He went on, “How could they be knowing of it? Samaire-heim be not known in their land-nor any other, save wherever it is Wulfhere may be. Nay, they be reavers as I was, though Crom and Manannan only know what they do so far south-HA!”
His shout was elicited by the arcing up of an arrow from one of the little hideboats that sought to encircle his vessel of fourteen oars; the flint tipped shaft fell short.
“HA!” the tall man barked out again. “Try on, Picts-once one of ye comes close enough to bounce one of your puny sticks off this ship, I’ll huff and puff until I blow over your snailshell!”
A cry of rage was the reply from the archer; the dark, squat men of Pictdom were not known for sense of humour.
In the Irish craft, a man called. “A fine threat, Cormac. But… what do we do? There be fourteen of these ‘snail-shells’ as ye’re after styling them, and us between them like a man running the Behlfires!”
The dark man named Cormac looked about.
Two Pictish boats trailed the little ship he commanded. Six paced it on either side. They might have been an escort, save that the Picts were friend to none in the world but themselves. Cormac knew that an ancestor of his had been friend and fighting companion to the last great Pictish king, Bran Mak Morn, years ago. That meant nothing now, either to the squat swarthy men or to the current bearer of the name Cormac mac Art of Connacht in Eirrin.
Small were the Pictish boats, of well-scraped hide rubbed with butter so that they were as if faced with glass that sparkled in the sun flashing on the placid waters. In each were two Picts, armed with spear and knife-and oar. A few had bows and arrows. The two-man craft were light and swift-gliding. Full a hand’s breadth had the sun moved in the sky since the little flotilla had intersected the ship’s course. Nor did the barrel-chested rowers seem in the least winded, nor minded to abandon their odd, paralleling chase.
“Ah for a wind,” Cormac said with anger and longing, “a wind, that we might leave behind these apish scum from Time’s dawn who seek our very hearts!”
He glowered ferociously about at the ringing skinboats, de curucis or curraghs: caracks. All remained just outside the distance to which any sensible man would seek to speed a spear. And few used the bow, which was a hunting tool, rather than a weapon of war.
Cormac snapped, “A-port!”
The steersman responded at once. Swiftly his craft began to move away from the caracks on their right. Nearly as swiftly, the Pictish boats to port swung away, nimble little craft rowed by experts.
In his anger and desperation Cormac himself snatched up arrow and bow of yew and sent a shaft at that skinboat which seemed nearest. The Picts howled in derision; Cormac mac Art was an indifferent archer at best.
“What do we do?”
Cormac looked at the short, leather-capped warrior at his side. “Row,” he said, in a snarl. “Go on. And hope for wind!” He glanced half the length of the ship at the druid.
The man in the robe of forest green either did not notice, or affected not to feel the accusing gaze. But he made answer, staring straight before him as though talking to himself.
“Behl and Crom,” he said, “cede power asea to Manannan mac Lyr and the Morrigu of the waves. And Manannan, as all seafarers know, is deaf from the roar of the surf.”
Cormac blinked. “In all my years asea,” he muttered, “I never heard that.”
The warrior beside him smiled, but wisely kept silent.
“CORMAC!”
The Gael spun at the alarmed shout of his name. Seeing the pointing finger, he wheeled. The Pictish boats to starboard, all six, were closing on his ship. Cormac’s reaction was not understood by those possessed of more patience and less experience and warlike joy than this Gael among Celts: Cormac grinned.
“Lugh!” he snapped. “Ferdiad!”
With grunts Lugh and Ferdiad shipped their oars, Ferdiad the first to starboard, Lugh the last. So had Cormac placed them, after giving both careful instructions and some small rehearsal. These two were better archers than their comrades along that side, and they knew their duties. Each man snatched up bow and clapped on helmet; each wore a jerkin of well-boiled leather, and long bracers on both arms.
Lugh and Ferdiad moved quickly into position at the starboard hull’s bulwark, looked, ducked, nocked, pulled string, rose, released, ducked again. The shafts may perhaps have taught some small respect; otherwise they were ineffective.
