The Tower of Death

PROLOGUE

“D’ye command war-galleys or wash-tubs? And are they fighting men at your orders-or babes messing their swaddling linen?”

Harshly the demand was snapped out, and harsh was the mood of the speaker. Count Guntram of Burdigala* had lately come in for scathing rebuke on the grounds that he’d let his master’s law be flouted. Not a man to suffer in silence was milord Count, or to deny his underlings their just share of the king’s anger. In truth he had just vented but a tiny measure of his frustration on the stolid officer before him.

*Bordeaux

Athanagild Beric’s son looked back at the count levelly. “My men are warriors, by God! As for the ships-” Athanagild shrugged and the movement brought a twinkling flash from the silver-gilt brooch that pinned his long green cloak to his shoulder. “My lord has inspected them himself. There are not enough, and they are old, and no others abuilding. You said it yourself, so don’t tell me I’m scrabbling for excuses.”

Guntram scowled and his face worked, but he told the officer no such thing. The man was right. Rome was a dying Colossus and the world it had created was coming apart all around the deathbed.

The count turned, still scowling, to stare out the unshuttered window at the courtyard of his mansion. The softly playing fountain, the colonnaded walk, the tiled roofs; all boasted silently of Roman architecture, and at least a hundred years old. The fountain leaped and shimmered prettily-and if it stopped Guntram of Burdigala knew it would hardly be worthwhile trying to have it repaired. The matter of warships was comparable.

But no, he mused, not quite; the matter of constructing and repairing warships was not quite the same.

Proculus, head of the municipal curia (who had brought two shrewd members of that body with him) coughed. Guntram turned slowly back, wearing a sour and challenging expression.

“My lord Comes,” Proculus said primly, “it is not that shipwrights cannot be had. There are enough and to spare, it would seem, to knock merchant vessels together.” He stressed the one word with distaste, while blandly ignoring the men of commerce also present in the chamber. “Fashioning warcraft, no doubt, is a different matter, and the men able to do it fewer-”

“And most of them,” Athanagild put in, for he commanded the royal fleet based in the Garonne, “would liefer work for shares in pirate loot.”

The comes or count banged a sword-strengthened fist on his oaken table. Objects jumped, and so did his secretary, who was sorely needed since my lord Count could neither read nor write. The count did not notice how he’d disrupted the poor man-or paid no mind, at any rate.

“Pirates!” he roared. “By the heart of Arius, I’ve gone through reports of pirates all morning until I’m fairly sickened. That shipping isn’t safe is ill enow. That these northern thieves have dared pillage ashore is enough to make me-me, a man who followed king Euric into battle after battle-wish for Judgment Day!”

“Their numbers alone make them difficult to destroy as rats, my lord.” The smooth, rather soft voice came from Philip the Syrian, a swarthy man and pockmarked. He blinked heavy eyelids. “The noble Commander Athanagild must cope with Breton corsairs, Saxons and Jutes out of Britain-King Hengist notable among them-aye, and their cousins settled in the Charente, upon his very doorstep as it were-”

“And the Frisians,” Count Guntram snarled, “and the Heruls, the Danes-that whole damned boiling sea of North Sea robbers! Not to speak of the Scoti who sometimes take the notion that our coasts are the very place for a happy little junket, and Vandals up from the south to try their luck! Hooves of the Devil! I live here too, merchant! Their numbers are greater than rats!” The count’s big hand, which bore heavy gold rings and dirty nails in almost equal numbers, lifted to stroke his pepper-and-salt beard. His face softened to an almost ludicrous contrast; his little bright blue eyes glittered.

“Nay,” he said almost softly, “with pirates on the water in such numbers, I know not why you are not ruined. I’d like to know how you manage.”

Philip’s eyes, dark as garnets, flickered and went suddenly as hard. His brocaded tunic and soft Cordoban shoes, no less than the shining gems scintillant on his person, did indeed suggest that he was managing very well indeed. The other merchant, Desiderius Crispus, in a simple dress-tunic long out of date and a wholly false air of patrician hauteur, looked more austere. And the count was too well informed to credit that sham.

