When Death Birds Fly

10

The sun shone bright and warm next day on Sigebert the Frank. He was at practice with swords in his courtyard. A rack of long Frankish blades stood to hand. Five of Sigebert’s barbarian soldiers were present, in their close-fitting trews and hard leather vests. Three watched whilst two engaged their master simultaneously, at his bidding.

Sigebert was unmasked. Clad as plainly as his guards, he put from him consciousness of the thickness, the pounding of his head. This was both necessity and recreation, and Sigebert loved it.

He shifted position, caught a stroke on his shield and drove his point at the man’s side above the hip. At the last instant he pulled the thrust so that it did not pierce the leather. Even so, the man knew he had been touched. He made a soft gagging noise and reeled.

Now the other was prevented from coming at his master. Stranded on the far side of his stricken partner, he had to move smartly to rightward, and by then Sigebert was prepared for him. The long double-edged swords glittered in the sun.

The soldier cut at his master’s head, feinted a blow with his leather-covered shield, and swept his swordtip quickly down in an attempt to skewer Sigebert’s foot. The foot was not there to be transpierced. It flashed aside, moving with a dancer’s ease. Had been a foolish ploy anyhow, as the foot was too small a target, and forever amove.

The soldier paid for it. Sigebert brought his shield’s rim jarringly down on the man’s arm. His sword clattered on the courtyard stones. Sigebert feigned killing him.

There arose some sycophantic applause and comment. Seigbert One-ear ignored it, scowling and preoccupied. He raised his eyes as the messenger Faraulf arrived.

“Good morrow, my friend. Saw you that?”

“The end of it, sir, aye. Was ye fighting the pair together?”

“And won! Do not make it sound so awesome, for we both know better. I’ve discovered that two men are weaker than one alone, when the one knows what he’s about. They lack his coordination… tend to stumble in each other’s way.” He squinted along his nicked sword-edge. “Also, these be my men. I suspect they are not fighting as well as they might. The trick that last dog tried, stabbing at my foot as if he held a spear, was a little too clumsy. He verily gave me the bout.”

“Mayhap he requires training,” Faraulf suggested.

“I’ll see that he has it! Aye, till his body cries for respite and his lungs ache for breath, day after day! When he faces me again, he’ll not incline to treat me gently in hopes of preference! I, too, require hard training. Do these fools think I am playing idle games, they must learnotherwise!” Sigebert’s voice rose in passion, and Faraulf blinked.

“Was clever use of the point, on the other man,” Faraulf said. Shoulder length, the messenger’s hair looked as if it had fallen into a tun of hot butter.

“Ah, you arrived in time to see? Aye, Faraulf. The point is much ignored. D’ye know that when the Romans came here they hardly used the edge? Over the centuries swords have lengthened and now the use of the point-so!” he cried, skewering the air- “is nearly forgot. I’m told that Cormac mac Art uses it well. Therefore I try its employment. I find that it works quite nicely. The hortest way to a man’s throat or vitals is best.” And Sigebert repeated softly, “Cormac mac Art.”

“The pirate?”

“The same. One of those black-haired Celts. Came from their stopping offin Spain on their was to Hivernia away from its previous people, I reckon. I’ve cause to think on him from time to time. It’s in my mind that we may meet again, that Hivernian dog and I. Should it befall, I’d not be unprepared.” Sigebert’s gashed face twisted appallingly. “One of his men gave me these scars.”

Faraulf was wisely mute, and the customs assessor turned to one of his soldiers.

“Have the highwayman fetched hither.” For a moment Sigebert watched the fellow make obeisance and leave, louting. Then he said, to faraulf, “Fear not to question me! By death, man, you bore me welcome news! You may speak if you wish!”

“What highwayman be this, sir?”

Sigebert shrugged. “Some fellow who was taken drunk at an inn, with his band of throat-cutting robbers far distant. Betrayed by his trollop, I believe. I cannot recall his name. However, he is well-born, and by reputation he handles a sword well, which is all that matters.”

