The Tower of Death cma-2

by Andrew J Offutt

  “Thanks, youngster,” Wulfhere looked about at the others and grinned. “Mayhap ye should ha’ left it for these big-mouths to try their strength also!”

  The Suevic troopers laughed in the good humoured appreciation of weapon-men for a superb one, and excitedly babbled that he should join them now, and later at a beast fight at which some rowdy local wenches were meeting them. A grinning Wulfhere observed that they seemed to be planning his kind of afternoon.

  Cormac shook his head. We’re here to see to the building of ships and the training of crew, and what does that man-mountain do?-starts in to make ax-throwers of them! It was pleasant, though, to know that Wulfhere would not lack entertainment. He’d a way of finding drastic remedies for his own boredom. Once over in Britain he’d forced a bishop to marry a thieving smith to a heifer, and burned the church when he found the ceremony too tame.

  The Gael turned smiling to enter the king’s hall.

  Acting on sudden thought, Cormac turned, knowing he’d find the heaven-blue eyes of Eurica king-sister watching the rugged wolfishness of his walk. He bowed to her as might a court-raised fop.

  Then he turned again and passed through the dark oblong gape that was the hall’s entry, seen from the sunlit outside. Wondering why she was watching, what she thought of him or might be planning, he strolled inside.

  He stood in King Veremund’s eating hall while his eyes accustomed themselves to the shade. The great hall formed two levels. The lower, with its long trench for fire and its double row of pillars, was public: the scene of feasts, weddings, and all noble gatherings. Above, upheld by the pillars of carven wood, a timbered gallery ran around three sides of the hail. Doors led off it to bedchambers. That one of those had been assigned to his and Wulfhere’s use was a measure of the impression they had made here. True, the king’s companions had quarters elsewhere, and lovers-and some of them of course had wives. But when they nighted in the great hall, they slept on benches.

  Two pirates from oversea had been granted con siderable honour, Cormac thought, as he ascended to their chamber.

  Here was neither Rome nor Eirrin. The room was a rude wooden box with a door. Woven hangings softened the walls and two dyed sheepskin rugs lay amid the rushes on the floor. The great bed was piled with fur covers. It was most tempting, and Cormac wanted to fling himself down with sighs of content. No; with ingrained suspicion he first hurled off some of the covers and ran exploring hands over the rest. Beds could hide a number of nasty surprises, such as poisoned daggers fixed upright to the frame. Cormac checked. A king had no need of such subtleties, but others might; whether they worked or no, they could sow distrust betwixt the king and his outland guests. Was foregone and certain, aye and inevitable that there would be factions to contend with. In all the history of the world, Cormac knew, there had never existed a kingdom that lacked them.

  Here, at least, were no bed-hidden traps.

  Thoughts of Eurica slipped from his mind. He sprawled, with sinewy fingers unterlocked behind his black-shocked head, for a nap. His brain was aroused, he discovered, and without trying he cogitated on the menace to the tower-and to ships approaching this coast-and how best to attack the problem.

  The door opened softly, and Cormac bethought him of his nearby sword.

  The figure that entered presented no menace. She was clad as he had foretold. Her thick brown hair was brushed till it shone, all coiled on her head bedecked with combs of enamelled white bronze. Fit for a provincial Roman lady was her long gown, in colour a dark rich red-brown like her hair. Broidered gold stiffened its hem and a golden belt cinctured it. From her shoulders swept an enveloping sky-blue mantle or paludamentum, its shimmering line the hue of fresh cream. The change in her was enough to take a man’s breath.

  “It’s hardly yourself I might have expected,” mac Art said.

  “Why?” Clodia asked. She was not trembling; the firm-held tautness of her body within gown and mantle was that of tremors repressed. The one short word was all she trusted herself to utter steadily. Taxing had it been to play-to be-the noble lady in misfortune, before the shrewd king. The tiring-wenches who bathed and dressed and coiffed her, with their chatter and questions and thinly-disguised malice, had been worse. She strove for controlled speech.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “What?”

  “Cha, Cormac! Introduce me as a lady!”

  He essayed a supine shrug. “Ye had no pleasant time aboard Raven, or ashore this morning either,” he said, though he was stating fact, in no wise making apology.

