The Tower of Death cma-2

by Andrew J Offutt

  Ivarr snorted. “These Sueves be dirt-farmers, lorded over by horsemen. High-nosed fools! Five years after they’re born, they can never bring their knees within hailing distance again. They’d dine from the saddle if they could.”

  Men laughed, and encouraged Ivarr added, “Can’t bring their knees together, those men. And their women come to the same state not much older.”

  Wulfhere roared and smacked Ivarr’s shoulder-and Clodia’s backside, simultaneously. Tight-lipped, Clodia moved out of the big Dane’s reach. Coming to Cormac, she clutched his arm and renewed her appeal.

  “Please make him-”

  “Belay that. Look!”

  Fire, shoreward.

  A dancing bright wisp of flame it was, that swiftly grew. In minutes it was a large yellow glow bright enow to be visible for miles of a clear night.

  “Signal,” Wulfhere muttered, thinking aloud. “That, or beacon.”

  “Or a rite of some kind,” Ivarr added. “Some chieftain’s obsequies? I’m not sure yon fire does not burn on the sea itself.”

  “Wreckers,” was Ordlaf’s suggestion, and a world of loathing he packed into the word.

  The others shared that loathing, and contempt. No seaman who had sailed the tricky coasts of Armorica, now known to many as Lesser Britain for the Cornish and Cymric folk who had settled there, went unmoved by the word wrecker. The name was an epithet. Wulfhere snarled in his bristling crimson beard.

  “If such they be, let’s find and kill them!”

  “If such they be, old Splitter of skulls,” Cormac said, “we will.” His tone was abstracted but not a whit less deadly for it. “We will, aye… but suppose that be a simple harbour-light. It’s no less mad we’d be to let it be drawing us in. Belike we’d be finding ourselves greeted with a royal claim on Raven and all she contains.”

  “Aye, Captain.” Ordlaf spoke quietly. “Best go wide of it now, whate’er it may be. Make investigation by daylight.”

  “For that we’d all fall asleep arowing,” Cormac mac Art added, “an we attempt it now.”

  Raven turned southward upon water like shimmering silk. Men pulled their oars, and pulled again, with no strength in their arms. They had used the last of it, and still they rowed. The shore they neared was wild and shaggy, with no signs of cultivation.

  “Put in yonder,” Wulfhere said, thrusting his massive head forward like a hound spotting birds. In truth he was squinting into the night.

  The sanctuary he had chosen was a wood-fringed cove scarce so large that it could be flattered as a bay. The longship nosed in slowly. Cormac, at the bow, probed ahead for rocks. The cove seemed innocent of such, excepting the seaworn mass at its southern end, which bore a goodly frost of bird droppings.

  They backed oars and anchored. No man would go ashore. The ship’s fire had been drenched out, days agone, but victuals remained, with an added odour of the sea from their sealskin wrapping. They ate lightly, without benefit of fire. Wulfhere, like his crew, was undismayed by cold food-but he did hark back lugubriously to the wine casks they’d heaved over-side. Cormac groaned. He knew there’d be complaints on that score at random intervals over the next several years. Such obscene waste had gone painfully to the Dane’s heart, or more aptly to his throat and stomach, the more susceptible parts of him.

  “Still ye remind me of something, guzzler,” Cormac said. “That business at Garonne-mouth; would ye not be saying it was too like what happened after, at Nantes? At both places we found traps, and them well laid, wouldn’t ye say?”

  Wulfhere shrugged and yawned. The matter was too far away and too long agone to concern him now. “Ye may have the right of it, Wolf. Does it signify? It’s never news, is it, that men of the law don’t like us. Mayhap we will take it up wi’ that fop Sigebert and his lord another day, though it’s from one ear only Sigebert’ll be giving listen! I’d surely like a word with that one-eared bastard when he lacks a score of weapon-men about him, were it only for Thorfinn’s sake. But these be Galician shores, and our concerns be here.”

  Cormac grunted, “Aye,” and said no more.

