“Aye, my lord. And-”
“There has been a storm! Storms.”
Cormac nodded solemnly. “Aye, lord King, and storm and sea like to have swallowed us, I make admission without shame.”
Now Cormac glanced significantly about him, for the first time noting the few men gathered here: Suevi under their tortured hair, darker Hispano-Romans though in the same short, decorated tunics, and a bald old man in a black-girt robe of aquamarine. Some looked most impressed and some were manifestly trying not to appear so; all stared at Cormac mac Art.
“A feat indeed, Cormac mac Art.” Veremund glanced over his nobles. “And from stories that have reached these ears concerning yourself and the Dane Wulfhere, I am not disposed to disbelieve the unbelievable of you. Nor am I loath to welcome such intrepid sailors… who have brought such embarrassment to the Goths! And… why were you in Nantes, Cormac mac Art?”
“Seeking a market, lord King, for some items of trade.”
“Items of trade.”
“Aye. A Gothic merchant-ship’s master is after seeing fit to bestow them on us a few days erenow… at the mouth of the Garonne.”
“Even there!” one of the nobles exclaimed.
Cormac was in a king’s presence; he did not respond to that, but kept his eyes fixed on Veremund. Veremund gestured for him to continue, and a little smile lifted the corners of the king’s reddish-brown mustache.
“Aye my lord King of the Sueves, and it was right swiftly we coursed northward to Frankish shores. For my lord of Burdigala is after dispatching a pair of warships-and them crowded with snarly marines-to hurry us on our way. Though in truth is was to slow us those men sought, and that more than somewhat!”
Laughter ran through those others in the hall of the king, and Veremund smiled.
“Ye tell me that in the space of a se’en-day, Cormac mac Art of Hivernia, ye’ve raided the Gothic shores even at the mouth of the Garonne; succeeded both in plundering a merchanter and eluding warships; slipped into the Loire well north, stole this lady from her affianced-her wicked affianced-out-shipped my lord King Clovis’s warships-which are huge and Romish-And crossed Treachery Bay to these shores.”
“During a storm,” Clodia reminded, and the hall exploded into laughter.
Cormac was nodding. “And, regrettably lord King, found evidence of murderous sorcery or worse in your own beacon-tower.” Cormac paused while all laughter stilled and every face went sober, and then he added, “And so came willingly here with your men.”
Veremund considered, gazing upon the tall and rangy pirate before him, and him darker of face than any present save the Hispano-Romans. The king turned his ring again and again with thumb and knuckle of the adjacent finger.
“It is in my mind that the waters you have been plying no longer hold much welcome for yourself, Cormac mac Art. Or prospect of continued health.”
“Truth, lord King. But it’s ever temporary such reverses are, and it’s a large world we habit.”
“Of a surety, and none will be crossing Treachery Bay after you! And… were Veremund of Galicia to tell you that ye be more than welcome here, and further that… he has offer of employment to ye, Cormac mac Art?”
“Despite my thirst and growing stiffness in my legs,” Cormac said, for no son of Eirrin bent very low before kings, “it’s listening I’d be, lord King. Methinks my lord of the Sueves would be borrowing from the wisdom of the Vandals, and seek to turn a landbound people into seafaring men?”
There had been a little murmur at Veremund’s carefully phrased offer; another followed Cormac’s straightforward words. Veremund’s eyebrows lifted high and his eyes twinkled no less than the fleck of mica in his diadem.
“Ye be no fool, Cormac mac Art, as evidenced afore by your speaking plain truth to me. In this wise, too, ye be correct. You and the Dane ye’ve long sailed with are surely the very men to aid me in floating a fleet and training up men to ply it. How say you?”
Amid a murmur in the hall, Cormac shifted his weight from his left foot to his right. “Myself says I’d not be disagreeing, lord King. But it’s Wulfhere Splitter of skulls who masters Raven our ship, and it’s him I’d be counselling with.”
“And where be Wulfhere the Dane?”
Smiling, Cormac said, “About, my lord… with others, watching those who watch our ship and doubtless waiting to learn if I require rescue.”
There were gasps, but Veremund smiled as if in spite of himself. Then he chuckled. “Watching my watchers?”
