Few of the company had ever seen so much wealth or such splendour. Often they paused in their work to exclaim or merely stare, dazzled by the brilliancy of jewels and the handsome richness of fine fabrics.
There were bales and folded piles of standard fabrics-and of fine linens and silks and wools that were dyed in divers hues and often purfled or cunningly broidered with panels and strips of other colours. There was even a strip of cloth-of-silver, twice the length of Cormac-the second tallest man among them, after Wulfhere-and just under half as wide. Men blinked at its lustre.
Earrings there were, and brooches and torts, and other ornaments. Two of the torts were so large and ornate as to constitute carcanets rather than the normal neck-rings worn by nearly every Celt of every land, whether Eirrin or Gaul or Britain. No less than a dozen good bracelets from the hand of the same artisan they discovered, in folds of the imperial red cloth of the Romans. Trade articles, Wulfhere opined. Of wrought bronze the wristlets were, and inlaid with gold, each decorated too with insets of agate and jasper in dark green and opaque yellow.
Cormac and Samaire conferred briefly; soon nine men, aye and the armoured woman among them, happily wore each a new bracelet.
Pearls there were too, though few really precious gems. A number of belts, scabbards, and two bracelets were studded with the red volcanic stones so popular among the Romans, porphyry.
A single gold plate, so finely wrought that it must have been stolen by the Romans from the Greeks, they found too: surely it had been stolen in turn by the Vikings off the ship of some wealthy Roman en route to-or, more likely, from-Britain. Its value was obviously considerable. Samaire soon made it vanish amid folds and folds of excellent white linen-which was surely of Eirrin.
Wulfhere approached the expedition’s leader, who stood thoughtfully in the great hall of butchery. The giant gestured.
“The gold and jewels in that throne, Wolf, would ransom a king-and perhaps buy the retainers of one… such as Samaire’s murderous older brother.”
“I’ll not be touching it, or have it touched,” Cormac said, gazing upon the great chair. It remained stately, despite the sword-hacking inflicted upon it by Bas. It was as if the chair itself owned and presided over the broad hall.
Wulfhere thought upon that, and nodded. “Another time I’d call ye mad, Cormac. Now, knowing what I know of this place… I’d not touch it either.”
“Then we’ll be asking no other man to theft from the king that caused this throne to be placed-to brood here for thousands of years.”
“Some time,” Wulfhere said, “this year or next or twenty or fifty years hence, others will come here. It’s they will pry forth that silver chasing, the gold inlays, those emeralds and rubies and those strange stones that are like clear glass with their many faces.”
“Diamonds,” Cormac said, “stones that cannot be cut. Aye. But not us.” Then he said, “But there’s naught to stop ye from returning, splitter of skulls, to collect what be here.”
“There is,” Wulfhere assured him. “It’s happy I’ll be to leave this isle behind-and alone!”
Cormac’s voice was almost a whisper: “Aye…”
“It’s Samaire and Ceann her princely brother have such need for… the financing of their enterprise, Cormac. Is it fair to them, to leave all this?”
Cormac looked into the other man’s eyes. Around them, as around his own, years in wind and sun and salt spray had worn and incised fine lines like the nascent erosion of a rain-swept plain. Above the flaming beard, Wulfhere’s face was like old ship’s wood.
“An Prince Ceann wants that throne-I’ll tell him of it-he may return here for it himself!”
Wulfhere’s grunting noise was a comment. He smiled, not with humour. “Ye have little love for our onetime companion… though much, methinks, for his sister.”
“There’s no quarrel I have with Samaire’s brother, Wulfhere, and naught I harbour against him. He is the king’s son of Leinster, and the time I have spent in his company, good times and bad, convince me it’s a good ruler he’d be making.”
“Still…”
“It matters not,” Cormac said, with an impatient jerk of his head.
Ceann he knew only tolerated Samaire’s relationship with him who’d once been a weapon-man in her father’s employ-and more latterly a pirate. Too. Ceann seemed at times to forget his own anomalous position-and who had rescued him and his sister from their Norse captors. Ceann Red-hair acted the role of the king he was not. To Wulfhere, though, Cormac mac Art saw no reason to tell any of this. He had braced Ceann Ceannselaigh afore, and doubtless would again. They’d also fought side by side, and endured and won through much, and accepted each the other’s counsel.
