Art mocks me by naming his son Cormac!
Cormac mac Art challenges me by bearing the name, by his feat, by suffering himself to be called Cuchulain…
Art and his weaponish son threaten Eirrin!
“It seems to me that Art and his weaponish son, Cormac and Cuchulain all combined, are threats.”
Milchu had but waited for him to speak it aloud. “It is why I’m after coming direct to yourself, High-king.
“The best time to meet such threats is before they become manifest and thus even more dangerous and harder to remove.”
“The thinking of a King of Kings, lord King,” Milchu said, and was careful to let his eyes remain flat and bland, lest they bespeak his true opinion of this… this fearful puppet of Mac Erca!
“Methinks the god of Rome-and of Eirrin-should be honoured with a fine chapel in Baile Atha Cliath… would ye be taking such a commission, Priest?”
“My lord King does honour on me!”
“Assuredly.”
“And should I wend my way eastward to Ath Cliath by a westward route, by way of… Connacht, lord King?”
The High-king’s eyes were hooded, but he leaned forward to end the game with plain words and royally extended forefinger.
“Eoin mac Gulbain were better and covered surely with honour an he avenged his father’s loss of honour on the man who replaced that father-and on the son!”
“Milchu nodded. His eyes were agleam. He rose.
“Soon, lord High-king of Eirrin, there shall have been but one Cormac mac Art in Eirrin, and him that great king dead these two hundred years! As for the other… none shall remember him, after his death at age fourteen!”
Chapter Two:
The Bear
A grassy branch popped loudly in the fire and one of the five men gathered about it shot out a foot to wipe the good-sized spark into the ground. He continued rubbing that foot along the ground; little, value a well-made buskin of good cowhide if he burned a hole in its sole. Still, one had to be mindful of the sparks. This forest-Sciath Connaict, the Shield of Connacht-had stood here in southern Connacht far longer than any man had lived, and fire in a forest was a terrible thing.
Huddled in furs to ward off the breeze-brought chill of early March, the five men stared at the fire. Eyes of blue and of grey gazed at the great haunch and leg of fresh-slain elk that sizzled on the makeshift spit they’d constructed of good green wood gathered from close round about. Bubbling fat became grease that dripped down to spat and sizzle and pop amid the flames. The aroma that rose thick on the air was enough to make stomachs rumble, and stomachs did.
Beneath their furs two of the five wore mail, linked in five circles of chain again and again in the manner of Eirrin. Two others wore the far less dear-and more swiftly made-armour coats of boiled leather. Bosses of bronze winked dully. One of these men of weapons, his helm beside him and his dark hair falling loose and sweat-matted nigh to his shoulders within his robe’s hood of hare’s fur, had bossed his leatherncoat with two great blunted cones of iron. Like huge shining blue nipples, they stood forth an inch from either side of his chest. Another of the five had doffed his plain round helm, too, and was combing tangled wheaten locks with his fingers.
The five stared at the meat, waiting. They swallowed repeatedly.
“Best ye get that pot back on your head, Roich, and forget the beauty of your hair.” It was the reddish-bearded man in chainmail who spoke. “This air does a sweaty crown no good, none at all.”
“Damned thing’s heavy,” Roich muttered, but he picked up his helmet.
“That’s because ye’ve a neck like a chicken, Roich,” the man beside him said, he in the thick heavy cloak of grey wolf and hare combined.
Roich pushed him angrily and the speaker chuckled, rocking on his buttocks.
“To gain Midhir’s advice is one thing, Bran, but to have my ears wounded with that raven’s voice of yours is more than a man can bear.”
Bran and Midhir chuckled.
The fifth among them wore an enveloping cloak of brown woollen, to which had been sewn a collar of badger. Around his hair a narrow leathern binding, a sort of head-torc or niamh-lhamn; on his chest a sun-symbol on a woven silver chain. He it was who spoke now:
“It’s with weapon-men of Art mac Comail I set forth as druid companion, and with children about a campfire I find myself. Och, only the youngest among us keeps his peace as a man.”
“Once again Edar the Druid speaks sense and truth,” the mailed, reddish-bearded man called Midhir said.
