The Tower of Death
( Cormac Mac Art - 2 )
Andrew J. Offutt
Andrew J. Offutt
The Tower of Death
Keith Taylor
Introduction:
The Cormac Mac Art Cycle
Robert E. Howard began the recounting of the fifth century Irish hero’s exploits in Tigers of the Sea, which Ace has reprinted. They and the keeper of the REH papers and the Howard literary agent then asked me to continue the cycle (none of which was printed during Howard’s lifetime).
My first three novels followed Tigers chronologically. The fourth went back to recount the treachery-born events that led to Cormac’s becoming outlaw, then exile from Erin. Later forced also to flee Alba/Caledonia/Scotland, he bitterly took to the sea as a reiver or reaver: pirate. He met the giant Wulfhere the Dane in prison. Later still Cormac became the only Gael aboard Raven, a Wulfhere-commanded ship crewed by Danes. Some of their exploits formed the four stories in Howard’s Tigers.
This is the fifth of the novels I have written, but the second in chronological order. It precedes Tigers by a few years. Herein the mac Art is younger-indeed, he lies about his age because of that embarrassment of youth we have all experienced. An exile, he has not forgotten her he left behind: Samaire. He loved her as he loved their mutual land: Erin or Eirrin.
He is a grim and sombre fellow. He is to become less so only in later years, when he re-meets Samaire and gains purpose and goal-and Irish shores. With Keith Taylor, this chronicle returns to that Cormac of less optimism and more dourness, and a different part of the world. Cormac is the exiled pirate among foreigners, crafty and untrusting.
Howard clearly indicated that mac Art’s activities were hardly confined to the area of the British Isles. Rome had withdrawn from Britannia after four centuries of interference and domination. Britons were dying to invading Saxons and Jutes and Angles who would give the land its new name: Angle-land or Angle-terre: England. (Strangely, some Britons had fled from the continent whence came the conquerors. There they founded lesser Britain-Brittany-and clung to it.)
On that continent, the legacy of Rome’s pomp and paraphernalia of governance were more evident. The land was already in division among many lords. Soon there would be a king in Italy! Though Frank-land, France, did not exist, the Franks were on the rise with their terrible throwing-axes so like a pre-charge artillery barrage. The Roman title comes remained. It would become the French comte, which we call count. And though no Count has ever held demesne in my Kentucky, this state is divided into 120 count-ies.
A new age was aborning, in Europe. With the importation of the concept of stirrups, the age of chivalry-cheval-ry or horse-ry-would grow out of the chaos left by Rome’s fall, and endure until some fool went and invented gunpowder. (Surely not Hank, protagonist of Mark Twain’s sf-hf novel!)
In the A.D. 480s, Cormac and Wulfhere were raiding along the coast of what would become France, and soon they had to cross the treacherous Bay of Biscay to northwestern Spain-and honest employment!
Keith Taylor knows about twice as much about that area at that time as Andrew Offutt. That’s why he is needed as cohort in this novel and its direct sequel, When Death Birds Fly, and the others we have outlined, leading all the way to Wulfhere’s homeland, Danemark. Without Keith Taylor, this novel would be about half as good.
We have never met. We live precisely halfway around this planet from each other. Yet there are few lines in this book that are pure Taylor or pure Offutt. When we collaborate, we collaborate. (How? Expensively, between here and Australia!)
Sir Keith has worked out and sent over a fascinating astrological compilation for both Cormac and Wulfhere. Maybe it is pure imagination and maybe it isn’t. What do you think their signs are? (Well actually, no, I didn’t say that we are believers-or that we are not.)
The zodiacal signs of these two troublesome seawolves are of no concern to Emperor Zeno over in Constantin-opolis, or to his comes of Burdigala, the Count of Bordeaux. The Dane and the Irisher have been raiding all too successfully, and are about to be in big trouble.
– Andrew Offutt
Kentucky, U.S.A.
PROLOGUE
“D’ye command war-galleys or wash-tubs? And are they fighting men at your orders-or babes messing their swaddling linen?”
