When Death Birds Fly

7

“Hengist!”

The startled echo of that name came from Wulfhere the Dane. He stared, and Howel of Bro Erech saw how the name alone drove thoughts of vengeance on Sigebert One-ear from Wulfhere’s mind. He took his hand from the spear-which stood, noted by all but him-to pace closer with his deep interest in his eyes. He thrust his massive head forward, as though better to hear.

“Ye be certain of this, Prince? Hengist? Somewhere in these parts?”

“Nay, somewhere to the south,” Howel said, rather hurriedly. “He came down the Narrow Sea from Kent with three galleys, and each sail bore the White Horse. My scouts and coast-watchers saw them pass these shores.” He frowned his displeasure. “I put forth in pursuit. Shameful that one should be using home waters with not a by-your-leave! Too, he’d have fetched a mighty ransom, could I have taken him alive-the which I will admit is doubtful. In any case his ships proved too swift for me to catch.”

“Hengist turned hare?”

“Surprise is on me,” Cormac said thoughtfully, “that he did not turn back and fight for the mere pleasure of it.”

Prince Howel agreed. “So thought I, knowing his reputation! Surely he had some urgent business to hand. Now word has come back to me that he is guesting, among the Saxons of western Gaul. It’s friends and kin he has among them.”

“Aye, true, he has,” Wulfhere said. “By Wotan! This is good hearing!”

“Ye’ve but now come to these coasts,” Morfydd said. “Strange that ye heard naught of it on the way.”

“Not so, strange. It was by night we traveled, and careful we were by day, to lie well hidden in lonely places. It’s hardly our best fighting condition we’re in at present.”

Wulfhere glowered at the Gael, and spoke from indignance. “But yet ten times better than most! Ah! Hengist and Sigebert both within our reach! That caps it, Cormac! We’ll not be leaving here until we’ve finished with those whoresons!”

“Both of them? God’s light!” Howel laughed merrily. “Your hate for Sigebert I know. What have ye against Hengist, Captain?”

Cormac’s eyes rolled upward. “Och, ye know not what ye ask. I trust ye’ve ample time and to spare for listening.”

“WHAT?” Wulfhere thundered, drowning out Cormac’s voice ere the Gael had finished speaking. “What have I against the swine? Know ye naught of his history, Prince? Hengist is a jute, for one thing, as I am a Dane. There be more death-feuds between our peoples than-than betwixt the Saxons and your own! We Danes moved into Jutland and drove out the Jutes with weapon-steel, generations agone. Some remained… as thralls, or carles or warriors in service to Danish chiefs, and sure it is we found many of their women worth the keeping! Many others fled in ships to the coast of Frisia, a sodden land and no good home. The sea’s an invader that steals the fields little by little. They can either humble themselves to a mean life fishing and fowling, or take to the pirate trade. I’ve no time for Jutes, but I grant ye this: they be not so lacking in manhood that they will choose the former!”

Wulfhere wet his throat and continued.

“Hengist was one of those stayed in Jutland. He served my grandsire, Hnaef. Now, Hnaef’s sister Hildeburg was wed to a Jutish chieftain in Frisia, and there Hnaef went with his hearth-companions-Hengist among them, may monsters eat his corpse!-to visit his brother-in-law. All went well at the beginning. Then, because of bad blood and old feuds, trouble arose. The damned swinish Jutes…”

Wulfhere paused, swallowing, his face having gone dark with fury. “-the pig-sired Jutes did treachery on their guests and attacked them in whelming force in the night. Though they had been surprised, the Danes of course got themselves into battle-order and made ready to sell their lives at high price. They fought. Grandsire Hnaef was cut down and slain, early in that fight. His companions were grief-stricken-and enraged! They fought like blood-hungry demons, they did, slaying and hacking and slaying until the Jutes gave back before them. Then came Finn, the Jutish chieftain, he who had done death on his wife’s own brother. That leering traitor offered them their lives an they’d swear peace and friendship! Aye! Now I put it to ye, Prince. What is a man to reply to such an insult as that?” Wulfhere shook his head. “Yet, the alternative was death. Too, Hengist was now become leader of the Danish company. Ye see? That damned Jute. Belike he felt his Jutish blood speak to him, though blood-ties should never count above loyalty to a chieftain.”

Howel made a faint grimace at that. Cormac was Cormac; set of face and slitted of eye, he showed nothing. Still, he felt as Howel did. They were Celts. Ties of blood and kinship to them were supreme.

“The snorting pig prevailed upon the Danes to accept Finn’s terms! A shameful, disgraceful thing it was, but never has Hengist known what scruples are save for tripping better men with. He’s a Jute. They suck treachery with their mothers’ milk. Worse than Franks, the Jutes.” Wulfhere paused then, seeing that Howel, who knew more of the ax-throwing Franks than he did of Jutes, was openly incredulous. “Aye,” Wulfhere repeated. “Worse than Franks, Prince! Anyhows-Hnaef’s band was not altogether lost to shame. They gave no thought to returning to their own country with such a tale. Among the isles and lagoons of Frisia they remained, living as neighbours to Finn’s Jutes.”

