Andrew Offutt - The Tower of Death

Veremund led the way to his long dining-hall. His serving men laid the chain out straight on the floor’s strewn rushes. Beside it, the long fire-trench breathed hard dry heat between its stone hearths. At the king’s bidding, Wulfhere paced the chain, nor was Wulfhere loath to do so. Twelve strides took him from end to end of Motsognir’s Chain-though his strides were a deal longer than most men’s.

“Twelve,” he rumbled.

Veremund gestured to his serving men. They lifted the chain and walked forward, the chain hanging down in curves between them like a mighty silver serpent. With a concerted lift and heave, they flung it into the fire. None need say aught; all watched. The silver chain curled and writhed in that heat like a thing alive, a bright segmented worm with a black head.

Is it to come alive, then? Cormac wondered, and his nape-hairs stirred. His swift-swerving eyes checked the positions of other men, lest he must fight; his was not an unsuspicious mind, ever.

Flames obscured the chain. Heat struck the reivers’ eyeballs as they peered closer. Sight blurred in the smoke. They narrowed their lids.

“Cormac,” Wulfhere muttered only half aloud, “an the thing be not changing , Fenris eat me!”

“Aye,” and the Gael did not ask, changing how? He’d sight as keen as Wulfhere’s, and he seldom put questions with small likelihood of useful answers. He watched. They all watched.

At last the chain went still. Veremund the king gave orders. With a long-handled iron hook, his serving men fished it from the trench-fire. The hook was for hot cauldrons; the chain was hot, and they stretched it hearthside a second time so that it lay cooling.

“Captain Wulfhere: will you tell me its length now?” the king invited, smiling.

Wulfhere Skull-splitter looked at him, wondering if he were being made sport of. A pointless sort of joke… but he trod the measure again-and stopped in bewilderment ere he reached the chain’s end.

“Twelve!” he announced, and paced on. “And… five more! Cormac! ‘Tis nigh half as long again as it was!”

“Right you are, Captain,” Veremund smiled. “Such is its property: the chain grows in fire. The longer since it was last so heated, the more it grows-whereby you will see there are limits to the wealth it can provide. A too-greedy man might even exhaust its powers.”

“Like that yarn of the goose that laid golden eggs.”

“Aye. One must be sparing, and cunning smiths and armourers such as I must have do not labour cheaply. Another reason why this curse on my harbour-tower is so dire. I have been seeking to increase Galicia’s seatrade, which has been worse than poor these last thirty years-and by Ertha!” The pagan oath slipped out unregarded. “Such as this business in the tower could ruin all!” Veremund grimaced, made his little throaty snuffing noise, and grew calm. “However, Motsognir’s Chain is still a bauble worth the having. And settles, methinks, any doubt as to whether I can properly gift those who do me service.”

“My lord King understates,” Cormac said. “And impresses us much, as I daresay we show. Yet were it wise to show such treasure to outland pirates?”

He’s spoken the very thought the king had warned Irnic and Zarabdas not to utter, and he knew it. Yet this ought to be said thus plainly at the outset, and answered in the same way.

The king spoke. “Zarabdas.”

The mage’s hand rose to the winged solar disk that hung pendent on his chest. The while he stared at Cormac mac Art, who met that gaze. Numbness and darkening entered into his mind. He felt a sense of heaviness; a great weight seemed to grow in him, as if Motsognir’s chain had been looped about him invisibly, and that without pressing more on one part of his body than another. Like the chain, the sensation grew, a steady, increasing drag throughout his entire organism. Cormac’s very bowels sagged in his belly. His bones went leaden. The blood ceased to flow in his hands, pooling heavily in hands he could scarce lift. His heart laboured. The thought came, and with it horror: Any tyro sworder could take me now! He sweated. He struggled to move. His very bones seemed to have gone heavier and were dragging at his muscles, down, heavy, heavier… The inexorable weight rooted him to the floor and grew still stronger. The Gael gan tremble with the stark effort of merely standing upright.

“Cormac!” Wulfhere stormed. “What’s wrong, man?” He rounded on Zarabdas. “Ye scrawny wizard! Whate’er it is ye’re at, stop it now -else I’ll see your head this chain’s length apart from your body!”

Zarabdas did not look to his king for guidance. Closing his eyes, he lowered his hand from the winged symbol of Behl. A cool breath of air seemed to waft over Cormac then, and slowly natural feeling returned. It was accompanied by a tingling, as though circulation had been cut off in every part of his body. He staggered, forced to advance a foot to keep from falling.

“It’s sentimental ye’re after growing in your eld, Wulfhere, he said, striving not to gasp.

The giant Dane snorted and shot Zarabdas another look.

“Your query is answered, mac Art,” King Veremund said. “Wulfhere Hausakliufr: I did not care overmuch for your way of speaking, a moment past. Let me hear no repetition of such threats against my honoured servant. Was I gave this command. Take the matter up with me, if you wish.”

Wulfhere looked back at him truculently, and tension trembled on the air. “The mac Art is my comrade,” he said, nor did he add “my lord.”

“I do not ignore that; was why I spoke ye so gently, Captain. Now hear my word! Rid this coast of the seaborn death that haunts it, and that for me will amply prove your worth. Do you but agree, I’ll make you immediate dower of this new growth of silver chain. Do you succeed, you shall have the weight of your own mighty ax and haft, Captain Wulfhere. Too, you’ll not find me niggard later, an you twain decide to commence the training of seamen from among my people.

Wulfhere looked at Cormac, who said, “Fair enow.” Wulfhere nodded, but a man must bargain for his own self-respect. “The weight of my ax, and Cormac’s sword.”

The king gestured. “Done. And here will ever be safe anchorage and guest-right for you and yours. Though the world and the gods be against you, I will be for you.”

Cormac swallowed. King , he mused, the praises and promises other kings have heaped on me ere this, ye’d not believe. And what they then did to me, ye’d all too readily believe. He and Wulfhere exchanged a look, though, and nodded.

“Good!” Veremund said, and he chuckled. “I feared you might demand the impossible: your own weight in silver, Master of Raven! -Battle-girt.”

The reivers laughed; the Dane’s ax, buckler, helm, and coat of scale-mail ran close onto a hundred pounds. In them, Wulfhere’s weight approached four hundred.

“And if I fasted a day before the weighing?” Wulfhere offered heroically.

Amid laughter, the king’s offer was accepted, and hands were clasped on the bargain. “Now I have other duties, and do sore wish you could handle them for me,” Veremund said. “Let us confer again at eventide; come sup with me. Anthemius, see this is known. By now a room has been prepared for you twain, here in my hall.”

First the king took hammer and chisel and himself parted the new-grown length of chain from the original. This was an act forbidden on pain of slow death to any hands but the king’s own-and with reason, as he explained. Were any link of the parent chain broken, its power would be lost. Anthemius blanched with horror at the notion. Two pirates quite shared his feelings.