The Tower of Death cma-2

by Andrew J Offutt

  “I know to the word what is on your tongue to say. Let it rest.”

  Zarabdas let it rest. Nobody said aught more. Mage and horse-soldier were clearly plagued by unease, while the king’s guests were all waiting attention. Veremund himself did not seem disposed to talk until he had that which he’d sent for, and wise men obliged kings.

  It came.

  Three strong servitors were bent by the weight of the thing called Motsognir’s Chain. The guard led them. Behind, the very mirror of grave dignity, came a Hispano-Roman in grey and tawny brown, with a ring of ornate keys stapled to his belt. Anthemius his name, they soon learned: he kept the king’s monetary records and had responsibility for the royal strong room. Hair stuck out in grey and russet shingles from his oddly-shaped skull. His eyes blinked and watered much.

  Him the two sea-rovers scarce gave a glance. The great chain was forged of nine times nine massy links and each was deeply incised with an ancient rune. Through the last-or first-link ran a large iron ring, a circle of smaller runes cut around it.

  Every link was of shining silver.

  “Aye, look well,” Veremund bade his guests. “This thing came from the land of my fathers, long agone, when they saw rivers but never in all their lifetimes the sea. The dwarves made it. It bears the name of their king. Time out of mind has it been the chief treasure of the Suevic kings. Anthemius: how burn the trenchfires?”

  “Low, lord King. However, we feasted late and the coals are hot still. I have had the great hall cleared and more fuel thrown on. None will be there to gawk.”

  “That’s well. Wulfhere Hausakliufr, Cormac mac Art-what you see now you will long remember. It is my desire that you speak no word of it in Brigantium. This chain has a special property, the which is hardly a secret, but… one does not make public display of such. Thus it is dismissed as rumour even ten leagues away, and thus there be fewer ambitious thieves to guard against.”

  Veremund led the way to his long dining-hall. His serving men laid the chain out straight on the floor’s strewn rushes. Beside it, the long fire-trench breathed hard dry heat between its stone hearths. At the king’s bidding, Wulfhere paced the chain, nor was Wulfhere loath to do so. Twelve strides took him from end to end of Motsognir’s Chain-though his strides were a deal longer than most men’s.

  “Twelve,” he rumbled.

  Veremund gestured to his serving men. They lifted the chain and walked forward, the chain hanging down in curves between them like a mighty silver serpent. With a concerted lift and heave, they flung it into the fire. None need say aught; all watched. The silver chain curled and writhed in that heat like a thing alive, a bright segmented worm with a black head.

  Is it to come alive, then? Cormac wondered, and his nape-hairs stirred. His swift-swerving eyes checked the positions of other men, lest he must fight; his was not an unsuspicious mind, ever.

  Flames obscured the chain. Heat struck the reivers’ eyeballs as they peered closer. Sight blurred in the smoke. They narrowed their lids.

  “Cormac,” Wulfhere muttered only half aloud, “an the thing be not changing, Fenris eat me!”

  “Aye,” and the Gael did not ask, changing how? He’d sight as keen as Wulfhere’s, and he seldom put questions with small likelihood of useful answers. He watched. They all watched.

  At last the chain went still. Veremund the king gave orders. With a long-handled iron hook, his serving men fished it from the trench-fire. The hook was for hot cauldrons; the chain was hot, and they stretched it hearthside a second time so that it lay cooling.

  “Captain Wulfhere: will you tell me its length now?” the king invited, smiling.

  Wulfhere Skull-splitter looked at him, wondering if he were being made sport of. A pointless sort of joke… but he trod the measure again-and stopped in bewilderment ere he reached the chain’s end.

  “Twelve!” he announced, and paced on. “And… five more! Cormac! ‘Tis nigh half as long again as it was!”

  “Right you are, Captain,” Veremund smiled. “Such is its property: the chain grows in fire. The longer since it was last so heated, the more it grows-whereby you will see there are limits to the wealth it can provide. A too-greedy man might even exhaust its powers.”

  “Like that yarn of the goose that laid golden eggs.”

