Andrew Offutt - The Tower of Death

Staggering, streaming sweat through the greasy smoke that rendered his face unrecognizable, Cormac mac Art turned and extinguished the beacon.

“Wulfhere and the others!” Hugi gasped. “Tyr’s beard-I’d forgot!”

Cormac had not, for the extinguishing of the beacon was another part of the plan he and Wulfhere had worked out. Outside, thunder stalked the sky like an enraged lion that frightened the wind into screams and howls the while it drove the ocean into restless dunes.

“It is no night for them to be out,” Gudfred panted.

“It’s as if… they knew,” Hakon said, and all wondered who or what “they” might be.

Through set lips Cormac said, “Methinks those who sent the devil-kelp do know.” He considered, frowning. “Now I but hope the unknown master of that killer weed will not think the ghastly attack has… succeeded, and show his… or its!… false beacon!”

“Aye,” Hugi said, rubbing at a smoke-dark face with smoke-dark fingers so that he accomplished naught but the creation of a weird design. “Our comrades are better giving no chase on this sea!”

Cormac stepped past him, and after a pause during which each man sucked in a breath, he threw open the door. More smoke billowed up into the chamber, dark and greasy. Flames crackled, fitful and scattered. The cauldron had rolled over the smashed door, or through it, and though it was charred that great chunk of old oak did not burn. As for the plants; they were consumed, and none more came.

It was a time for the clarions and shouts of the victors, the prancing of steeds and the tossing of flowers ’neath glittering towers whose windows sprouted the smiling faces of children and desirous damsels.

Instead Cormac and his dirty, smudged little company sank weakly down to sit on the floor in exhaustion. Now they became aware of stinging pain from suckers torn from their flesh, and nicks from their own weapons, and two burns from brand or lashing, burning plant. Clothing was ruined and armour would require cleaning, and oiling. Yet their thoughts were as one: of their companions of Raven , asea in a night become a vast total blackness that was vassal to a howling roaring wind.

The howling roaring wind drove the sea into foaming madness. Lightning slashed the sky like glittering daggers and thunder stalked on the feet of a thousand soldiers amarch to war. Raven rocked and was tossed. Rolling water slammed into her strakes like great fists and the foot-thick mast creaked and quivered as if become an aspen sapling. Her two sea-anchors were almost weightless in a sea gone insane and inimical.

In cap and oilskins, Wulfhere was able to stand at the bow because he clung tightly with gloved hands. He stared at nothing.

The tower was no longer visible though it was not so far as a hundred yards away. The tremulous yellow glow of its beacon had marked it; now that was extinguished. Morbid and horrific thoughts pulled at the mind of the Danish giant though he fought them. Was it Cormac who had extinguished the light, or…

An he and those with him are slain, I’ll flood the sea with blood , he thought ferociously, and then realized that the Gael’s little group had been attacked by bloodless algae, plants of the sea. Any blood he’d spill would be that of his former comrades.

He stared into the night of seagods’ wrath, waiting for another glow to tug at his peripheral vision. For Wulfhere would not take his gaze from where he’d last seen the tower’s light, lest it be rekindled and mislead him. It was the false light he awaited; the wrecker’s beacon.

His crew was silent. They huddled and clung while all about them chaos reigned and water came cascading over the ’midships gunwale to drench them. Beards were bespattered with briny foam like hoarfrost. They did nothing but wait because there was nothing else to do. The water drained sloshing into Raven’s bailing well, where its level rose slowly.

“Hrut!” their captain bawled. “Thorbrand! Blades ready!”

The two men rolled their eyes, but lurched each to an opposite side of the hull. With one hand they clung there, to slippery wood. The other was out for balance, and to draw steel at their leader’s command. The wind dropped with the suddenness no man ever grew accustomed to. Eyes looked this way and that; wind-assaulted ears seemed suddenly to have become hyperacute. Thunder grumbled like an old smith shackled to his forge.

Thorbrand and Hrut Bear-slayer drew swords because the pommels felt good in their hands. The two stood, well-braced on seasoned sea-legs, near the thick taut ropes that vanished over the sides.

“HA! See? See!”

Aye! they saw what Wulfhere descried through the troublous dark. A new glow. A light. A new beacon. It seemed to bob, as though someone with a lantern somehow ambled over the water. The decoy light! With the true beacon out in the old Roman tower; the wreckers had lit their own to entice Raven to her death.

“Oars! Half-sail! Chop! ”

Men leaped to their feet and sprang to the oar-racks where their long poles rattled, stowed during the awful wind and plunging waves. Others hauled up the rope bound yard. And as one man Hrut and Thorbrand chopped through the rope. The thick braided lengths, vanished; below, huge boulders dragged them to the seabed. Oars dropped into their locks and stout arms manned the rudder.

“Pull!”

Raven spread her wings. Raven flew.

The wind returned, and men cursed and called on the gods.

“Aegir sleep well!” one said, hoping that underwater lord would not awake and come for them with his giant net.

“Nyrod… in the palm of your hands is Raven your servant!”

“Ran be kind to sons of the sea!”

But that man was stared at; none wished so much as to attract the attention of the goddess of the sea and drowner of those abroad on her bosom.

And Wulfhere muttered the names of Thor and the All-father and Frigg to please Odin, and Freya and her sunny brother and aye, those sea-deities too-and, just in case, he quietly mentioned that Mannanan macLir that Cormac was wont to call upon, for those of Eirrin did insist that it was he lorded it over the sea.

Again the wind whipped the water into white-topped, mobile mountains. They drove like gigantic fists against Raven and the ship rocked with their impact. Rocked, and sped forward. Wulfhere’s commands were constant. Clinging to the side with one hand, the master of Raven made his way slowly, ever watchful, along the narrow planking that ran from bow to stern.

Raven raced through that howling inimical night of dashing leaping waves, and all aboard knew they hurtled toward the doom that was planned for them. Wulfhere’s sea-genius and their own strength could save them-and the gods.

Even as his ship wrestled the ocean and his ruddy face went scarfy with leaping brine, Wulfhere wondered. Did they but chase a phantom, a will-o’-the-wisp that would provide not even a decent battle for axes and swords… but might well give them watery death just the same?

Clinging, he glanced forward. The light loomed larger. When Raven climbed up from a trough to balance a moment on a ridge of water, the staring giant had a flashing glimpse of the wrecker’s craft. Weirdly, he saw no sails and the other vessel looked white. Then his own straining ship plunged down a slope of rushing water and he saw only the walls forming the next trough.

Suddenly he gripped the rail with both hands and stared. “ROCKS!” he bellowed, and hurled himself aft along a foot-wide walkway, not even holding, defiant of the wind. “Steerboard oars up! Pull hard aport! Hard, boys, an ye’d ever be dry this side of Valhalla! Quarter sail to steerboard!”