He… drained himself… as the conflict has cost me hard. Ah! Cthulhu fhtagn! Give me meat and wine!”

  He seemed to fall to his haunches. Squatting shapelessly, he bowed his head.

  Usconvets waved a hand to indicate that the Antiochite be given what he wanted. Out of a certain morbid curiosity he asked, “Have you no further need to fast?”

  “My need is for strength,” the mage mumbled. He received meat, and began to eat. “Does our bargain stand, sea-chieftain?”

  “Aye,” the Basque said, almost unwillingly. “Usconvets is loyal to his word. Show me the ship Raven and I fall upon it with all my -strength.”

  “That is good hearing,” Lucanor said, past a steaming mouthful of whale meat. Delight as much as exhaustion fed his tremors now. “I have time, not immensities of time, but it suffices… to regain my strength, and then to fast for another day, and to perform certain divinations… yes. When they appear, you will know, lord. You will know.”

  None failed to note that of a sudden Lucanor had become curiously servile. Mayhap because of the expenditure of so much energy, and strength? Whatever the reason, Usconvets took cue from it at once.

  He nodded curtly. “Then eat,” he said. “It has long been my thought that Wulfhere Skullsplitter-the great oaf!-ought to have stayed in his cold northern waters. Now he shall learn it himself, by the Sun above me!”

  3

  When Dead Men Attack

  “In a world where the old-time skill of the Roman swordsman is almost forgotten, Cormac mac Art is well-nigh invincible. He is cool and deadly as the wolf for which he is named; yet at times, in the fury of battle, a madness comes upon him that transcends the frenzy of the Berserk. At such times he is more terrible than Wulfhere, and men who would face the Dane flee before the bloodlust of the Gael.”

  – Conal the minstrel, of Britain

  Dusk had begun to shadow the blue water. Red as fiery copper, the sun of Behl sank lower in the direction of Galicia, which Raven had now left eight days’ sailing to westward. Behind the bay where Cormac and Wulfhere had rested their crew for a day and a night, the foothills of the Pyrenees rose dark against the sky. Beyond them shouldered up the great mountain peaks in mauve and scarlet and burnt gold, brilliant yet in the last of the light.

  Coppery dusk illumined too the pirate galley’s swelling sail as Raven put to sea. The sail was new, of Galician manufacture; blue stripped with green. The ship slid forth silent as a crafty predator-which it was. This time Raven was on no piratical mission.

  Wulfhere, standing immense by the shield-rail, breathed the twilight air with pleasure. His crimson beard fell to spread in untrimmed exuberance over his scale-mail corselet. Over his shoulder he bore the overlarge long-hafted ax that was never far from him. Braces of gold and brass flashed like fire on his arms, which were big as most men’s thighs. The mighty Dane made a picture of rampant barbarism not easily forgotten; and just now, of a contented man.

  The barbarian loomed over the world Rome had conquered, and ruled, and lost. Unlike so many, this one was not interested in scrabbling over the truncated corpse of empire; Wulfhere Hausakluifr was content to live and to fight and to laugh.

  “Ha, Cormac,” he rumbled, “this be more to my liking! By the Thunderer, I had begun to feel choked in that cramping harbour of Brigantium! Was well enow for yourself; ye be at home with kingly intrigues and politics. Not I.”

  Cormac smiled faintly without making answer. The Skull-splitter had voiced some such comment on each day of their voyage thus far. Nor would the Gael be disagreeing with him. Cormac mac Art was not so much at home with matters political that he didn’t savour this challenge. Asea, he and Wulfhere were their own masters, and the kings of the earth could do no more than gnash their teeth over the fact.

  Once again Cormac wore his black mail of chain mesh. Its reassuring familiar weight covered him from throat to mid-thigh, clinking. Above it his dark, scarred face well suited the war-shirt’s implications. His black mane, not long, was bare to the wind. Beside him on a vacant rowing bench rested his plain helmet. Its crest of flowing white horsehair stirred a little with the breeze of Raven’s movement. At one hip rode his straight, double-edge sword in its sheath; on the other hip he wore a Saxon fighting knife.