The four of them looked at him the druid had singled out; a lad he was, his face showing only the adolescent intimation of a beard to come. It would be black. Black the hair falling below his pot-like helm; nor was his skin fair like Bran’s and Midhir’s. Yet his eyes were grey-blue, the colour even in the light of the dancing fire of good sword-steel. Was he wore the other coat of chainmail, over a shirt of soft doeskin and leggings of the same. His gaze moved swiftly from one to the other of his ‘companions, returned to the elk’s leg over the fire. Praised for his mannish silence, he nevertheless spoke now.
“Midhir…“ he said, in, a voice not quite through its change to that of manhood, for he had recently reached that age at which boys were called men whether they were ready or not, and were so called until old age began to set in-usually at about forty, and usually not of long duration thereafter.
“Aye,” Midhir said, looking also at the meat.
Bucking up the knees of his crossed legs, he pressed with his heels. Chain rustled then as he thrust himself easily to his feet without touching the ground with his hands, for all the weight of his muscular self and his chaincoat and helm. His right hand pushed away his furs; his left went in to his hip and came forth with a long dagger.
Behind him, a horse whickered. Another stamped. Midhir paused to glance at the four animals, staked out for the grazing just without the fire’s light. Nearby rested the two carts they had drawn hence from Cruachan. The carts were empty.
Roich twisted half around. “Heard they something I did not?”
“It’s but happiness on them to have delivered the annual tribute to our king and have naught to pull but empty carts,” Bran said. “And less than a day from home.”
“We’ve been still and so have they,” Midhir said. “Morelike they were startled by my getting up to test this meat.” And he leaned in toward the haunch and leg of juicy elk.
It was then the thundersome roar exploded from the darkness of the woods. The noise seemed to shake the very twigs of the trees with their fledgeling buds. With wild calls, startled birds vacated their nests. One of the horses, the red-brown, reared and tugged at his leg-tether.
All five men were on their feet in an instant and staring into the darkness.
Mighty crashing noises, slavering snarls, and another roar announced the coming of… something. The men’s long spears stood from one of the carts like huge needles from a good wife’s cushion, and Roich and Bran lurched into movement toward them as if shoved. Driven they were, indeed, by the weapon-man’s training that became as instinct.
Was Bran who first snatched his spear, and at that instant the great bear came charging into the little encampment.
Like a jealous guardian of the forest privacy he was, angered at the intrusion of men into his wood, and bent on doing death on them all. Up on his two hind legs he was so that he towered over all; a shaggy brown beast rising eight feet in height. A fleeing ring ouzel hurtled across the little clearing on blurring wings, and a sizable shrew, fearing the bear more than the evidence of its nose, rushed in among the men, headed directly for the fire. It swerved sharply, skidded, and was a brown streak that vanished into the forest again.
Bran could not cast or make a running stab; the bear was already too close, and coming. The weapon-man swung his spear to get it in line with the beast even as he backed a pace. One paw the size of Bran’s head snapped the spear, bringing a grunt of pain from him as the haft slammed int
o his hip. The spear broke, for all its being good seasoned ash.
And then the bear caught Roich, who screamed out in a voice not a man’s.
Ere Midhir could abandon dagger and draw sword, the furs flew in a rustle from the lad at his side, and clumbed to the earth. Surely it was worse than unwise for that tall, beautifully constructed youth to do what he did then, all in an instant; he drew both sword and foot-long knife at the same time as he rushed to Roich’s aid.
That writhing weapon-man had managed to strike the bear in the nose with no more than his knuckly fist, yet with an angry and pained roar the beast hurled him aside. His gaze lit instantly on that which moved: the rushing youth. A huge shaggy arm leaped out to grasp him. The beast emitted such a fierce growling that it might have been heard through all Connacht, and he moved on the youth as if he had a mind not to stop and tear him up at all, but to swallow him at the one mouthful.