  “Aye. One must be sparing, and cunning smiths and armourers such as I must have do not labour cheaply. Another reason why this curse on my harbour-tower is so dire. I have been seeking to increase Galicia’s seatrade, which has been worse than poor these last thirty years-and by Ertha!” The pagan oath slipped out unregarded. “Such as this business in the tower could ruin all!” Veremund grimaced, made his little throaty snuffing noise, and grew calm. “However, Motsognir’s Chain is still a bauble worth the having. And settles, methinks, any doubt as to whether I can properly gift those who do me service.”

  “My lord King understates,” Cormac said. “And impresses us much, as I daresay we show. Yet were it wise to show such treasure to outland pirates?”

  He’s spoken the very thought the king had warned Irnic and Zarabdas not to utter, and he knew it. Yet this ought to be said thus plainly at the outset, and answered in the same way.

  The king spoke. “Zarabdas.”

  The mage’s hand rose to the winged solar disk that hung pendent on his chest. The while he stared at Cormac mac Art, who met that gaze. Numbness and darkening entered into his mind. He felt a sense of heaviness; a great weight seemed to grow in him, as if Motsognir’s chain had been looped about him invisibly, and that without pressing more on one part of his body than another. Like the chain, the sensation grew, a steady, increasing drag throughout his entire organism. Cormac’s very bowels sagged in his belly. His bones went leaden. The blood ceased to flow in his hands, pooling heavily in hands he could scarce lift. His heart laboured. The thought came, and with it horror: Any tyro sworder could take me now! He sweated. He struggled to move. His very bones seemed to have gone heavier and were dragging at his muscles, down, heavy, heavier… The inexorable weight rooted him to the floor and grew still stronger. The Gael gan tremble with the stark effort of merely standing upright.

  “Cormac!” Wulfhere stormed. “What’s wrong, man?” He rounded on Zarabdas. “Ye scrawny wizard! Whate’er it is ye’re at, stop it now-else I’ll see your head this chain’s length apart from your body!”

  Zarabdas did not look to his king for guidance. Closing his eyes, he lowered his hand from the winged symbol of Behl. A cool breath of air seemed to waft over Cormac then, and slowly natural feeling returned. It was accompanied by a tingling, as though circulation had been cut off in every part of his body. He staggered, forced to advance a foot to keep from falling.

  “It’s sentimental ye’re after growing in your eld, Wulfhere, he said, striving not to gasp.

  The giant Dane snorted and shot Zarabdas another look.

  “Your query is answered, mac Art,” King Veremund said. “Wulfhere Hausakliufr: I did not care overmuch for your way of speaking, a moment past. Let me hear no repetition of such threats against my honoured servant. Was I gave this command. Take the matter up with me, if you wish.”

  Wulfhere looked back at him truculently, and tension trembled on the air. “The mac Art is my comrade,” he said, nor did he add “my lord.”

  “I do not ignore that; was why I spoke ye so gently, Captain. Now hear my word! Rid this coast of the seaborn death that haunts it, and that for me will amply prove your worth. Do you but agree, I’ll make you immediate dower of this new growth of silver chain. Do you succeed, you shall have the weight of your own mighty ax and haft, Captain Wulfhere. Too, you’ll not find me niggard later, an you twain decide to commence the training of seamen from among my people.

  Wulfhere looked at Cormac, who said, “Fair enow.” Wulfhere nodded, but a man must bargain for his own self-respect. “The weight of my ax, and Cormac’s sword.”

  The king gestured. “Done. And here will ever be safe anchorage and guest-right for you a
nd yours. Though the world and the gods be against you, I will be for you.”

  Cormac swallowed. King, he mused, the praises and promises other kings have heaped on me ere this, ye’d not believe. And what they then did to me, ye’d all too readily believe. He and Wulfhere exchanged a look, though, and nodded.

  “Good!” Veremund said, and he chuckled. “I feared you might demand the impossible: your own weight in silver, Master of Raven!-Battle-girt.”

  The reivers laughed; the Dane’s ax, buckler, helm, and coat of scale-mail ran close onto a hundred pounds. In them, Wulfhere’s weight approached four hundred.

  “And if I fasted a day before the weighing?” Wulfhere offered heroically.

  Amid laughter, the king’s offer was accepted, and hands were clasped on the bargain. “Now I have other duties, and do sore wish you could handle them for me,” Veremund said. “Let us confer again at eventide; come sup with me. Anthemius, see this is known. By now a room has been prepared for you twain, here in my hall.”

