When Death Birds Fly

11

“She will do, Wolf!”

The ship was a ponto, flat-bottomed and therefore shallow of draught. This gave advantage in some ways, although a strong wind might blow her sideways across the waves like a scudding wooden tray. None the less, she was sturdy and well rigged, with the same effective iron anchors Raven was equipped with. Indeed, Cormac had discovered the value of iron anchors on these same coasts in his days with the reivers of Eirrin, and shared the knowledge with Wulfhere later.

The latter appeared well satisfied. “Aye,” he went on. “There be ample room in her belly to hide us all, and harmless she looks, a mere trader. Were we to fare in one of the prince’s corsair galleys we’d have closer inspection to face!”

“So thought I,” Cormac said, “and despite our friendship, one of Howel’s galleys had been much to ask. He loves them as his children.”

“They be sweet vessels,” Wulfhere agreed, and added in duty-bound chauvinism, “for southern ships.”

Turning, he tramped down the timber jetty where the ponto was moored, her wooden fenders squealing with friction as she rocked forward and back. Huge, immense of height and thew, with his fiery mane and beard, his mail shirt and weapons and his golden jewelery, he resembled some great autumnal tree that, hung with sacrifices of battle-gear, had heaved up its roots and taken to walking about.

Beside him, Cormac walked with tigerish litheness. Wulfhere’s Gaelic battle-brother was one of the few men who did not show meanly by comparison with the hulking Dane. Part of the reason lay in the extreme contrast they made.

Where Wulfhere was massive, Cormac’s form was lean and rangy, yet instinct with savage vitality-like the wolf he was called. On him were no glittering, flashing ornaments of gold. His black mesh-mail shirt, and the helmet unadorned save for its crest of horsehair, sorted well with the grimness of his dark face. Thin-lipped it was, shaven and marked by a number of scars. Set in that somber mask, his cold, narrow grey eyes had a peculiarly sinister look.

Prince Howel awaited them on the beach. Morfydd stood beside him, her long black hair blowing wild in the sea-wind. Nine Bretons were there as well, the air of seamen bred about them.

“What think you?” Howel asked.

“She’s a good choice for the work,” Wulfhere said. “I’m indebted to ye, prince.”

“It’s little enow.”

Howel indicated the foremost of the Armorican seamen, a smallish, hard-bitten man with a seamed face mostly nose. Was a nose that seemed to have been violently struck once at least from every direction. Shrewd eyes nestled close to it, seemingly for shelter, looking with tough-minded appraisal from beneath sandy brows.

“This is Odathi,” the prince told them. “He and his men are to take the ship into Nantes for you-and bring you safely out again when you have your vengeance.”

Cormac remembered Odathi of old. He couldn’t have asked a better man for his purpose. The Armorican was a skilled mariner, and able to hold his tongue. He merely nodded by way of greeting.

“We will come out again,” Wulfhere said confidently. He turned to his Danes. “Look ye, blood-spillers, there is our ship! And since it’s ours she is for this little time and this one purpose, I’ll be naming her anew. This voyage, her name is Norn!”

He named the three women of Northlands belief; harsh goddesses who wove on the loom of Fate, and whose decrees not even Odin could reverse.

“I call her that,” Wulfhere said loudly, in a moment of fancy unusual for him, “because she’s to be the instrument that brings Sigebert One-ear’s weird upon him!”

The Danes roared with laughter, shaking their spears and clashing swords or ax-heads on their shields of linden-wood. Was the sort of fierce joke they appreciated.

Cormac said quietly to Morfydd, “No Sight to offer us? No prophecy as to the outcome?”

Morfydd smiled with a kind of tranquil compassion. “Suppose I had, Wolf of the blue sea? Suppose my prophecy were evil? Would you or your friend or any of your men abandon your vengeance because of it?”

Cormac shook his black head.

“What if I prophesied success? Could that add the faintest aught to your determination?”

Again the reiver shook his head.

“Then I should not speak but to wish you good fortune-as I do, Cormac Art’s son, from my heart.”

