Both men’s faces gleamed and then they were sweating huge drops, though they stood motionless. They strove mightily, without moving from where they stood and without so much as raising their arms. Kuicho’s bare long limbs could be seen to tremble with effort, with focused energies.
The very air between the moveless combatants sang and vibrated with unseen forces. Usconvets knew that he watched war, eerie and of the shadow-world with powers drawn from the minds and those breathless gulfs between the stars, and that combat was no less than the striving one against the other of two enemy ships on stormy waters. Did he know doubts then, at having pitted his old companion against the newcomer whose appearance was obviously deceiving, as a long, lean rangy man could be strong as one with muscles like stones?
He had cause to be. As abruptly as it had begun, it ended. Kuicho shrieked, shook and twitched like an aspen in a gale, clutched at his eyes-and crumpled to the sand.
Instantly Lucanor reeled as with release of some mighty tension, and the illusion of the great winged thing surmounting and sharing his body vanished. Yet he fell not. Too, he no longer seemed aught save a most ordinary man. Breathing in great gasps, he stared at Usconvets.
“Vici,” he croaked; I conquered.
Usconvets swallowed again so that his voice emerged strong. “What of Kuicho? Is he dead? By Orko, if he has died our bargain is void-and your life as well, stranger among Basques!”
“He lives,” Lucanor said thickly; another short Latin word. “He will… be ill for many days, however. He… drained himself… as the conflict has cost me hard. Ah! Cthulhu fhtagn! Give me meat and wine!”
He seemed to fall to his haunches. Squatting shapelessly, he bowed his head.
Usconvets waved a hand to indicate that the Antiochite be given what he wanted. Out of a certain morbid curiosity he asked, “Have you no further need to fast?”
“My need is for strength,” the mage mumbled. He received meat, and began to eat. “Does our bargain stand, sea-chieftain?”
“Aye,” the Basque said, almost unwillingly. “Usconvets is loyal to his word. Show me the ship Raven and I fall upon it with all my -strength.”
“That is good hearing,” Lucanor said, past a steaming mouthful of whale meat. Delight as much as exhaustion fed his tremors now. “I have time, not immensities of time, but it suffices… to regain my strength, and then to fast for another day, and to perform certain divinations… yes. When they appear, you will know, lord. You will know.”
None failed to note that of a sudden Lucanor had become curiously servile. Mayhap because of the expenditure of so much energy, and strength? Whatever the reason, Usconvets took cue from it at once.
He nodded curtly. “Then eat,” he said. “It has long been my thought that Wulfhere Skullsplitter-the great oaf!-ought to have stayed in his cold northern waters. Now he shall learn it himself, by the Sun above me!”
3
“In a world where the old-time skill of the Roman swordsman is almost forgotten, Cormac mac Art is well-nigh invincible. He is cool and deadly as the wolf for which he is named; yet at times, in the fury of battle, a madness comes upon him that transcends the frenzy of the Berserk. At such times he is more terrible than Wulfhere, and men who would face the Dane flee before the bloodlust of the Gael.”
– Conal the minstrel, of Britain
Dusk had begun to shadow the blue water. Red as fiery copper, the sun of Behl sank lower in the direction of Galicia, which Raven had now left eight days’ sailing to westward. Behind the bay where Cormac and Wulfhere had rested their crew for a day and a night, the foothills of the Pyrenees rose dark against the sky. Beyond them shouldered up the great mountain peaks in mauve and scarlet and burnt gold, brilliant yet in the last of the light.
Coppery dusk illumined too the pirate galley’s swelling sail as Raven put to sea. The sail was new, of Galician manufacture; blue stripped with green. The ship slid forth silent as a crafty predator-which it was. This time Raven was on no piratical mission.
Wulfhere, standing immense by the shield-rail, breathed the twilight air with pleasure. His crimson beard fell to spread in untrimmed exuberance over his scale-mail corselet. Over his shoulder he bore the overlarge long-hafted ax that was never far from him. Braces of gold and brass flashed like fire on his arms, which were big as most men’s thighs. The mighty Dane made a picture of rampant barbarism not easily forgotten; and just now, of a contented man.
The barbarian loomed over the world Rome had conquered, and ruled, and lost. Unlike so many, this one was not interested in scrabbling over the truncated corpse of empire; Wulfhere Hausakluifr was content to live and to fight and to laugh.
“Ha, Cormac,” he rumbled, “this be more to my liking! By the Thunderer, I had begun to feel choked in that cramping harbour of Brigantium! Was well enow for yourself; ye be at home with kingly intrigues and politics. Not I.”
Cormac smiled faintly without making answer. The Skull-splitter had voiced some such comment on each day of their voyage thus far. Nor would the Gael be disagreeing with him. Cormac mac Art was not so much at home with matters political that he didn’t savour this challenge. Asea, he and Wulfhere were their own masters, and the kings of the earth could do no more than gnash their teeth over the fact.
Once again Cormac wore his black mail of chain mesh. Its reassuring familiar weight covered him from throat to mid-thigh, clinking. Above it his dark, scarred face well suited the war-shirt’s implications. His black mane, not long, was bare to the wind. Beside him on a vacant rowing bench rested his plain helmet. Its crest of flowing white horsehair stirred a little with the breeze of Raven’s movement. At one hip rode his straight, double-edge sword in its sheath; on the other hip he wore a Saxon fighting knife.
Planting a foot on the rowing bench beside his helmet, mac Art set his two hands on that knee and inhaled salt air while listening to the sound of water furling past in a hiss, and the thunk of oars accompanied by the grunts of those pulling them. Just now Raven’s unmanned oars were overmany. Threescore men made her full crew, fifty to row and ten to handle steerboard, sail, and lines. Now here they were, he and Wulfhere, roving the sea with but twoscore.
Still, mac Art of Eirrin did not fret over that for which there was no help. They’d been undermanned aforenow. They had prevailed. They lived.
Well they knew this western coast of Gaul. Here, in these waters where Gallia and Hispania met, heavy swells were common. In crashing gouts of foam they broke dangerously near sunken rocks even where the water was deep. Farther north, off the River Garonne and the Saxon islands, tidal streams ran tricky and inconsistent as though designed by hunt-wise foxes. To run up this coast by night required not only men who knew what they were about but bold ones besides. Necessity bred boldness as kings did conflict. The night did offer cover, and western Gaul was stiff with the reivers’ foes.
Big brusque Guntram, the Gothic Count of Burdigala that would be Burgundy, craved their bodies for exhibition on a gibbet to placate his master King Alaric. Athanagild Beric’s son, who commanded the royal Garonne fleet for Alaric, yearned even more to capture them.
More enemies were the Saxons settled in the Charente region and the large islands nearby. They knew the reivers; they knew Cormac had not come by his Seax-knife-Saxon dagger-through amiable trade.
Nor was it likely that Sigebert the Frank, now chief customs assessor of Nantes, would have forgotten them. He’d set a cunning trap for Cormac and Wulfhere not two months previously-and failed to take them though he had them at swords’ points. He’d lost an ear for his trouble.
Ah, half the world was set against the self-exiled Gael of far green Eirrin, and he was not even taking Lucanor into account.