  They stretched the lowered sail for an awning, lest it rain. Blissful it was to lie down for a night’s sleep on tranquil water! Cormac made no objection when Clodia lay beside him and pressed close; indeed, he hardly noticed. After five unresting days on a crazy sea, he’d rather have had oblivious slumber than the embrace of Fand herself.

  Clodia was, though, in proud fleshy bloom and ripe, and someone found interest and impulse to stoop and fondle her boldly as he passed. That resulted in a yelp and spasm that made Cormac sit up, hurling aside his covering cloak. A sharp, icy irritability weighed on him.

  “Will ye horny sons of mares be still!” he snarled. “You too, wench! By Midhir and Morrighu, the next man who troubles my rest will sleep ashore or in the water where I’ll right briskly hurl him. And yourself, Clodia. Be that understood?”

  There were soft hootings, and comments of a scurrilous nature emerged from the shrouding dark. Mac Art paid those no mind.

  Once more he wrapped his cloak about him and composed himself to sleep, and this time with success. Clodia curled against his back, pleased he’d at least called her by name. She passed an arm about his waist, and clung. She did not intend that any “horny sons of mares” should drag her away from him for amusement betwixt the rowing-benches, an someone awoke in the night and decided he was sufficiently rested to be up to it.

  CHAPTER FOUR: The Horror in the Lighthouse

  Dawn provided colour and detail for a coast that might until then have been Hel or the Hesperides. Sunrise proved it to be neither. Both Cormac and his Danish shipmates stared, silently thoughtful, for this land bore haunting similarities to their home shores.

  For Cormac mac Art, the one man of his race aboard Raven, and more irrevocably an exile, the similarities roused memories. And they were bitter.

  Gossamer morning-mists had already begun to ravel away in the sun. Estuaries, deep and wind-swept like the northern fjords, sliced into a fertile land. Deep, blueshaded woods of beech and oak stretched broadly. Beyond loomed the greenest mist-shrouded hills Cormac had seen since he’d departed Eirrin the Emerald of the Sea.

  Was said the Eirrin-born never forgot, or found true happiness elsewhere on all the ridge of the world. Homesickness took him by the throat like an enemy; homesickness roiled in his stomach. Though Raven’s deck was now the one true home he had, it was suddenly hateful to him. The land drew him like a sorcerer’s spell of summoning.

  “I’ll be returning soon,” he said thickly.

  “Your shield,” Wulfhere said.

  Cormac slung it along his arm. With a splash and a stumble, he dropped from Raven’s thwarts. He waded forward, his eyes fixed on this land as if he were one possessed. He was vaguely aware of Clodia, who was following him close. He did not glance around. He waded ashore.

  It might have been worse. At least she’d not bleated any Cormac, wait for me’s after him, for the crew to guffaw over. She was even tagging a few paces behind and keeping her mouth shut… which, had he seen his own face, would not have surprised the Gael so deep in his memories.

  Then he ignored and even forgot her.

  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 shadeful forests old as time. Poets and craftsmen Eirrin produced, whose work vied with that of nature; learned men and druids of supernal wisdom and power. Splendour, and wealth, and delights. Eirrin. All barred to him.

  All Eirrin barred to him. Because of the treachery of kings, and a deliberately provoked quarrel.

  Cormac mac Art of Connacht had been meant to die of that provocation and ensuing duel. Instead, he had slain. Considering when and where he had done death on another Gael of Eirrin, his slaying had been well-nigh as bad as him sl
ain, or as disastrous to the boy he’d been. He who provoked did so during the Great Fair; Cormac slew him during the High King’s peace, which was inviolate. For such a crime the laws did not award other punishment than death.

  Cormac had fled away, in misery, ere he could be taken and executed. By then he knew treachery had been done on him by a rival, and by a king-and surely too the High-king himself. Crossing the plain of the sea to Dalriada in Alba up in the north of Britain, he left behind him a girl most beloved-and half his belief in the justice of kings. And too he left behind the sword of his father, for in his hand it had slain a Gael in Eirrin. The sea had it, now.

  How young he’d been then, this scarred, slit-eyed pirate of Raven!

  In Dalriada, he sought obscurity and low employment. In the employ of peasants, he worked the land like a peasant for nigh onto a year. Close and silent he’d been, and unknown to any he had remained. Partha he’d called himself; Partha of Ulahd, a name he had used aforetime to cloak his own.