  She made a jerky shrug like a spasm. “You stood my friend when it mattered. It was… fortunate, that I did not have to say much.”

  “Sure and it’s up to yourself what ye be doing with your new station now-my lady.”

  “I’ll never make them believe it.” She was starting to tremble.

  Cormac said naught. He agreed.

  “It was sweet of you, Cormac. You’d been treating me so-”

  “Gods, woman! Your tongue! The gods themselves shudder at thought of a sweet Cormac!”

  “Y-you-” She was trembling openly. “I see that you ha-andle compliments about as well as you would a di-distaff.”

  “Say no more, then. Be ye weary?”

  “Terrified! Drained! I’ve been afraid so much as to speak-Cormac, for God’s love, hold me!”

  There was naught of the contrived about the way she toppled forward, else it had been more graceful. The impact of her was substantial and alive. Cormac grunted, and held. Sobs hit Clodia then with a rending power that twisted all her body, torn as with hooks from her lungs and very bowels. She wept for her father, perhaps, enduring torture for his avarice or dead and glad of it. For all her hanging on throughout the voyage here, and all the strain with king and the women who attired her as the noblewoman. For herself she wept, and even for Cormac, and the world of slaying and treachery that wrapped them both about.

  Art’s son of Connacht held her, the while she groaned and bleated; she was no silent griever, Clodia of Nantes.

  Like the storms of Treachery Bay, it passed, to leave a great quiet and wreckage untidily adrift. A comb had come out of her hair and the other hung awry so that her brown locks were ravelling down onto Cormac’s breast. She had made a swamp of his shoulder.

  When she moved, he did not let her go.

  She uttered a small sound, neither protest nor great encouragement. The sound of query was in it. Cormac made her definite answer. The girl from Nantes was drained and passive, but not completely, and Cormac postponed both planning and nap for a time, and slept the better.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: A Bargain with Pirates

  At dinner the two newcomers met more of the king’s cronies and relatives-the comites-and them without helms and armour, now. Some were friendly and others disdainful of a pair of foreign pirates in borrowed tunics. All the others were better attired for dinner, though Cormac noted that some of the fancified leggings and decorated tunics or robes showed wear, and too he saw the marks of re-sewing; mending of hems and little snags. He had first frowned at the leggings provided him; they bore a yellow chain-design running up the outside of each leg. The fabric itself was slate in hue.

  He and Wulfhere had too their first view of Queen Venhilda. Tall Veremund’s wife was, and splendidly formed, so that she should have been a commanding presence. She was not. Her appearance was pale and haggard. She seemed unwell, with a deadly lassitude on her. This was made but the more noticeable by the richness of her garments. And too… her gaze was strange.

  When Cormac was introduced to her, the large grey blue eyes rested on his, and never blinked. Nor did she blink at any other time that he observed. Her shadowed lids seemed fixed, as with congealed wax, and never so much as flickered. Cormac at last felt a little chill and looked on Galicia’s Queen no more.

  Not so Clodia! Clodia was happily resplendent in a lovely gown of red vertically striped with beige. It had been provided by a lady of the court, of course, for the m
erchant’s daughter introduced as Lady Clodia. She received more than a little attention, Clodia did. She was visibly delighted to be seated between Irnic Break-ax and a lean, broad-shouldered Hispano-Roman who obviously bore the blood of both peoples.

  My Lady Clodia, Cormac mused. She will never carry it off, not buxom Clodia; she must be hard put not to pick up a pitcher and serve wine!

  Each time he glanced at Princess Eurica, he caught her in the act of averting her eyes, so that he knew she’d been witching him. The mac Art tried to look elsewhere.

  The princess’s behaviour was true, too, of Zarabdas the mage. Cormac wore the Egyptian sigil within his Suevic tunic of brown-stitched blue, and forebore lifting a hand to the chain. Was that Zarabdas’s interest? Why did the Palmyran watch him when Cormac’s own gaze was elsewhere? Had Zarabdas another interest in the Gaelic pirate who had contracted with the Suevic king he served in Hispania as… adviser?-as mage?-seer?

  And Eurica. Was she one more fascinated female like others Cormac had known, of varying ages and races. The wife of the lord Hermanric Marcellus right now, for instance, and her name a very Roman “Plotina.” She favoured the Gael with her dark-eyed gaze, and did not look away when his eyes swept her. Look away, milady, Cormac mused; mac Art has rules about women with husbands; ’s called self defense!

