That proved to be the case; reaching the point at which the shadowed defile debouched onto the sunlit beach, Cormac paused.
“I will talk,” he said. “Follow my lead. And make no hostile move on your own. Now-sheathe our swords.” And he did, silently.
From Wulfhere, a low chuckle: “Ye’ll not be minding that the druid and I keep our axes naked in hand, will you, Wolf?”
“Be not overweening anxious to bear arms against our own comrades,” Cormac reminded. “But, as we move toward them, stay not too close together to… hamper one another.”
“An we cease not this chatter and move,” Wulfhere grumbled, “it’s naught we’ll see but Quester’s stern and that well out to sea!”
But Cormac had already stepped forward and out into the sunlight.
They were a hundred paces away on the beach, not asea, but the eight men were well about the business of taking leave of the island. Already the foremost reach of Quester’s keel lay in the water, though the grunting men had not yet got it far enough out to float. Cormac could see five of them, straining the long boat down to the water’s edge.
Pausing at the entrance to the sharply sliced defile so that his companions were blocked within, Cormac shouted.
“Ho, comrades-had ye but waited a little I’d have helped ye-since there’s more strength in me than any of ye!”
At that affable shout all activity ceased. Five men stared at him, and then eight, for Osbrit and Duach and burly Cet Fergus’s son came around from the far side Quester. They stared, with their faces showing them surprised and far from happy at the appearance of their leader.
“Let there be no discussion of strength,” Findbar said, and he gestured at Cet mac Fergus.
Cet strutted a chest like a barrel split lengthwise from its center. But he said nothing. Indeed, confusion appeared on his jowly face, and he glanced at Findbar, for Cormac’s eyes had never left that less burly Meathman.
“It’s yourself had bade us leave, again and again,” Findbar said. He paused, but Cormac said nothing, holding his cold blue eyes on the man who’d made so many disgruntled noises in the past few days of their adversity.
Then Cormac moved, and Findbar’s eyes flickered. From behind the Gael came the others, one by one; Brian and Lugh and Samaire and then Bas, his robe girt and an ax in his hand. Wulfhere appeared last, great ax on one broad shoulder in the manner of a woodsman.
“We want no help,” Findbar said.
“And none offered,” Cormac said as he strolled down the strand toward Findbar’s company. “It’s fit enough ye all look this morning. Nay, we but followed to call to your forgetful minds two matters ye doubtless forgot in your haste.”
“We’ve forgot nothing, Cormac mac Art!”
Cormac’s eyes swerved to the speaker. “At least ye’ve not forgot the name of the man who spoke softly to ye when ye had the fear of a nightmarish child on ye, Osbrit of Britain, and treated ye not as an enemy!”
“Slow your steps, Wolf,” Wulfhere muttered, so low of voice as not to be heard by the men about the ship. “See them squint; the sun’s behind us. I’d be keeping it there.”
Cormac was only ambling; aware of the warrior’s wisdom of the Dane’s words, he paused. “Two matters, as I said, want more than discussion ere ye sail, Findbar. The first is that it’s all the food and drink ye’ve brought away.” He made a boyishly reproachful face. “For shame. A serious oversight, that; we’d be dead in three or so days, and ye’d have the blood of both a druid and a royal princess on your hands.”
“And a Dane not yet ready to dine in Odin’s hall!” Wulfhere added, from just behind Cormac and to his left.
“And too, if ye be of no mind to sail with Lady Samaire and the Splitter of Skulls, ye must leave a goodly portion of Quester’s cargo for them.”
Cormac noted that all the men with Findbar looked both confused and stiff-save Findbar himself. And all watched Findbar. He spoke.
“The dead have no use for water or spoils,” he said. “And those who remain with you, accursed mac Art, are dead.”
“Murdered by comrades who abandon us to die of thirst?” Samaire demanded; she was between Cormac and Wulfhere, at a distance of four or more paces from each.
Ros looked stricken by her words.
“Ros!” Brian called from Cormac’s right. “Sword Companion!”
Young Ros of Dun Dalgan shook his fair head in its gleaming helm and knitted his brows, as though torn by painful thought. This Findbar saw, and he spoke three words.
“Ros mac Dairb!”
The youth stiffened; trembled. Then his face lost all expression. It was as if his mind left his body.
“Behl protect,” Samaire murmured.