  Yet Dalriada, founded long before by Gaels of Eirrin some called Scoti, was menaced ever by Picts from the Caledonian heather. Was not a place where a born fighter could remain forever obscure. Forever? In truth, that better part of a year was remarkably long. He toiled, and one day there came a Pictish attack on his master’s lands. Heart and hand and weapon-man’s training flashed awake in the peasant labourer. He did destruction on the shock-headed dark men with a reckless ferocity even they lacked power to match, and he emerged blooded but alive-perhaps because he hardly cared whether he died. The Pictish survivors fled, a thing seldom known. Picts were wont to slay to the last, or die in like fashion.

  And so distinction in combat came again upon Cormac mac Art, now Partha mac Othna. Gol, King over Dalriada, had invited him into his service, and good service had the youth given…

  Good, however brief. It happened that the king’s own daughter of Dalriada took undue interest in this Partha Pictslayer, mighty and envied weapon-man who had swiftly shown himself the best among her father’s warriors. The king had eyes to see it. Now a king must and will protect his own and marry them well, and so it was arranged that Partha fell into the hands of the Picts.

  For others this fate befell, the invariable result was death not long delayed. For this Partha Pictslayer-who had earned the name-the stocky, short men had plans more ornate.

  They played with him right gently at first, whilst they argued the merits of all the contradictory, irreconcilable ends they wished to give him. Their prisoner even kept all limbs and members, so tender with him were his captors-though he was not left unmarked. At last they settled on slow starvation, with exposure and beatings at times.

  They chose awrong. The lengthy process gave Cormac opportunity to escape. He was free again-and unwelcome in still another land. But there was the sea. From captive he became outlaw, nursed by bitterness. He gathered a band about him and took to the sea on a lifted curragh. And he came to know who had betrayed him into Pictish hands, and why.

  On the wild coasts of Dalriada he left what had remained of his belief in kingly honour. His youth he left there as well, and him then not yet twenty. Nor did he meet with difficulty in making the men he led believe him older.

  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 grey and cold and glittering as the metal of his sword. Cormac an-Cliuin he was: Cormac the Wolf.

  Came the time when he must quit those waters, for they had grown too scalding even for him, and his crew was quivering on the edge of mutiny. Came then a long voyage down the coasts of Britain, and Gallia and Hispania. Those Gaelic reivers had reached even Africa, where they made themselves known too well to the Vandals. Yet return to the western isles he had, lest Gol forget the man on whom he’d done a king’s treachery.

  Time came when civil strife in Eirrin resulted in the sundering of Cormac’s crew. Time came when he was captured again, and tossed into prison quarters colder and more filthy than even the Picts had given him. Here he awaited execution. Another prisoner in the same plight languished there, for company. Wulfhere Hausakliufr his name, and he admired the genius of the darker man who used their meagre victuals as food for the prison’s rats, who provided nourishment for the two prisoners…

  “Cormac.”

  The sound of his name returned him to the immediate now. She had been saying his name for some time, to no result; he’d been deep in the past, surrounded by this Eirrin-like land. Though he eased his abstracted walking, he did not turn to look at Clodia. She spoke his name again, on a falling note, and fell silent.

  The young woman behind him bit her lip. By no means was it subtly that he conveyed to her that she was unwanted! Yet she durst not return to the ship and all those men. Not without Cormac. That fearful crew of fiery-headed pirates, and those genially brazen hands of Wulfhere who was big enow to wrestle bulls for pastime!

  Clodia nerved herself. Whate’er it was gnawed within this reiver made this the wrong time entirely, and not being a fool the auburn-haired girl knew it. Yet there might not be other times. Besides, she felt a touch of anger. With a ship and forty swords at his back, what had the great dark man to gloom so about?

  That a ship and forty swords could be appallingly little on occasion, she did not consider.

  “Cormac,” Clodia said hesitantly. “What-what do you mean to do with me?” She bit her lip, swallowed, and then rushed on, finding that she feared an answer.

