“Cormac the Rude!”
“Unseemly, lady sister,” Veremund said, without looking at her he now made seem small, by his standing beside her. He was the king; she was a girl in her midteens, unmarried because he was still pondering, Cormac was sure, the options open to form alliances.
Veremund descended the two steps of the little dais on which rested his throne of oak set with gold and coral, and rune-carved. Eurica need not be embarrassingly dismissed; the king, with the Gael, was leaving her presence. As Veremund walked to Cormac and bade him accompany him, only his topknot brought him an inch above the Gael’s height of six feet.
“Ah-please have the Lady Clodia seen to, Zarabdas,” the king said, and he and Cormac mac Art left the chamber and the hall.
The king and a little retinue of fighting men rode with Cormac, whose shout soon fetched up Wulfhere and the others. And still others, to the astonishment and consternation of the men set to watch Raven. Veremund ordered the setting up of two pavilions without the gates of the old city for the crew of Raven, and he turned to the Gael.
“Unless ye’ll not be separated from your men, Cormac mac Art, you and Wulfhere will be quartered in my own hall.”
Cormac bowed his head, and looked at the giant ambling toward them.
“The king would have converse with us, Wulfhere.”
Wulfhere nodded, beaming, and shifted his grip on an ax whose weight should by now have stretched his right arm to his ankle. “Be there ale in Galicia?”
CHAPTER SEVEN: Bargain in Silver
There was ale in Galicia. Veremund and his people though, like the Romans, were drinkers of wine. Wulfhere downed a great mug of ale for his thirst before swiftly tucking away a flagon of wine to make his hosts happy. Then he was ready for ale again, and his hosts, seeing what sort of respect he had for their wine, did not say him nay.
In a low-beamed room whose walls were hung with draperies and tapestries that helped retain heat in winter and to ward it off in summer, they conferred: Veremund the King, and Cormac of Connacht in Eirrin, and Wulfhere of the land of the Danes-Dane-terre, Veremund’s people called it, for all the folk of this continent were more Romanized than they knew.
With them were Veremund’s tawny-moustached cousin and adviser, Irnic Break-ax; and the lean, bald, robed man of fifty or so years. Zarabdas of Palmyra his name, and him in a silver purfled, black-girt robe of aquamarine blue. From his belt hung an almoner of black leather. A ring gleamed with the dullness of gold on one knob-knuckled finger: a very old ring that seemed to consist of two twined serpents. A segmented sigil glinted on his breast, slung by a silver chain around his neck: a circle with wings. A winged sun, Cormac surmised, though it was no druidic emblem.
Zarabdas took ale but scant touched his lips to the glazed mug of vermilion pottery. Irnic had wine set before him in a goblet of beaten silver set with blue stones of some sort and what appeared, impressively, to be an emerald. He did not touch it. If a man of Irnic’s height-which was far from great-should have weighed a hundred and seventy pounds, Irnic probably carried fifteen pounds more. Nor, Cormac thought, impressed with the gaunt-faced fellow’s control and condition, could there be an ounce of fat on him. Irnic Break-ax was built for fighting.
The Gael had naturally been prepared to dislike the king, and instead liked him; the fellow wasn’t a monarch, he was a man! As for a king’s cousin made adviser-he should have been fat and impossible. The Lord Irnic was neither, and Cormac gave him respect.
As for the dusky man from the palmy deserts around ancient Palmyra, the fellow had the feel of sorcery about him, and only one sorcerer had Cormac mac Art ever trusted.
That man had been a druid, his name Sualtim Fodla. He was nearly nine years dead. He was long mentor to the boy Art’s son of Connacht had been, and Cormac was long past those days. Indeed, it seemed a score of years agone when he’d been the more than promising young weapon man in Connacht, and then in Leinster, until the treachery of kings and his own momentary hotheadedness had resulted in his exile.
Zarabdas’s twin beard was black as the wing of the raven, and Cormac had to wonder if the bald fellow weren’t dyeing it. The five men sat, most privily, at table. Ere they could begin to discuss ships and shipbuilding, crew and payment, Cormac brought up the matter of the vampire weed from the sea. When Zarabdas frowned, the Gael fixed him with a narroweyed look and recounted what he and his shipmates had discovered.
“This is the second time those managing the lighttower have fallen to such an attack,” Irnic said, who was in general command of the horse-soldiers of little Galicia. “Though on the previous occasion,” he said with teeth tightly set, “there were no signs of the killer of three men.”
“None?”
“None, Cormac mac Art. For that reason I ordered the crew increased to five.”
“And they died,” Wulfhere said, “just as three did.”
“The solution is not in numbers,” Cormac said. He sat back, legs asprawl, and toyed with the mug he stared at. “My lord Irnic… it is in my mind-I cannot be sure, o’course-that… the deadly kelp we found is somehow directed. With intelligence behind it, I mean.”
Mac Art gazed only at the mug, but saw nonetheless that Zarabdas frowned and seemed to arrange his features into a scoffing expression. Zarabdas appeared Irnic’s opposite: he must have weighed ten or so pounds less than whatever was normal for his height and his weight. In consequence he looked taller than he was, and his face was wrinkled like that of an old hound of Britain.
Cormac said, “Else why did the vampire weed withdraw after it did death on those manning the tower, and leave no trace of its presence or nature?”
“Such things are not possible,” Zarabdas said, in his voice that was dry as wind through the desert whence he came. “I would see such seaweed with these eyes.”
“An I see the kelp again, it’s calling ye I’ll be. See ye bring a sharp blade.”
Immediately Veremund snuffed, in his throat. “I am most pleased you are here, Wulfhere and mac Art. And I admit, Zarabdas, I am impressed with this canny Gael. His mind works logically even when it reaches an apparently illogical conclusion.”
Wulfhere tipped more ale into his mug. “Oh, it does that, all right.”
Cormac gave the king a little smile. A good man for avoiding trouble, this Veremund of the Suevi! “Myself has had thoughts on the matter. I’d be coming forward in an attempt to remove such a danger, an we’re to be dealing otherwise with my lord king.”
“Good!” Veremund and Irnic said, almost together, and they smiled each at the other then, so that Cormac knew they were friends.
“The weed,” Cormac said, “fears me.”
“Fears you?” Irnic echoed.
“And how is that?” Zarabdas asked, nor was his tone solely that of one seeking information.
Cormac tugged at the chain around his neck until he’d drawn up the Egyptian sigil from beneath his tunic. He displayed it with a dramatic air of significance.
In truth, the Gael had no notion of the thing’s meaning, or if it had one… or indeed if it was aught other than jewellery, which he did not wear. As he had thought it wise to lie about Clodia’s station, he was minded now to impress these people and create some mystery-and to test the Palmyran, who was bending forward to gaze upon the sigil. Zarabdas’s mahogany eyes peered keenly, like those of a hunting hawk.
Cormac said, “It is not merely by armour and arms of good steel that I am protected, my lords.”
Cormac was gambling. Superstition held power even over kings. For aught he knew it was a bit of jewellery, this odd sigil that hung glittering on his mailed chest. He knew of no magickal significance it held. Nor was he the sort to rely on such even when their repute as talismans was established. No, it was that he had need, though, to impress these people. Too, he wanted to test the king’s mage, who had bent forward to stare closely at the golden serpent. Zarabdas’s narrow right hand was crooked possessively around the solar disc on his own thin breast. Cormac had observed how the Palmyran fondled it constantly.