And… though it might mean the state marriage de convenance of a kingly Ceann’s sister and Cormac’s last sight of her, he knew that the time would come when he’d be working to topple Feredach an Dubh and place Ceann on Leinster’s throne.
Cormac glanced over to find that Wulfhere had departed from his side. They had long been companions; the Dane recognized at once when thought came heavily upon mac Art. Thinking was not Wulfhere’s province, and he well respected it in the Gael. Neither of them had a better friend than the other-until, perhaps, Samaire. Cormac noted that the fiery-haired giant had appropriated the largest of the axes dropped on this floor of bloody tiles, and the mailcoat that had belonged to the burliest of the Norsemen.
Alone with the dead, the Gael returned again within himself. Wulfhere had called up Ceann into his mind, but it was of the prince’s sister Cormac thought.
Samaire.
He’d known her long, the princess with the Eirrin-green eyes. Long before his own years and years as blood-splashed reaver, an exile…
Both bright and sturdy had been Art’s boy Cormac; the old druid Sualtim saw to the training of the lad’s mind while his father taught him the wielding of arms. Auspicious the name of Cormac son of Art of Connacht, for it had belonged centuries before to one of Eirrin’s very greatest kings. Unfortunately the boy’s stoutness and skill at arms, combined with the very name, attracted the notice of a man whose crown rested shakily on his aging head; High-king Lugaid was a fearful man on a throne that had been sat afore him by giants among men. Young Cormac knew naught of plots and scheming. His father paid no heed, he who was a descendant of great men though he wore no crown. But treachery was done by a man with fear upon him, and came the time when Art of Connacht was slain, and that mysteriously by an unknown hand.
Young Cormac mac Art was not slow, either to learn or to adapt. His judgment was astonishingly logical, and good, for so Sualtim had trained his good mind. There could be no blood-feud with the Ard-righ, the High-king, not for a boy of Connacht and him both fatherless and motherless.
Not yet a man, Cormac did what he must: he fled Connacht, ere his father’s fate could overtake him.
The Connachtish youth was not recognized as the “Partha mac Othna of Ulahd” who-lying about his years-took warrior service in Leinster. He proved a good soldier and a good man, for all his being not yet a man. He remained apart from his fellow weaponmen in Leinsterish blue, lest they learn age or origin. Partha mac Othna kept his counsel, and was promoted even to the Command of a Hundred. Eventually he had still another secret, a dangerous one: a friend who became more than a friend, a girl but a year younger than himself. Fair and freckled she was, with eyes of a startling green and hair like a rich October sunset.
Forfeit would have been the head of Partha/Cormac, had His Highness known of the young weapon-man’s friend and paramour-the king of Leinster’s own royal and well-betrothed daughter Samaire.
Came the day when young Partha mac Othna well represented Leinster in the too-frequent warring between Leinster and Tara over the latter’s collection of the ancient and much-hated Boru Tribute. Spawn of a long-ago quarrel it was, and like a wedge driven into the heart of Eirrin or an insurmountable fence across the land. But it lingered on; no High-king forewent its collection
or declared it banned. Leinsterish kings but tried…
In that year, though the “tribute” was gained, the hero of the skirmishes was Partha mac Othna.
He was so accomplished and valiant a weapon-man that some compared him with the legendary Cuchulain of old. And soon, on Tara Hill of Meath, High-king Lugaid learned the real name of the so-called son of Othna. It was High-kingly gold brought to an end that era of Cormac’s life. He was goaded, carefully and deliberately, into drawing steel at the Great Fair. Thus he slew; thus he broke the King’s Peace; thus he condemned himself. For he who broke the King’s peace at Fair-time stepped instantly outside the law, and must die-or flee.
Samaire had wept that night, and assured him that she loved him. And then Cormac mac Art, driven already from home and home-land, was driven from Eirrin. He fled, outlaw.