Harshly the demand was snapped out, and harsh was the mood of the speaker. Count Guntram of Burdigala* had lately come in for scathing rebuke on the grounds that he’d let his master’s law be flouted. Not a man to suffer in silence was milord Count, or to deny his underlings their just share of the king’s anger. In truth he had just vented but a tiny measure of his frustration on the stolid officer before him.
*Bordeaux
Athanagild Beric’s son looked back at the count levelly. “My men are warriors, by God! As for the ships-” Athanagild shrugged and the movement brought a twinkling flash from the silver-gilt brooch that pinned his long green cloak to his shoulder. “My lord has inspected them himself. There are not enough, and they are old, and no others abuilding. You said it yourself, so don’t tell me I’m scrabbling for excuses.”
Guntram scowled and his face worked, but he told the officer no such thing. The man was right. Rome was a dying Colossus and the world it had created was coming apart all around the deathbed.
The count turned, still scowling, to stare out the unshuttered window at the courtyard of his mansion. The softly playing fountain, the colonnaded walk, the tiled roofs; all boasted silently of Roman architecture, and at least a hundred years old. The fountain leaped and shimmered prettily-and if it stopped Guntram of Burdigala knew it would hardly be worthwhile trying to have it repaired. The matter of warships was comparable.
But no, he mused, not quite; the matter of constructing and repairing warships was not quite the same.
Proculus, head of the municipal curia (who had brought two shrewd members of that body with him) coughed. Guntram turned slowly back, wearing a sour and challenging expression.
“My lord Comes,” Proculus said primly, “it is not that shipwrights cannot be had. There are enough and to spare, it would seem, to knock merchant vessels together.” He stressed the one word with distaste, while blandly ignoring the men of commerce also present in the chamber. “Fashioning warcraft, no doubt, is a different matter, and the men able to do it fewer-”
“And most of them,” Athanagild put in, for he commanded the royal fleet based in the Garonne, “would liefer work for shares in pirate loot.”
The comes or count banged a sword-strengthened fist on his oaken table. Objects jumped, and so did his secretary, who was sorely needed since my lord Count could neither read nor write. The count did not notice how he’d disrupted the poor man-or paid no mind, at any rate.
“Pirates!” he roared. “By the heart of Arius, I’ve gone through reports of pirates all morning until I’m fairly sickened. That shipping isn’t safe is ill enow. That these northern thieves have dared pillage ashore is enough to make me-me, a man who followed king Euric into battle after battle-wish for Judgment Day!”
“Their numbers alone make them difficult to destroy as rats, my lord.” The smooth, rather soft voice came from Philip the Syrian, a swarthy man and pockmarked. He blinked heavy eyelids. “The noble Commander Athanagild must cope with Breton corsairs, Saxons and Jutes out of Britain-King Hengist notable among them-aye, and their cousins settled in the Charente, upon his very doorstep as it were-”
“And the Frisians,” Count Guntram snarled, “and the Heruls, the Danes-that whole damned boiling sea of North Sea robbers! Not to speak of the Scoti who sometimes take the notion that our coasts are the very place for a happy little junket, and Vandals up from the south to
try their luck! Hooves of the Devil! I live here too, merchant! Their numbers are greater than rats!” The count’s big hand, which bore heavy gold rings and dirty nails in almost equal numbers, lifted to stroke his pepper-and-salt beard. His face softened to an almost ludicrous contrast; his little bright blue eyes glittered.
“Nay,” he said almost softly, “with pirates on the water in such numbers, I know not why you are not ruined. I’d like to know how you manage.”
Philip’s eyes, dark as garnets, flickered and went suddenly as hard. His brocaded tunic and soft Cordoban shoes, no less than the shining gems scintillant on his person, did indeed suggest that he was managing very well indeed. The other merchant, Desiderius Crispus, in a simple dress-tunic long out of date and a wholly false air of patrician hauteur, looked more austere. And the count was too well informed to credit that sham.
Philip said, “If I may speak for us both, my colleague? I believe, my lord Comes, that it is because the bulk of our trade goes by land or river. For myself, what goods I ship are brought from the east to Narbo Martius, and then hither. I should not dream of trusting my wealth on the western seas at matters ar now.”
