The Sword of the Gael
( Cormac Mac Art - 5 )
Andrew J Offutt
Andrew J Offutt
The Sword of the Gael
Foreword
This novel is the result of a couple of love affairs.
To begin with, I have been a fan of the work of Robert E. Howard for a long time. I don’t expect to “outgrow” that, and Cormac son of Art of Connacht is a Howard character.
Next, while reading over a million words in research and taking thousands of words of notes, I fell hopelessly in love with the Emerald Isle, whether it be called Eirrin or Erin or Eire or Ireland. That me grandmither was an O’Driscoll has nothing to do with it-I think. Nor even-I think-that I once married a woman whose name strings out as Mary Josephine McCarney McCabe Offutt. Or maybe that’s O’ffutt…
It is astonishing how little we know of history or “history,” other than Roman, before AD 800 or so. Open your encyclopedia to Scotland or Ireland or any part of Britain and see when they seem to think history began. Even at that I was unable to get hold of all the material I needed (whether I knew of its existence or not), and shall as a consequence probably catch it from some of the Eirrin-born.
Consider this: Stirrups had not been invented at the time of this novel (about AD 490). Stirrups made possible chivalry (from cheval, horse) and knighthood, for they made possible combat on horseback. Try sitting even a standing horse without stirrups, and swinging your arms strenuously. Revelation can be painful, even without a heavy sword or ax, in hand, much less while weighted with helmet, armor, and buckler!
Some will note that the history shown here is accurate-but that the history books show different royal names in the late fifth century. This is fiction, and I wanted people such as Prince Ceann to exist, and Samaire, and Feredach the Dark. Also… Howard held ever an awareness or belief in continuity, both in the history of this planet and among races and nations. Does racial memory exist? Howard thought so. It is obvious from his work that he carried the same awareness/belief as regards individuals.
But I think that belongs in an article I will probably write, some day. Meanwhile: Things are not always as they seem, even when we have “historical records.” (Tell me about a contemporary-?-of Cormac, King Arthur, and then go look him up. The Mayaguez incident of modern piracy is history, and we can lay it all out neatly from start to finish-or can we?)
Finally there is this.
I have avowed being a fan of Robert E. Howard; we even collect Conan comics at my house. I am extremely, often painfully, aware of REH’s shortcomings, too. I studied Howard before I wrote this book, and while I wrote it, too. His Cormac stories I read four times over before I even began to write, and I made notes. (Don’t tell me Howard said Cormac had been in exile fifteen years or more, while I say twelve. It was twelve. Maybe Cormac dissembled to Howard as he did to Wulfhere, hating to be so young-while so bright and competent.)
Nevertheless, I have not attempted to copy Howard. Where is the worthiness in that?
Howard was like Burroughs in that people can and do make themselves feel superior by making fun of his cardboard characters and purple prose. (Building oneself up by tearing others down is a favorite game-because it is so easy.) Yet, like that of Burroughs, Howard’s work lives and has grown increasingly more popular. Simply put, REH, like ERB, had the Magic. Whether we are fans or imitators-there are lots of those-or emulators or choke-gasp critics, we all sort of wish we had that Magic, too. If I’ve got hold of some of it, wonderful! You can pat my back if you’re of a mind to and my hand will be right there with yours.
In addition, though, I was completely charmed by the language of Augusta Gregory’s 1892 translation of the great Irish folk-cycle, Cuchulain of Muirthemne (see Pronunciation Guide). I copy no one, consciously. Let’s say though that I have been ever conscious and most mindful of both Howard’s style and of Lady Gregory’s “Old Gaelic” way of telling Cuchulain’s story, while I told Cormac’s.
That’s enough. All I started off to do was tell you about the lack of stirrups, and what a great joy and sheer fun this has been for me, and to assure you that all I have done here is with love of Howard’s work and what little I know of old Eirrin.
Maybe the publisher will let me write another Cormac story. It’s fun.
andrew j offutt
Kentucky, U.S.A.