Faraulf did not ask how a captured highwayman came to be a captive of the customs assessor, and in his own manse. An Sigebert had a use for him, he’d have found it simple to contrive the robber’s “escape.”

Two Frankish soldiers returned with a tall, yellow-haired man in a doeskin tunic and short leather boots. Filthy from travel and prison grime, he yet stood insolently straight and stared from eyes the colour of granite. Faraulf had thought to see remnants of breeding in that lean face, and sought them. The signs of reckless violence and wasted power were far plainer. The miscreant’s arms were bound to a wooden pole laid across his shoulders.

“Well,” he said coarsely, staring. “Seek you dogs to affright me with this scarface? Who be ye, the local frightener of children?”

Sigebert smiled with unfeigned pleasure. He’d been told this animal had spirit. A movement of his hand stayed the soldier who had been about to strike his prisoner with a spear-butt.

“My name has no importance,” he said, “to you. I am the man who will do death on you, here and now-unless you can slay me!”

The highwayman received the news stoically, and did not lose his sarcasm. “Then I reckon I’ll be the loser,” he grunted, “since my hands be bound up. There’s been no blood going through these arms in hours.”

“It shall return. Your wrists shall be freed,” Sigebert promised, and watched the fellow blink. “I would have your name.”

“You know my name. And jape me not about untying me.”

“No japery, fellow. And no, all I know of a name for you is what they call you in that area where you plied your trade. I’d have your name-ere one of us stretch the other cold and bloody.”

“What they call me’s good enough, and I don’t give a tinker’s pot about your name.”

“Very well then, Lynx. Time shall be yours to exercise, to work out the stiffness in those bound limbs, and you may choose a sword from yonder rack. You yourself may say when you wish to begin. Then-we fight to the death, you and I!”

Lynx’s bloodshot eyes widened. “Ye say? Supposing I have your life, man?”

“Then you may have a fast horse and an escort from the city as well. Freedom! These men have been given their orders, and bound by oaths. They will not harm you an it prove that I cannot.”

“Such as you harm me? 0-ho-ho! Plainly ye be mad, and certainty’s with me that ye lie-but Satan’s eyes, what odds? Unbind my arms and place a pretty blade in m’grasp, and I’ll accept my chances!”

“Sir, this is folly!” Faraulf protested. “Single combat with a felon who’s naught to lose? As well face a wolf!”

Sigebert looked at him. “I intend to, a wolf named Cormac. For now-only a lynx, methinks. It is my whim. I require a man who will fight. I trust you have no thought of interfering? Nay? Then stand you back.”

A dagger’s blade caught the sun, sawed briefly. The highwayman stood unfettered. He rubbed his big-boned wrists with white hands. The hands darkened as blood returned. He flexed his shoulder muscles and flung his arms about to set the blood moving. Ignoring the ready soldiers, he went to the rack and handled each sword there, trying them for balance and weight in the manner of an experienced fighter. His eyes narrowed, then widened to stare and narrowed again, as he studied the blades for flaws. At last he chose one. He made it keen through the air. He surprised them all, then, by chopping into the rack.

“Easy lads,” he said with a flash of smile. “I’d not meet your master with a weakened blade, now would I? I like this one well enough, Scarface.”

The anxious gaze of every eye went to Sigebert, but he only smiled his thin smile. Incredible. The mere mention of his face would gain another a flogging, or worse.

“Give me a shield.”

A soldier tossed a shield to the man called Lynx. He caught sixteen or more pounds of iron-bossed, iron-banded wood handily, with his left. He slipped it up that arm, flexing his forearm against the strap. His knees bent and he practiced a few simple strokes and guards. There was no showing off. Faraulf took this to mean that the thief had skill and did not wish to betray it in advance. Lynx, eh? Were he unsure of himself, he’d have attempted to look better than he was. A lynx. Rufous-furred, sharp-eyed little bastards, eating anything they could overpower. Ferocious when threatened or cornered. A lynx. The big wheaten-haired man might be well named at that. Faraulf pondered Sigebert’s sanity.

