Bas stopped suddenly as if he’d run into some barrier Cormac could not see. The druid looked all about, then lifted oak and mistletoe at the ends of green-robed arms.
“Hail O warming Sun in your bright rising, our shield of gold and our eternal heat-fire; give us good fortune! Hail O Behl lord of earth and sky; You we call now upon to perform a work only you can! A work of the Light to hurl down foul work that comes from the Dark!”
Bas began walking forward, among the corpses toward the throne.
“Soothe pains until they are painless… let the dead sink in rightful unpained slumber with woundy hurts smarting no more… let them rest and begin the Ring of Return, not as shades bearing evil but as Rightful Men in your Name!”
Cormac stood still, feeling a horripilation on him, as the man in the forest-green robe advanced into the immense room, walking amid corpses without looking down to guide his steps, without stilling his voice. But his steps were guided; his feet touched neither blood nor sheared away member nor corpse nor fallen weapon, and Cormac knew that the god was upon the druid.
“Agron, slaughter’s noble mistress: attend us not!
“Shadowy Scathach who did tutor Cuchulain of Muirthemne, grant us invincibility as ye did him!
“Cu Roi mac Dairi, twice-noble master of sorcerers, note ye here Cormac mac Art-lend him your sword!
“Go along now those unneeded, come along now those we need, and perform for the sons of men the work of laying the dead, the word of the Light against the Dark! Hear us, warming Sun in your bright rising! Let not this mortal blood be spilled-we BEG! Let not evil strike down these fair mortal forms-WE PLEAD! Behl, Crom, Cu Roi, Great Dagda… behold your servant Cormac, behold your servant Bas, behold-an t’uil!”
Bas lifted high the all-healing mistletoe to the unseeing walls and the high-domed ceiling and, Cormac fervently hoped, to observant gods. All-healer was the wax-green plant that grew not from the ground but magickally on the sacred oaks in Eirrin, and in Gaul, and in Britain, and put forth its pure white berries: an t’uil!
“By mistletoe and oak, by Sun and moon, by fire and water we call for help, we pledge the good, the Light; we abjure the Dark of sorcerous evil; we proclaim that we be not ready to face Donn, Lord of the Dead, that so well we like this land we are not ready to view splendid I-breasil…”
Cormac’s voice rose, and it seemed of its own accord, for he had no thought of speaking whilst holy words were intoned. The words merely… emerged.
“And I pledge body and brain,” mac Art said, “spear and sword, voice and arms, to drive out from our fair green Eirrin those raven-robed, raven-tongued usurpers and proclaimers of the New Faith!”
Cormac frowned, shocked and astonished he’d spoken so.
Bas had stopped still at that sudden interruption of his speaking to his gods. But then, there amid the gory dead of Britain, he nodded, and bent, and took up a sword and a dagger. These he held high, one across the other so that they formed the execution symbol of the Romans and the priests of Rome.
“Behold the Cross, symbol of slow and agonized Death!” he cried, and dashed down the two blades with a great clang.
The druid was at pains to tread upon the broken cross as he resumed his slow trek to the throne. Now he muttered, and Cormac, understanding no word, knew that Bas spoke in the Old Tongue that only druids knew.
“In the name of the Sun and the moon,” Cormac said, rather haltingly, wondering how to pray, wondering if indeed the gods of his fathers would listen to such a red-handed dealer of death as he. “This I say truly and swear by the gods the great clans of Eirrin swear by: All foemen I face. And this I ask: if foes must come, let them be of living flesh, that I may fight as a man fights.”
At the far end of the sprawling room, ringed about by pillars with squared decor of bronze and gilt, the stately chair rested. From it, Cormac remembered, had one of his own men swept a fine bale of rich cloth, to cover one of their dead. Now green-robed Bas reached that kingly seat, and turned, and sat. Cormac stared, taken aback.
Kings Cormac had seen, and kings he had served, and on him by kings had treachery been done. But only one had he seen who looked so kingly, so made for such a chair, as this Bas mac Miall of the Northern ui-Neill of Tir Conaill; grandson of a king, brother of a king, brother in law to Eirrin’s Highking-and by choice Druid of the Old Faith.
Then, as the seated Bas spoke on, droning now, Cormac took note of that rich and outsized chair.
