“This is Odathi,” the prince told them. “He and his men are to take the ship into Nantes for you-and bring you safely out again when you have your vengeance.”
Cormac remembered Odathi of old. He couldn’t have asked a better man for his purpose. The Armorican was a skilled mariner, and able to hold his tongue. He merely nodded by way of greeting.
“We will come out again,” Wulfhere said confidently. He turned to his Danes. “Look ye, blood-spillers, there is our ship! And since it’s ours she is for this little time and this one purpose, I’ll be naming her anew. This voyage, her name is Norn!”
He named the three women of Northlands belief; harsh goddesses who wove on the loom of Fate, and whose decrees not even Odin could reverse.
“I call her that,” Wulfhere said loudly, in a moment of fancy unusual for him, “because she’s to be the instrument that brings Sigebert One-ear’s weird upon him!”
The Danes roared with laughter, shaking their spears and clashing swords or ax-heads on their shields of linden-wood. Was the sort of fierce joke they appreciated.
Cormac said quietly to Morfydd, “No Sight to offer us? No prophecy as to the outcome?”
Morfydd smiled with a kind of tranquil compassion. “Suppose I had, Wolf of the blue sea? Suppose my prophecy were evil? Would you or your friend or any of your men abandon your vengeance because of it?”
Cormac shook his black head.
“What if I prophesied success? Could that add the faintest aught to your determination?”
Again the reiver shook his head.
“Then I should not speak but to wish you good fortune-as I do, Cormac Art’s son, from my heart.”
Cormac looked at her for a moment, and for no reason he could name he thought of Samaire of Leinster in Eirrin. Then he must clasp Morfydd’s hand and Prince Howel’s, and lead the tramping Danes aboard Norn, for it was time to go.
The weather was clouded this day, and turbulently windy. Standing on Norn’s high stern, Cormac and Wulfhere watched the waves lashed to a running waste of foam, while the sails of thin dressed leather were strained taut as drumheads. The masts creaked. Wulfhere’s great beard streamed before him like a flame.
“Two days,” he said softly, fondling the haft of his beloved ax. “Two days at most will bring us there, Cormac.”
“Aye,” the Gael agreed absently. He’d been gazing at the sky, thinking how dark it had suddenly turned. A strange note rode the wind… a storm brewing? Or a squall about to strike! He turned his gaze upward again, and felt his body shudder.
“Wulfhere!” he said hoarsely.
The Dane followed his line of sight. For a moment, he saw only dark clouds tumbling before the strong wind. Then they parted, and terrible shapes swept out of the murk to fill the great empty spaces of the sky.
Women rode naked on wild-maned horses. Their arms, holding the reins, were red to the elbows with blood. Their eyes looked eastward, alight with exultation at some greater slaughter that only they could see. Dreadful laughter twisted their mouths. Black flocks of carrion birds kept pace with them, hungry and expectant.
Such were the precursors. Behind them, huger even than they, rode a lone horseman. Although a wide-brimmed hat obscured his face, one icy eye glittered from its shadow, merciless and forbidding as the spear he carried. Loping like hounds by the feet of his eight-legged steed were two wolves. Even as he watched, Wulfhere saw the nearer throw high its head to howl. The second shivered between the ragged clouds.
Then they were gone, rushing eastward.
“Hel’s teeth!” Wulfhere croaked. “Battle-brother, tell me, even if ye lie, that I’ve not been stricken with madness! Tell me that ye also saw! “
“I saw,” Cormac muttered, shaken as few had seen him. He breathed hard, and swallowed with effort. “I saw right enow, and I’m thinking that this be no wise time to mention the name of your Hel of the death-demesne.”
“A true word. Yon bloody-handed hags might be her very daughters.” Wulfhere laughed harshly, and stopped the noise short when he heard how it sounded. “To think the foolish poets make them honest, virtuous war-maidens, those Valkyrior! I’ll break the back of the next who chants such stuff in my presence.”
Cormac stared. “Wulfhere-”
“What is it?”
“What is it? A pertinent question! Of what be ye talking?”
“Eh? Cormac, was yourself showed them to me. Ye saw them first! Valkyrs, their arms dripping gore, riding the sky along with the birds of battle-death, and their father Odin behind them attended by his wolves. It’s a portent. Some great battle is brewing over eastward. The Father of Victories doesn’t ride abroad for little things.”
Cormac mac Art continued staring.
At last he said, “Suppose I tell ye what it is I am after seeing. A hunting pack of pure white hounds, Wulfhere. The dazzle of them like new snow in the sun or bright foam on the sea. And their ears a burning-scarlet, and their jaws as red, open and baying. They ran as if they’d run down the world and make it their prey! I saw not your Father of Victories looming behind them. Was a figure of Vastness all cloaked in grey shadow, riding a grey horse. Upon the rider’s head were twelve-tined royal antlers, and the pale death-fire played over them like slow lightning. His face I could not see, and by the gods, it’s glad of it I am!”
Wulfhere was staring at his blood-brother as if the Gael had come up daft.
“Wulfhere, it was him we call the Grey Man, the lord of death and rebirth. Among the Britons it’s as Arawn the Hunter he’s known, and it’s Cernunnos also he has been named: the Antlered God. Nigh as many names and titles he has with him as your Odin! Yet it’s him I saw, not the Father of Victories.”
Baffled and angry, Wulfhere struggled not to say aught he’d regret, such as giving Cormac the lie to his face. The dark Gael was not lying. Even Wulfhere, whose perceptions were far from subtle, could see that Cormac was in earnest. He’d seen what he claimed to have seen. Yet-Wulfhere knew what he had witnessed.
“Ye must have been mistaken, Wolf,” he said at last. “This death-lord of yours… ye took the One-eyed All-father for him, that’s all.”
“Since when,” Cormac snapped, “does the One-eyed have an antlered head and bear a hunting horn jewelled with black stars?”
“Oh, he bore a hunting horn gemmed with stars now, did he? That’s a thing ye forgot to mention the first time around!”
Cormac opened his mouth, was struck by the argument’s absurdity, and shut it with an audible click of teeth. Glancing into Norn’s midship deck, he saw that which turned his mind swiftly to practical matters.
“Wulfhere,” he said, “let us agree that each of us saw something, and it was a dark omen, whate’er the details. But by all the gods, it’s down there we’d best go and take control at once, or the Armoricans and our Danes will be panicked together. Look at them!”
The Skull-splitter did. Three of Odathi’s mariners were yammering in his face whilst the rest were attending but poorly to ship’s duties, and the reivers’ two-and-thirty Danes were muttering among themselves with every sign of unease.
“Right you are,” Wulfhere growled, clambering down from the high sterncastle. “Do you handle the Bretons, Wolf. You are closer to them by language and race.”
He himself confronted his own men, glaring. “What be this havering?”
“We’ve seen the valkyrs riding,” muttered Einar. “This venture’s accursed. Best we turn back and try another time!”
“Not for all the valkyrie that ever stirred up war!” thundered his leader. “Why do ye suppose they ride for us? I say they ride to fetch Sigebert One-ear, and I’ll show ye how right I am when we reach Nantes! Turn back? Now there’s a thought, Einar. And we could do so; beg these Britons to take us the way we’ve come, and us barely a few hours out of the Mor-bihan, because we saw spectres in the clouds! Aye. That’d be a fine explanation to make the man who loaned us this ship. No dishonour therein at all. We could still hold up our heads.”