“Nothing!” the flame-haired giant said explosively. “We saw nothing! No sign of wrecked ships, not even a plank. And no slain men, sucked dry or otherwise.”
Cormac made a sympathetic face and gave his head a jerk. “Will ye be ready to-morrow evening?”
“Aye,” Wulfhere nodded. “To-morrow e’en. And… I’ll not be sleeping in our chamber this night, again.
“My chamber,” Cormac corrected. “Not a married lady, I hope.”
“Frey’s stones, No! Neither of them!”
As they were finishing dinner, Zarabdas quietly let Cormac know that he would have converse. The Gael was none loath and they went outside for a walk about the grounds of the king’s hall. The sky was still a deep slate colour, rather than black. They talked, but nothing was said.
“Was you suggested a talk,” Cormac said at last, “but we talk not. It’s but tentatively feinting each of us is, and almost desperately parrying. Methinks is because neither of us really wishes to tell the other aught of his knowledge and arcane powers.” Of which I have none, Cormac added, but only in his own mind.
“Straightforward words. And true. Might one ask how came ye by the medallion ye showed us?”
Cormac but smiled, very slightly. He could be seen; it was answer enow.
“Well then… might I see it again, now we are sure we serve the same king?”
Cormac paused, turned to the other man, and stared.
Zarabdas at last frowned. “Ye seem to have suffered a seizure of the tongue, mac Art.”
“What I have suffered, mage, is a seizure of the sigil! It vanished during the night just passed. Nor can I fathom how anyone entered my chamber without awaking me-unless by some sorcerous means. Too, Zarabdas, no one has been so interested as yourself, in that… bauble.”
“Stolen!” Zarabdas hissed. “And I hear myself being accused without so many words… mac Art, I have it not. I do not steal. Nor do I believe that medallion to be other than a piece of Egyptian jewellery of no great age.”
“Then why would someone in the hall of the king himself be going to such trouble to steal it? Surely no paupers sleep within the keep!”
“I cannot say,” Zarabdas said, meeting Cormac’s slitted eyes straight on; the two men stood still now, face to face. “Mayhap I am wrong about the medallion’s meaning, and possible… use. And mayhap another thought it to be valuable, of thaumaturgic use. Hmm. The thief woke neither you nor your bearish friend?”
“He… took his rest elsewhere.”
“Ah. Rest, eh?” Almost, Zarabdas smiled. “Of course… Cormac mac Art: do you bolt your door this night.”
“It had occurred to me,” Cormac said with exaggerated dryness. “It’s thinking too I’ve been of leaving it unlocked-and sleeping not, but waiting with sword in hand.”
“Not unwise; save that when one sleeps in the hall of the mighty, one must be most cautious as to whom one attacks, in one’s own chamber or no.”
“I do not believe it’s the king will be visiting me this night,” Cormac said.
“I will think on this,” Zarabdas said, and turned and returned to the hall while a surprised Cormac stood and watched.
Things were seldom what they seemed; Cormac mac Art had learned that, and too many times had he learned and re-learned the lesson to his anguish. Could Zarabdas be sincere, and guiltless, and without knowledge of the accursed sigil?
Mayhap I be well rid of the damned bauble! Well, I’ll be going on in and-oh, blood of the gods! Trapped!
It was the Lody Plotina, wearing a darkish dress draped with care to disguise the fact that her belly extended considerably farther than her bosom, which was a considerable distance. Nothing sinister, at least, in that dissemblage-or in her brazen suggestion.
“My lady is a follower of the dead-of Our Lord the Nazarene?”
Frowning, Plotina asked, “Aye-and why do you ask? What has that to do with thee and me?”
“It means that you will understand my sad state, my gracious lady; I have taken a vow of chastity.”
“Oh!”
She was most sorry, and departed with little grace, though she tried. A grimly smiling mac Art reflected on his lie and was most happy that Behl and Crom of Eirrin were not like the Dead God of the Saints or Christians, threatening vengeance on those who professed a faith other than theirs.