It was of wood, bound with bronze, decorated in silver and onyx and gold itself, and all the decor in squared figures, for those of Atlantis and Valusia of old never broidered with reminders of their dread enemy: the sons of the Great Serpent, who owned the earth before man.
But the chair… the chair itself… that huge highbacked throne of wood…
Cormac mac Art strode out amid the gore and weapons and ghastly remains littering the floor, treading with care to avoid the awful clutter. He turned, and looked up. From the gallery at the front of the castle, Brian and Ros gazed down upon him.
“Go ye together. Remain together!” Cormac gestured. “Go along that corridor until ye come to a room piled with booty like the treasure trove of an Eastern prince. Gather what your arms can carry, and proceed back, and down, and out the door into the sun. An ye succeed unchallenged, return for more. WAIT! If aught amiss occurs… if it’s foemen ye see… drop the booty, lads, and RUN! Draw ye no sword and stand to fight-FLEE, for heed me: it’s fleeing mac Art will be!”
Without waiting for an answer, he whirled again and strode, a dark and lean man in rustling chain who stepped over a headless body and a cloven shield and then an armless hand as he paced to the stately chair where sat Bas.
“Bas… your pardon, Holy Druid… what say ye this chair be made of?”
’Bas stared, blinking, obviously having been far and now coming back but slowly.
“Cormac mac Art,” he said in a strange voice that came as if from that faraway place, “see ye that so long as ye live ye do never again interrupt a Druid in converse with Those he serves!”
It was Cormac’s turn to blink. His armpits prickled and a chill touched his back. Almost, he who bent knee to no man, not even crowned head, considered kneeling… almost. He made no reply, for he could think of naught to say.
Now Bas, with no visible rancor whatever, looked down at the ancient throne, ran his hands over it. The druidic ring flashed. His head came up, long dark hair flurrying at his shoulder, and there was enlightenment in his clear eyes.
“Oak!”
“Aye, so I thought even from afar. Oak! From the tree holy and beloved to Behl and-”
But the druid’s grey eyes had swerved to look past him, widening. Cormac broke off. He knew what he’d see ere he turned, for he felt it: Silent menace and the chill of the grave had entered the lofty hall of Atlantis. The air hung thick with a loathsome aura of blood-freezing horror and the cruelest sorcery devised by demonic mind.
He turned, and they were there.
There had been no sound; there was none now. They were there.
Men in plain helmets of iron bands and helms with horns like the Old God, Cernunnos the Horned One; men with eyes of blue and grey, and drooping pale moustaches; men carrying axes and swords and the round shields of far Norge. And… others…
Cormac’s body went all overchill and damp, and the sweat was atrickle in armpits and palms. Ah, gods! He knew them, those Danes… Hrothgar of the bent broken nose and brilliant swordwork, and Hrut Forkbeard with his ornately hilted sword and silver-chased leather jerkin and vainly twisted mustachioes… and there Edric, aye and Hnaef…
“Gods! Oh my old comrades… I saw ye all dead on this very floor!”
Chapter Six:
The Throne of Kull
Dull eyes staring fixedly from faces like pasty masks, the men who were at once dead and not-dead began to move forward.
Bas rose to his feet. Deeply green sleeves slid back over surprisingly thick wrists as the
druid extended his arms. Toward those stalking shades he held out mistletoe and oak. They stared, every one with naked sword or ax in hand, and no wounds upon them.
“Be at rest! By Sun and Moon, fire and water, oak and the green mistletoe that lives all the year… BEGONE! Mead awaits you in Valhal… your Valkyries cannot find you… bodies unborn await you in the land of the living! Your mighty god Odin of the Single Eye awaits you! Journey to him-Leave us! This is the realm of the living, where there is no place for slain men… and… ye be dead!”
They stared dully, fixedly, those horrid spectres that looked so unlike spectres, but living men. Two-and-twenty, they ceased their slow forward movement. Every eye, Cormac saw, was on the druid’s hands…
Then they began their ghastly silent moving again, edging around sidewise, avoiding Bas… coming at Cormac. In winged helm and shining scale-mail, one Norseman was well ahead of his fellows. Blue eyes, dull as though mindless, stared at Cormac mac Art.
