Lucanor dragged himself painfully from the floor, glanced at Sigebert low, and collapsed into a chair.
Though he’d been glanced at, Sigebert asked in the mildest tone, “Have I said that you might sit?”
Lucanor would have taken sincere oath that he was physically unable to stand again, and he was a physician, among other things. Yet at Sigebert’s softspoken question he found himself on his feet, trembling.
“Better,” Sigebert said.
“Sir-my lord… I-am not well! My travels and travails… privation and hunger… your… punishment… I beg to sit. I may faint else.”
Sigebert could have instructed a king in the way he waved a hand, and to the monarch’s benefit. “Very well. Now attend me. From this moment, you are no more and no less than my man. I am no other than your master. Should you forget that, I doubt that any demon you control could prove more cruel than I shall be.”
Lucanor sat still, hearing those words spoken quietly, as plain statement of fact. He could not disbelieve.
“You came here for vengeance on a pair of pirates,” Sigebert said. He caressed the place where his ear had been, softly, meditatively, while a strange look kindled in his eyes. “You shall have it. Rather we sh-I shall have it, and you may savour it with me. Be certain of that, man from Antioch. However, Wulfhere Skull-splitter and Cormac mac Art must wait. Greater things are toward.
“North of here, war is abrewing. King Syagrius the Roman prepares to resist invasion by the Frankish cousin-kings, Clovis and Ragnachar. The fate of Roman Gaul hinges on the battle between these two forces, and well they know it, both. I wish to know early, and with sure truth, how it has gone. You learned of me through your sorcery; you set your fylgja to find me across leagues of distance. It must be possible for you to… see this battle.”
“Possible? A simple matter,” the mage said, and saw Sigebert lift an eyebrow, and added with some haste, “sir. Although… to fly forth in my spirit form and view the battle thus… that cannot be done. Full sunlight will destroy me when I am out of my corporeal house.” He touched his chest, and went on before Sigebert could demand of what use he was. “Happily, it is not needful that I do so. Power is mine to scry and prognosticate events. The closer they may be in time, the easier the mists to dispel and the more clearly I can discern what lies beyond-what lies ahead, in time. In this case… meseems it is your wish to be informed of these bloody events whiles they are happening? Not, that is, to predict them?”
“Just so. I fancy your predictions can have but little value. Were you able to read the future with any true skill, your own fortunes had never come to this sorry state.”
“One’s own fortune, sir, is ever nigh-impossible to read,” Lucanor said stiffly. “I had in my power a queen, and a land to come-and a single pirate disrupted that and thus reduced me! Two pirates. I made the error of trusting other forces, those I had set in motion,” he assured the Frank, not wishing to say that he had planned poorly and prodigiously underestimated a certain man of Eirrin, and him far younger. “I have a small mirror of opaque black glass I use for divinations. The mirror itself has no magical powers, of course; those reside in me. I might scry in a simple bowl of water, as others do. It merely haps that I am accustomed to the mirror-”
“By death! This does not fascinate. What care I of the how of it? You may take your head between your legs and look into your own backside, for aught it matters to me! I slew yesterday and fetched home a comely doxy; today I had passage at arms with a strong man of weapons and slew him with a sword in this hand. It is action fascinates me-and information. Give you me false information, and I will give you molten lead to quench your thirst.”
Again, a plain statement of fact, almost dispassionate, after Sigebert’s first passionate outburst. Lucanor nodded. “That is understood,” he said, with no sign of fear.
“Ah. Confidence upon this matter? Good, then!” Again Sigebert waved a’ hand, for he had slain one man this day, and bested two others, and reduced this one. He sat his chair as though enthroned. “Mayhap now you should rest, and later eat your fill and wash it down with good wine without water. You will have need of restoring your strength.”
The utterance gave warning to Cathula, who was listening at the door.
Swiftly, silently and with her heart apound, she fled away with hardly a rustle of her new clothing. Was the second time she had eavesdropped on the demonic master of this nightmare house to which he’d brought her. She had been listening the night before when the monstrous black owl appeared in his privy chamber, and she had managed to gain a glimpse of it as it flew away. Cathula neither knew what it was nor had aught of deep thoughts on the subject, having understood little of what she had heard. She was a peasant, and not of this land, and not yet fifteen. She assumed merely that the creature was Sigebert’s familiar demon, and that they challenged each other. She had heard of such; that preternatural forces were hard to control, and endangered the person who sought that control.
What mattered to her was that she now knew names that belonged to deadly enemies of the scarfaced Frank, her mother’s murderer; the names of two pirates.
Wulfhere the Skull-splitter and Cormac mac Art.
11
“She will do, Wolf!”
The ship was a ponto, flat-bottomed and therefore shallow of draught. This gave advantage in some ways, although a strong wind might blow her sideways across the waves like a scudding wooden tray. None the less, she was sturdy and well rigged, with the same effective iron anchors Raven was equipped with. Indeed, Cormac had discovered the value of iron anchors on these same coasts in his days with the reivers of Eirrin, and shared the knowledge with Wulfhere later.
The latter appeared well satisfied. “Aye,” he went on. “There be ample room in her belly to hide us all, and harmless she looks, a mere trader. Were we to fare in one of the prince’s corsair galleys we’d have closer inspection to face!”
“So thought I,” Cormac said, “and despite our friendship, one of Howel’s galleys had been much to ask. He loves them as his children.”
“They be sweet vessels,” Wulfhere agreed, and added in duty-bound chauvinism, “for southern ships.”
Turning, he tramped down the timber jetty where the ponto was moored, her wooden fenders squealing with friction as she rocked forward and back. Huge, immense of height and thew, with his fiery mane and beard, his mail shirt and weapons and his golden jewelery, he resembled some great autumnal tree that, hung with sacrifices of battle-gear, had heaved up its roots and taken to walking about.
Beside him, Cormac walked with tigerish litheness. Wulfhere’s Gaelic battle-brother was one of the few men who did not show meanly by comparison with the hulking Dane. Part of the reason lay in the extreme contrast they made.
Where Wulfhere was massive, Cormac’s form was lean and rangy, yet instinct with savage vitality-like the wolf he was called. On him were no glittering, flashing ornaments of gold. His black mesh-mail shirt, and the helmet unadorned save for its crest of horsehair, sorted well with the grimness of his dark face. Thin-lipped it was, shaven and marked by a number of scars. Set in that somber mask, his cold, narrow grey eyes had a peculiarly sinister look.
Prince Howel awaited them on the beach. Morfydd stood beside him, her long black hair blowing wild in the sea-wind. Nine Bretons were there as well, the air of seamen bred about them.
“What think you?” Howel asked.
“She’s a good choice for the work,” Wulfhere said. “I’m indebted to ye, prince.”
“It’s little enow.”
Howel indicated the foremost of the Armorican seamen, a smallish, hard-bitten man with a seamed face mostly nose. Was a nose that seemed to have been violently struck once at least from every direction. Shrewd eyes nestled close to it, seemingly for shelter, looking with tough-minded appraisal from beneath sandy brows.