The Tower of Death cma-2

by Andrew J Offutt

  “The same as before,” Gisivald said at last, with moroseness.

  “Aye. Men tracelessly slain-save that one is not there. Rechiaric.”

  “It’s a broken body we’re after finding among the rocks by the water’s edge,” Cormac offered. “Mayhap that’s your missing man.”

  The Sueves went to the place along the quay on which stood the lighthouse, and examined the body.

  “By his garb and accoutering, that’s Rechiaric,” Gisivald opined in a dull voice. “Eye of Wotan, little else is left to know him by!”

  He lifted hard-clenched fists to the sky, and swore bitterly by other gods the Church dismissed as heathen devils. Cormac, impassively listening, took note with pleasure that any power the Dead God’s priests might have among these men seemed scarcely to go deep. The Goths had imposed the Arian doctrine once, as a matter of form; however, naught Cormac heard had ever implied that forced acceptance had lasted long-or greatly impressed.

  The man Rechiaric’s shapeless corpse was wrapped in a mantle over-bright for a shroud. Scarlet and green, the Gael mused, were colours to be alive in. Five spare horses the Sueves had brought along, which now their comrades would never ride. The body went across the saddle of one, lashed in place. The others, cold in the high tower, could be fetched down later.

  “Four horses, and four strangers to take before the king,” Irnic said. “It’s an omen, clear as sunlight! Who says nay?”

  He was asking his comrades. It was Cormac who made answer.

  “We will accompany ye,” he agreed. “Not as prisoners, though; we’ll be retaining our arms. Else must ye take us along as ye take that one.”

  He jerked a thumb at the horribly shapeless package across the fifth spare horse.

  “It’s not impossible,” Gisivald said.

  “Not impossible, no.” Irnic surveyed the four strangers. “Unnecessary is what I’d call it. There be twenty aboard yon dark ship, by my reckoning. Twenty of us remain here to watch them, leaving ten or a dozen to-escort our guests. Who have not the look of riders born.”

  Cormac disputed him not, and ignored Suevic chuckles. A good man, he thought, who’d observed his ship from the lofty window. Then a sudden thought and idea flashed upon the Gael. At first it seemed madness; yet it might work. There was none in this distant, largely isolated land able to prove it a lie… Clodia had nerve and ability to play the part… Surely the lass deserved a better time than she’d been having.

  Besides, it might somehow be useful. Cormac turned.

  “Ivarr, send the Lady Clodia ashore. We ride to audience with the king, and it’s fain, I am to present her. There be no reason why a noblewoman should kick her heels in the scuppers.”

  Ivarr, looking as if the world had turned upside down, nevertheless obeyed.

  Clodia joined them in a seeming daze. At sight of her damp, sandy clothes, and the tangled mare’s nest of her hair, Cormac was less sure she could carry it off; although the sea-crossing they had made would amply explain her appearance. He’d make assertion he had disguised her as a tavern bawd for some reason.

  The story was thin, but it would do. Clodia-“the lady Clodia”-must convince by manner alone.

  The Sueves were rocking with laughter at the three Danes’ attempts to mount the tall Gothic war-horses. In their cold homeland was naught but ponies. Nor was the stirrup known among these men of the western world. The Persians had long used it, having borrowed the invention from the fierce Asian nomads they fought incessantly, but all of forty years would pass ere the great horse-general Belisarius would make it standard among the forces of the Empire. More decades would pass while the idea spread through the western kingdoms, until a simple iron device became the seed of the way of life that would replace Rome’s. In the mean time Hrolf, Knud and big Hrut Bear-slayer provided the Sueves with a deal of merriment in their efforts to mount.

  Their concealing mirth gave Cormac a moment to speak to Clodia. Few and imperative were the words he used.

  “Carry this off, girl, and it’s linen and unborn lamb’s wool ye’ll be walking in, belike. Fail, and it’s tears of blood ye’ll be weeping.”

  Clodia blinked. She’d spent the better part of a tormenting week on the sea. She’d grown to hate it. Too, there had been trying times both previously and after. Her head ached, and her stomach felt like a snail curled within her. The girl from Nantes was a far, far stretch from her best. Even so… he must be thinking her very slow. She forced thought from her exhausted brain.