“And Crom defend,” Lugh added, with fervor.
“You will leave half the castle’s trove,” Cormac told Findbar, less equably now. Though he looked not at Ros, he felt his skin a-crawl from that one brief glance. “And a like amount of ale and water. Ye be but two days from an isle with a fine spring, and fresh waterfall tumbling into the sea.”
“Fare there in Amber Rowan, then,” Findbar said. “We leave nothing.”
“Then ye’ll not be departing.”
Findbar’s eyes remained fixed an Cormac, but he said, “Cet! There stands your enemy. Ye heard him, man; he’ll not suffer ye to depart this place! It’s Cormac mac Art stands betwixt ye and the Eirrin ye long to be in-kill him!”
“No, Cet! We’ve sailed together, man, fought Picts together, bled together and endured the horror of Thulsa Doom together, day after day. Blood of the gods, Cet-ye and me cannot war one with the other!”
Cet paid the Gael’s words no mind. He came on past Findbar with buckler high and ax low and balanced to swing, a thick man of surpassing strength who lacked only Wulfhere’s height to balance him in size. Nor was he without skill at weapons, else Cormac would not have picked him as part of a carefully chosen crew.
“Cet!” Cormac called out as the big man neared.
“Cet!” Findbar echoed from behind Cet mac Fergus. “Kill him!”
Cet essayed to do. Cormac waited until the ax was swinging in a blur of silvered grey ere he spun away, drawing steel on the move, coming about to face Cet across the three feet of space through which the ax had whished.
“This must not be, Cet Son of Fergus!”
Cet spoke not, and Cormac remembered Wulfhere that day on the mesa. And like Wulfhere then, Cet and his ax now came attacking still.
Cormac contrived to twist his buckler as he swung it to meet the ax, deflecting it with a great grating cran-n-ngg of ax on shield of ironbound wood thick with enamel. At the same time the Gael aimed a stroke at the bigger man’s head. This Cet’s greenand-blue targe caught with a great noise; surprisingly, he anticipated and caught, too, Cormac’s murderous backswing.
The two men circled, fighting with brain rather than with the necessity of the combat among many, or the berserker rage upon them. Each eyed the other, ever shifting their feet in the sand, flexing muscles to keep shields and weapons amove.
Cormac feinted low; Cet met point with buckler and tried a sidearm chop. That Cormac both ducked and deflected with interposed shield. The bear emblazonment of Carnal Uais was long since ruined, though the buckler was undented. Steel on wood hardened to the likeness of iron boomed out. Once more the two men’s arms were stilled but for a constant swaying as each sought an opening or slip on the other’s part; either would lead to the one cut that was frequently all that was necessary.
Moving warily, each made small feinting movement, the other’s obvious readiness for which stopped them short of full cuts or stabs.
Shaken still as Cet seemed not to be, Cormac made an error. Circling, testing each several step in the sand, he moved more to his right, until he was unable to see the ship and the seven men before it. He had accepted the unstated but tacit understanding that he and Cet would duel whilst the others awaited the outcome and the decision it brought.
He was w
rong.
Findbar spoke no word; he must have gestured. Cormac saw nothing; heard nothing until Wulfhere shouted.
“Cormac! FALL!”
The Gael reacted instantly, as if instinctively. Many months had passed, over a year had gone since Cormac had heard that cry. He knew its meaning. It told him that he was in danger from someone other than him he faced. He was to betake himself from that attack with all swiftness-and down, not merely aside. With a feint at Cet’s legs, the Gael lunged sideward and let his knees drop him to a squat. His sword he held upward to keep Cet back; at the same time he rolled his eyes to the side.
Cormac saw Laegair mac Gol in the act of attacking him where he’d been; he heard the rush overhead of Wulfhere’s thrown ax; he saw it smash fully into Laegair’s face. Laegair mac Gol of Tir Edgain died on the instant of a crushed skull, far from his home in Ailech of Eirrin.
Cormac thought, Why?
Then he was up, meeting a vicious whirring stroke of Cet’s ax and doing his very best to chop off the burly Meathman’s sword-arm.
Wulfhere was meanwhile taking two strides to the side and with a swift twist, plucking the ax from the hand of Bas the Druid.
