“Please make him-”
“Belay that. Look!”
Fire, shoreward.
A dancing bright wisp of flame it was, that swiftly grew. In minutes it was a large yellow glow bright enow to be visible for miles of a clear night.
“Signal,” Wulfhere muttered, thinking aloud. “That, or beacon.”
“Or a rite of some kind,” Ivarr added. “Some chieftain’s obsequies? I’m not sure yon fire does not burn on the sea itself.”
“Wreckers,” was Ordlaf’s suggestion, and a world of loathing he packed into the word.
The others shared that loathing, and contempt. No seaman who had sailed the tricky coasts of Armorica, now known to many as Lesser Britain for the Cornish and Cymric folk who had settled there, went unmoved by the word wrecker. The name was an epithet. Wulfhere snarled in his bristling crimson beard.
“If such they be, let’s find and kill them!”
“If such they be, old Splitter of skulls,” Cormac said, “we will.” His tone was abstracted but not a whit less deadly for it. “We will, aye… but suppose that be a simple harbour-light. It’s no less mad we’d be to let it be drawing us in. Belike we’d be finding ourselves greeted with a royal claim on Raven and all she contains.”
“Aye, Captain.” Ordlaf spoke quietly. “Best go wide of it now, whate’er it may be. Make investigation by daylight.”
“For that we’d all fall asleep arowing,” Cormac mac Art added, “an we attempt it now.”
Raven turned southward upon water like shimmering silk. Men pulled their oars, and pulled again, with no strength in their arms. They had used the last of it, and still they rowed. The shore they neared was wild and shaggy, with no signs of cultivation.
“Put in yonder,” Wulfhere said, thrusting his massive head forward like a hound spotting birds. In truth he was squinting into the night.
The sanctuary he had chosen was a wood-fringed cove scarce so large that it could be flattered as a bay. The longship nosed in slowly. Cormac, at the bow, probed ahead for rocks. The cove seemed innocent of such, excepting the seaworn mass at its southern end, which bore a goodly frost of bird droppings.
They backed oars and anchored. No man would go ashore. The ship’s fire had been drenched out, days agone, but victuals remained, with an added odour of the sea from their sealskin wrapping. They ate lightly, without benefit of fire. Wulfhere, like his crew, was undismayed by cold food-but he did hark back lugubriously to the wine casks they’d heaved over-side. Cormac groaned. He knew there’d be complaints on that score at random intervals over the next several years. Such obscene waste had gone painfully to the Dane’s heart, or more aptly to his throat and stomach, the more susceptible parts of him.
“Still ye remind me of something, guzzler,” Cormac said. “That business at Garonne-mouth; would ye not be saying it was too like what happened after, at Nantes? At both places we found traps, and them well laid, wouldn’t ye say?”
Wulfhere shrugged and yawned. The matter was too far away and too long agone to concern him now. “Ye may have the right of it, Wolf. Does it signify? It’s never news, is it, that men of the law don’t like us. Mayhap we will take it up wi’ that fop Sigebert and his lord another day, though it’s from one ear only Sigebert’ll be giving listen! I’d surely like a word with that one-eared bastard when he lacks a score of weapon-men about him, were it only for Thorfinn’s sake. But these be Galician shores, and our concerns be here.”
Cormac grunted, “Aye,” and said no more.
They stretched the lowered sail for an awning, lest it rain. Blissful it was to lie down for a night’s sleep on tranquil water! Cormac made no objection when Clodia lay beside him and pressed close; indeed, he hardly noticed. After five unresting days on a crazy sea, he’d rather have had oblivious slumber than the embrace of Fand herself.
Clodia was, though, in proud fleshy bloom and ripe, and someone found interest and impulse to stoop and fondle her boldly as he passed. That resulted in a yelp and spasm that made Cormac sit up, hurling aside his covering cloak. A sharp, icy irritability weighed on him.
“Will ye horny sons of mares be still!” he snarled. “You too, wench! By Midhir and Morrighu, the next man who troubles my rest will sleep ashore or in the water where I’ll right briskly hurl him. And yourself, Clodia. Be that understood?”
There were soft hootings, and comments of a scurrilous nature emerged from the shrouding dark. Mac Art paid those no mind.
Once more he wrapped his cloak about him and composed himself to sleep, and this time with success. Clodia curled against his back, pleased he’d at least called her by name. She passed an arm about his waist, and clung. She did not intend that any “horny sons of mares” should drag her away from him for amusement betwixt the rowing-benches, an someone awoke in the night and decided he was sufficiently rested to be up to it.
CHAPTER FOUR: The Horror in the Lighthouse
Dawn provided colour and detail for a coast that might until then have been Hel or the Hesperides. Sunrise proved it to be neither. Both Cormac and his Danish shipmates stared, silently thoughtful, for this land bore haunting similarities to their home shores.
For Cormac mac Art, the one man of his race aboard Raven, and more irrevocably an exile, the similarities roused memories. And they were bitter.
Gossamer morning-mists had already begun to ravel away in the sun. Estuaries, deep and wind-swept like the northern fjords, sliced into a fertile land. Deep, blueshaded woods of beech and oak stretched broadly. Beyond loomed the greenest mist-shrouded hills Cormac had seen since he’d departed Eirrin the Emerald of the Sea.
Was said the Eirrin-born never forgot, or found true happiness elsewhere on all the ridge of the world. Homesickness took him by the throat like an enemy; homesickness roiled in his stomach. Though Raven’s deck was now the one true home he had, it was suddenly hateful to him. The land drew him like a sorcerer’s spell of summoning.
“I’ll be returning soon,” he said thickly.
“Your shield,” Wulfhere said.
Cormac slung it along his arm. With a splash and a stumble, he dropped from Raven’s thwarts. He waded forward, his eyes fixed on this land as if he were one possessed. He was vaguely aware of Clodia, who was following him close. He did not glance around. He waded ashore.
It might have been worse. At least she’d not bleated any Cormac, wait for me’s after him, for the crew to guffaw over. She was even tagging a few paces behind and keeping her mouth shut… which, had he seen his own face, would not have surprised the Gael so deep in his memories.
Then he ignored and even forgot her.
Eirrin. Love of the greater gods, Eirrin.
It’s liquid music the name was. A name that called up, that meant, the world’s bravest and fairest men and women, thick-maned horses, red and brindle cattle, rivers like molten silver with gold shining in their beds, and great shadeful forests old as time. Poets and craftsmen Eirrin produced, whose work vied with that of nature; learned men and druids of supernal wisdom and power. Splendour, and wealth, and delights. Eirrin. All barred to him.
All Eirrin barred to him. Because of the treachery of kings, and a deliberately provoked quarrel.
Cormac mac Art of Connacht had been meant to die of that provocation and ensuing duel. Instead, he had slain. Considering when and where he had done death on another Gael of Eirrin, his slaying had been well-nigh as bad as him slain, or as disastrous to the boy he’d been. He who provoked did so during the Great Fair; Cormac slew him during the High King’s peace, which was inviolate. For such a crime the laws did not award other punishment than death.