The Mists of Doom cma-1

by Andrew J Offutt

  The pure man of action at his side hardly understood, and as they paced into the woods they were nigh to arguing. Midhir but stated that which to him was obvious.

  “And shall I be taking spear and buckler and sword, then, and setting out in quest of the slayer?”

  Midhir slammed first into palm.

  “Aye! O’course!”

  “And in which direction, Midhir?”

  Midhir walked in silence.

  “And what name shall we be putting on him, this man I go after this instant?”

  In silence Midhir talked, and with a frown upon him. Cormac knew then that the man was alive because of his arms-expertise, his prowess and strength-and through good fortune. Nor did mac Art know that the time would come when he would team with another man of similar make-up and mentality, and him a huge flame-bearded Dane… and that mac Art’s counsel would prevail.

  “Midhir.”

  “Aye “

  “It’s no family estate Glondrath is, Midhir. On the morrow, or next week, the new lord and commander may come riding.”

  Midhir stopped dead still. He stared at the much younger man. “By the gods my father’s people swear by! Cormac!”

  “Just so, Midhir. My entire world is-ho, look there.”

  “Ah. A sidhe. “

  They entered a little clearing among the thickbudding trees and brush. In its center was a cairn, though not a sidhe or fairy-mound. No, Cormac saw, this was a place of worship-rites for the common folk who yet followed the very old ways, as Celts did over in Gaul. Pacing over to the pile of stones, Cormac saw the ash of a recent bonefire. Midhir was just behind him when the youth, noting that the bones were those of small animals, bent to examine them.

  He heard the harp-like twang. He heard the highpitched bee-sound come, rushing through the clearing’s air. And he heard the solid thunk.

  Cormac knew the sounds. A released bowstring; a whizzing arrow; its imbedding itself in a target other than straw or wood. Heedless of the ashes, Cormac fell deliberately forward, thrusting forth his shield-arm. He rolled with difficulty, holding shield and wearing sword, and only then allowed himself a look.

  Midhir, an arrow standing from his eye, limply bent at both knees and then fell, partway on his side. His left leg kicked twice, then a third time, more weakly-and no more.

  Midhir! The thought was anguish and anger combined in Cormac’s mind. Bloodlust and rage leaped up in him and his heart pounded so that his pulse was a drum in his temples. Yet his brain maintained control. Kicking himself half around, he hurled himself into the scant protection of the low bushes amid the trees at the clearing’s edge. No fool of viscera and twitching reaction he, to give way to emotion and rush the supposed hiding-place of the archer; the man would but make good use of another of his goose-feathered shafts ere Cormac found his position, much less reached it.

  The arrow had come from directly in front of him, beyond the cairn. He had dived leftward, tumbled arolling, and hurled himself into gorse and doebush. No more than thrice his body length separated him and the bowman, diagonally across a part of the clearing. Cormac scrambled, trying to make himself small behind his shield. Cheek against the ground, he peered around the shield’s edge.

  Yes; after a time he was certain he described what he’d not have seen had the season of spring been more on the land. No greenery obscured the man behind that split- or twin-trunked alder over there.

  No matter how he strained his eyes, Cormac could not identify the bowman, Cormac was aquiver; not from fear did he shake, but with realization that this was surely his father’s slayer-and that the murderer was surely bent on putting an end to the line. Only minutes agone Midhir mac Fionn had said it: “For he’ll want the son in the earth with the father.”

  Aye, Cormac thought, narrowing his eyes. That arrow sang its nasty bee song over my head-had I not bent to the ashes, it would have found its real target-not Midhir!

  Cautiously, keeping the shield interposed, Cormac crawled and wallowed behind a thick old oak. He was able to keep it between him and the twin-tree then, while he backed, on his knees and slowly, to another broad-boled patriarch of the forest and then to a third…

  Cormac rose then, and faded into the woods and its veiling shadows. He went silently as he was able with sword and buckler and jingly armour, and him on no path. The cloak caught now and again, though he held it close; a hardy, struggling redthorn fought him for possession. The lack of greenery made his passage both easier and more nearly quiet. At last he judged that he’d worked his way beyond the clearing of the cairn, behind the murderous archer.