“Your pardon, Druid, but I have more need of this than you!” The Danish giant strode forward past Cormac and Cet to face the other followers of Findbar. “Stay back. These two fight. I’ll not interfere on Cormac’s behalf. We all wait, unless any of you is of a mind to join that treacherous weasel!” He jerked his shield-arm at the fallen Laegair, whose face was no longer recognizable.
Findbar turned, and in a passionless voice he pronounced a sort of litany: “Ruadan mac Mogcorf… Ros mac Dairb… Laig Senain’s son… Osbrit Drostan’s son of Britain… Duach mac Laig of Airgialla.” As men aslumber and yet afoot they stared at him. Findbar pointed at Wulfhere. “Slay the foreigner; kill the Dane!”
Every man raised weapon and shield and turned eyes on Wulfhere.
With a twinned yell, Brian and Samaire came running. Lugh was close on their heels. All three armoured attackers held shields and long swords up for combat.
It was chance set Samaire against Duach, who was also left-handed. Though willowl-slim, Duach had been picked by Cormac for the expedition because of the speed and agility that made him, with some skill, a formidable swordsman. He wheeled and braced round shield against Samaire’s rushing sword and sent his own forward in a blur of silver-grey steel to open her face. Her buckler whipped up; both blades clanged harmlessly on bucklers.
Brian’s initial charge would have done for Laig the navigator, but Ruadan cut at the youth, and on the instant he who loved to fight gained opportunity more than enow. Brian was beset by two countrymen bent on the sight of his blood.
After a wild passing swipe at Samaire that she surprised them both by sword-blocking, young Ros of Dun Dalgan met Lugh with a new ring and skirl of clashing steel. But a little distance removed, Osbrit and Findbar harried Wulfhere like cautious but fierce dogs, while he kept the two busy ducking and fending off his swooping ax.
The sound of battle cries, challenges, and curses rose on the air to mingle in cacophony with the steely clangor of blade on helm and buckler and armour. Stamping, twisting, sliding feet churned up the sand around the twelve unevenly divided opponents. This was battle indeed, made more horrible by the fact that all were shipmates.
The broad side of Cet’s ax slammed into the mailed leg of a twisting Cormac, and with a grunt of pain he was knocked off his feet. Grinning, Cet raised his ax for a killing stroke. Hastily he aborted that attack when he found himself staring at a swordpoint extended upward so as to spit him with his own movement. He rushed sideward, ax still on high; Cormac kicked himself over and rose fluidly with sand falling from his steel links. A swift lunge forced Cet to parry with buckler and back away to seek another opportunity.
Findbar, in ducking, lost his footing and sprawled backward. Wulfhere hove up his ax for the stroke of death but Osbrit interfered; his sudden rain of stabbing, hacking steel kept the Dane busy long enow for Findbar to scramble up. A bear-like stroke tore through the edge of Osbrit’s shield and down so that ax-edge rang on iron boss.
As the ax caught momentarily in sheared iron and splintered wood, only Wulfhere’s swiftly swung shield prevented Findbar’s blade from splitting his scalemail and flesh-his shield, and the vicious hopping kick Wulfhere gave the other man’s calf. The Dane’s ax came free; the flurry ended. The three men moved warily, watching each other.
Duach was perhaps stronger, but Samaire was not only good with sword, she had been shown certain concepts of tactic by Cormac, who had surprisedly pronounced her an instinctive weapon… woman. In swiftness she and Duach were well matched. The lean man of five-and-twenty or so, with his fortnight-old orange beard, was hard pressed physically and mentally to protect himself from her unpredictability, while Samaire must guard against the man’s longer reach.
Both wielded sword in the off-hand and buckler in right; both were armoured in leather, though Duach had got a round Norse helmet from the throne room of Kull’s castle. His shield was new and Norse, too, blazoned with a blue dragon on a deep red facing. Samaire’s long-bossed buckler was painted and enameled the blue of Leinster-though it bore the angry boar of her cousin’s husband Cumal. Swiftly Duach learned of her unorthodox methods, learned of Cormac mac Art who’d learned them elsewhere than in Eirrin. Duach was not prepared for the maneuver when her shield flashed out defensively. Though he back-lunged with sufficient swiftness to prevent the stoving in of his face, her buckler’s outside boss tore his cheek.
After that they fought as intelligent weapon-men fight who respect each other, not in a mad flurry of cuts and lunges but with much watchful movement that erupted from time to time into a sudden clangorous exchange.
