Andrew Offutt - When Death Birds Fly

The Basques strained mightily to avoid the impact. They succeeded only partly.

Raven’s deadly beak, driving fiercely through the water, did not bite amidships; instead it smashed one of the Basque’s long steeringsweeps with a terrible grinding popping crack-and with a crash, half-shattered the stern. A splinter of wood thick as his arm and longer than he drove through a Basque’s body as if it had been a hurled spear. His ship lurched violently over while he gurgled death. Crew and marines flew through the air like hurled toys to plop-plop into the water like so many clods of dirt.

Cormac’s sword glittered bare. The glitter in his sword-grey eyes was no softer and his lips drew back from his teeth in a wolfish snarl. The dark Gaelic rage was upon him. Reason shrank and battle-frenzy ruled his brain and body. He only just remembered to snatch up his shield.

“HAAAA!” he yelled earsplittingly. “Sunder them!”

He sprang to Raven’s shield-rail as though he knew no encumbrance of sword and ten-pound helm of steel over sponge and forty-pound mailcoat and heavy buckler of wood and iron; and thence he pounced down into the Basque ship. Another ugly feral cry tore from him.

His round shield, thrust ahead of him into snarling black-bearded faces, deflected two spear-heads while breaking off another it happened to meet squarely. Basques went down under this mad assailant’s greater weight, sore surprised and disconcerted by a man who used seventeen pounds of buckler as an offensive weapon.

Cormac swung that lindenwood shield more, in a bone-breaking arc this time, to gain space for himself. Springing fully erect, he ruthlessly stamped the head of a man downed by his leap. An ax banged on his shield and his own elbow was driven into his side, mail against mail in a rasp of steel links. His sword replied. The point ran into a man’s side; a man Cormac never saw. More surprise for the enemy: Cormac mac Art was fond of using his point. He yanked it free in a sluicing spurt of blood and slashed sidewise without ever looking at the foe whose arm he destroyed.

The attackers were attacked by a madman. The raging Gael cut his way forward without looking back to see whether any comrades followed him.

Half a dozen did. Despite the horror of what they thought they saw, they noted too that Cormac was fearless and that hideous corpses fell before his one-man charge. The Danish pirates were not backward about discovering that what they perceived as living dead could die again, and fall like men. Leggings and arms were splashed warmly. Crimson runnels spilled over the ship’s timbers.

Wulfhere’s instincts were to plunge after his blood-brother. But Wulfhere commanded Raven . He cursed and cheered Cormac equally and without bias, while knowing he durst not follow into the blade-reddening action he loved. His archers were still speeding volleys onto the two remaining Basque ships. Close upon them now, those vessels were bearing down in foam-sided furrows white as new samite.

“Belay that!” Wulfhere roared in a voice like an ocean-storm. “Bend to rowing, ye geldings! Would ye be cracked like a nut betwixt tongs? Lay alongside that one, the nearer-we’ll grapple to her! Ugly bastards, aren’t they! Best we aid them along to Ran’s arms where they belong, lads!”

His broad face darkened with passion above his flaming beard. Ax upraised, his immense height increased nearly to seven feet by his horned helmet, Wulfhere Skull-splitter was a fearsome sight. The bitter necessity of leaving mac Art fighting for his life made the giant’s rage greater, if such were possible. He loosed another hideous bellowing cry that froze Basque blood into marrow and whitened dark faces. He gnashed his teeth and foam speckled his vast beard like white-hot flame amid red.

Glaring, he brandished his terrible ax and raved threats against the ship he had designated for assault. He cursed each moment that passed ere the first grappling hook could fly.

To Wulfhere-as to all left aboard Raven -they moved against a vessel of unnatural life-in-death. All too recently he had coped asea with foes otherworldly and inhuman. Now his eyes assured him that death’s head liches stared at him from sockets like thumb-gouged holes, and thirsted for his blood. Yet he never hesitated, nor did his men.

Grappling hooks flew gleaming like dragon’s teeth. Some bit into wooden strakes while others missed because the ship’s structure was not what they saw it to be. Those men reeled in and tried again even as feverish fishermen, the while Raven drew closer by means of those lines that had found purchase. Wood creaked and water hissed and gurgled as the two craft swung close.

Wulfhere Hausakluifr was first over the side, in a flying leap that should not have been possible to a man of such size. Like those of a mad giant his big feet crashed to the deck of the other vessel. Behind him swarmed his men, yelling in the way of wolves or berserks. They rattled onto the Basque craft, tall fair men all agleam in armour of glittering bosses or lapping scales sewn to byrnies of boiled leather.

Counting their leader, the Danes numbered five-and-thirty. While their arrows had left about that many Basques to face them, the Danes in general were bigger men, and armoured besides.

Faces of corrupting death leered at them. Weapons hacked and stabbed in fists with tattered grey flesh raveling around knuckles of bare white bone. The northerners’ noses were deceived, too, for the stink of death was as of an old burial-barrow torn open. Yet their very revulsion nerved the Danes to fight with transcendent fury.

Axes and swords swung and hacked, flashing like lightning bolts playing about the deck, and where they struck crimson sprang up. Basques went down. Attackers had been attacked; attack became massacre.

Wulfhere strode raving through the melee. His ax rose and fell, chopping and streaming, in a racket of cloven bone and metal. In his mighty arms it described huge horizontal eight-figures in air, the interlocked circles formed of a scarletdotted blur of grey, so swiftly did he swing his ax. A sword rushed at him and the shield of the man just behind Wulfhere rushed forward. It did not stop, and a seemingly half-decayed face shattered around the iron boss. Teeth clattered onto the deck. Wulfhere plunged on. He disdained a shield; he had his ax. Thus! and a head flew from ragged shoulders. Thus! and blackened stinking bowels burst from a belly that had appeared swollen tight with putrefaction.

The third ship wavered. Its oars contradicted one another. Then it turned about and fled the battle become massacre. It vanished into the blue dusk and was seen no more.

Usconvets, aboard the ship Wulfhere and his men were rapidly making into a slaughter-yard afloat, saw it happen. From behind the grisly magical illusion that masked his face, the Basque pirate cried out in despair.

“Cut free! Part those grappling ropes and break off the fight!”

His men rallied, fired by desperation and the example he showed them.

Yet still they did not fight as they ought, and could. The illusion encompassed the vision of all save Cormac. What the Basques saw bracing the Danes was not their chief, but a foully animate corpse. It did not inspire them, though it shouted in a voice that was nearly Usconvets’s. Had Wulfhere not seen how things stood, and been content for his own reasons to let the “liches” depart, his Danes would have surely devastated the ship from end to end. They had almost done so in any case.

“Let them go!” Wulfhere thundered. “By the Hammer! Whatever landfall they can make is welcome to them! Back aboard Raven , ye bloodhungry dogs! Cormac’s needing us!”

His voice blared above the din of the fighting like one of the Romans’ big buccina horns. When men did not obey him swiftly enow, he whacked them lightly-by his standards-with the flat of his gore-dripping ax and shoved them to the rail with his other hand, big as a foot. And ever he roared at them to move, move, and cursed their tardiness.