“Cormac,” he said in greeting. “Skull-splitter.”
“Our very selves. And Thorfinn ye’ll not be knowing.
He has no word of Latin, Balsus, but give him to drink and he will not pine for conversation. He’s here to help with our load.”
More than that, he provided excuse for them to talk among themselves in Danish if they wished. The advantage was that Balsus Ammian would comprehend not a word. Cormac’s early life had not left him a trusting man.
“Plunder,” the merchant said, closing the door and replacing the bar. He found the word about as enticing as gout, to hear him, but his dark eyes gleamed. “It is a bad time for trade, Captain, but aye, we can discuss it.” To the brutal-faced hulk attending him he said, “Back to your bouncing, and tell Clodia we have guests warranting our best. Hungry, thirsty guests new from a sea voyage.”
The chucker-out’s nose had told him as much. With a grunt, he went through to the grog-shop, whence were borne odours of sausage, ale, wine, tar and sweat on gusts of argument, laughter, bawdry and alleged song.
Balsus led the way up creaking stairs to a room hung with cheap tapestry and rugged with sheepskins. Its odour was musty, but the pirates had sat in far worse. The lamps Balsus lit from his candle, puffing, burned scented oil. Cormac wondered idly how much could be got from rendering their host, and him wheezing like a walrus ashore after a rise of stairs…
They threw off their wadmal cloaks, and seated themselves with a creak and chime of battle-harness. The chairs held firm, even Wulfhere’s. They had been in this house erenow.
“Well, Captain,” Balsus said, “I’d never ask you-no, no, far from me the thought-to talk business neither drunk nor dined. You are famished, not so?”
A nod from Cormac and a vehement rumble of Wulfhere’s belly assured him it was.
“But a hint, an intimation while you eat-perchance a sample?” The hand of Balsus flashed in air, fingers partway curled into graspy claws.
Cormac, who yet carried his helmet in the crook of his arm, produced from it a wooden casket, and something else. That something glinted in the lamplight with gold and lapis lazuli and breathtaking jeweller’s art.
It certainly took their fence’s breath, and his face showed agony at the need to handle it casually. The bauble dangled, turning on its fine chain, from his graceless fingers, the sigil of a writhing winged serpent. His skin seemed to tingle at its nearness. It had not the look of mere ornament, though it was that, and wrought by a master; it impressed as a formal talisman.
Might it be? Cormac, watched him closely.
“It’s forgetting the casket ye seem to be,” the Gael murmured, and set down his helmet beside his leg.
“Time and to spare,” returned the merchant, dissembling too late. “One doesn’t wish to be hurried. By Saint Augustine! Frankincense!”
The aroma pervaded the room above that of the lamps.
“And more of the like yonder,” Cormac told him. “Spices, gums, jewels, and rolls of silk still dry in their covers. Our finest haul yet, so let us be having no more natter of how bad is trade nowadays. Your hands do betrayal on ye, man. It’s downright palsied with eagerness they are.”
“H’m. A splendid haul, yes. Not to be denied, but such-distinctiveness-brings its own problems, good my sirs. Makes it all but impossible to dispose of, do you see?” The fingertips of Balsus now massaged his palm.
Cormac stared back at him, unwinking. His hard boned face looked more sinister than ordinarily. Wulfhere, no fool, did not try to match that intimidating performance. He simply looked benign, and patient with his fellow man’s gaucheries.
Into the room and the moment, breaking the tension, came Balsus’s daughter Clodia.
A shrewd, spirited presence she, possessed of redbrown eyes and dense red-brown hair, with hips a-sway and skirt a-rustle. The tray she bore upheld an ale-jug large as a bucket, and four pewter tankards. Had been a goodly feat of strength on her part to bring it upstairs, but she knew it would last, in this company, one avid breath after it was poured.
The healthily-constructed young woman set it down on the table with gusty relief.
“Captain Wolf!”
She perched on his knee, took Cormac’s face between her hands and kissed him with knowledge and willingness enough to melt the grimness from his mouth. Nor was Cormac over susceptible. She knew him from the days when he had led his own crew of reivers from Eirrin, wherefore she and her father called him “Captain” even yet, for courtesy’s sake-a fancy to which Wulfhere was not mean-minded enow to object.
