The Skrayling Tree: The Albino in America

by Michael Moorcock

  Solomon had carried me all the way from Acre. I had acquired him from a Lombardian knight who, like so many of my crusader comrades, had joined the expedition entirely for the land it promised. Finding the promised land a little barren, he had joined the Templars, turned to disappointed drinking and gambling and from there to the inevitable duel. I had let him pick it. I had long coveted his horse. Being of a weakly disposition, I also needed a soul or two for my sustenance and preferred my food ripe.

  The religious posturings of these brutes were as corruptly self-deceiving as anything I had witnessed. Religions so at odds with mankind’s nature and its place in the natural order only produce a kind of madness, where the victims are constantly attempting to force reality to confirm their fantasies. The ultimate result must be the ultimate destruction of the realm itself. In their histories, wherever the banner of pious Law was raised, Chaos quickly followed.

  Though their people were said to have visited Cimmeria, there was still every possibility that the Norseman would not be able to help me. I would soon know.

  I had been to Isprit before, but from the sea. The mountains became greener and more forested and the ride to the port pleasant, if hurried. I arrived above the city just before sunset. The Adriatic stretched, tranquil pewter, beneath a golden sun. Protected by a huge promontory, the port had been chosen by Diocletian for its views and air. Parts of walls and columns along the harbor were clearly from Roman times. But where imperial sails had blossomed on bulky triremes, the ships were now traders, fishing craft. There was only one reefed sail on a tall, slender mast, her crow’s nest decorated with vivid dragons curling around the tip, where a black flag flew. The sail was recognizable to anyone but an inlander. It was the typical scarlet-and-azure stripes on a white field of the old Norseman. Gunnar was still in port.

  From this height the town looked unplanned and ramshackle, a sprawl of huts and badly thatched houses standing among the marble ruins of a vast Roman compound. As you drew closer, the real wonder of the place made itself evident, as did the rather pungent smell of the dust heaps and sewage dumps inland of the harbor. None of this was noticeable, however, when you looked out over a dark blue sea turning to a pool of blood in the dying sunlight. I rode down the old trade trail from the mountains into that extraordinary port.

  Several hundred years before, the emperor had built himself a palace here overlooking his private moorings and the Adriatic. An extensive complex of buildings, its entire purpose was to comfort the abdicated emperor and help him forget the troubles of the world, many of which were his own creation. The walls were high. There were cloisters and fountains; pleasant walks and groves; benches and tables of basalt, marble and agate; temples and chapels. The baths were exquisitely luxurious. When I had last been here the decay was less extensive.

  When Rome’s power faded, the barbarians’ power over Isprit had grown. Byzantium lacked the resources to claim much in the way of sovereignty, so the port had filled with free fishermen, scrap-metal shippers, slavers, timbermen, traders, pirates, furriers and all the other honest and outlaw callings known to men. It was not an important port, strategically, but it was a lively one. The ostentatious palace was now the core of an entire community. They occupied its rooms and galleries, used its gardens for growing food, its halls for trading and meeting, its baths—those still in working order—for supplies of running water. Even to me this infestation of brawling, squabbling, embracing, praying, shrieking, giggling uninhibited human life had a certain charm.

  The fountains had long since dried up. Some had been turned into the hubs of dwellings, their fanciful masonry in contrast to the simplicity of the people. Pigs, sheep and goats were kept in pens on the outskirts, so the stench increased as you approached but lessened as you reached the streets.

  I rode through shacks and shanties of driftwood and stones which looked like the debris of a dozen sea-raids in which everything of wealth had been taken. Yet there was probably more life here now than when the emperor came. In those imperial ruins the fallen mighty had given way to the vital mob. This was one of the lessons I had tried to teach my countrymen. Their final lesson came when I demonstrated their weaknesses and the strength of the new, human folk who challenged them.

  I had led those human reavers. I had destroyed the Dreamer’s City. It was no wonder that I preferred this dream. Here I was merely a leprous wizard with a talent for warfare. There I was the prince who had betrayed his own people and left them scattered, homeless, dying from their world’s memory. My actions had allowed Jagreen Lern, who always sought to emulate Melnibonéan power, to raise the Lords of the Higher Worlds, to threaten the Cosmic Balance in the name of the Gods of Entropy.