  Planting a foot on the rowing bench beside his helmet, mac Art set his two hands on that knee and inhaled salt air while listening to the sound of water furling past in a hiss, and the thunk of oars accompanied by the grunts of those pulling them. Just now Raven’s unmanned oars were overmany. Threescore men made her full crew, fifty to row and ten to handle steerboard, sail, and lines. Now here they were, he and Wulfhere, roving the sea with but twoscore.

  Still, mac Art of Eirrin did not fret over that for which there was no help. They’d been undermanned aforenow. They had prevailed. They lived.

  Well they knew this western coast of Gaul. Here, in these waters where Gallia and Hispania met, heavy swells were common. In crashing gouts of foam they broke dangerously near sunken rocks even where the water was deep. Farther north, off the River Garonne and the Saxon islands, tidal streams ran tricky and inconsistent as though designed by hunt-wise foxes. To run up this coast by night required not only men who knew what they were about but bold ones besides. Necessity bred boldness as kings did conflict. The night did offer cover, and western Gaul was stiff with the reivers’ foes.

  Big brusque Guntram, the Gothic Count of Burdigala that would be Burgundy, craved their bodies for exhibition on a gibbet to placate his master King Alaric. Athanagild Beric’s son, who commanded the royal Garonne fleet for Alaric, yearned even more to capture them.

  More enemies were the Saxons settled in the Charente region and the large islands nearby. They knew the reivers; they knew Cormac had not come by his Seax-knife-Saxon dagger-through amiable trade.

  Nor was it likely that Sigebert the Frank, now chief customs assessor of Nantes, would have forgotten them. He’d set a cunning trap for Cormac and Wulfhere not two months previously-and failed to take them though he had them at swords’ points. He’d lost an ear for his trouble.

  Ah, half the world was set against the self-exiled Gael of far green Eirrin, and he was not even taking Lucanor into account.

  His reflections were most rudely interrupted. “Three ships on the steerboard side!” the lookout bawled. “They come fast under oar, from astern!”

  Three! Cormac snatched up his helmet and went swiftly aft while he settled it on his head. Ordlaf the steersman greeted him with a nod.

  “Yonder, I�
�d guess,” he grunted. “I see naught as yet.”

  Cormac stared into the deep-blue gloaming. Three shapes emerged. Cloven water hissed white at their bows. Each was smaller than Raven but seaworthy and fast in the highest degree. Aye, Cormac knew them and for him a glance sufficed: Basque ships. They neared, well-rowed.

  “Wotan!” Ordlaf burst out, in a voice of incredulous horror such as Cormac had not previously heard from the stolid Dane. “What phantoms be these?”

  “Phantoms?” Cormac stared in puzzlement. “What is it ye mean, man? It’s ships I see on the breast of the sea, and men on them bent on a fight. Bad enough that is-what’s this of phantoms?”

  Ordlaf looked at him as if he were mad while Ordlaf’s were the wild eyes of madness. From the crew’s sudden braying of panicky invocations of Wotan, Aegir and other gods, Cormac understood that something was badly wrong. Were his own eyes failing him? He squinted at the oncoming ships. Raven was undermanned and pursued, badly outnumbered, aye and undeniably. But it would take more than that to shake this crew of battle-hungry demons Wulfhere and he led. What then? What?

  Wulfhere Skull-splitter himself burst through the uproar on knotty legs, seeking advice from the man on whose crafty counsel he depended. Cormac saw that his eyes, too, were wide aghast.

  “Wolf! Do ye see them? Surely it’s from Nastrand itself those demons have voyaged to find us!”

  “Nastrand?” Still not comprehending, Cormac heard his friend name the cold barren shore of Hell, where the corpses of cowards and perjurers were eaten by monsters till the end of time and breath. “Blood of the gods! Nastra-Wulfhere? What see ye there?”

  For the second time Cormac received from eyes less than rational a look that questioned his sanity. “See? What is there to see? Rotted ships of death, crewed by liches!” Hearing himself, Wulfhere gathered up the reins of his own runaway control. “But we’ll soon cause the sea to cover those corpses-again!”