“Cormac! All good be with ye! Nervousness has been on ust that-”
Cormac interrupted the speaker ere he’d finished voicing his anxiety; he recognized Fedelm, called Iron Jaw after a horse’s kick had but bruised his face.
“Be fetching your weapons, Fedelm! Picts are well inland.”
Fedelm blinked. The cloaked youth strode on, a great stalking cat full of purpose. Never had Fedelm mac Conain had words of command from mac Art. Yet there was that about the grim young face, the way the words were spoken… Fedelm turned and set out for the barrack at a run.
Cormac approached the rath-house. There a great ring of black iron swung from the branch of a centuried oak, swung at the end of a rope thick as a man’s wrist. From a peg formed by a broken-off branch hung an iron rod by its rawhide tether. Cormac’s feet had not stopped moving when he had snatched the rod and struck the hoop a mighty blow. Then he thrust the rod through that ring of iron, within which two men could have stood, and began circling his arm.
The clangour of Glondrath’s alarum shattered the night with iron sound, so that even the dogs were shocked into silence.
Cormac paused in his clanging: “PICTS” he bellowed, and clanged the signal-hoop the more. Other voices took up the cry, and others, and ere he had ceased tormenting the iron ring men, were running, some mayhap bright-eyed with the rosy haze of ale fumes, but all bearing arms and armour.
Soon he was surrounded. Weapon-men aided each other into armour of chain and leather whilst they waited with scant patience for the arrival of others, and the words of the son of their dead lord. Some had brought torches, and none failed to perceive that there was blood on the big youth.
“The bow of Aengus Domnal’s son,” he shouted, holding high that weapon of treachery. And then Cormac mac Art told the first of the expedient lies he was never to hesitate to use, throughout his blood-smeared life. Was only a slight omission of fact, this time. “SLAIN, is Aengus! SLAIN, is Midhir! Pi-i-i-ictssss,” he bellowed, turning threequarters of a circle the while he called out the hated word. “Two I slew, and one escaped-and it’s these eyes saw him come up from the strand with a score and more of his ugly fellows. Armed to the teeth they be and tramping through the wood as though they own it-or intend to!”
Cries of horror and anger rose, and he had no more need of words; the men of Glondrath but waited to be led to the enemy that had plagued them for many tens of years.
“Fergus!” Cormac shouted. “Well I remember your injured arm, and cease your striving to hide it! Pick ten men to remain and defend, light torches and arm every woman and child lest the Picts double back! Hurry, man!”
Few were anxious to be chosen; Fergus looked about and about, and called ten names, one by one. He was roundly cursed more than once.
“Fergus the Horse is in command here-keep ye a close watch! We others will not be after returning till we’ve hacked them with point of spear and edge of blade!”
And ten remained, and the rest followed him in a mob, and Cormac mac Art was a leader of men.
Chapter Five:
Exile of Glondrath
The blood thirsty thrave followed the son of their former lord through the nighted wood. Raging like wolves they were, eyes aglitter with rage and malice under the twinkle of the ever-restless starshine. Once they’d come upon the Pictish trail, it was easily followed, and they fair loped through the dark forest until they came to the low-built house of a woodcutter. Then their cries rose higher with their ire, those men of Connacht, for the house was splashed with gore and the door stood open to the night.
Within, the family had been slain as they sat at table, and horrors had been perpetrated on their bodies. A dread silence fell upon the weapon-men then, and all heard the voice of the youth they followed without question. For Cormac mac Art stood in that house of gore and atrocity and swore by the earth beneath him, by the heaven above him, and by the sun that traveled daily to the west, that he would seek no rest by day nor sleep by night until this peaceful family of innocents was avenged.
A man called out from behind the house then, and once again they were on the trail he had found, a blood-trail now, for Picts were wont to let their axes drip where they would.
Farther into the woods they rushed abristle with spears. Cormac and some few others strove to hold them silent lest the quarry hear, and lie in wait, to set upon the hunters.