“Oh my lord, your men at the shore outnumber him and his only by two to one, and that Captain Wulfhere does not consider even a fair match-for himself.”
This time Veremund leaned back laughing. Others stared the while at mac Art and the king and the pretty girl who sat so near him in her white gown frosted with cloth-of-silver, and looking large-eyed on the Gael.
“Surely, brother,” she said, in a quite high voice fresh with youth, “this is the boldest and most outspoken man ever to stand before you in this hall!”
Madb’s breasts, Cormac thought, his sister! Another damned unwed princess! The bane of my life!
“Surely!” Veremund called, with his laughter slowly waning. And then he stopped it on a sudden, and looked full at her. “And one of the most dangerous, Eurica.”
“Then why does he wear his weapons?”
“Because, my dear sister, it were doubly dangerous to seek to deprive a brave man of pride of his weapons,” and Cormac knew this king was wise.
She gazed coolly upon Cormac. “Then might it not be wise to have him slain at once and scour our shores for his Danish comrade and others who may be hiding?”
Cormac mac Art kept his gaze on the king, and did not twitch his eyebrows. He looked cool, rather than dangerous-which assured observant men of wisdom that he was indeed a dangerous man.
“My sister is not known to be a fool, Cormac mac Art.”
So it’s to be a test, is it, and originating in this little girl all excited about the big pirate from the sea! “Indeed, lord King. The Lady Eurica may speak true, though detention were ever wiser than slaying out of hand-or attempting to do.”
Someone laughed. Eurica stared angrily. Her brother now kept his eyebrows steady.
“It is true,” Cormac added, “that though I pledge no acts against you or any of your people, kindness for kindness, neither Wulfhere nor I will vow fealty to yourself-or any other.”
The small female voice piped, “Or to me, Cormac mac Art of Hivernia?”
Cormac ignored her, continuing to gaze at her brother. The girl stamped her foot.
“Ye make my lady sister no reply, Cormac mac Art?”
“Lord King. My business here is audience with the King of the Suevi, who would be building a navy-and who has another problem that comes not from this natural world, surely. I’m after standing before kings erenow, and know how to behave. It’s fearful I am of doing insult on my lord by answering the queries of someone my lord King has not given permission to question me.”
The thick silence that followed those words might have presented challenge to the well-sharpened blade of Cormac’s dagger. Then the lady Princess Eurica rose with swift youthful sinuousness and a rustling of white skirts. Her sky-blue eyes flashed under darkened, downdrawn brows.
“As you said, lady sister, the boldest and most outspoken man to come before us. And… his point is well taken.” Veremund looked mildly up at his sister, who, thoughtlessly, with her anger on her, now stood higher than a king.
“I’ll not be chastised by a reaver from oversea and him with the stench of kelp about him!”
“Lord King,” Cormac said quietly, “as it’s naught but your good will I’m wishing, I make apology for bearing still the stench of that unholy stuff that slew your sea-tower watch… and I make apology too to your royal self for having angered your lady sister.”
Standing close beside her seated brother, Eurica stamped her foot. “And still he speaks not to me, nor looks at m
e!”
The Gael pressed his lips together. With slow deliberation and as if stiff of neck, he turned his head just enough to look into the anger-bright blue eyes of the Lady Eurica, who appeared very young indeed. He studied her face for a space, then moved his gaze slowly down her slim, white-clad form to her very toes in their beaded felt slippers, and then back up again, as slowly, to her face. It flamed, now. She stared. Her mouth worked and silver flashed as her bosom heaved. Her hands formed knobby little fists.
With slow deliberation, Cormac gave his head the quarter-turn necessary to return his gaze to her brother.
Himself no fool, Veremund rose to end the tension. He made a snuffing sound in his throat. “We must needs bring Wulfhere Skull-splitter among us, Cormac the Bold.”
“Cormac the Rude!”
“Unseemly, lady sister,” Veremund said, without looking at her he now made seem small, by his standing beside her. He was the king; she was a girl in her midteens, unmarried because he was still pondering, Cormac was sure, the options open to form alliances.
