Andrew Offutt - The Tower of Death

Then the enormous strength of the Skull-splitter was added to that of Ordlaf. The steersman was a strong man, and muscular; Wulfhere’s upper arms were big as his thighs. The sea tried to take the steering oar away from them. Even with so little sail on, the mast creaked and bowed. Ropes of walrus hide strained and seemed to grunt like men. Raven hurtled. Captain and helmsman bent their backs and the muscles of their calves bulged their leggings.

Wood creaked horribly, the ship fought, and turned, and of a sudden the sail flapped.

“Reef sail! Reef sail!”

“Hela’s cold dugs- look at those teeth! ”

“Hela indeed-the old bitch hungers for us and would have us join her in Elvidnit this night!”

This from those men aport who saw the awful rocks that had awaited them, wet jagged teeth that would have received Raven and turned her into driftwood in bare seconds. Only just had they saved themselves, by their captain’s seamanship and main strength… and the strong backs of oarsmen who fought wind and leaping, dashing waters.

Even the wind eased, as if otherworld forces were reconsidering their attack.

Swift as a racing horse, Raven plunged past the rocks aport, showering them with a boiling white wake. The vessel shuddered as she slammed into a wall of water that drenched the crew anew. The world vanished; they were under water! No-they were plowing through that wet dune! Then they were out, through it, gasping, the decks streaming-only to glissade like an uncontrolled sled down a long mountainside of water.

“Up quarter sail! All oars-PULL!”

Water sloshed higher in the bailing well. Wulfhere glanced in. No; no men need yet be detailed to that churl’s job.

Wind and wave struck. A man yelled and an arm was broken. Knocked onto her side, Raven dumped water as she rushed along showing her keel. The steer-oar waved ridiculously in air. Then the ship was up, shaking herself like a great wet dog. Her crew spewed water from noses and mouths and glanced around nervously. All were there; the faces of two writhed in pain and that Knud Left-hand’s arm was broken was all too obvious.

“It’s only the right,” he said, and tried to wave, and passed out. Two of his fellow carles sprang to seize him and lash him down. Raven’s second Knud would not be holding shield or oar again, for a long while.

Mighty arms forced the tiller over and Raven bucked wind and sea. Somehow they dragged her about as a strong man drags a screaming stallion for the breaking. Wind and water buffeted her with a viciousness that seemed sentiently deliberate. Again the ship plunged for the light. It seemed to flee now, definitely amove on a swift-moving deck, its attempt to smash them on the rocks having failed. The wind glibbered obscenely and new thunder snarled with the voices of ten thousand rearing bears.

A bolt of lightning created noonday light, and Wulfhere stared at the craft of the wreckers. It was fleeing-and what a vessel was there!

He and his desperate men were far, far too busy to grapple the supernatural wreckers, for so Wulfhere at least now knew them to be. But he’d seen them, oh Odin’s stones he’d seen them across those mountain ranges of water-ere they and their weird and shuddersome barge vanished away into the windswept night.

Aye, vanished, and the cursing crew of Raven set about getting her in.

Next day-late, after weary men woke on dry land beneath bright Hispanic sun-Wulfhere Skull-splitter told Cormac what he’d beheld, and the Gael stared at him. Already he’d seen what he did not want to believe and had been forced by menace to his very life; must there be more? Logic had become unreasonableness-but with reason that was unreasonable, Cormac mac Art resisted.

“Ye mean-women?”

“I swear,” Wulfhere said, and drew himself up so that he was even more imposing; Wulfhere would have been imposing buried to the knees in mud. “I swear by the All-father’s one entirely sufficient eye and by Thor’s scarlet beard, aye and by the moustache of my dear father’s woman Freydrid-I swear, Wolf: I saw them.”

“Ran’s…”

“Ran’s daughters.”

“Ran’s daughters.”

Wulfhere nodded.

“ Women? Sirens?”

“Sirens? What’s that?”

Cormac mac Art waved a hand. “A supposition of the Greeks. Comely women of the seas who entice seafaring men to-”

“Aye!” the Dane nodded emphatically. “Aye! Loki’s eyes and Hela’s dry gourds, Wolf of Eirrin-believe! They were the dread daughters of Ran sure, and afloat on a barge made all of bones.”

“Bones.”

“ YES!”

“Bones, asea. In a storm.”

“Bones, son of an Eirrish pig farmer! Nor had any or aught of them an oar in her dainty pale hands, nor was there aught of sail on that barge not of this Midgard!”

And the Splitter of skulls stamped, to assure them both that they still trod the land of mortal-kind. Galicians saw them there outside the king’s hall, and stared, but went on their way. No man wanted aught to do with an argument between those two storied pirates.

“The sea was high, Wulfhere. It’s black the night was as a bear’s cave in winter. It’s glad I am and no man lost asea, old battle-brother. But… how saw ye them in that darkness?”

“ Wolf. Ye doubt me yet. Ah Cormac, Cormac-I saw . A fire burned on the deck of-”

“A fire! On the very deck! In the wind and a sea like mountains on the move!”

“ YES, damn ye! A fire burned there on that otherworld barge. I SAWit! Without fuel and blazing high, within a sort of circle, a strange sort of circle that… well, it was all picked out in that… that Romish piece-rock. Ah-mosaic.”

Cormac stared at him, and he’d looked more believing.

Wulfhere stared at the Gael, the man he’d escaped gaol with, sailed and divagated with, these three years.

Cormac stared at the.Dane, whose life he’d saved and who’d saved his; his battle-brother and respected companion.

The Dane said, “Well?”

“I believe you, Wulfhere. If my battle-brother Wulfhere Skull-splitter says he saw it, it was there.”

“Aye! Of course it’s impossible, blood-brother. And it was there. As the moving attacking kelp was. Aye, blood-brother, believe, as I believe all you tell me.”

And the two men gazed at each other in the sunlight of a quiet day the praises of which Galician birds trilled, and Wulfhere beamed and Cormac smiled. With his lips closed and his brows up.

“And you, blood-brother. Tell me what befell yourself and those four men with you in the tower.”

Cormac shrugged. “Well, after Freya stopped in and we all supped on one of the cats who’d pulled her chariot, a hundred and thirty-seven Valkyries flew in, and all tall as yourself. And though ’twas boring and sore hard work, we were stout men and managed to serve them all. After that-”

Wulfhere went crimson and his face worked. With doubled fists, he wheeled and walked off. Stiff or no, the huge Dane would make the ax-target suffer this day.

Cormac stood reflecting for a time, and squatted and drew aimless designs in the grass and the dirt. At last he heaved a great sigh. Then he rose and set off after his battle-brother.

CHAPTER TWELVE: A Lovely Afternoon for a Murder

Ran was wife to Lord Aegir the Bountiful, and no kindly she-goddess was she. Any northborn seaman knew that she spread nets of disaster for ships, and delighted in dragging them and their crews down and down to her airless demesne. There she gave laughter whilst watching the pretty bubbles of those men’s last breaths go dancing up to the sunlight. And, as the skalds were wont to refer to the sea as “the whale’s road,” so they called the rolling waves “Ran’s daughters.”