It was on the landing above the sprawling main chamber they sat and ate, for they would not join those corpses and bones and tattered clothing below, nor cared any to remove the remains of corpse-slain Britons and the others… men on whom death had heeds been brought twice.
Cormac rose, stretched, looked about, and gave them a wolfish grin.
“We should have seen to armour and weapons afore we fed our bellies,” he said, and there were sour looks and groans. “But-hunger spoke more loudly than the weapon-man’s instinct. Now, though… we must rub and with care, for water is no friend to steel, and salt water is worse-and in our steel rests our lives!”
“What boots steel against an enemy already dead?” Findbar grumbled.
“Leave your blades and armour as they are then, son of Lirchin,” Cormac said, and he assumed the posture familiar to those who wore coats or shirts of linked steel. Once his belt was opened and removed, he hitched up the skirts of his mailcoat-and bent forward from the waist until his hands slapped the
floor. With legs braced, he wiggled his torso and shook his shoulders-and forty pounds of steel links slid clinking and jingling down his body and arms. With one hand he coaxed the weighty mass at his neck, and his mailcoat jingled off over his head to form a smallish pile on the floor. Only fools attempted to press such weight as if removing an ordinary shirt, and then but once.
Straightening, he peeled off the padded coat beneath, and with a wrinkling of noses all knew that soon they must endure not just that of Cormac mac Art, but the odorous sweat of all their number.
Seating himself on the floor in wet tunic and leggings, Cormac proceeded to the examination and rubbing of his armour. His sword scabbard was propped against the wall upside down. The long brand lay beside it, though it bore no trace of seawater. He had been more than mindful of protecting blade and sheath, and had reminded and warned his companion.
The oil all weapon-men carried was rubbed into leathern armour; steel coats were carefully rubbed and wiped with cloth; a bale of linen had been brought from the ship for that purpose, though it was far too fine.
Armour, Wulfhere Hausakluifr of the Danes observed, was finer.
“Someone stinks abominably,” he also observed, without looking up from his clinking mail.
“Someone!”
Wulfhere grinned; Cormac chuckled. “Would that all that bluster today had brought rain as well,” Samaire said, aware of her own addition to the odour in the narrow, longish defense hall.
“Rain will come,” Bas said, and once again the entire company stared at him.
Cormac pursed his lips. “Tonight?”
“On the morrow, more likely,” the druid said in a careless tone.
“Ye know this?” Brian asked in a voice little above a whisper.
“Rain will come,” Bas said, and seemed to vanish within himself once more. He had no armour to see to, but sat crosslegged in his woolen robe that must have weighed twenty pounds with its burden of sea water.
“Druid,” Wulfhere said, rubbing and rubbing, shifting links, rubbing and rubbing. “Ye said it was your talk to Behl and Crom and whatever other gods of Eirrin brought down the sky-fire at… him. I had as much reason to believe it was Father Odin and his son the Thunderer. Now ye’ve said that Quester and all aboard it will be safe on the morrow, and too that rain will come. No such clouds I saw today-nor does this old wound in my… ham bespeak its coming.” The Dane paused; Bas mac Miall said naught. “An all this comes to pass, Druid of Eirrin, I shall bethink myself of… changing my allegiances.”
Far away, thunder rumbled.
Samaire smiled. “Thor heard, Wulfhere-or is it Thunor?”
“Behl,” the druid said, sounding as though he spoke from a deep well, “heard.”
There was silence long upon them, then, but for the clink of mail and the swish of cloth.
At last Ros mac Dairb of Dun Dalgan rose and started for the steps. Instantly Cormac challenged.
“Where go ye, Darb’s son?”
Ros paused, looked back. “Nature calls.” Then he remembered,’ catching his lip in his teeth for a moment like a child caught in the wrong. “Och! Each in sight of the others-but mayhap two or several others also have need to make a little rain of our own?”
Cormac showed them his almost-smile, nodded, and returned his attention to his mailcoat. It had been long with him, and was valuable, and had proven itself among his best friends-with sword and buckler-on many occasions. He was more methodical in its cleaning than any man he had ever known. A single rust spot could weaken a link so that a swordpoint would enter! Never had mac Art lost so much as one link to rust.