  “I’ll carry it off,” she whispered, with a coolness of voice and mien that indicated she was already entering her new role.

  After a smile of grim approval, Cormac applied himself to getting a leg across a dun charger his clumsiness made restive. He performed better than any of the Danes for all that he was long years out of practice: Eirrin had tall splendid horses, and Cormac had ridden as a boy.

  At last mounting in a bound, he clamped his right leg tightly while he lifted Clodia to perch before him. They set out, the Sueves matching their pace to the abilities of the strangers. They moved slowly. Within the narrow extended tongue of forest whose tip ended barely a stone’s throw from the towering lighthouse, Wulfhere Hausakliufr watched them leave.

  “Hel gnaw their bones!” he snarled. “The sows’ abortions, the bow-legged sons of mares! That I let them ride away with my shipmates under guard! Nay, we can still make a raid to fetch them back, lads! This forest allows us cover even to the city wall. None knows we be here. With such advantage, can we not strike and win against ten times our number? What say ye?”

  From his score of slayers came a fierce acceding rumble like a storm’s first warning. Natheless, some shook their heads. Wulfhere glowered about, ice-eyed beneath thick brows like flame.

  “Surt’s burning sword! What ails you holdouts? D’ye fear Cormac will be slain and we make trouble? Small likelihood of that. He’s not bound, nor even disarmed.”

  “And that’s why, captain,” Makki Grey-gull stuck out his lip gloomily. “They four went not like prisoners. Think ye Cormac had accompanied them with never a blow struck, an they had not spoken him fair? What’s in his mind I cannot say. I’m just thinking we should wait and see.”

  Jostein the Grinner supported him. “He brought the wench ashore-Lady Clodia. He’d not have done that were he thinking of battle. He’s some trick under his helm, sure. He shouted as much-at the top of his voice.”

  Wulfhere simmered with ire, and clutched his huge ax for self-control until his knuckles were as fleshless. And saw the force of their arguments.

  “Well, this much is true,” he grumbled without pleasure. “Can any man talk his way out of such a situation; the Wolf’s he. Nor will we help his case do we rush in hewing.”

  “Aye!” Makki said eagerly. “An those horse-riders intend murder-” (this from a man with eight lives to answer for in the land of his birth) “-there’s no preventing it now. But we can take such a vengeance that all the world will know of it, beginning with that lot.” He gestured at the twenty Sueves between them and Raven. “With Ivarr and the lads aboard, we outnumber ‘em twofold, and have ’em from two sides. We can crush them as grain milled in a quern. Or capture most living, to ransom Cormac and the rest, an that seems the better course. Those be their king’s own hearth-companions, Wulfhere. It’s good bargaining-counters they’d make.”

  Agreement was upon the others by this time. Wulfhere gnawed strands of his fiery beard, not liking to wait, and yet aware this was but his notorious lack of patience.

  “Look you,” he growled, “we will tarry till night falls or something else occurs. We will keep close watch on Raven, and these fools who think they be guarding her. Suppose dusk is here and no word has come; then we go aboard again, and should any try to prevent us, their women will bewail them. Although… I scarce think it will mean waiting so long as that. Even a city like Brigantium cannot be that deep asleep.” He showed his men a piratical grin.

  Jostein gave vent to a j
aw-cracking yawn. “Talking of sleep, let us wake in shifts of five, as when we stand night watches. I long to stretch out on soft leaves, and here we have ’em.

  The others gave even more ready agreement to that. Wulfhere was astounded. His men must be growing soft. Granted, it had been a strenuous few days, but they had eaten and enjoyed a full night’s sleep, and done naught since save row a mile or two, and talk much. Dane-mark was not breeding them as she once had.

  CHAPTER SIX: The King of Galicia

  Surrounded by watchful men whose hands rode their pommels as if casually, Cormac mac Art was escorted inland. Aye, there was old Brigantium harbour, another relic of Rome not yet moribund, and here the old city that was, Roman stone looking leprosy-afflicted, peopled by foreigners to these shores. Cormac passed through it without glancing to either side of the crumbling, pitted street. The Gael towered tall, and his helmet with its flowing crest added to his appearance of great height.