But no. The Picts were blooded. The scent was in their broad nostrils, and they sought more. Another house the pursuers found, with its door torn half from its leathern hinges the way that it swung drunkenly. Bright blood splashed that door. Blood splashed the floor within, and ran down the walls. Here again had there been slaughter, and only the good wife of this murdered man was armed; she lay ax hacked and deliberately mutilated, with a carving knife in her fist. There was no blood on it, only on her and round about her. In a lovingly-wrought cradle lay a babe; its face was dark and its neck broken. The marks of powerful fingers were still in the fair skin of its throat.
On through the cloud-haunted night rushed the Gaels of Eirrin, baying the Pictish trail.
Even at the forest’s eastern rim they came upon a third house-and here battle raged. Yelling dark men sought to do massacre on another family. Amid torchlight and blood-chilling Pictish shrieks, a farmer and his big-built, deep-bellied wife battled the yelling savages, and with them their two slim sons. It was farm tools against knife and short-helved ax and flint-tipped spears, and the outcome was inevitable-though the Gaels fought valiantly to set a high price on their lives.
The men of Glondrath broke from the woods like the slavering pack onto the fox they’d long chased. No less than seven Picts were down in their blood ere their fellows knew they’d been counter-attacked. The others turned then, beset by well-armed warriors rather than untrained farmers-and two more Picts went down in seconds. One fell prey to the long handled hoe wielded by a lad of no more than eleven or twelve; the other was opened by the adze of the youth’s father.
“Into your house!” bellowed a man at Cormac’s side.
Good advice for the farm family, with a boiling knot of stout warriors come to their succor. Yet none of the four obeyed, but held their ground before their besieged home while steel blades flashed like streaks of liquid silver in the starlight and carved out a path toward them.
The dusky men of Pictdom pressed back one upon the other; they gave ground toward the house; a good sturdy farmwife swung her scythe to open up one of them, all across his muscular back. A huge-shouldered savage lunged at Cormac with his spear, a Celtic staff with dark iron point. So savagely did Cormac chop down that weapon, just behind the head, that the butt came up hard into the wielder’s armpit and like to have lifted him clear off the ground, for all his muscular weight. Beside mac Art, Dungal Big-head drove his own spear into that Pict and through him, so that Dungal had to let go his haft and draw sword. A spearhead scraped across his buckler and sparks danced; like a ravening wolf Cormac slashed sidewise. In a flash of steel the attacker’s head was made to hang only by a shred of flesh and a twinned fountain splashed both Dungal and Cormac with scarlet.
“It’s a fine team we are, Cormac!” Dungal cried, grinning.
The young son of Art said nothing, nor did he smile.
It is what had happened, that the battle-rage had come upon him. He hacked and slashed and stabbed, even half-braining a foeman with his buckler’s edge. No man should have been able to jerk and slash with the heavy shield in that wise; Cormac in this combat was no normal man. Nor did he smile even in triumph, for he thought only of slaying Picts. On them he laid his needs for blade-reddening vengeance, for he could not slay him who had done death on Art and on Midhir.
A chance use of his sword sent the blade girding deep into the vitals of a dark ax-wielder, and in the back of his mind mac Art recorded the fact that a stabbing thrust was efficacious indeed when all about him were swinging their weapons. Was a lesson learned long and long agone by the Romans, though few other
s on the ridge of the world used their blades as stabbing weapons.
Around him men groaned and toppled, spitted and hacked so that blood bespattered wounded and dead, dying and unscathed alike. Indeed men with no wounds upon them looked sore blooded, whilst others who had taken severe cuts knew it not in the mindless blaze of battle-lust.
About the farmhouse the night-battle whirled and eddied, blades of steel and iron and flint flaming and flashing.
No Pict escaped. All were slain, with edge and point of sharp-edged steel. A man of Glondrath died cursing like a madman with his last breath this side of Donn’s demesne; two others were sore wounded and a third bore a woundy cut that would be a long-time ahealing; scratches and minor cuts were widespread among the company. Cormac, having suffered only a couple of scratches, had no idea how many apelike savages he’d laid low; he was told he had downed four and wounded a fifth so that another’s ax slew him easily, but mac Art had been as if in a trance and could not swear to so much as one.
