Andrew Offutt: The Tower of Death

Two men stood in her bow in the morning light. Athanagild had described them without error, save in one point only. Yet still he had not conveyed their presence; to accomplish that would require a bard aflight on the inspiration of his demon.

Wulfhere was immense, and no less; a man huge of height and thew, with fire-blue eyes under thickets of brow and a beard like a conflagration. Though he was restless with waiting, he moved not save to fondle the great ax he held across the front of his body and, once in a while, to sigh. At such times his scale byrnie expanded as if it were hard put to contain him. That was but illusion, though a remarkable one. On the Danish giant gleamed heavy golden buckles, studs, and armlets. His war-gear was adequate and more. In his belt gleamed the whalebone hilt of the broad-bladed dagger sheathed there, and a smaller ax was tucked through that same broad thick belt at his other hip. Against his knee leaned a shield like a scarred moon of battle.

Athanagild’s one mistake had been in saying that the Skull-splitter overtowered him by a foot. It was half a foot only, though the high bull’s horns adorning the Dane’s helmet made it seem the more; Wulfhere affected the style of his ancestors. But then Athanagild’s one sight of Wulfhere Hausakliufr had been from a distance. The which was confirmed by the fact that Athanagild Beric’s son was yet alive. Wulfhere was only five inches over six feet…

The man at his side was equally still, and seemed more at his ease in that moveless waiting. Leanly muscular in his shirt of black link-mail, Cormac mac Art of Eirrin wore no ornaments on his darkish skin. Strange this was, in one of a race whose men loved to adorn themselves, and never more splendidly then when they went forth to fight. This Gaelic Celt, though, had ceased long since to care for show. He was all stark professionalism as he scanned the nearby sea, casting an occasional searching glance into the reeds behind him. Had they moved contrary to the light sea breeze, he’d have issued a warning. For copper-beaked Raven lay in ambush here as in the jaws of a bear-hopefully a sleeping one.

Cormac, Wulfhere, and their crew of Danes lurked in no less than the home waters of the Visigothic kingdom’s Garonne fleet. In truth, from where he stood at Raven’s bow, Cormac mac Art might have hurled a stone into the River Garonne’s estuary. Moreover, just the other side of that great estuary nestled Saxon settlements, and Saxon pirate ships along with some few thousand Saxon fighting men under a dozen independent chieftains-and every one was willing to be known as friend to Wulfhere’s greatest enemy, Hengist the Jute, King of Kent over in Britain.

Four nights agone they had lowered Raven’s sail, unstepped her mast and rowed softly in with muffled oars. Since then they had eaten cold food only, spoken almost never, and then not above whispers. They had endured the mosquitoes and midges. As Cormac seemed scarcely to notice them, someone had murmured low that any gnat biting the sombre Gael knew it would die horribly.

Waiting strained them sore, and chafed men of action. They endured. They exercised as best they could by arm-wrestling on the oar benches, and straining betwixt them with braced feet and backs.

Rather nearby, other men than they were weary of waiting.

On the estuary’s northern side, two galleys of the Visigothic royal fleet lay tucked behind a woody point of land. Athanagild Beric’s son, treading the deck of one ship, tugged his heavy moustache and frowned at his marines, who were eating their supplies at a deplorable rate. Had he known the men he’d been ordered to capture had been almost within shouting distance for days, unseen and undreamed of, Fleet Commander Athanagild might have suffered a seizure.

The while, beating up the coast from Bayonne in the merchant tub Thetis , came one Gervase, a plain sea captain. He squinted brown eyes northward, and then at the coast; Gervase was both fearful of Saxon war-boats and hoping for a Gothic galley on patrol.

My luck , he thought morosely, to meet the Saxon pirates so near safe harbouring!

An odd sort of voyage, too; the whole distance around Spain, and having to pay toll to the Vandals on the way. Curious. He spat to landward, with the wind. It wasn’t long since those towheaded heretical bastards would have taken the whole cargo, and slaughtered the crew for being Orthodox. A lot of them still would, and did. But Gaiseric was the man who had made their seapower, and he was a decade in hell.

The Vandals were not the terror of all the Mediterranean any longer, but only the western half… and learning that one did not kill a cow for its milk. Still, they were unchancy, and it had been good to see the Pillars of Hercules fade into distance.

It was strange, though, the way the backers had insisted on this route. They had brassed up so readily, too, with the Vandal’s toll. Not like them at all. From Narbo to Toulouse by road, and then down the river to Burdigala by barge, that was the proper route! Simpler and the Devil of a lot safer.

Aye, but the royal court was at Toulouse. The Gothic king might have decided to buy the lot-at his price. Likely enough the backers had decided the Vandals were a better risk. In any case the danger money was coming to Gervase for it.

Had he known that his backers and the Count of Burdigala had of a purpose set him out as bait for pirates, he might well have dropped in a fit at the same time as Athanagild. Both men were thus protected by lack of knowledge.

At the creek-mouth, a fox barked twice.

Sudden fierce eagerness filled Wulfhere’s Danes; not often did foxes bark from treetops. One of their own, called Halfdan Half-a-man for his short stature, swung nimbly down from branch to branch to soggy earth and made for the ship. An oar swept out over Raven’s strakes. The blade grounded on the creek-bank and Halfdan walked up it, a stocky personification of delight. He took shield and ax without having to think on it the while he moved forward to give word to his chieftain.

His grin told the news ere his tongue could form it. “It’s the one! Or if not, there be two corbitos for Burdigala under brown canvas with a pale three-sided patch!”

“How does she ride?”

“Heavy! By Aegir the bountiful, there’s wine in her hold, as ye were assured! And outrun Raven such a’ round-bellied seagoing walnut could not, even were she riding light!” Halfdan smacked his lips. “We will drink tonight.”

“Ahh,” Wulfhere gusted, in a bliss of anticipation. “ Push out, then, ye thirsty sons of Dane-mark! Reward is ours!”

Cormac said naught, and his grin was a bare skinning of teeth as he drew his sword. Dark and smooth-shaven was his face, of a sinister cast not amended by the scars upon it, or the cold narrow eyes grey as his weapon-steel. His visage was fitly framed in the cheek-pieces of his helmet, a hard leather casque strengthened with plaques of black iron. Its flowing horsehair crest was the nearest thing to ornament he had on him, and even that to a purpose; was a lasting taunt to Hengist’s Jutes, for the White Horse was the badge of their royal house, and they fought under a standard of white horsetails.

Held vertically, oars thrust down into the creek-bed, poling Raven forward.

As she slid lithely out to where she had more waterroom, the poling men seated themselves and ran their oars out horizontally. Their two-score benchmates did the same. The blades dipped raggedly, cut into water, and fifty strong men pulled back against its resistance.

Raven sprang forth on a bright sea glittering with scales of hot gold.

Knud the Swift, in the stern, called staves for his comrades to row by, and they rowed hard. Water peeled back white from Raven’s copper-sheathed prow. It hissed by the strakes. Oars lifted shining, swept back, dipped, and men drove them forward again, revelling in the free use of muscles too long cramped. Work? Naught of the kind! A touch of healthy exercise to get the kinks out before they bathed their weapons!