Veremund descended the two steps of the little dais on which rested his throne of oak set with gold and coral, and rune-carved. Eurica need not be embarrassingly dismissed; the king, with the Gael, was leaving her presence. As Veremund walked to Cormac and bade him accompany him, only his topknot brought him an inch above the Gael’s height of six feet.
“Ah-please have the Lady Clodia seen to, Zarabdas,” the king said, and he and Cormac mac Art left the chamber and the hall.
The king and a little retinue of fighting men rode with Cormac, whose shout soon fetched up Wulfhere and the others. And still others, to the astonishment and consternation of the men set to watch Raven. Veremund ordered the setting up of two pavilions without the gates of the old city for the crew of Raven, and he turned to the Gael.
“Unless ye’ll not be separated from your men, Cormac mac Art, you and Wulfhere will be quartered in my own hall.”
Cormac bowed his head, and looked at the giant ambling toward them.
“The king would have converse with us, Wulfhere.”
Wulfhere nodded, beaming, and shifted his grip on an ax whose weight should by now have stretched his right arm to his ankle. “Be there ale in Galicia?”
CHAPTER SEVEN: Bargain in Silver
There was ale in Galicia. Veremund and his people though, like the Romans, were drinkers of wine. Wulfhere downed a great mug of ale for his thirst before swiftly tucking away a flagon of wine to make his hosts happy. Then he was ready for ale again, and his hosts, seeing what sort of respect he had for their wine, did not say him nay.
In a low-beamed room whose walls were hung with draperies and tapestries that helped retain heat in winter and to ward it off in summer, they conferred: Veremund the King, and Cormac of Connacht in Eirrin, and Wulfhere of the land of the Danes-Dane-terre, Veremund’s people called it, for all the folk of this continent were more Romanized than they knew.
With them were Veremund’s tawny-moustached cousin and adviser, Irnic Break-ax; and the lean, bald, robed man of fifty or so years. Zarabdas of Palmyra his name, and him in a silver purfled, black-girt robe of aquamarine blue. From his belt hung an almoner of black leather. A ring gleamed with the dullness of gold on one knob-knuckled finger: a very old ring that seemed to consist of two twined serpents. A segmented sigil glinted on his breast, slung by a silver chain around his neck: a circle with wings. A winged sun, Cormac surmised, though it was no druidic emblem.
Zarabdas took ale but scant touched his lips to the glazed mug of vermilion pottery. Irnic had wine set before him in a goblet of beaten silver set with blue stones of some sort and what appeared, impressively, to be an emerald. He did not touch it. If a man of Irnic’s height-which was far from great-should have weighed a hundred and seventy pounds, Irnic probably carried fifteen pounds more. Nor, Cormac thought, impressed with the gaunt-faced fellow’s control and condition, could there be an ounce of fat on him. Irnic Break-ax was built for fighting.
The Gael had naturally been prepared to dislike the king, and instead liked him; the fellow wasn’t a monarch, he was a man! As for a king’s cousin made adviser-he should have been fat and impossible. The Lord Irnic was neither, and Cormac gave him respect.
As for the dusky man from the palmy deserts around ancient Palmyra, the fellow had the feel of sorcery about him, and only one sorcerer had Cormac mac Art ever trusted.
That man had been a druid, his name Sualtim Fodla. He was nearly nine years dead. He was long mentor to the boy Art’s son of Connacht had been, and Cormac was long past those days. Indeed, it seemed a score of years agone when he’d been the more than promising young weapon man in Connacht, and then in Leinster, until the treachery of kings and his own momentary hotheadedness had resulted in his exile.
Zarabdas’s twin beard was black as the wing of the raven, and Cormac had to wonder if the bald fellow weren’t dyeing it. The five men sat, most privily, at table. Ere they could begin to discuss ships and shipbuilding, crew and payment, Cormac brought up the matter of the vampire weed from the sea. When Zarabdas frowned, the Gael fixed him with a narroweyed look and recounted what he and his shipmates had discovered.
“This is the second time those managing the lighttower have fallen to such an attack,” Irnic said, who was in general command of the horse-soldiers of little Galicia. “Though on the previous occasion,” he said with teeth tightly set, “there were no signs of the killer of three men.”