“And our walking menhir all shaggy with lichen!” she added, bussing Wulfhere with equal warmth. “You need not tell me. My beloved father has been trying to cheat you again.”
She poured the heavy brown ale. The three did not so much drink as breathe it in. She poured again, this time including her father in the round, and that finished the jug. Clodia put it aside.
“Garth”-this was the chucker-out-”will be waddling in like a goose with a keg in his arms. Sausage and cheese and a roast sucking-pig will come after; the man who ordered it will be desolate to hear that it fell in the fire, but we’ll feed him costless on something else-ohh!”
Her eyes had fallen on the Egyptian sigil. She picked it up with a murmured, “Beautiful,” and was about to slip it over her head when Balsus snatched it away. He did more. He struck her fiercely and snarled a curse.
Seeing Cormac’s eyes upon him, coldly speculative, he muttered something about “the jade’s getting above herself.”
The Gael knew well there was more. Balsus Ammian’s daughter had a business head as good as his own, and better judgment of men. Not only for her services as barmaid did her father have her attend such meetings as this. No. Something about the pendant itself had aroused his touchy possessiveness. Balsus must be deeply moved, else he’d conceal it better.
That, Cormac thought, will increase our profit from this night.
He wondered what the bauble’s significance might be.
Clodia had retreated to Wulfhere for comfort, which he charitably provided with a hand up her skirt. Her tears quickly dried, she fussed and wriggled and slapped him lightly without making aught of real efforts to get away; she did glance sidewise to see the effect of this byplay on Cormac. He was paying not the least attention; no care on him if Wulfhere were to set her astride his lap and go him to work in earnest.
The edge removed from his thirst, Cormac poured down his ale at a slower rate. His custom was not to touch wine until business was settled, and until they had food in them, their trading would not even be discussed. But there was news to be had that did not bear directly upon business, and Cormac had always an ear for news.
Balsus dropped the winged serpent on the table beside the casket.
“Handsome,” he said casually. “Yes. But as I mentioned, trade becomes ruinous. And there are bribes. The custom-house must document, for lawful credibility, such goods as I buy from you… the which is naturally not done for love. Its chief grows more and more demanding. I’ve cut back his profits, and chanced the sale of more common goods without telling him, but what you bring tonight is not of that class. ’Tis conspicuous-such as none but kings or great nobles can purchase. Such folk are finicky over forms of law, if not their letter.”
“We can spare ye the danger and worry,” Cormac said bluntly. “It’s kings and great nobles there are in the west of Britain whose fathers never bowed to Rome. These are not, I promise ye, finicky with forms of law. It’s no such foolish questions as where we got it they’d be asking.”
“There now, father, see what you’ve done!” This from Clodia, leaning on Cormac’s shoulder. “This customs official Nestor is greedy, true-but he takes what he can get, and sweats and shivers o’ nights, I shouldn’t wonder, lest the Consul get wind of his… private transactions. What can he do but complain? Nay, he’s that eager to tumble me he scarcely even does that-the fool, hankering to mix business with venery!” (Which was Co
rmac’s own opinion on the matter, and the reason he had not tumbled Clodia in the years of their acquaintance.) “I doubt he so much as suspects he’s been cheated.”
Someone found that cue too apt for resisting.
An object, impelled up the stairs by a casual toss, arced through the doorway left open for the promised ale. Its distinct sodden thump on the floor drew their eyes, which widened, Balsus’s and Clodia’s in profound horror. The object rolled to a terminus and tilted a face of starkest agony towards them.
Balsus croaked involuntarily, “Nestor!”
Cormac did three things, and on the instant, and so near simultaneously that the difference was not a practical issue. He shoved Clodia violently away lest she cling to him in shock. He sprang to his feet, overturning his chair. He ripped sword from sheath with a harsh metal whine.
And one action more he took. Stooping, he snatched his helmet and covered his square-cut black mop with it.
All this was done whiles Wulfhere and Thorfinn were rearing upright, in an explosion of hair-trigger response too swift for the eye. Then Cormac was ominously, totally still again, a strip of edged pointed steel in one hand and readiness to kill in every line of him. Yellow lamplight shone on his mail and helmet.
