The Tower of Death cma-2

by Andrew J Offutt

  “Mac Art.”

  “Aye. Zarab… das. Aye. What do ye here, Zarabdas?”

  “The king has asked for you, and I had observed your pensive walking. I thought you’d have come here, to contemplate that which happed out there last night.” His nod compassed the sea and the tower standing over it. “But-I’ve called your name several times. You are all right?”

  “I am all right, Zarabdas,” Cormac said, hardly of a mind to tell this unknown quantity of an eastern mage of his Remembering. To avoid further queries and discussion, he said, “It’s deep I was in thought, Zarabdas. Aye, deep in thought… what saw Zarabdas, the evening past?”

  “I saw it, mac Art. I saw the kelp come from the sea like snakes, and I saw how it climbed, and was driven back. I heard your battle in the tower, and I saw the light die.”

  “Was I extinguished it, after we beat off that demonstuff from the sea. Saw ye Wulfhere, or… what he saw?”

  Zarabdas shook his head and his cowl slipped back; he stood in shade now, anyhow. “No. Only the dark, and the wind and the lightning, and crashing thunder. What did Wulfhere see?”

  Cormac was still unsure as to whether to trust Zarabdas, but he told him. The Palmyran shook his head and looked grim.

  “Manannan of the white steeds and sunlit waters is not the only god of the sea,” Cormac said darkly, looking upon the waters with one brow cocked. “It’s demons there are in the deep. Creatures that pull down sailors, good men and bad, down and down to their airless demesne… which men know by many names in many lands.”

  The Palmyran mage studied him, wearing a strange expression.

  “Aye, though probably more exists than you know of, Cormac mac Art.” Zarabdas seemed to stare at nothing and his sockets seemed nearly to swallow his dark eyes. “There are strange cults of Dagon hereabouts, spread about by Imperial legionaires in centures just past. And that dread belief and cult never dies, of the One who sleeps in sunken R’lyeh.”

  “Of Dagon I know. but… Releeyuh? That word I know not.”

  “R’lyeh. A most, most ancient cult-and foul. It’s said the horrid demons emanated from off this plane, and were on the earth afore our own kind arose from the slime.”

  Cormac studied him, thinking. “Zarabdas… think ye any hereabouts yet practice the rites of this… R’lyeh…”

  “…no no, that is the place, a city or mighty palace…”

  “…who might be… calling up such… gods, or demons, or creatures whatever they be? Living moving kelp, and maidens on a ship of bone?”

  “I have no knowledge of it.”

  “Hmmm. Well… and the king is after asking for me, it’s best I return to his hall. Suppose we both be telling him what we know, and ask him about cultists, hereabouts.”

  And so they did, met partway back to the old city by a mounted troop… The two men went to the king in his hall. There they gave him their knowledge and their surmises and their un-knowledge. And did the king know aught of any who practiced such dark cultism in his realm? Nay, but Veremund called in his Hispano-Roman advisor.

  That hawk-beak, who bore the ancient name Vindex, came. With haughty Patrician distaste he did assurance on them that he knew of no such activity. Nor drew he too close to the Gaelic pirate. Vindex wore a lovely tunic of apple-green silk all broidered with goldwire thread. It was passing sweet, that garment, mac Art thought.

  “Yet I’d not be wholly surprised at such a cult here,” Vindex said austerely, wearing his eyebrows halfway up his forehead. “Most peasants here are still pagan in basic belief, though they do profess adherence to the One Church.”

  At this Veremund firmed his lip. Cormac held back his smile: he’d been apprised of the existence, in the king’s own most private quarters, of a most private little Remembrance of the old goddess Ertha; and Irnic Break-ax flaunted the device on his shield: it was the horned head of Arawn, the Old God of the fair people of Germania and Gallia and Britannia.

  “Shall I inquire?” Vindex asked.

  Staring at the king, Cormac shook his head almost violently. Veremund saw, and said nay. He also advised Vindex to keep silent on the matter altogether. The curly-haired man departed, tunic skirt swishing, eyebrows high, eyes just above the plane directly before them. Just the sort of fellow for whom being tripped would do a great deal of good, Cormac thought. Ah Caius Julius who was surely nigh as great a king as my namesake, what have ye wrought, and to what have your followers come?