The mailed young man reacted in the manner of a seasoned warrior. So deeply did he chop into the furry arm that the bear’s instant yanking back of his limb tore the sword from it’s weilder’s grasp. The brute had shrieked-but attacked in bleeding rage, rather than fled. The other arm swept forth, and then the wounded one as well. The sword dropped free of riven flesh while the animal seized the source of its pain.
Instantly the young man was being crushed against the great beast, which sought his face or neck with its terrible jaws. Was well for the Connachtish youth he had not removed his coat of linked steel chain, else the awful claws would have ribboned his back and torn him to the bone.
Only just was the youth able to wedge an arm beneath the brute’s chin, and his body quivered with strain while he held the yellow-white teeth scant inches from his face. At the same time, his legs braced and the calves knotting within deerskin leggings, the youth plunged his dagger again and again into his ferocious antagonist.
The immediate effect was precious little, though the bear issued more screams of rage that blasted the human’s eardrums and fanned his face with the charnel-house breath of the beast; this omnivorous creature must have come recently from its winter’s nap and found meat almost at once. Now it sought more. Its prey was incredibly strongly held, squeezed in his carapace of steel links-and in imminent danger now of being crushed even as a steelbacked beetle. His entire body quivered in the strain of muscular tension. Surely his life was measured in seconds.
Straining to keep massively powerful jaws and great teeth from his face, he desperately re-directed the aim of his dagger-and plunged it into one glaring feral eye.
Long was the blade, and deep he drove it.
Steel point sundered eyeball and drove back within that vulnerable hollow to pierce smallish animal brain. Reflexively the beast hurled its foe from it, for it was sorely stricken enow to give over battle in favour of sensible flight. The valiant youth was propelled mightily backward against Bran. Both fell. Past them stamped leather-shod feet, and Midhir drove the dagger-long wedge of a spearblade solidly into the brute.
The leaf-shaped blade of iron directly pierced the beast’s heart.
Bleeding in a dozen places, the brown bear fell, rolled, clawed snarling at itself and the earth and air. Its roars and snarls diminished in strength and volume. And then its legs were kicking loosely, aimlessly. It died.
“Th-thanks be to ye, Midhir mac Fionn!” the youth gasped in a strained voice, when Midhir helped him to his feet.
“Thanks to me! Was yourself attacked the monster, Cormac! Be ye hurt?”
“Uh-” The youth swelled his torso in a brace of deep breaths that brought winces on him. “Hurts a little… it’s terrible pain I’d be feeling an my ribs or back were broke or cracked, would I not?”
In the aftermath of the attack and the prodigious fight, Midhir’s chuckle emerged as a giggle uncomplimentary to himself. “Aye, lad,” he said, clapping the youth high on the back. Leaving that hand there, he looked at Roich. “Roich?”
“Bruises. Naught more. First the waggon caught me, then Cormac fell on me-small wonder ye prevailed, son of Art: methinks ye outweigh yon beast!” Roich was feeling over himself with hands that visibly quivered. “He- Crom’s beard! My coat is torn! Torn, as if ’twere naught but linen, this stout coat of leather!”
“Aye, and so is the arm beneath, the druid said. “Come ye back to the fire and let me see to it, mac Lurchain. Cormac-it’s sure ye be there’s no hurt on ye? Let me have look at your back.”
“No need,” Midhir said. “I’ve seen men slashed to the bone, but in the heat of combat they never noticed. But our Bear-slayer’s all right, Druid. A triumph of the skill and steel of Taig the Armourer!”
“And Cormac’s steel ribs,” grinned Roich, speaking a bit loudly now the danger was past; his hands still shook. “Much thanks I owe ye, Cormac mac Art!”
“Morelike your worthless life you’re owing to him,” Midhir said. His hand on the youth’s back propelled him to the fire on legs suddenly gone all aquiver.
The men moved back to their blaze, the youngest among them fair creaking from the crushing bearish embrace he’d endured. With herbs from his pouch Edar treated Roich’s upper arm, and the druid insisted too on seeing to the few scratches on Cormac’s hand; the hero had not noticed them.