Cormac’s grin faltered not. He’d trained these two hunters well. No sooner were they again hunkered below the top of the bulwark than four arrows whished over their heads. The Pictish shafts passed completely over the ship. One persuaded a portside oarsman to helmet himself.
“HARD A-PORT!” Cormac bawled.
At the same time, he pounced like a panther to Ferdiad’s oar. A mighty pull he gave that foremost oar, so that the men behind him felt the sudden ease in their own pulling. Their lean captain’s strength was astonishing. The steersman had responded, and Cormac’s impulsive move added to the ship’s sharp swerve. Ferdiad sprawled; Lugh again straightened and launched an arrow. Like all others thus far, it found no fleshy home.
The ship’s stern was more effective. It crushed a carack in its swing. With a cry, one nearly naked Pict went flying to splash, thrown twice the length of his own body. The other man of that boat was surely more fortunate than brilliant; with a warrior’s reflexes he was able to grasp the tiller even as his boat, spear, oar and bow were lost to him.
Like most of his kind he was a short, dark man with long arms slung from prodigiously broad, meaty shoulders. He clung fast to the tiller. The ship lurched. The steersman cursed. Cormac’s voice rose too, cursing magnificently in two, then three languages.
“The fatherless dog clings to the tiller!” the steersman cried.
“Shake him off!” Cormac wrestled with his oar. “Up oars and sweep: One… Two… Ferdiad! No!”
“It’s shaking him off I’ll be,” the hunter had muttered, and he rose to hurry sternward and put an arrow into the clinging enemy.
Even as Cormac shouted his warning, Ferdiad’s right cheek sprouted a gout of blood and a flint arrowhead. The shaft had entered his other cheek to smash through his mouth and pass completely through his. face. Ferdiad was choking on his own blood even as he fell-onto the third starboard oar. Both that oarsman’s curse and his look of horror were purely reflexive. Again Cormac too cursed; already chaos threatened, rising and shaking its shoulders like a grim spectre over his ship.
Shouts arose both within the Irish vessel and on both sides now, and the ship wheeled insanely. Its oars whipped back and forth less than a meter above water level.
To a god looking down from the dual vantage points of height and immortal lack of concern, the scene might have been amusing.
The Irish ship was like a mighty horse, beset by a swarm of rabid cats. Already it had kicked one-and been scratched. Those to port had started to close just after their comrades on the far side, and then suddenly their prey had swung about, like a mindlessly bucking stallion. It bore down upon them to divide their number yet again or crush one of them under its hard hooves. Next it was bucking like an unbroken colt under its first rider, swinging this way and that, oars lashing out like flying deadly hooves, while one tenacious attacker clung to the hoof that was its tiller.
And now the ship lost momentum. Pictish yells rose triumphant on both sides. They howled like wolves now, not cats.
“Stupid,” Cormac muttered, to none save himself. “Had I known these men to be seasoned competents, and Samaire not aboard, I’d have ordered all oars shipped and allowed this attack, long ago!”
Now battle had been forced upon him, nor was he unhappy.
Jerking in his oar, he bellowed the order for the other rowers to do the same. Then the mail-coated Gael was on his feet and snatching up spear and buckler. The sword at his side was a fine weapon-once the enemy had pressed in too close for good spear-work.
“The mad-dogs want to board!”
he bawled. “The worse for them… EIR-R-R-R-RINN-N-N-NNNN!”
It was merely the first rallying shout that sprang into his mind; long a weapon man and a sea-roving reaver as well, Cormac well knew the value to men of a battle cry-any battle cry. It was one more aid to the heating of the blood.
Naturally the shout was instantly taken up by those about him, as would have been any but the most ridiculous. The fire-eyed screamers included the short warrior in the studded leathern cap and strange high boots who’d stood beside him… Samaire that warrior’s name. Samaire of Leinster of Eirrin.
Weighted ropes flew. Some ended in grappling hooks. Others were knotted about stones, one of which sent a son of Eirrin to his knees, clutching his arm. Then Cormac was beside him, his eyes terrible. Without releasing either spear or buckler, the Gael boosted the jagged stone up with his bronze-bossed shield, lifted, and hurled it back over the side.
And ten more came over the bulwarks of the hull, on either side.
