When Death Birds Fly

15

Prince Howel kept a manse in the town of Vannes. Romish and all of two centuries old, the house had been well built. It would not tumble in Howel’s lifetime. True, it showed its years, as must any oldster. Tapestries concealed the cracked yellow stucco of the exedra’s walls-without reaching so high as to hide the half-obliterated peacock frieze near the ceiling. Here and there a broken floor tile lay waiting to trip a man and make him curse. Morfydd had furnished the place in the manner of her own people, with heavy chairs and couches strewn with shaggy carpets in several hues.

“Behl protect!” the lady of Bro Erech was saying, seated on a pelt of golden tan. “As he truly did! Were it not for the sigil ye carried from Hispania, Cormac, that had been an ill night for us all. The monster showed itself vulnerable to your mace, as well-yet did not seem to fear it half so much as the power of our lord the Blessed Sun. Were I your menaced self, I’d be keeping the winged serpent upon my body at all times hereafter.”

“I shall,” the Gael replied grimly. “Another gave me the selfsame advice, in the Suevic Kingdom. It’s hardly wise I was to forget it.”

Wulfhere slouched against the wall, saying naught. Wulfhere was hurting and all knew it. The battered planes of his face were harsh with unassuagable endurance of pain. Morfydd had promised to do for him what she could, once they returned to the island where her sorcerous effects were kept. She had admitted to holding little hope. With hope or no, it never became a warrior to whimper. Wulfhere endured in silence.

Cormac likewise said naught. His heart was twisted within him by concern for his battle-brother, yet his way had never been to talk when he could not do. One tiny clue; the faintest trace of the means to effect a cure, and he’d follow it over the sea-rim and into the lairs of demons, if needful. They had no such clue.

“A strange thing, this,” Prince Howel said. “Once, not so long agone, concern was on us to know the meaning of those omens ye saw asea, Cormac. Trifling it seems now, when I can give ye the answer.”

“Seems? Maybe.” Curt and moody the Gael felt, and something of that was manifest in his voice. “And yet-ye’ve knowledge, Howel?”

“Aye, even though the rites were disturbed.” Howel’s eyes seemed to look into haunted distance beyond the world. His voice reverberated with a timbre not quite canny. “The god came upon me. I rode through vast spaces on a great, death-grey horse and saw the world spread below me like a tapestry that unfurls. Fields no bigger then squares of quilting. Houses mere chips of wood. Spectres moved in the sky above, and Phantom armies, and there was a confusion of many noises. My face turned eastward, and there I saw war abuilding. ’Tis Frankdom that marches! Frankdom that lifts its axes against the swords of the Roman Kingdom! The cousin-kings Clovis and Ragnachar lead their hosts within the month. I know it. Syagrius will meet them in strength. Corpses of men slain redly will cover the ground, and rivers in the Frankish marches will run crimson, even to the sea. Such is the meaning of the omens I saw. I know it,” he repeated, and all understood that he was not sure how he knew.

“Blood of the gods,” Cormac said softly, into a shaken quiet. “Said ye this thing seems ‘trifling’?”

Howel made no answer. Morfydd spoke in a brittle voice, as if afraid.

“It is not. But it scarcely need trouble yourself, Cormac, save insofar as there be plunder to be had out of it. Me thinks my lord means that Wulfhere’s plight is of great moment to him and to you.”

“Truth,” Cormac acknowledged.

Prince Howel had recovered his normal voice and demeanor. “We may have to look to ourselves here, should the Franks win. They may not rest content with ravaging the Roman Kingdom only.”

Gloomy silence rested in the chamber. Wulfhere stirred, scratching the depths of his beard. Even that appeared to have lost its fiery hue, somehow reduced to drabness.

A knock at the door jerked them from their reverie.

“It is Garin, my lord,” a voice answered Howel’s query, and was bade enter.

The tall golden warrior came in wearing an expression of puzzlement. He gave formal greeting to his lord and lady, and a more casual one to the pair of reivers.

“Lord, this is a strange thing, and one that concerns Cormac if anybody. A wench is here, a young woman-”

Cormac’s eyes rolled in Wulfhere’s direction, and he frowned. No comment from the Dane. The inveterate womanizer was hurting and feeling low, to say naught about who might be concerned with the advent of a young woman!