Cormac’s buckler was on his arm and sword in hand. The Gael attacked, for all the prickle of horripilation up his back and on his arms.
His sword swept out and around like a gale, humming through the air, and he watched it slash through the Viking’s bronze-cuffed sword-arm. Watched it slash… through… without resistance… without blood… and with no effect on the arm, which continued rising. It descended in a rush. The Gael’s shield leaped up and he shuddered as the descending sword crashed onto its metal-ringed edge.
“By all the gods! My steel has no effect on him-none! But his blade’s as deadly as ever steel is! A man has no chance against this horror-BAS!”
Cormac could only retreat or die; a swift jab showed him that the Norseman’s shield, too, was fit to defend a living man. An unslayable kill-machine, the Viking swept up his terrible ax.
For the first time in his life, Cormac mac Art turned and ran from a foeman.
From the shocked druid’s hand he tore the oaken hafted ax of Ruadan mac Mogcorf. He was unsure why; it was as if some instinct drove him. His sword he left against the throne-chair as useless, nor did he wield the ax as a man should. Holding it close to the head he’d thought overlight for a fighting man, he drove the end of the haft at the Norseman who had followed-but had stopped three paces from the throne.
The ax was poorly balanced for a thrusting weapon, held thus wrong end before, but with it Cormac thrust. Nor was he averse to using the Saxon tactic of feinting at the body and stabbing at the face.
The tip of the haft jolted home as if against living flesh and bone. Cormac could have wept for happiness at the shock to his arm.
A horrid groan filled that soaring chamber, and seconds later an equally horrid stench, the stomach-turning fetor of putrefaction and decay. And the Norseman seemed to melt, the flesh fading from his bones, hanging in tatters, vanishing into the air. His body quivered all over.
While his back crawled, Cormac watched what oaken stave had wrought, when steely brand was of no avail.
Bronze armlets dropped to ring on the floor, and one rolled noisily. Coat of scalemail caved in, cleaving to a form suddenly fleshless. For a brief moment Cormac stared into the eye-holes of a skull, a whiteboned death’s head bereft of so much as a scrap of flesh.
Then the lifeless skeleton crumpled to the floor with a rattle. It lay there, as should have done the bony structure of a man slain three months before.
“It’s the O-O-O-OAKHH!” Cormac mac Art shouted, partly in triumph and partly in a release of fear and horror, tension close to hysteria. “The OAK, Druid! Behl’s symbol of LIFE-the dead cannot withstand its touch! This be why that man Osbrit alone survived, for he sat that oaken throne! Here is why they sought to avoid you and come ‘round at me, Bas-you held this ax!”
Then Cormac did that which was alien to a weaponman, and against the grain of his very nature.
With all his might, he swung the ax against a broad thick pillar of smooth, time-darkened stone. His hands shifted so that it was the side of the steel head that struck with a great ringing thump and a terrible jar to his arms. A loud crack split the air as the haft broke. With another swift stroke Cormac smashed the head from his ax so that it hurtled through the air until it struck another pillar-and rebounded, and rebounded, and drove bloodlessly through one of those horrid foes to ring and clatter on the floor.
The Dane was unharmed; the ax was an ax no longer; Cormac held a thick oaken stave as long as his arm, to the fingers.
With it he drove at another man of the Norse. A whirring ax-blade rushed past his head, while he slammed the haft of what had been Ruadan’s ax into the shield-arm of the Viking. An awful death-cry rose; again came the stench of a mouldering putrid corpse-and a second skeleton clattered horribly to the floor.
Bas stared with half-glazed eyes as the tall weaponman of Eirrin fell to one knee to avoid a swordthrust, and cracked that attacker’s knee with his strange cudgel. And there were three skeletons amid the corpses on the floor of Kull’s Castle.
They closed in now, and Cormac did what he must to avoid death-dealing thrusts and slashes of un-dead men whose blades his targe could not turn all at once; he hurled himself aside.
Then he ran, racing around the seated druid to come upon a Dane at the edge of the cluster. Cormac knew that lightly bearded man; had fought beside him and trod the decks of ships named Raven and Wolfsail with him. But the Gael was steeled, sure now that he had the means of providing rest for these men brought back from the land of the dead on the murderous mission of some unknown mage. Cormac was the means.