Ros and three others left, close together.
“Small value that be to me,” Samaire muttered.
“When they return,” Cormac said, “you and Wulfhere and I will go and examine the stars.”
Samaire’s eyes rose; so did the Dane’s. “Wulfhere!”
After a moment he rumbled, “I know how to stand close, with my back turned, weapon-companion.”
After another moment, Samaire and another actually managed to laugh.
And so it was accomplished, and when all had sallied forth and returned, Cormac rose, stripped his leggings to reveal what none but Wulfhere and Samaire had seen afore: very pale, hairy legs with bulging calves and thighs solid as biceps. He spread padded coat and leggings on the floor and leaned against the outer wall to gaze upon them.
He told, then, all he knew of Thulsa Doom, and when he’d done, their exclamations and questions consumed as much time as his narrative.
“It is only with me, then, that Thulsa Doom had quarrel,” he said quietly, when questions had dribbled away and he had silenced them again. “To-day or on the morrow, all of you could take your leave, and most likely in safety.”
“Methinks we have covered this point afore,” Brian na Killevy said.
“Aye,” Wulfhere said, and others nodded.
“It’s foolish ye all be,” Cormac told them.
“No more foolish than yourself,” Wulfhere told him in an equable tone.
“Time approaches, Champion of Eirrin,” Samaire said, “when ye should still your foolish tongue that we may all sleep.”
Cormac appeared to take no note of either remark. It’s not giving myself up for dead I am. Ye all can take Amber Rowan, and the booty, and go. I shall follow, in Quester. I have coped with Thulsa Doom afore, and-”
“You and I will. follow in Quester,” Wulfhere said.
“And I,” Brian said, and they began again, until Cormac’s look again brought silence.
Into that new quiet Osbrit said hopefully, “I was navigator on Amber Rowan. The sea I know, and-”
Ros was staring at the Briton; he interrupted. “Can ye handle her alone?”
Osbrit shook his head.
“Then ye’ll not be going,” Ros told him, and Brian and Wulfhere grinned.
Cormac said, “We must sleep. After this day of fruitless toil, it will not come hard. Remember: None must leave this group.” He swept them with his gaze, and decided to be more graphic. “For he who does will then be prey for Thulsa Doom, and when next we see our companion he will be Thulsa Doom.”
He looked around about at them, and he saw fear and apprehension in their faces. Good, Cormac mac Art thought. Let them be fearful-let us all be fearful. Else-Thulsa Doom wins, and I am no such fool as to believe he will let any of this company live.
Next day it did indeed rain, and they were able to catch drinking water aplenty. It was good that they did; they left not the island that day, either.
Chapter Seventeen:
The Wizard Strikes
Three more days passed, and still the will of Thulsa Doom prevailed.
At least there was the fresh water Bas had promised. As he had said too, the ship from Eirrin was found each morning untouched by the baleful wizard. They saw him no more; daily they saw evidence of his power.
Lugh contrived to gain them fresh meat.
Though it was stringy, there were few complaints about the two birds he brought down with his bow-at cost of one broken arrow, three lost, and two retrieved from the bodies of the pale seafaring birds. Others of their ilk, too far distant to be reached by arrows no matter how strongly loosed and skillfully directed, the company looked upon with open envy.
The soaring, inanely screeking birds came and went as they pleased. The birds were free. The birds found what food they needed on other islands less inhospitable than Samaire-heim and, faring as they did well asea on their broad, current-catching wings, plucked forth those shining fish so careless as to cavort at the surface. The birds were free, mobile, and free too of the frustrating overwork and muscles strained for naught.
Thulsa Doom had no quarrel with birds.
Salt water fish seemed to avoid the isle, but meagre and dwindling supplies of food were supplemented by the catching of one great silver-blue denizen of Manannan’s abode-upon the spearing and landing of which burly Cet mac Fergus became a hero. Two other smaller fish were merely picked unheroically up from the sands whence they had been borne and tossed by wind-swept water, and left gasping behind when the wind died and the sea receded.
