When Death Birds Fly

3

“In a world where the old-time skill of the Roman swordsman is almost forgotten, Cormac mac Art is well-nigh invincible. He is cool and deadly as the wolf for which he is named; yet at times, in the fury of battle, a madness comes upon him that transcends the frenzy of the Berserk. At such times he is more terrible than Wulfhere, and men who would face the Dane flee before the bloodlust of the Gael.”

– Conal the minstrel, of Britain

Dusk had begun to shadow the blue water. Red as fiery copper, the sun of Behl sank lower in the direction of Galicia, which Raven had now left eight days’ sailing to westward. Behind the bay where Cormac and Wulfhere had rested their crew for a day and a night, the foothills of the Pyrenees rose dark against the sky. Beyond them shouldered up the great mountain peaks in mauve and scarlet and burnt gold, brilliant yet in the last of the light.

Coppery dusk illumined too the pirate galley’s swelling sail as Raven put to sea. The sail was new, of Galician manufacture; blue stripped with green. The ship slid forth silent as a crafty predator-which it was. This time Raven was on no piratical mission.

Wulfhere, standing immense by the shield-rail, breathed the twilight air with pleasure. His crimson beard fell to spread in untrimmed exuberance over his scale-mail corselet. Over his shoulder he bore the overlarge long-hafted ax that was never far from him. Braces of gold and brass flashed like fire on his arms, which were big as most men’s thighs. The mighty Dane made a picture of rampant barbarism not easily forgotten; and just now, of a contented man.

The barbarian loomed over the world Rome had conquered, and ruled, and lost. Unlike so many, this one was not interested in scrabbling over the truncated corpse of empire; Wulfhere Hausakluifr was content to live and to fight and to laugh.

“Ha, Cormac,” he rumbled, “this be more to my liking! By the Thunderer, I had begun to feel choked in that cramping harbour of Brigantium! Was well enow for yourself; ye be at home with kingly intrigues and politics. Not I.”

Cormac smiled faintly without making answer. The Skull-splitter had voiced some such comment on each day of their voyage thus far. Nor would the Gael be disagreeing with him. Cormac mac Art was not so much at home with matters political that he didn’t savour this challenge. Asea, he and Wulfhere were their own masters, and the kings of the earth could do no more than gnash their teeth over the fact.

Once again Cormac wore his black mail of chain mesh. Its reassuring familiar weight covered him from throat to mid-thigh, clinking. Above it his dark, scarred face well suited the war-shirt’s implications. His black mane, not long, was bare to the wind. Beside him on a vacant rowing bench rested his plain helmet. Its crest of flowing white horsehair stirred a little with the breeze of Raven’s movement. At one hip rode his straight, double-edge sword in its sheath; on the other hip he wore a Saxon fighting knife.

Planting a foot on the rowing bench beside his helmet, mac Art set his two hands on that knee and inhaled salt air while listening to the sound of water furling past in a hiss, and the thunk of oars accompanied by the grunts of those pulling them. Just now Raven’s unmanned oars were overmany. Threescore men made her full crew, fifty to row and ten to handle steerboard, sail, and lines. Now here they were, he and Wulfhere, roving the sea with but twoscore.

Still, mac Art of Eirrin did not fret over that for which there was no help. They’d been undermanned aforenow. They had prevailed. They lived.

Well they knew this western coast of Gaul. Here, in these waters where Gallia and Hispania met, heavy swells were common. In crashing gouts of foam they broke dangerously near sunken rocks even where the water was deep. Farther north, off the River Garonne and the Saxon islands, tidal streams ran tricky and inconsistent as though designed by hunt-wise foxes. To run up this coast by night required not only men who knew what they were about but bold ones besides. Necessity bred boldness as kings did conflict. The night did offer cover, and western Gaul was stiff with the reivers’ foes.

Big brusque Guntram, the Gothic Count of Burdigala that would be Burgundy, craved their bodies for exhibition on a gibbet to placate his master King Alaric. Athanagild Beric’s son, who commanded the royal Garonne fleet for Alaric, yearned even more to capture them.

More enemies were the Saxons settled in the Charente region and the large islands nearby. They knew the reivers; they knew Cormac had not come by his Seax-knife-Saxon dagger-through amiable trade.

