“Likely not. Now attend: we will do no harm on ye. By my advice, ye’ll be hiding yonder, in what was kitchen and larders. All solid stone, with easy access to the courtyard. An this house takes fire, ye’ll not be burned, or trapped to suffocate in the smoke either. There be hidey-holes, too, where no looters ought to find ye, supposing any trouble in this disused shell of a place, as I think they will not. Understand me?”
“Yes, lord!”
“Good. Keep together and quiet, and I hope soon ye are with your family. My friends and I depart now.”
And, after Cormac had told his companions of the exchange, they did leave the place, on their dark errand. Boy and girl watched them tramp away through the courtyard. Both were amazed that such terrible men had not slain them out of hand for the mere sport of it. That wore away enough for them to become sensible children. They hid where Cormac had recommended.
Making a path through the congested streets of Nantes was not easy, even for armoured men with shields and swords or axes. Once the company stopped while Cormac gave listen to a fat man haranguing a crowd. He spoke in favour of King Syagrius, and cursed Count Bicrus for fleeing the city in manner cowardly. Mac Art listened but briefly ere he was convinced that this jiggle-belly knew no more than the boy they had queried-and, while unlike the boy, would never be so honest as to admit his ignorance. Cormac gestured and he and his men pressed on. They were peculiarly his, now, with Wulfhere so obviously and pitifully weakened.
Because they knew Nantes well and Sigebert’s manse had belonged to the customs inspector they’d formerly dealt with, Cormac and Wulfhere were able to find the place. No happiness was on them to find it locked and barred. The place appeared deserted.
“I’ll wager One-ear’s not here,” Wulfhere growled. “That one will have declared for whichever side he thinks apt to win, and be active somehow.”
“True for you, Wulf,” Cormac agreed nodding. “Still, there must be servants, a housekeeper; a few guards at least, for us to be questioning.”
“That pig Lucanor may be here!” Knud snapped. Hopefully.
None stayed them as they broke in. Sadly, neither Lucanor nor his master was to be found. Sigebert had left not so much as a guard or two. Belike he deemed it too petty a precaution, with a kingdom’s fate in the balance-and his own shining future. Yet it was as Cormac suggested: a few servants remained, and the formidable housekeeper, Austrechilda. She knew far more.
Austrechilda was stubborn. Two men had to hold her face in a bowl of water to make her speak. Even then it appeared that she might rather drown than divulge what she knew. A tribute to her character, mayhap-or to Sigebert’s ability to inspire fear. Cathula had told mac Art of Austrechilda. Not until she had come up for the sixth time, snorting and choking and blowing water through her nose, did she decide that talking was preferable to dying now, though Sigebert might have to be faced later.
“He-he-” she gasped. “-he’s at the manse of Count Bicrus. Some days agone… he and the municipal-curia and the… bishop, declared support for the Franks. What’s become of the Count I know not. It’s-ulp! ulp! in my mind that he-he’s dead. Now the city is divided… and my lord Sigebert sits in the Count’s manse, whilst the forces he has raised battle Sy-Syagrius and his men.”
Cormac swallowed and digested that while he demanded, at once: “What of Lucanor Antiochus? It’s a fleshy-faced man I speak of, with a thin blade of a nose, and airs about him. Where might he be found?”
“With-the lord Sigebert.” Austrechilda quaked into a long fit of coughing. “She may sit,” Cormac told the Danes who held her. To Wulfhere: “This makes sense, I’m thinking.
Wulfhere nodded. “Dark plots and treason, with Sigebert in the midst of it. Aye. An he’s against this king, I be for Syagrius!”
“Away out of here then, to the Count’s rath!”
That manse stood nearby, close to the forum and basilica. Lurid firelight made the great square almost as bright as it had. been ere sunset, for several buildings were ablaze. Towering flames created great lamps. The square was choked with men, all revealed in that evil light of orange and yellow. Armoured horsemen rode down foot soldiers or smote them with sword and mace, while they were being speared or sworded in their turn. In adjacent streets and alleys, other foot soldiers seemed to be fighting on the side of the mounted men: Syagrius’s. The city was indeed divided.
“Blood of the gods! It’s little difference our two dozen men will make, in that butcher’s yard!” Cormac looked around, his eyes invisible within their slits. “Aye… best we place ourselves on some rooftop, choose targets for arrows, and shout ‘Syagrius!’ as our battle-cry. Peradventure in a while we shall be able to essay more without getting ourselves killed for naught.”
Men looked at him who’d become General Cormac, and at Wulfhere who coughed in a sudden eddy of smoke. “Aye,” the giant said, and his eyes watered.
The Danes implemented the plan swifttly with out standing on ceremony. They chose the building whose roof looked best for their purpose, and they forced a way into it. A horseman actually struck at Halfdan, who ducked and gave no return stroke. The horse bore that surprised Goth on by, while the scalemailed men vanished into the building. They gained the roof by the simple expedient of breaking a large hole in the tiles. Between fire and Wulfhere’s ax, the roofs of Nantes were suffering much this night. Soon they’d found a place to stand and aim: a small terraced roof-garden that they might have reached less forcefully had there been less haste on them.
Below, Frankdom’s supporters had had their fill. Doggedly they retreated, still fighting and forming a semblance of ranks before the dead Count Bicrus’s manse. Seeing them drawn up thus, Cormac blinked incredulously. Be this all of them left alive?
Probably not. Many must have melted into the maze of streets, deserting. Few of those remaining still had shields. Those who had were placed in the forefront. Between them and the mailed horsemen was a grisly morass of dead or wounded. That and the short distance made a mounted charge impossible. The horse-soldiers began dismounting, to finish the night’s work afoot. Cormac noted that orders were given by a man in red-crested helm and tattered cloak of crimson.
“It’s Sygarius hisself that must be.”
“And a beautiful target he’d make were we against him,” Wulfhere rumbled, “asitting up there on his big horse with his fine helmet and cuirass! Our arrows would nail it to his backbone! Why stand we gaping? Shout and loose!”
The Danes laughed, and obeyed. Their bellowed “SYAGRIUSSS!” rolled over the square to bring heads around in bewilderment, just as two dozen arrows sang over the carpet of dead and dying. They thudded deep into the ranks of Frankish supporters. Six shafts actually drove through shields, to flesh themselves lightly in the men holding them. Others found throats, and brains and thighs.
Another flight, humming high-voiced, and another. Danish arrows slew Franks to aid Romans and Goths. Each volley was accompanied by a new roar of “SYAGRIUS!” The enemies of the defeated consul-king continued to go down; not spectacularly, collapsing in a mass, but with a nerve-wracking, inexorable steadiness.
Cormac was not comfortable watching easy butchery. “Knowledge is on him whose side we’re on, unless he be fool. Let’s be going down to announce ourselves.”
“What-by our true names?”
Cormac paused at that. “Hm! Best not, perhaps. We come from Bro Erech with a score to settle, with the One-ear. That is all Syagrius need know of his-allies.”
Wulfhere agreed and ordered his Danes to hold fast and continue pulling string until he called for them. He followed Cormac from the roof then, into the slaughter-reeking square. Franks were bawling for bows, and finding none, and going down. Two strangers emerged from the building whose roof rained feathered death.
They faced each other in the midst of the shambles, those men of war; the Roman commander with his tired face and battered, gore-crusted cuirass fitted to his torso, astride his wounded horse; the gigantic Dane with his great beard and ever-thirsty ax; the dark, sombre Gael in his shirt of black mail, treading over the slain in the light of a blazing city. Once Cormac slipped, in a puddle of sticky scarlet.