When Death Birds Fly

23

The gates shattered before a makeshift ram. Cormac, Wulfhere and Syagrius were first through the opening. Gothic mercenaries and piratical Danes poured after them, shouting. The owl was dead. The men of Raven attacked; the death-bird’s crew flew into Sigebert’s keep.

Cormac remembered little of that fight. The black Gaelic battle-frenzy came on him, that madness peculiarly his that would prompt a minstrel of Britain to say, “At such times he is more terrible then Wulfhere, and men who would face the Dane flee before the blood-lust of the Gael.”

His red-streaked sword flashed and seemed to spring lithely before him, opening throats so that blood came gushing forth; striking into entrails. No shield a man could bear was adequate to protect him from that inhuman sword-arm, however skillfully he handled it. Cormac was a henchman of death who stalked grimly among those Franks and struck like a fanged snake.

Beside him strode Wulfhere, a two-handed ax-man exulting in his freedom from the cold agony that had dwelt near his heart for so long. He was irresistible and terrible. Shields broke like crusts of bread under his ax. Men died headless or half sundered. Swords skidded off the blade that destroyed their wielders.

And there was Syagrius. Defeated, deposed, careless of life, the Roman fought like a demon. His kingdom was lost. All he wanted here was vengeance. He took it and was resistless in his uncaring advance. Sigebert’s Franks fell to his whistling steel, and Gallo-Roman traitors. That night any man who tried to stand before one of the three leaders-or could not flee-died.

Aye, and the trio’s men followed their example mightily.

There, across a gore-spattered and corpse-strewn courtyard, stood the doors of the mansion, shut and barred. Sweeping away the last opposition, Goths and Danes together brought up the ram. Molten lead came splashing down from above. Men fell back with howls and curses. Leather leggings smoked and were holed by hissing splashes. Up came shields, high. And those men moved to batter down the doors under an armoured roof of wood and metal. The ram thundered; the bars burst. The foreigners swarmed in, attacking foreigners in the manse built so long ago by the foreign conquerors whose last consul now stomped in under a helmet crested with scarlet little different from the one worn by that first Caesar called Caius Julius.

Ten Franks faced them, ranged on a marble staircase. At its head stood the man they sought, and his smile was all mockery. “It is pleasant,” Sigebert said, “to see men so eager for my company. My lord Syagrius, I see.” One-ear bowed with a flourish. “And speaking of company-you lower yourself, once-king, by consorting with pirates who await the rope. Do you know the men flanking you to be Cormac mac Art and Wulfhere Skull-splitter?”

“Indeed?” Syagrius glanced interestedly at his allies. “Is this true? I see that it is! Last week I might have had to order your deaths; today: well met! I’ll not allow you to sow dissension this time, Sigebert, traitor! Thanks to you, I no longer rule Gaul and have no responsibility to enforce the law against these men… even had I power and inclination to do, which I have not. I am come here to deal with you. So are they. Since they have a prior claim, in a manner of speaking, I have relinquished mine in their favour.” With the courtesy of a king, he turned to his piratical allies. “I have done speaking, my friends. Consider the dog and son of a dog yours.”

“You Franks,” Cormac called. “Will ye be dying needlessly with your unworthy master, or leave him to me?”

One of the Franks spat on the stair without taking his gaze from Cormac’s eyes. There was no other answer, and none of Sigebert’s men moved.

“Brave men ye be, and loyal,” Wulfhere said rumbling, “but foolish. Think again. By my beard, ye shall live to go free.” He stared at a Frank. “We come here for justice. You and I have no quarrel. Why die for him?”

At that consummately sensible suggestion, Frankish laughter was a baying of trapped wolves. “We’ll see who does the dying, an ye’ve the hardihood to be first up these stairs!” one jeered. “Come and eat steel!”

Wulfhere sighed. In their place, he’d have used the same words.

“Have it your way,” he said, and gripped his ax-haft high up and far down.

The notched and dripping weapons of the attackers crashed against the unblooded ones of the defenders. Murder seethed on the stair; blood spilled over the marble. The noise within those walls was as the anvil-pounding of a god. Wulfhere’s ax dropped one Frank with a shattered hip and, twisting a bit, brained another on the return stroke. Syagrius, weary from combat and travel and combat again, at last proved a little too slow. A blow from a Frankish shield-rim broke his arm. His sword clattered down the stair. Timely intervention by a Goth and a Dane in combination saved his life. They trod over a glaring Franci corpse and fought on toward the top.