He made a little bargain with a kitchen maid, who was not unhappy to be groped or to proffer a jug of wine and a cup on the king’s guest. She asked twice, looking up from under long darkened lashes, if that were all “my lord Mackert” wanted of her. He assured her that it was, and was wondering at his own sanity by the time he was in his room and sitting back, sipping the best fate of Hispanic grapes. It was not the best wine he’d tasted-though it far exceeded in quality that stuff the Britons made from the wrinkly grapes their chill wet climate produced.
He filled a second cup, thinking, and was soon yawning-when there came a tap at his door. He set down the pottery mug, looked thoughtfully at his mailcoat and sword, and have his head a jerk. In the manner of a civilized man, he inquired who was there. It was Zarabdas. Cormac admitted him.
Zarabdas, whose pate was so clear of hair and yet whose beard was so dark, wore a different robe, light and ungirt. And he held a stemmed, round object with a piebald pattern on its knob, which was a bit larger than the Gael’s fist. Merely a dried gourd, Cormac saw.
“A talisman?”
Zarabdas smiled, and shook the gourd. It rattled, dried with its seeds within. A nice children’s toy; some folk hung them outside the door to rattle in the wind and frighten night-demons.
“No,” the Palmyran said, “a doorstop.”
Cormac blinked, then nodded his understanding.
“Ah.” He took the gourd, thanked the mage, and closed the door. He set the gourd carefully against its base.
And he retired, dagger close to hand and his sword standing in a corner on the other side of the bed. The wine soon enveloped him in sleep.
A strange sound aroused him. Cormac awoke as fully alert as any pirate, and but a moment passed before he realized that what he was hearing was a child’s rattleball rolling along the floor. He had his dagger in his fist and was out of bed and several feet from it in an instant.
“It’s in me hand my sword is, and if ye ope the door to depart ye’ll become a sheath. Came ye to slay, or to steal more than ye did yester night?”
“Neither,” a tiny female voice quavered. “I am come to return that which I… borrowed on yester even.”
“Eurica?”
“Aye,” she squeaked, and there was a pause while she swallowed and found her voice, which was very small even when she’d not been terrified. “And unarmed. Please don’t hurt me-I am walking toward your voice. I bear no arms. Shall I stretch out my hands or put them behind my back?”
“Behind your back,” he said, and stretched out his left hand. He heard the approach of her voice, but now she had fallen silent he heard not even the whisper of feet.
So! Who’d have guessed a girl who liked so to stamp her feet could be as silent as a cat walking on velvet! His armpits prickled, and he held forth his left hand, while his right held the dagger ready to strike upward. Then he heard a whisper of cloth, and knew she was close enough to touch, and damned himself mentally for a fool: she was short, and he was holding his hand too high. He lowered it-directly onto her head, and she made a frightened mouse sound.
“Hands at your sides. Be perfectly still. My blade is ready in my other hand.”
He felt her, with his left. A long cloak, silk sewn to wool. An empty hand; another. Aye, and within the cloak a slender chain. Tracing his hand down, he found two well-spaced little hills of flesh, almost hard in youthful firmness. Betwixt them was the winged medallion. And a low-necked shift of some gauzy stuff. Her under-dress, or perhaps a nightdress; he knew some wore such, even when the weather was far from wintry.
“Why took ye this?”
“I-came for an-another purpose,” she sai
d, and he both felt and heard that the girl trembled still. “I had not the-the courage, once I was within and found ye-s-s-sleeping. But-I took the sigil I knew you had worn. I… have liked having it between my breasts, this day.’;
“Ye’ve warmed it for me.”
“Aye,” she said, signally tiny of voice.
“And shall I be taking it now?”
In an even tinier voice: “Aye.”
“Uh-oh, sorry. Hmmm.” He groped under her hair, which was very soft. “Think ye I can be taking this from ye without your undressing?”
“…no…”
Cormac heaved an elaborate sigh. “Ah, then I must be begging ye to hand it me on the morrow, lady Princess.”
“Wh-wh-but-”
He leaned close, so that her hair brushed his lips. “It’s not alone I am, here.”
“But-the Dane is with-”
“It’s not the Dane I speak of, lady Princess.”
“Then you-Oh!”
“Shhhh-it’s asleep she is, and we’d not want her awake and knowing the royal princess is here.”
“oh!”
Cormac remained silent. Go, damn ye girl, go-and all the gods save Art’s poor dear boy of Connacht from still another princess-this is one king I’d rather not befalling out with!