Cormac looked at her for a moment, and for no reason he could name he thought of Samaire of Leinster in Eirrin. Then he must clasp Morfydd’s hand and Prince Howel’s, and lead the tramping Danes aboard Norn, for it was time to go.

The weather was clouded this day, and turbulently windy. Standing on Norn’s high stern, Cormac and Wulfhere watched the waves lashed to a running waste of foam, while the sails of thin dressed leather were strained taut as drumheads. The masts creaked. Wulfhere’s great beard streamed before him like a flame.

“Two days,” he said softly, fondling the haft of his beloved ax. “Two days at most will bring us there, Cormac.”

“Aye,” the Gael agreed absently. He’d been gazing at the sky, thinking how dark it had suddenly turned. A strange note rode the wind… a storm brewing? Or a squall about to strike! He turned his gaze upward again, and felt his body shudder.

“Wulfhere!” he said hoarsely.

The Dane followed his line of sight. For a moment, he saw only dark clouds tumbling before the strong wind. Then they parted, and terrible shapes swept out of the murk to fill the great empty spaces of the sky.

Women rode naked on wild-maned horses. Their arms, holding the reins, were red to the elbows with blood. Their eyes looked eastward, alight with exultation at some greater slaughter that only they could see. Dreadful laughter twisted their mouths. Black flocks of carrion birds kept pace with them, hungry and expectant.

Such were the precursors. Behind them, huger even than they, rode a lone horseman. Although a wide-brimmed hat obscured his face, one icy eye glittered from its shadow, merciless and forbidding as the spear he carried. Loping like hounds by the feet of his eight-legged steed were two wolves. Even as he watched, Wulfhere saw the nearer throw high its head to howl. The second shivered between the ragged clouds.

Then they were gone, rushing eastward.

“Hel’s teeth!” Wulfhere croaked. “Battle-brother, tell me, even if ye lie, that I’ve not been stricken with madness! Tell me that ye also saw! “

“I saw,” Cormac muttered, shaken as few had seen him. He breathed hard, and swallowed with effort. “I saw right enow, and I’m thinking that this be no wise time to mention the name of your Hel of the death-demesne.”

“A true word. Yon bloody-handed hags might be her very daughters.” Wulfhere laughed harshly, and stopped the noise short when he heard how it sounded. “To think the foolish poets make them honest, virtuous war-maidens, those Valkyrior! I’ll break the back of the next who chants such stuff in my presence.”

Cormac stared. “Wulfhere-”

“What is it?”

“What is it? A pertinent question! Of what be ye talking?”

“Eh? Cormac, was yourself showed them to me. Ye saw them first! Valkyrs, their arms dripping gore, riding the sky along with the birds of battle-death, and their father Odin behind them attended by his wolves. It’s a portent. Some great battle is brewing over eastward. The Father of Victories doesn’t ride abroad for little things.”

Cormac mac Art continued staring.

At last he said, “Suppose I tell ye what it is I am after seeing. A hunting pack of pure white hounds, Wulfhere. The dazzle of them like new snow in the sun or bright foam on the sea. And their ears a burning-scarlet, and their jaws as red, open and baying. They ran as if they’d run down the world and make it their prey! I saw not your Father of Victories looming behind them. Was a figure of Vastness all cloaked in grey shadow, riding a grey horse. Upon the rider’s head were twelve-tined royal antlers, and the pale death-fire played over them like slow lightning. His face I could not see, and by the gods, it’s glad of it I am!”

Wulfhere was staring at his blood-brother as if the Gael had come up daft.

“Wulfhere, it was him we call the Grey Man, the lord of death and rebirth. Among the Britons it’s as Arawn the Hunter he’s known, and it’s Cernunnos also he has been named: the Antlered God. Nigh as many names and titles he has with him as your Odin! Yet it’s him I saw, not the Father of Victories.”

Baffled and angry, Wulfhere struggled not to say aught he’d regret, such as giving Cormac the lie to his face. The dark Gael was not lying. Even Wulfhere, whose perceptions were far from subtle, could see that Cormac was in earnest. He’d seen what he claimed to have seen. Yet-Wulfhere knew what he had witnessed.

