The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25

by Gardner Dozois

  Olaf Gustaf’s son was morose to the point of suicide, but it was a point in exquisite balance. “I’ll end in a nameless grave,” he confided to David later that same evening when David had found him on the castle wall overlooking the moonlit lake. “That’s the fate of out-laws.” David had brought him a tankard of ale because words were like fish and when wet swam more freely. “I was an important merchant in Galway Town. I took tin and timber from Cornwall to Bordeaux and to Henaye in the Basque country and brought back LaRochelle wines, Bourgneuf salt, and Spanish wool. Now there’s a price on my head, and I never even had that poor man’s woman. I wouldn’t mind being cut down so much if I’d ever futtered her; but she and I hadn’t closed the bargain yet. Her husband thought otherwise, and so he died for the sake of an error. That don’t seem right.” Olaf sighed. “Still, people will go against me. Me, what’s fought Breton and Basque pirates, and sailed with the Hansards against the wild Prussians.”

  David pointed to the vessel tied up to the wharf on the west side of the island, half visible in flickering torchlight. “Is that the ó Gonklin boat?”

  “Ship,” the Ostman told him. “Not ‘boat’. Ja, that’s her. Looks a little like a cog, but she’s a poor sailer. Flat-bottomed, no keel. Her master fought his leeway all up Lough Corrib. Used oars, he did, to bring her to dock, so she’s even part galley. No castles, fore or aft, to give archers height over pirates.”

  “May be there are no pirates in her home waters?”

  Olaf spread his hands. “Or may be the pirates win. But she’s got that queer second mast behind the main, which I fancy would harvest a bit more o’ the wind than the usual bonnet sails, so she’d have heels when sailing large. And the strakes are clinkered, d’ye see – but top-over-bottom like the old knorrs, not bottom-over-top like modern ships. If I had to guess . . . D’ye have any more of The ó Flaherty’s ale? Ah, my thanks t’ye. If I had to guess, I’d say this ó Gonklin fellow never had deep-water ships, just coasters; and what he’s got now, he’s copied off knorrs from the days of Eric the Red. That little hind-mast, though. That’s new. That’s a good idea.” He took a long pull from his tankard. “I’d like to be out on one now. Not on that bastard. I’d not try the Gascon coast without a proper keel beneath me. But I’d like to be out on a proper ship. Out of Aire Land, where every man’s hand against me.”

  “Mine isn’t.”

  “Ach. That only means ye haven’t heard the price on me yet.”

  David studied the ship again. He had never seen a cog before, let alone something that wasn’t exactly a cog, and Olaf’s explanations were as much a foreign language as that of the ó Gonklins. It astonished him that so large and heavy a thing could float at all. “I don’t think those vessels can bring an army across the Ocean.”

  “Don’t be fooled by her size,” the Ostman said. “There be plenty room in ’er hold.”

  “It isn’t the size I’m after thinking of. You said you wouldn’t take it to the Gascon coast. Would you take it on the Ocean Sea?”

  Olaf considered that. “If Hengist’s family were breathing on my neck, I’d try Ocean in a coracle. If I’m to end in a nameless grave, better a watery one. But . . . The easting would be simple enough. Put up enough linen, catch the westerlies, and here you are. As for the westing . . . Well, she’s got oars . . .”

  “But if a flat-bottomed ship slips sideways . . .”

  “Leeway, we call it. That’s the problem with her. Ye couldn’t be sure where ye’d raise land. If these Red Foreigners had keeled ships that could hold a bearing, they would have been here long since.”

  “You can’t spin linen from straw,” David agreed.

  “And without those hairy horses of theirs, they’d have to walk everywhere, and how big would their kingdoms be? As big as a thumbnail, I’d wager. No grand cities as Thorfinn’s told of: Manahattan, Lechauweking. That Tatamaigh fellow, when we slipped past Galway Town and her great walls, he turned his nose up and laughed. I’d be offended, if the Galwegians weren’t all trying to kill me. I suppose a folk can be only as great as their tools will let them.” Olaf turned as another man climbed the steps to the rampart and he called to the newcomer in Old Danish. “Hails, Thorfinn, son of the Rafn! How fare ye?”