Men seethed into the room, ten or a dozen, disposing themselves either side of the door.
Cormac recognized them as Franks.
Ax-armed they were, in long leather vests and closefitting trews; with the backs of their heads shaved bald, most of the remaining hair drawn up in a thick tress on top of the head and the rest combed forward in a fringe over their brows, they could be from no other tribe.
No half-civilized Goths or Vandals had they here, but untamed killers out of the forest marches.
“Let nobody,” a voice came from the dark beyond the door, “move a finger.”
The speaker sauntered in. Lithe and handsome, indeed over-handsome, begemmed and perfumed and shaven, his dark brown hair exquisitely barbered in Roman bangs, he was a picture. Limpid hazel eyes were scarcely needed to complete it; despite their colour, though, they had even less warmth in them than Cormac’s. Too, they were as watchful, if not so slitted and deep-set.
Wulfhere looked infinities of scorn at him. The Dane’s horned helmet stood on the table. Coolly, deliberately, he set it on his shaggy head. The stranger betrayed no irritation.
“A defiant fellow,” he said affectionately. “A fearless, overgrown rat in the woodwork of the kingdom! You are going to squeak like a mouse between the claws. I have some clever iron devices that will reduce you to manageable size, a nose here, a finger-joint there. And your glowering, dark-visaged friend.”
None answered him. He lifted the head of the customs official by the blood-splashed hair.
“This fool could tell you; were he not forever dumb. But perchance his expression says enough. He did not die graciously… and he did suspect.”
Thump went the ghastly thing on the table. Clodia started. The stranger lifted a brow in appreciation of the sight that made.
“Your late friend Nestor contracted a fever last month, and thought it was plague. He called for a priest right enow, and he couldn’t babble his confession sufficiently fast. The priest broke the confidence of confessional to gain favour with his bishop, Remigius of Reims… and in my turn I owe the bishop a favour, now. There is always proof to be had when one knows where to look for it. The king was pleased… behold in me the new customs assessor of Nantes!
“My name is Sigebert. It will be better known for this night’s work-a fortunate one for my future, eh? The new broom sweeping briskly, as they say. One fat traitorous merchant and a trio of sea-pirates on the first night of my office, all for torment! I judge your profession aright, do I not? Methinks I can even guess your names, or two of them. The Count of Burdigala might pay well to have you handed across the Loire into his hands. My king would approve the transaction, I am sure.”
Sigebert loved, Cormac noted, the sound of his own sweet voice. Aye, and in particular when it was explaining how clever he was. Cormac despised the man, but he remained silent.
Sigebert raked the woman from hair to feet with sparkling eyes.
“You need not suffer, my dear,” he said politely. “Unless of course you’re of firm mind to join your father and this low company you’ve fallen into, whither they are bound. Let me advise you: welcome me instead to Nantes in appropriate fashion.”
Clodia shuddered. Her father, no doubt, would have pleaded for leniency, but he was too terror-stricken to find his tongue. Such was never a fault of Cormac’s, and he felt that Sigebert had orated long enough.
“Be not a fool, man,” he said. “I suppose none of your soldiers is after having a Latin education? They do not look it.”
“They apprehend not a word we are saying.”
“And I’d lay wagers that it is not by chance. Well, then-take ye Nestor’s private arrangements unto yourself, as ye have his house and station. Accept our bond that we will deliver ye full accounting of all we… find, asea, and a third share in the profits. They ought to suffice for such splitting, with the Nantes customs assessor to pass us intelligence. And that ye may look better than him who preceded ye, to be sure, we’d be looting no Roman craft. In such wise it’s happy and wealthy we’ll all be!”
Sigebert considered the swiftly sketched proposition. Watching, the Gael began to believe he had talked his way out of this trap.
He knew Sigebert’s kind. There were Franks in some numbers at the court of Soissons; their kingdom lay to the east, where they had been settled as federates of the Empire. The polite fiction was that they were still its subjects. Franks made up a large part of King Syagrius’s army. Much rarer were polished courtiers like this one, but they existed, wearing Latin speech and Latin education like their jewels, and Sigebert had seemingly learned Latin calculation as well. It had not changed him.