Cormac himself slew the last of the ten Franks and in his impatience he hurled the follow from the topmost stair. At last, Cormac mac Art faced Sigebert One-ear of Metz, of Soissons, of Nantes; of Frankdom.

The Frank wore a light-flashing cuirass of moulded leather. Refulgent steel epaulettes guarded his collar-bones; an oval of convex steel polished to mirror brightness guarded his bowels. Almost as strong as mac Art’s mesh-mail, that cuirass, and a deal lighter. For the rest, he wore a leather helmet strengthened with iron placques, carried a buckler rather than the large Frankish shield, and held, with seeming negligence, a long Frankish sword.

“How impetuous we are tonight,” he murmured. “What, pirate? No big talk? No blather of how I’m to answer to you now for that moronic crewman of yours? What was his name; the one who slashed my face?”

“Black Thorfinn,” Cormac said, slitted swordgrey eyes watchful. “Nay, no talk. Time enow for that when you are dead, Sigebert, dead. Should I fail, there be Wulfhere to come. But should I fall in combat with such as you, I’ll have deserved it!”

“No argument.” Sigebert smiled. He was facing his end, Cormac thought grudgingly, like a man with more to be proud of. “Oh yes, I see Wulfhere. He’s too big to miss. How is your health lately, redbeard? I’ve heard reports of-”

The sword, no longer negligently held, leaped for Cormac’s neck. The Gael’s own blade turned it aside with a teeth-torturing scrape of metal. A less experienced man had surely been taken off guard by Sigebert’s mocking banter, and died for it. That cut had been startlingly swift. Cormac bashed back, was rebuffed by shield, shoved hard, pounced to the landing-and only just ducked under a slash that hummed like a breeze.

Mac Art fought coolly, making no showy displays of skill. For now, he was content to hold to the defensive and make trial of Sigebert’s swordsmanship. Determination was on him to take no chance of underestimating this man. Others had done that; among them, mayhap, was Count Bicrus.

The blades flickered and rang. Cormac’s battered shield met Sigebert’s unmarked buckler with a great bam and crash. They struck, feinted, circled. A thrust of Cormac’s was deflected over Sigebert’s shoulder by the well-handled buckler. In return, the Frank cut slantingly down at the side of Cormac’s knee in an effort to cripple. His sword met the edge of Cormac’s shield, cut in through the already much abused rim, and stuck there. Mac Art strained to give his buckler a quick turn in hopes of disarming or dragging off balance. The Frank twisted his hilt the other way so that his blade tugged free and he sprang backward. For him, it had been a nasty moment. Mac Art attacked with a sword seemingly flailing, pressing his advantage. Sigebert eddied away from him like mist, knowing the Gael to be stronger and longer of arm. Now he ceased the retreat, for to turn further had exposed his back to the top of the stair and those who watched, and “honourable fight” was a game for boys. Came a brief savage flurry, almost body to body, legs straining and swords a bright flashing cross of steel between the two men. Their grunts and the stamp of their feet mingled with the sound of clashing steel. Then Sigebert had slipped aside and was safely away from the stair. The rushing after him of Cormac’s shield was impressive for the strength in the Gael’s left arm, but Sigebert avoided it and flashed a smile at Cormac’s grunt.

Aye, Sigebert knew something about the work. He’d a natural talent for it, a coordination of hand and eye and brain. This was the encounter for which he had been obsessively training, half hoping for it. In addition, that early training he had indolently allowed to lie fallow for years had come back to him. He remembered it all, and knew much, and was strong and uncommon fast. Nerve he had too, combined with a devious imagination-and naught in the least resembling a scruple.

Even so, Cormac mac Art could match him on all those grounds save the last-though in combat he also paid no mind to scruples. His advantages of reach and strength were offset by the hard fighting he’d already done this night. There remained his endurance and long experience. These had been hammered into the scarred Gael bone-deep, through years of feud, war, exile, seafaring in all weathers and all seasons; through bitter imprisonment that few others could have survived. These were in his muscle and his heart; in his very marrow by now. They were qualities that Sigebert One-ear, whose life on the whole had been pampered, could never match.

Slowly, the Frank was forced to realize it. In him grew the chilling knowledge that he neared the end of his powers, while this grim dark wolf he faced had yet to extend himself fully.

A try for the neck was caught on buckler. That shield leaped at him, so that he was only just able to get his own shield up to catch the sword-edge that followed Cormac’s offensive use of seventeen pounds of iron-banded wood.

Sigebert had one trick left him. So far, he had used only the edge of his blade. Sure that the Gael was deceived and that withheld knowledge would work, Sigebert feinted once, twice, bringing Cormac’s shield low-and thrust straight for the throat in a bright, flashing line.