Nor was it likely that Sigebert the Frank, now chief customs assessor of Nantes, would have forgotten them. He’d set a cunning trap for Cormac and Wulfhere not two months previously-and failed to take them though he had them at swords’ points. He’d lost an ear for his trouble.

Ah, half the world was set against the self-exiled Gael of far green Eirrin, and he was not even taking Lucanor into account.

His reflections were most rudely interrupted. “Three ships on the steerboard side!” the lookout bawled. “They come fast under oar, from astern!”

Three! Cormac snatched up his helmet and went swiftly aft while he settled it on his head. Ordlaf the steersman greeted him with a nod.

“Yonder, I’d guess,” he grunted. “I see naught as yet.”

Cormac stared into the deep-blue gloaming. Three shapes emerged. Cloven water hissed white at their bows. Each was smaller than Raven but seaworthy and fast in the highest degree. Aye, Cormac knew them and for him a glance sufficed: Basque ships. They neared, well-rowed.

“Wotan!” Ordlaf burst out, in a voice of incredulous horror such as Cormac had not previously heard from the stolid Dane. “What phantoms be these?”

“Phantoms?” Cormac stared in puzzlement. “What is it ye mean, man? It’s ships I see on the breast of the sea, and men on them bent on a fight. Bad enough that is-what’s this of phantoms?”

Ordlaf looked at him as if he were mad while Ordlaf’s were the wild eyes of madness. From the crew’s sudden braying of panicky invocations of Wotan, Aegir and other gods, Cormac understood that something was badly wrong. Were his own eyes failing him? He squinted at the oncoming ships. Raven was undermanned and pursued, badly outnumbered, aye and undeniably. But it would take more than that to shake this crew of battle-hungry demons Wulfhere and he led. What then? What?

Wulfhere Skull-splitter himself burst through the uproar on knotty legs, seeking advice from the man on whose crafty counsel he depended. Cormac saw that his eyes, too, were wide aghast.

“Wolf! Do ye see them? Surely it’s from Nastrand itself those demons have voyaged to find us!”

“Nastrand?” Still not comprehending, Cormac heard his friend name the cold barren shore of Hell, where the corpses of cowards and perjurers were eaten by monsters till the end of time and breath. “Blood of the gods! Nastra-Wulfhere? What see ye there?”

For the second time Cormac received from eyes less than rational a look that questioned his sanity. “See? What is there to see? Rotted ships of death, crewed by liches!” Hearing himself, Wulfhere gathered up the reins of his own runaway control. “But we’ll soon cause the sea to cover those corpses-again!”

Again Cormac looked at the approaching trio of ships. He saw ships crewed by staring weaponmen. Is that the way of it, he thought. Illusion and seeming-and I immune!

He wasted no time in attempt to convince his fellows that what they saw was unreal. What mattered was to make them fight. An they were still the men he knew, they’d do so. He raised strong voice.

“All who row not, string your bows!” he commanded. “Swiftly, swiftly! Teeth of Fenris, be ye children to quake at sorcerous illusion? Ivarr-come man, feather me thatun standing by the mast! Those are men, men!”

The three strange vessels were swiftly overtaking Raven. White water furled back past what all save Cormac saw as skeletal ships: naked wooden ribs, grown over with mussels and barnacles and trailing masses of dismal kelp like ragged nets. Sails blew aflutter in rotting rags from the yards. The oars that rose and dipped were decayed or broken. Yet in spite of all, the death-ships moved across the sea at a better pace than Raven.

Aye, and to all but the Gael their crews were men long since drowned.

Wulfhere saw horrid white eyes, that had rolled up to stare blankly like those of landed fishes. Blue-grey were their skins and slick with corruption, like wet slate. Sea-lice had eaten them here and there to form hideous patchwork. Such men were dead-and they rowed.

Those not naked wore garments that seemed only rotting sackcloth and leather; that hung in tattered ribbons from their ghastly bodies. In dreadful silence they brandished weapons yet able to bite, though corroded by brine.

With coldness like drift ice in his stomach, Ivarr obeyed Cormac’s order. Oh, he had no misgivings about his ability to hit his ghastly target. What the Dane dreaded and half expected was to see it continue standing with his arrow betwixt its visible ribs. What could an arrow be, to something dead and rotting that yet moved and challenged the living?

The bowstring said thunng and Ivarr’s barbed shaft keened out over the water accompanied by his curse-and prayer. The arrow skewered the shape by the mast. Through the belly it took him, and Ivarr saw the creature tumble and fall down, kicking. So saw the other archers, and so did Cormac mac Art, though what he saw topple was a living human, an armourless Basque.