  “It is a matter to be investigated,” Zarabdas said. “I shall be most discreet, lord King.”

  “So be it,” Veremund said, “and be so. Cormac?”

  The Gael shook his head. “We must try again, of course. It’s several questions I have, King, but few answers. Methinks I’ll do a bit more pacing and cudgelling of this poor brain of mine.” No help here, he thought. Sure it’s long been said that Behl lends aid to him who aids himself!

  Zarabdas gave him a look askance, with an eyebrow raised, and Veremund smiled. This uncatchable reiver was hardly known for a “poor” brain!

  And once again Cormac mac Art went awalking, to be alone with his thoughts. He and his companions had come close to death in that tower. There must be another way to deal with the demon-weed, even though the door was being replaced at this moment-with bronze.

  He walked. He liked this land well enow, with its green and blue-misted hills and dark forests beyond which grasses waved on rolling land often wetted by rain; not all that different from green, wet, sea-ringed Eirrin, was Galicia of the Suevi. It was a lovely afternoon for a walk. Despite his cares he felt light and springy, unweighted by armour or helm and with his left arm free of his shield’s fifteen pounds.

  Meandering, he entered and paced through the dim coolth of a smallish wood, mostly oak and the chestnuts beloved of Galician swine. He thought much, but decided nothing. Indeed he found it hard not to dwell on the strangeness of that past-vision that came on him from time to time. With his sword he sliced the green shoot of a branchlet, and chewed it as he walked, ambling. Many months had passed since he’d dared walk carelessly abroad; was good to be welcome, someplace.

  The gentle tinkling of bells impinged on his outer awareness just enough to cause him to turn his steps along a side path. Soon he emerged onto a long broad stretch of meadow. Here was beauty, under the sun and misted by the air of this seaside land of much rainfall.

  Like the plains of Poitain…

  Mac Art shook off that thought. “Galicia,” he muttered aloud, with firmness.

  It was cattle he’d heard, he now saw, and belled; probably to prevent their calving in the woods and eluding their masters. Busy at the grass-pulling, these independent few; the rest of the herd lay about in that grove of piebald birch, chewing and belching and chewing.

  It was a lovely afternoon.

  Cormac ambled toward them, in the open now, and feeling ridiculous with his sword swinging at his hip in this pastoral setting. The farmers hardly wore swords! The farmers… peasants… What shrine or cleared area like a druid’s glade might lie hid in the deep darkness of that forest? He’d only just entered it, after all, traversing its bare edge. These peasants might well…

  From the far side of the birch grove two horsemen appeared agallop, the one atop a bay, the other riding a garnet-hued animal. Both men wore leathern coats and, carried spears and shields, and both booted their galloping steeds. They appeared not to be Suevi, though one could not be certain; both men were helmeted. The tunic of one was of cross-hatched double-stripes, green and red on bland white homespun, while the other wore a sleeveless tunic of plain blue under his long leather vest bossed with copper whorls. Though mounted, neither man wore leggings.

  They were galloping his way. They swerved around the cows. Strange, armed and armoured men, here in the pasture-

  They were galloping at him. They were attacking!

  Though it was a peaceful country of late afternoon he was in, and among friendly peoples, mac Art was glad now that he had eschewed
going about naked; sword and dagger hung at his hips. Of a sudden he was sorry that he wore neither helmet nor mailcoat, and carried no shield.

  Yet that would have been ridiculous. Who’d have dreamed he would find himself about to be murdered in such a place on such a lovely day?

  He was; the horsemen galloped at him, bending forward now, with lances poised to slay. Clumps of turf from a soil seldom dry flew from the pounding hooves of their mounts.

  Though he was poised and full ready to draw steel, Cormac pretended to stare stupidly at them. Let them think he could not believe their mission, these silent racing assassins! They separated, with blue-kilt’s bay digging up more grass and sod as he swerved to Cormac’s right. The Gael decided; that man he watched, turning slowly. The fellow was a bit too distant to make a good unavoidable cast…

  Cormac sprinted directly ahead, drawing steel and turning his face to the other man after he’d begun to run. He felt marvelously fleet, nigh sixty pounds the lighter without helmet, chaincoat, and buckler. Sword and dagger had long since become as part of him.