“Ye must have been mistaken, Wolf,” he said at last. “This death-lord of yours… ye took the One-eyed All-father for him, that’s all.”

“Since when,” Cormac snapped, “does the One-eyed have an antlered head and bear a hunting horn jewelled with black stars?”

“Oh, he bore a hunting horn gemmed with stars now, did he? That’s a thing ye forgot to mention the first time around!”

Cormac opened his mouth, was struck by the argument’s absurdity, and shut it with an audible click of teeth. Glancing into Norn’s midship deck, he saw that which turned his mind swiftly to practical matters.

“Wulfhere,” he said, “let us agree that each of us saw something, and it was a dark omen, whate’er the details. But by all the gods, it’s down there we’d best go and take control at once, or the Armoricans and our Danes will be panicked together. Look at them!”

The Skull-splitter did. Three of Odathi’s mariners were yammering in his face whilst the rest were attending but poorly to ship’s duties, and the reivers’ two-and-thirty Danes were muttering among themselves with every sign of unease.

“Right you are,” Wulfhere growled, clambering down from the high sterncastle. “Do you handle the Bretons, Wolf. You are closer to them by language and race.”

He himself confronted his own men, glaring. “What be this havering?”

“We’ve seen the valkyrs riding,” muttered Einar. “This venture’s accursed. Best we turn back and try another time!”

“Not for all the valkyrie that ever stirred up war!” thundered his leader. “Why do ye suppose they ride for us? I say they ride to fetch Sigebert One-ear, and I’ll show ye how right I am when we reach Nantes! Turn back? Now there’s a thought, Einar. And we could do so; beg these Britons to take us the way we’ve come, and us barely a few hours out of the Mor-bihan, because we saw spectres in the clouds! Aye. That’d be a fine explanation to make the man who loaned us this ship. No dishonour therein at all. We could still hold up our heads.”

Wulfhere’s heavy sarcasm had the desired effect. Men glanced sheepishly at each other. Some looked to the now empty sky. None spoke further of turning back.

When Wulfhere turned around, he saw the Armorican seamen back at work. He didn’t ask how Cormac and Odathi had managed it. Mayhap they had simply convinced the crew that the Danes would slaughter them all, did they falter.

What they had seen, they did not dwell on. The vengeful hunger was in them to rend the guts of Sigebert One-ear, and each sea-mile brought them nearer to Nantes. The wind held. By nightfall they had reached the mouth of the Loire. Another day’s sailing up the wide estuary would bring them to the port.

“We’ll go on by night an ye wish,” Odathi said. “Will be slower, more careful going, but what of it? Thirty-odd Danish seamen there be, to work the ship while mine sleep, and none will spy them from the river-bank in the dark.”

“It’s well!” Wulfhere said eagerly. “That will see us at the city’s docks i’ the forenoon.”

“Let’s be having the smallest noise we may, then,” Cormac advised. “It’s far voices carry across water at night and there just may be someone listening somewhere who knows Danish when he hears it.”

Thus Norn moved up-river through the short summer night, a shadow of vengeance ghosting over the waters.

At last, false dawn lightened the sky.

“Time ye were all getting below,” Odathi said. “I’ll awaken the lads, and we will bring the ship to the docks.”

“Aye,” Cormac said curtly. He disliked this part of the scheme. It had on it too much the smell of placing his fate in another’s hands. “Leave yon hatch open, Odathi. We’d suffocate were it closed and battened.”

Wulfhere descended into Norn’s capacious hold, grumbling. “It likes me not, to skulk down here!”

“Nor I,” Cormac said. “Knud, and yourself, Half-a-man-do off your armour and look as much like common seamen as ye can.”

“What?” Halfdan Half-a-man, so-called by reason of his shortness, did not see the necessity. “To what purpose?”