“Well done!” Cormac called, as if ’twere an accomplishment more than standard, for the need for encouragement was obvious to him. He knew how to motivate men, by praise and threat, by shaming and challenge. “What ails the rest of yet, that ye gape and delay? Shoot for the rowers!”

Heartened at the falling of the supposed lich in the manner of an ordinary sailor of blood and flesh, they loosed their arrows in flights of ten. Speeding angry bees seemed to hum shrilly over the sea.

The Danes were marksmen, who made the finest bows and produced the most deadly archers in all the lands about the Baltic. Oarsmen in the foremost of the attacking vessels began to suffer.

“Ye see?” Wulfhere bellowed. “Weapons can destroy them-WE can destroy them! Hard about! To portside now, and ram that weed-grown hulk!”

Oars increased stroke on the same side of Raven as its great steering-paddle; those opposite were raised but not shipped. The slender pirate craft came about hurling white water in a close circle. The foremost Basque ship continued to plow in. Raven’s coppery beak was now directed at the broad side of the attacker. The Danes bent to their oars with renewed will and a savage enthusiasm.

Unlike her enemies, Raven was fitted for ramming. Her bows had been strengthened, and braced within, sheathed in scales of hammered copper without. Her dragon’s head laughed savagely the while she bore down on the enemy. And now the Basques saw what was intended, even as they saw their prey’s speed increase.

The Basques strained mightily to avoid the impact. They succeeded only partly.

Raven’s deadly beak, driving fiercely through the water, did not bite amidships; instead it smashed one of the Basque’s long steeringsweeps with a terrible grinding popping crack-and with a crash, half-shattered the stern. A splinter of wood thick as his arm and longer than he drove through a Basque’s body as if it had been a hurled spear. His ship lurched violently over while he gurgled death. Crew and marines flew through the air like hurled toys to plop-plop into the water like so many clods of dirt.

Cormac’s sword glittered bare. The glitter in his sword-grey eyes was no softer and his lips drew back from his teeth in a wolfish snarl. The dark Gaelic rage was upon him. Reason shrank and battle-frenzy ruled his brain and body. He only just remembered to snatch up his shield.

“HAAAA!” he yelled earsplittingly. “Sunder them!”

He sprang to Raven’s shield-rail as though he knew no encumbrance of sword and ten-pound helm of steel over sponge and forty-pound mailcoat and heavy buckler of wood and iron; and thence he pounced down into the Basque ship. Another ugly feral cry tore from him.

His round shield, thrust ahead of him into snarling black-bearded faces, deflected two spear-heads while breaking off another it happened to meet squarely. Basques went down under this mad assailant’s greater weight, sore surprised and disconcerted by a man who used seventeen pounds of buckler as an offensive weapon.

Cormac swung that lindenwood shield more, in a bone-breaking arc this time, to gain space for himself. Springing fully erect, he ruthlessly stamped the head of a man downed by his leap. An ax banged on his shield and his own elbow was driven into his side, mail against mail in a rasp of steel links. His sword replied. The point ran into a man’s side; a man Cormac never saw. More surprise for the enemy: Cormac mac Art was fond of using his point. He yanked it free in a sluicing spurt of blood and slashed sidewise without ever looking at the foe whose arm he destroyed.

The attackers were attacked by a madman. The raging Gael cut his way forward without looking back to see whether any comrades followed him.

Half a dozen did. Despite the horror of what they thought they saw, they noted too that Cormac was fearless and that hideous corpses fell before his one-man charge. The Danish pirates were not backward about discovering that what they perceived as living dead could die again, and fall like men. Leggings and arms were splashed warmly. Crimson runnels spilled over the ship’s timbers.

Wulfhere’s instincts were to plunge after his blood-brother. But Wulfhere commanded Raven. He cursed and cheered Cormac equally and without bias, while knowing he durst not follow into the blade-reddening action he loved. His archers were still speeding volleys onto the two remaining Basque ships. Close upon them now, those vessels were bearing down in foam-sided furrows white as new samite.

“Belay that!” Wulfhere roared in a voice like an ocean-storm. “Bend to rowing, ye geldings! Would ye be cracked like a nut betwixt tongs? Lay alongside that one, the nearer-we’ll grapple to her! Ugly bastards, aren’t they! Best we aid them along to Ran’s arms where they belong, lads!”