The two hounds of Cormac were young, exuberant, and skillful. This Lugh learned, though it was his last knowledge gained in this life. The flashing brand of golden-haired Ros tore through mail and flesh and bone and the horrified Lugh stared down at his right arm. It flopped to the sand, spraying scarlet as did its stump. Then the archer only gurgled as Ros slashed away half his face and more.
Without so much as a pause in elation, Ros whirled, another instinctive weapon-man. It was at Wulfhere’s rear he moved. Osbrit and Findbar kept the big red-beard passing busy; he was an easy target.
“STOP AND TURN!”
At that challenging roar Ros froze for an instant, in his youth. Then he spun. The youth found with a blink that he faced Bas the Druid, who had already appropriated Lugh’s sword from the archer’s severed hand.
“Ye’d slay from behind, Boy; I’d not!” And Bas attacked as though he’d borne arms all his days.
“Druid-I-” Ros blocked a fierce cut that dented his shield’s iron rim and buckled the wood so that it crackled and bulged outward. The young man’s pale eyes again mirrored confusion and agony, and he backed. To launch death-bringing blows at a druid…
“Break it, Ros mac Dairb!” Bas bade him sharply. “Break the hold of Thulsa Doom, who is evil incarnate! Fight me not, Ros mac Dairb-it’s a druid of your own people ye face with naked steel in hand!”
Perhaps Findbar heard and perhaps it was but unfortunate coincidence. Again he bellowed out the name of each of his followers, shouted after each name the single word: “Kill!”
And Ros, jerking his head as if arousing from slumber, attacked the druid of his people.
Eyes glinted with the bright madness of slaughter-lust and swords and axes flashed in the sun like silver lightning. Already the sand looked as if torn by a passing horde of galloping horses. Helmets and armour and blades, ever amove, sent back bursts of light at the fire of Behl on its ascent into the heavens. Like a carrion-eating beast the shade of death stalked grimly among the stamping slashing combatants in that horrid battle among comrades and countrymen.
The shade of death, stalked, chose…
Its icy hand fell on Ruadan mac Mogcorf. With an awful cry he fell, his thigh chopped more th
an half through by Brian’s downward-curving backstroke. Brian gave him no death-stroke but lunged away from Laig’s ferocious chopping slash. Too shocked to do aught for himself, Ruadan lay shuddering while he bled to death.
Samaire was prey to a similar stroke from Duach’s brand. But she had been twisting away, and his steel failed to open her leather-clad leg. She felt as if struck with a battering-ram nonetheless, and fell. A-wallow on the sand, she gritted her teeth and strained to keep her eyes open. Pain was like a dark cloud striving to fall over her brain.
At almost the same instant, a few feet away, Wulfhere’s rushing ax was not even slowed by a thick Briton neck. Osbrit’s head went flying twenty feet on a wake of scarlet. Spatters fell on Samaire and Duach, who was chopping down at her. She rolled with a desperate speed she could not have matched outside the superhuman stimulus of combat and lifesaving desperation. Duach’s sword actually scraped the boiled leather at her shoulder on its downward rush. The blade buried itself in the beach with a crunching of sand on steel.
Like an animal, Samaire was scoot-boosting herself to her feet and then running headlong to stay on them, despite her limp and the screaming of her leg. Wrenching his shining glaive from the sand, Duach rushed after her.
She turned as he made his thrusting charge. Even as her leg failed her and she tilted crazily sideways, the fugitive princess caught his rushing point on a moving shield. Wideswept, the buckler sent the swordblade and Duach’s left arm with it swinging wide of his body. Immediately and desperately he covered with a crossing-over buckler-and Samaire chopped into his right side.
She fell to her knees then, watching the young man’s sky-coloured eyes go enormously wide, watching him gasp and stagger, seeing the appearance of blood at the lips of an inches-deep wound at his belt line. His sword dropped and he clamped that hand to the wound, half-turning-but her following stroke was already in motion.
Grimly, teeth clenched, she chopped again from her kneeling posture. Her edge clove through leather and flesh and then bone, in almost precisely the same area in Duach’s left side. Come far from Slieve Cuilinn in quest of adventure and spoils, Duach Laig’s son of Airgailla became a twinned fountain of blood. He fell, dying as his life’s blood rushed from him-slain by a woman of Leinster.
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