The Sign of the Moonbow

by Andrew J Offutt

  “Even a month,” Wulfhere said thoughtfully, and a smile twitched his beard. “I’d be the most popular man on the island, with the girls. And what fun to come back a year hence and see all the little redheaded offspring of Dane and Danu!” He grinned broadly, gazing inland.

  Cormac shrugged. “Stay then, red bear of Loch-linn. It seems there be no Norse, as ye said, and it’s for Eirrin’s shores I am-with this ship.”

  “Salvage.”

  “Conquest!”

  “Ye’d tow two craft, ye greedy Eirrisher?”

  “Nay. The Daneirans want no ship. Nevertheless, it’s Amber Rowan we’ll be leaving with them, and all under the deck of Odin’s Eye. A Briton-built ship is best being pulled apart for whatever use the Daneirans have…”

  He turned to hand-signal Quester. Immediately the two of Daneira swung over the side and came hurrying up the beach, with their staves.

  “Your great Cathbadh slew all who fared here on this knorr,” the Gael told them. “The craft itself we take with us. All aboard her is yours. And that ship-the poor one made by the Britons, who learned naught of shipbuilding or much else in five centuries of Roman rule-it too is yours, for firewood or a clambering toy for Daneira’s children. Is it a good seafaring craft, Wulfhere?”

  Wulfhere had come to Doom-heim on Amber Rowan-bound to the mast, a captive of Britons who’d learned of the spoils there from the Dane when he was deep in his cups. The Britons had little, save what the Romans had left behind eighty years agone when great Rome fell and they withdrew. Even now those Britonish shores were raided by Danes and Norsemen, Saxons and Angles, Frisians and Jutes, along with a few more from nearer to hand: Picts from other side Hadrian’s Wall, along with men of both Alba and Eirrin.

  Wulfhere made reply: “Nay.”

  “Remember that, sons of Danu. Now ye’ve had a taste of the sea, and it seemed marvelous to ye. But-the Daneirans are best where they are, living in peace and with hope that none find ye. Come, give us a bit of help now. We’ll see what the Norsemen are after bringing ye… aside from the metal melted in Daneira!”

  The Daneirans stared at the painted heads on prow and stern, each with fangs meticulously carved in wide-open jaws; none of Daneira had seen a wolf, or even a dog.

  Cormac and Wulfhere swung quickly aboard and raised the deckboards to bare the shallow space in which were stored those supplies that seafarers might need ashore, and they were forced to land and tarry, but had no need of while they voyaged. There was little; the ship stood not Cormac’s height from gunwale to keel and was only about twice as broad, amidships. The Gael and the Dane drew forth utensils that might or might not be of use to the Daneirans; the metal would be welcome.

  Astern, the small chamber of the steering platform was empty; there had weapons been stored. Keel up on deck, a single afterboat was bound and secured with ropes of walrus hide. For it the Daneirans had no use; Cormac would leave it where it was, on his new ship.

  “She seems a better craft than any we’ve sailed, Cormac.”

  Cormac nodded. “So she seems. Come; we’ll be stripping. That Britonish craft will be easy to pull and push in.”

  It was. The matter of coaxing and manhandling Odin’s Eye into the water was far more difficult. Samaire and Bas came to lend their strength. Without the prodigious strength of the Dane, they’d never have accomplished it and would have had to wait for the vessel to be floated by the tide. Then Odin’s Eye was partially afloat, and they tethered her behind Quester, as Amber Rowan had been. Cormac checked over every inch of the towline.

  “I tell ye again, Wolf: If we encounter weather, real weather, ye’ll have to cut loose that leashed dog of a ship. She’ll be the death of us else.”

  “The weather will hold,” Bas said.

  It was a statement of absolute fact that made the Dane feel gooseflesh on his bare sweaty arms. Nevertheless he asked, “For a ship named for a god not of Eirrin?”

  “The weather will hold.”

  Cormac said nothing, but turned to the two of Daneira. “Mayhap this craft and these few things of Norge can be of use to ye,” he said. “It’s sure I am none will sneer at the metal ye bring home! Ye know the way to Daneira from here?

  They but smiled at that. The people of Danu’s Isle knew its every inch, sure!

