Andrew Offutt - When Death Birds Fly

Lynx’s eyes bulged. His mouth gaped in an effort to speak, mayhap to pray. No sound emerged save a rattling croak. His knees bent the more. His arm commenced to twitch. His entire long body lost proper articulation and he fell, a graceless crimsoned sprawl in the courtyard.

Blood continued to spurt. It would soon slow. Sigebert stood panting.

Faraulf shook his head. He’d known Sigebert since they were boys. Both had been trained in weapons-play, as befitted Franks of good birth. Yet Sigebert had never cared for it, maintaining that a surer road to power, lay in letters and politics. Faraulf and others had made fun of him for sharpening his speech and his grammar rather than swords and axen. Although a fine athlete and graceful, Sigebert had not seemed to have the makings of a fighter . When news reached Faraulf that the other had become a polished courtier of the Roman king’s court at Soissons, Faraulf had felt more certain than ever. His boyhood acquaintance must be swiftly forgetting all such fighting skill as he possessed!

Not so. Plainly something happened to make him remember. What Faraulf had seen this day seemed implacable obsession-or outright madness. The man of letters and politics and guile was determined to be a weapon-man-and was.

“Take this rubbish and sink it in the river,” Sigebert said, cleaning his blade on the robber’s soiled doeskin tunic. “Let none observe you.”

“Yessir!” one of the soldiers said, as though respectfully replying to a general. He and three others carried away the corpse of Lynx the highwayman. Another fetched a bucket of water to sluice the shed blood from the stones. They’d be darker, now.

Hardly had the four left when a guard entered from the direction of the great house’s gates. Faraulf, about to speak, closed his mouth.

“Sir: there is a fellow at the gates says he must see you. He demands , lord! I’d ha’ sent him off with busted bones, save that you ordered us to watch for such a one-but I swear sir, he’s a base and beggarly scut, for all his fine language.”

“Ah,” Sigebert said, thinking of last night. “Has he given a name?”

“Lucanor Antiochus sir-spoke as he mighta said Emperor!”

“Fetch him hither, and do so gently. I myself, be there need, will convince him that he is not a wearer of purple.”

The soldier departed smiling grimly; Sigebert almost laughed when he returned escorting the stranger. Base and beggarly, by God and the gods, was an understatement! This Lucanor owl-Sender might have been the half-starved shadow of an unsuccessful midden scavenger. His odour wafted ahead of him.

“You?” the Frank said in open unbelief. Lucanor knew what the question implied. His back straightened.

“It was I and no other,” he replied, making his voice ring.

Sigebert looked into the robed man’s strange black eyes, and believed.

“Then wash,” he said. “You are the second guest in as many days has arrived here requiring a bathe and new garments. I’ll not speak with you in a closed room as you are!”

Lucanor pressed his lips tightly together, locking in words. That he resented such high-handed treatment was most obvious. He had not long to wait ere he’d be convinced that, from Sigebert, this was naught to complain of. Less than an hour, in truth.

Shorn and cleanly, he was escorted into the Frank’s presence. Sigebert dismissed the guards with a curt “Let none disturb us” and closed the door. He turned a deadly stare upon the mage.

“And such a thing as you dared address me as ‘foolish man’!” he said. “You could use me, could you? A tool, is it? I am not acceptable as your equal? You’d rend me apart and find another tool if it suited you, would you? You!”

His black fury was not assumed. With a snarl, he gripped the smaller man in a way that made Lucanor cry out in pain. Almost he had raised an ancient god, and subverted a kingdom as he had its queen, and now he was come to th-

Sigebert jarred all such thoughts from his mind by slamming him violently against the wall four times. He hurled him then to his hands and knees and kicked him around the room until the Antichite grovelled for mercy. It became worse for him then, with the Frank’s rage cooled a bit, for now Sigebert placed his kicks more carefully.

At last he desisted and, nostrils flaring, seated himself.

Chillingly self-controlled on the instant, he spoke. “You have escaped lightly, though I daresay you do not appreciate it. I’d have the life, and slowly, of any other who offended as you have done. I may have yours yet. It will depend on how well you serve me… Lucanor .”

Lucanor dragged himself painfully from the floor, glanced at Sigebert low, and collapsed into a chair.

Though he’d been glanced at, Sigebert asked in the mildest tone, “Have I said that you might sit?”

Lucanor would have taken sincere oath that he was physically unable to stand again, and he was a physician, among other things. Yet at Sigebert’s softspoken question he found himself on his feet, trembling.

“Better,” Sigebert said.

“Sir-my lord… I-am not well! My travels and travails… privation and hunger… your… punishment… I beg to sit. I may faint else.”

Sigebert could have instructed a king in the way he waved a hand, and to the monarch’s benefit. “Very well. Now attend me. From this moment, you are no more and no less than my man. I am no other than your master. Should you forget that, I doubt that any demon you control could prove more cruel than I shall be.”

Lucanor sat still, hearing those words spoken quietly, as plain statement of fact. He could not disbelieve.

“You came here for vengeance on a pair of pirates,” Sigebert said. He caressed the place where his ear had been, softly, meditatively, while a strange look kindled in his eyes. “You shall have it. Rather we sh-I shall have it, and you may savour it with me. Be certain of that, man from Antioch. However, Wulfhere Skull-splitter and Cormac mac Art must wait. Greater things are toward.

“North of here, war is abrewing. King Syagrius the Roman prepares to resist invasion by the Frankish cousin-kings, Clovis and Ragnachar. The fate of Roman Gaul hinges on the battle between these two forces, and well they know it, both. I wish to know early, and with sure truth, how it has gone. You learned of me through your sorcery; you set your fylgja to find me across leagues of distance. It must be possible for you to… see this battle.”

“Possible? A simple matter,” the mage said, and saw Sigebert lift an eyebrow, and added with some haste, “sir. Although… to fly forth in my spirit form and view the battle thus… that cannot be done. Full sunlight will destroy me when I am out of my corporeal house.” He touched his chest, and went on before Sigebert could demand of what use he was. “Happily, it is not needful that I do so. Power is mine to scry and prognosticate events. The closer they may be in time, the easier the mists to dispel and the more clearly I can discern what lies beyond-what lies ahead, in time. In this case… meseems it is your wish to be informed of these bloody events whiles they are happening? Not, that is, to predict them?”

“Just so. I fancy your predictions can have but little value. Were you able to read the future with any true skill, your own fortunes had never come to this sorry state.”

“One’s own fortune, sir, is ever nigh-impossible to read,” Lucanor said stiffly. “I had in my power a queen , and a land to come-and a single pirate disrupted that and thus reduced me! Two pirates. I made the error of trusting other forces, those I had set in motion,” he assured the Frank, not wishing to say that he had planned poorly and prodigiously underestimated a certain man of Eirrin, and him far younger. “I have a small mirror of opaque black glass I use for divinations. The mirror itself has no magical powers, of course; those reside in me. I might scry in a simple bowl of water, as others do. It merely haps that I am accustomed to the mirror-”