Andrew Offutt - When Death Birds Fly

The demon came down on Cormac as an eagle drops on a hare.

Instinctively Cormac flung himself flat and rolled aside. Mace and shield he retained; they hampered him briefly, in getting to his feet, but he did so with creditable swiftness despite that. His sharp wits had already told him what he had glimpsed, and he wasted no time in inner complaint that it was impossible. It was there, and to be dealt with.

The black wings thrashed like gale-blown sails; black sail.

The naked man in the stag’s head mask had risen from his seat, quite humanly amazed. He crouched a little, his empty hands spread as if to grasp something. Garin, still choking for breath, had also gained his feet, somehow. He was a warrior. He had weapons in his hands. Here was a threat.

Bro Erech’s people remembered the sight for decades, and talked of it to their children. The circle of ancient, firelit stones; the roaring central blaze, gold and vermilion and pure white, gouting sparks to the sky; the Antlered God, arms outspread, seen through the flames; the demoniacal black predator, flapping like a spurred fighting cock ready to leap and strike and rend; and the armed personifications of dark Winter and golden Summer, rushing upon it from different sides.

Garin thrust with the consecrated spear. It glittered hotly as the sun-symbol on his breast, given him by Cormac.

The black owl flapped madly away from him, whirling upward. Its pinions sent gusts of wind through the stone circle, and the fire danced wildly. Despite the warmth of the night and the fire’s parching heat, that wind was numbingly cold.

Garin reeled. Cormac set his teeth and stood fast, waiting. He expected the black owl to descend on him again.

It did not. Wulfhere Skull-splitter had shouldered his way forward, colossal in the leaping firelight. He lacked both armour and weapons-he’d been occupied with a pretty Armorican wench he’d caught to himself for the Long Dance and its aftermath-yet little seemed he to care. He came striding on and him no Celt, his bearded mouth stretched wide and venting a Danish battle-cry.

The black owl swooped upon him, eerie horror itself.

Full on his mighty breast it struck, sinking hellish talons into chest muscles like slabs of weathered topaz; glared at him from a range of inches. The cruel beak snapped, eager to strip his face from the front of his head.

Wulfhere caught the awful thing by the neck. Snarling, he sank his fingers deep. Clearly he meant to wring its head off. Maddened by pain, he might have done it, had he grappled a thing of flesh and blood. But there was no solid resistance to his grip. His iron hands encountered what seemed layer on layer of shadow-dark feathers, numbingly cold. The strength went out of his arms.

For one of the few times in his life, Wulfhere Skull-splitter knew fear.

Cormac reached him. Swinging the mace with all the power of his deadly war-arm, he struck the black owl a blow that might have shattered the skull of a bullock. An ordinary weapon had achieved naught; the leaden mace, like Garin’s spear, had been sacred in Midsummer’s rites time out of mind. It had gathered to itself power of a sort the new Church rejected with horror. So much the worse for the Church! To this place the power of cross and book did not extend.

The battered, stone-dull lead sank deeply through the black owl’s body. It shrieked once, hideously, an unbearable screech that tore men’s ears. There ensued a moment of preternatural cold, a sickening fetor, and the being was gone… was gone , as a bursting bubble is gone, without a sign.

Wulfhere staggered against one of the stones. He steadied himself with a spadelike hand. With the other, he clutched at his breast in the way of a man with a dagger in his heart. The black owl’s talons had sunk tearing into his flesh. Cormac had seen it himself. Yet Wulfhere’s tunic did not hang in shreds as it rightly should. Nor was there aught of blood.

The big Dane realized it himself, through his bewilderment of pain.

“Surt and all the giants!” he snarled. One-handed, he tore his tunic in half from neck to waist. It hung agape, exposing a curling mat of copper-red hair, over chest and belly muscles like one of the moulded cuirasses worn, long ago, by high-ranking Roman officers. Still cursing vehemently, Wulfhere ran his fingers through the shaggy mat, testing the hide beneath.

There was no blood. Incredibly, the skin remained unpierced. Yet… not unmarked.

Morfydd had drawn nigh, holding a fiery brand above her head. In a voice unlike her own, she said, “I beg you, stand still… so. Now let me see, Captain…”

She reached up, her diminutive stature making it a stretch for her. Cool fingers parted the Danish giant’s chest-hair. For once, Morfydd the wise-woman turned pale.

Black as pitch, two groups of stigmata showed on Wulfhere’s fair northern skin, centered upon the nipples. They were the marks of predatory talons. In each group, one pair of claw-marks stood above the nipple and another pair below, as they would be made by two claws facing forward and two back, in the fashion of owls.

“Hell!” Wulfhere said harshly. “I’ve never had pain like this from such tiny pinpricks erenow! ‘Tis cold , too, like the stab of daggers frozen in ice for ten thousand years! Think ye that shadowthing had venom on its claws?”

“Not of any material kind, perhaps,” Morfydd answered. “Tis outside my experience-and against most of it! Cormac? Have you seen such a thing as this?”

Cormac was watching the sky, alert lest the black-winged monster return. He did not trust its obliging disappearance. Yet he saw no sign of it, either then or again that night.

To Morfydd’s question, he was forced to answer nay.

In the richly arrased chamber wherein he transacted his most important business, Sigebert One-ear stood fingering his facial scars with a slender hand. He did so without being aware of it, just as he stood tensely when he might have sat. His gaze was fixed upon Lucanor the mage.

The Antiochite lay on a couch draped in aquamarine. He had eaten well and regained some flesh since entering the Frank’s house. Just now, however, he looked desperately unwell. He lay in trancelike sleep and moved in faint spasms. His fleshy, blade-nosed face was the colour of ash. From his appearance, Lucanor might well have been dying.

Sigebert hoped not. He wanted the mage to live-so long as he remained useful. Greater yet was Sigebert’s desire to know what befell in Armorica. He gloated at a vision of Cormac and Wulfhere dying in agony under the beak and talons of the black owl. Could I have but seen so fine a sight! Yet that was impossible. He could not. He must see it through Lucanor’s eyes-in Lucanor’s words. How much longer would the eastern lapdog lie senseless?

Lucanor commenced to shudder violently. His leg slipped from the couch so that his heel banged the floor. His lips moved, though no sound emerged, and sweat gleamed on him. Then his eyes opened. They were full of such fear as even Sigebert had never seen. He gazed on starkest terror, and knew it. The mage croaked wordlessly.

Has the incompetent pig gone mad?

Thus wondering, Sigebert poured a cup of unwatered wine. He handed it impatiently to the other man. Lucanor tried to steady it between his two hands. Both shook. Such was his state that he had to make several attempts ere he could drink, and even then Sigebert heard the chatter of teeth against the cup’s rim. Lucanor gulped, gulped.

When he lowered the cup his colour had become less ghastly. Still, only fool or liar could have said he looked fit to stand. His teeth chattered still; his hands, shook; his dark eyes stared wildly. He seemed about to collapse.