“I hadn’t realized you…”
“Cormac the Bold; was yourself said it, lady Princess. It’s flattered I am, and forever grateful. Have care that none sees ye now, returning to your own quarters.”
Something jingle-clattered on the floor. “Take your damned bauble, pirate!”
The door opened and closed. Blowing out his lips, Cormac sighed again-this time genuinely, in relief. King’s daughters were his bane, and would be his weird unless he protected himself. Aye, and king’s sisters. Kings had a habit of thinking the royal women should leave alone un-royal males. Nor, an the ladies disagreed and took action elsewise, was it they on whom royal anger and punishment fell.
Yet he was not unaroused, and was long gaining his sleep that night. On the morrow he’d a few words with a lowborn and extraordinarily well-constructed wench, and she passed a few words back, and he and she exchanged a few more, and agreement was reached. He had his self defense, he thought, and besides, it was hardly meet for a man to have to lie to a princess more than once, that he was not alone!
CHAPTER TEN: Night of the Demon-Weed
The day came, and went again, and Cormac and Wulfhere went down to the sea.
Cormac chose his men and Wulfhere his. They disagreed only over Hugi the Nimble, whom they both wanted. With little grace Wulfhere agreed that orange-moustached Hugi was of more use to mac Art than to his shipmaster. The swift beardless Dane, rangy as Cormac though shorter by a hand’s breadth, joined the Gael and those others he’d chosen to accompany him in this night’s vigil and work.
“A fine afternoon for a little rowing!” a man called out.
Though negative sentiments and indeed thoughts were infrequent visitors to his mind, Wulfhere quoted Father Odin Himself: “Praise not the day till evening has come.” He looked at Cormac. “Methinks it will storm.”
Cormac glanced skyward. “The sky is clear enow.”
Wulfhere rubbed his backside. “My butt says otherwise, and you know how dependable this old ham-wound is.”
“Would ye be waiting for another night?”
“No.” And with six-and-twenty men besides himself, the redbearded giant mounted into Raven. He stood dolorously studying the distant sky while his crew took twenty-foot oars from their holding forks and went to their seats. Ashore at the edge of the quay, Cormac watched while each stout wooden oar-blade was threaded into its narrow slot and dropped into the little oar-port.
Wulfhere turned, and he and Cormac stared at each other. Both men nodded. Then Wulfhere signalled, and oars dipped and pushed and lifted, and Raven began easing backward from shore. Her hawkbeak and gunwales rode high in the water, despite the sea-anchors: each rope-bound stone was of such size that two men had carried it aboard, with grunts and a smashed fingertip.
Cormac glanced up along the coast. There stood Zarabdas, in woollen tunic and leggings of plain midbrown, buskins gaitered to the knees, and a cloak of dark blue. It hung still and straight and square-hemmed from the Roman clasp at his shoulder: no breeze stirred. To hand by him were two torches well-oiled, and flint and steel for their lighting. This night the Palmyran would see for himself what befell.
Cormac looked on his four companions.
Hugi the Nimble in his leathern jerkin sewn with armour bosses of whorl-dited bronze that did not quite touch each other, and armed with his short-hafted ax and the sword he had of a Roman cavalry officer who should have stayed ashore; Gudfred Hrut’s son, who with his massy helmet, full beard, and sweeping mustachioes-and small nose-seemed little more than a pair of lake-grey eyes under a black helm and separated from his half-sleeved coat of overlapping steel scales by his russet beard of a thousand curls; burly Edric in his captured Roman helmet with visor all esthetically tooled in blackened silver and the scalemail coat his own mother had years agone enameled with blue; was about half sky-blue and half steel-grey now, from years of serving its purpose. And there was Hakon Snorri’s son, in steel-stripped coat of boiled black leather and unadorned helmet of three steel bands around a cap of leather lined with sponge. He’d a three-inch scar down forehead and cheek, Hakon had, that was white-pink and commemorated a sword-stroke that had missed his eye by less than the breadth of his smallest finger.
Each man bore a good round shield of linden-wood rimmed and bossed with dark iron, arm- and hand-strap within and chipped paint on its face. (Indeed on Gudfred’s shield only chips remained of the scarlet paint that had once covered it, so that his buckler had a blood-flecked look about it.)
