The Sign of the Moonbow

by Andrew J Offutt

  He writhed, and now and again he complained of cold, the cold of steel blades piercing his body and holding open its wounds.

  But he did not bleed.

  The lovely little breeze had grown now, riffling the sea and tugging at their hair. Quester slid smoothly over the nigh flat plane of the sea. Amber Rowan followed like a dog at leash, in turn seeming to lead a long white trail of foam.

  The second ship was empty, crewless, of no present value. It only slowed them, and already they had had to swing wide, to avoid the Wind Among the Isles that had once wrecked Cormac and Wulfhere, and to avoid too the isle the Gael had named after the sea-god of his people:, the Ire of Manannan Mac Lir. But Wulfhere Skullsplitter and Cormac called an Cliuin, the Wolf, had spent long years riding the breast of the sea, a-reaving. Wulfhere was not capable of leaving behind a perfectly good seaworthy craft. Cormac was not capable of leaving behind a perfectly serviceable ship either-unless it was absolutely necessary.

  Fortunately, necessity had not risen. An it did, the son of Art hoped with sincerity that the necessity was direfully pressing. Else it was argument there’d be, between impetuous overconfidence heightened by headlong, bulling strength, and the practicality and ever-thinking mind of mac Art. There had been many such arguments. Nor had Cormac always won his way, and he bore scars and the memories of intimate acquaintances with death as mementoes of those times he had yielded to the Dane’s boyish inclination to bull forward regardless of odds or terrain.

  Now, however, sea and wind were good, Thulsa Doom was their prisoner, and ahead lay the unnamed isle that was their immediate goal.

  Cormac well remembered it. Here they had landed to tarry briefly afore, he and Wulfhere and Samaire and her brother Ceann mong Ruadh. As now, there had been then the need to take on water. Wulfhere had groaned when good ale had been emptied from leathern bags that they could be filled with fresh sweet water. Too, it was much in love with personal cleanliness the people of Eirrin were. Samaire and Ceann had insisted on bathing. At that Cormac had groaned-and climbed high to keep watch. Apparently the forested island was unpeopled, and Cormac had taken his turn abathing, whilst Wulfhere kept the needless lookout.

  Now, cleverly making use of the wind and daringly defying it all at once, the Dane brought them skimming in to that same paradisic isle. It rode the sea south of Britain like a floating emerald, fragrant and richly green.

  Trees still rose high and full-leafed from the high stony banks standing over the water, and birds still sang their joy of the place that seemed made for their kind. Crystal water still tumbled many feet from a pile of steep grey rocks to splash into the little inlet that formed a perfect sheltered harbour. Into it, with an expertise hardly equalled on the Narrow Sea or any other, Wulfhere of the Danes brought Quester.

  Amber Rowan proved rather more difficult; laughing and splashing despite the horrid presence of their prisoner, they accomplished it.

  Wulfhere aided Cormac into his mailcoat while Samaire reminded them both that this green spot on the sea had proved uninhabited. Her own jacket of leathern armour lay on the deck; she wore only a soiled tunic of blue, and the usual boots that rose up under it.

  Cormac gave her a dark look.

  “So was Doom-heim unpeopled,” he told her, and he buckled on his sword. He turned to Brian, who had his own coat of small-linked, Eirrin-made chain ready in his hands and was obviously preparing to accompany the man he adulated. Cormac raised a staying hand.

  “I will climb up there, above the waterfall, and keep the watch. I have done it here afore. Do you help them take on water, Brian-and bathe.”

  Brian frowned. He looked up at the tree-crowned cliff, back to Cormac, and glanced at Samaire. Bathe? Three men and a woman?

  Cormac smiled. “The matter of bathing here has been accomplished afore, Brian I-love-to-fight. Surely ye can work it out, as we have the matter of answering calls of nature, four men and a woman aboard ship!” Cormac looked at Bas.

  “I will remain aboard, with-him,” the druid said.

  With a nod, the Gael turned and made his way to the prow, There he slung his buckler onto his back, girt high his sword, and squatted, measuring distance with his eyes. He sprang several feet onto a shelf of rock that sprouted curling roots like listless serpents. Mail jingling, his buckler thumping his back, he scaled the cliff’s face as he had done four months previous. It was not a difficult climb.

