Andrew Offutt: When Death Birds Fly

“You are brusque as ever, Cormac mac Art.” Her girlish voice held displeasure. “There is-well, there is someone watching. That could not be avoided. Yet I promise you, she is my most trusted attendant, who nursed me when I was little. My attendant, not my royal brother’s.” Her voice dropped an octave, with ignorance of having reminded him of the very reason they must have no meeting, not even low-voiced converse. “She will not betray us, Cormac.”

“Will she now?”

Cormac was, considerably less trusting. He wished he could think of some way painlessly to make the point that there was no “us” to betray, and that without sounding finicking or priggish. None suggested itself. Peradventure she could be affrighted away…

“Royal persons have been stabbed in the back by attendants erenow, Eurica.”

“Not by my Albofled!” the princess assured him, with impatience on her. “Oh, Cormac-she’s out of earshot, and were she out of seeing-range as well, I’d be in your arms this instant!”

“And I’d be hanging from a gallows tomorrow,” Cormac said stiffly, “or fleeing this land with blood of the king your brother’s henchman on these hands.”

“Be not foolish,” she said indulgently, going royal. “How should he know? As for fleeing the land… Cormac, oh Cormac, I have heard you are about to do that in any case. Is it true?” Close by now, she looked up and her eyes shone.

“No, my lady.” Call her not by name , he told himself. Be not moved. Aye, it’s attractive she is, and more than willing. It’s also a silly and theatrical brat she is. Many her age are, but how to tell a king’s sister so?

“But there has been talk of a long and perilous voyage into the north! ”

Eurica’s eyes were large, aglisten in the starlight. To her, the north was a legendary place of floating mountains and cold grey seas, of fierce monsters and savage manslaying giants, where corpses walked and all men were Wulfhere’s size-six and a half feet, unshod-and blood was drunk smoking. Aye, and truly, along with the ordinary business of living and tending crops in a land where winter was like unto an unwanted relative that came early and stayed late, all those things had been known to exist and to happen.

“You hear much,” Cormac said, and damned himself for a weak, weak answer worthy of any boy.

“So I do,” Eurica said smiling. Nor did she reveal that her source of the northbound rumour was one of the bed-wenches even now sporting with Wulfhere. Her smile suddenly vanished. “Cormac, you may not return for a year! You-you may not return at all! I beg you, remain here and be safe!”

Safe with you , he thought. Safer battling him who sleeps in sunken R’lyeh, sister of a proud ruler! “My lady,” he said, striving to push his brain to choose words, “that I may not do. It’s a mission for the king that Wulfhere and I’ll be undertaking. We cannot now go back on our agreement and still keep his friendship-even did we wish to change our minds. Which I surely do not.”

“Why?” Eurica looked anguished. “What is this mission that your life must be risked for it, who has already saved our land?”

“A matter of ships and shipbuilding that will bring new life to the kingdom, and perhaps more,” Cormac said, and listened to her snort her scorn. “For me, my lady, a purpose. Aimless roving and plundering has been my lot since I went into exile from my own far Eirrin. A man Eirrin-born does not forget his green homeland. I’d not be complaining; a wild life and merry it has been, but now desire is on me for something more.”

The instant the words left his mouth he knew his blunder. Desire was a word Eurica could relate only to herself. Eyes ashine, forgetting the watcher among the trees, she enwrapped Cormac with her arms and rose on the veriest tips of her toes to kiss him with passion.

He was not made of steel and ice. His sinewy arms gripped her hard, firm warm young flesh tight and fatless over patrician bones. He forgot calculation in the madness aroused by her soft body and sweetly moving tongue. She moaned with delight and strove to press herself through him.

“You will not go,” Eurica said with assurance.

That aided him to break the brief spell. “After that, it’s more convinced I am that I must go, lady Princess. For surely my need of the king your brother’s favour is all the greater, now.”

“Go then,” Eurica whispered. “Each day you are gone will seem ten days, Cormac. When you return, there will be something more than aimless roving and plundering for you. I promise it, Cormac.”

She kissed him once more, swiftly, and broke away to run for the dark trees, gathering her cloak about her as she flew.

Cormac stood moveless. At last his teeth showed in his grim, sardonical indication of a smile. What was the dear youngster thinking of? Her hand in marriage and half the kingdom, peradventure?

I promise it , she had said. Promises were cheap, and this one she had no power to keep. That power lay in her brother’s hands, though she doubtless had no thought of dissemblance and meant what she said with such sweet heat.

The Gael’s black brows drew together. Aye now; there is that. Her brother. Did he and Wulfhere build the navy King Veremund wanted, as Cormac knew they could do, then might the king indeed consent to his sister’s marriage with an outlaw pirate? Cormac mac Art was self -exiled from Eirrin. He was not an outlaw in this land of Galicia, and when a king approved of what a man did, he was not then a pirate.

It would bring me position and power, on these new shores.

And do I want such, an it mean marriage?

Samaire , he thought, and though it was the Gaelic word for daybreak, it was not the sun’s dawning he thought of.

These were questions for the future, he told himself firmly. A long voyage awaited him now, as did Irnic and the comites … and a woman Cormac mac Art had taken unto himself here, a woman who was no princess and no virgin, and whom a man could tumble with, with no thought of far-reaching consequences.

Alone in the darkness, Cormac laughed aloud, and forgot Eurica. With a wolf-like step the son of Eirrin continued on his way to the king’s hall.

“The Basques… claim that they are the only unmixed descendants of the pre-Aryan inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula. This claim has some basis, for in 19 BC, when the Roman conquest of Spain had been completed, the Basques [Vascones] were already established and managed to maintain their independence. Their love of freedom and independence has characterized their entire history.”

– J.S. Roucek

“They formed a single cultural unit, reinforced by traditions, by a strong sense of racial homogeneity, and by the Basque language…”

– Encyclopedia Britannica

In the fishing village well to the east of Galicia, people rejoiced. True, fishing villages seldom knew rejoicing when pirate ships came down on them, and three such were drawn up on the fine yellow sand of their bay. But villagers and pirates alike were Basques, or Vascones as the Latin had it, as the sea the Romans called Vazcaya was Basquaya to these folk who had named it, or Bascaya sometimes called Biscaya. To them who had so long known it, that sea of ever-shifting winds was not the Bay of Treachery that strangers named it.

A driftwood fire roared and crackled, hurling sparks high into the purple dark and mingling its scent with that of the salt sea. Other tempting aromas filled the nostrils of the pirate chieftain: wine and roasting whale meat and blubber yielding its oil in cauldrons.