  The dark Dane said nothing, but he took the jug of ale from Olaf’s hand and drank from it, wiping his mouth afterward with the back of his hand. He looked at David without expression, and did not return the jug. Smiling, and speaking the Gaelic so that the Red Dane would not understand, Olaf turned back to David. “He wouldn’t last a week in Galway Town before he smiled below his chin.”

  “They are afraid. All of them but the gilly.”

  “Then they shouldn’t swagger so.”

  David looked into the night, past Lough Corrib, past Connemara, past the Ocean Sea. “Sometimes a man must push himself forward, if to step back is death.”

  David went off by himself the next morning to watch the sun come up over Cill Cluanaigh on the eastern shore of the lough. The breeze, smelling of fish and the damp, whipped his cloak about him and he gathered the edge of it in his hand. A party of horsemen breasted the horizon, paused, and disappeared on the farther slope. Normans – perhaps Mac Costello’s men. David spat over the wall into the waters that lapped against the foot of the fortress. Or a party of king Aedh’s men, or even Leyney men sent south by Conner god ó Hara. Outriders? Or were rumors spreading?

  Below, crossing the courtyard, ó Tubbaigh carried slop buckets to the midden. David whistled and the man looked up. For a moment the two locked gazes, then ó Tubbaigh put the slop buckets down and climbed the ladder to the parapet. David mimed smoking the bowl-and-pipe, but when the other drew it out made the negative gesture of passing the hand back and forth across his lips. He pointed to the horse carved into the bowl and said in Danish, “Saga horse sing.” The previous night Thorfinn, through Olaf, had described how the Red Foreigners esteemed the horse above all beasts, and ó Tubbaigh seemed from his bow-leggedness a man who had spent most of his life astride one.

  Ó Tubbaigh thought for a moment and his lips moved, as if he were puzzling from the Danish to his own tongue. Then he shrugged and began to speak in a sing-song voice. David began to walk slowly around the parapet and the Red Foreigner walked beside him, singing in a high nasal whine. David understood not one word of it, but that was not his purpose.

  At one point in the song ó Tubbaigh gnashed his teeth, then rubbed his stomach and pointed to the horse carving. Then he waved his hand before his mouth, by which David understood that at one time his people had eaten horse meat, but did so no longer. The Normans had a similar taboo, and small wonder. Eat all your mounts and what do you ride? A chevalier in armor would present less fearsome a prospect astride a cow. The miming with which ó Tubbaigh accompanied the song suggested the capture and breaking of horses, but he rode his imaginary steed with a wilder abandon than the Norman kettle-heads and he mimed the shooting of a bow and not the lowering of a lance.

  At that point, turning the corner of the parapet, they came face to face with the ó Gonklin chief Tatamaigh and his woman about their own morning circuit of the walls. Tatamaigh halted and stared with onyx eyes at David and ó Tubbaigh. The gilly, who had been in the midst of loosing one of his imaginary arrows, smiled and released it directly at the chief’s chest.

  Tatamaigh snatched at his sword-hilt, but the gilly said, “Hahkalo iss’ubah, sachem. Sa taloah himonasi,” and bowed most insolently. Then he grinned and made riding motions, biting imaginary reins in his teeth and loosing another bow shot. The ó Gonklin affected not to listen, but his woman, standing a pace behind him, watched ó Tubbaigh’s rolling hips with her lower lip caught between her teeth.

  Tatamaigh released his sword-hilt – and David heard the subtle sound of other swords sheathed a few paces behind him. Gillapadraig, as always, his shadow. But the chief reached out and snatched the smoke-pipe from ó Tubbaigh’s hand.

  Ó Tubbaigh cried out, but Tatamaigh fended him
off with a sharp blow that rocked the gilly’s head back. Then, holding out his palm, the chief spoke sharply. David heard “tzibatl” but it sounded no more at home on this man’s tongue than it had earlier on his servant’s. Possibly it was a word of the Aire Bhoach folk, those who grew the leaves. Ó Tubbaigh snarled something that David had little trouble interpreting as a refusal, slapped his chest and said, “Mingo-li billia!”

  The ó Gonklin chief grabbed his sword-hilt again and might have drawn it this time, but that his woman put a hand on his arm and said something soft. Tatamaigh shrugged her off without looking, but nevertheless unhanded the sword. “Tzibatl,” he said again, holding his hand out. Two of his guardsmen had come up behind him and watched the servant with smoldering eyes. David crossed his arms and leaned his back against the parapet, waiting to see how it would play out.

