The Sword of the Gael cma-5

by Andrew J Offutt

  “Nicely done,” Cormac grunted. “Stay back now; Dond-it’s no armour ye have!”

  “The family stays back,” Dond mac Forgall answered as he jerked back his blooded spear. “Step aside, that we may face them together!”

  The man emerged, naked but for a breechclout like the Picts. Behind him his woman slammed and barred the door. Cormac hewed away the arm of the Pict that sought to take off Dond’s leg at the knee; Dond sent another skipping back with a lunge of his spear.

  Dondal had found himself an armoured man who knew somewhat of the play of sword and buckler. Though he defended himself from the boy’s lunges and swings, both backhand and fore, so vicious and swift were they that the steadily backing Pict had no opportunity to leave the defensive. A similarly seasoned warrior Ceann had found, and they were trying each for the other, blow for blow.

  Sword rang off shield and sparks flew, and then the launcher of that foiled stroke had to interpose his own shield to stave off a return hack. Around and around the two circled, Ceann with his red hair loose and swirling in the moonlight and his foe a man wearing a necklace of bear-teeth and a ridiculous loincloth of bright yellow.

  Lendabaer and her younger son and daughter remained within and were safe-but another was with them, and she was not content to remain sheltered inside. Amid the high-voiced sounds of Lendabaer’s expostulations, the door was again yanked open.

  “HA-A-A-A-A-A-AAHHHHHH!”

  With that Samaire lunged through the doorway, right knee and hand extended. In that fisted hand was the great old sword of Dond’s grandfather. Sliced but not killed, the Pict who had been attacking a man, and who had now been blooded by a woman, went reeling back. His eyes were huge as he stared at her.

  She boiled forth like a fury, between Cormac and Dond, the big bronze sword in one hand and a kitchen-knife in the other.

  “Heee-yahhhhh!” Samaire screamed again. She made a vicious swipe with the sword, and allowed that ducked attack to swing her completely about-whereupon she kicked the astounded Pict in the shin so hard that he fell.

  “Ooohh!” she said, with impressed enthusiasm, for she saw how Cormac, without interrupting his parry of sword with sword, went to one knee and slammed his shield-edge down. So great was the force of that blow that it smashed the chest of the man she had downed. The stab she made into his hard flat belly with her ancient weapon of dull-gleaming bronze was unnecessary; already dark blood was bubbling from the man’s mouth like a horrid spring.

  Beside her, Don’s sideswung spear sent a squat dark man a-rolling, and the fellow regained his feet on the run. He vanished around the house, racing toward the shore.

  “No! Dond, NO!” Cormac bawled, but the fisherman paid him no mind; he charged after the fleeing foe.

  “Damn! You vicious son of a she-wolf-you’ve bloodied me!” Ceann cried, with a note of incredulity in his voice.

  The prince had fought like a man, but now the berserker rage came upon him. It was a vicious animal launched a whistling tree-cutting stroke of his sword that clove his attacker half in two at the waist. Almost instantly, the prince was looking about, blinking as if coming awake. He was in time to see Dondal’s foe break and run-and Dondal run in a different direction!

  Past Ceann flashed the boy, and he dropped his sword. At the run he jerked free his fishing spear, and circled the house. Both father and son were gone, chasing the last two survivors of what should have been a Pictish massacre and had become instead a massacre of Picts.

  “They’ve gone mad!” Cormac bawled.

  With Samaire on their heels, he and Ceann raced around the house and along the path that led to Dond’s diminutive wharf. The three warriors brought up short, for Dond and son were unscathed. They stood staring at each other with the much impressed look of fellow warriors.

  One Pict lay half in the water and half ashore; the other was in his longboat. Both had been bloodily transpierced by hurled fish-spears.

  Thirteen savages had attacked an easy prey, and had come upon a den of ferocious wolves, and the numbers of Pictdom were reduced by thirteen.

  Chapter Eleven: A Warrior Born

  After immortal battles abroad,

  In countries many and far distant;

  There fought he like the lion,

  Then slept the balmy sleep.

  – Ceann Ruadh, the “Minstrel-king”

  (from Cormac the Gael)

  The sun of Munster edged up above the horizon like a forming pearl. Its rays fingered down to pick out the yard of a humble fisherman.