Men sought shellfish among the rocks surrounding the island that had become their prison, and were unrewarded-though punished with skinned shins and one wrenched wrist.
“It’s only me right wrist,” Duach said with an attempt at a shrug and a grin, for the slim but accomplished swordsman from the Slieve Cuilinn area of northern Dalriadia was left-handed. But no one laughed.
The druid had drunk little, eaten nothing at all, and spoken hardly more. Bas remained busy with his accumulation of oak and patched-together symbols and his muttering-and, ever accompanied by at least two others, his “reading” of the many pictures and glyphs on the castle walls. All knew he was working on their behalf against a wizard far more accomplished and experienced. Nevertheless that failed to prevent a growing impatience with Bas as day followed dreary day of imprisonment; the men of Eirrin fell out of infatuation with him on whom they’d set such hopes.
“He seeks to save us all, and he fasts on our behalf,” Cormac told Findbar mac Lirchain, after the Meathman had snarled against Bas.
“Fasts-so do we all fast!” Findbar retorted. “And what sustenance has our enemy?”
“Ye saw his… face,” Samaire said. “The wizard died years agone-centuries agone. He has no need of sustenance-as ye will not, an ye lean not on that hull-here comes the wind again!”
Day after day, winds that rose on the instant from nowhere drove them back-and then died as abruptly once they’d manhandled the ships well up the strand and taken what shelter they could against the island’s forbidding walls of stone; there was no lee side.
Night after night they slept in the castle, all together along the upper defense hall and complaining of the snoring of Wulfhere and Cet and Lugh. Thence they repaired each even at dusk, carrying their provisions-which they returned to the ships each day in their new attempts to depart this place of Hel.
With ample opportunity to grow sick at the sight and smell and sound of each other in this constant frustration and enforced proximity, they did. Laden with the spoils of Norsemen they’d not had even to slay, they sought only to leave Samaire-heim. And daily the power of Thulsa Doom drove them back.
Cormac had still his confidence and his rope, and he plotted and murmured a secret plan. Thus, on the second night after their confrontation with the wizard they’d not seen since, the company of fourteen laboriously gained the mesa paralleling the castle’s upper storey. Thence they hurried silently in the dark to the ships. In silence they forced Quester down to the tidewaters for a perilous attempt to ply treacherous shoreward waters by night.
The wind came, and cursing they set their shoulders to the stern of the long boat whose bow they’d just been apushing. Then the wind died… and on its last sighs came borne the sound of mocking laughter.
There were more frowns and angry words and curses than cooperation that third day. Returned to the castle once more, Cormac mac Art relieved himself of a lecture. Some received it with set teeth; others with sheepish looks; Findbar with a sneer he would not disguise.
Thulsa Doom must have had means of witnessing that scene, for that night he made another direct attempt at gaining his ends. Later, the survivors of that new horror could only reconstruct what took place from imagination and supposition. Somehow the wizard must have lured Findbar from their midst while all others slept; that, or the sullen Meathman awoke to nature’s call and ignored the one overweening rule. He fared from his companions, and outside, and there he found his weird. Dawn was acoming, the sky going from black to deep blue lightening to an orange-shot grey in the east, but the enemy worked swiftly.
Some faint noise awoke Wulfhere rather than Cormac, who had striven the hardest on the day previous and, his brain full of frustration and plans that came to naught even in the thinking, had lain long awake. It was Wulfhere awoke his former reaving companion, quietly.
“Half our number have left us,” he whispered. “Look.”
Creep-footed, Cormac moved to one of the arrow-niches from which their first approach to this isle, months agone, had been contested by the two Norsemen left as guards. He peered forth into a chill morning just greyed with dawn.
Far out across the plain, a knot of men was just on the point of entering the narrow gorge slicing through the towering wall of stone that separated plain from beach. Cormac opened his mouth to call out; closed it. He sighed.
“Let them go Wulfhere “ he murmured “It’s not they are Thulsa Doom’s prey; they can escape him thus, without me.”