  “Then it’s leave we’ll be taking of ye. May your goddess send happiness on ye both and all your people-and many children.” Cormac turned seaward. He was more ready to be off and away, and no love was on him for these weaponless people who had never known travail. It put a fog and a darkness on his mind, just the thought of their easy lives, for when ever had he known ease or lack of strife or the necessity of having his sword by him-aye, and shield?

  “Danu be thy light, Cormac mac Art. Danu be thy light, friends of the Danans.”

  “Danu be thy light, Cormac mac Art, and thou Wulfhere, and Brian. And thou Samaire-and yourself, holy druid.”

  From the ship to which he’d returned to be by Thulsa Doom, Bas nodded.

  Cormac boosted Samaire onto Quester and swung up. He gave her a swift crude fondle while there was none to see, and turned to aid Brian aboard. Then the Gael looked down at Wulfhere, who had turned to look back toward Daneira. Heavy laden, the two sons of Danu were lugging Norse utensils into the woods.

  “Fare ye well, Wulfhere Hausakluifr,” Cormac said. “Many children. Oh-and may your goddess Danu shed her light-”

  Wulfhere swung to glower up at his friend. “May plague fall on ye and the restless worms infest your anus, son of an Eirrish pig-farmer!” And the Dane swung aboard with such vehemence of motion that Quester’s planking creaked and water sloshed.

  And this time they held out again to the open sea and, with sail opened to the wind, stood forth northwesterly for Eirrin. The water gurgled past the hull as if delighted to be bearing them homeward. It was a journey that might take a few days-or months, for none could ever be certain. Reckoning was worse than imprecise, and only gods might know or control the weather-which controlled both the sea and all those aboard its undulant plain.

  A wind huffed without undue enthusiasm across the sea south of Britain, so that Quester’s green-latticed sail stood out nicely like a merchant’s belly. The Isle of Danu was left well behind and the voyagers were alone, as in a gigantic empty chamber that surrounded them on four sides with water and sheltered them only with a roof of sky that was nigh the same colour as the demesne of Manannan mac Lir.

  The world was blue, green-blue, and white.

  In the heavens Behl added the warm yellow of his smile. Cormac and his companions wore no armour, now. Mail and leathern coats were stored in the little compartment under the steering platform astern. They had buckled their weapon-belts on again; the sea was ever unpredictable and none wanted his most valuable possession swept overboard amid some emergency of wind, and wave… and three aboard had survived a volcanic eruption that brought new land onto this same ocean.

  Nor could they bring themselves to store away sharp-edged steel, even though their dread enemy was now a helpless captive.

  Scarlet tunics made in Daneira wore Brian and Wulfhere and Cormac, and on the chest of the latter’s new garment flashed the Moonbow on its silver chain. Rather higher up on the night-dark robe of Thulsa Doom rode his identical Chain of Danu, though with the Moonbow upside down; on him the goddess frowned and from him she turned away her face. The deadliest creature in the world sat at the mast. He was not bound. Nor could he change form or launch attack on mind or body; he wore the necklace. He sat still at the mast as he’d been bade by his master. The undying wizard was the creature of Cormac’s will, now, as before his will had commanded theirs and brought so much horror and agony on them all.

  The ship slipped rapidly across the sea under swollen sail, straining toward Eirrin. Those it bore talked of what it might mean, this being in a “different dimension.” It was like unto the world they’d always known-with differences.

  “What differences?”

&
nbsp; They could not be sure. Perhaps in the world or dimension they had quit, the Isle of Danu was as uninhabited as they’d supposed.

  “Mayhap,” Bas said. “Mayhap in our own dimension all that we now know of the People of Danu after our ancestors supplanted them-did not take place. Mayhap there they are not ruled by a woman at all. Or do not exist.”

  “Let us hope they do,” Brian said, with a glance at their captive.

  “And that a queen rules them,” Samaire added.

  Wulfhere chuckled. “A niceness, if Thulsa Doom himself made it possible for us to be his weird for all and all, by bringing us here, where rules the crowned woman to end his foul existence!”

  “If such does rule here,” Samaire said, for she was aware of the improbability even more than the others.

  “But… where,” Brian wanted to know, “is here?”