  The moment stretched on.

  Then ó Tubbaigh sighed and reached into his cloak and fetched out the bag of smoking powder. He held it for a moment, and David thought he might throw it over the wall in spite. Then, he handed the pouch to his chief saying something that David thought might translate as I hope you choke on it.

  David noted how both men’s hands trembled while handling the powder and he thought that the white smoke might exert some powerful influence over them, as whiskey did over drunkards. Before he had even departed with his retinue, Tatamaigh had filled the bowl with the powder and had sent one of the guards to fetch a coal to light it with.

  “They didn’t fight,” Gillapadraig said. He had come to walk beside David and spared now a backward glance at the departing eagle-chief. “I thought you said they would fight.”

  “Not yet,” David told him. He turned to ó Tubbaigh and said, “Mingolaigh. Chief?”

  “Mingo, chief Muisce ó Geogh,” he said. “Sachem, chief al-Goncuin.”

  David repeated the name more carefully. “Al-Goncuin, is it? Are they Saracens, then?” But ‘saracen’ meant nothing to the red man and David did not press the matter. What concerned him was less whence the red men had come, than whither they might be going.

  When they turned onto the parapet overlooking the lough, David found Donnchad ó Mulmoy and Olaf the Dane waiting, as he had arranged.

  “How many?” David asked Donnchad, indicating the cog moored below them.

  “Three-and-twenty,” ó Mulmoy told him, “though it was a hard count, seeing how they all look alike. About half wear iron shirts. The others climb the ropes, so I think they must be the sailors. There are always two on guard but they don’t keep good watch.”

  “They believe themselves among friends,” David said.

  “More than friends. A couple of ó Flaherty’s scullery maids have gone inside on one errand or another – mostly the other, I’m thinking – and they have a Pictish woman that they must have captured when they fought the ó Malleys.”

  David turned to the Dane. “Olaf, do you have any friends yet in Galway Town?”

  The Ostman shrugged. “Does a man with a price ever have friends? I suppose you could call anyone who hasn’t yet tried to slit my throat a ‘friend’.”

  “What if you could promise them a ship faster than any they’ve known?”

  “So . . .” Olaf’s eyes dropped to the alien ship. “She needs a proper keel. But I know a man at Bordeaux who would do it.” His eyes danced along the masts. “A dozen to sail her, I think, though the rigging be strange . . . and we would need to . . .” He stopped and nodded. “Ja. I’ve cut ships out before. It can be done.”

  “Good. Make a list of the men you want and give it to ó Mulmoy. Donnchad, ride for Galway Town. You know the town. Find the men Olaf names and bring them here by stealth. You may encounter ó Dallies down that way, and there is nothing ill between them and us; but if deBurgo is abroad take care. Travel unseen.”

  Donnchad smiled. “One ó Mulmoy is worth ten Burkes.”

  “Then take Kevin with you. I think there are more than ten.”

  Donnchad left. Olaf lingered a moment longer, gazing at the cog and rubbing his hands together. Then he too left.

  A silence passed before David said, “Tatamaigh home sail, warriors bring. Take you?”

  Ó Tubbaigh laughed bitterly. “Chief al-Goncuin. No more.” He slapped his chest. “Muisce ó Geogh all chief now. Town, stronghold, how say?” And he mimed the striking of a flint, the lighting of a fire.

  “Burn,” said David.

  “Town, stronghold al-Goncuin burn. Women . . .” And he thrust with his hips.

  “Books, too?” To the gilly’s puzzled look, David mimed reading and ó Tubbaigh shrugged.

  “Pfft.” His fingers fluttered like smoke.

  “Ochone. They do burn easily, do they not?” David said. He wondered if there were any monks in that New-Found Land. He wondered if they would catch whatever they could on their parchments before all the learning ran through their fingers like so much sand. He thought about the saints of Aire Land scratching away with quills in the failing light of the long ago while vikings howled outside. What they had written was tinder, but tinder of a different sort, which later, in the courts of Charlemagne, had lit a different sort of fire. And now Charlemagne himself was legend, a subject of romance and fable, as distant from the present day as the Fall of Rome had been from his.

  Ó Tubbaigh spoke in halting Danish. “Ship take hair yellow.” When David made no answer, a distant look came into his eyes. “Go with. Home see ahcheba. Ah, the grass, the grass.”