“None?”
“None, Cormac mac Art. For that reason I ordered the crew increased to five.”
“And they died,” Wulfhere said, “just as three did.”
“The solution is not in numbers,” Cormac said. He sat back, legs asprawl, and toyed with the mug he stared at. “My lord Irnic… it is in my mind-I cannot be sure, o’course-that… the deadly kelp we found is somehow directed. With intelligence behind it, I mean.”
Mac Art gazed only at the mug, but saw nonetheless that Zarabdas frowned and seemed to arrange his features into a scoffing expression. Zarabdas appeared Irnic’s opposite: he must have weighed ten or so pounds less than whatever was normal for his height and his weight. In consequence he looked taller than he was, and his face was wrinkled like that of an old hound of Britain.
Cormac said, “Else why did the vampire weed withdraw after it did death on those manning the tower, and leave no trace of its presence or nature?”
“Such things are not possible,” Zarabdas said, in his voice that was dry as wind through the desert whence he came. “I would see such seaweed with these eyes.”
“An I see the kelp again, it’s calling ye I’ll be. See ye bring a sharp blade.”
Immediately Veremund snuffed, in his throat. “I am most pleased you are here, Wulfhere and mac Art. And I admit, Zarabdas, I am impressed with this canny Gael. His mind works logically even when it reaches an apparently illogical conclusion.”
Wulfhere tipped more ale into his mug. “Oh, it does that, all right.”
Cormac gave the king a little smile. A good man for avoiding trouble, this Veremund of the Suevi! “Myself has had thoughts on the matter. I’d be coming forward in an attempt to remove such a danger, an we’re to be dealing otherwise with my lord king.”
“Good!” Veremund and Irnic said, almost together, and they smiled each at the other then, so that Cormac knew they were friends.
“The weed,” Cormac said, “fears me.”
“Fears you?” Irnic echoed.
“And how is that?” Zarabdas asked, nor was his tone solely that of one seeking information.
Cormac tugged at the chain around his neck until he’d drawn up the Egyptian sigil from beneath his tunic. He displayed it with a dramatic air of significance.
In truth, the Gael had no notion of the thing’s meaning, or if it had one… or indeed if it was aught other than jewellery, which he did not wear. As he had thought it wise to lie about Clodia’s station, he was minded now to impress these people and create
some mystery-and to test the Palmyran, who was bending forward to gaze upon the sigil. Zarabdas’s mahogany eyes peered keenly, like those of a hunting hawk.
Cormac said, “It is not merely by armour and arms of good steel that I am protected, my lords.”
Cormac was gambling. Superstition held power even over kings. For aught he knew it was a bit of jewellery, this odd sigil that hung glittering on his mailed chest. He knew of no magickal significance it held. Nor was he the sort to rely on such even when their repute as talismans was established. No, it was that he had need, though, to impress these people. Too, he wanted to test the king’s mage, who had bent forward to stare closely at the golden serpent. Zarabdas’s narrow right hand was crooked possessively around the solar disc on his own thin breast. Cormac had observed how the Palmyran fondled it constantly.
As for the king, he was gazing questioningly at mac Art.
“It’s from slumbering Egypt this bauble comes, and men have killed each other for it. Excepting the most ignorant of them, that slaying was not merely for its value as precious metal.” Cormac paused for effect. “I am content to test its powers in your deathly tower, lord King, in attempt to remove the danger. As I believe I can.”
Veremund disrupted the silence so that Zarabdas jerked; the king brought a hand down on the table in a slap of decision.
“A noble offer,” Veremund said, “to be treated nobly!” And he strode to the door, which he flung wide so that it banged echoically. He gave the ornate ring from his first finger to a guard in a leather war shirt studded with iron. “Take this for authority, and fetch me Motsognir’s Chain from the treasure room.”
Turning back swiftly, Veremund surprised gape-jawed looks of consternation on the faces of Irnic and Zarabdas. Their dismay did not escape Cormac, or Wulfhere either. While the reivers did not know what Motsognir’s Chain might be, they grasped well that it was kept in the treasure room. They traded glances of bland meaning.
“My lord-” Zarabdas ventured.
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