“So that ye both may keep watch above decks when Odathi goes ashore. Odathi I’m inclined to trust, but he has eight seamen by my count, and… it requires only one traitor savouring reward for our heads to ruin all. Ye’re to take a fighting knife each, and if any Briton save the sailing master and whoe’er chooses to go with him should try to leave the ship-prevent it! No wish is on me to be trapped in this hold by Sigebert’s soldiers.”

“Sound sense,” Wulfhere nodded. “How certain be ye that ye may trust Odathi?”

“I’m not. Naught in this world is certain, but that we must chance. Someone has to go ashore, and it’s too conspicuous we both be. And the rest of us here be too clearly warrior Danes.”

Tensely they waited, in the creaking gloom of the hold.

Not long after dawn, someone called that Norn was approaching the docks of Nantes. Wulfhere sent Halfdan and Knud on deck, and sweated. The business of mooring followed, and after that, more of waiting. And sweating.

At last, Odathi came down the ladder.

“Chieftain,” he said, as one who knows what the answer will be but asks for form’s sake, “this enemy of yours; be he brown of hair, with Romish dress and manners? One who erst was handsome but is no longer?”

“Ye have seen him?” Wulfhere demanded, thrusting his face forward.

“He’s in the custom-house yonder. He is there, now. I spoke to him and answered his questions. There be sword-scars upon his face that he hasn’t had for long; not so long as a year, surely.”

“Sigebert!” Cormac breathed. “Why should it astonish us, after all? Chief customs assessor is the office he holds. Why should he not be there?”

“Within our reach!” Wulfhere shouted joyously. The hold reverberated to his voice. “Here on the waterfront! Cormac, we can slay him now! ’Tis needless to wait for night and attack his manse!”

“The place is aswarm with Frankish soldiers,” Odathi warned.

“The worse for them. It needn’t deter us. So would his mansion be!”

Cormac was thinking quickly. Wulfhere’s impetuosity, oft had much to commend it. Their original plan had been to wait, and seek the Frank’s house after dark, although that left the entire day for some unforeseen little thing to betray them. Now they could strike quickly from Norn, retreat to her as quickly after slaying Sigebert, and make escape.

Against that was to be weighed the seeming madness of an attack in full daylight. Cormac considered it, briefly. He decided it was no real objection. The very audacity of the notion gave it promise. Besides-holding back Wulfhere now were bull-wrestling.

“True for you, Bush-face,” he said with a savage grin. “It’s better Black Thorfinn’s ghost will rest this night. Let’s be at them!”

That morning was spoken of on the Nantes waterfront for years thereafter. Nigh three dozen fighting men appeared as from nowhere, to spill over the decks of an ordinary trader and charge down the gangplank, yelling. Many did not wait, but sprang to the rail off the ship and thence to the dockside, drawing swords as they landed. Steel blades and helms flashed in the sunlight like silver and flame. Their beards and bright helms announced them. Folk scattered before them on the crowded waterfront.

“Saxons! The Saxons are here!”

“Follow me to Sigebert’s heart! Wulfhere roared, striding through the panicked rout. He did not trouble to smite such unarmed folk as inadvertently got in his way. He simply shoved or shouldered them aside or dealt the merest love-taps with the flat of his ax. Cormac, beside him, acted similarly. Behind and about them their men widened the path their leaders had opened, with battering shields and jabbing spears.

“There’s the custom-house!” Cormac snarled, pointing with his sword to a powerful stone building. “Behl and Crom! It might be a little fortress!”

“We will take it!” Wulfhere said.

Even as he spoke, Sigebert’s bodyguard of Franks came arunning from an alley beside the custom-house. Their long oval shields rattled together and they howled like demons. Cormac had time to judge their numbers at thirty, before the two parties met.

They clashed like colliding waves of bone and metal. No civilized fighters these! The Franks in their leather vests, with their deadly long swords and hand-axes, were as ruthlessly fierce as the Danes. If the tough oxhide protecting their torsos was somewhat less strong than the Danish scale-mail shirt, it was also less weighty and allowed greater freedom of movement.

Blood spurted; deep fierce war-shouts drowned the first death-yells.