  The queen was unusual enough among ruddy, healthy, buxom women. There was something else about her that caught Cormac’s eye, with the fascinatingly fluid motions of her hands-one of her three rings. The band was plain enow, simply a little circle of gold. Atop it though, caged in two strips of gold wire, flashed a most extraordinary opal. So he supposed it to be; he had seen two others similar, though not so beautiful. A thousand tiny speckles of colour lay imbedded in the black stone, like the stars of night save that these were of yellow and red and blue and shades between. A gift of love, Cormac mused, and he’d lay wager.

  Putting women and rings out of his mind, Cormac turned to the man beside him.

  This minor lord of the Suevi seemed delighted to know him and Wulfhere. Some were, whatever their motives, and Cormac was accustomed to those who nigh fawned, fascinated with men of deeds striding the world ahead of a wake of blood. He asked Lord Rhodoghast about Zarabdas, and was bidden to call Rhodoghast by name alone.

  “Zarabdas,” Rhodoghast said, nodding. “To begin with, the man may or may not be a wizard!”

  Realizing that the Palmyran’s powers were not known to everyone, Cormac made no comment but affected to show the surprise expected of him.

  “Aye! He came here two years agone, mysteriously methinks. Said he sought sanctuary in a land he knew had not really embraced the faith of Jesus Christus. He was a fugitive from the Visigothic lords, he claimed, having offended the emporer with an over-vociferous opposition to his religious policy.”

  Cormac nodded encouragingly. That policy was the making Christian of all “subject” lands. Or so the emperor said, living in the past of imperial glory and power. Stupid, Cormac thought. Emperors came and went, as would surely this religion designed for slaves who needed something to look forward to-such as a slice of honeycake in the sky. How surprised the “Saints” or Christians must be to discover that what followed death was return to earth in a new form, as a helpless babe fated to begin all anew!

  “Just over a month after the arrival of Zarabdas,” Rhodoghast said, “Queen Venhilda fell ill-very ill indeed. Eventually the court physician Lucanor advised the king that she could not live. It was then that Zarabdas prevailed upon Veremund,” Rhodoghast said, lowering his voice even more as he pronounced his king’s name unadorned, “to allow him to attend our lady queen. Lucanor Antiochus had given up in defeat, and so there seemed little to lose. Whilst Veremund was considering, Lucanor sought to make a religious issue of it. The king was angered by that and the threat implied, and he bade Zarabdas do what he could for Venhilda.’

  “This Lucanor…”

  Rhodoghast gave his head a jerk and made a swift gesture. “A Christian, of course. A… semi-sufferable cross-wearer from that far old place of Antioch. Not as dark as one would expect; he be Greek or has Greek blood.”

  Rhodoghast lifted his winecup, waited to catch the eye of a serving lad, and glowered at him. His and Cormac’s cups were immediately filled. Cormac lifted it, looked over its rim to find the Lady Plotina Marcella gazing at him. Rather than look away she held his glance, and ran her tongue, slowly, all around her lips. Without acknowledgment Cormac returned his attention to Rhodoghast.

  “Is’t true you have sunk a score of ships?”

  “It is not,” Cormac said. “It’s but two we’re after sinking, and four others we’ve disabled. Nor have Wulfhere and I done death on so many as is said. And hear this Rhodoghast: neither of us has ever slain any man who did not have a weapon in his hand. Now what ye’re after saying of the queen interests me, for she is thin and wan. Ye were going to tell me that Zarabdas cured her.”

  “How did ye know?”

  “She be not dead.”

  “Ah. Aye, within two days it was obvious that she was recovering. Within four she was on her feet again, though weak. In less than a month she was fully recovered-or as ye see her now. In truth she’s never been any sort of buxom woman, though. Since then Zarabdas had been naturally enough held in high esteem by the king and queen. Gradually he’s grown strong in the king’s counsel, as well. All know he is a most wise man and knowledgeable in physick. Many of course wonder if he be mage or no; he is a mystery among us who keeps much to himself and shares counsel only with Veremund and Venhilda. Some fear his influence; others are thankful for it. Some have naturally reminded that it was just after he arrived among us that my lady queen fell ill, and that it was most convenient for him to gain the king’s favour.”