April, 1975
Chapter One: The Wrath of Manannan MacLir
Patrick, enquire of God
Whether he recollects when Cormac was alive;
Or hath he seen, East or West
A man his equal, in time of fight.
– from “Cormac the Gael,”
by Ceann Ruadh, the “Minstrel-king”
“I pray that we reach the land of Eirrin, those who are riding upon the great, productive, vast sea:
That they be distributed upon her plains, her mountains, and her valleys; upon her forests that shed showers of nuts and all fruits; upon her rivers and her cataracts; upon her lakes and her great writers; upon her spring-abounding hills:
That they may hold their fairs and equestrian sports upon her territories:
That there may be a king from them in Tara; and that Tara be the territory of their many kings:
That noble Eirrin be the home of the ships and boats of the sons of Milesius:
Eirrin that is now in darkness, it is for her this oration is pronounced:
Let the learned wives of Breas and Buaigne pray that we may reach the noble woman, great Eirrin.
Let Eremon pray, and let Ir and Eber implore, that we may reach Eirrin.”
– Prayer of the poet Amergin for the coming of the Celts to Eire
Like a demon from the darkest Plutonian hell of the fallen Romans, the wind shrieked and howled in its sudden attack.
It was a vicious wild thing bent on the destruction of sailcloth and timber and human flesh, and men of the Wolfsail went hurtling from the frail vessel to their deaths. Their screams were unheard above that of the slashing wind.
The deckless little ship spun and careened. Its single mast was cracked and had fallen, to carry with it two good men amid striped squaresail of Nordic weave. Down went Wolfsail’s starboard, till she lay flat with her port side to the darkling sun. Her keel rose like a low wall from the brine. In that sudden sideward lunge more men met their weirds with wails of horror and black death.
The hugest of those desperate seafarers held fast the jagged stump of the ruined mast. To his great broad swordbelt clung one of his men; to his knotty calf in its soaked leggings hung another, fearful of being swept off the ridge of the world. The huge man gripped the mast as though it was his beloved. He it was who bellowed out to Father Odin and his son The Thunderer, for they had escaped the dread whirlpool off these nameless little isles of unpredictable elements only to fall prey to this demon-shrieking gale.
One-eyed Odin and his son heard not-or if they did, were steadfast in their resolve to punish their sometime servant for his many sins. Nor durst he relinquish his grip even so long as to draw steel, that he might die as befit his people, with sword in ruddy fist.
The little ship spun, swung, tipped, and spun again. It hurtled headlong. Islands flew by, shod and crowned with jagged rock. Cordage creaked and wood groaned as if in mortal agony. Men moaned, or prayed, or shouted-or screamed and went to their fathers.
One among their number was silent, and him alone.
He was a man apart in other ways, his armour different and his hair a swatch of the midnight sky. Grim, stolid with the insouciance of a fighting man who expects neither reward nor punishment but takes what may come from gods and men, his mouth was tightpressed and his scarred face almost impassive. He h
ad nailed himself to the dying craft with his own great sword.
Full two inches into the ship’s wood just aft of the dragon headed prow he had driven that oft-gored blade. Around its hilt he had secured his swordbelt, and to belt and gunwale he clung, with hands like the vises in a smith’s smoky domain.
This man’s slitted eyes were grey as the steel of the blade by which he bound himself aboard. In those eyes there was no fear, no horror-nor yet acceptance, either. Only a certain sadness as his Danish companions died for nought but god-whim, and a waiting. He remained alert and ready to release his iron handed grips and hurl himself into those waves like walls, should the craft break or be driven down into airless realms.
Between two craggy little isles no bigger than the dun-keeps of rich men the frail craft was swept.
Rocky walls rushed by. Instantly the force of the dread gale was quartered by intervening granite. Ten men, left of nineteen, heaved sighs of relief-
But Wolfsail’s mindless speed was great. She burst from that rock-shadowed lee into the open waters once more. Again the angry wind attacked as with a scarlet battle fury. The vessel lurched twenty feet to starboard as if shoved by the hand of a callous giant.