  His timing had been so excellent it was as if Eirrin’s ancient god Crom of Connacht had tugged him forward under Behl’s shining sky-eye; with a whistling whizzing sound the lance of the man in the tartan kilt passed through the space wherein Cormac had just stood. That ironshod lance would have transpierced him from behind. As it was, the spear’s head drove heavily into the earth, twenty paces away; thirty from where Cormac now stood.

  So much, for a few seconds, for that attacker. Cormac swung his face back to the bay-mounted man.

  That one had reined about and was charging in from the side, bent low with his eyes squinted against whipping mane. His spear was held on a downward angle. Cormac saw that he had no chance of running to the other lance, pulling it free, and wielding it in time to meet this attack. This idiot was gripping his mount with muscularly bulging calves and thighs, and obviously meant to skewer the unarmoured Gael. Surely the shock of impact would knock the fool off his mount…

  That was hardly high among Cormac’s concerns. The fellow obviously did mean to do it. Perhaps his horsemanship was that good and his legs that strong. It didn’t matter; even if he did fly backward off his steed on impact, that same impact would drive the spear through Cormac’s body. Here came death, at the gallop.

  The horse plunged at him, seeming to grow bigger and bigger, its neck stretched forth and its teeth showing. Was it so ferocious? Almost in desperation, Cormac decided to find out. He bellowed out as loudly as ever he had in his life. At the same time he feinted left and dived rightward. He struck the ground to roll over and over, hanging onto his sword.

  Without ever coming to a halt he hurled himself onto his feet and started a spring for the other lance, standing at an angle from the ground.

  He never glanced back to see that the assailant on the dark horse had tried to follow the feint, missed, and was galloping on, rocking precariously in the saddle and using his shield-arm to tug his mount around. Mac Art was interested only in the imbedded lance-and the first horseman, the blue-kilted man on the wiry bay.

  Their course was set to intersect. The man wanted his lance back, and could naturally snatch it from the ground as he raced by; these men were, after all, horse-soldiers. Not only did the Gael want that spear, he did not want its owner to retrieve it.

  Cormac ran as fast as he could, yelling, brandishing his sword.

  Neither of them got it. Cormac was on the horseman’s right, and that hand was empty, set to grasp the spear. The attacker’s shield was on his horse’s other side. He could try yanking his mount about-and perhaps cause it to fall or, if he succeeded, get himself or his horse sword-slashed. Cursing, the fellow raced on, with a leftward swerve. The spear remained.

  And Cormac heard hooves pounding behind him.

  His own curses filled the air and he slashed wildly at the spear as he fled past. Pause to grasp it, he knew, and he’d be skewered from behind, or crushed beneath flailing forehooves. As it was, he too veered leftward, and his sword-blow, while it failed to slice through the spear’s haft, did knock it flat to the ground. It wouldn’t be easily regained from horseback, now.

  Once again the Gael had little time for thinking or planning. On the run, he circled, and saw the garnet-coloured horse bearing down on him, seeming big as a ship with a strange horsehead prow. Desperately, he hurled his sword. A continuation of that all-body movement sent him lurching leftward.

  The horse snorted, then squealed almost humanly as only a horse can. The sword, turning in air, struck it crosswise just above the pale softness of its nose. The animal jerked up its head, trying to hurl itself aside. The thrown sword, without wounding, had served Cormac’s purpose.

  His attacker, rocking in the saddle, had to lever his right arm out for balance-and a ravening maniac, black hair flying and eyes burning like blue fire, pounced in to grasp the haft of his spear betwixt point and grip. And the horse lunged away leftward.

  There was no brace for the rider’s feet and thus no leverage for his body. Himself falling, Cormac pulled the tartan-kilted attacker off his own mount.

  Both men struck the ground hard, with whump sounds and grunts. In a drier clime they might have broken bones. The assassin’s impact was much greater than that of his intended victim, and he loosed his hold on his spear. Even so, as Cormac clung to the haft, it came treacherously up into its owner’s armpit. His groan was loud, and pained.