Under costume and manners this Sigebert was Frankish to the marrow: treacherous, bloody and cruel.
Thus too had Clodia assessed him, with no difficulty. She knew men. When she thought of having to please this one abed, and gave thought to what that might involve, claws of panic terror ripped at her mind. She could not help shaking.
Sigebert’s gaze kept roving to her whilst he considered. He obviously enjoyed the outward signs of her fear.
He made up his mind.
“No. Wealth and happiness? They are more to be hoped for from my lord the king than a pair of foreign reivers. Take them!”
Like fierce hounds unleashed, the soldiers bayed forward.
Wulfhere’s ax sprang aloft, light as a withe in a child’s hands. The foremost Frank hurtled back again, breast caved in, a scarlet ruin of a man. He fouled the legs of two of his mates. As one stumbled, he felt the cold sliding intrusion of Cormac’s point in his throat. A short Frankish ax banged on the Gael’s helmet, turning his head. Fuzzy lights crossed Cormac’s vision. On a born sworder’s instinct, and all the training and experience that had been his portion since, he struck backhanded.
A drawing stroke with the edge it was, and it opened his assailant’s side through leather and flesh to the spine. Entrails bulged out like a host of escaping snakes, and steel grated on bone.
Clodia seized the moment’s opportunity to hide the Egyptian sigil in her hospitable bosom.
Her father, less greedy or less calm in emergency, thought he saw an opening and barged for the doorway. The flat of a Frankish ax clouted him negligently on the side of the head, impelled him through the frame and dropped him senseless a pace or two beyond it.
And Wulfhere killed another man, and Black Thorfinn the second that had fallen before him.
Cormac twisted lithely aside from a hurtling ax-edge, dropped to one knee beneath a second, and drove the point he favoured over the edge under a leather tunic and deep into a Frankish groin. The man made a high whistling shriek like a snared rabbit, and folded double on his way to the encrimsoned floor. Wulfhere’s ax clanged and crashed, and
there was company for Nestor’s severed head.
In bare moments, Sigebert had been left with three men standing. The smile had vanished from his mouth to be succeeded by something like horror. He drew his sword from its gilded sheath.
Black Thorfinn met his weird then. With a raucous battle-cry in his teeth, he cut at Sigebert. A soldier interposed his buckler. Thorfinn’s sword shrieked along the rim; his point, by a freak of chance, snagged the corner of Sigebert’s mouth and ripped upward through his cheek, to slice the ear from his head on that side.
The same soldier swung his ax. It split the scale byrnie to chop through Thorfinn’s ribs and open his lung.
The Frankish lordling staggered, but did not fall. Red howling agony filled his head. He saw the man who had hurt him. By naked instinct, he thrust home.
Thorfinn, stricken already, his armour gaping, had half a foot of steel rammed through his navel. The irony was that never but in pain-maddened frenzy would Sigebert have used a thrust at all. Swordplay was entirely with the edge, and of all men only Cormac mac Art seemed to appreciate what the point could do; the Gael used it deliberately and constantly. He had learned the art’s efficacy long ago in Eirrin, of a fine weapon-man. A dead man, one of too many dead bloodying the Gael’s life-wake.
Thorfinn fell, gasping. Sigebert stumbled through the door and half-toppled downstairs, screaming for the men who surrounded the place. The three remaining soldiers retreated as far as the head of the stairs, dragging the inert Balsus with them.
Cormac slammed the door and dropped its bar. “Out of this!” he grunted.
“But my father!”
“Stay here, then.”
Clodia chose not to do that. She wrenched open the door on the room’s far side, and the reivers followed her out. They left a bloody shambles behind them, as often they’d done afore, the lamplight shining on gore and cloven metal. Then the door closed after them.
The trio stood in a musty darkness in the main part of the warehouse, on a crude railed gallery that ran about it on three sides. The floor below was stacked with ship’s goods: barrels, bales and bundles; canvas and thin dressed leather for sails and pitch for caulking; oil and candles and salt meat, rope and cord and twine. And concealed among it all, as leaves in a forest, such trade items as were never bought for sailors. They would be found and confiscated for certain, but there was no time to resent that.
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