  It was a scene of horror and red carnage.

  Samaire and Dond were unscathed. Ceann had been scratched and no more, though it was to the blood. He bore too a few fresh bruises, and limped from that whack across the shin. It had left a swelling and a purpling welt, the bone having been bruised. Dondal had sustained a cut on his left leg, above the knee, and another on his right arm. He had noticed neither, nor had he heard much since Cormac’s laying a hand on his shoulder.

  “Ye be a warrior born,” he had told the lad.

  Mac Art knew such when he saw him, himself having been just as ferocious a youth, albeit better at arms for his training. With his eyes bright and glowing, Dondal sat motionless, gazing into his dreams while his mother treated his wounds. Neither was deep.

  Not only had Cormac mac Art gained several new bruises and scratches, he had taken a slice across two fingers of his left hand that would be troublesome. The Pictish dagger had caught his knuckles. A point had slipped betwixt the links of his mail and sunk into his side above the hip, but the steel ring had held so that the stab-wound, was not deep. Samaire was careful to squeeze blood from it before she treated it with the hot water and Lendabaer’s herb remedies. He’d another cut on his sword arm and on the back of that hand.

  “It’s the hero-light I was seeing about your head, Cormac,” Dond gushed. “Not since Cuchulain of old has a man so valiantly and awesomely smit his enemies!”

  The name Cormac had given these people was a combination of his own and of his old alias: Cormac mac Othna. He and his companions claimed to be of western Munster, far from here. For though its land was not the best and sparsely settled, Munster’s territory was great; it took in fully a third of Eirrin, including the mouth of the River Shannon. Ceann was “Celthair mac Ros,” and Samaire had chosen the simple old name Ess.

  “No hero light I saw or felt,” Cormac said smiling, for he was determined not to wince at the burning stuff Lendabaer kept on hand for the treating of wounds. “We did bring a massacre on them though, didn’t we!”

  “Indeed!” Lendabaer said. “And what’s a woman to do, with her menfolk become warriors and the lawn all blood and bodies?”

  “Rejoice,” Dond said, looking at her, and there was an end to that.

  “There’s a gain,” Ceann/Celthair said. “Dond mac Forgall, that excellent Pictish boat and their property-including weapons enow to arm a town and sufficent arrows to take one! They be yours, by conquest.”

  “It’s no towns we’ll be taking,” Dond said, glancing nervously at the rigid, entranced Dondal. “But-the other things-it was you three saved us all, and we’ve no doubt about it! Those trinkets-the fine belts they’d got off murdered men, the two who wore armour…”

  Ceann was shaking his head. “None of ours. Dond, we’ve hardly told ye all the truth. We-”

  “I’ve known that, nor need we hear more,” Lendabaer said. At her cooking, she too glanced nervously at her older son.

  Ceann waved a hand. “We have hid about us, even as Cormac and I disguised our armour lest it afright gentler folk, the loot we took from a Viking band. In a raid similar to this Pictish one on yourselves, the Vikings slew and burned, and made prisoners of Samaire Ess and myself. It was Cormac came to our rescue.”

  “I’ve no doubt on it!” Dond said, and he looked again on Cormac as though he were a god or at the very least the reincarnation of the legendary Cuchulain of Muirthemne.

  “Well-it’s much Vi
king-stolen booty we have secreted about ourselves,” Ceann went on.

  “There’s more,” Cormac said, regarding Dond very seriously. “We were better not dressed as we are. Admittedly we’ve some rents and filth on the clothing we wear, but-”

  “Anything in my house that fits any of ye,” the overplump woman at the stove said, “is yours, for it’s our whole family ye saved.”

  “We’ll insist on trading a bit of Viking gold, understand,” Cormac said. When he saw that both Dond and his wife were about to argue, he added, “That the conditions of goods-trade may be fulfilled, and none of us in debt to the other.”

  “Oh, Mother!” the boy Laeg cried excitedly. “Gold!”

  “’Twere danger-fraught for peasants such as we to turn up at market in Rorybaile with such as gold or jewels,” Dond said. “And arousing of suspicion, as well.”

  Cormac stretched out a leg and smiled. He was seated in a chair made by Dond himself, and that with high competence.