  That shoulder and arm would have given the would-be assassin a bad night and remained sore on the morrow as a family of boils, had not Cormac lunged to his feet and, twitching his hands into a new grip as he moved, driven the ironshod spear into its owner’s guts. The man squealed with the sound of a gelded hog.

  The Gael’s biceps sprang up and under his tunic his pectorals leaped, as he gripped the spear with all his might and gave it a good twist while he drew it forth. Blood poured from the large wound. The man kicked weakly while with both hands he sought to stem the red tide from his stomach.

  Cormac was already whirling, hardly winded, to brace the other man with the dripping spear. He’d noted it was not barbed, as were those of the Sueves.

  The other man was heeling his bay, racing in at his prey. Bent low, he swung the ax he’d pulled on its haftthong from his saddle. Now he saw that he was alone, that his spear was irretrievable from horseback, and that his prey stood waiting-in a weapon-man’s crouch, long spear ready for the skewering.

  A dozen yards from the Gael, his attacker suffered an attack of wisdom. He leaned leftward while he changed the pressure of his heels against his mount’s flanks. The horse swerved readily. Angrily Cormac ran after it as it galloped away. The Gael paused long enough to launch the spear-seemingly disarming himself in his zeal for vengeance.

  The lance fell well short of the racing horse. Cormac’s glance told him that now he was but four paces from the other spear, and he tried to look helpless, afoot and unarmed.

  Blue-tunic gave himself no opportunity to fall into the trap. He went bucketing on without ever turning to glance back. Reins streaming, his partner’s horse galloped in his wake.

  Cursing fiercely and imaginatively enough to blue the air about him, the cheated Gael sought out and found his sword. He’d speared one man and driven off the other, and his blade wasn’t even blooded. He returned to the man he’d unhorsed and speared. Feeling vengeful and robbed, mac Art would right happily tickle the bastard’s stones with his sword point until the fellow told him a few things.

  He found he’d been cheated twice.

  The man’s eyes were already filmed, and the merest glance from Cormac’s experienced eyes told him his attacker had already poured out over half his blood. He’d never suffer from the peritonitis a belly wound always brought, and he’d never be telling Art’s son who he was or who’d sent him, either.

  Cormac cursed sulphurously.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Lucanor of Antioch

  Galicia of the ever-martial Sueves had b
ecome ever more martial in appearance. Extra guards had been posted, even at the perimeter of the farmlands whose habitants had been warned. Mounted men rode sentry. From the looks of those horse-soldiers, Cormac thought, they were akin to Wulfhere: they’d love nothing better than to meet more such as those who had attacked the mac Art.

  No one could identify the corpse, and no one recognized his horse. The smith was summoned to examine arms and horseshoes. No; he knew them not. He also had work to do, and he returned to his hearth and anvil. (Cormac liked that. A good man, Unscel the Smith, he thought; he has the way of Eirrin about him!)

  The dead man was not of the Suevi. Exchanging looks, men opined aloud. Perhaps the attackers were of Cantanabria, though thisun had died far from that neighbouring land of northwestern Hispania.

  The horse now belonged to Cormac mac Art, as spoils of combat. No equestrian he, and he impressed all with supposed gallantry; he made Eurica king’s-sister a gift of the animal. And whispered in her ear. And she made gift of it to the widow of one of those dead in the tower; the woman has hardly above a score of years in age, and had six children, all living. Nor did mac Art trouble to mention that he was no horse-lover and was no happy tenant of the backs of such beasts. Cormac far preferred the difficult footing of a rolling deck to the back of an animal to make him sore of rump and thighs.

  “You have that of the statesman in you, mac Art,” King Veremund said. They had retreated to the little room of the silver chain, to share a cup.

  “Truth, lord King, I like not horses. And were I statesman, I’d not be asking ye again to show me the chain of silver.”

  Veremund gave him a look, but conducted him to the treasure room. Cormac was careful to be still, while Veremund showed the Gael the new chain. It had not shrunk.

  “Beautiful as ever,” Cormac said, with an affected sigh.

  Veremund, wearing a tiny smile, stored away the chain. “You were in truth nervous that some sorcery had faded away the links you saw added.”

  “Lord King! How could a sea-pirate far from Eirrin question a king?”