Seven and twenty Picts bled their last on the grounds of Labraid mac Buaic, and afterwards weeds grew all too well there. None of Labraid’s family was slain or sore wounded, though the older son had sustained a cut he loudly hoped would leave a scar there on his forearm, and Labraid’s wife Uaithne had wrenched her back-in swinging the curved scythe with which she saved her life from a short-hafted ax. With cloth from their scantling supply the farmfolk tended the wounds of their rescuers, the while they learned that the band of weapon-men was led by the son of Lord Art, and him dead these two days.
Food and ale offered Labraid, though in truth he was no man of wealth. While his men loudly accepted, the new temporary lord of Glondrath made mental note to send both a cask of (better) ale and a fresh-slain boar to this house.
Loud were the cries, and cups were lifted high as Celtic spirits. New and noisy praise was heaped upon the youthful battle-leader. He heard new comparisons of himself with both Cuchulain and that great Cormac afore him. But on this occasion there was no adolescent swelling of the head and chest of Cormac mac Art. On his mien was the stern-set face of a man; in his mind were only two slain men: Art mac Cumail and his friend Midhir.
And still was he quiet when he led his company back through Connacht-Shield Wood, having reminded them of those who waited at Glondrath, and knew not whether to keen or cry joy. Behind them along the broad path they followed this time, those triumphant men of Connacht dragged seven and twenty Pictish corpses. And two men bore Eochu Fair-hair, to present to his sorrowing parents and sweetheart.
Though weariness was on him, mac Art detoured to take up himself the body of Midhir, that no forest beast might feast on the man.
Joy at the triumphant return outweighed sorrow in Glondrath, and was long afore many were asleep, and in truth the result of that undertaking was a rich harvest of babes, nine months thence.
Wounded Eber and Curnan survived the night, and druids and attending women announced that both would live to fight another day-though the former would most probably limp. Early on that morning of the morrow, a white-bearded druid and a beardless youth went to the house where Midhir’s wife Aevgrine keened her grief. When they emerged the tall, rangy youth bore the arrow he himself had drawn from Midhir’s eye.
Sualtim Fodla had watched the boy-man steel himself to that unhappy task, and he saw now that Cormac was not ill of his night of bloodletting, followed by this ugliness. And Sualtim frowned. For men who never knew illness after battle, and were not nauseous at such as the drawing of an arrow from the eye of a dead friend, were to be feared. Cursed of the gods they were said to’ be, and destined thereby for lives in which blood ran in scarlet rivulets. In a flash of manadh, or druidic foresight, Sualtim saw that indeed so would it be for Art’s son. He knew too in that instant that the youth must not tarry here.
“Cormac.”
Cormac looked at the druid.
“Glondrath holds your doom, Cormac mac Art.”
Cormac blinked, though he did not pale. “It held my father’s,” he pointed out.
“Remain here and it’s no other birthday ye’ll be seeing, mac Art. It is what I see for you, an ye remain in Glondrath, that nothing of your skin or your flesh will escape red doom, except what the birds will bring away in their beaks and claws.”
Cormac compressed his lips. “Walk with me, mentor.”
They walked, and in the meadow’s northern end Cormac drew an arrow from beneath his cloak and handed it to the druid, along with that which had slain Midhir.
“What see ye, mentor?”
“Call me Sualtim, Cormac; ye be boy no longer. Hmm-I shall not be saying that I see two arrows.” He studied both shafts. “I see two arrows made by the same hand, from the wood of the same tree.”
“So.”
“An ash. Aye, and feathered by the same goose, or I miss my guess and these eyes are become older than I’m thinking.”
“Ye see well, mentor. Two arrows from the same tree indeed, and from the same goose their fletching, made by the same hand. And-from the same quiver.”
“Aye. Those two stripes, now, are no emblem familiar to me.”
“Nevertheless, m-Sualtim, it’s these arrows will lead us to the slayer of Midhir.”
“Aye.”
“And, most probably, of the slayer of my father as well.”
“Probable.”
And Cormac led the druid through the forest, and Sualtim made no plaint at the length of their trek, nor even the difficulty of its other end. Then they stood over the body of Aengus Domnal’s son.
“One of these arrows ye saw me draw forth, from Midhir, Sualtim Fodla. The other I took from that empty quiver there at Aengus’s hip. Here be Midhir’s murderer.”