  That thought had occurred to Cormac, but he’d not indulge in gossip with such as Rhodoghast-or indeed anyone else. He asked, “And the Antiochite leech? Did he slink off to Gothish lands, or all the way back to Golden Antioch?”

  “Oh no, neither. He is still here, though out of favour with those of us who count. Say something to me in Gaelic.”

  “Legach boina boinin,” Cormac said, quoting a homile among those who’d been his people: “To every cow her calf.”

  “Hmm… what does that mean?”

  “It means I am a vicious bloodthirsty pirate and am interested in Lucanor, not in language lessons. I will tell you this: the Gaels have no verb ‘to have’, but there are several ways of saying ‘to do death on.’”

  Rhodoghast chuckled, but the two sidewise looks he shot the “vicious bloodthirsty pirate” bespoke his nervousness. Cormac was careful not to smile.

  “Lucanor remains here. He is leech for the weaponmen, and others. He stays very busy, though hardly as prosperous as beforetimes.”

  “Think you the lady queen is cured by sorcery?”

  “Some do,” Rhodoghast said, and grew most interested in the tumbler and female juggler who entered the king’s dining hall then, bounding and jingling bells.

  The entertainers were fair, Cormac thought, surreptitiously observing Zarabdas while he pretended interest in the leggy woman with her minimal juggling ability and less chest.

  They departed amid applause, and the floor was clear. Veremund rose to announce that the Masters of Raven were here to serve the crown-and that mayhap the first act should be the creation of a new target for ax-practice. Amid general laughter, Wulfhere looked about, and grinned, beaming… and reddened.

  “We would now take counsel with these twain,” Veremund said, “on a matter of passing import to our realm, and our children. I would have Zarabdas and Commander Irnic join us, with Salvian.”

  All others were thus dismissed, as the king said naught about their continuing in the hall. The Lady Plotina-well overweight, Cormac noticed as she rose from board-sought to catch his eye, but he was careful not to see her. Or Eurica, though he made a head-bow to Venhilda, who despite her thinness and pallor, was a most handsome woman. Yet-g
ods, those eyes! He and Wulfhere followed the king, his cousin Irnic, Zarabdas, and the Hispano-Roman secretary, Salvian. They entered the same small chamber in which they’d talked earlier in the day. This time bowls of wine and fresh melon, prepared in little balls, awaited them.

  Soon Cormac was saying that the way to begin their task was to learn more about the mysterious beacon that appeared when the real one was extinguished. Irnic inquired as to whether he had a theory.

  “One I like not, my lord.”

  “Call me Irnic, and say it out anyhow, Cormac.”

  Twice tonight had mac Art been invited to call nobles by name. While he had betrayed no reaction to Rhodoghast who sought to be friend of the exotic pirate, he smiled and nodded acknowledgment to Irnic. This fellow weapon-man, Cormac thought, just couldn’t be bothered with the “lord” business.

  “Suppose,” Cormac said slowly, “that some… presence… knows when a ship approaches, and sends then the kelp to do death on those in the tower.”

  “Sends?” That from Zarabdas.

  Veremund asked, “To what purpose?”

  “To lead the ship astray,” Wulfhere said, shrugging.

  “To what purpose,” Veremund repeated, and Cormac did not like the mind of one who knew causes from effects and motives from purposes.

  The Gael was nevertheless forced to shake his head. “Who knows? Hopefully it’s that we’ll be ascertaining, among other things.”

  Veremund looked about. Irnic and Zarabdas were nodding. Salvian was making his notes. The king looked at Cormac, and nodded.

  “It’s my own self I propose to man this lighthouse, with a few men… and a large supply of quicklime.” Cormac gave the king a questioning look. “A large supply.”

  The king nodded. “Lime is plentiful here. I’ll have the preparation of quicklime begun on the morrow, heat or no. At dawn.”

  “Just before sunset then, Wulfhere will take Raven well out, and sea-anchor. Then I and my troop, with the quicklime in quantity, will mount into the tower. Assuming that quicklime affects the vampirish kelp as it does other plants, it’s we ourselves will be extinguishing the beacon in the tower. If the false one appears, Wulfhere will give chase-with all care, being forewarned.”