Andrew Offutt - The Tower of Death

Cormac fell into withdrawn silence. Wulfhere moved aftward. Cormac but gazed at the nearing coast as if that clotted extent of darkness fascinated him.

It did not. It was one more foreign and likely hostile shore. He’d seen many such. Not the least intimation came to him of rare events waiting, or any high promise. At present he was, after all, a very weary man.

From behind him a slap resounded, along with an angry exclamation in a woman’s offended voice. The sounds mingled with Wulfhere’s belly-deep chuckle and the gentle slap of water along Raven’s hull. The Gael sighed. After coming so far at cost of such immense labour and peril, all gods defend them, they had to arrive with a woman aboard! Where did Wulfhere find the inclination?

“Quiet,” he bade them, not deigning to turn.

Clodia made complaint, none the less. “But this huge man-mountain persists in-”

“Quiet.”

“And for why?” Wulfhere demanded. “It’s little we have to fear of Veremund’s Galicians here asea. River barges and fishing boats manned by native Spaniards are not going to trouble Raven , would ye say? Has Veremund warships? I never heard of it. Nor did yourself.”

“So. I did not,” Cormac made admission. He yawned. “I’m needing quiet while I think-remember that? Thinking? I’ll admit Veremund’s being shipless is a thought that will mayhap bear following out-another time. The Sueves’ fathers knew all they knew of the sea from travellers’ tales, as did the Vandals once… but the Vandals learned seamanship.”

“Of a sort,” put in Ordlaf. If Ordlaf of Dane-mark knew of a better helmsman than himself on all the seas, no one was likely to learn it from the lips of any aboard Raven .

Ivarr snorted. “These Sueves be dirt-farmers, lorded over by horsemen. High-nosed fools! Five years after they’re born, they can never bring their knees within hailing distance again. They’d dine from the saddle if they could.”

Men laughed, and encouraged Ivarr added, “Can’t bring their knees together, those men. And their women come to the same state not much older.”

Wulfhere roared and smacked Ivarr’s shoulder-and Clodia’s backside, simultaneously. Tight-lipped, Clodia moved out of the big Dane’s reach. Coming to Cormac, she clutched his arm and renewed her appeal.

“Please make him-”

“Belay that. Look! ”

Fire, shoreward.

A dancing bright wisp of flame it was, that swiftly grew. In minutes it was a large yellow glow bright enow to be visible for miles of a clear night.

“Signal,” Wulfhere muttered, thinking aloud. “That, or beacon.”

“Or a rite of some kind,” Ivarr added. “Some chieftain’s obsequies? I’m not sure yon fire does not burn on the sea itself.”

“Wreckers,” was Ordlaf’s suggestion, and a world of loathing he packed into the word.

The others shared that loathing, and contempt. No seaman who had sailed the tricky coasts of Armorica, now known to many as Lesser Britain for the Cornish and Cymric folk who had settled there, went unmoved by the word wrecker . The name was an epithet. Wulfhere snarled in his bristling crimson beard.

“If such they be, let’s find and kill them!”

“If such they be, old Splitter of skulls,” Cormac said, “we will.” His tone was abstracted but not a whit less deadly for it. “We will, aye… but suppose that be a simple harbour-light. It’s no less mad we’d be to let it be drawing us in. Belike we’d be finding ourselves greeted with a royal claim on Raven and all she contains.”

“Aye, Captain.” Ordlaf spoke quietly. “Best go wide of it now, whate’er it may be. Make investigation by daylight.”

“For that we’d all fall asleep arowing,” Cormac mac Art added, “an we attempt it now.”

Raven turned southward upon water like shimmering silk. Men pulled their oars, and pulled again, with no strength in their arms. They had used the last of it, and still they rowed. The shore they neared was wild and shaggy, with no signs of cultivation.

“Put in yonder,” Wulfhere said, thrusting his massive head forward like a hound spotting birds. In truth he was squinting into the night.

The sanctuary he had chosen was a wood-fringed cove scarce so large that it could be flattered as a bay. The longship nosed in slowly. Cormac, at the bow, probed ahead for rocks. The cove seemed innocent of such, excepting the seaworn mass at its southern end, which bore a goodly frost of bird droppings.

They backed oars and anchored. No man would go ashore. The ship’s fire had been drenched out, days agone, but victuals remained, with an added odour of the sea from their sealskin wrapping. They ate lightly, without benefit of fire. Wulfhere, like his crew, was undismayed by cold food-but he did hark back lugubriously to the wine casks they’d heaved over-side. Cormac groaned. He knew there’d be complaints on that score at random intervals over the next several years. Such obscene waste had gone painfully to the Dane’s heart, or more aptly to his throat and stomach, the more susceptible parts of him.

“Still ye remind me of something, guzzler,” Cormac said. “That business at Garonne-mouth; would ye not be saying it was too like what happened after, at Nantes? At both places we found traps , and them well laid, wouldn’t ye say?”

Wulfhere shrugged and yawned. The matter was too far away and too long agone to concern him now. “Ye may have the right of it, Wolf. Does it signify? It’s never news, is it, that men of the law don’t like us. Mayhap we will take it up wi’ that fop Sigebert and his lord another day, though it’s from one ear only Sigebert’ll be giving listen! I’d surely like a word with that one-eared bastard when he lacks a score of weapon-men about him, were it only for Thorfinn’s sake. But these be Galician shores, and our concerns be here.”

Cormac grunted, “Aye,” and said no more.

They stretched the lowered sail for an awning, lest it rain. Blissful it was to lie down for a night’s sleep on tranquil water! Cormac made no objection when Clodia lay beside him and pressed close; indeed, he hardly noticed. After five unresting days on a crazy sea, he’d rather have had oblivious slumber than the embrace of Fand herself.

Clodia was, though, in proud fleshy bloom and ripe, and someone found interest and impulse to stoop and fondle her boldly as he passed. That resulted in a yelp and spasm that made Cormac sit up, hurling aside his covering cloak. A sharp, icy irritability weighed on him.

“Will ye horny sons of mares be still!” he snarled. “You too, wench! By Midhir and Morrighu, the next man who troubles my rest will sleep ashore or in the water where I’ll right briskly hurl him. And yourself, Clodia. Be that understood?”

There were soft hootings, and comments of a scurrilous nature emerged from the shrouding dark. Mac Art paid those no mind.

Once more he wrapped his cloak about him and composed himself to sleep, and this time with success. Clodia curled against his back, pleased he’d at least called her by name. She passed an arm about his waist, and clung. She did not intend that any “horny sons of mares” should drag her away from him for amusement betwixt the rowing-benches, an someone awoke in the night and decided he was sufficiently rested to be up to it.

CHAPTER FOUR: The Horror in the Lighthouse

Dawn provided colour and detail for a coast that might until then have been Hel or the Hesperides. Sunrise proved it to be neither. Both Cormac and his Danish shipmates stared, silently thoughtful, for this land bore haunting similarities to their home shores.

For Cormac mac Art, the one man of his race aboard Raven , and more irrevocably an exile, the similarities roused memories. And they were bitter.