Cormac glared into a snarling face under a fringe of mouse-coloured hair. The Frank warded a cut with his long shield, then chopped at Cormac’s shoulder. The Gael’s point flickered like lightning to drive into the fellow’s mouth and through the back of his neck. His spine severed, the Frank toppled, emitting a death-gurgle. Cormac trod ruthlessly over the corpse, his blade taking further toll as he went.

Wulfhere was howling like a berserker. His terrible ax made nothing of the Franks’ oxhide vests, splitting leather and ribs alike, while the iron boss and rim of his skillfully handled shield broke limbs as they had been twigs. Aye, for this day he wielded his ax one-handed.

“Sigebert One-ear!” he thundered. “Dog! Cur and torturer of wounded men! Where be ye?”

“Here, you blundering oaf!” Sigebert’s voice answered, mocking and amused. He leaned in the custom-house doorway, sword in hand but as yet unblooded. “Come if you can reach me. You shall be welcome.”

Wulfhere snarled his frustration and his blue eyes blazed. A knot of Frankish soldiery stood betwixt him and Sigebert; he could only fight his way past them. His ax thundered, rose and fell with a racket of breaking shields. Three Danes broke from the melee to aid him. The Franks went down in their welling blood.

“Come!” Wulfhere panted, and charged.

The custom-house door slammed in his face.

No matter that it was made of iron-bound oak. Wulfhere attacked it with an ax he wielded like a madman. The door began to splinter.

Cormac, cool and deadly in battle, had seen and heard what befell. Guessing that Sigebert had gulled Wulfhere into charging the front and would now vanish out the back, he sent five Danes to prevent it. His powers of command were tested greatly to separate them from the murder boiling in the alley and make them go. Just as he made to accompany them, several Franks came running. Mac Art found himself in a desperate rearguard fight.

The Franks spread out to flank him. Cormac got an alley wall at his back and glowered at them. One lean wight moved in too recklessly; his foot slipped on the blood-greasy stones.

Instinctively, Cormac leaped forward, a man who was ever happier taking the initiative. His shield-rim broke the man’s exposed neck almost in passing. Then immediately, it was interposed between himself and a Frankish sword swung two-handed. Cormac’s own point vanished into that man’s belly, and his knees buckled.

In the mean time, Sigebert One-ear departed the customs-house by its rear. With him were three stout soldiers. They emerged just in time to meet the five Danes dispatched there by mac Art, and Sigebert ceased to laugh and mock. He tasted cold fear. The red-bearded giant would be upon him at any moment.

Snarling in desperation, Sigebert fought like a demon.

This was his first experience of real battle, and he went well at it, goaded by fear and necessity. Hungry Danish swords sought a way past his shield and blade. Dropping almost to one knee, Sigebert rammed his point into a bearded pirate’s crotch. Though that harsh thrust failed to pierce the skirt of the man’s shirt, it dropped him writhing in agony for all that. His face a snarl, Sigebert straightened and all in that motion his point ran into a Danish throat. Beside him an ax cut through the cheekpiece of a Danish helm and into that pirate’s brain through the temple.

Sigebert took that opportunity to run. His horse was tied in the customs yard and he knew he had acquitted himself well. With a sweep of his blade he cut the black animal free, and sheathing his sword he leaped to the saddle. Behind him, ignored and unsung, his Frankish guards were dying.

Wulfhere burst into the yard in time to see the horse’s tail vanish.

He wasted no time in outbursts of rage or disappointment. Striding like a colossus, he crossed the yard and gained the street on its far side. Sigebert had kicked the horse into a gallop, to trample pedestrians as if they were so much rubbish. His short cape flapped from his shoulders.

Wulfhere raised his huge ax, and hurled it.

The terrible weapon flashed through the air, turning almost gently, flying for Sigebert’s backbone. Wulfhere began to run, even while the missile was in the air. It needn’t slay Sigebert. Gods! An it merely knocked the cur-begot bastard from his horse’s back, or struck the horse itself and caused it to throw Sigebert, that would be enow. Wulfhere yearned only for the chance to get his hands on the swine. Of that there could be but one end.