Before the Dane could swing his weapon into line, a truncated ax-haft struck his shield and then his arm. As silently as he’d done three months before, Cormac’s comrade of erst died again, and there were four skeletons.
Bas jerked erect as though waking from some dark dream.
“Cu Roi mac Dairi,” he said in a shaky voice as his hand closed around the hilt of Cormac’s sword, “son of Behl, servant of Crom, be with me! And… King Kull… pardon!”
With that the druid crashed Cormac’s sword down onto one arm of the priceless ancient throne. The blade bit deep; wood older than old splintered and broke. The throne shuddered-as did Bas’s surprisingly powerful arm.
A man in an iron-banded helm of dented grey rushed past the oaken throne to swing his shining glaive at Cormac mac Art-and Bas the Druid smashed a ragged chunk of chair-arm into the Viking’s back. Released by fingers from which the flesh began instantly to dangle in tatters like old draperies, the Norse sword rushed past Cormac to clang and clatter far across the room. A thrice-banded helmet slipped down over the shining white mound of bone that had been a human head. A skeleton once more, the Norseman fell.
Cormac too had struck, and six skeletons lay on the tiles.
A sword crashed off Cormac’s shield and he saw another rushing in from the side. Desperately he struck at it with his oaken club just as he’d have done with his own good sword-which was now so horribly useless. Ax-haft deflected glaive-blade; the point tore a channel up the Gael’s forearm. Later he would feel pain and be discommoded by the rip in the skin and flesh; now he did not so much as notice. Ax-haft thunked into mailed hip, jerked away, leaped sidewise swift as a striking adder. Oak met skin; skin became tatters; tatters vanished to leave only bone.
The two skeletons fell almost together, with a rattle as of many games of knuckle-bones at once.
The ghastly battle continued. It was two against fourteen now, and one of the two unarmoured. Unhelmeted too he was, and cumbered by rustling robes of woolen girt with a rope composed of four intricately plaited strands.
“Bas, Bas! Back to the throne, man, ere ye be slain for naught! Hack the throne… and hurl the pieces!”
Bas skipped away from an overweight man of Norge. He turned-and faced an ax that had already commended its downward rush. Reflexively the holy druid jerked up his splintry chunk of ancient oak, and up leaped his other hand to brace it with a grip on either end.
The ax rushed down t
o cleave through that time-weakened slab of wood so that it was two, and had only slowed the descent of steel death. Bas went to one knee. His shocked arms quivered. From one nerve-tingling hand, even as the un-dead drew up his ax for the death-stroke, a piece of ragged wood fell. It struck the floor and bounded, just a little, onto the buskined foot of the ax-wielding Dane.
From above his head Bas heard a grunt. Then there was the stench of death’s decay eerily accelerated, and then that was gone, as Guthrun Black-shield died once more. Again he returned to pallid smooth bones that clattered on the tiles.
Ten skeletons lay on the floor in their mail or leather; twelve men who were not men shuffled on. Twelve Un-dead men continued to do what they must: endeavour to slay the living. Helpless voiceless minions of the ghoulish sorcery that had raised them, they clove blindly to their one purpose: murder.
Bas of Tir Conaill gained the throne-chair and turned to look upon the awful sight.
The floor was strewn with corpses and man-shaped collections of bones. Bleeding from right forearm and left shoulder where the capping sleeve of his mailcoat was shredded, Cormac mac Art leaped and dodged, ducked and skidded, lunged and jabbed and swung. He danced, armour a-jingle; he raced away to attack again like a great spitting cat amid harrying dogs. Succor he knew lay only in nimbleness; a dash here, a jab there with his headless ax, and duck and dodge to continue the grim work from a new direction.
One advantage was held by the living man among the Un-dead; when his stave struck other than shield or enemy blade, an enemy fell.
The wood of the god-tree met sorcery-driven steel. Another of the resurrected dead was struck. Another skeleton crashed to the floor. A hand broke, and fingerbones rattled free to roll about. It was then Cormac fell backward across a Briton corpse. Ghoulmen who had been enemies, allied now in death, leaped in concert to carve the fallen man like a ham at feast-time.
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