  Shield up and sword aready, he moved in.

  His heart pounded and he was sweat-wet; Cormac had never before stalked another human. And then he was there, and disappointed with a feeling of weakness on him as preparedness drained; the man was gone.

  Oh, he’d been here right enow. All about the double-trunked tree the new grass was well trampled, particularly here, on the side away from the clearing. Some slim green blades were still creeping slowly erect again, as though fearful of being trodden anew.

  For a long space Cormac waited there, roving the woods with his gaze until his eyes stung. He saw nothing. He heard only birds and insects. Yet it was with caution that he paced out to his fallen friend.

  Midhir lay still, the arrow rising from his face. Midhir was dead.

  Cormac had known it in the mind behind his mind, yet he had resisted the fact and set it aside. Now tears stung his eyes while he examined the arrow that had slain the man he had but minutes agone told himself he’d cling to. Now there was no one. Only Sualtim, a stern old man too wise and old to be a comfortable grandfather, much less a father-substitute.

  The arrow was a long wand of ash, tipped with gray goose quill. Two blue stripes ringed the off-white shaft. That was the portion that counted for naught. The small tip that meant life or death, one more drastic change in Cormac’s life and a far greater one in Midhir’s… that tiny portion of the arrow was imbedded in Midhir’s brain.

  Cormac moved away from the dead man. Bent to stare at the ground, he paced slowly. Midhir. Dead, all in a moment. Dead. And this second death, this second theft of life that robbed Cormac, too, of so much, was a greater blow than had been his father’s slaying. Not because of a greater feeling on him for Midhir than for Art; no, it was that he had turned in his mind to Midhir, pinned his hopes on this man.

  And now both were gone. There was no one. All was gone. Anguish tightened his stomach; desperation swirled about him like murky fog.

  Several times he jerked his head to rid himself of the tears that persisted in trying to blind him, though he was not sobbing. Cormac felt even more alone now than he had earlier this day. Now there was no one, and the thought came again and again. Now he-

  He discovered the trail of the murderer. The man was afoot.

  Cormac used his brain only a little, this time; it was cluttered and clogged and partially paralyzed by grief and sorrow for self. The day was late. Dusk was almost on the forest, and the treetops cut out much of the light of the low-lying sun. The air was becoming chill. The rath was but a few minutes away, with horses and good spears and men who’d be eager in the rage to accompany him in following a good trail.

  Cloaked but afoot and without spear, horse, or companions, Cormac nevertheless followed the murderer’s trail through the forest. He felt the weening necessity of taking action on his own, and he did.

  After a time he realized that the slayer was angling around, moving in a tight curve, around the northward edge of the rath-lands. He surely could not be headed for the mountains. The coast, then.

  Cormac followed, never giving a thought to the fact that now he could raise help merely by shouting out. Thereby though he would warn the murdering archer. Not likely the fellow would be expecting a lone youth to follow him, and bearing only weapons for close fighting. The slayer was moving sloppily, not troubling to avoid twigs that showed Cormac their fresh breaks, or loamy spots t
hat held a footprint or two, or clumps of early grass that were still rising after the flatening by his foot. Here he had wiped animal excrement from his buskin. The trail was that for the following by a child; that of a man confident he had escaped, and was not pursued.

  Cormac’s tracking took him from the forest into rocky coastal terrain where the archer was harder to follow. Cormac felt the cold sea-breeze that brought the tang of salt to his nostrils. He moved along the little runnel from a weak spring; found a footprint where the man had hopped it. He hurried on in the direction it indicated.

  Now there were no trees, and little shrubs. Stones littered the sandy earth beneath his feet; here reared a great boulder or outcrop of rock, there clung a haw. He heard seabirds, screeking and mewling like cats. Steep cliffs formed over the sea that ran from Eirrin’s western coast to-nowhere, so far as any knew. Here a foot had slid. Here the other had come down hard. Here lay stones partially imbedded; two had been freshly upturned by the passage of a foot.

  The trail led the youth down a steep incline created and then scarred anew by erosion. It was only just walkable, and here the archer had fallen. Cormac did not.