“I’m ready,” the rogue said, with an oath-and rushed upon the word.

Faraulf caught his breath at the savagery of that onslaught. He’d said it himself: this man had naught to lose. He charged to slay on the instant.

He did not; swords rang so that pain to Faraulf’s ears made his face writhe. Shields clashed together like slammed doors. The two men moved under the vine-trellises, knees bent, eyes fixed, then darting, to return and stare fixedly again; circling each other, the unkempt wheaten head and the exquisitely barbered brown with its sides and Romish bangs arranged to hide the ugliness where an ear had been. Their feet whispered, shifting, shifting.

Sigebert smote at his adversary’s leg. Lynx’s shield flashed down in time to save it. Even while sword was banging off round buckler the highwayman was hewing murderously at the Frank’s neck. He failed to reach it (shriek of blade parrying blade in a blaze of metal in dappled daylight) and slammed his shield-rim into the Frank’s side. Sigebert made a croaking sound of pain. For a few moments he fought a desperate running defense while he regained his breath-and while the thief attacked and attacked, using every trick he knew to slip past Sigebert’s guard. He made attempt to trap Sigebert in a corner darkened by hanging vines. The Frank slipped away, backing from beneath the trellises into the open courtyard. His breathing sounded more natural again.

His brain was working, working, too; the highwayman was meant to rush after him with his face to the sun and receive that white dazzle in his pale eyes. He did not. He laughed shortly even while he moved sideward more swiftly than a scuttling crab-forcing Sigebert to do the same-and maintained a more equal sharing of the light. His eyes stared, and they had become pale blue gemstones in the bright sunlight.

“Frankish pig! I’ll not be caught by a trick as old as that!”

“Manners,” Sigebert said, neither moved nor seemingly disappointed.

While Faraulf and Lynx noted how this excellent Frankish fighter showed nothing, he attacked.

Light on his feet, supple and nimble as a dancer, he made but small use of his buckler. He was content to employ it only to catch the other’s strokes. Yet his sword flickered like a thing alive, a rigid serpent of blue-flashing silver.

It occurred to Faraulf that for all his praise of the point, Sigebert had not used it once in this death-duel. Nor had his chosen opponent. Although an able fighter, the man called Lynx seemed limited to the edge.

Even as this occurred to him, Faraulf saw Sigebert catch a lethal cut on his shield’s edge. Sparks leaped amid the scraping sound as a shrieking swarm of enraged bees. Then Sigebert’s own long sword and arm extended in one driving line, over the rim of the highwayman’s shield. The point slid through the blond man’s throat to grate on spinal bone. That swiftly, that simply. Blood burst forth. In the cloudless daylight it sprayed intolerably red.

Lynx’s eyes bulged. His mouth gaped in an effort to speak, mayhap to pray. No sound emerged save a rattling croak. His knees bent the more. His arm commenced to twitch. His entire long body lost proper articulation and he fell, a graceless crimsoned sprawl in the courtyard.

Blood continued to spurt. It would soon slow. Sigebert stood panting.

Faraulf shook his head. He’d known Sigebert since they were boys. Both had been trained in weapons-play, as befitted Franks of good birth. Yet Sigebert had never cared for it, maintaining that a surer road to power, lay in letters and politics. Faraulf and others had made fun of him for sharpening his speech and his grammar rather than swords and axen. Although a fine athlete and graceful, Sigebert had not seemed to have the makings of a fighter. When news reached Faraulf that the other had become a polished courtier of the Roman king’s court at Soissons, Faraulf had felt more certain than ever. His boyhood acquaintance must be swiftly forgetting all such fighting skill as he possessed!