  “Not for you, Dond mac Forgall! Think you those who know ye, aye, and those who do not, will not soon know of what happened here? Why, total strangers even in Rorybaile will know of it, and think not this attack and its outcome will not be spoke of even in Cobh!”

  The Rorybaile Cormac spoke of as if it were a metropolis was a little town a few miles distant, where agents came and bartered and took the fish caught hereabout inland. Cobh, with its excellent harbour, was a growing town on the two arms of the River Liagh; its name would be Cork.

  The family stared at him-all save Dondal, who continued staring at that which only he could see. “Cobh!” Lendabaer whispered.

  Samaire hugged her big soft shoulders. “As for a bit of gold from the Viking thieves,” she said, “why, you got it from the Picts, same as the arms and arrows ye’ll be able to sell, didn’t ye?”

  Lendabaer looked at her, blinking. Then Dond laughed aloud.

  “I’ve business elsewhere,” he said, and departed them suddenly. He returned anon, beaming, swaggering a little, and carrying two earthen jars, well closed. His wife glanced on them and sighed.

  It was ale, and there was celebration rather than work at the tiny keep of Dond mac Forgall of Munster that day.

  Those neighbors who came were glad to sip of the man’s good ale and hear the story of the great war that had taken place here. It was not averse they were, either, to lending aid in the planting of Pictish corpses well away from the house of their now more-than-good friend Dond. The day wore on and the story was told again and again. Nor did it fail to gain and grow in telling. It was little-enough there was to talk about on this oceanic border of quiet Munster, and the tale of Cormac son of Cuchulain-for so he had become-and mighty Celthair of the Flaming Head and Ess the Sun-tressed, along with Dond and Dondal and what they’d done with their humble fish-spears, would live and be told for years.

  First Ceann and then Cormac became afflicted with the disease of drunkenness, and they were soon joined by Dond-and his son, despite his mother’s efforts to keep the boy away from the ale. But he was now a countryside hero, and it was not only his father’s ale he drank but that brought by this neighbour and that. Smiling, they plied the boy with it. In return they learned how Cormac and Ceann had saved them all-and how Dondal mac Dond had saved each man of them as well, meanwhile slaying seven fierce Picts. His head swelled and swelled, and so did his story, and it was not only the result of alefumes.

  All were delighted that the trio spent another night there, save Samaire. There was little she could do about it, though. For Ceann and Cormac, like Dondal and Dond and no less than five others, fishermen from up and down the coast hereabouts were quite asleep before the fall of night.

  On the morning of the morrow, Lendabaer had reason to wail. And wail she did. It was her son Dondal she saw, and him in Pictish armour too small for him, and wearing a helmet, and with sword and dagger on him. He stood grinning in the doorway.

  The boy announced that he would guide the trio of visitors to Cashel, the capital, and there seek service himself as a weapon-man of the king.

  “Oh grief on me!” Lendabaer cried, flinging up her hands before her ruddy face.

  Dond insisted that he needed’ the boy here. Lendabaer wept. And Dondal, a changed person and that overnight, remained adamant. The boy even sneered at such a weapons-handler and Pict-slayer as he wielding net and oar and fish-spear for the rest of his life, and the king mayhap in need of such a man for the good of crown and land!

  Samaire gave Cormac a look, and his face and demeanor grew worse than sheepish.

  “It was you, bloodthirsty hulk,” Samaire muttered, “who just had to say ‘Ye be a warrior born’ to that poor peasant’s son. Oh, Cormac! He’ll be getting himself killed within the month for it!”

  Quietly, walking along the shoreline just before dawn, Cormac mac Art told Dond mac Forgall a few facts. Around and about them birds twittered and called, and the sound of the sea was in their ears.

  “I have pride in me, Dond, and-”

  “Aye, and with good cause!”

  “Hush a moment, friend, and list to this prideful man,” Cormac said quietly. He shot a glance in the direction of the hut. “That pride will not let me continue to lie, and have a good man as yourself, Eirrin-born and of heroic bent in the protection of his family… what was I saying?”

  Dond suppressed his smile. “I suffer from the same iron ball rolling about within my skull, son of Othna,” he said. “Ye were-”

  “I know now, for you have said it. I have no father named Othna, nor have I ever. I am Connacht-born, Dond, and it’s Art my father was, and a name hard to wear he gave me.”

