Andrew Offutt - When Death Birds Fly

The monster thrashed frenziedly in attempt to flee. Its talons came out of Cormac’s thighs. The vast wings beat. Cormac squinted in that wind and hung on while he knotted the broken ends of the pendant’s chain immovably together. The round, sinister head turned then; the beak attacked. Instinctively mac Art flung up his arms to shield his face, and hurled himself backward.

The black owl whirled up with an awful shriek. When Cormac tried to climb at once to his feet, he discovered that his legs would not lift him. He groaned at the caustic pain in his muscled thighs; he, who had not groaned when years before he’d been tortured by Picts. The best he could do was rise to one knee. Blood of the gods it’s crippled me!

Nor had the black owl gone. It fluttered wildly in air above the corpse-gutted square. Cormac stared, and thought of an immense black moth that blundered back and forth between invisible walls, seeking escape from a confinement it could not understand. Battering its own wings and body with mindless persistence. A monster presence over Nantes.

Then it began to burn.

It burned . Bright golden fire encircled its neck like a blazing torc. The dazzle hurt the eyes of every staring watcher. Metal poured molten from a crucible had been less painfully brilliant. The flame, fell and preternatural as the victim, spread along the black owl’s wings to their very tips, streaming behind, shedding sparks. They fell in bright array toward the watchers below, and winked out in air.

Sunfire , Cormac thought, while his back crawled.

The dark soul of Lucanor the mage thrashed in the bright fire it had tempted once too often. The blaze covered its head, took its head. It screamed one final awful cry and lurched aloft. It flew higher, higher, higher, until there was but a brilliant spark in the sky, a phoenix pyre from which there would come no renewal… and then naught.

Silence filled the square. Owl and fire had vanished, and amulet.

Wulfhere broke that silence: he destroyed it. He had staggered and clutched at his mighty mailed breast as the black owl was destroyed. Now he cried out in amaze and relief, and it was a bellow.

“The pain is gone! Gone! It-I’ll wager the talon-marks are vanished, too! Cormac; the curse is lifted! I’m whole again! WHOLE!”

Cormac’s legs had been freed as suddenly of the crippling pain. He rose. He stood. Crom and Behl! He’d felt that agony for mere moments. It awed him to realize that Wulfhere had endured it for weeks; had given orders, fought battles, slept, led his men while under such a burden.

“I’m fieeee!” Wulfhere thundered. “I shall live!” He lifted ax and fist to the sky, a titan on spraddled legs like treetrunks. “HAAAAA!”

In a shaken voice the Consul Syagrius asked, “What was that horror?”

Cormac shook his head. “We know not. It’s attacked us afore, a monster seeking destruction. It’s gone, whatever it was.”

“Gone, aye. It is in my mind that but for you, Mawl, I should have fallen its victim.” Syagrius smiled grimly. “I can offer little reward any longer, but for what it is worth, I renounce any claim to Sigebert of Metz! He is yours, Mawl.” The Roman threw aside the remnant of his military cloak and raised his sword. “Now let us go in there and take him!”

They gripped hands in a silent sealing of their purpose, and Wulfhere’s huge red-furred hand rested atop both of theirs to make a triple clasp. Then they gathered their men and moved to the attack.

The gates shattered before a makeshift ram. Cormac, Wulfhere and Syagrius were first through the opening. Gothic mercenaries and piratical Danes poured after them, shouting. The owl was dead. The men of Raven attacked; the death-bird’s crew flew into Sigebert’s keep.

Cormac remembered little of that fight. The black Gaelic battle-frenzy came on him, that madness peculiarly his that would prompt a minstrel of Britain to say, “At such times he is more terrible then Wulfhere, and men who would face the Dane flee before the blood-lust of the Gael.”

His red-streaked sword flashed and seemed to spring lithely before him, opening throats so that blood came gushing forth; striking into entrails. No shield a man could bear was adequate to protect him from that inhuman sword-arm, however skillfully he handled it. Cormac was a henchman of death who stalked grimly among those Franks and struck like a fanged snake.

Beside him strode Wulfhere, a two-handed ax-man exulting in his freedom from the cold agony that had dwelt near his heart for so long. He was irresistible and terrible. Shields broke like crusts of bread under his ax. Men died headless or half sundered. Swords skidded off the blade that destroyed their wielders.

And there was Syagrius. Defeated, deposed, careless of life, the Roman fought like a demon. His kingdom was lost. All he wanted here was vengeance. He took it and was resistless in his uncaring advance. Sigebert’s Franks fell to his whistling steel, and Gallo-Roman traitors. That night any man who tried to stand before one of the three leaders-or could not flee-died.

Aye, and the trio’s men followed their example mightily.

There, across a gore-spattered and corpse-strewn courtyard, stood the doors of the mansion, shut and barred. Sweeping away the last opposition, Goths and Danes together brought up the ram. Molten lead came splashing down from above. Men fell back with howls and curses. Leather leggings smoked and were holed by hissing splashes. Up came shields, high. And those men moved to batter down the doors under an armoured roof of wood and metal. The ram thundered; the bars burst. The foreigners swarmed in, attacking foreigners in the manse built so long ago by the foreign conquerors whose last consul now stomped in under a helmet crested with scarlet little different from the one worn by that first Caesar called Caius Julius.

Ten Franks faced them, ranged on a marble staircase. At its head stood the man they sought, and his smile was all mockery. “It is pleasant,” Sigebert said, “to see men so eager for my company. My lord Syagrius, I see.” One-ear bowed with a flourish. “And speaking of company-you lower yourself, once-king, by consorting with pirates who await the rope. Do you know the men flanking you to be Cormac mac Art and Wulfhere Skull-splitter?”

“Indeed?” Syagrius glanced interestedly at his allies. “Is this true? I see that it is! Last week I might have had to order your deaths; today: well met! I’ll not allow you to sow dissension this time, Sigebert, traitor! Thanks to you, I no longer rule Gaul and have no responsibility to enforce the law against these men… even had I power and inclination to do, which I have not. I am come here to deal with you . So are they. Since they have a prior claim, in a manner of speaking, I have relinquished mine in their favour.” With the courtesy of a king, he turned to his piratical allies. “I have done speaking, my friends. Consider the dog and son of a dog yours.”

“You Franks,” Cormac called. “Will ye be dying needlessly with your unworthy master, or leave him to me?”

One of the Franks spat on the stair without taking his gaze from Cormac’s eyes. There was no other answer, and none of Sigebert’s men moved.

“Brave men ye be, and loyal,” Wulfhere said rumbling, “but foolish. Think again. By my beard, ye shall live to go free.” He stared at a Frank. “We come here for justice. You and I have no quarrel. Why die for him? ”

At that consummately sensible suggestion, Frankish laughter was a baying of trapped wolves. “We’ll see who does the dying, an ye’ve the hardihood to be first up these stairs!” one jeered. “Come and eat steel!”