“You slimy, lying serpent!”
Guntram gripped the underside of his much-abused table and heaved it over. Ink, reports, quills and fine blotting sand were scattered like trash. The secretary, who had been seated at one end, rolled backward and betook himself out of the way. A corner of the table had banged Proculus on the knees; the phrases he hissed between his teeth as he rubbed were hardly in keeping with the dignity of his position. He stared silently at the count as if wishing the big soldier were small enough to stamp.
The Count of Burdigala was amove; he seized Philip by the throat and choked him until his bulging eyes saw the stark face of Death. Then Guntram flung him down among the papers and ink to get his breath.
“D’you think I’m a fool?” Guntram roared. “Or that my spies waste their time? From Narbo is it, with tolls and levies each mile of the way? Pah! And you,” he snarled, rounding on Desiderius. “Traitor! I’ll not bore ye with all I know. It was full eighty swords of Spanish forging, the best there is this side of Damascus, that found their way into Hengist’s grasping hands-not so? Not so? And paid for in gold from a looted church! Ahhh! And you, Philip of Syria. Captain Ticilo may not be your man for speaking publicly of, but I know what he did in Massilia last year, and what Vandal galley gave him escort the length of the Spanish coast. And raided Lusitania on its way home, to such profit that it must have had advance information to guide him. What last I heard, Lusitania is part of our Gothic realms as much as this city-which means, Syrian, that these dealings were no common sharp practice or thieving. They rank as treason!” He looked at Proculus. “Be that not so, sir?”
“Beyond doubt, if there is proof,” the municipal prefect said, with stiffness. “It would merit the severest death the law can award.”
Philip had not risen from his knees; Desiderius now joined him there.
Both merchants wailed for mercy. They had been moved, they avowed nigh fearfully, to do what they did out of desperation for the losses these same pirates had inflicted upon them. If the menace could be abated, the seas cleared or rendered so that a merchantman had so much as even odds, would be their dearest wish come true. Let the Count of Burdigala but state his desires. And so forth.
Guntram was not listening. Proculus had his ear at the moment, and Proculus was waxing condemnatory. He straightened, lean in his robes through with a growing pot. His thin-lipped mouth was twisted. Pain from his smitten knee and disgust at the exhibition he’d been forced to watch were in equal measure the cause of it.
“My lord Count,” he snapped, “this disgraces me! Here is neither a court of law nor a wharfside grog-shop-though just now, one might well take the one for the latter. Let these men be arraigned for their crimes in due form, and let the civic questioner be the one to lay hands on them. I give you good day.”
“Hold!”
Guntram’s crisp order stopped Proculus in his tracks. He gazed at the bleak-faced count, frozen in motion.
“My sons are beyond that door,” Guntram of Burdigala said, all in one deadly tone. “They have swords, and will cut to pieces any one who leaves afore I have told him he may. Anybody, sir. An ye have complaints, you can make them later, in that due form you love so well-but by God you’ll stomach it for now! This is urgent business, should it chance that ye’ve not yet grasped it!”
The prefect looked stricken. No fleshy, high-coloured, wine-loving old Visigoth he faced now, baffled by law and literacy and intent only on secure comfort in his declining years. Nay, this was Guntram the war-man who had reddened his sword on a score of battlefields in doing his part to turn back Attila’s Huns and conquer Hispania. The cheerful ruthlessness on the old soldier’s face was warrant that the threatened murders would be performed.
Proculus gathered what dignity he could, and returned to his place in that temper-littered room.
“Better; tha-at’s better,” Guntram said, nigh purring. “Now attend, all of you. I spoke of an inland raid. The report is amid this litter somewhere…” Guntram looked hopelessly round himself. “Well, the gist of it is that a pack-train carrying oil, white salt and fine glassware from Italy, was ambushed and robbed on a forest road… full twenty mile from the coast! The robbers were Danish pirates; their leader was recognized. There cannot be two men of that size, accoutred so, and with beards so red and axes so huge. For that it was on me the king’s anger fell. The stolen goods, y’see, were meant for the royal court. An I cannot deal a sharp blow to these pirates within the year, there may be a new Count of Burdigala… and a new commander of the fleet.” Guntram’s eyes wandered to Athanagild; Guntram glowered about at them all before he went on:
“Certain it is that there will be two less merchants in this city! And the new man, whoever he may be, will have words whispered to him about the municipal curia… bribes and such, you know; the king cheated of his taxes and the like. Think on it. Given our king’s the sort who’s apt to dismiss an old soldier who served his father thirty years and feels his wounds every night-to dismiss such a one over the matter of the royal table salt, what can you expect? Eh? And it’s written proof I have, and witnesses, mark me! Your fates depend on mine, all of you. You had better be convinced of that.”
