Andrew Offutt: The Tower of Death

“Never,” Wulfhere assured him. “We have Raven , and we hold her. I say we cross Treachery Bay, and toss overboard any who dispute that. Let them do the swimming! Ordlaf?”

Ordlaf Skel’s son the steersman, who had not joined the outcry, spat over the stern. “I’ll succeed, chieftain. And even should I fail, there’ll be none able to twit me.”

Wulfhere boomed happy laughter. “I’m served by one man, at least! You hear, codfish? Oh-ho-ho! It will be an adventure! Who is there that doesn’t fight? But this thing was never done afore, that I’ve heard of! Now bend your backs, or you will be having to fight ere the Romans reach you, and with me! But do make it a speedy decision. Yon galleys be not standing still!”

His persuasiveness carried the debate.

Thus it was that the top-heavy Roman warcraft saw Raven vanish whither they dared not follow. Even then, the pursuers did not guess the resolve that was aboard the pirate craft. The Roman commanders assumed she had put back to the coast in the hour before dawn, and wasted their day searching bay, cove and channel for her. By then she was far out on the heaving grey sea, with low-pitched grumbling on her benches, and prayers to Lord Aegir and the Thunderer.

Clodia was lucky, and over-lucky, not to be sacrificed to the sea people.

Grey.

Grey sea under grey sky.

And Raven pressed betwixt the two on a surging horizon while the sky grumbled and now and again bellowed like a beast jealous of its territory.

The ocean swells grew out of Ran’s breathing belly like monsters prowling the grey world. Slowly they gathered, rising, rolling. To those who watched from the little ship tiny on the sea as a fruit-fly at an imperial banquet, it was as if they had the leisure of all time to watch them form. Then the swells were fulfilled. They peaked like wet mountains beneath the keel, the sun striking lights from them like mica in granite. For a stricken heartbeat the crew of Raven looked down a glassy tilt of forever.

And then they slid down it. Faster the ship went, and faster still, tobogganing insanely-to the next wet mountain that bulked up even as a grey colossus. Should the steersman fail to keep her head aright, Raven would wallow and do her best to gulp in half the Bay called Treachery-and go swiftly to the bottom.

Ordlaf held her. He plied the weighty steering-oar with neither panic nor hesitancy. Even so, Raven took water. Men were kept bailing all the while, and all the while more water sluiced over the deck and into the bailing well. No; was hardly the best of jobs. But then neither was Ordlaf’s: Nor was Wulfhere’s, for he was master of Raven and thus responsible.

All this, while the weather stayed fair.

The girl from Nantes attached herself to the end of one oar-bench, as a limpet to its rock. She quickly became abominably seasick. Her lovely complexion went all greenish and she suffered the humiliation of retching and chucking until there was naught left in her stomach. After she loosed the first spasm inboard, someone seized her by the neck and flung her to the wale like a puppy not yet trained.

“The fish want it,” she heard the Danish pirate say. “We do not.” And the callous dog had himself a feel of her while he was at it.

Much later, she crawled back to her old position. She was still miserable, and now there was no relief. Her stomach was empty, and sureness wasn’t on her that she had not vomited up her guts as well.

Then the weather worsened.

The men from the fjord-sliced north had it that Thor created thunder by hurling his hammer “Miller,” which struck with a shower of sparks that was lightning; indeed his keep was called Bilskirnir , Lightning; and that sleepy Aegir was lord of the sea below. But Aegir mostly slumbered. Not so his wife Ran, who had the temperament of a she-cat in heat and no toms about. The Tyrannis of Cormac’s people was probably the same as the nordic Thor. Not so Lir, who was the sea, and his son Manannan. And was Manannan MacLir ruled the waters of salt. It mattered not who was right; the Saints or “Christians” said the father of their Dead God ruled land and sea on all the ridge of the world, the pompous jackals, and the Romans of the old way had it that Neptune did.

Perhaps they were all right, aye and the Greeks too with their Poseidonis. Whatever the case and Whoever ruled: He or She was restless.

Now restlessness became anger.

The wind that gave Treachery Bay its name began it, in roaring gusts. It blew at random from eight several directions and all at once. Forty feet tall, the mast creaked and its foot-thickness began to seem frail. The sail cracked and boomed with the winds’ unpredictable shifts. At first, Wulfhere tried trimming it accordingly, but his orders were useless ere they could be carried out; a new wind pre-empted. Judging from the darkening sky, worse was accusing.

Wulfhere dolorously bade his men lower sail.

Wind-roughened water seethed about, complicating the ocean-swell. The longship bucked and slammed. Raven was become the sea’s prisoner. Clodia lost her grip, lurched three paces and fell, banging her hip that was wide and wide for childbearing. She whimpered, knowing she’d bear a colourful bruise. The girl who’d never afore been asea sought some new haven, any place to anchor herself, and again she missed hold. Clodia tumbled across the foredeck with a noise that sounded more like exasperated protest than aught else-though it broke on a note of despair. As if to add insult to injury, the wind screamed angrily at her and hurled a great splash of cold water over the merchant’s daughter.

Impatient hands, big hands and leathery-rough of palm and calloused fingers, seized on her and Clodia first squeaked, then made a grateful noise.

It was Cormac mac Art who tucked her under a battle-hardened arm, and paused to seek and be sure of his balance. Clodia hung there, a dazed, dead weight. In a plosion of long swift strides, Cormac gained the mast. He hugged its solid thickness with his one free arm, again pausing.

Wind blew so hard as to bang him with his own sword-scabbard. Setting his feet on the X of crossed beams that were braced within Raven’s sides to support the mast, he lashed Clodia thereto. This task he performed impersonally as he might have seen to a loose bit of cargo.

She’d be safe now from plunging overboard or disrupting working men, and no nuisance in her landhugger’s clumsiness.

Cormac remembered something.

Without ceremony, he plunged a hand between Clodia’s excellently blooming breasts. Astonished, the young woman knew the fleeting thought that this was scarcely the time, but she made no objection. She instead smiled, and lifted her wet face.

Cormac’s groping hand found the Egyptian sigil, all that was left of his hard-won loot. He plucked it forth.

“Doubtless it’s keeping it warm for me ye were, just,” he said with flat-voiced cynicism. “Thanks. If drown I must, it’s as a man of property I’ll be going down to visit the son of Lir.”

“You great swaggering boar!” she screamed out, eagerly hitting upon an object for her misery and wrath. “You-you fathom of scars and ill manners! You with your mailshirt cleaving to ye like a second skin with the crusted sweat and blood and stink of the five years you haven’t had it off! I know now why your enemies run away in droves! The sole reason your friends do not the same-”

She railed on. It was not true, but he said nothing. She added several imaginative hypotheses about his friends. Cormac had ship’s matters to attend to, wherefore he paused but long enow to drop the winged serpent about his own neck, beneath the battle-gear and cloth. Then he turned away, and Clodia knew with rage that she was already forgot. Hardly comforting; she knew well that she was a savoury, ripe morsel for male lust. And this one couldn’t even be bothered bidding her hush, or denying her allegations, or so much as slapping her.