  First the king took hammer and chisel and himself parted the new-grown length of chain from the original. This was an act forbidden on pain of slow death to any hands but the king’s own-and with reason, as he explained. Were any link of the parent chain broken, its power would be lost. Anthemius blanched with horror at the notion. Two pirates quite shared his feelings.

  Motsognir’s Chain went back to the treasure room. The reivers made great gesture of good faith and sent their portion there also-as they had no safer place at present for its stowing. The five plotters parted company. A bright-eyed, most impressed lad had been delegated to serve the wants of the visitors, and he conducted them to the good clean room they would share. There Cormac and Wulfhere at last disencumbered themselves of their armour. Both sighed and Cormac remembered Clodia’s comments on his armour and padded underjack. A man worked and fought and even slept in his battle-gear until he forgot he’d not been born in the stuff. It was when it came ringing and sliding ajingle off him that he noticed the difference.

  They refused offers of royal servants; these two professionals would inspect and clean their own weapons and mail. Good oil they requested, for leather, and rags. These they used methodically, along with fine sand, on Cormac’s finely wrought chain and Wulfhere’s scale sewn on leather.

  The king’s table for dinner, Cormac thought. We be rising in the world! And when asked what else he required, he named it: a bath. Mir, the boy loaned them as attendant, looked more than surprised. The Sueve were hardly so fond of bathing as were the Eirrin-born-as indeed were none on the ridge of the world save the Romans. They had left public baths of a sort in Brigantium, though the Roman plumbing had long since failed of its function. They were conducted thence, though the lad seemed ashamed, that such heroes might require that which was so effete-and that his friends might see him contributing to this Romish softness on the part of the king’s guests.

  Here water was heated in long open vats, not in the boilers of old. Steam was made by dashing water over glowing hot stones. Such an arrangement Wulfhere of course took for granted; it put him in mind of northern sweat-baths-though Galicia lacked snow to roll in after. Natheless, he admitted that it felt very good.

  His disappointment in them and these wants did not make Mir careless.

  While the sea-rovers turned crimson and sweated rivers that much darkened the water, he had their garments taken away to be washed by house-wenches. By the time his charges had scraped each other’s hides clean of sweated dirt-with implements taken from slaves they had briskly sent away-and sloshed and wallowed to their full content in tepid water, Mir had returned with fresh linen and tunics. Now mac Art was at considerable pains with his hair, for he was of Eirrin, while Wulfhere concerned his huge self more with the cleansing of his fiery beard. It caught brine asea, and itched.

  Cormac’s new tunic fitted sufficiently well, and looked good on the sombre Gael besides. Plain black it was, bordered with gold.

  “Wulfhere: realization is on ye of too much coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “Consider. The availability of that merchant-ship. The proximity of ready, marine-manned warcraft. The raid on Balsus’s: that mincing Sigebert was at pains to let us know he did not expect us, but why else had he such a herd of armed men posted outside? And then came more warcraft. Y’see? Someone set traps for us, Wulf, someone with power. Great pains were taken, all for us. Best we be staying well away from that coast. It’s not unpleasant to be gaining useful employment that suits our talents… particularly in view of the extreme inhospitability of those waters!”

  “Aye, and a good bed is a welcome prospect,” Wulfhere said. He flashed the darker man a smile. “So is Veremund’s silver, sorcerous or no!”

  “Uh-I did take note of that chain when we left. Our links remained intact.”

  “Crafty Cormac, trusting no one! Well-I even like Veremund. As to that other business you mention-naturally I had thought on all that. Likely Caesar himself sent orders for the capture of such monsters as we!”

  Cormac smiled. “More likely that old throat-slitter Guntram, with an ax over his head from Alaric. As for Veremund… aye. I like the man.”

  “You? Like a king?”

  “Split a knuckle, Wulfhere.”

  The Dane laughed, then sobered. “And Irnic. Good soldier. Arms like slabs of meat and hard as oak. Now then-am I pretty enough?”

  Cormac looked at his comrade-in-arms. He grinned. The Suevi wore their tunics short, and no man among them stood even nigh so tall as Wulfhere Skull-splitter. On him, even the largest available Suevic tunic was nigh obscenely short.