Then came the long years in which he was a farmhand, little more, in Dal Riada, on the southern coast of Alba. Next he was a warrior in the service of that king-until once again royal treachery was done on him. Pictish captivity followed, a captivity during which he’d have died had it not been for a Pictish girl, widowed but recently in her youth. After that came escape and the years as coastal raider, and then capture and imprisonment anew… and escape with a prison-made friend, a mighty and outsized man from the cold north.
It was then Cormac and that new friend and comrade, Wulfhere the Dane, became a perfect pairing. With a crew of Danes, they raided every coast save that of Dane-mark and Eirrin-and far Norge.
Was a vicious wind swept them here, an unfathomable whim of capricious gods. Then, by similar caprice, the gods saw that the life-line of Samaire of Leinster again intersected that of Cormac of Connacht, after over a half-score of years.
That first night she had joined him as he lay beneath the sky, in whose chill starlight he’d slept so often. That night he slept but little, and he and Samaire had not been apart since. And now she had told him they’d part no more…
She told me, aye, he mused, and I said naught to the contrary!
Standing in the great hall of Kull’s Castle and gazing in silence upon corpses and skeletons and a floor cluttered too with dropped weapons and shields and helms, the memory-bound Cormac heaved a great sigh-and heard the approach of footsteps from behind. Instantly he turned, to see bright-eyed young Brian.
Once I was bright of eye and clear of mind and bushy of tail, Cormac mused, cheerlessly, but he showed nothing.
First making apology for the interruption of thoughts, Brian said, “All the booty be gathered at the tops of the stairs, Captain.”
Cormac nodded. “It is late of afternoon for the loading of ships-and after that too late to launch them. It must be tomorrow we leave, Brian.”
Brian looked about them with distaste, though Cormac saw no fear on the youth.
“It’s another night we’ll be spending on this isle, then.”
“Aye,” Cormac said. “Though some prefer to be away from this place and remain with the ships, I’ll wager there are others who’d be averse to leaving the amassed treasure!”
Brian grinned. “True. And… Osbrit?”
“Brian,” Cormac said, seeking to be gentle, “it’s… not my second ye be.”
Brian slapped his head. “Och, it’s the Dane who sent me, my lord.”
“Oh. Wulfhere.” Cormac nodded. Without appointment, Wulfhere had become his second in command. “But I be no man’s lord, Brian na Killevy. Hm; Osbrit. A badly frightened man. Not likely to attempt aught against one man, I’m thinking, much less a dozen. Nor likely, either, to want to be apart from the company of others… nor will he be attempting to sail off alone! Only Wulfhere could ever accomplish such as that. A man not to be worried over then, is Osbrit of Britain. Nor I noted has Wulfhere aught against him that be personal, from his captivity of the Britons.”
“I think not, Captain-other than that Osbrit be neither Dane nor yourself! He be unsure of us, methinks, and… we be of him.”
“Osbrit.”
“The Dane, Captain.”
“Wulfhere?”
“Aye,” Brian said. “It be obvious he trusts none and is friend of none save yourself, Captain. We others are, after all, of Eirrin save Osbrit, who is a prisoner. Wulfhere is… neither.”
Cormac faced about to fix Brian’s clear large eyes with his own dark gaze. “Brian: see you that all understand this, though quietly apprised. Wulfhere Hausakluifr is my blood-brother. It’s five men he’s worth, in any passage of arms.”
When Brian looked not just doubting but shocked, Cormac twitched his mouth in what might have been taken for the hint of a smile. He said, “Very well then, Wulfhere be the worth of any five men-save myself. Ah, I see that goes down better-but see ye that ye make me no god, Brian I-Love-To-Fight of fair Meath! And see ye that all know this: it was for years I was the only man of Eirrin among a crew of Danes… his Danes… and we were comrades-at-arms, Brian; it’s brothers we all were.”
Brian blinked more than once. “Champion of Eirrin, I meant not to imply that we respect him not, or that there be any sigh of trouble among us. Only a… certain… lack of comfort.”
Cormac nodded shortly. “My name for that is foolishness; see that all know it. Now there is a place I wish to go, alone.”
The young man took his dismissal with aplomb, as Cormac’s due. He returned to carry the plans to Wulfhere-and the leader’s words, quietly, among the others. Cormac, knowing where he went though not what he might find, took with him the long, long coil of rope he’d used to gain entry to the castle.