  The forces of Law and Chaos were not themselves good or evil. It was by their actions that I judged such Higher Lords. Some were more trustworthy than others. My own patron Lord of Chaos, Duke Arioch, was a consistent if ferocious being, but he had little power in this world.

  The only lighting in the warren of cobbled streets and apartments came from the taverns and dwellings themselves. Behind the oiled vellum of windows, the candles and lamps gave the twilit town a sepia look. I searched for a seamen’s hostelry Friar Tristelunne had told me of. The smell of ozone was strong in my nostrils, as was the smell of fish. I was hungry for some fresh octopi, which Melnibonéans had always eaten with great respect. The creatures possess intelligences greater than most mortals. Certainly their flavor is considered subtler.

  My own Melnibonéan appetites and impulses were forever at odds with the ideas I had inherited from my human companions. Cymoril, while she was alive, never knew that cannibalism disgusted me. She had taken her place at the ritual tables without a thought. I derived very little pleasure in the arts of torture cultivated by Melnibonéans for thousands of years. For us there were formal methods of dying as well as of killing.

  As a youth I began to doubt the wisdom of these pursuits. Cruelty was scarcely a trade, much less an art. My fears for Melniboné had been practical. I had lived and traveled in the lands of the Young Kingdoms. I understood how soon they must overwhelm us. Had that been the reason that I had joined the ranks of my enemies? I dismissed this guilt. I had no time for it now.

  I found the tumbledown, straw-roofed shingle building with a dim fish-oil lamp illuminating a sign that read in old Cyrillic Odysseus’s, which was either the name of the owner or of the hero with whom he wished to be associated. The tavern had declined a little since the Golden Age.

  Not trusting the Dalmatians, I dismounted from Solomon to lead him into the tavern. It stank of stale wine and sour cheese. The straw on the floors had not been replaced in months. There was a dead dog in one corner. The dog offered the advantage of attracting most of the flies and covering up the worst of the smells. The majority of the other customers were collected at a bench playing backgammon. A couple of men who sat talking quietly in the corner farthest from the dog attracted me. They had the filthy fair hair of the typical Danish pirate, arranged in two greasy plaits which had enjoyed as much of their meat gravy as they had. But they seemed in good humor and spoke enough kitchen Greek to make themselves understood. Clearly they were not disliked, for the landlord’s girl was relaxed with them and told a joke which had them all laughing until they saw me a little more clearly.

  “Nice horse,” said the taller, his eyes narrowing a little, though he tried to disguise his expression. I was familiar with the response. He had recognized me as the Silverskin. He was wondering if he was going to find out what it was like to contract leprosy. Or have his immortal soul turned to roughage.

  “I’m looking for a boy to keep an eye on him,” I said. “He might even be for sale.” I held up a silver Constantine. Shadow rats appeared from everywhere. I selected one and told him the Constantine was his as long as the horse was safe and well groomed. If he knew of a likely customer he would get a commission. Then I stared into the unhappy faces of the Vikings and told them I was looking for a man named Gunnar the Luckless.
The men understood this subtle snub. “He’s called Earl Gunnar the Wald, and he has a liking for good manners,” said the younger, clearly wishing he had not been put in this position. They were Leif the Shorter and Leif the Larger.

  As the boy took away my horse to the ostler’s, I turned to one of the serving women and ordered a skin of their best yellow wine. I, too, I said, appreciated good manners and would feel snubbed if they did not join me. The group with the backgammon board, hearing us speaking Norse, displayed only a passing interest in me, having identified me as an outlander. I heard one of them refer to me as Auberoni and was amused. I was no king of the fairies. The men were Venetian fishermen who had settled here recently and clearly had never heard of Il Pielle d’Argent or his sword, which was still known in Venice as Il Corvo Noir after its legendary maker, who had not actually forged the sword but had made the fanciful hilt. A large body of opinion believed the sword had taken its first soul from Corvo.

  I dusted off the crusader’s surcoat I still wore and joined the wary lads, Leif and Leif, who typically had hands as carefully groomed as their hair was greasy. I supposed if they ate mostly with their fingers, there was a point to keeping them clean. Needing neither to shave nor, in the conventional sense, pass feces, few Melnibonéans were familiar with beards or urinals. Many human habits remain deeply mysterious to us.