Wulfhere paced a step, swung back to fix fjordblue eyes on Howel. “That did not last long. Word of what had befallen wended back to Hnaef’s kinsmen in the north of Jutland. Naturally they made ready to pay Finn and his fellows a visit, and in numbers, all armed and war-shirted.”

“Well, naturally,” Howel said nodding. “How old were you?”

“I was not! Hengist is old, Prince, old-he’d lived too damned long twenty years agone! He gave aid to those Danes of Jutland’s north! Aye! He who had broke his oath to Hnaef once Hnaef was dead, now broke his oath to Finn the Jute whilst Finn yet lived, and helped the Danes to slay him! Victorious, the Danes returned home, and their kinswoman Hildeburg with them. Hengist was left in Frisia-in power!”

Wulfhere paused and stared at Howel until the prince shook his head in disgust, and the giant went on.

“Thought ye the Franks were treacherous, eh? Now Hengist became a pirate chieftain-and one for the reckoning with. Natheless Frisia was and is no good place to live. He looked about with his pig’s eyes, bethinking him of a better place to make his home.”

“Aye, and I know what happened after,” Howel said.

Wulfhere went on as if he’d not heard. “Was the worst thing that halfwit king of the Britons, Vortigern, ever did! To hire Hengist and seven shiploads of his wolves to fight the Picts, once the Romans were well gone and Britain unprotected by the legion and beset from many sides. Thor’s thunder, any man who knew Hengist could have predicted the outcome. He commenced calling in other sea-rovers who wanted homes in a land that squelched not under their feet. In great numbers they came, like called pigs to the trough.”

Cormac, from in-sloping Eirrin that squelched under foot as often as not, and well familiar with Britain’s fogs and fens, was almost smiling. Almost.

“When Vortigern saw what was happening,” Wulfhere said, when a movement of facial muscles indicated Howel might essay to speak, “he sought to stop it. Too late, too late. He dealt with Hengist, prince among princes of treachery. Naturally, Hengist turned against him. And now now old Vortigern’s dead and Hengist’s a king himself. In Britain, as well ye displaced Britons know… calling himself not Jute but Englisc, along with the Saxons who have also moved in, jowl to cheek with Angles.”

“King,” Cormac said, and again in the tongue of Eirrin: “Righ! King of a tiny patch like Kent! King over as much of Britain as his hand and hams will barely cover!” Wulfhere was his old friend, a friendship conceived in prison and born in escape and grown asea to be ripened by the saving each of the other’s life, more than once. One sneered at one’s friends’ enemies.

“All this I know,” Howel said, indicating the wine. “Still, Kent is a wealthy little patch of Britain.”

Wulfhere jerked, sloshed the wine he was pouring and glowered. “Hengist swore loyalty to my own grandsire and then proved false! He is Loki’s left hand and my own blood-enemy. Aye, blood-enemy. I snatched some loot out of his hands, years agone. He revenged himself by taking captive eight of my men. At my offer to ransom them, he laughed. The leprous pig-snouted dog hanged them with his own hands, then sent me their corpses with the message that he wished me joy of them!”

“Peace, Wulf,” Cormac said quietly. “Ye cannot have thought on you that other folk know the story of all the blood-feuds ye have with all the rovers afloat! Blood of the gods, it were simpler to tally those ye have not enmity with. They cannot number above a dozen.”

“Listen to him!” the huge redbeard snorted. “Ye have made foes of your own in plenty, battle-brother. Hengist for one! Ill-will hung betwixt yourself and him ere ever I met ye. Who was it took that grey madman’s battle-standard of white horsetails from the middle of his camp, and has crested his helmet with ’em every since?” And he indicated mac Art’s helm, which was unusually ornate for his sombre, unbejeweled attire, with its flowing crest.

“Policy,” Cormac said, straight-faced. “An angry foe cannot think.”

He thought on it, whiles Wulfhere made churlish complaint about how wine left one with a drawn mouth and thirst curable only by tankards of ale. Hengist was not to be taken lightly. The grizzled devil had achieved what no Caesar ever had; a lasting foothold in Britain. His name thundered over the North and Narrow Seas like a storm. Wulfhere had told naught but truth of the man’s early deeds; all those things Hengist had indeed done. Aye, and he’d grown more terrible in his grizzled eld, not less.

“Hengist,” Cormac said with a grim matter-of-factness, “likes to kill.”

“And he’d rather betray than drink!” Wulfhere snarled.

“Has age brought him no infirmity?” Morfydd asked.

“Only in the head,” Wulfhere said.

But even that was not true. Hengist was crafty and clever as ever. A giant he was, huge and powerful as Wulfhere, despite his grey mane and beard like brine or hoarfrost. None knew the number of his years, because nigh all of his generation were dead. Threescore years and more, surely. Hengist remained-and flourished. Year after year he raided, plundered, slew in ever wilder excess. He showed no sign of weakness or mercy. It was as if by behaving as a wildling yunker he could cheat death itself. Some thought he had; some thought him supernatural.