Philip said, “If I may speak for us both, my colleague? I believe, my lord Comes, that it is because the bulk of our trade goes by land or river. For myself, what goods I ship are brought from the east to Narbo Martius, and then hither. I should not dream of trusting my wealth on the western seas at matters ar now.”

“You slimy, lying serpent!”

Guntram gripped the underside of his much-abused table and heaved it over. Ink, reports, quills and fine blotting sand were scattered like trash. The secretary, who had been seated at one end, rolled backward and betook himself out of the way. A corner of the table had banged Proculus on the knees; the phrases he hissed between his teeth as he rubbed were hardly in keeping with the dignity of his position. He stared silently at the count as if wishing the big soldier were small enough to stamp.

The Count of Burdigala was amove; he seized Philip by the throat and choked him until his bulging eyes saw the stark face of Death. Then Guntram flung him down among the papers and ink to get his breath.

“D’you think I’m a fool?” Guntram roared. “Or that my spies waste their time? From Narbo is it, with tolls and levies each mile of the way? Pah! And you,” he snarled, rounding on Desiderius. “Traitor! I’ll not bore ye with all I know. It was full eighty swords of Spanish forging, the best there is this side of Damascus, that found their way into Hengist’s grasping hands-not so? Not so? And paid for in gold from a looted church! Ahhh! And you, Philip of Syria. Captain Ticilo may not be your man for speaking publicly of, but I know what he did in Massilia last year, and what Vandal galley gave him escort the length of the Spanish coast. And raided Lusitania on its way home, to such profit that it must have had advance information to guide him. What last I heard, Lusitania is part of our Gothic realms as much as this city-which means, Syrian, that these dealings were no common sharp practice or thieving. They rank as treason!” He looked at Proculus. “Be that not so, sir?”

“Beyond doubt, if there is proof,” the municipal prefect said, with stiffness. “It would merit the severest death the law can award.”

Philip had not risen from his knees; Desiderius now joined him there.

Both merchants wailed for mercy. They had been moved, they avowed nigh fearfully, to do what they did out of desperation for the losses these same pirates had inflicted upon them. If the menace could be abated, the seas cleared or rendered so that a merchantman had so much as even odds, would be their dearest wish come true. Let the Count of Burdigala but state his desires. And so forth.

Guntram was not listening. Proculus had his ear at the moment, and Proculus was waxing condemnatory. He straightened, lean in his robes through with a growing pot. His thin-lipped mouth was twisted. Pain from his smitten knee and disgust at the exhibition he’d been forced to watch were in equal measure the cause of it.

“My lord Count,” he snapped, “this disgraces me! Here is neither a court of law nor a wharfside grog-shop-though just now, one might well take the one for the latter. Let these men be arraigned for their crimes in due form, and let the civic questioner be the one to lay hands on them. I give you good day.”

“Hold!”

Guntram’s crisp order stopped Proculus in his tracks. He gazed at the bleak-faced count, frozen in motion.

“My sons are beyond that door,” Guntram of Burdigala said, all in one deadly tone. “They have swords, and will cut to pieces any one who leaves afore I have told him he may. Anybody, sir. An ye have complaints, you can make them later, in that due form you love so well-but by God you’ll stomach it for now! This is urgent business, should it chance that ye’ve not yet grasped it!”

The prefect looked stricken. No fleshy, high-coloured, wine-loving old Visigoth he faced now, baffled by law and literacy and intent only on secure comfort in his declining years. Nay, this was Guntram the war-man who had reddened his sword on a score of battlefields in doing his part to turn back Attila’s Huns and conquer Hispania. The cheerful ruthlessness on the old soldier’s face was warrant that the threatened murders would be performed.

Proculus gathered what dignity he could, and returned to his place in that temper-littered room.