  David pulled his knife and scabbard from his belt and handed it to the Muisce ó Geogh captive, for such he had concluded the man was: one of the sacking horde in the wreckage of an empire, captured by a fleeing band of al-Goncuins, possibly even as the escape ship was casting forth. There were red stains on the cog’s decks that spoke of a desperate fight. Ó Tubbaigh hesitated. Then he snatched the knife from its scabbard and secreted it in the wraps of his turban, returning the empty scabbard to David. He said, “Smoke we two ahcheba.”

  “We will smoke again,” David lied.

  The ó Flaherty Himself escorted David to the edge of Cill Cluanaigh and sat upon his pony beside him while the hill men disembarked from the boats and sorted themselves out for the long trek back to the Slieve ua Fhlainn.

  “You’ll tell Cormac,” ó Flaherty suggested.

  “I’ll tell The McDermot everything I’ve seen.”

  The king of Iar Connaught grunted over the careful phrasing, then he looked west, past his stronghold in the lough. “I don’t understand your loyalty to a weakling like Aedh.”

  “A weakling he is, and a fool,” David admitted, “but if we demand our kings be worthy before we pay them the respect that kings are due, then all is chaos. Kings come, kings go. It’s the white rod that matters, not the fool that holds it.”

  The ó Flaherty pondered David’s words. “I see,” he said at last. “You are Felim’s man. You’ve been Felim’s man all along.”

  “It would be awkward,” David explained, “if he killed his own brother. Turlough will see to that – should no cuckold step forward.”

  Ó Flaherty grinned without humor. “And then Felim’s dogs will remove Turlough, with the iron shirts to back them? Sure, it’s a sad tale, then, that the Red Foreigners will upset his plans.”

  David shrugged. “Life brims with the unexpected. Oh. I’m after losing my knife.”

  “Are you now?”

  “I think that red gilly is after taking it. I think he means to murder Tatamaigh.”

  “Over the woman? She isn’t much to look at, but I don’t suppose looking is what he has in mind.”

  “Maybe the woman. Maybe the smoke. It doesn’t matter. Warn Tatamaigh.”

  The king of Iar Connaught scowled, suspecting some cleverness. “It would be better for you – and Felim and Cormac – if Tatamaigh were slain.”

  David crossed himself piously. “The Lord commanded us to do good even for our enemies.”

  * * *

  David halted his party o
nce again on the hill overlooking Lough Corrib and turned his pony round to gaze at The ó Flaherty’s stronghold while awaiting the signal from the outriders that no ambush lurked. Gillapadraig trotted his pony to stand next to David’s.

  “So it did come down to a woman in the end,” he said. “How much have you teased out?”

  “They’re not coming,” David said. “They’ll never come; not to help Turlough, not for any reason.”

  “Can you be so sure? The Normans found it worth the effort . . .”

  David pulled on his moustache, gauged the position of the sun, and wondered if he could reach the monastery at Tuam before nightfall. “The Irish Sea is a shorter crossing than the Ocean Sea. But that is not the reason. The al-Goncuin empire is broken. The clans of the Muisce ó Geogh light campfires with their books. Tatamaigh was desperate for a refuge and grasping at any straw. He would have promised ó Flaherty anything. We may see a few more such boat-loads seeking the legend-lands the Danes sing of – but that is all.”

  “What of these Muisce ó Geogh folk, then? They are the victors, you say. Will they not come?”

  “The ó Flaherty is mad. Bad enough to invite the red Romans in; to invite the red Huns is pure Sweeney. They are horsemen, not sailors, and there is more wealth in the wreckage of an empire than on these poor shores. Yet they are a wild folk, and the horizon taunts them. Should ó Tubbaigh escape to tell them of us . . .”

  “Small chance of that.”

  “How small is small enough? He is a bold man, and a clever one to survive as long as he has in the hands of his enemies. When Olaf steals the ship, will he not be aboard? Could I hazard his escape? Ah, darling, it’s a cruel and pitiless age we live in to spend such a life to buy a little time. Had they not burned the books, I might have hesitated.” David fell silent and tugged his chin. “There may be a blessing, though, in all this.”

  “What is it?” Gillapadraig asked.

  “That Tatamaigh’s crown was solid gold, was it not?”