Ever after, Wulfhere cursed the fools who made that street too short. Sigebert had reached its end and was turning the corner to safety by the time the Danish ax caught up to him-and hissed by. The head caught his flapping cape, tangled therein and ripped it from his shoulders. Though rocked in his saddle, Sigebert was untouched. His horse galloped.

Swearing mightily, Wulfhere continued his ponderous, armoured run and swore the more. The iron scales of his byrnie jolted and rang with each step. A woman, helping her young brother from the street after Sigebert had ridden him down, shrank fearfully aside from the big red beard. He never noticed her, nor gave thought to the possibility of being mobbed by the people.

They showed no sign of wishing to meddle with this enraged giant loose on their city. The contagion of mass fear had convinced them all in moments that they had a Saxon invasion to dread.

Wulfhere grunted with satisfaction to see his cherished ax lying in the street, enwrapped by the Frank’s rich cape. Seizing the weapon, he left the garment in the muck and returned to the customhouse, bawling for Cormac.

“Wolf!” he roared, absently knocking a wounded Frank aside with his shield when the fool-still on his feet-seemed to want to attack him. “The slimy dock-rat’s escaped us! He’s run, the mangy scum, and left his men! There’s no more to be done here!”

“Bad,” Cormac said, betrying little emotion. “We must leave. It’s defeat we’ve put on these Franks, but if we tarry, the Count of Nantes will be sending a little war-host against us. This time, let us be very sure we leave no wounded, for that polished filth to play with.”

Wulfhere, fully agreeing, began to shout orders.

Cormac ran to inspect the three Danes by the custom-house’s back door. Poor old Horsejaw had his helmet off and his brains, showing. Unquestionably he was dead. Another lay in his blood with a sword-thrust through the throat. Anlaf’s gullet, windpipe and arteries were severed, all. Cormac took in the nature of that particular wound, and did not miss its significance. His icy eyes slitted briefly in thought.

The third Dane was Einar, still suffering greatly from that blow in the stones. He’d lurched to his knees, sweating, grey-faced and bent over, but he needed Cormac’s aid to rise and walk. On the way to Norn he vomited; once he’d gained her deck he sank down groaning. He’d lack interest in women for at least a month, mayhap for life.

“Out of here, swiftly,” Cormac bade Odathi, and added with harsh humour, “Best ye be not come trading again in this port!”

Odathi chuckled. “I’d not ha’ lent myself to your scheme if I’d any pressing need to return! Your enemy, chieftain-did he die hard?”

“He died not,” Cormac said bitterly. “It all went for naught. It is the rest of the day ye mean to stand there babbling?”

Grimly, they counted their dead. Those numbered not so many as Cormac had feared; indeed fewer than he’d dared to hope: three only. Some others were sore wounded, and most, including Cormac and Wulfhere, had at least minor hurts.

“The first good thing in this business, Wulfhere growled as they cleared Loire-mouth, “is that no trap was set for us this time.”

He was thinking of their first meeting with Sigebert, when they had almost been captured. That had been a most carefully planned trap. Few could have scaped it. Even Cormac and Wulfhere had found it needful to abandon their hard-won loot in order to keep their lives, and cross the tempestuous waters of the Cantanabrian Sea to evade the Romish warships that pursued them.

“Sigebert cannot have dreamed we’d dare set foot in Nantes again,” Cormac said. “He knows better now, curse him-and it’s even greater care he’ll be taking to safeguard his putrid life!”

Morbid silence descended on them both. Three men slain, others hurt, and naught gained. Further, Einar was victim of Sigebert himself and so, Cormac thought, was Anlaf.

They knew not of the lost and hating young girl Sigebert kept in his house. They cared not that their bold attempt on the Frank’s life was the talk of Nantes by midday. Sigebert’s guards were those who spoke of it loudest and most vehemently, for they had greatest cause. The names of Wulfhere Skull-splitter and Cormac mac Art were freely bandied about. Cathula recognized them with great joy when the story came to her ears.