“Ah well,” Cormac consoled him. “Ye did call him niddering and coward to his teeth, and a hundred men are after witnessing it.”
“Rather would I ha’ split him to his teeth,” Wulfhere grunted. He scratched his chest, and Cormac saw him wince. “Curse these talonmarks! They burn like fire still.”
Aye, Cormac thought, and worry was on him. That is a matter we must be seein’ to, when again we reach Bro Erech.
18
Three days to Fritigern’s Isle; two nights and a day to achieve their object; three days more to return. So it fell out, and they entered the Morbihan to learn that Howel was recovering. Although desperately weak and in pain, as he would be for a while yet, he would live and not be crippled.
“His wounds are avenged then,” Morfydd said though without smiling. “It is well! And Hengist-he lives yet?”
She sat in her lord’s hall, wearing a plain gown of dark red and no jewellery on her save two rings. Present too was a very different Cathula, exquisitely clean and attired in what was surely the finest skirt-red-and embroidered bodice-white on yellow-she’d ever worn… and uncertain as to what to do with her hands. Despite that entirely ordinary insecurity, the look of latent madness had not left her.
“Aye, curse him,” Wulfhere answered Morfydd, in surly wise. “Hengist lives.”
The pleasure of striking back at his enemy and venting his frustrations in battle had left the Dane. His cheeks had gone lank. Sunken in their sockets, his blue eyes were ringed with dark flesh and stared bright as with a fever. The constant daggerish pain of the black owl’s stigmata had begun to waste even him.
Morfydd took note of these signs. She recognized their meaning. Concern sat on her brow. She considered, as if weighing words she had rather not utter; words whose very wisdom she gravely doubted. Yet at last she spoke.
“Wulfhere: Sigebert has used magical sendings against you. Is it your wish to do likewise by him? You may find it possible.”
“Eh?” Wulfhere started, blinked, became closely attentive. “How?”
Cormac remained silent. He cared little for the sound of this.
“The Antlered God, the Lord of Death, is abroad with his hunting pack,” the lady Morfydd said, with utmost seriousness. “So much we know of surety. In earthly phrasing, it is possible to give his pack a scent to follow and cry, them on the chase. Great hate, strongly directed, can do this, an it be focused in a place of power such as the stone circle in Broceliande. Now here we have a triad who greatly hate Sigebert One-ear: your own self, Cormac; and Wulfhere, and Cathula. With me to guide and direct, your combined ill-wishing can raise the death-gods of Arawn. And set them abaying on Sigebert’s track to harry the soul out of his body and into the realm of Donn.”
Cormac’s mouth assumed an ugly shape. Cathula said with dreadful eagerness:
“Yes!”
“Suppose it fails?” Cormac demanded with hostility.
“That were hideously dangerous for us all,” Morfydd said. “Arawn is a god, not some lackey to be whistled up and despatched on errands! When the doom is loosed, it strikes where it will, and whom. The lord of Death, the Dark Huntsman, and his pack can as easily descend upon the ill-wishers as on those wished ill. Even should that not befall… the casting is a fearful strain, and could leave us broken in body and spirit. I tell you this: I would fear to do it. I’d not be so much as speaking of it, were it not that I foresee Sigebert One-ear will do great harm to Bro Erech one day, unless he be destroyed.”
“He-will-be-destroyed,” Cormac said. He spoke dispassionately, though the look in his grey eyes was far from neutral. “It’s Wulfhere and I who’ll be seeing to that, and without the use of sorcery. Ye’ve put belief on me about the danger that’s in it, Lady Morfydd. An I have learned aught in this life, it is that gods are not to be used as weapons… or meddled with-or trusted! It’s my own wits I’ll be trusting to bring me to Sigebert’s throat, and this sword to open him a second mouth therein.”
Though he’d naturally ‘shown interest, Wulfhere growled agreement.
“No!” Cathula fair shouted, forgetting herself in her fervor. “Where be your manhood? Where be your hate? Be ye twain reivers or whimpering babes? An ye dare not do this thing, I will do’t-alone!”
“You will not,” Morfydd said, in a perfectly equable tone. “You speak with the loud voice of ignorance, and under a prince’s roof. I pardon it, and ask Cormac and Wulfhere to do the same despite your insults, for you have suffered much.”
Cormac’s shrug said plainly that the outburst of a peasant girl could not hurt him. Was beneath him to inflict punishment for it. Wulfhere said, “Aye-but look ye to your manners, wench. Not all are as forbearing as I and Cormac.”
“Now attend me,” Morfydd said vehemently. “Put this thing from your mind, Cathula! Even with the stress of the summoning shared among three, and I to direct, the peril were worse than deadly. For one alone, and that of an ignorant village girl-yes, ignorant-no matter how strong your hate, this were madness and utter destruction for you. I’ll by no means abet it, and there’s an end.”
Cathula’s stare was sullen and fanatical. She dared attempt one further sharp protest and was as sharply silenced by Morfydd, and dismissed from the hall. Even she was not so driven as to take the matter to the point of further argument. The stubborn look in her eye, however, had not altered.
19
“The ravens are flying!”
So the word had been uttered, in Midgard and in worlds beyond. Now had the ravens gathered for the feast. Whichever side conquered, in this war, the ravens would be victorious as welclass="underline" servants of the Lord of Death, death-birds of the battlefield; eaters of death-glazed eyes.
Syagrius, Consul of the Empire, better known as King of Soissons, went forth from his city to meet the Frankish threat. He chose not to remain behind walls and subject Soissons to a siege. Informed by spies that Clovis and Ragnachar were raising a war-host, Syagrius had at once sent word to the counts of the appropriates cities: raise levies and march! Conferring with them, he had flatly refused to subject Soissons to a Frankish siege:
“No, my lords. The barbarians have chosen their time too well. At any other time, we might retreat behind walls and wait while hunger and desertion thinned their ranks. Now, the harvest is everywhere ripe to feed them. I will not permit them to lay it waste, or destroy it myself to forestall them. They have no cavalry, and we have-Gothic mercenaries, no less! We will cut the Frankish host to pieces just as did the Gothic horsemen at Adrianople, a hundred years agone. Oours is the discipline, the heavy armour, the superiority with missile weapons. The Franks can better us in one respect only: Numbers. They will find it insufficient.” Thus had spoken Syagrius, and thus was the die cast.
Now he sat his heavy Gothic charger under an overcast sky full of lead and slate, and watched the Frankish host approach. It looked as if the entire nation of the Franci was on the march. They covered the plain as a river in flood-time. The creak and clank, the odours of leather and iron and unwashed bodies flowed ahead of them even to Syagrius’s aristocratic nostrils. He wrinkled them in distaste.
A Roman, this Syagrius. A proud one: last heir to the mighty tradition of soldiering and rule. A Consul of the Empire he was, insofar as the Empire meant aught in these times. He bore too the title magister militum: commander of Gaul’s mobile field forces. His clean-shaven face might have been represented on an antique coin. He wore the panoply of a Roman general from another time; ornate, red-crested helmet with engraved and gilded cheek-pieces, inlaid cuirass and greaves, and a flowing scarlet cloak. His sword, however, was pure business: a plain Gothic cavalry spatha. A weapon for use, not show.