“And if they take Quester rather than the Britonish ship?”
Again Cormac mac Art heaved a weary sigh. “Can we have the heart to contest them? Fight those men, my picked men, for the right to leave me-and live?”
Wulfhere frowned deeply, but said nothing, and his friend turned from the embrasure. He glanced about at those remaining, all asleep-and then he went spear-stiff and peered close.
“Blood of the gods! Up, up all, and into your armour!”
While those sprawled lumps of shadow stirred and sat up to become human beings and then rose, Cormac’s words drove sleep from them and determination into their hearts.
“All the others have departed us, but a few minutes past. Look about ye-it’s all the water and all the food they’ve taken! It’s abandoned to die we are, not from the sorcerer, but from the death that comes more swiftly than starvation-thirst!”
Chapter Eighteen:
Steel Against Sorcery
They clad themselves hurriedly in armour of leather and steel. Buckling on sheaths and scabbard belts, they settled helmets over skulls and took up their bucklers. When they left the castle of Atlantis at a trot, ax or sword was naked in every hand, including that of Bas. Solemnly, without a word, the druid had descended to the great hall and there girt up his robe with a Norseman’s broad belt. He took up a Norse ax as well, after slipping the buckler of a dead Dane up his arm as though he well knew how to wear and use it.
Even so, weapon-gripping hands were few. The loyal remnant of Cormac’s fourteen now consisted only of Samaire, Wulfhere, Brian, Lugh called Manhunter, and Bas. They were six; eight had left surreptitiously, apparently to abandon them with nothing to quench their thirst.
Though his blood was high and the desire to run at full speed was on him, Cormac forced them to walk, once they were in the deep-cut corridor that led through solid rock to the beach. Two reasons he had for slowing, both good.
There was no way the narrow and twisty defile could be traversed at any gait above a speedy walk without running into or scraping the stone walls again and again, with the danger of injuring leg or arm, or falling. Too, as Cormac told his tiny company, they were far better to arrive on the strand unwinded.
Brian could not understand that Ros could have gone with the others, and said so repeatedly.
“Ay
e, I thought Laig and I were friends,” Wulfhere said as they walked in the gloom, hurriedly, quivering the while like eager hounds held on taut leashes.
“It’s none of them I understand,” Samaire said. “Leaving, perhaps… but taking all ale and water-evil!”
“Worse than evil,” Wulfhere growled from behind her.
“Findbar perhaps, the constant complainer. And Osbrit I suppose-though it’s not as a captive we’ve treated that Briton we found so prostrate in fear. But Ros, and Laig…” Samaire gave her leather-helmeted head a jerk. “Yet no more can I understand Ruadan’s leaving us, taking all food and drink, or big Cet either… and Duach, and Laegair…”
“It is the wizard’s dark work,” Bas muttered. “I’m after seeing to the protection of ship and spoils, day after day, aye, and all of ye as well, whilst ye’ve been at fruitless toil with the ships. But while we slept… somehow, he struck.”
“That ever-snarling Findbar may have struck a bargain even with him,” Wulfhere snarled.
“But the others?” Brian’s voice was plaintive, disbelieving. “Even Ros? Why?”
“How,” Lugh said, and the others were silent; that question seemed more to the point.
“Cormac,” Bas said quietly. “I’m thinking that it’s his creatures they may well all be.”
Cormac made no reply. The thought was already in his mind. But if that were true, then-
“We may have to fight them,” Wulfhere said, as if for his longtime sword-companion. Nor did the rumbly Dane sound overmuch perturbed at the possibility of such ghastly civil war among the members of a company already passing small.
Brian’s tone was fraught with worry: “Might they be lying in wait? Even one Cet, mayhap. One man could hold us at bay in this narrow passageway with no room to pass him, and Cet be the biggest among us.” And sadly he corrected: “Among them.”
Cormac mac Art led the way. His voice came back to the others hoarse, and far from pleasant. “An such be the case, it’s not long Cet mac Fergus will bar my way, for all our being comrades and his good fighting against those Picts!” Sword held ready, he went on as if there were absolutely no danger.
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