  The Vikings probably thought me some effete Byzantine affecting Oriental manners. They had enough respect for my reputation, however, and showed me perfect courtesy. Renowned for their love of poetry and music and fine workmanship, Vikings enjoyed cultured living and hospitality. These two sea-robbers, though they served under one of the most evil captains known, were well informed and told me they had discussed deserting Gunnar for crusading or working as mercenaries in Byzantium. But they had no real choice. Their fate was to sail with Gunnar until the Valkyries came to carry them to Valhalla. They found a boy to run to Gunnar.

  By the time we finished the skin, there came a stirring and a chorus of greetings. Earl Gunnar had arrived.

  He hated to show his face. They said his wounds were so hideous he could not bear to look on his own features. I was surprised at the baroque workmanship of his mask, fashioned like a gryphon’s head with an open, threatening mouth, but where the gullet would be was a face of silvered steel. Of Eastern origin, the helmet’s crest had been cleverly crafted in silver and pewter: gryphon ascendant. But it was my own face I saw when I first looked at him. He was coming towards me, striding with dangerous inelegance.

  Gunnar the Doomed was a bear. He was twice my width and slightly taller. I could imagine this terrifying figure on the bridge of his ship. He wore fine-woven plaids and linens and, like all his kind, his hands were girlishly tended. Hanging down over his shoulders his hair showed a little grey. With his well-trimmed, flowing locks, his rich clothing and knee-high doeskin boots, he could have been a Danish noble of the previous century. There was a generally archaic air about the man. It had been a hundred years since the last Vikings had gone on raiding expeditions.

  The Norse sailors most reminded me of my old friend, the bluff, direct and solidly realistic Smiorgan Baldhead of the Purple Towns. As an individual Gunnar struck me as Smiorgan’s opposite. There was something unwholesome about him. He affected the rough manners of a nobleman too long in the company of brutes. Yet he was a real diplomat. He knew enough not to threaten me. Instead he preferred to charm me. He ordered another skin of Bulgar wine and had it brought to the table where I still sat with his men. I could, of course, read nothing from the face, completely covered by the mirrored steel of the helmet. There were dark cavities in the mask. Through two of these he stared at me. Through another he fed himself tiny scraps of some kind of meat he carried in his hand. Otherwise he had the familiar manner of those who do not know me. He kept a little distance between us on the chance that I was actually a leper. Courteously I refused his wine. I had drunk my fill, I said. “I have some business with you, Earl Gunnar.”

  Gunnar shrugged. “I’m not a merchant, and my ship is not for hire.”

  “You are an adventurer, like myself, and your ship is your own. I’m not here to hire you, Earl Gunnar. A man like yourself does not strike me as one who would sing to another’s tune no matter how sweet the melody.”

  “You’ve come overland, have you? Where from? Constantinople? Did you ride through the Devil’s Garden?”

  I told him that I had. He nodded. He sat back in his chair, that more-than-enigmatic mask regarding me with some interest. “So you saw all those massive heads. You’d think they were alive, eh? I saw something like them when I sailed with the Rose on her twin-hulled ship The Either/Or. We passed an island which marked the boundaries of that people’s empire. Huge eyes staring from these stone faces. An island of giants. We did not go closer.”

  Gunnar had a certain witch-sight. No ordinary mortal would have seen those stones for what they were. I held my own counsel and let Gunnar continue.

  “So you know me by my reputation, as I know thee, Sir Silverskin. And it pleases you to flatter my pride. Yet you know I do indeed work for hire on occasions. So, while I appreciate your courtesy, I’d be as happy to get down to business, if we have any, as not. I sail on the morning tide, and my crew is already aboard, save for these two, whom I came to find.” He paused. Taking a reed from within his jerkin he placed one end in his wine cup and the other in the aperture in his mask. He sipped delicately. “My destination’s already determined.”

  “I understand that also.” I dropped my voice. “North and west to the World’s Rim?”

  He was too canny a captain to respond immediately. “You know more than I do, Sir Silverskin. We are merely setting sail for Las Cascadas to find fresh crewmen. Winter approaches, and at this time we normally go down to Zanzibar, where we take an interest in the slave trade. It’s a poor business, but there are few other ways for an independent captain to make a living in these oversettled times.”

