Andrew Offutt - The Tower of Death

Motsognir’s Chain went back to the treasure room. The reivers made great gesture of good faith and sent their portion there also-as they had no safer place at present for its stowing. The five plotters parted company. A bright-eyed, most impressed lad had been delegated to serve the wants of the visitors, and he conducted them to the good clean room they would share. There Cormac and Wulfhere at last disencumbered themselves of their armour. Both sighed and Cormac remembered Clodia’s comments on his armour and padded underjack. A man worked and fought and even slept in his battle-gear until he forgot he’d not been born in the stuff. It was when it came ringing and sliding ajingle off him that he noticed the difference.

They refused offers of royal servants; these two professionals would inspect and clean their own weapons and mail. Good oil they requested, for leather, and rags. These they used methodically, along with fine sand, on Cormac’s finely wrought chain and Wulfhere’s scale sewn on leather.

The king’s table for dinner , Cormac thought. We be rising in the world! And when asked what else he required, he named it: a bath. Mir, the boy loaned them as attendant, looked more than surprised. The Sueve were hardly so fond of bathing as were the Eirrin-born-as indeed were none on the ridge of the world save the Romans. They had left public baths of a sort in Brigantium, though the Roman plumbing had long since failed of its function. They were conducted thence, though the lad seemed ashamed, that such heroes might require that which was so effete-and that his friends might see him contributing to this Romish softness on the part of the king’s guests.

Here water was heated in long open vats, not in the boilers of old. Steam was made by dashing water over glowing hot stones. Such an arrangement Wulfhere of course took for granted; it put him in mind of northern sweat-baths-though Galicia lacked snow to roll in after. Natheless, he admitted that it felt very good.

His disappointment in them and these wants did not make Mir careless.

While the sea-rovers turned crimson and sweated rivers that much darkened the water, he had their garments taken away to be washed by house-wenches. By the time his charges had scraped each other’s hides clean of sweated dirt-with implements taken from slaves they had briskly sent away-and sloshed and wallowed to their full content in tepid water, Mir had returned with fresh linen and tunics. Now mac Art was at considerable pains with his hair, for he was of Eirrin, while Wulfhere concerned his huge self more with the cleansing of his fiery beard. It caught brine asea, and itched.

Cormac’s new tunic fitted sufficiently well, and looked good on the sombre Gael besides. Plain black it was, bordered with gold.

“Wulfhere: realization is on ye of too much coincidence, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Consider. The availability of that merchant-ship. The proximity of ready, marine-manned warcraft. The raid on Balsus’s: that mincing Sigebert was at pains to let us know he did not expect us, but why else had he such a herd of armed men posted outside? And then came more warcraft. Y’see? Someone set traps for us, Wulf, someone with power. Great pains were taken, all for us. Best we be staying well away from that coast. It’s not unpleasant to be gaining useful employment that suits our talents… particularly in view of the extreme inhospitability of those waters!”

“Aye, and a good bed is a welcome prospect,” Wulfhere said. He flashed the darker man a smile. “So is Veremund’s silver, sorcerous or no!”

“Uh-I did take note of that chain when we left. Our links remained intact.”

“Crafty Cormac, trusting no one! Well-I even like Veremund. As to that other business you mention-naturally I had thought on all that. Likely Caesar himself sent orders for the capture of such monsters as we!”

Cormac smiled. “More likely that old throat-slitter Guntram, with an ax over his head from Alaric. As for Veremund… aye. I like the man.”

“ You? Like a king? ”

“Split a knuckle, Wulfhere.”

The Dane laughed, then sobered. “And Irnic. Good soldier. Arms like slabs of meat and hard as oak. Now then-am I pretty enough?”

Cormac looked at his comrade-in-arms. He grinned. The Suevi wore their tunics short, and no man among them stood even nigh so tall as Wulfhere Skull-splitter. On him, even the largest available Suevic tunic was nigh obscenely short.

“Hunch forward like a gnome and it’s middling decent ye are,” the Gael said, never cracking a smile. He went on gravely, “To be sure, it leaves ye as bare of arse as my father’s prize boar. And whate’er befalls, be careful of keeping your leggings well pulled up, and don’t be stretching. Ye’d vanish at once under a burial-mound of all the Roman ladies within seeing-range.”

The Skull-splitter was not amused.

The well-born lad Mir, indeed impressed with their kemptness, suggested that mayhap a sewing-woman of the king’s hall could add a border to Wulfhere’s tunic. A deep one.

They left the Roman city then and returned to the king’s dun, ambling on a lovely day that was well-warmed by a smiling sun and cheered by Hispanic birds. Attracted by the clamor, they found a score or so of the king’s troopers at practice. Their target was a massive slab of seasoned oak, indeed a log split in two with its flat surface facing the throwers. Buried three feet in the ground and braced with great stones, the revealed target was tall as a man, and broader. Eyes, genitals, and internal organs had been crudely drawn on it.

At it the Sueves were hurling the Frankish assault-ax, of the sort that gave that fierce and treacherous tribe its name. The missiles hissed through the air, short-hafted, single-edged, and deadly sharp. Wicked weapons they were, though their main use was in hurled volleys immediately before a foot charge with swords or second axes.

Watching, noting the skill of these, Suevi as well as their spirit and the manner of their training, Cormac held his gaze on them. He had become aware of himself being watched. That slim, richly-clad figure on the far side of the compound was past mistaking. Did Eurica stare at him in invitation, or malice, or foolish-innocent curiosity? She hadn’t the wit to veil it, whichever. At least I need not suspect her of cunning , he thought, and affected not to notice her. Thus he missed Wulfhere’s departure.

The Dane returned… carrying his horrid three-quarter-moon ax with its prodigiously heavy head. Oh, anyone could lift it; it was only Wulfhere could swing it for more than a few minutes. Only he could throw it at all. Swing it he did; when Wulfhere Splitter of skulls hurled himself into battle, bloodstained, beard like blood and fire bristling and those terrible blue eyes blazing, his great ax clotted with blood and brains, few dared face him.

The two reivers were a good twenty feet behind the line of Suevic francisca-hurlers , who were essaying thirty-foot throws and had not seen their observers. Some axes struck, bit, and dropped; a few slammed into the wood’s painted targets and stood there amid the sound of cheers. Too many struck with the sound of wood against wood, or the chringing of steel against wood but not edge-first. These bounded away to either side of the target and littered the ground until all men had thrown, after which axes were collected for the next round. Trainers harangued in loud voices and praised not so loudly.

Wulfhere gauged, squinting, noting even the wind despite his ax’s weight. He muttered and cocked his head and moved his fingers in laborious calculations. And he backed a half-pace.

“Cormac,” he muttered as warning, and with a mighty heave and a grunt, he hurled that ghastly doer of death that was definitely not designed for throwing.