  Dogs stared at him, quivering in limbs and nostrils, ears cocked forward, quietly rumbling without really growling. A little beast the hue of calf-excrement came on the run, yapping. The swipe of one soldier missed him; the spear-butt of another sent him tumbling while changing his yaps into squeals. The pup fled. Children, too, stared, and their mothers wound protective arms around them from behind-and stared.

  I probably look Roman, Cormac mused without humour. It’s been a long time for these people. And since he wore his weapons, the stranger couldn’t be a captive-could he?

  “Head straight; look ahead,” the Gael muttered to the woman before him on the plodding dun, and Clodia did. She also stayed very close. He was aware now that he’d taken out much frustration on her.

  These were a mixed people, he saw, without distaste for hair of various hues and nigh as many dark eyes as blue and grey; those native to this land so long ago had married-and bred with, without marrying-the Roman conquerors. Now some had mingled their blood too with the Suevi that Constantius the Illyrian had driven into this northwest corner of Hispania. And they stared at the dark, scarred man with the grey eyes and the armour coat of linked chain. Only the burly smith did not stare; he was an ever busy man who but glanced, and went on pounding lest his sheet of yellow-glowing metal cool.

  Hail Smith, Cormac thought, and the corners of his thin-lipped mouth twitched as if contemplating a smile. They discarded the notion.

  The remnant of Rome ended. The former manse had been all but destroyed; King Veremund had his own keep.

  Stony earth from a curving ditch ten or so feet deep was banked on its opposite side, and a single bridge of planking crossed the trench that would do no more than slow mounted attackers. Cormac glanced down at muck, and wrinkled his nose. He and Clodia and their escort crossed over to the sprawling grounds about the king’s hall.

  As the king was in truth little more than a tribal chieftain of what anciently had been a confederation rather than a distinct tribe or family group, his dwelling was no palace. Under its thatched roof it was but a large Germanic keep with gable-ends carved ornately into ghastly gryphons and corbels covered with a catenulate design. The fine great door of oak stood open. A weapon-man went forward to draw aside the hanging there: a door-sized sheet of fine softened narwhal. The heavy arras was stamped in an overall pattern with a seal or property mark consisting of three concentric circles centered with a horizontal oval that Cormac saw represented a watchful eye.

  He continued with the Clodia masquerade, handing her down and astonishing the dirty rag-tag young woman by stepping aside in manner courtly. After giving him a look she thought austerely highborn, she went in. Cormac, stooping exaggeratedly low, passed into the hall of the king.

  Now all must wait in an anteroom or defense-hall whilst Irnic in his scarlet Roman cloak went somewhere within. There were no sentries. Cormac stood easy. He knew that one must ever wait while the wearer of a diadem was apprised of one’s presence. He also knew that a messenger had already galloped here on just that mission, and the Gael prepared himself to dislike the Suevic lord of Galicia.

  Nor was there aught unusual in that; mac Art of Eirrin had had nothing good of kings but only treachery-and if there had been good of them too, he’d forgot it because he wanted to do.

  The officer returned and Cormac was conducted into the presence of the king.

  Others were there of course, the advisers and hangers-on called courtiers who ever clung about thrones. Cormac was careful not to notice them or even the young woman directly beside the high seat. He kept his dispassionate gaze fixed steadily on the man seated atop a two-step dais. He wore a robe dyed brightly in the vermilion hue of the minium brought up from the bed of the nearby River Mino, and its hem was purfled with cloth-of-gold.

  He was tallish in the body and short in the leg, neither pale nor dark, neither handsome nor ill-favored. He’d a good brow and big hands. His twisted topknot, brown like his beard and droop-ended mustache, was worn over his right ear so as to accommodate his royal diadem. This was an inch-high band of gold sheet doubtless laid on over bronze plaques. The violet stones called almandines decorated it, with an interesting fleck of winking mica and two fair garnets, dull and lifeless amid the gleaming purple stones, which were convex. His swordbelt, mark of the military men of which he of course was supreme commander, was similarly decorated and the buckle appeared moulded of pure gold, in twisted bands like a fine torc.

  Behind him hung a nicely woven tapestry, showing a battle or two and centering on the same eye-in-circles sigil that decorated the door-hanging. Cormac recognized a tall vase as Greek, stolen long and long ago.