Not so. Plainly something happened to make him remember. What Faraulf had seen this day seemed implacable obsession-or outright madness. The man of letters and politics and guile was determined to be a weapon-man-and was.

“Take this rubbish and sink it in the river,” Sigebert said, cleaning his blade on the robber’s soiled doeskin tunic. “Let none observe you.”

“Yessir!” one of the soldiers said, as though respectfully replying to a general. He and three others carried away the corpse of Lynx the highwayman. Another fetched a bucket of water to sluice the shed blood from the stones. They’d be darker, now.

Hardly had the four left when a guard entered from the direction of the great house’s gates. Faraulf, about to speak, closed his mouth.

“Sir: there is a fellow at the gates says he must see you. He demands, lord! I’d ha’ sent him off with busted bones, save that you ordered us to watch for such a one-but I swear sir, he’s a base and beggarly scut, for all his fine language.”

“Ah,” Sigebert said, thinking of last night. “Has he given a name?”

“Lucanor Antiochus sir-spoke as he mighta said Emperor!”

“Fetch him hither, and do so gently. I myself, be there need, will convince him that he is not a wearer of purple.”

The soldier departed smiling grimly; Sigebert almost laughed when he returned escorting the stranger. Base and beggarly, by God and the gods, was an understatement! This Lucanor owl-Sender might have been the half-starved shadow of an unsuccessful midden scavenger. His odour wafted ahead of him.

“You?” the Frank said in open unbelief. Lucanor knew what the question implied. His back straightened.

“It was I and no other,” he replied, making his voice ring.

Sigebert looked into the robed man’s strange black eyes, and believed.

“Then wash,” he said. “You are the second guest in as many days has arrived here requiring a bathe and new garments. I’ll not speak with you in a closed room as you are!”

Lucanor pressed his lips tightly together, locking in words. That he resented such high-handed treatment was most obvious. He had not long to wait ere he’d be convinced that, from Sigebert, this was naught to complain of. Less than an hour, in truth.

Shorn and cleanly, he was escorted into the Frank’s presence. Sigebert dismissed the guards with a curt “Let none disturb us” and closed the door. He turned a deadly stare upon the mage.

“And such a thing as you dared address me as ‘foolish man’!” he said. “You could use me, could you? A tool, is it? I am not acceptable as your equal? You’d rend me apart and find another tool if it suited you, would you? You!”

His black fury was not assumed. With a snarl, he gripped the smaller man in a way that made Lucanor cry out in pain. Almost he had raised an ancient god, and subverted a kingdom as he had its queen, and now he was come to th-

Sigebert jarred all such thoughts from his mind by slamming him violently against the wall four times. He hurled him then to his hands and knees and kicked him around the room until the Antichite grovelled for mercy. It became worse for him then, with the Frank’s rage cooled a bit, for now Sigebert placed his kicks more carefully.

At last he desisted and, nostrils flaring, seated himself.

Chillingly self-controlled on the instant, he spoke. “You have escaped lightly, though I daresay you do not appreciate it. I’d have the life, and slowly, of any other who offended as you have done. I may have yours yet. It will depend on how well you serve me… Lucanor.”

Lucanor dragged himself painfully from the floor, glanced at Sigebert low, and collapsed into a chair.

Though he’d been glanced at, Sigebert asked in the mildest tone, “Have I said that you might sit?”

Lucanor would have taken sincere oath that he was physically unable to stand again, and he was a physician, among other things. Yet at Sigebert’s softspoken question he found himself on his feet, trembling.

“Better,” Sigebert said.

“Sir-my lord… I-am not well! My travels and travails… privation and hunger… your… punishment… I beg to sit. I may faint else.”

Sigebert could have instructed a king in the way he waved a hand, and to the monarch’s benefit. “Very well. Now attend me. From this moment, you are no more and no less than my man. I am no other than your master. Should you forget that, I doubt that any demon you control could prove more cruel than I shall be.”