  It was down onto the strand the man had gone, Cormac thought, and he ran down the long hill to keep from falling. Intelligence and craftiness, now, were submerged in a red rage.

  The sound of the battering of water against rocks rose in volume; the tangy scent of brine intensified; the chill grew as his cloak billowed about him. Now great boulders rose round about rearing up like strange plants from the sandy, rocky soil. Coming onto the talus at the foot of the incline, he slowed his steps.

  Yet still he pressed forward intently; too intently; he was completely unaware of the possibility of a trap until it was sprung.

  They were Picts, and they were three.

  With the shrieks that were designed to terrify their prey whilst heightening their own courage and ferocity, they leaped at him from behind a flanking pair of towering boulders whose surfaces were smoothed from long exposure to the saltgritty winds from seaward.

  Short men they were, and dark and broad, with black eyes under heavy brow-ridges and stringy, straight black hair caught by bands of leather beaded or decorated with-coral. Two wore buskins and leggings of filthy, greasy leather, and naught else but bronze bracers; the third was doubtless proud of his blue Celtic tunic-still stained with the blood of its former owner. This Pict wielded a shining sword of steel, hardly made by his kind; his companions brandished flint axes and had flint daggers girt at their sides. Huge-bladed things they were, against their chipping and snapping. All three attackers were heavily muscled, massive of arm and shoulder and leg, long of coal-black hair-and ugly. Blue paint rendered them the more savage and hideous; one had added ruddy stripes traced diagonally down his forehead to give him a permanent scowling. appearance.

  They came fast and yelling, and Cormac did indeed freeze.

  Only the thick bearskin collar of his cloak saved him from the running stroke of a flint-headed ax. The blow staggered him-and was pure reaction that jerked his shield-arm so that the second attacker, him with the sword, was struck hard. Running, he was hurled windmilling twice his length.

  Only just was Cormac able to dodge the axstroke of the third Pict. Sword-sharp, the flinty edge whined venomously past his nose.

  And then, happy to have foes on whom to vent his sorrow and frustration-on which, as the Cruithne were not considered men but only semihuman-Cormac met their return with full skill and a savagery that matched their own.

  An ax slammed down and banged on his bronze-faced buckler. While it was still sliding off, the Gael’s slash caught that savage at the waist with Cormac’s edge. So vicious was the side-swiping blow that the Pict was cut nigh in half and Cormac had to twist his arm and jerk, to free his blade. His sword-arm jerked up under the wrist of a second wielder of short-hafted ax, so that it only just touched his mailed chest. Cormac’s muscles bunched and his shield came around as though weightless. It bashed into that man’s upper arm. The ax fell while the Pict toppled sidewise. The sword-armed one was coming back, and Cormac ignored the man he’d unintentionally disarmed. His eyes glared at the coming Pict like nuggets of frozen starlight.

  The Pict should have foregone use of his trophy and held to his familiar ax. With his buckler Cormac easily met the sword of a slain Celt, and his thrust sank a hand’s length of his own brand through blue Celtic shirt and dusky Pictish abdomen and bone, and blood, and organs. Huge-eyed the man staggered back off the point. He dropped his sword; his mouth burbled blood. He fell kicking.

  The third remaining Pict was without ax, though he had drawn his long stone dagger. He stared at their intended prey. Sore of wrist and upper arm, armed with a short blade against a long one of steel, seeing that their ambush had resulted in the horribly swift death of his fellows, the Pict turned and fled.

  Cormac, battle-lust soaring in him like a fire in his blood, followed the savage downward amid a maze of boulders and rocky outcrops.

  He halted just after rounding a rearing chunk of rock half again taller than himself. He stared down at the bloody corpse. Ax-hacked, it was Aengus mac Domnail, Midhir’s second-in-command and thus Art’s third. He lay in a soaked muck of scarlet sand.

  All three dead, was Cormac’s first thought-and then he recorded the evidence of his eyes. The swirling red chaos of rage and headlong pursuit fled his mind, and he stared in agonized comprehension.