  “This land is strange to me as to you. We have been friends, Cormac. That I’d have liked to be more in the old days, you know.” Already they had become the old days to her, distant and dim. “That you ofttimes desired me, I know. Then what is it turns you so hard? You know how a woman fares with barbarian war-bands, an she lacks one single protector. Can you not bear the thought of being my protector, Cormac?” And then, her voice rising to shrillness, “Look at me!”

  Cormac turned, and looked. Clodia’s strong and high-breasted body was bared to him, her skirt and bodice a crumpled heap on the alien sand. Shame, desire and desperation commingled to heat the blood that darkened her face. He was astonished to see how far from the ship they had wandered along the strand, whilst thoughts had enveloped him to no purpose.

  She came swaying, smiling, seducing…

  Anger seethed in him, cold and sudden and inexplicable. The last simpering resort: her body. And see the tavern-girl trying to look the temptress! She reached him then, smiling-and of a sudden he caught her hard and clasped her hard.

  Clodia yelped in shock. His arms tightened and the links of his mail pressed into her skin, hurting, marking her. She arched her back and set her palms in urgency against his steel-clad chest, pushing hard and then harder. Cormac lifted her off her feet, swung her around. Her struggles grew wilder. She cried out. Her lower body stretched out at right angles to his as he swung-

  Cormac let her go.

  There was a wild waving of white limbs in the morning sun, and a resounding splash that drowned a high-pitched squeal. Clodia was no swimmer, as her frantic paddlings testified. Nor did Cormac mean to drown her; the water was shallow, he saw, and the strand very near. When her feet touched bottom it would occur to the wench that she might stand and wade ashore.

  Cormac left her to do so. He made his way back to Raven. This is Galicia. This is now. Eirrin is the past. Eirrin is but a word. The past is dead as last year’s leaves.

  “Now that was no long absence!” Wulfhere greeted him. “And where be the vine that clings to the wolf?”

  “Swimming.”

  Laughter rose, but the Gael’s tone and expression made short work of it. “Now tell me, what have we found?”

  “We, do ye say?” Wulfhere lifted red thickets of brow. “Hmm. While yourself and the lassie strayed, Ivarr mounted yon rise for a vantage view. He has seen a great high tower that looks to be the source o’ yester-night’s beacon
light.”

  “Does it so?” Cormac drummed fingers on the oarloom before him, cogitating. “Sure and we can bear the risk of looking into that.”

  “So think I. It’s certain we’ve naught better to do.”

  They were preparing to push off when Clodia appeared. She scrambled aboard with downcast eyes. Huddled as small as she could make herself, she spoke not a word.

  Raven’s crew rowed north again.

  Cormac, rubbing a blackly stubbled chin that itched him, was made mindful as the brilliantly blue sunflecked water slid by that he’d not shaved in well-nigh a week. Though he was not wont to adorn himself, he was of Eirrin: he was mindful of such matters as cleanliness and his hair and aye, shaving-when circumstances allowed. Indeed he kept a razor of finest eastern steel in his belt-pouch rather than make do with a honed knife. He was little twitted, though the Danes agreed that never had they heard of a more amazing habit.

  Nah, Wulfhere said; was only because the poor Gael couldn’t raise a beautiful red beard that he kept it scraped…

  Without benefit of oil or grease, he kept at the miserable task. Lip and cheeks, jaw and chin and finally throat he scraped clean. He rubbed with his fingertips to ensure thoroughness. Well that his skin had weathered hard over the years. As for the facial scars that lent him a sinister aspect, he’d memorized them.

  They had some time since left the tiny cove with its point of land and the rise from which Ivarr had scanned about. Now they came with abruptness to a triple bay, miles across and miles deep. At its southwestern tip rose the tower reported by the sharpest-eyed among them. Now they saw it closer, and what lay beyond: the sunwashed stones of a Roman city, falling into neglect and abandon like many another in the west.

  The men of Raven stared, cursed and invoked supernatural protection, for Northerners were superstitious about the engineering feats of Rome the once-mighty.

  “’Tis the work of giants!” Knud the Swift declared.

  “And I’m Idun,” Cormac told him, “who has the apples of immortality.”