“Ah, NO!” a man cried out, and his nails dug into the ship’s seasoned timber so that the fingers bled. “Pray to your people’s sea-god, Gael! It’s in his domain we’re wind-captured, sure, not the All-father’s!”
The grey-eyed man regarded him without change in his set features. He recalled the seagod of the blue-hilled land he’d long since left, a fugitive. His lips formed that ancient name, though not in prayer, for this descendant of Milesian Celts begged of neither human nor immortal.
“Manannan MacLir,” he murmured.
And then his teeth clamped, hard, for the ship was dashed against the offshore rocks of another isle and wind-rammed up an unknown beach, and Wolfsail had her death therefrom, in a terrible scraping and tearing and splintering of wood.
Strong men flew like dolls clad in glittering steel onto that nameless shore, and were still.
The wind relented and returned to whatever dark lair housed it between the times it drove howling forth to express contempt and hatred for the sons of men.
Like new gold a summer sun burst its cloud-bonds. Sand sparkled on the strand of an unknown island well off the southwestern coast of abandoned Britain. Wind-driven water vanished in vapourous shimmers and the sand paled as it dried. The airy shimmer hovered, too, above the forms of nine prostrate men. Prone or supine or pitifully curled, they lay strewn along the shore where they’d been flung.
The scales and links of battle-scarred armour dried, and heated in the sun. Prostrate men sent back a steely scintillance.
Nine men, lying still.
All were flaxen or red of hair, save the one whose dark mane tumbled from beneath his scarred helmet. All wore armour of good scale mail, save only that one, whose chainmail was forged and linked in the way of Eirrin and Alba to the northeast. All were believers in and followers of One-eyed Odin and his hammer-wielding son Thor or Thunor-save only that one, whose superstitions lay with those of the Druids: The Sidhe of green-cloaked Eirrin, and Agron and Scathach, Grannus and Morrigu the Battle Crow and cu Roi mac Dairi, and Behl of the sun for whom burned the Behl-fires… and great Crom, god of an Eirrin older even that Behl’s power.
All, too, were of the cold land of the Danes, save only that one, and he of Eirrin-and an exile.
It was he who first awoke.
The Gael wakened to the familiar salt scent of the sea. A gull screeked. Lying still, the black-haired man twitched his nostrils in the manner of a wary wolf. He scented nothing of that which was all too familiar-raw, blood. Blinking against the flaming sun and the lingering grogginess of unconsciousness, he squinted open his eyes.
“Blood of the gods,” he muttered. “This be no afterworld, surely-I live!”
Slowly, alert to the flashing pain of broken limb or back or neck, he sat up. There was no flash, but only twinges from a body badly used by the wind. He was whole. Those twinges might have brought moans and lamentations and supine confinement to other men. To him, they were but the boon companions of weapon-men. He was whole; it was enough.
He looked about.
Strewn around him were his companions, lying as they had fallen along a stretch of beach that would have enclosed the house of one of those self-proclaimed “kings” of Britain since the Romans left. A tiny smile tugged at his mouth when he saw the rise and fall of the great barrel that was the chest of Wulfhere Skull-splitter. The giant lived also. Slitted eyes roved; assured their owner that so did all breathe-though there were but seven others.
Before the gale, they had been one and twenty.
He swallowed. There was thirst on him. With a grunt he rose, saw the gleam of his sword, and retrieved it. He wiped it again and again on his sun-hot trews before returning it to the sand; a watery sheath was no more trustworthy than a crowned man.
As he unbuckled belt with pendent sheaths, he looked around himself the more.
Of their ship there was no sign. Dragged back by the wind, he mused grimly, and chased on to be buried in the sea. We are stranded here, then. And… where is “here”?
The sweet sandy shore was a lie. This was a barren and inhospitable speck on the waters, and it would offer little comfort to man or beast. Only the fowls could come and go at will, for aye there were ugly-voiced gulls, and he heard the honk of wild ducks or geese.
And all around: stone. Granite and basalt, igneous rock like petrified sponge, and the sand to which some of it had been worn, by wind and sea with the aid of uncaring time.