  Chopped in several places and no longer bleeding, Aengus still clutched a bow. His hip-slung quiver had spilled its arrows, and so rapidly was the third Pict fleeing that he’d not tarried so long as to snatch up the fine shafts… shafts tipped with gray goose, and each bearing two woad-stripes of blue.

  It was impossible. It was unbelievable-and Cormac had to believe. Here was clear evidence: Here lay his father’s and Midhir’s trusted aide, and the man had slain them both, and had sought to do death on Cormac as well. Mac Art had no notion why this man had done such treachery; on his longtime companions and friends, and his lord commander. His brain had been sore afflicted all the day; now his stomach twisted.

  Cormac stared down at the hacked mass of mangled flesh, and on him was as much sorrow as shock and anger.

  Oh, Aengus!

  He was given no time now to contemplate the dead man’s treachery. Weapons clinked. A Pict called out from up the beach; another answered, and then a third voice rose. Cormac went instantly alert again. There was no puzzle here. A party of the Cruithne, several of their skin-boats full, must have made landing here. By coincidence had they run full onto the fleeing Aengus; mayhap he had a boat waiting, and they had found it. Thus they had taken Cormac’s vengeance for him. They had heard Cormac’s precipitate descent of the long declivity-or thought that Aengus might have others with him fallen behind-and set their trap. Cormac had destroyed it, and two of the ambushers. Now the third had summoned aide.

  Their voices told Cormac both that they were hurrying his way and that they formed a goodly number; too many for a sensible man to face alone.

  Swifty wiping his sword on Aengus’s leggings, Cormac sheathed the blade. He dragged the corpse behind the tall boulder. Taking up both bow and arrows, he raced back up the slope. He kept his footing and made headway through sheer determaintain and the strength that hurled him upward. At the top, he turned and loosed one of the traitor’s arrows; perhaps its keening and sight of it would force the Picts to take cover for a minute or two.

  Whirling, Cormac followed his own and Aengus’s trail back for many yards. He leaped the runnel to leave a deep footprint, stepped back and splashed down it for a dozen yards. From the little stream he pounced onto a boulder whose colour was all too dark to show a wet footprint to any other than close-searching eyes. And he leaped thence to hard ground, and sprinted into the forest.

  Here was no trail, no path. Here stumps, fallen branches and bushes slowed him. A vermiculate mass of last year’s honeysuckle sought to trip him. Swiftly as he dared-and a
t that falling once-he made his way back to the edge of the same trail. He ascended a tree that overlooked it. With care not to fall, he hurled one of the arrows-ahead, along the trail, as though he’d dropped it in headlong flight. Then he crouched, almost in darkness. The sky had gone a deep slate, save to the very west, where it had become all bloody-like the land here below, Cormac mused grimly.

  He breathed as Sualtim had taught him, and thought the thoughts that Sualtim had taught him, to still his panting and his racing pulse. And he waited. Like a great cat crouched in a tree where he had no business being, he waited soundlessly and without the slightest movement save his breathing.

  They came. Quietly they came, these woods-wise devils, so that he heard them only seconds before they were passing beneath his perch: He held his breath. Sword-grey eyes full of malign intent glared down at them, and the Picts knew it not.

  They passed like shadows beneath him, squatty broad men numbering a score and more. They went on, moving inland. In the darkness below, they became invisible almost immediately. Cormac heard a cry of delight; they had discovered the arrow. He heard them break into a trot. He released his breath very slowly, drew in another, just as slowly and quietly. He heard nothing. He waited longer. The Picts passed from earshot, and no others came; why post a rear guard when they came from the sea and were pursuing one who fled afore them so precipitately that he dropped an arrow?

  Cormac clambered down. He took a difficult, necessarily circuitous route back to Glondrath.

  The long march at least served to keep him warm. It was dark in the forest; darkness cloaked the sprawling meadow of Glondrath when he emerged from the woods and took up a trot. As he passed a low house, a dog barked. Others joined that one, as dogs would in the night, whether or no they smelled or saw aught. Lights began to appear. Trotting, Cormac called out his own name, again and again. He heard the people that had been his father’s charges calling back and forth, repeating the identification-with relief. Grimly purposeful, spattered with blood that was not his, he strode past without making reply.