  “Hunch forward like a gnome and it’s middling decent ye are,” the Gael said, never cracking a smile. He went on gravely, “To be sure, it leaves ye as bare of arse as my father’s prize boar. And whate’er befalls, be careful of keeping your leggings well pulled up, and don’t be stretching. Ye’d vanish at once under a burial-mound of all the Roman ladies within seeing-range.”

  The Skull-splitter was not amused.

  The well-born lad Mir, indeed impressed with their kemptness, suggested that mayhap a sewing-woman of the king’s hall could add a border to Wulfhere’s tunic. A deep one.

  They left the Roman city then and returned to the king’s dun, ambling on a lovely day that was well-warmed by a smiling sun and cheered by Hispanic birds. Attracted by the clamor, they found a score or so of the king’s troopers at practice. Their target was a massive slab of seasoned oak, indeed a log split in two with its flat surface facing the throwers. Buried three feet in the ground and braced with great stones, the revealed target was tall as a man, and broader. Eyes, genitals, and internal organs had been crudely drawn on it.

  At it the Sueves were hurling the Frankish assault-ax, of the sort that gave that fierce and treacherous tribe its name. The missiles hissed through the air, short-hafted, single-edged, and deadly sharp. Wicked weapons they were, though their main use was in hurled volleys immediately before a foot charge with swords or second axes.

  Watching, noting the skill of these, Suevi as well as their spirit and the manner of their training, Cormac held his gaze on them. He had become aware of himself being watched. That slim, richly-clad figure on the far side of the compound was past mistaking. Did Eurica stare at him in invitation, or malice, or foolish-innocent curiosity? She hadn’t the wit to veil it, whichever. At least I need not suspect her of cunning, he thought, and affected not to notice her. Thus he missed Wulfhere’s departure.

  The Dane returned… carrying his horrid three-quarter-moon ax with its prodigiously heavy head. Oh, anyone could lift it; it was only Wulfhere could swing it for more than a few minutes. Only he could throw it at all. Swing it he did; when Wulfhere Splitter of skulls hurled himself into battle, bloodstained, beard like blood and fire bristling and those terrible blue eyes blazing, his great ax clotted with blood and brains, few dared face him.

  The two reivers were a good twenty feet behind the line of Suevi
c francisca-hurlers, who were essaying thirty-foot throws and had not seen their observers. Some axes struck, bit, and dropped; a few slammed into the wood’s painted targets and stood there amid the sound of cheers. Too many struck with the sound of wood against wood, or the chringing of steel against wood but not edge-first. These bounded away to either side of the target and littered the ground until all men had thrown, after which axes were collected for the next round. Trainers harangued in loud voices and praised not so loudly.

  Wulfhere gauged, squinting, noting even the wind despite his ax’s weight. He muttered and cocked his head and moved his fingers in laborious calculations. And he backed a half-pace.

  “Cormac,” he muttered as warning, and with a mighty heave and a grunt, he hurled that ghastly doer of death that was definitely not designed for throwing.

  The ax flashed through the air, lofting high to arc well over the heads of the Suevic warriors. The seven-pound chunk of sharpened steel glinted and winked in the sun as it flew, turning slowly, and turning again…

  With a frightful slamming crash like unto Loki bursting his chains, the Danish ax smashed into the target. At its mighty impact, a couple of feet above the ground, another ax fell. Obviously it had not been well imbedded; Wulfhere’s ax clung and its haft stood forth like the ridgepole of a barn. The heavy timber slab vibrated from top to bottom and a brace-stone moved.

  Bedlam came swooping down onto the practice field.

  Amid the commotion Wulfhere muttered, “Shit. See how low I struck! Either I misgauged or I’m growing weak with my years.”

  Cormac said nothing. He was as impressed as the Galicians. Some embarrassment and laughter followed, for them; a young weapon-man ran, topknot bobbing, to pull the ax free of the target-and had to lay hold of the haft with both hands while setting a foot against the slabbish target. His comrades laughed, called comments and suggestions and turning, invited the huge man from the far north to join them.

  A grinning Wulfhere did. He reached their line as the well-muscled lad, having at last succeeded in wrenching loose the prodigious ax, brought it back to him.