  “A plane of existence where at least one island does not exist,” the woman said, idly fingering the dark-bordered hem of the tunic made for her in Daneira; it was an almost yellow green. “Remember the isle that was suddenly not there and thereby told Bas we had been dragged here by Thulsa Doom, in his attempts to escape us.” She looked with malice on the undying mage. He sat moveless, an unwilling but helpless slave of the Chains of Danu; a slave of Cormac mac Art.

  “A place where a Norseman named Thorleif, son of Hordi, once slew Wulfhere,” Cormac said.

  “Hmp! That I refuse to believe! I could slay such as Thorleif all day and still have time for Daneiran maidens the whole night through!”

  “They are so far astern now that not even their isle is in view,” Brian said from the tiller, where he was nervously, proudly in training-so long as the sea remained gentle. Nor was his statement made without some small wistfulness. He stared asea, his hair like a cloud about his head and his flaxen eyebrows all but invisible in the sunlight.

  “An it be true what Thorleif avowed,” Bas said, “rejoice, Wulfhere. For else it’s two of ye there’d be in this plane-which is now our abode for good or ill!”

  “Blood of the gods! Bas-think ye I be here-I mean… that there be two of me here?”

  “Ha! An intolerable world then, two of ye, son of an Eirrish raiser of pigs!”

  “Wulfhere old friend and drinker with Britons, much as hate’s upon me to tell ye of it and spoil your insults, my father was after being of the descendants of High-king Niall the Great, one of the ua-Neill of Connacht. It was no pigs my father raised. Nor in truth was he a farmer at all.”

  “Nonsense, by Thor’s red beard! All the Eirrish raise pigs! Why, pork is surely the national dish and pigs’ bladders the only toy of the young!”

  Samaire’s voice came in weary practicality, a whisper that forced them to fall silent in order to hear. “Truly there might be… another Samaire here, and another Cormac, and Brian, and you too, Bas?”

  “Aye-but, Behl be praised, only one Thulsa Doom!”

  “And only one Wulfhere,” Cormac said, “Behl be thanked nigh equally, if Thorleif did indeed kill you-him. Who could abide two of ye, with your ever-itchy beard and your babbling?”

  “Ye look thirsty, Wolf of Eirrin. Could I be aiding ye into the water that ye might quench your pigfarmer’s thirst? Simple matter to hold ye by your heels-”

  Samaire slapped her high-booted leg. “An ye two put not an end to your constant childness, it’s a mother ye’ll make me feel yet, the hapless dam of two bickersome boys!”

  Wulfhere contritely ducked his head-in the manner, indeed, of a chastened boy. Cormac seemed not to notice her words. He’d gone all thoughtful, and gazed contemplatively at the skull-faced abomination sitting with back to mast. The Gael fingered the Moonbow on his chest.

  “Thulsa Doom! It is my bidding ye obey, and naught else.

  “Aye.” There was only resignation in that word from lipless mouth.

  “I want information of ye, monster!”

  The red points in the eyesockets of Thulsa Doom’s death’s-head stared at Cormac mac Art. But they were without their usual fire of malice, for Thulsa Doom’s mind was no longer his own.

  “Ye’ll provide information, an I demand it.”

  The mage’s voice bore no semblance of happiness, though his hissing malevolence was also missing. “Aye. I will tell you what I can.”

  “Be there escape from this dimension of yours, a way back to-our own world?”

  “I am trapped here. You are as well, as you came through with me though totally by accident. We cannot return.”

  That felt like a blow to the stomach, and Cormac heard gasps from the others. He tried, hopefully but with his voice bordering on the desultory. “And if we order ye to return us, blackheart?”

  “I cannot. The slip-through, the ‘gateway’ I have so long used is destroyed. Never have I been so sorely held fast as ye held me, with swords, and with that man of Behl striving with his powers. I strove more mightily than ever I have before. Thus by accident I tore the slip-through, and brought through all with me-even these ships. And thus destroyed the link between this dimension and that other. I know. I strove to go back there, with you here. I could not; no means exists.” The mage broke off and stared straight ahead.

  “More,” Samaire urged.

  “Thulsa Doom!” the Gael snapped. “Heard ye not Samaire?”

  This time the wizard’s words emerged bitterly, defiantly. “She does not wear the chain linked in the Beyond to this one!”

