“Pirates,” Cormac said, without the sign of a smile.

“Foul bloody seagoing dogs who cannot be countenanced,” Wulfhere added, and when he grinned his full beard moved like a fiery broom on his barrel of a chest.

Zarabdas the mage muttered, “Set a thief…”

“True, you and your reivers have done well,” Veremund the Sueve went on. “You have also had your losses. Are there more than twoscore able men left to work your ship Raven-and to fight?” The question was rhetorical; Veremund knew there were not. “I would copy the Vandals. I would make my nation powerful on the sea, though we began as a race of horsemen far to the east-as they did. Meseems the best course were to employ renegade Vandals to make up your numbers, and shipwrights from the same source. Do you agree?”

Cormac mac Art frowned while Wulfhere impetuously answered at once, though with a brave effort to be tactful in a king’s presence and conceal his disgust with such a suggestion.

“It’s in no way the same, lord King. Look you: these Vandals did begin as an inland horsefolk, like you Suevi. But they did not end their travels in this Hispania, as your own Sueves are doing. The Vandals crossed into Africa generations since, lest they be trapped and destroyed. At that they had to be given sea transport by some Romish lord in Carthage… What was the fool’s name, Cormac?”

“Bonifacius,” the Gael answered. “It was their aid he was wanting, against a Roman rival. Fool, indeed! He might as well have imported plague. There was another such fool, in Britain. It’s Jutes and Saxons he is after inviting over his threshold. His name was Vortigern. Jutes and Saxons rule many gobbets of Britain now, men without the price of twenty cows calling themselves ‘kings’ and gaining land, followers-and more than twenty cows.”