The while, Roich and Bran were stintless in their praise of the bear-fighting youth or New-man. Was praise from Midhir that swelled the bearslayer’s boyish chest, though; this was the man most trusted by Cormac’s father, who called him even Arbenn, chieftain, and not in jest. And it was Finn’s son Midhir too who was most responsible for the training at arms of his lord’s son, as it was Sualtim the Druid who had trained the youth’s brain.
“It’s truly a man ye are, son of Art,” Midhir said very seriously. He was carving their neglected dinner, now overly charred on one side. “Your slaying of those Picts on that day of shield-splitting and now this deed are the sort that birth legends, and it’s sure that ye’ve caught the eye of Connacht’s good king. Cormac mac Art: Bearslayer!”
“And mayhap the High-king as well,” Bran said excitedly.
“The day will surely come,” Midhir said on, “when ye’ll serve our lord king directly, and him with gratitude on him for it, and… peradventure, Cormac, weapon-man, it’s yourself who’ll be winning for Connacht the Championship of Eirrin, even at the Great Fair!”
“Aye, weapon-comrade!” Roich cried.
Cormac said naught, keeping his eyes down while he bathed in the good rich oil of praise.
“Were best not to be attracting the eye of the Ard-righ,” Edar said quietly. “It is known that men have died, aye and with mystery on it, once they’ve caught the ever-roving eye of poor King Lugaid. For our High-king ever sees enemies alurk all about him, and snakes under his very bed.”
“Snakes!” Bran cried.
And laughed, and so did the others laugh with mirth upon them.
For all knew that their fair land of green meadows and swirly mist and high blue-misted mountains possessed no slithering reptiles. Nor had it ever.
“Aye, and if told there be no snakes in all Eirrin,” Roich said with high exuberance, “our High-king would surely be convinced ‘twas a lie, and set a watch over him who told it!”
“Nay, nay, for his own wife would assure him was Padraigh drove all those doubtless-millions of creepy reptiles from our land, belike with that pointed stave he carried!”
And they laughed anew.
Edar was more serious still. “All that Padraigh brought us is a plague of serpents in human form, men who slither about the fens and meadows of Crom and Lugh and Behl in robes of black, seeking to win all to the worship of the gibbet of dying Rome!”
Midhir hastily returned to his bragging on Cormac, for none among them wished to give ear to a druidish lecture on the druid’s deadly enemies. Was the biggest bear ever he’d set the gaze of eyes on, Midhir mac Fionn avowed, and the more courageous Cormac was in bracing the brute single-handedly.
“I was after trying to brace hi
m double-handedly,” the young man said, rather shyly amid the praise, “but he made such an objection to my sword that I threw it away!”
Again there was hale laughter, and a chuckling Midhir said, “Never would I be saying that it was a foolhardy act, son of Art!”
“Oh, never, “Bran cried, and they laughed anew, while the beat of their hearts slowed and the prickle faded slowly from their armpits and the tremors commenced to quit their hands.
“Admittedly,” Midhir said, half strangling on his chuckles, “had the subject ever arisen whilst we were at your training at arms, Cormac, I’d have been advising ye not to attack a bear taller than two men and outweighing four!”
“A… bear,” Edar murmured slowly, and his frown chased their laughter.
Blinking, thoughtful, the servant of Behl and Crom frowned about at the darkling woods. “Bears have not been seen in these forests for years, for here no caves lie near, to house them as they like it. Even so-were a bit early for one to be up and abroad after his winter’s snooze…”
Edar looked at Cormac, and still his brow was creased and furrowed. The others were silent, stilling even their breath. The druid had spoke naught but the truth, and now it was called to mind, neither the bear’s attack nor even its presence seemed… natural.
“It is an omen, son of Art,” the druid said, and his stressing the name of Cormac’s father reminded them all that art in their tongue meant no less than “bear” even as it did over in Pretene or Britain, where one Uther had so named his son.
They sat unspeaking, impressed to the viscera, and only after several minutes did Roich break the silence with an enthusiasm born of nervousness.
“It’s no son of this bear Cormac is!”
“Though he will soon have a great enveloping winter’s cloak of its hide,” Midhir said. “I and Aevgrine will soon be seeing to that.”
But the youth looked dark with the shadow of thought on him.
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