His broad face darkened with passion above his flaming beard. Ax upraised, his immense height increased nearly to seven feet by his horned helmet, Wulfhere Skull-splitter was a fearsome sight. The bitter necessity of leaving mac Art fighting for his life made the giant’s rage greater, if such were possible. He loosed another hideous bellowing cry that froze Basque blood into marrow and whitened dark faces. He gnashed his teeth and foam speckled his vast beard like white-hot flame amid red.

Glaring, he brandished his terrible ax and raved threats against the ship he had designated for assault. He cursed each moment that passed ere the first grappling hook could fly.

To Wulfhere-as to all left aboard Raven-they moved against a vessel of unnatural life-in-death. All too recently he had coped asea with foes otherworldly and inhuman. Now his eyes assured him that death’s head liches stared at him from sockets like thumb-gouged holes, and thirsted for his blood. Yet he never hesitated, nor did his men.

Grappling hooks flew gleaming like dragon’s teeth. Some bit into wooden strakes while others missed because the ship’s structure was not what they saw it to be. Those men reeled in and tried again even as feverish fishermen, the while Raven drew closer by means of those lines that had found purchase. Wood creaked and water hissed and gurgled as the two craft swung close.

Wulfhere Hausakluifr was first over the side, in a flying leap that should not have been possible to a man of such size. Like those of a mad giant his big feet crashed to the deck of the other vessel. Behind him swarmed his men, yelling in the way of wolves or berserks. They rattled onto the Basque craft, tall fair men all agleam in armour of glittering bosses or lapping scales sewn to byrnies of boiled leather.

Counting their leader, the Danes numbered five-and-thirty. While their arrows had left about that many Basques to face them, the Danes in general were bigger men, and armoured besides.

Faces of corrupting death leered at them. Weapons hacked and stabbed in fists with tattered grey flesh raveling around knuckles of bare white bone. The northerners’ noses were deceived, too, for the stink of death was as of an old burial-barrow torn open. Yet their very revulsion nerved the Danes to fight with transcendent fury.

Axes and swords swung and hacked, flashing like lightning bolts playing about the deck, and where they struck crimson sprang up. Basques went down. Attackers had been attacked; attack became massacre.

Wulfhere strode raving through the melee. His ax rose and fell, chopping and streaming, in a racket of cloven bone and metal. In his mighty arms it described huge horizontal eight-figures in air, the interlocked circles formed of a scarletdotted blur of grey, so swiftly did he swing his ax. A sword rushed at him and the shield of the man just behind Wulfhere rushed forward. It did not stop, and a seemingly half-decayed face shattered around the iron boss. Teeth clattered onto the deck. Wulfhere plunged on. He disdained a shield; he had his ax. Thus! and a head flew from ragged shoulders. Thus! and blackened stinking bowels burst from a belly that had appeared swollen tight with putrefaction.

The third ship wavered. Its oars contradicted one another. Then it turned about and fled the battle become massacre. It vanished into the blue dusk and was seen no more.

Usconvets, aboard the ship Wulfhere and his men were rapidly making into a slaughter-yard afloat, saw it happen. From behind the grisly magical illusion that masked his face, the Basque pirate cried out in despair.

“Cut free! Part those grappling ropes and break off the fight!”

His men rallied, fired by desperation and the example he showed them.

Yet still they did not fight as they ought, and could. The illusion encompassed the vision of all save Cormac. What the Basques saw bracing the Danes was not their chief, but a foully animate corpse. It did not inspire them, though it shouted in a voice that was nearly Usconvets’s. Had Wulfhere not seen how things stood, and been content for his own reasons to let the “liches” depart, his Danes would have surely devastated the ship from end to end. They had almost done so in any case.

“Let them go!” Wulfhere thundered. “By the Hammer! Whatever landfall they can make is welcome to them! Back aboard Raven, ye bloodhungry dogs! Cormac’s needing us!”

His voice blared above the din of the fighting like one of the Romans’ big buccina horns. When men did not obey him swiftly enow, he whacked them lightly-by his standards-with the flat of his gore-dripping ax and shoved them to the rail with his other hand, big as a foot. And ever he roared at them to move, move, and cursed their tardiness.

They tumbled into Raven and pushed off, leaving the Basques to go where they could.