“Cormac…”
His face remained impassive despite the piteous appeal of her voice and face. “Ye live, Clodia. And it’s not as my guest ye be aboard.” And he went from her.
By scanning the stars through wind-shredded gaps in cloud, and by Behl the sun as he shook off the dark and reigned anew, they discovered that they were far off course. Now Clodia of Nantes knew the reason that men of the sea ever equivocated with words such as should and with luck and good fortune when they answered the simple question: “How long will it take?” For none could ever be sure. A journey by sea might take two days or ten-or three months, an a ship, was blown so far off her course and then afflicted with calm.
Erelong, those aboard Raven had contrary winds to fight again. These rose to such a patch that not sail only, but mast as well had to be lowered, else both had gone by the board. The wind shrieked like mad hags babbling inanities and lightning lit the sky with lurid flashes, followed by the crash of thunder.
Thor was angry.
Aegir was awake, and angry.
Ran was angry. And what care had the son of Lir for a girl of Nantes, and boys and men of Dane-mark, and one long exile from Eirrin?
It went on that way for five days.
Save for two other such respites that were all too brief, their time on the Bay of Treachery was consistently as bad as the first day, or worse.
They were fighting a sea that deserved all its fell repute, that hated humans and drowned whales while tearing down cliffs. Its bottom must be crowded with ships and bones, assuming that many had been foolish enough to come abroad here. A lesser ship than Raven and her crew had not been seen again save as fragments of axhoned wood torn by wind, and sodden corpses washed up on far beaches. With weaker leaders, even that crew might have given up from weariness and let themselves rest-in the nets of Ran.
Two of the wounded men died.
Two others, able-bodied companions, were lost in the hell of the sea for a moment’s missed footing; in truth, Ubbi was gone because he’d released his grip on his oar long enough to pick his nose.
Four deaths, and they received no comment aside from muttered oaths and a fare-thee-well. There was not even time to think good thoughts of those men. The Danes could mourn their comrades later, so long as they did not join them. And so long as former comrades returned not as liches; Those Who Walk after Death.
During one of the respites, idly talking men decided that Aegir and Ran had naught to do with this awful stretch of water, and the skalds must merely have failed to make mention that here reigned Loki and his ugly get, Hela who ruled the underworld. Clodia was willing to think them right, as she had already decided they were the coldest, meanest, bravest and most competent men under heaven.
On the fifth day the winds steadied, and fell.
Raven rocked gently on the water become glassy plain, and weary survivors of wrathful, treacherous winds basked in the gentleness as in sweet bed-linen. Men sagged, or merely crumpled and slept, or rose and stretched-and then slumped. Up went the sail, and it was hardly less relaxed than the men beneath.
In twilight, they espied a dark coastline. After the cloudy sundown a land-breeze roved out to bring the welcome scents of earth and forest. Yet was too soon to rejoice; as leaders, the Gael and the huge Dane had to decide what landfall might portend. Nor was thinking easy for them, with fatigue on their bodies and brains like thrice-filtered poison.
They spoke with great deliberation and exaggerated care and what, in fresher state, they’d have deemed thick simplicity, the Gael in particular.
“Yon be Hispania,” Wulfhere said. “Must be.”
“Hispania,” Cormac agreed. “And the northern part. Most likely the north-west. Galicia. That is the name they call it by. Galicia.” He paused to ponder, and that ponderously. “Have we enemies here?”
“I think not. Ye’ll not believe me, Wolf, but this is one coast where I’ve never done business. Farther south, aye. Never here.”
“Nor I.”
“Strange.”
“Umm.” Cormac was bethinking him of former days, when he’d led a band of Eirrin’s reivers and men had named him the greatest such sea-wolf since Niall of the Nine Hostages.
Aye, Cormac an-Cliuin had plundered farther south than this too, all the way to Africa’s sparkling shores and within the very blue, blue Mediterranean. Yet it chanced that he had never put in at Galician shores, not even for naught so harmless as to lift a few cattle for fresh eating. He’d taken nary a drop of Galician booty off a ship, to his knowledge. There could be naught against him here, in this northwest corner of Hispania… save his reputation, o’course, should he chance to meet with narrow, finicking men.
He raked through his tired memory for what he knew of this land.
The people here were an insular lot, he seemed to recall, not the sort to care what he and Wulfhere had done in other places, to other peoples. The Galicians were just as separated from other men as the sea-roving tigers of Raven. Some German tribe held the mastery here, didn’t it? Aye-what was it they were called, now. An amalgam of tribes, an old group united in-
“Sueves!” the Gael said aloud.
“Slaves?”
“Na, redbeard: Sueves. The Suevi. The people who rule this land.” He slapped his knee, on which the watered, salted leather had gone dry and hard as old bark. “Fine, then! They’ll not be hanging us unless on principle, and-”
“Principle?” Wulfhere’s tone was truculent.
“We are pirates, Wulf! We can make ourselves understood by them. It’s a German people they are, or were. I had their king’s name, once.”
“Ah! One Veremund the Tall. That his height is what a Dane would reckon ‘tall’ I misdoubt, though. Umm… the name’s all I know of him.”
“Veremund. Verem-aye! A king with ideas, I’m told. It’s trouble with the Goths he and his people are after having. It ought not harm our credit an we let him know the Goths are after having trouble with us… and he’ll be knowing that anyhow.”
“How much trouble,” Wulfhere asked, “and how bad?” After a moment he added, “The Sueves with the Goths, I mean.”
That Cormac knew, but he also knew his own brain was working little better.
“There is the meat of it, Cormac. And be they at odds still, or at peace? For all we know, they now be Gothic vassals.”
Cormac, silent, laboured at remembering. The conquests and dispossessions that had boiled across the known world in the last hundred years were beyond any man’s power to keep straight in his head. The writhe and surge of humanity in this that the “Saints” called the fifth century in the reign of their Lord had been like unto the winds of Treachery Bay. Those in Britain, that Cormac was more familiar with, were complicated enow.
The Gael stalked through his own mind, sorting. Blood of the gods, how many places he’d been, how much he knew of the world! And to think that but eight years agone he’d been but a provincial boy who’d thought he had the world because he’d slain a bear of Connacht, alone and with a dagger!
He said at last, “No, it’s no Gothic vassals these people are. The Sueves came down into Spain with the Vandals and the Alans, a long lifetime agone. The Sueves remain, though they were squeezed westward; the Vandals and the Alianis have crossed into Africa and become one people. The Goths, I was hearing, did subdue these Suevi three or so times, on behalf of the Romans. The first time and the second, the Goths have the lesson and then returned to those lands ceded them over in Gaul. Hmp! Roman diplomacy at work, I’m not doubting, and them with no desire to see the Goths grow too powerful.”
Cormac squinted darkly at the sky, reflecting.
“The last time matters fell out differently. The Sueves were waxing fierce once again, under a king named Remismund; they had taken Lisbon, this one Germanic tribe! It was that city’s own Roman governor himself who oped the gates to them! By then Euric had just become king over the Visigoths, and he marched them over the mountains once more, to rout the Sueves.”