  Samaire stood watching, shaking her head. Ever the so-cautious and ever-watchful pirate, her dairlin Cormac!

  She sighed, watching him with a pensive smile. It was not that she had been instantly attracted to this hardly handsome man, back when she was but a girl and he a boy who concealed his age to fill the role of weapon-man in her father’s employ twelve years agone; she had recognized him even then, as did those others who liked or loved inexplicably at what they thought of as first sight.

  It was first sighting only in this life, this one of many, last but not final in a long line of lives, an unending and unbreakable chain of carnate existences extending into the time that had been and aye, into the time that was yet to be. Samaire knew; whether Samaire Ceannselaigh of Leinster had been of Atlantis or Valusia, or indeed had even known this King Kull they spoke of, she was not certain. It mattered not. She was certain that afore now she had known the life-force or soul or ka that had been incarnate as Kull, and as Conan, and Cormac, and others between. The when of it was unimportant. The names they’d borne in past lives were unimportant. Now was important. This time, and the time to come, the beyond-Now. Cormac, and Samaire, and Tu, linked across the millennia that sprawled like the star-strewn skies.

  Nor did Samaire of Leinster in Eirrin assume that there had been ease or would be; this life-force to which hers was connected throughout time was a key one, a volatile one. And now he was Cormac mac Art, and he was safely up the cliff, this man she loved and had loved-throughout time.

  She smiled, and turned to join Wulfhere and Brian in collecting the containers to be filled with that which neither Doom-heim nor the sea offered: clear sweet water for drinking. Only Wulfhere made complaint that waterfalls bore not ale.

  The rocky cliff, rearing forty or so feet above water, was so rough of face as to afford easy climbing. Cormac soon scaled it. His breathing was hardly accelerated when he squirmed on his belly over the lip of the cliff and onto level ground. The grass began a few feet away; the trees just beyond. He moved onto the grass and looked down the long incline that was crowded with trees and brush. It swept down and down, into the forest that seemed to cover all the island.

  A beautiful place, he mused.

  Small, grown up completely in greenery, fine oaks and nut-trees rearing high above lesser neighbours. Perhaps half their leaves had fallen with the onset of autumn, to strew the ground already richly carpeted with grasses, moss, creepers, weeds, bushes, and wildflowers that had long since bloomed and gone to seed. Back in the summer just past, it would have appeared as an enchanted isle of eternal summer, all richly green and colour-splashed by the blooms of weeds and wildflowers.

  Now autumn had come, and it was little less beautiful.

  Such a land, he thought, to be without people!

  Then he saw that he was wrong.

  There were people.

  He froze, staring, a man who had barely heard the myth of Eden told by the adherents of the Dead God but who stood now overlooking paradise-and discovered the serpent. The humans he saw were engaged in the ugly business of their kind-his kind.

  A youthful couple, boy and girl or perhaps young man and woman of small stature, were beset in an oak-bound clearing by four weapon-men; These wore round helmets and armour, two in coats of scalemail and two of leather. One was sword-armed; the other three wielded axes. All bore round shields and all four were bearded with flax or gold. The youths were prey, not opponents, for they were neither armoured nor armed-at least not with steel.

  In truth they were doing well for themselves with nought but staves, which
they plied with uncommon expertise. An ax flashed at the boy in a great half-circle, missed, and a swiftly plied stave, nigh the height of the youth himself, rushed so that the attacker only just interposed his shield.

  The long-haired youngsters defended themselves well-but would of course fall before steel in the hands of skilled, armoured men. Nevertheless, Cormac mac Art set his lips and forced himself to turn his back.

  Where there were four of the men of Norge, there were more. Their ship was drawn in somewhere on this island’s coast. Perhaps the pair under attack below were escaped captives-temporarily escaped. They are none of my business or concern.

  He stared down at his own companions. They had nearly finished collecting their water and transferring it onto the long boat that was their ship, and the men were elaborately-and ridiculously-turning their faces seaward. This so that Samaire could bathe. As Cormac looked down, she doffed her last garment and glanced upward. The slim woman waved gaily and flashed him a smile. Then she plunged into the pool to betake herself in under the waterfall. If she had called out, its roar and splash swallowed the words and her voice.