  Dond stopped stock-still, and he stared. “My lord!”,

  Cormac squeezed his shoulder. “Do not insult me by ceasing to call me ‘friend Cormac,’ friend. At any rate-it was long ago I was forced to flee Connacht, for the High-king then was fearful of a man bearing the name I do.”

  “Sure, and it be a name even greater than Cuchulain, Cormac mac Art. The High-king ye speak of was Laegair Niall’s son?”

  “The same. With, I think, the aid of Leinster’s king, he did treachery on me, and I fled, years and years ago. Now it’s on my way to Tara I am, and the High-king and assembly I hope to see, for a man Eirrin-born does not forget his land. But none must know this until I have made my way there, and had my reception, whatever form it takes.”

  “You mean to confront them all at the Feis of Tara, my lor-friend Cormac?”

  “I do.”

  “Then until well after that time, it is Cormac mac Othna and his friends I have known and loved-but by Yuletide next, all will know that it was Cormac mac Art of Connacht who slept and slew here.” Abruptly Dond chuckled. “And shared a headache with me!”

  “Be careful, Dond. My name may be even less then than now, for many have forgot, in twelve years.”

  “Twel-why, ye were a mere boy!”

  “Aye. And that be something else I’d talk with ye about. So is Dondal a mere boy, Dond, and not so proficient as was I with arms then, for I have been trained by fighting men, and Druid-taught. I make you this promise, friend: I’ll not depart Cashel before I’ve sent the boy home to you.”

  Dond went pale, and actually stumbled. Cormac had seen men weak with joy before, and affected not to notice.

  “Tell his mother and still her cries and her mind. But know this, Dond, and seek to set yourself and that good woman Lendabaer at peace on it: your son Dondal is a warrior born. It’s made to wield a sword of good steel he was, not a fleching-knife or net or barbed spear, and sure one day all the land will have the name of Dondal mac Dond in their mouths!”

  “Ye… think so.”

  “Ye know me for a weapon-man, Dond, and one who has reddened his arms many times, though only once in Eirrin. Oh-twice, now…”

  “Picts don’t count!” Dond said in a boyish rush.

  “At any rate-I know a warrior born, yes.”

  Dond nodded, and no more was said of the
matter.

  Even though he trusted the man implicitly as friend and one he had both saved and reddened arms with, Cormac said no word about the identities of “Celthair” and “Ess.” True, their business was now his. But the telling of it, in Cormac’s personal code, was not. Later he knew that Dond had already shared with his wife news that Cormac would see to their son’s return, for she gave him a great hug and a cheek-kiss as they prepared to take leave.

  Nowhere approaching so fine as he thought he looked, Dondal was their guide, in his Pictish armour and girt with their weapons. Samaire had retained the tall boots she loved, though now a tunic of homespun covered them past her knees. Ceann and Cormac, too, wore clothing loomed and sewn by a fisherman’s wife. All three of them retained their broad long cloaks, into which Samaire had sewn secret pouches.

  With the birds singing all about and the sun smiling as if happy with the thirteen savage bodies now nurturing its soil, the little quartet set out inland. Behind them danced and jabbered the two younger children of Dond and Lendabaer, until their brother paused to bid them return. With great respect, they showed him crestfallen faces but made no complaint. Back they went, with tears staining their cheeks. Dondal walked tall and Cormac was forced to slow the boy’s long stride.

  Stiff-tipped, Samaire pointed out that they had enough wealth off the Vikings to buy horses sufficient to seat all Munster.

  “This is peasant country, dairlin girl. It were best as we’ve agreed to make no bold display of our wealth. Horse or chariot would be the boldest. We continue afoot to Cashel.”

  “I swear by the gods the great tribes of Leinster swore by before Padraigh,” Samaire/Ess muttered, “this walking will be the death of me, a good and strong woman who’s fought the good fight even as a man!”

  “No one told you to wear boots that fit you but ill,” Cormac reminded her, and received a black look from beneath new-stained lashes.

  Later in the day, when occasion arose, Dondal asked Cormac quietly-and nervously, with stammers and a licking of the lips that ill became a companion-at-arms, whether Ess Sun-tress was his woman.