Drawn somehow though he knew not by what, he ascended to the second floor again. He paced thoughtfully along the corridor until he reached a well-remembered room. Carrying a lighted torch in his hand and with sword loosened in sheath, he entered the fetid passageway that became subterranean tunnel. The old secret door he braced open after him.
Chapter Ten:
The Roof of the World
Cormac mac Art was not certain why he paced again along this gloomy stone-braced corridor that had been so haunted by sorcery… and was now haunted by footprints of mystery. Perhaps he was deliberately-foolishly-tempting his new enemy, him he had not laid eyes upon.
Foolhardy this trek again beneath the earth, and especially so with Bas, and the Gael knew it. Yet it was… irresistible. He was as if compelled, drawn by unseen hands or command, as those strange shipguiding stones were drawn ever to the north. Nor was it any new mood of Cormac’s, this need to be alone with his busy mind.
Busy his mind was-and confused.
It hummed and thrummed now with that sonorous name of menace: Thulsa Doom, Doom…
Dust whispered beneath his feet and he fought the ugliness, the foreboding drumbeat inside his head. With will and stern determination, he wrestled his mind from its ugly thoughts elsewhere, to beauty…
Samaire.
Face and form to stir a man’s blood and rouse his body, to make his fingers fair tingle for the feel of her under them; these were Samaire of Leinster.
A woman with the highness of pride in bearing and in those wide eyes the colour of grass in high summer, was Samaire daughter of Ulad Ceannselaigh. Slim and well-curved her body, full and well-curved her lips, which, as their ancestors in poet-honouring Eirrin would have told it, were red as the berries of the rowan-tree.
Firm those lips became against him, and warm as if fiery so that there had been times when her mouth had seemed to burn while he listened to her quickening breath and felt her arms about him, felt her straining against him until his own arms were pulling her feverishly close.
Yet there was more to Samaire, far more. Swift and skilled and unblanching in danger and combat she was; a warrior’s companion for she was herself a warrior.
Cormac let his mind slip to her as he paced along the tunnel beneath the earth, breathing its fetid, vitiated air.
She’d been wed, naturally enough, betwixt the time of his leaving Eirrin (when we were both but children, he now thought) and their
coming together again on this rocky speck on the ocean. She was wed by her father to a prince of Osraige, a small strip of land that was to all but its proud king a part of Leinster. Samaire was not long a wife. Whilst aiding the Munstermen in resisting a Pictish incursion into their lands, the prince of Osraige took an arrow in the chest. It gave him his death, even as his men carried him homeward. Childless Samaire was, and no friend of her late husband’s mother. She returned to the home of her ancestors.
Already death had visited that home, coming suddenly and without blood upon her father. His firstborn ascended to the high seat of proud but tributeladen Leinster. That son sat the throne well. He became it, as it did him. Though he retained close to hand most of those who had counseled his father, he created his brother Feredach high minister.
Another brother there was still: Ceann mong Ruadh, whose wife had died in her bearing him a child. Widow and widower, Samaire and Ceann became the good friends and companions that they had not been, as children, for friendship were a difficult matter for siblings.
The king was dead within a year, nor was there much doubt that it was his brother Feredach had him slain.
And Feredach was king. He was soon called an Dubh, the Dark. A mean, unpopular, grasping and ever suspicious man was he, with the schemer’s usual suspicion that others were ascheming against him. Much time Ceann and Samaire spent together, for it was much they had in common. Feredach suspected them; Feredach feared them; Feredach did treachery on his younger brother and sister as he had on his elder.
In a scurrilous bargain made worse because it was with Norsemen, Feredach saw that there was no possible claim on Leinster’s throne save his own. The men of Norge kidnaped and carried off Ceann and Samaire as one day they rode near the sea.
Then had chance or the gods taken a hand-if Chance were not indeed a god. To this haunted isle whirlpool and storm brought Cormac and Wulfhere; here too the Norsemen brought Ceann and Samaire. Soon Feredach’s Viking hirelings were well paid in scarlet coin. Once he was freed of bonds and had snatched up sharp steel, the minstrel-prince Ceann took good toll among his own captors; all were slain.
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