He saw how the beach ran up bare and desolate, strewn with drifts and gravel and fragments of rock. Then rose, towering, steep and gloomy ramparts of natural rock, deep-hued basalt. Its somberness was cut here and there with veins of paler lipartite and studded with twinkling quartz, set like jewels against the dark and brooding background.
The Gael compressed his lips. The island was like a great rock wall or giant’s castle, surrounded by shore and a coast that was mostly rocky and precipitous, and then by an enormous protective moat: the domain of Manannan MacLir, the unending sea.
Then a voice rumbled up from a massy chest. “There’s a great drouth in my throat. If this be Valhalla, where be the cup-bearers?”
The Gael was forced to chuckle. He turned to look at the big man, Wulfhere Hausakliufr, who was in the act of sitting up. Already he scratched in his beard:
“I see no cup-bearers, and a Valkyrie I am not, bush-face.”
Wulfhere looked at him. “Cormac! We live!”
The Gael nodded. “We do. And all others breathe.”
Even as he spoke, another stirred. Like Wulfhere, he scratched at the salt encrusting his chin deep within his vermilion beard. “Where are we?”
Wulfhere’s reply was a snort. “Ask the gulls, Ivarr.”
The Gael named Cormac said, “Where are we? Here.”
Ivarr sighed, twisted, shoved himself erect with a palm against the sand. He gazed around himself.
“Ugh and och! Here, is it? I’d rather be there.”
“Ahh… methinks my arm be broke.”
“You are lying on it, Guthrum,” Cormac told that waking Dane. “Stir yourself. It’s a nice sleep we’ve had: the little death. An we find not water, and that soon, it will be the big sleep on us all.”
Another man moved, with first a grunt and then a curse. “Water! Hmp-it’s food this snarling belly wants!”
Cormac was removing his sleeveless tunic of linked chain. “Food! That, Half-a-man, we’ll have, for there are tasty gulls-”
“Arrgh,” Halfdan Half-a-man growled, and he made a face.
“-and wild geese or ducks,” the man of Eirrin went on. “And it’s their blood we’ll be drinking, Wulfhere, and proclaiming it the fairest quencher of thirst on the ridge of the world!”
On his feet, Wulfhere poked a finger into his scarlet beard to scratch. He no
dded, a giant with breast muscles that bulged like a brace of shields beneath his corselet of scalemail. He grunted when he stooped for his horned helmet. With that on his head he was even more formidable and giant-like.
“Ummm,” he agreed in a rumbling grumble. “We shall not die of thirst or starvation, then. And meanwhile-what do we do here?”
“Care for our armour,” Cormac advised. With his removed, he folded his legs and lowered himself to the sand. He commenced a meticulous wiping of each of the many links of good small chain, to rid it of salt and rust-bringing water.
Thirst and rumbling bellies were ignored as one, then three, and at last eight others followed his example. A man could stand his hunger and his dry throat. Arms and armour, though-on those his life depended. Despite the fact that this island was surely abandoned by the gods, and unpeopled by the sons of man so that it might be home now in both life and death, the nine survivors of Wolfsail sat, and squinted, and rubbed and picked and polished.
As he had begun first and had no scales to lift, it was Cormac who first finished and rose. As though he might at any instant meet an army of attackers, he doggedly fastened armour and arms about his lean, rangy form. Wulfhere glanced up.
“Whither?”
“You’ve more armour to see to,” Cormac said, with that small sardonic smile of his. “I think I’ll take a walk.”
“Aye, with care. Halfdan will follow you, Cormac mac Art-he has less steel to see to.”
Halfdan-called-halfman said nothing. He was built low to the ground, too, but like an ox. Thus the name jestingly given him meant naught to the short man, who could lift and hurl the likes of Cormac and who had sent many taller men to their fathers, and them longer of arm.
Cormac mac Art set off walking, along the shore to the eastward. He angled his steps inland to the rocky wall that stood between him and-whatever dark secrets this grim land housed, back of its lifeless shore.
Halfdan-and Knud the Swift as well-were just on their feet and clad in well-inspected armour when their Gaelic comrade called.
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