“Strange? Strange how, Garin?”

“Strange,” the shore-watcher said emphatically. “You must see her to know! Yet I’d not trouble ye with her, save that she mentions Sigebert One-ear. Claims she was a prisoner in his house, and escaped.”

Wulfhere came alive. “Sigebert?” He glanced at Cormac, whose cold eyes had narrowed while he stared expectantly at Garin.

“Aye,” Garin said. “She’s a peasant wench-only a girl really, dirty, footsore and ragged from travel. Even so she’d be pretty beyond the common, were it not for…”He hesitated, as though he could not find proper words for the framing of his thought. “Have ye interest in what she has to say?”

“It’s a trick,” Wulfhere growled. “Sigebert has sent her to gull us! What peasant wench could escape his snaky clutches?”

“Not many, in truth,” Cormac agreed. “Yet as a trick, it seems too simple-minded for that Frankish cur. It’s something subtler he’d be conceiving. But-the more fools we to send her away without so much as hearing her! Howel, Morfydd-is objection on ye to Garin’s bringing her to this chamber?”

“I’ve none,” Howel said readily. “Let it be now. Indeed, it’s interested I am myself.”

Morfydd chuckled throatily. “After hearing that, I know I must stay! Best to have a woman present anyhow. An she’s false, she may need-frightening. But an she’s true, it’s more likely she will want reassuring.”

“Fetch her in then, Garin, the Prince of Bro Erech ordered, and they exchanged glances, and soon they were gazing on her.

Cormac mac Art, hard son of a harsh age, hewed to a trade savage and ruthless even for his time and place. His comrade’s sobriquet Skull-splitter was an earned one. Prince Howel, too, was a pirate who had spilled his share of blood. The Lady Morfydd lived in the same world as they, and knew well what it was like. None of them was naive, simple or inexperienced.

Nevertheless something about this girl chilled them all. She entered the chamber hesitantly, with Garin guiding her by a hand on her arm above the elbow; perhaps lest she take fright and flee. An that were his motive, Cormac thought, he had erred. The girl showed no fear of confronting such high-seated folk. Her hesitant steps were surely due to hunger, exhaustion-and something more. She looked as if she no longer belonged in her body or was quite aware of walking on solid ground. The blue eyes had a remote, empty look.

“Who are you, girl?” Morfydd asked gently. “Lady, my name is Cathula.” She spoke softly. “I lived in a village north of here…” She looked at Howel. “Is you-be you Prince Howel, lord?”

“I am.”

Cathula turned her eyes to the immense, redbearded warrior behind her, and then to the dark Gael. For the first time the direct focus of living concern entered her gaze. “And ye twain-”

“I am Cormac mac Art.”

Cathula considered that speaker. The height and sinewy, tigerish power of him, the scarred face. Somehow his scars did not repel her as Sigebert’s had done. On the Frank’s fair skinned, almost girlish visage, sword-scars were a sickening disfigurement. Cormac mac Art had never been pretty. The scars were part of him, and belonged; to the dark, sombre mask of his features, they made little difference. Too, mac Art’s facial scars were years older than Sigebert’s. Time had faded them somewhat.

Cathula said, “The one-eared Frank is your enemy?”

“Enemy!” Cormac snarled. “When I catch him, I’ll tear out his throat-or Wulfhere there will! Now be telling us how it is ye know this, Cathula.”

“Sigebert told her, and sent her here,” Wulfhere said, doggedly holding to his belief that she was an agent of the Frank’s.

Cathula said simply, “No.”

“Then how were ye able to escape such as that man?”

“Because he has greater matters to think on than a girl he carried off to spice up a day’s bad hunting. I heard him speak of you. Was’t truly you what tried to slay him in Nantes, a se’enight since?”

“Aye. Blood of the gods! A pity it is we didn’t succeed! The tale of it was all over the city no doubt, and discussed loudest in Sigebert’s own house. So. It is reasonable that ye’d have heard our names. But how knew ye where to find us? And how are ye after coming here?”

“Oh,” Cathula said with strange indifference, “you and them Danes came to the city in an Armorican ship. I listened to Sigebert hisself, talking on it.”

“Spied on him, ye mean?”

“Aye.”

“That demanded courage,” Cormac observed. “Still, Bro Erech is not the only Armorican princedom.”

