Zarabdas did not look to his king for guidance. Closing his eyes, he lowered his hand from the winged symbol of Behl. A cool breath of air seemed to waft over Cormac then, and slowly natural feeling returned. It was accompanied by a tingling, as though circulation had been cut off in every part of his body. He staggered, forced to advance a foot to keep from falling.
“It’s sentimental ye’re after growing in your eld, Wulfhere, he said, striving not to gasp.
The giant Dane snorted and shot Zarabdas another look.
“Your query is answered, mac Art,” King Veremund said. “Wulfhere Hausakliufr: I did not care overmuch for your way of speaking, a moment past. Let me hear no repetition of such threats against my honoured servant. Was I gave this command. Take the matter up with me, if you wish.”
Wulfhere looked back at him truculently, and tension trembled on the air. “The mac Art is my comrade,” he said, nor did he add “my lord.”
“I do not ignore that; was why I spoke ye so gently, Captain. Now hear my word! Rid this coast of the seaborn death that haunts it, and that for me will amply prove your worth. Do you but agree, I’ll make you immediate dower of this new growth of silver chain. Do you succeed, you shall have the weight of your own mighty ax and haft, Captain Wulfhere. Too, you’ll not find me niggard later, an you twain decide to commence the training of seamen from among my people.
Wulfhere looked at Cormac, who said, “Fair enow.” Wulfhere nodded, but a man must bargain for his own self-respect. “The weight of my ax, and Cormac’s sword.”
The king gestured. “Done. And here will ever be safe anchorage and guest-right for you and yours. Though the world and the gods be against you, I will be for you.”
Cormac swallowed. King, he mused, the praises and promises other kings have heaped on me ere this, ye’d not believe. And what they then did to me, ye’d all too readily believe. He and Wulfhere exchanged a look, though, and nodded.
“Good!” Veremund said, and he chuckled. “I feared you might demand the impossible: your own weight in silver, Master of Raven!-Battle-girt.”
The reivers laughed; the Dane’s ax, buckler, helm, and coat of scale-mail ran close onto a hundred pounds. In them, Wulfhere’s weight approached four hundred.
“And if I fasted a day before the weighing?” Wulfhere offered heroically.
Amid laughter, the king’s offer was accepted, and hands were clasped on the bargain. “Now I have other duties, and do sore wish you could handle them for me,” Veremund said. “Let us confer again at eventide; come sup with me. Anthemius, see this is known. By now a room has been prepared for you twain, here in my hall.”
First the king took hammer and chisel and himself parted the new-grown length of chain from the original. This was an act forbidden on pain of slow death to any hands but the king’s own-and with reason, as he explained. Were any link of the parent chain broken, its power would be lost. Anthemius blanched with horror at the notion. Two pirates quite shared his feelings.
Motsognir’s Chain went back to the treasure room. The reivers made great gesture of good faith and sent their portion there also-as they had no safer place at present for its stowing. The five plotters parted company. A bright-eyed, most impressed lad had been delegated to serve the wants of the visitors, and he conducted them to the good clean room they would share. There Cormac and Wulfhere at last disencumbered themselves of their armour. Both sighed and Cormac remembered Clodia’s comments on his armour and padded underjack. A man worked and fought and even slept in his battle-gear until he forgot he’d not been born in the stuff. It was when it came ringing and sliding ajingle off him that he noticed the difference.
They refused offers of royal servants; these two professionals would inspect and clean their own weapons and mail. Good oil they requested, for leather, and rags. These they used methodically, along with fine sand, on Cormac’s finely wrought chain and Wulfhere’s scale sewn on leather.
The king’s table for dinner, Cormac thought. We be rising in the world! And when asked what else he required, he named it: a bath. Mir, the boy loaned them as attendant, looked more than surprised. The Sueve were hardly so fond of bathing as were the Eirrin-born-as indeed were none on the ridge of the world save the Romans. They had left public baths of a sort in Brigantium, though the Roman plumbing had long since failed of its function. They were conducted thence, though the lad seemed ashamed, that such heroes might require that which was so effete-and that his friends might see him contributing to this Romish softness on the part of the king’s guests.
Here water was heated in long open vats, not in the boilers of old. Steam was made by dashing water over glowing hot stones. Such an arrangement Wulfhere of course took for granted; it put him in mind of northern sweat-baths-though Galicia lacked snow to roll in after. Natheless, he admitted that it felt very good.
His disappointment in them and these wants did not make Mir careless.
While the sea-rovers turned crimson and sweated rivers that much darkened the water, he had their garments taken away to be washed by house-wenches. By the time his charges had scraped each other’s hides clean of sweated dirt-with implements taken from slaves they had briskly sent away-and sloshed and wallowed to their full content in tepid water, Mir had returned with fresh linen and tunics. Now mac Art was at considerable pains with his hair, for he was of Eirrin, while Wulfhere concerned his huge self more with the cleansing of his fiery beard. It caught brine asea, and itched.
Cormac’s new tunic fitted sufficiently well, and looked good on the sombre Gael besides. Plain black it was, bordered with gold.
“Wulfhere: realization is on ye of too much coincidence, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Consider. The availability of that merchant-ship. The proximity of ready, marine-manned warcraft. The raid on Balsus’s: that mincing Sigebert was at pains to let us know he did not expect us, but why else had he such a herd of armed men posted outside? And then came more warcraft. Y’see? Someone set traps for us, Wulf, someone with power. Great pains were taken, all for us. Best we be staying well away from that coast. It’s not unpleasant to be gaining useful employment that suits our talents… particularly in view of the extreme inhospitability of those waters!”
“Aye, and a good bed is a welcome prospect,” Wulfhere said. He flashed the darker man a smile. “So is Veremund’s silver, sorcerous or no!”
“Uh-I did take note of that chain when we left. Our links remained intact.”
“Crafty Cormac, trusting no one! Well-I even like Veremund. As to that other business you mention-naturally I had thought on all that. Likely Caesar himself sent orders for the capture of such monsters as we!”
Cormac smiled. “More likely that old throat-slitter Guntram, with an ax over his head from Alaric. As for Veremund… aye. I like the man.”
“You? Like a king?”
“Split a knuckle, Wulfhere.”
The Dane laughed, then sobered. “And Irnic. Good soldier. Arms like slabs of meat and hard as oak. Now then-am I pretty enough?”
Cormac looked at his comrade-in-arms. He grinned. The Suevi wore their tunics short, and no man among them stood even nigh so tall as Wulfhere Skull-splitter. On him, even the largest available Suevic tunic was nigh obscenely short.
“Hunch forward like a gnome and it’s middling decent ye are,” the Gael said, never cracking a smile. He went on gravely, “To be sure, it leaves ye as bare of arse as my father’s prize boar. And whate’er befalls, be careful of keeping your leggings well pulled up, and don’t be stretching. Ye’d vanish at once under a burial-mound of all the Roman ladies within seeing-range.”
The Skull-splitter was not amused.
The well-born lad Mir, indeed impressed with their kemptness, suggested that mayhap a sewing-woman of the king’s hall could add a border to Wulfhere’s tunic. A deep one.