A similar tactic had slain the highwayman in awful surprise. Now, mac Art’s swordblade was there. It caught the Frank’s and swept it out of line with a flash and hideous grate of metal, burrs grating along notches and burns. The Gael laughed savagely. Below, so did Wulfhere.

“Now for that I’ve been waiting since we began dance, Frank! Ye fool! Ye did death on one of our men in such wise when we paid our visit to the custom house, remember? I saw his body, thrust through the hollow of the throat. Were ye after thinking I had not eyes to notice it or wits to know what it betided? Blood of the gods! Aye, and when ye warded my own thrust so neatly this night, ye did sureness on me. Now try your last and be accursed, One-ear!”

With a howl of pure frustration, Sigebert flung himself on Cormac mac Art, stabbing, slashing. Again and again his blade banged and skirled off Cormac’s shield, and then his time came and the blades glittered and flamed together one last time and Sigebert’s sword, quite unstained by blood, rattled on the marble. His own sword-arm poured red, laid open from elbow to wrist.

Sigebert’s eyes glared wildly. He was helpless.

“Wulfhere,” Cormac said, low and deadly, and the Morrigan had never been grimmer.

Wulfhere knew what was meant, and came without his ax.

“Romans crucify a man,” he rumbled. “We northrons have another way.”

They stripped a snarling Sigebert of his leather cuirass and threw it aside. He growled like a mad dog, spitting in their faces, snarling, cursing them vilely. Then, while four Danes held him down, Wulfhere drew dagger. He thrust, sliced; again; he cut the blood-eagle on the Frank’s body, the dreadful northlands death Wulfhere had never inflicted on an enemy and never would again.

Sigebert screamed like a soul in hell when he saw what would be done. His bulging eyes stared at the ceil, but he saw it not. Horribly rearranged, his body, too, bulged unnaturally.

Many were the things he might have seen: Black Thorfinn, writhing in agony, screaming likewise while infection bloated his belly and death’s clean mercy was withheld from him; or Cathula’s mother torn apart by hounds while her daughter watched, or that daughter’s later cruel reduction and use; or Count Bicrus of Nantes struggling across a tiled floor in his blood… or a score of other victims of whose fates the pirates knew naught. Uncounted treacheries lengthened the list of Sigebert’s crimes.

He might have beheld any or all of his victims, come from the grey lands of death to witness their murderer’s end. He did not.

He beheld great, misty spaces. An emptiness beyond his little comprehension. Bounding out of the mist came a hunting pack fit for nightmares; pure white hounds, save for the ears of them that were red as their gaping fanged mouths and glowing eyes. Coursing down through the night to harry the soul out of his body; to hunt it fugitive through nine eternities. Behind those beasts, towering on a great horse with flaring nostrils, came a shadow-cloaked Huntsman whose head was crowned with royal antlers. Sigebert saw what few saw; the terrible Lord of Death, god of the Celts of Britain and Armorica and Gaul and other lands as well.

And Sigebert knew, and his final screams formed coherent words while the bones burst from his blood-eagled body.

“The hounds!-aahhhh, mercy, no, no, the hounds, the hounds!”

Syagrius did not flinch to see the thing done. He had intended himself to have the traitor crucified, a death equally dreadful and longer drawn out. He saw only justice. Not without pleasure, he watched Sigebert die.

They found Lucanor in one of the upper chambers. He was unmistakably dead, shriveled as if by fire though neither charred nor blistered. Had his neck been cut, as by a tight-drawn chain, all round? None could be sure.

So, then. King Veremund would be glad to learn that death had been done on the mage who had destroyed his queen, body and mind and soul. Cormac and Wulfhere cared but little. The man who had died at the head of the marble stair had been more dangerous than forty such as the mage, for all Lucanor’s powers of sorcery.

Count Bicrus’s body they discovered below. It was wrapped, with cynical pretense at respect, in a shroud.

“It is over then,” Syagrius said wearily. “Poor Bicrus was the last hope left me. I might as well have fled south at once. I have achieved little save to spend lives and burn a part of the city.”

“Blame Sigebert for that, not yourself,” Wulfhere said gruffly. Almost he clapped the Roman on the shoulder, but remembered the man’s freshly splinted arm. “Let the city-and Gaul-take care of itself, as it will. I and Cormac mean to go away from here and get mightily drunk until dawn, and it’s my counsel that ye do the same. What say ye?”

Consul-King said to pirate. “I say lead on!”