The Picts kept up their awful wolf-howling as they attacked, for this was their battle cry both to spur and excite themselves and to shake the enemy. Frail skin-boats rocked as squat men stood in them, tugging at their grapple-ropes. Men from time’s dawn they were, avatars. out of place in this age-and knowing it.
Deagad mac Damain, who’d kissed his plump Dairine farewell and vowed they’d demand her hand of her father on his return, a hero, thrust with his good spear at a burly dark man who stood below, in his boat. The nearly naked Pict deflected the spearpoint with a twisting movement of his shield that turned the jab into a scraping carom accompanied by a grating ear-assaulting noise. At the same time, he miraculously kept his footing in the rocking carack. Without pause the black-haired man drove the tip of his own spear, a jagged wedge of flint the length of his hand, straight up into young Deagad’s eye. It ran deep, destroying eye and pricking brain. Deagad lurched backward with a moan rather than a cry. The Pict, whipping back his spear, cocked his arm and launched the death-tipped stave at another man who leaned over his ship’s bulwark fifteen feet away, engaged in a thrust-and-parry spear-duel with another attacker.
Deagad’s killer looked astonished when a dark, scarred son of Eirrin appeared and, swifter than any man should have moved, bashed the spear away, only inches from its intended victim.
“Take MY spear, Pict!” Cormac yelled.
His hurled spear burst into the chest of Deagad’s slayer with such force that it tore out of his back to the length of a tall man’s foot. Pict and boat went over; only the shining skinboat remained on the surface of the water. Its surface darkened suddenly as with red dye.
Cormac’s crew were not seasoned seamen, nor had any save one so much as seen a Pict before. While they howled like the dread wolves of the forests they loved, the little apelike men the Romans had called Pictii-the very old ones, or aborigines-fought like bulls. They charged, heedless of defense against them. Mothers of Eirrin frightened their children with tales of the awful Picts, with long greasy black hair and woad-daubed faces. It was said too, and often, that a Pict was harder to reduce to that final twitchless death than a cat.
With a battle-mad, blood-loving ferocity and overwhelming momentum, several had gained the ship. It was not that those who should have kept them away were terrified; they were worse: disconcerted, and caught up in memories of old and horrid tales.
Nevertheless Cormac brought death of wound or water on three, and one pouncing man of Pictdom drove his head straight onto the point of Samaire’s spear, which was wrenched from her hands as he dropped into the water. Her arm whipped across her belly under her loose mailcoat and dragged out her sword; Picts were aboard and sons of Eirrin were down.
Hand in hand with the grim god of war, red chaos, the oldest god of all, seized the rocking ship.
Steel flashed in the sunlight like behlfire.
Men-and a woman-shouted and screamed and iron clangour rose loudly. Spears jabbed, knives and swords and two axes flashed and swept. Men reeled on hard-braced feet. Blood spattered and flowed.
A slashing sword taken from the corpse of a slain Irish struck blue sparks from the helm of another son of Eirrin. Beside him another sword struck through hide-armour and flesh and muscle and into bone, and whipped back trailing a flying wake of blood that spattered and smeared ship and woundless men.
Dark eyes blazed with animal blood-lust while whistling blades clanged on shields, skittered skirling over mail byrnies, found vulnerable flesh. Even though the short-hafted ax that struck his shield nigh broke that arm against his own body, Ros mac Dairb of far Dun Dalgan remembered their captain’s counsel to thrust, not slash. He thrust, and was rather surprised at feel of resistance at his point, then a lessening as it went on, as though into a good haunch of meat. Surprising too was the sudden flare of the dark eyes of the stock man before him, and his guttural gasp. Ros of Dun Dalgan remembered to yank back his blade, and saw the bubble of blood over the Pict’s lips even as he stuck him again, though it were unnecessary.
A Pictish head with a gaping mouth flew from one side of the ship to the other in a shower of blood. The man who had swung that decapitating blow so dear to the heart of a weapon-man set his lips and teeth in a grim, ugly grin. For beside him was the former exile from Eirrin’s shores, the former reaver of several coasts, the reigning Champion of Eirrin, Cormac mac Art an Cliuin-and Cormac said “Beautifully done, Connla!” and Connla glowed, and struck with sword and parried with buckler, and he died not that day but emerged scatheless as though god-protected.