  Only another minor king, Cormac thought, remembering how Hengist had styled himself “king” in Kentish Britain when the Jutish pirate had but three hundred followers and perhaps a score of horses. The most notable aspect of this one was that he was little older than his visitor, and that he was making no effort to look ferocious. The Gael tried not to be impressed.

  “Veremund, Rex Suevorum!” a voice announced from the king’s left, without bothering to mention Galicia. Cormac didn’t bother to glance at the annunciator.

  “Who are you,” King Veremund said, in a baritone that sounded more like a well-controlled tenor. “Why are you come here?”

  Rather than answer, Cormac stepped aside and swung a courtly arm out to his companion of the torn skirt. “May I introduce to the lord King of the Sueves the Lady Clodia, of the Roman Kingdom of Soissons, and lately of Tours. Affianced through blackmail of her father to the hideous monster Sigebert One-ear, and now fleeing in quest of protection.”

  Ah, Sigebert mine deadly enemy-how ye’d be loving those words-dog!

  The king leaned forward. “A Frankish noblewoman, here? Fleeing a legal betrothal arranged by your father, my lady?”

  Bad cess, Cormac thought, and only just managed to seem unhasty in his reply: “A betrothal into which her most misfortunate father was scurrilously tricked and forced, my lord King. Indeed, her father is more than pleased that his lady daughter is after escaping the thrice-cruel Sigebert.”

  Clodia sopped that up like bread in the gravy, and essayed to appear the lady. She succeeds, Cormac thought, about as well as I might. Veremund gazed at her for a time, muttered “Lady Clodia” without further committing himself or his land, and leaned back. Again he looked upon mac Art.

  “It’s Cormac mac Art I am, a Gael of Eirrin-though not for these eight long years, lord King.” And a little murmur rose in the great hall.

  “Cormac, mac, Art,” Veremund said, enunciating elaborately, and he smiled to let his visitor know he was known here. Fame-and infamy, Cormac thought-be damned. “The ‘mac’ is ‘son of’, is it not?”

  “Aye, lord King.”

  “And the Lady Chlodia is not your woman.” This time Veremund gave her name the Gothic rather than the Roman pronunciation, in the way that “Childeric” and “Hilderic” were the same name, depending upon who uttered it, and where.

  “No, lord King! Not my woman,” Cormac sa
id as though shocked. “But under my protection.”

  Someone snorted. Cormac continued to gaze upon Veremund, who nodded and leaned a bit to one side, resting his arm and looking thoughtfully at the two strangers to his land. Now Cormac allowed his peripheral vision to take in the woman seated beside the king, on his left. Several years younger-indeed in her teens, surely-she was perhaps the queen, except that she bore strong resemblance to Veremund. Cormac wondered whether under his beard the king too had a strong chin, and dimpled.

  The Gael was also sure that the young woman’s pale blue eyes were regarding him appraisingly.

  Veremund asked, “You bore my lady Clodia away from Tours?”

  “From Nantes, my lord Veremund-a few spearlengths ahead of King Clovis’s Loire fleet. We durst not venture south along the coast, as milord of Burdigala has a… quarrel with me and my comrades. It’s the whole coast his ships are now patrolling, searching for our ship.”

  “Raven.”

  Hardly out of touch, these folk whose shipping or shores I’ve never raided, Cormac noted, and said, “Aye, my lord. So… it’s down to your shore we sailed, in hopes of finding a more friendly reception and fair trade for… a few items of trade that my lord Veremund, King, surely had more need of than the Visigoths for whom they were intended.”

  Someone among the nobles collected around the king chuckled appreciatively; a different voice laughed its scorn. Veremund again sat forward, having noted the visitor’s first words more than his last.

  “You crossed Treachery Bay?” *

  * [The Bay of Biscay. Its Roman names are Sinus Aquitanicus and Sinus Cantabricus, or Cantaber Oceanus, Cantanabria being Calicia’s eastern neighbour, sprawled in a thin strip across most of the northern coast of Hispania. Only those who live far from it call that lovely body of water the Cantabrian Sea; to those who know it, it is ever the Bay of Treachery.]