“The nearest,” Cathula said, and Cormac couldn’t forbear a bleak grin.

“And then ye made escape. How?”

“Oh, the hardest part was slipping out of the mansion and its grounds. The next hardest was sneaking clear of the city. One dark night I let myself down the wall by a rope. Then I walked. I went hungry, hid in ponds; I stole food… twice I cadged rides in farm carts.”

Wulfhere demanded “How,” and she said in a perfectly equable tone, “By giving them drivers what a girl has to offer.”

She said it with the same detached indifference as she’d spoken all else. Although plainly exhausted she had not asked if she might sit; and judging by what was almost the pertness approaching impertinence of some of her utterances, fear did not restrain her. It was as if, since she happened to be standing, she would remain so until she fell. Nor was pertness a true description of her manner. She seemed quietly obsessed with what she had to tell, so that nothing mattered but the telling. Cormac had the eerie feeling that were she taken out and beheaded once they had heard her out, she would not care.

“Can ye be proving all ye’ve said, Cathula? It’s strong proof I’ll be requiring. It’s a careful man I’ve been since I was young and people I knew not were trying to kill me for reasons I knew not.”

“You talk funny,” Cathula murmured, as if to herself. She thought for a time, twisting her hands in agitation. “There be the village I lived in,” she said, and named it. “When the Frank came there he… he set his hunting hounds on my mother. They rent her in pieces, and et on her.”

Morfydd moved rustling to the girl’s side. Taking Cathula gently by the shoulders, she caused her to sit. Both women were pale. Cathula spoke without emphasis, in one tone only.

“She was arunning for our hut. She mighta got there, too, but my father barred the door on her. He knowed if he tried to save her he’d get tore and et, too. I know now that Frank woulda made him come out if he’d let mother in and then barred the door-that, or Sigebert woulda burned ’em both in our house. He barred her out and the dogs was all over her like that. I tried to beat them off with a hoe. I didn’t even know what I was about. The Frank stopped me and paid my father money and carried me away. Big black horse. The priest seen it all-he watched and did naught.” She said priest as mac Art might have done.

Cormac believed that. Morfydd was clutching the girl, staring at him, and her face was as if she’d looked on maggots and child-corpses.

“I passed through there, on my way here,” Cathula went on. She might have been talking of things that had happened to folk dead a thousand years. “It was night. Nobody saw me and I went to my h-my father’s hut. It stank of wine and he was laying drunk and senseless by the hearth. I tied ’im fast to the wall whiles he snored. Then I burnt the hut with him in it.”

“Enough,” Prince Howel said hoarsely. “Oh, enough!”

“Enough,” Morfydd said, ashy-faced, “but not all.”

“They’s more to tell!” Cathula said with vehemence. “Sigebert One-ear’s got a wizard in his manse. He obeys Sigebert and commands a demon, too! I have saw it-a thing like a huge black bird-”

Wulfhere’s wine-cup crashed on the floor. “Ye say so, girl! Ah! By Loki and all his get! Cormac-that’s a likely thing! Had Sigebert a demon in his service, who but you and me would he send it to attack?”

Mayhap several people, the Gael thought; the Frank was richly endowed with enemies. This, though, was surely proof that Sigebert had something to do with that fell owl. Now Cormac realized that it had attacked not long after their attempt on Sigebert. Sent!

“So Sigebert has a wizard in his foul employ,” Cormac mused, low of voice. “Tell me of him, girl.”

“I’ve not saw him but once or twice. Got a thin nose, in a fleshy face. Scary dark eyes, and he’s real dark. Name is Lucanor of… Atyok?”

“Annnn-tiochhh…” Cormac breathed.

“Lucanor!” Wulfhere roared, starting from the wall. “Now that’s too much! Surely that cur-son abides leagues to the south-or more likely dead at the hands of angered Basques. The wench lies, Cormac!”

The girl turned to stare at him from a face gone all ugly.

“She knows his name,” Cormac pointed out. “How, an he be not somewhere in these parts? He could be after escaping the Basques and coming north, you know. By his sorcery he could discover that Sigebert is our deadly enemy. Lucanor and Sigebert! By the gods, Wulf, there is a partnership to make a man dream ill dreams!”

