“Does it so?” Cormac drummed fingers on the oarloom before him, cogitating. “Sure and we can bear the risk of looking into that.”
“So think I. It’s certain we’ve naught better to do.”
They were preparing to push off when Clodia appeared. She scrambled aboard with downcast eyes. Huddled as small as she could make herself, she spoke not a word.
Raven’s crew rowed north again.
Cormac, rubbing a blackly stubbled chin that itched him, was made mindful as the brilliantly blue sunflecked water slid by that he’d not shaved in well-nigh a week. Though he was not wont to adorn himself, he was of Eirrin: he was mindful of such matters as cleanliness and his hair and aye, shaving-when circumstances allowed. Indeed he kept a razor of finest eastern steel in his belt-pouch rather than make do with a honed knife. He was little twitted, though the Danes agreed that never had they heard of a more amazing habit.
Nah, Wulfhere said; was only because the poor Gael couldn’t raise a beautiful red beard that he kept it scraped…
Without benefit of oil or grease, he kept at the miserable task. Lip and cheeks, jaw and chin and finally throat he scraped clean. He rubbed with his fingertips to ensure thoroughness. Well that his skin had weathered hard over the years. As for the facial scars that lent him a sinister aspect, he’d memorized them.
They had some time since left the tiny cove with its point of land and the rise from which Ivarr had scanned about. Now they came with abruptness to a triple bay, miles across and miles deep. At its southwestern tip rose the tower reported by the sharpest-eyed among them. Now they saw it closer, and what lay beyond: the sunwashed stones of a Roman city, falling into neglect and abandon like many another in the west.
The men of Raven stared, cursed and invoked supernatural protection, for Northerners were superstitious about the engineering feats of Rome the once-mighty.
“’Tis the work of giants!” Knud the Swift declared.
“And I’m Idun,” Cormac told him, “who has the apples of immortality.”
Back he tilted his dark head, and back, looking up. He squinted. The great white tower soared forty men high and more; there was no assessing. Its builders had reared it in several tiers, each smaller in crosswise measure than the one immediately below. The lowermost was shapen cuboid, the topmost a smooth cylindrical shaft against the pure Spanish sky. A sort of roofed cupola topped it off, around which ran a stone balcony.
“I should ha’ known,” Cormac said. “It’s the Romans raised that lighthouse here. The greatest in the western world, I’ve heard say. It’s the Pharos of Alexandria it had for a model. Yonder will be the harbour of Brigantium.”
“And a fair harbour, too,” Wulfhere said, with enthusiasm. “A fleet could lie here-nay, exercise here! Although there’s little sea traffic it looks to receive nowadays. Who be manning the lighthouse, and why?”
Ivarr narrowed his keen eyes. “No one, Captain. From here it looks deserted. An it be not-why’s nobody at the top, looking down upon us and giving alarums? Have we gone so harmless in appearance since yesterday?”
Cormac turned decisive. “It’s finding out we’d best be,” he said, staring at the immense tower as at some inscrutable foe. The Gael seemed to snuff the air like the wolf whose name he bore. “Do you see to the ship, Wulfhere. I’ll be taking three men into yon lighthouse to see what I can find. Hrut Bear-slayer, come and climb stairs with me.”
The enormous, brain-addled strong man had all but usurped the place of Cormac’s shadow. His comrades had exerted their best ribald efforts to stay him from lumbering after Cormac and Clodia when they went off together. Mightily hurt he’d have been, had Cormac ignored him now.
“You too, Hrolf,” the Gael went on, “aye, and yourself, Knud. I’m thinking we can handle any bogies we may meet.”
“Ha! Listen to him!” The protest was Wulfhere’s, uttered loud. “And ye’re not jesting so much as ye’d have us believe! I now ye, Crmac, and by the gods I know that look. Ye can sniff out battle and death and unholiness even as a ranging hound sniffs out boars in the brush, ye rangy hound of Errin!”
“Repitition. And over-stating of the truth, what’s more. It’s but that I was born suspicious and have since grown more so. We’ll be after returning ere ye know we have gone.”
“So ye will,” the Dane agreed, stubborn as a rooted tree, “for the rest of us be coming along. Who commands here, I’m asking?”
“ir and Manannan macLir!”
The oath aside, Cormac made no difficulty. When Wulfhere invoked his captaincy there was no budging him and mac Art did not fight stone walls. Thus all trooped ashore, save Clodia and those few men chosen to remain aboard ship as watch.
Slipping and sliding over weed-covered rocks, they reached the base of the lighthouse. Kittiwakes screamed at them, wheeling grey-cloaked and white-breasted about the tower. A huge bronze-bound door, closed and barred, greeted them blankly. Surely naught but a ram would be capable of gaining entry here-and handling one on the rocky shore was impossible. When Wulfhere looked of a mind to attack it with his ax, Cormac stayed him.
“I’ve a smoother way,” h said. “Are ye after bringing the grapnel and line, Knud?”
“Aye.”
The Gael took it, whirled it, and tossed the grapnel neatly through one of the slitted windows above their heads. The rope paid out, running up; the prongs caught and held.
“They designed their embrasures ill,” was his comment. “It ought not to be so simple. Tcha, well. It’s not meant for a fortress this tower was.”
Mac Art swarmed up the rope with a sailor’s agility, mail, sword, and all; their weight was part of him, of long accustoming. A lithe bend and twist took him through the window.
Standing in a reeky dimness, he waited while his sight adapted. Little there was to see; stucco walls, rafters, a door leaning drunkenly from its hinges, and a deal of dust. Crmac frowned. The latter had been laid by a curious, bad-smelling dampness with no taint of age or mildew. Recent for sure, he mused. A rainstorm in the past day or so?
Yet never had rain combined with dust in an old house smelled quite this way… Not even this near the sea. For a moment his teeth were in his lip, whilt he considered.
With a shrug he made his way down the angled flights of stairs and opened the door. Wulfhere Skull-splitter’s armoured bulk filled the space instanter.
“You cannot come in,” the Gael said sardonically. “The place is a mess.”
Wulfhere disputed him. Cormac argued and cursed with the ability of long practice. At length he pursuaded his blood-brother to remain outside, whiles he made search with the three men he had chosen. Not happily, Wulfhere made way for Knud and Hrolf, and Knut.
Ascending, the four found that little that Cormac had not seen previously, save ruined furniture. The stench of brine and kelp pervaded, and was somehow wrong. Cormac saw Knud and Hrolf wrinkle their noses, though he made no comment.
They reached the topmost storey of the great edifice. Here was merely a hollow shaft of whitewashed brick, with a stair spiralling around it internally. They climbed, fighting dizziness.
“Mayhap those Romans sought to reach the sky, and gave up a ladder’s length short,” Knud suggested.
They reached the top. Pulleys and ropes were there, and a heavy capstan, for the raising of supplies; lamp-oil chiefly, Cormac hazarded. The big lamp the Romans had used was fifty years missing though, as were the mirrors employed to magnify its light and reflect it many miles seaward. Now there was a large iron brazier, and faggots of oil-soaked wood.
The tower’s human occupants were present as well.
They numbered four, and all were dead.
“CORMA-A-A-AC!” Wulfhere’s bellow.
Save the mark, Cormac thought. Worse this is than being married.