  “I do. Speak. Add to what ye’ve said.”

  “You cannot return,” Thulsa Doom said at once, “because I cannot. Nor could I guarantee it if your coming through had not destroyed the means of transference, for it was all by accident and my desperate striving to break the hold of swords and the druid. Be assured that I brought you not here by design, Cormac mac Art who was my greatest enemy!”

  Cormac’s half-smile was grim. “For once, monster, I’m believing ye. Well then, we must make the most of it. This dimension does differ from ours?”

  “Aye. It is the same, but some things have not happened here. Others have happened here that have not, will not in the other plane that was your home. There is a, a fork, a branching, in history. Both nature’s forces and sorcery had do with that branching, long ago. Now there are two worlds, lying parallel and each invisible to the other. This one became my escape… for here I did not survive death, so long ago. Most things are the same. That would not have remained so, for-” the sorcerer broke off.

  “For what, mage? Answer!”

  “-for I would have taken possession of this world, and ruled it,” Thulsa Doom said. “From Rome.”

  “Rome!” Brian echoed.

  “Aye.”

  “In this world… Rome fell not? Rome still rules… even Britain?”

  “No no. All those things-are the same; all major matters are the same. No-it was my plan, my hope, to rid your world of yourself, and this one-and then to rule this plane. Rome would be the best capital-for I would have replaced the leader of those who called themselves first ‘Friends’ and now are known as ‘Christians.’ Their chief priest or bishop is in Rome-from there he seeks to rule, but of course does not. I will-would have done. The Pope whose image I would wear would never die, would rule forever, and soon all would believe in his faith and his claim of direct descent from him chosen by their god.”

  “A lovely plan,” Cormac mac Art said quietly. “An undying dead man… ruling a world devoted to the Dead God, Iosa Chriost!”

  “That island that was there but not here,” Brian said apprehensively, for he was more interested in the immediate and the personal than the inconceivable: unending world rule. “It is now… here? It is gone?”

  Into the silence, Cormac said, “Answer questions from us all.”

  “It is not here,” Thulsa Doom said. “It was never here.”

  “Nev-oh gods! Eirrin… be it here?”

  “Aye. Eirrin exists. Britain exists. Norge and Dane-land exist. Rome left the shores of Britain some eighty years ago. Al-ric,
king of the Visigoths, took and sacked Rome in the four-hundred and tenth year of the era of the Christians. It is the same. The August date was the same. Eirrin’s kingdoms are the same.”

  All eyes aboard Quester were fixed on the mage now, all ears drinking in his dull-voiced reluctant replies as if they were ale and all were dying of thirst. The sea rippled alongside the ship, and gurgled in its wake.

  “Brian,” Cormac said. “Is there… another Brian here?”

  “No.”

  Brian gasped and jerked as though struck.

  “He put to sea three years agone, the skullface said, “and has never been seen since. Indeed he never will, as he was slain on the coast of Alba by Picts-”

  “Dead!” Brian said in a broken croak, and held up his hand before his face. It shook. He stared at that quivering hand, as though for assurance that he indeed lived.

  “Then all ye need do,” Bas reminded the youth, “is pretend a bit-and return to the bosom of an overjoyed family! Any errors ye make, in memory, can be laid to captivity or some sea battle.

  “That,” Brian said very quietly, “I have experienced.”

  They were silent, gazing upon the youth from Killevy up in Airgialla. All remembered how he’d had to do death on his best friend Ros, another youth whose mind was possessed by Thulsa Doom and who’d been striving to slay Bas. Cormac, whose mind bore scars, knew that act had etched one into Brian’s brain, too, and Cormac felt both remorse and guilt, for it was in following him that Brian had come upon such horror and had manhood thrust upon him, ten or so years all at once.

  “And Wulfhere?” Cormac asked.

  “Aye-has Thorleif slain me here-my, uh, other self, I mean? Odin’s god-like patience but this is a thorny matter to think on-even to try to talk on!”

  The death’s-head moved slightly to face the giant. “It is true. And aye, was Thorleif of Norge slew you, years past. There is no other Wulfhere here.”

  Wulfhere stared, then rose and stalked aft, to mutter to Brian that it was his turn at watch and tiller.