“That black owl that struck at you and smote Wulfhere-it must be a sending of this Lucanor’s!” Prince Howel nigh shouted. “Surely, if any man knows the remedy for Wulfhere’s hurts, it will be him! He,” he corrected, with a glance at Morfydd.

“A good thought,” Wulfhere rumbled. “Aye, a very good thought, Prince. We must capture the eastern cur alive and force him to tell us. Since he now dwells in Sigebert’s manse, why, we’ll have to slay Sigebert in order to get him!” The Danish giant grinned ferociously. “I feel better even now, Just thinking on’t.” A knifing spasm of pain twisted his face to give him the lie. Cormac saw his fingers twitch and start to curl.

“The cure may be such that your Lucanor will be loath to speak of it, even under torture,” Morfydd said, and all looked to her. “I have been thinking, Captain. Cathula here calls the black owl a demon.” Her hand remained firm and motherly on the girl’s far shoulder. “I had supposed as much myself, for lack of knowledge. The creature may still be a demon-or it may be a sending. An emanation of the wizard’s owl soul. An that be so, the remedy for your pain is simple. Ye need only to do death on this Lucanor. The effects of his work will vanish with his life.”

“Ha!” Wulfhere growled. “Lady Morfydd, it is sentence of death ye have pronounced on that eastern weasel!”

“Be very sure ere you strike,” she said, using the personal pronoun. “Should the black owl be some being independent of Lucanor’s soul, after all, you will lose your only link with it.”

Cormac felt this woman’s warmth, and depth. “First we must lay hands on the misbegot dog,” he said, moving swiftly to pragmatism.

“Aye!” Wulfhere’s unremitting suffering made him even more tactless than usual, and he glowered at Cathula. “Very well, wench. Ye’ve explained all save why ye be here, telling us these things. Is it reward?”

“Reward?” Cathula seemed to find the word impossible to understand. “Ye twain is Sigebert’s blood enemies! Where else should I go? I want him to die…”

“Die he shall,” Cormac promised all grim. faced, “and life shall be better for yourself hence-forward, an it’s truth ye’ve told. An ye lie-”

He did not finish the sentence. The savagery of his dark face said all for him. Yet the peasant, so young and so old, did not quail. Like so many others, she’d been thrust and dragged into womanhood without having had time to enjoy being a girl.

“What should I fear?” she asked. “I saw my mother die awful. Sigebert One-ear’s had me for a plaything. I’ve did death on my own father. For that I am damned. I do not fear weapons or… sendings, or life or death, or man or god. Or demon either. It’s truth I tell ye.”

“We shall discover,” Cormac told her. She was at least half mad, he thought. Knowing what he did of Sigebert One-ear, he was not astounded.

“Come away, child,” Morfydd said. “You need to wash, and you need fresh garments and a meal, and rest. Anything else you can tell us will wait. D’you love nice fresh pork, hmm? Come along now-you must tell me whether you love chops best, or the sweetmeats…”

Left alone, the three men looked at each other. Howel spoke first.

“What think ye, Cormac?”

“That one’s not doing deception on us,” Cormac said readily. “Blood of the gods! The peasant wench never drew breath who could act a part in such manner!-and it’s peasant wench she is, from her speech to the calluses her hands bear from working in the fields. Attend me: her story rings true.” He looked from Howel to Wulfhere. “Nonetheless, we’ll be testing it.”

“How?”

“By going to this village of hers and hearing the gossip there. My father and Sualtim raised no stupid son! This may be a scheme of Sigebert’s however strong the reasons for thinking not. It’s Warily we’ll be going, then. Will ye be lending us a few of your best foresters, Howel, to scout for us and be sure no ambush is laid?”

“Och, man! It’s scarce need ye have for asking,” Howel said, going all old Celtic, “save as a way of stating your wishes. As well ye know, Cormac mac Art. They shall be found this very day.”

“Howel: it’s the best of friends ye be. Remember; I shall. Lest there should be fighting to do, we’ll take most of the Danes with us. Two dozen, eh Wulfhere? All draw lots for five to remain and work on Raven?”

Wulfhere agreed, and so it was decided, amid much feeling of close camaraderie. The curses of those five who drew the losing lots nigh sufficed to wither the remaining wet out of Raven’s timbers with no need of the sun’s summery heat.