  I opened my palm and showed him what was there. “Give me a berth on your ship, Earl Gunnar, and I’ll tell you more about this.”

  It was not in his nature to hesitate.

  “The berth is yours,” he said. “We sail on the first tide.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Pielle d’Argent

  Darkling dragon, reiver’s pride,

  Rides high upon the turquoise tide.

  His weird-drenched wave

  Shan bear him to a rich retreat.

  Darkling dragon, reiver’s pride,

  Lord of the Last, destined to die.

  In Woden’s waves he’ll find no grave

  His death’s pre-written on his own black blade.

  LONGFELLOW,

  “Lord of the Lost”

  A little before dawn I was down at the harbor looking over the long, slender ship lying against the dock. Solomon had been sold for a fair price to a Greek merchant who had some fancy to show himself off as a knight. I threw in the surcoat for good measure. At least he could pretend to fellow Christians to have been a crusader. Solomon would be making his way home to Lombardy shortly after we sailed. If he was lucky, the merchant would not be on the stallion’s broad and cunning back.

  Narrow, seemingly delicate, yet full of sinewy power even at anchor, The Swan pulled eagerly at her traces, haughty and confident as her namesake. I heard Gunnar had bought her from the impoverished Greenlanders who had made her but lacked the skills to sail her.

  I admired the lines of the ship. Her fine, beaky figurehead might deliberately have been a cross between a swan and a wyvern. She had the swan’s calm stateliness, but also an air of menace, which had something to do with the rake of her deck, the set of her mast.

  In the old Viking manner there were shields strapped to the rail above the board which ran between the rowing benches and the shutbeds where men could store their goods and get sleep when utterly worn out. I knew that many Vikings preferred to sleep at their oars and had developed ways of hanging over the great, go
lden sweeps to find the total rest of the thoroughly exhausted. But half the shield spaces were empty. I suspected they were not filled by born Norsemen.

  I waited patiently near the gangplank as the sea-raiders arrived. They represented most nations, from Iceland to Mongolia. “By Ishtar,” murmured a Persian, seeing me, “Gunnar’s more desperate for men than we knew.” Some of the races I did not recognize at all, but there were tall, thin East Africans, a couple of burly Moors, three Mongols and a mixture of Greeks, Albanians and Arabs. All of them had the grim look of men who knew violence more thoroughly than peace. Settling in to the ship, some of them took places by shields they had clearly acquired from the dead. The two Ashanti had brought their own long shields. Others had no shields at all. There was a miscellaneous mixture of weaponry. If ever a crew was born to sail a ship into the realms of Chaos, it was The Swan’s.

  Out on the far horizon something moved. I glanced up. Melnibonéans were also a seafaring people, and I had their way of scanning the ocean out of the corner of my eye. One of the Mongols ran up the mast like a rat to yell out his urgent fear.

  “Venetian war galleys. Making good speed.”

  Gunnar came brawling down to the dock, half a dozen whores and hounds forming a living train behind him, shouting orders which were followed like thoughts by his obedient men. He took a moment to turn his faceless head to me and yell “We sail for Las Cascadas. We’ll be safe there. Come aboard. If we can’t strike a bargain, I’ll set you off on the island.” He swung his heavily cloaked body up over his rail and headed for the stern.

  Las Cascadas was a notorious rock in the western Mediterranean with a single port. It was still some days’ sail away, and we had the Venetians, possibly the Turks, perhaps the Byzantines, the Italians and the Caliphates to deal with, all of whom claimed authority over these seas. Gibr al Tairat itself was not so thoroughly untakable, but Las Cascadas’s harbor was so well protected no enemy fleet could hope to enter. Any attempt to attack by land was thwarted by the steep, volcanic cliffs which rose sheer from the water. As a result the place had become a refuge for every corsair on the Red Coast and beyond and had its own queen, the infamous pirate known across the seafaring world as the Barbary Rose, whom Gunnar boasted of sailing with. Her strangely named twin-prowed ship was unmistakable and had been built apparently by shipwrights the Rose had brought with her from the South Sea Empire, which few European navigators even believed existed. Only the two tattooed giants, who still served the she-captain, knew the secret of making such vessels.