  She’ll not be tarrying, he mused. A few hundred heartbeats and it’s back on the ship she’ll be, swirling her hair in the sun, and the others in the water. Nor is if long they’ll be. I’ll take no turn; it’s dirty and smelly they can accept me! These others… this be no fight of mine, no concern. No. And four Norse on this isle means a ship, and that means twoscore and mayhap more, and-we are but five. We have fought enow! We must needs be going on, and about the business of ridding the world forever of Thulsa Doom!

  He knew dismay at that thought; ending the menace of an illusion-spinning mage of eighteen thousand years’ age were bad enow-but to find a woman who ruled, to set him forever at rest-as well seek a serpent amid the green green grass of Eirrin or a shamrock growing from the solid rock of Doom-heim!

  He looked all about, with care.

  He saw no other ship. Below, Samaire was doubtless splashing and laughing, though the falling water isolated him from sound. No. He’d climb down and tell them now. They’d be off. They’d been at the sword-reddening combat enough and more than enough. An he interfered with the attack of four Norse on seeming innocents, they’d doubtless have then to face the Norsemen’s comrades, and surely in overwhelming numbers. Pretty young men had been slain afore ere they’d shaved and sown their seed, in thousands, in millions. Pretty young women with flying hair had been bruised and raped and slain or left moaning and bleeding, time and time again, time without end. It was the way of the world, and its history. It was no business of a harried weapon-man of Eirrin, and him with awful responsibility on him as well as a woman to cherish and watch over.

  No. He’d merely not look. One need not have concern over that which one saw not.

  Norsemen…

  It was Norsemen their own brother had intrigued with, to have Samaire and her brother Ceann snatched from Eirrin’s own sod. The bloody dogs would rather leave their cold land and slay and steal than eat!

  Aye and aye, but this time was no concern of his.

  Below, Samaire emerged nude and glistening from the pool, her water-darkened hair falling past the middle of her back. Cormac smiled on the whiteness of her buttocks and the jiggle of bare white breasts, but try as he might it was a different urge he felt. He felt the ache in his jaw, too, and heard the gritting of his own teeth.

  Deliberately he looked away from Samaire, who waved up to him. again.

  He looked again inland, down the long green hill.

  Axes flashed silvery menace in the sun that struck through half-leaved oaks into the glade. Backward the young man fell, against the base of a great-boled oak, and his quarterstaff dropped from unfeeling hands. He lay still. The young woman, moving lithe as a cat and built with the same economy of bone and flesh, rapped a Norseman’s helmeted head with her stave, which she held before her with both hands. She aimed almost instantly at the face of a second with the staff’s other end.

  Grinning, the four men dropped their steel. Retaining their bucklers in necessary defense, they closed on her. The boy lay still.

  Girl or woman, she was valiant and her hair a fine cloak of black spraying out from the yellow band at her nape. Almost, she might have been Samaire in days past. Or Brian’s sister of Killevy, if indeed Brian had siblings. Or-

  Cormac turned and lunged down. Flat on his belly, he hung his head over the cliff and shouted. His companions did not hear him above the waterfall. At the mast, Thulsa Doom stood like a ghastly statue. In her shift, her hair wrung and close-bunched like a sheaf of gold thread, Samaire looked up. Cormac shouted; he saw her smile and shout in return. He heard only the hint of her voice above the sound of rushing water and its splashing below, sweet water into salt. The men turned, hearing her. Their gazes followed-hers upward.

  Shoving himself up onto his feet, Cormac drew his sword, pointed inland, and waved sword and buckler.

  Cormac turned and plunged down the long green hill, sure his companions had understood his silent message.

  He ran as best he could, avoiding trees and berrybushes and entanglements of viny plants. Once he fell, instinctively flailing, wide his sword-arm so that he did not come to grief on his own blade. He rolled and slid, grunting. Getting his body turned crosswise to the slope, he stopped himself, lunged cursing to his feet, and hurried on. Behind him the sound of downrushing water dwindled. Now there were only the calls of birds and the wind of his own swift passage.