“Better; tha-at’s better,” Guntram said, nigh purring. “Now attend, all of you. I spoke of an inland raid. The report is amid this litter somewhere…” Guntram looked hopelessly round himself. “Well, the gist of it is that a pack-train carrying oil, white salt and fine glassware from Italy, was ambushed and robbed on a forest road… full twenty mile from the coast! The robbers were Danish pirates; their leader was recognized. There cannot be two men of that size, accoutred so, and with beards so red and axes so huge. For that it was on me the king’s anger fell. The stolen goods, y’see, were meant for the royal court. An I cannot deal a sharp blow to these pirates within the year, there may be a new Count of Burdigala… and a new commander of the fleet.” Guntram’s eyes wandered to Athanagild; Guntram glowered about at them all before he went on:

“Certain it is that there will be two less merchants in this city! And the new man, whoever he may be, will have words whispered to him about the municipal curia… bribes and such, you know; the king cheated of his taxes and the like. Think on it. Given our king’s the sort who’s apt to dismiss an old soldier who served his father thirty years and feels his wounds every night-to dismiss such a one over the matter of the royal table salt, what can you expect? Eh? And it’s written proof I have, and witnesses, mark me! Your fates depend on mine, all of you. You had better be convinced of that.”

Guntram had gone to purring again; was worse and more menacing, those men thought, than his shout and bluster.

“I’m with you, my lord Count,” Proculus assured him. “A loyal subject should do all he can to put down pirates. But how can I be of aid to you? I am no sailor or fighting man.”

“You can help with counsel,” he was told, “and ere we’re done there may well be a few little legal matters that need smoothing over. The Syrian was not merely gabbling when he said pirates are too many, but we have no need of sinking them by the dozens. Athanagild! Say that you knew where to find them, just where to find them, man, and what their movements would be?”

The younger Goth’s eyes sparkled. “My lord! I’d lay a couple of the greatest among them by the heels. We’d set some examples to give pause to the rest.”

“And gladden the king’s heart,” Guntram said, and he well nigh beamed. “He might then listen to me when I urge him to march his war-host into the Charente, to subdue or destroy those serpentish Saxons there! The damned place is a home away from home for Hengist and his throat-cutting captains! There’d be glory in it for you too, man. You’d have to strike from the sea at the same time.”

“Trap your specimen pirates first,” Proculus advised with wise cynicism.

“Right you are. I want Wulfhere and Cormac mac Art!”

“Merciful Saviour,” Philip the Syrian whispered.

Fleet Commander Athanagild grinned broadly.

“My lord Count, your pardon,” one of the curiales said. “I know little of individual pirate captains. Of these two I have not heard.”

“By God,” Athanagild grunted, “had you my job, you’d know their names! Or were you trader, or seaman or pirate of any sort. My lord?”

“By all means tell him.”

“Wulfhere of the Danes is a giant. He’s all of a foot taller than I, with the bones of an ox, a chest like a wall, and a crimson beard to cover half of it. Hausakliufr is he nicknamed in his own language-the Skull-splitter, and not for compliment’s sake. Battle is the greatest joy of this colossus’s life-the plunder’s but an excuse. His fellow Danes are hardly a weak-kneed lot, but they outlawed him because he was too dangerous to have around. Somewhat more to the point, there’s no bolder or more expert sailor on the northern seas.”

“You sound, sir, as though you had encountered the man.”

“I’ve seen him,” Athanagild owned, and the words came betwixt clenched teeth. “Aye, and heard him laugh at me through a gale. None would make a better display on a gibbet.”

“And the other?”

“Cormac? That one’s an exile from Hibernia, one of the few reivers wild enough to sail with Wulfhere. He’s dark as the Skull-splitter is red, a master of the sword, and subtle-brained. Wulfhere loves him for his battle-prowess and relies on him for his crafty advice. No snakes in Hibernia, eh? This Cormac mauled our coasts with a Celtic crew of his own, some years agone. One ship these two have, and sixty followers, and with that they’ve raked Britain and Gaul and Spain as if there were naught to oppose them but wax men with paper weapons.”

“I want them!” Guntram said harshly, and was momentarily nonplussed with no table to bang. “With all their fame, they’ve but one ship and none to avenge them. What’s more, it was these very two lifted the king’s pretties from the pack train.”