Guntram had gone to purring again; was worse and more menacing, those men thought, than his shout and bluster.
“I’m with you, my lord Count,” Proculus assured him. “A loyal subject should do all he can to put down pirates. But how can I be of aid to you? I am no sailor or fighting man.”
“You can help with counsel,” he was told, “and ere we’re done there may well be a few little legal matters that need smoothing over. The Syrian was not merely gabbling when he said pirates are too many, but we have no need of sinking them by the dozens. Athanagild! Say that you knew where to find them, just where to find them, man, and what their movements would be?”
The younger Goth’s eyes sparkled. “My lord! I’d lay a couple of the greatest among them by the heels. We’d set some examples to give pause to the rest.”
“And gladden the king’s heart,” Guntram said, and he well nigh beamed. “He might then listen to me when I urge him to march his war-host into the Charente, to subdue or destroy those serpentish Saxons there! The damned place is a home away from home for Hengist and his throat-cutting captains! There’d be glory in it for you too, man. You’d have to strike from the sea at the same time.”
“Trap your specimen pirates first,” Proculus advised with wise cynicism.
“Right you are. I want Wulfhere and Cormac mac Art!”
“Merciful Saviour,” Philip the Syrian whispered.
Fleet Commander Athanagild grinned broadly.
“My lord Count, your pardon,” one of the curiales said. “I know little of individual pirate captains. Of these two I have not heard.”
“By God,” Athanagild grunted, �
�had you my job, you’d know their names! Or were you trader, or seaman or pirate of any sort. My lord?”
“By all means tell him.”
“Wulfhere of the Danes is a giant. He’s all of a foot taller than I, with the bones of an ox, a chest like a wall, and a crimson beard to cover half of it. Hausakliufr is he nicknamed in his own language-the Skull-splitter, and not for compliment’s sake. Battle is the greatest joy of this colossus’s life-the plunder’s but an excuse. His fellow Danes are hardly a weak-kneed lot, but they outlawed him because he was too dangerous to have around. Somewhat more to the point, there’s no bolder or more expert sailor on the northern seas.”
“You sound, sir, as though you had encountered the man.”
“I’ve seen him,” Athanagild owned, and the words came betwixt clenched teeth. “Aye, and heard him laugh at me through a gale. None would make a better display on a gibbet.”
“And the other?”
“Cormac? That one’s an exile from Hibernia, one of the few reivers wild enough to sail with Wulfhere. He’s dark as the Skull-splitter is red, a master of the sword, and subtle-brained. Wulfhere loves him for his battle-prowess and relies on him for his crafty advice. No snakes in Hibernia, eh? This Cormac mauled our coasts with a Celtic crew of his own, some years agone. One ship these two have, and sixty followers, and with that they’ve raked Britain and Gaul and Spain as if there were naught to oppose them but wax men with paper weapons.”
“I want them!” Guntram said harshly, and was momentarily nonplussed with no table to bang. “With all their fame, they’ve but one ship and none to avenge them. What’s more, it was these very two lifted the king’s pretties from the pack train.”
The disparaging scorn in his last phrase rang clear. Too canny to say it out in such words, or indeed in any words, Guntram despised his king. Alaric the Second, King of all the Visigoths, the old soldier considered a disgrace to his father’s name. Despite his rage at the piratical activity along his shores-and inland-the young king preferred to buy erotically skilled women from Egypt and the Levant to beguile his nights, rather than warships to patrol his coast. Guntram almost snorted, thinking of it; indeed, his nostrils flared.
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