  He heard the girl cry out, for girl he had decided she was, and her so tiny.

  A shout from him would cause her attackers to turn from her to face him. Aye… and to be thus well prepared for him. Suffer a bit, girl, and it’s of more value I’ll be against unarmed men wearing tall horns!

  He ran on in silence, hearing the sound of male laughter and shredding cloth.

  So rapt and enwrapt were they in their own lust, laughing and calling encouragement to him who now had their prey down, that none heard either the passage of a rushing man between rustling bushes nor the jingling clink of his mailcoat.

  Then the dark man was bursting from the forest into the glade, and one tow-bearded reveler turned in time to see his own coming weird before it was on him in a swift sword-slash that shivered the air and opened his throat and windpipe in a moment. Blood leaped from a severed caratid. The Norseman staggered, his eyes huge, his hand rising ineffectually to his throat. Already his knees were loosening; already his silent rushing attacker was half whirling to thrust at a second of the pale-haired men of Norge, the one with the dragon knife-etched and red-outlined on his round shield.

  Driven by an experienced arm backed by rangy though unusually powerful muscles, the sword of the Gael split apart scalemail links and drove them before his point into the man’s belly, nigh the length of a hand. That raider, so far asea on the Viking trail, stopped short, shuddering. His mouth was wide as his eyes. Moving sidewise without interrupting his initial action, Cormac gave his sword a strong twist and a swift tug. It came free, scraping on destroyed scales of steel and followed by a spate of scarlet.

  There had been four men of far cold Norge. Now two lay dying quietly, if not silently. There was a moment for Cormac mac Art to scan about, rather than attack as he had, slashing one man blindly and reacting to the movement of the second with the reflexes of a longtime weapon-man.

  The slender girl with the long, midnight hair lay on her back, and her skin was much exposed and dark as Cormac’s own. Between her thrashing legs, mailcoat and all, lay a man from under whose helmet escaped a single thick braid that was almost yellow. Though she was kicking, writhing, flailing, he was getting his way with weight and strength. Nor could Cormac end that man’s efforts and his life; the fourth raider, buckler on right arm, had snatched up ax, and was lunging at the Gael. At the same time, he called a warning.

  Cormac mac Art had oft avowed that he killed only when necessary. Challenged on the matter of the bloody wake of his past,
he admitted that it was often necessary… it was necessary now. Where there were four raiders from the sea, there were others. None of these must go free to warn their fellows, wherever on this small tree-grown island they lurked.

  A left-handed foe could be difficult. His disadvantages were his advantages. His shield was on Cormac’s shield side, his ax aligned with Cormac’s sword. Interpose a shield quickly across the body at his slash, and strike back at-what? Yet there was no time for difficulties and normal circle-and-feint this day. Cormac swung in a way that appeared wild. Nordic eyes gleamed at the invitation, and ax came arushing. The Gael was not there to stop its edge, either with buckler or flesh. He dodged and moved in, swinging his shield over and up to smash the wrist just back of the ax-wielding fist. Then he was past without waiting to watch the ax waver, lower, drop from fingers that flexed open.

  The Norseman whirled. Cormac’s sword was a streak of silver that lifted the hem of a leathern coat of armour and plunged upward from groin into intestines and the floor of the man’s stomach. With the ugly noise of a sick rooster, the raider clutched at himself, bending, bloodying his hand on the skewering blade. The Norseman fell backward off Cormac’s point, still staring.

  The Gael turned to face the fourth man-their leader of course, as he’d got first turn with the captive. He was up. He had his buckler, and his sword. And he was no small man, crouching so expertly with sword held just so and buckler at the precisely proper height and distance from his body.

  Over their shields, the two men stared at each other, the scarred, black-stubbled Gael of Eirrin and the fully bearded blond of Norge.

  “Cormac! It’s Cormac the Wolf-again! And here, both of us far from familiar haunts! Well, Cormac, well… it’s here you meet your weird, Skraeling of Eirrin! It’s here I do death on you at last, as I slew your fellow sea-thief Wulfhere of the Danes years ago!”