Andrew Offutt: When Death Birds Fly

Zarabdas the mage muttered, “Set a thief…”

“True, you and your reivers have done well,” Veremund the Sueve went on. “You have also had your losses. Are there more than twoscore able men left to work your ship Raven -and to fight?” The question was rhetorical; Veremund knew there were not. “I would copy the Vandals. I would make my nation powerful on the sea, though we began as a race of horsemen far to the east-as they did. Meseems the best course were to employ renegade Vandals to make up your numbers, and shipwrights from the same source. Do you agree?”

Cormac mac Art frowned while Wulfhere impetuously answered at once, though with a brave effort to be tactful in a king’s presence and conceal his disgust with such a suggestion.

“It’s in no way the same, lord King. Look you: these Vandals did begin as an inland horsefolk, like you Suevi. But they did not end their travels in this Hispania, as your own Sueves are doing. The Vandals crossed into Africa generations since, lest they be trapped and destroyed. At that they had to be given sea transport by some Romish lord in Carthage… What was the fool’s name, Cormac?”

“Bonifacius,” the Gael answered. “It was their aid he was wanting, against a Roman rival. Fool, indeed! He might as well have imported plague. There was another such fool, in Britain. It’s Jutes and Saxons he is after inviting over his threshold. His name was Vortigern. Jutes and Saxons rule many gobbets of Britain now, men without the price of twenty cows calling themselves ‘kings’ and gaining land, followers-and more than twenty cows.”

The latter words were spoken for the benefit of Irnic, Zarabdas and the king, to whom Britannia was only a word, same’s Eirrin its neighbour, which they knew of as Hivernia or Hibernia, these Suevi. Wulfhere knew the story of Vortigern and his importation of Hengist; knew it as well as his Gaelic blood-brother. He should have done. Hengist the Jute was Wulfhere’s greatest enemy. The Dane’s blue eyes glittered coldly at thought of that burly Jutish tiger, but Hengist was far away in northern waters-the lying treacherous triple-dealing bastard.

But it was the Vandals that mattered, this far south.

“Aye, Bonifacius,” Wulfhere said in his resonant rumble. “Well, he’s dead now and no matter his name save on Loki’s list of Great Fools. The Vandals took Carthage for themselves. Now they’ve made themselves the greatest sea power on the Mediterranean.” He lurched forward, and his elbow jarred down onto the table as he pointed. “But what worth be there in that? The Mediterranean is enclosed and tideless as a washtub. Once it was Rome’s lake and now it’s the Vandals’! Fine for children to go swimming in… but lord King, it’s a man’s ocean ye have to deal with here!”

Noting that everyone at table had leaned a bit back from him, Wulfhere let his shoulders and his voice drop a bit. “The Vandals still build their ships to the Romish pattern. Believe me, that is not suited to the wild Atlantic or the Bay of Treachery yonder!” He waved a mighty arm, thickly pelted with red hair, unerringly in the direction of the sea off Brigantium. Wagging his big head, Wulfhere leaned back and spoke as if he were a Greek lecturing a class.

“None but the boldest of Vandal captains dares venture past the Pillars of Heracles, as they call ’em, and up these Hispanic coasts. Those I and the Wolf,” he said, now indicating Cormac by banging a fist off the Gael’s thigh, “have met-in their blundering triremes-we have sailed merry circles around.”

He paused, as if working out his own sentence to be sure he’d stated what he intended. Wulfhere’s command of his native tongue was hardly a scholar’s; his Latin was ghastly, and so most men spoke, in this part of the world. At that it was better than when he and Cormac had arrived here awhile back, having fled the soldiery set on them by that Sigebert fellow whose pretty face they’d ruined.

“Rings around Romish triremes built by Vandals in Carthage,” he said again, savouring the sound and thought of it. “I suppose ye’d wish your own navy to do the same.”

Cormac mac Art’s dark, sinister face showed some small tension about mouth and jaw. Only Zarabdas, by watching him closely, observed it.

“You suppose rightly, Captain,” Veremund the Tall said. “I am answered.”

Cormac relaxed as unobtrusively as he had tensed for trouble. Few kings indeed would accept such truculently declaimed outspokenness so mildly. Veremund, though, was like unto no other king Cormac had met-and was the first the Gael had found whom a man might respect and like. The Sueve knew the uses of forebearance without being weak-or even appearing so, to intelligent men of craft.

How are these Sueves after having got a good man as king, anyhow? Cormac mused. Unique, Veremund is.

While the Gael thought thus, it was Irnic Break-ax who spoke. “What of the Basques, then? They have been seamen from ancient times, and surely they know Treachery Bay as well as heart could hope for! I am told they build goodly ships.”

Cormac was impressed even while his face went cold. From a commander of horse-warriors and kinsman of the king, it was a sound evaluation. Irnic spoke true. Basque shipwrights and sailors would be worth the having. Cormac did not like to disillusion the man with whom he’d developed camaraderie.

“True for yourself,” he said. “It’s better for the purpose the Basques are than Vandals would be-were there any getting them. But there is not. It’s fiercely independent and clannish they are; more so than the Gaels of Eirrin, and that’s saying much. In their time they held off the Romans from their mountain valleys, and they held off the Goths, and by the black gods!-they are fell toward outsiders. Never will they be lifting a hand for someone not of their own race, unless it has a weapon in’t, and that for the spilling of blood and doing of red death.” Cormac mac Art’s sword-grey eyes looked broodingly back into his own past for a moment. “At base they be the same folk as the Silures of west Britain, and the Picts of Alba,” he said low, “although the latter bred with another race in the long ago; a strange race, squat and apish, the signs of which can still be seen on them. Their breed and mine have an enmity older than the world.”

Cormac, whom men called the Wolf, did not exaggerate. Older than the world was that feud, indeed… or older than the world as it now existed. Vague memories of former lives and other epochs stirred in his brain, tempting him to lose the present in that strange reverie others called ‘the rememberings ’ that sometimes seized him without warning. Cormac rejected its lure with all his iron strength of will and focused on the visages of the two Suevi below their barbarically knotted hair.

“An ye doubt me, my lords,” he said grimly, “send ambassadors to these people. Set beside the northern Picts, it’s the very flower of gentleness they be-and even so ye’d do well to send men ye can spare.”

King Veremund doubted not, nor was he inclined to put Cormac’s test to trial. The Basques of the Pyrenees were far closer neighbours of his than were the Vandals. He knew all about them.

“What of the Britons of Armorica?” Zarabdas asked. “Are they not skilled in these arts?”

“They are so,” Cormac admitted. “Their ancestors crossed the sea from Britain, most of them from Cornwall. The pulse of the sea is after being in their blood since long before Rome was a power. For the lure of your wealth, lord King, they could be had, though it were better elsewise. It’s Celtic Britons those folk be, by blood and language. It’s too fiery a mixture they’d be making with Danes and Suevi.” Cormac shook his head, leaned back, and showed Veremund an implacable expression. “Nay, as we’re to be replenishing our crew and bring yourself the master-shipwright ye desire, lord King, it’s a longer voyage than that is called for.”