Lucanor sat still, hearing those words spoken quietly, as plain statement of fact. He could not disbelieve.

“You came here for vengeance on a pair of pirates,” Sigebert said. He caressed the place where his ear had been, softly, meditatively, while a strange look kindled in his eyes. “You shall have it. Rather we sh-I shall have it, and you may savour it with me. Be certain of that, man from Antioch. However, Wulfhere Skull-splitter and Cormac mac Art must wait. Greater things are toward.

“North of here, war is abrewing. King Syagrius the Roman prepares to resist invasion by the Frankish cousin-kings, Clovis and Ragnachar. The fate of Roman Gaul hinges on the battle between these two forces, and well they know it, both. I wish to know early, and with sure truth, how it has gone. You learned of me through your sorcery; you set your fylgja to find me across leagues of distance. It must be possible for you to… see this battle.”

“Possible? A simple matter,” the mage said, and saw Sigebert lift an eyebrow, and added with some haste, “sir. Although… to fly forth in my spirit form and view the battle thus… that cannot be done. Full sunlight will destroy me when I am out of my corporeal house.” He touched his chest, and went on before Sigebert could demand of what use he was. “Happily, it is not needful that I do so. Power is mine to scry and prognosticate events. The closer they may be in time, the easier the mists to dispel and the more clearly I can discern what lies beyond-what lies ahead, in time. In this case… meseems it is your wish to be informed of these bloody events whiles they are happening? Not, that is, to predict them?”

“Just so. I fancy your predictions can have but little value. Were you able to read the future with any true skill, your own fortunes had never come to this sorry state.”

“One’s own fortune, sir, is ever nigh-impossible to read,” Lucanor said stiffly. “I had in my power a queen, and a land to come-and a single pirate disrupted that and thus reduced me! Two pirates. I made the error of trusting other forces, those I had set in motion,” he assured the Frank, not wishing to say that he had planned poorly and prodigiously underestimated a certain man of Eirrin, and him far younger. “I have a small mirror of opaque black glass I use for divinations. The mirror itself has no magical powers, of course; those reside in me. I might scry in a simple bowl of water, as others do. It merely haps that I am accustomed to the mirror-”

“By death! This does not fascinate. What care I of the how of it? You may take your head between your legs and look into your own backside, for aught it matters to me! I slew yesterday and fetched home a comely doxy; today I had passage at arms with a strong man of weapons and slew him with a sword in this hand. It is action fascinates me-and information. Give you me false information, and I will give you molten lead to quench your thirst.”

Again, a plain statement of fact, almost dispassionate, after Sigebert’s first passionate outburst. Lucanor nodded. “That is understood,” he said, with no sign of fear.

“Ah. Confidence upon this matter? Good, then!” Again Sigebert waved a’ hand, for he had slain one man this day, and bested two others, and reduced this one. He sat his chair as though enthroned. “Mayhap now you should rest, and later eat your fill and wash it down with good wine without water. You will have need of restoring your strength.”

The utterance gave warning to Cathula, who was listening at the door.

Swiftly, silently and with her heart apound, she fled away with hardly a rustle of her new clothing. Was the second time she had eavesdropped on the demonic master of this nightmare house to which he’d brought her. She had been listening the night before when the monstrous black owl appeared in his privy chamber, and she had managed to gain a glimpse of it as it flew away. Cathula neither knew what it was nor had aught of deep thoughts on the subject, having understood little of what she had heard. She was a peasant, and not of this land, and not yet fifteen. She assumed merely that the creature was Sigebert’s familiar demon, and that they challenged each other. She had heard of such; that preternatural forces were hard to control, and endangered the person who sought that control.

What mattered to her was that she now knew names that belonged to deadly enemies of the scarfaced Frank, her mother’s murderer; the names of two pirates.

Wulfhere the Skull-splitter and Cormac mac Art.