There were few duels in that howling, clangourous melee. A man parrying the stroke of a second while slashing or stabbing at a third was often wounded or, given his death by a fourth, and sometimes by accident. Bright red dotted the air and gleamed on helm and mailcoat, jerkin and blade and skin. And on the deck, where footing grew precarious with flowing scarlet and moveless corpses.
“Och, I love to fight!” Brian of Killevy enthused, and hewed away an arm.
Men died, or were sore wounded, or were wounded and got their deaths from another’s hand, almost negligently, or took wounds that slew them later rather than at once. A hacked calf guaranteed a Pict a limp the rest of his days-had not the boss of Cormac mac Art’s shield smashed his face and, in crushing his nose, driven splinters of its bone into his brain.
Some who fell or reeled had eyes of blue or grey; others’ were black as the bracelets of polished coal they wore on their thick dark arms.
It was a princess of Eirrin’s Leinster who took a swordcut on the helm that made her head ring and formless grey dance before her eyes, and who drove a booted foot into the crotch of him who had landed that blow turned by her bronze-bossed helmet, then spitted the enemy’s mouth and nose and most of his chin on her sword. The Pict died without even knowing it was a woman had sped his soul. Samaire took a cut on the hand too, and was pinked in the right forearm, but managed to crush that attacker’s face with her buckler’s boss even as his sword dropped.
Sons of Eirrin fought the better for her presence among them, for she was like unto Agron goddess of slaughter that day, or Scathach, the war goddess whose tutoring had made invincible the hero Cuchulain of Muirthemne.
It was she who ferociously out-shouted the Picts, and was hoarse three days after, while limping from the thwack of a shield-edge against her leathershod shin.
And then the ship was clear of living Picts.
So too was the sea all about, save for one. He had plunged overside and, gaining a carack, began paddling madly away. A hard-flung spear missed him but brast through the bottom of his boat, so that he was forced to leave it there, a strange sail-less mast, lest by withdrawing the point he was reduced to floating while he baled.
Yet there could be no immediate rest for the victors, each of whom was ghoulishly blood-spattered, for it had fountained on that weltering ship this day and those without scathe were bloody as their wounded comrades.
There was the gory, twice-unpleasant business of pitching overside Pi
ctish corpses-and pieces, including three limbs, a grimacing head, and a ghastly long coil of pink sausage from a sundered belly.
Even then none could sink down gasping to rest; there were the wounded to see to, and the dying to comfort, and the dead to be buried in the only available grave, that great endless tomb of the sea. Too, the tyrant who commanded them insisted that every inch of blade and mail be wiped of blood and gore, then greased against salt spray.
“Ye fought well,” he told them, “and these weapons served us well. It may be we’ll be having need of them another day-and rust, lads, is the weapon-man’s worst enemy!” He grinned. “Aye, and were some of ye hardly weapon-men this morning-so ye be all now!”
The final words assured willing compliance with the unwelcome command.
Then the sun died, as bloody-red on the horizon as the many battles it had witnessed, and eleven men and a woman sank down to the sleep of exhaustion, while the ship wallowed.
Chapter Two:
Warrior and Priest
The wind was hardly worthy of the name. A gentle breeze, it was just enough to fill the sails. Laeg mac Senain was well chosen, and Cormac was grateful to have the man aboard. Laeg the navigator made the most of even this pallid stir of air, with hardly a limp nor complaint whatever of the cut he’d taken in his right thigh. It was as much Laeg’s skill that made the vessel skim over the water, oarless, as the breeze that others might have thought too little.
The Cormacanacht-so were the men happy to call themselves, men of the Champion of Eirrin who’d bested even Bress Long-hand of Leinster at the great Feis of Tara-took their ease. They lounged, or exercised, or talked idly and looked about, though there was only water to see. Not so glassily flat as on the battle-day afore, Manannan mac Lyr’s bluegreen demesne was nevertheless quiet. The breeze turned only little ripples that gleamed in the sun like twinkling gems.
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