The disparaging scorn in his last phrase rang clear. Too canny to say it out in such words, or indeed in any words, Guntram despised his king. Alaric the Second, King of all the Visigoths, the old soldier considered a disgrace to his father’s name. Despite his rage at the piratical activity along his shores-and inland-the young king preferred to buy erotically skilled women from Egypt and the Levant to beguile his nights, rather than warships to patrol his coast. Guntram almost snorted, thinking of it; indeed, his nostrils flared.

Honest Gothic lasses with broad hips for bearing, and no knowledge of degenerate tricks; these had been good enow for Alaric’s father Euric-and aurochs horns to drink from. No question, the race was declining. The younger generation would never carry it to century’s end, but fourteen years off.

Well… business.

“I want them!” he repeated, and glared at the merchants. “And you objects are going to help me take them. Do not think elsewise!”

“Impossible, my lord!” Desiderius Crispus cried. “I do not deal with these men, nor does the Syrian. I keep myself informed. Did they barter their loot in Burdigala at all, I would know of it.”

“True, it’s true, my good lord!” The confirmation burst eagerly from Philip. “Their buyer is in Nantes, in the Roman kingdom.”

“Nantes,” the count growled. “And the name of their buyer?”

“I do not know, my lord. By Saint Martin, it’s the truth!”

Though Guntram eyed them narrowly, he did not hector them the further. He’d sharper pins than that to jab these two with.

He said sharply, “Your oath in a saint’s name settles it. It must be true. The part about Nantes is right, in any event, and it’s fortunate for you that I happen to know. I’ve had a spy there of late; the same that uncovered your own shifty dealings, so y’see he knows his word. He traced the man through a customs official he found to be corrupt. The Dane and his partner deal with one Balsus Ammian. Know you aught of him?”

“My lord Count, I do.” Desiderius said, and Guntram saw his surprise was real enow. “But it would seem… not so much as I did think.” He watched the count make an impatient gesture; Guntram had not fetched in Desiderius to flatter his choice of spies. “Aye. Balsus Ammian dwells by the waterfront and makes great affectation of being one step from poverty, but in truth he’s no less rich than-”

The merchant stopped suddenly.

“Than you are?” Guntram suggested. “Aye, that tallies with my man’s description. We talked until late last night.”

The merchants’ mutual thought was easy to guess: I must learn who this spy of Guntram’s is. Which, of course, was why he was not present at this meeting they now knew Guntram had planned, and planned well.

“An I find ferrets of yours within sniffing distance of his name,” the count said genially, “I’ll see your bones picked bare and rattling in the wind. Understood?”

Under those innocently staring blue eyes, they did assurance on him that they understood.

“So. Let’s get on, then. These piratical swine have shown that they too keep themselves informed. I mean to tempt ’em with a cargo they can scarce resist. Wine, for the most part, but with a treasure of lighter goods, and none of the dangers of fakery; the lading will be true. It will sail from Narbo, and around Hispania hither. Word will be let fall. The Dane and the Gael, if I judge them aright, will not waylay the ship off the Hispanic coast. They will choose to take it within comfortable distance of their market-and Athanagild will be waiting.”

Guntram paused but long enough to glance at Athanagild; the commander nodded with enthusiasm.

“And do you, sirs, know the best part of all?” Guntram went amiably on. “It is you who will public-spiritedly provide the bait, and at your own cost.”

The merchants broke into a babble of protest. Proculus silenced them by gazing dreamily at the ceiling and murmuring, “Treason. The knives. The clamps. The hot lead.”

Count Guntram nodded approval. This Proculus fellow might be snobbish and finicky, but once he got into the spirit of things the man was downright useful.

“But my lord,” Desiderius bleated, “they may succeed after all!”

“In which case you will have to take your losses, now won’t you? But aye, it’s a thought. I should like them to have a nasty surprise awaiting then in Nantes, in the event they do. It requires thought. But you have more to tell me yet. You may not traffic with Wulfhere and Cormac, but you are to betray to the full measure of your grimy knowledge the pirates you do buy from. Either they are taken and executed within the year-hooves of the Devil, within the season!-or you, dear sirs, suffer in their places. Well, sirs, I am waiting.”

They did not force the noble count to wait overlong.