Hugi alone wore sheathed sword; the others carried the more common ax with two-pound head and haft just over a foot’s length. Each wore leathern leggings and boots rather than gaiter-strapped buskins. At the hip of each hung a broad-bladed long dagger; the hilts of three curved into dragon-heads while Edric’s was a large, plain knob of night-blue iron. He and Hakon Shorri’s son bore another dagger in addition; Hakon could throw a knife true as a sped arrow. Only Gudfred was not red of hair, for at two-and-thirty he’d gone grey as the cairnstones of his own Dane-mark. All were cloaked, and two of those brooches were of solid gold while the head of’ Hugi’s brooch-pin was capped with a rough-cut sapphire. Piracy were not all unpleasantry.
The four looked back at Cormac mac Art: tall and rangy the Gael was, deceptively strong and beloved for his craftiness; steel-eyed and jet-haired, a man nigh as likely to use his sword daggerishly as to slash and cut. His mailcoat was in the style of Eirrin, not theirs; thousands of quintuply-linked circles of steel formed it and each was separately welded. He wore no decor; the Celtic torc about his strong neck and the bracer on his right wrist could not be considered such. Young was Cormac mac Art though old his eyes and scarred his face, which was darker than any Dane’s and not with their ruddiness. He scraped his face daily, when not asea.
As Wulfhere was the bull capable of smashing through the side of a barn, Cormac was the wolf who craftily plotted and sought out the quieter, less dramatic entry.
Without a word, the wolf turned and walked along the stone-sided quay to the beacon-tower. Without a word, his pack followed.
Their spears they left at the tower’s base, beside its heavy door. And they went in, and up, and up.
Cormac had deemed it wise to man the tower with but the five of them. More men might well hinder each other’s movements. The light-chamber was hardly spacious. He and his companions were hemmed about by a goodly supply of prepared lime in sealskin bags, and two stacks of faggots soaked in animal grease, and the table with flint and steel and closed oil-lamp. And there was the beacon, and its platform against the niche of a window through which it shone.
Doffing their cloaks, five men piled them in a corner.
Peering out, Cormac s
aw Wulfhere standing out well offshore and his men still pulling their oars. Zarabdas was just visible, standing where on yesterday Cormac had sat. Though now their gazes met, he and the Gael exchanged no sign. Cormac turned back to his men. They went again through his plan, assuming that there would happen that which he expected.
They waited.
Well out on the water, Raven waited. A stout rope ran taut over either side to trail down into the dark water, bound to the huge stone serving as sea-anchor. They waited.
The sky went pink and lavender and grey. Orange suffused the horizon, and darkened. The sun crouched, was halved by world’s edge, and sank from sight. They waited. A breeze stirred. Looking out and below, Cormac watched the formation of sea-clouds: creeping, shifting fog, white shading to pearly grey. It seemed to finger out from the shore, reaching for Raven. Gradually it enshrouded the base of the tower, though to no great height.
The sun was gone. Cormac and Hugi lit the beacon. And they waited.
“My eyes see only grey,” Cormac said, turning from the beacon-window. His pupils were huge from his staring attempts to see aught amiss out there in the fog. “Hakon?”
Hakon took up the watch, and they waited. “See ye nothing, Hakon?”
“The fog shifts and shifts, unfortunately. Only that. Stars twinkle. The moon comes.” Hakon squeezed his eyes shut and knuckled them. “Ah that I had the eyes of Heimdallr!”
“Gudfred,” Cormac said. “Your watch.”
Gudfred took Hakon’s place and they waited, and he watched, and heartbeats thumped away minute after minute.
“We should have brought a game-board,” Edric said, in his voice that was so oddly high for all his burliness.
Outside, the breeze stiffened. It murmured, now. Far off, thunder sounded in a long rumble.
“Listen to Sleipnir gallop!” Edric said, and at the window Gudfred looked up as if to see Odin’s eight-legged mount. Cormac remembered Wulfhere’s boding ham.
“I am thinking of a thing,” Hugi said, beginning a game, “and it is blue and grey.”
“A gull,” Hakon guessed.
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