Hengist had no need of plunder. Piracy was his pleasure these days, not his livelihood, for no livelihood was necessary to him. King! Had he wished, he might have sat at ease in his dun on the Isle of Thanet, which commanded the trade of the north, and grown yearly richer without lifting a hand.

He did not. He feared that. Aye, he feared precisely that, did Hengist, who feared neither god nor man nor demon. Others might believe him immune to age. He knew better.

Women no longer interested him. Each winter the fear gnawed in his brain that his lungs or thinning blood would betray him in the cold, so that he, Hengist the terror of the wide seas, would die unworldly in straw. Each summer he fared and bullied forth in greater fury, hoping for a warrior’s end. Each summer it eluded him. He sought the occasion of death, but slew and slew and showed his wiles and thus avoided the fact of death. As sometimes haps when a man actively seeks Hel’s embrace, she passed him by as though he bore a charmed life. And she filled her chill hall with those he made enemies, and then corpses.

In a few summers more, surely, he must find himself too ill for voyaging. No choice would be his then but to decline and rot like a sessile tree.

That fate Wulfhere Skull-splitter had every intention of sparing him.

“So,” the Dane said, softly now, “Hengist is nearby, eh?”

“It’s… other business we have in hand, Wulfhere.”

“Surt’s burning breath!” The voice lifted to a roar again, as Wulfhere proved how man could be mule. “Other business? Other business! YOU go and farm pigs, Cormac! This is my business! This is a debt owed to my slain crewmen, to my betrayed grandsire, and I’ll not let it slip unregarded into time for Ver-”

For Veremund or all the silver ever mined from this earth, he was about to say, Cormac knew, and Cormac forestalled him. He raised his voice against the Dane’s in a bellow that rendered Wulfhere’s words incomprehensible.

“Blood of the gods! Now ye’d shift to Latin and spout veritas odium parit, would ye?” he cried, striving to warn. “Must we squander the men we have left on every grudge ye’ve ever harboured? What of Sigebert One-ear, yonder in Nantes, opening his windows to the stench of Thorfinn’s green rot? Let us be dealing with him, at least, ere we concern ourselves with three shiploads of Jutes and an unknown horde of Saxons!”

’He and Wulfhere stared at each other while their hosts remained very still, nervously swallowing.

“Besides,” Cormac said on in a more moderate tone, having quelled Wulfhere’s giving away of secrets, “we cannot go hunting jutes over the water, Wulf. It’s overhauling Raven wants; have ye forgot?”

Wulfhere drew and gusted forth a sigh to fill a galley’s sail, and his belt buckle flashed aureate. “Aye, that’s true,” he said, grudgingly. Having given some vent to his wrath, he began to use his wits-he who’d once said in a time of quiet that Cormac was his wits. “Hmmm, hmmm. Look ye, Wolf, we must draw Raven up the shore and dry her out, or her timbers will soon be waterlogged, and she too heavy for rowing. Well it is that your Armorican summers be bright and warm, Prince! Then the battle-bird must have her careening and re-caulking, for if such work be done not this summer, will mean greater delay next year.”

“True.”

Another sigh; grudging and mournful. “That we cannot afford.”

“Aye. True also,” Cormac said relentlessly.

“Well, then… it needn’t disadvantage us, surely? It were maybe foolish to use Raven in any case. Our battle-bird of the seas is too well known on these coasts. Surprise be the way to deal with Sigebert.”

“Right,” Cormac said, recognizing the nigh wheedling tone of his comrade and playing him as only he could. “Right as the words of a spaewoman.”

“Ah… well then…” Wulfhere’s voice trailed off. “What think ye that we should do?”

Cormac gave him a gift: “Going to be keeping your own plan back to test mine, is it? Why, that must depend on our host. What say ye, Howel? Will ye be lending us a ship, that we might be making a little run to Nantes?”

Howel was sure not to glance at Morfydd, who was frowning. “And gladly!” His smile was genuine. He knew that Wulfhere had been angling for this favour, but knew not how to ask it for himself. The Dane was after all a stranger, while Cormac was the corsair prince’s friend, known to him of old. “It’s the right man ye ask for the loan of a ship, Cormac Art’s son! Ha! When that first Caesar came to these shores, he was amazed to find my ancestors building better ships than any in use on the Mediterranean! He defeated them only because the wind failed them at a crucial time. Even then many escaped to the west of Britain. Great seafarers we have been, in all the generations since! We builded seaworthy ships of oak when the men of the northern lands hadn’t yet heard of sail! No force in that. I’ll be providing you both the means for faring to Nantes-and ye will bring me that verminous Frank’s other ear, won’t ye?”

Wulfhere blew flutteringly through his lips in the manner of a restive horse. He’d his own ideas about the respective merits of southern and northern ships. He was also the prince’s guest. Heroically, he refrained from speaking.