The druid stared at him, and then his shoulders drooped with his sigh. “Aye,” he said, and it was a whisper. “And if I must believe that, and I must indeed, then I believe too that Aengus slew the Lord of Glondrath.”
Cormac said naught.
The druid stooped by the corpse, found before them only by the birds they’d frightened away; was why Cormac had on yester eve covered Aengus’s face. The dead man wore a sundisk of bronze, on a beaded cord of leather. It flashed in the druid’s hand. Surely for no particular reason unless it was a flash of prescience or intuition, Sualtim turned over that sigil of the Old Religion of the Celts. He made a grunting sound of surprise then, as if struck. He looked up at Cormac. The latter bent, and stared.
Scratched into the back of the sundisk of Behl was… the cross. of Iosa Chriost.
Slowly Sualtim straightened, and Cormac heard the old man’s joints pop. He looked at Cormac, and his usual solemnity of mien was clouded over with deep concern.
“This bodes no good, son of Art. None. It’s more there is to the murder of Art and the attempt on his son that mere murder of a man or two. A lord has died; the lordling has narrowly escaped, and think not that it was pure accident and your own whim made ye bend just as that arrow was loosed, Cormac.”
Mac Art stared at him, saying nothing. Gulls wheeled and screamed against a sweet blue sky, the birds jealous of these men who had chased them from their morning find. Aengus had after all eyes for the pecking.
“More here than a simple blood-feud, surely,” Sualtim said. “Where the New Faith is involved, there are seldom simple motives.”
“The Dead God, “Cormac said, his teeth set and his lip curling.
“Aye. But so long as he has followers, and Romish plotters every one-even those of Eirrin-he lives, Cormac.”
“Was known my father was no friend of him or his priests!”
“So it was, and is. Nor is that all of this matter; I’d vow on it.” Sualtim looked down at the corpse. “Disguised, but he wanted his god by him and so marked the symbol on the back of his sundisk-sacrilege! He dared much.” With a sigh Sualtim added, “He accomplished much. Well. There is naught I can do for this man I thought I knew, who turned his back on the faith of his followers and followed the foreign god-even to mu
rder. Will ye be doing aught for-”
Cormac interrupted his lifelong mentor. “I will not! The birds covet his eyes; let them have those orbs of Aengus Bradawc-Aengus the Treacherous!”
“It’s bent on a vindictive path ye be, my pupil?”
Cormac met the soft grey eyes with his own suddenly icy-hard ones. “I am. It is what is left me, Sualtim. Come. I have shown you what I must, and it’s a long trek back we must be making.”
Cormac turned away to go. For a few moments Sualtim gazed most thoughtfully at the young man’s broad back. Then, with the tiniest suggestion of a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth, he nodded and stepped forward past the youth-become man. They set out to return to Glondrath.
After a time Sualtim said, “Ye spoke to me just now as though ye were Lord Cormac, my…” he swallowed the word he’d have uttered-“pupil”-and said, “son.”
“I meant no offense to the mentor of my youth and life.”
“None was taken, Cormac. Indeed, in some ways you have been as son to me, and to a man with maturity on him, it’s prideful pleasure he feels when the boy becomes so obviously a man.”
Cormac went on for a time in silence. Then, “Men followed me last night, mentor, as though I were Lord Cormac.”
“And-”
“We both know I am not,” Cormac said, and heard Sualtim sigh with relief. So he was worried I had big notions, was he?
“And you know you can never be lord of Glondrath,” Sualtim said, very quietly, and far from happily.
“I know,” Cormac said, as easily as he could sound; it had been but a brief dream. “Today or tomorrow or the day after, someone will come from Cruachan, with fine skirts and jewels on him. And he’ll be telling all in Glondrath the name of the king’s new commander. Nor will it be anyone here.”
“It was no idle word I spoke, Cormac, when I told you you’d not live out a year an you remain in Glondrath.”
“So I felt. A fell strangeness was on your face and voice, Druid. Foolish is he who believes not druids in their saying of the time-to-come, and that look on their faces. Foolish is he who believes Sualtim Fodla not, in any matter! I do not misdoubt you, Sualtim Fodla.”
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