The Sword of the Gael cma-5

by Andrew J Offutt

  Eeriness struck among them. Seconds after he drank of the ale, Snorri Evil-eye groaned, and his wayward eyes bulged, and he gasped and rattled deep in his throat. Then he fell. He was dead.

  Men who had faced death and slain, and that bloodily and often, stared at him and at each other, and their flesh crawled.

  “Sorcery,” Halfdan whispered, for his mind was of such a bent more than his companions’.

  “It’s the sorcery and the power of the Druids I’ve believed in all these years,” Cormac mac Art said quietly, “but never have I seen its evidence.”

  Others looked at him, hopefully. Then Wulfhere spoke.

  “Call it then the displeasure of the gods, and the delayed death I have seen afore with these eyes. It was within himself that poor old Evil-eye took some injury, when the sea flung him upon the strand. But he knew it not, and felt nothing of it-until now, when he sought to drink. Any man knows that inward injuries may leave no sign upon the body-and later bring such results.” He gazed down at their dead companion.

  “Aye,” a voice said in relief, and a ruddy-haired hand went out for a pothern of ale.

  “Mayhap,” Cormac said. “But it’s none of that strong drink I’ll be tasting.”

  Widened eyes fixed upon him, and his words did more to protect their sobriety than all Wulfhere’s grousing, though Cormac was as sure as the huge Dane that it was unknown internal injuries had slain Snorri thus.

  Striding to the grand old throne of ironwood that sat imperiously on its dais, Guthrum whipped from its base the bale of purple, shot through with cloth-of-silver. Ivarr had placed it there’ as a joke: an offering to the invisible king of this land. With the cloth, Guthrum now covered their dead companion, and wound him about.

  They had been one and twenty, and then nine, and then eight, and now they numbered but seven.

  Slowly they returned to the business of filling their bellies, but with less noise and jubilation. Cormac would have liked to be in the magnificent dome overhead, and it set with a cyclopean eye that must have been the size of his shield. For he knew how ridiculous they must look, so few in this vast hall.

  Into it could have been fitted the house and entire grounds of Gol, King of Dalriada on the coast of Alba, in whose service Cormac had borne sword until the king did treachery on his fellow Gael, for kings must see to their daughters.

  Supported by a double row of lofty columns thrice the thickness of Cormac’s body or twice Wulfhere’s the room was; the length of two men separated the pillars of that colonnade, and in each row there were five and twenty. Round about them the walls were etched and carved with decorative swirlings and scrollwork and stylized representations of the sea, and ships on its breast.

  In addition the walls told a story in pictures scratched into their surface with fine tools, and Cormac walked to read it.

  Men had come here in great ships that could have carried within them three or four such as Wolfsail, strong and mighty men, bronze of body and them in clothing and armour that were both strange and rich.

  Across the broad sea we came, Cormac thought, and shuddered. And to this place, and here we met the fathers and grandfathers of the serpent-people who ruled the world, above and within, ere Kull wrested Valusia’s crown from Borna. And there was war upon us, and I struck and struck and slew and was sore injured…

  The wall pictures showed those mighty serpents, prodigiously large and surely exaggerated-but Cormac mac Art knew without knowing how he knew that this wall was history, and without embellishment. The sons of men met in battle those who had preceded them and were loath to give up the world they had so long ruled. There was a great war, and the golden skinned men of Atlantis prevailed.

  Then did we set about the erection of this great keep, as a monument to Man, with all its corridors straight and broad that there might be no resemblance to the tracks and lairs of the serpents.

  Cormac blinked. He jerked his head from side to side, looked up and around. We? I must be losing what mind I have! What dark sorcery sends into my brain these memories that cannot be memories, for full a thousand lifetimes separate me from Atlantis!

  But… was I here? Have I been here, in each of those lifetimes, ever the warrior, ever slaying so that I must comeback, and back, and…

  Again he shook his head, sharply and more than once. And he was again Cormac, son of Art of Connacht in Eirrin, and nothing crowded his head but the present, and his own memories of this short lifetime-memories that were entirely enough, and bad enough.

  He studied the wall, biting his lower lip to make sure he was not distracted into some dreamish world he could not explain and thus resisted with all his sanity.

  Unless he missed his guess, those islands the engravings showed the ancients exploring were Britain, and beside it Eirrin, narrow to the north, and above it Alba that the Romans called Caledonia. Strange beasts had roamed their soils then, Cormac saw, and serpents too. He smiled a little, for surely this triumphant etching showed why it was that green Eirrin was free of serpents but contained only toads and a few trifling lizards: the ancient sea-roamers and palace-builders had slain the serpents on that soil, every one.

  And I was with them…

  No!

  A new feeling came over him, and he liked it no better than the remembering that was surely false. As though sorcerously drawn out, his finger went forth to touch a certain portion of the isle he thought must be Eirrin. Connacht, western home of the Shannon’s source. Green Connacht with its long ragged hills that were blue in the distance, its fens and plains and slopes and its bogs. Connacht of Eirrin; here it was that the son of Art had been born, and raised, until…

  Cormac turned away from the wall and the story it told.

  No longer was he interested in that tale of ancient triumph, or either in food, or the companionship of his Dane-born fellows. If the wall there past the throne showed what had happened to take away these great seafarers and builders, long long centuries agone, he was not interested. No matter what they had recorded, and builded here, it was exiles they’d been. So too was Cormac mac Art exile, and it came down on him now, in the great hall of what must have been his ancestors of a thousand or ten thousand years ago. What matter how long?

  Eirrin.

  Quern and nuts up to the knees at every Behl-smiling harvest, he thought helplessly, with his eyes full of pain. And the good trees bending with the weight of their fruit, and the Bueis and the Boyne full of salmon and trout, and the sun of Behl shining on his own land with ever smiling brightness and favour.

  Before his eyes he saw the face of his father. And then again, but changed, for these were the blue eyes Cormac had last seen, and them fixed in death. The son of Eirrin gritted his teeth, for it was no natural death his father had got, and his dangerously-named son just at the age of manhood at the time, fourteen winters and thirteen summers old…

  Cormac swallowed. He flicked his gaze to his fellows. Wulfhere was staring at him.

  “Has it come upon you again, old friend?”

  Cormac stared at him.

  “The remembering?”

  Cormac’s face was expressionless. “We be vulnerable as sea-dogs in their mating season,” he said gruffly. “I’m for scaling one of the cliffs outside-the westward looked to have handholds enow-and keeping a seaward watch. It’s a bow and two arrows I’ll be taking, for a warning if need be.”

  “Cormac-”

  But the Gael, his eyes bleak and his shoulders seeming somehow less broad and confidently set, was leaving them. He said no more, nor did he look back…

  “There be an enchantment on that man,” Wulfhere said, and he heaved a sigh. “Some say we have trod this world before, all of us. Cormac knows it.”

  “Aye.” Ivarr nodded. “Know you what he dreams of, when he goes away thus, and him still with us?”

  “A yesterday he cannot possibly know.”

  “And-”

  “Eirrin.”

  “We shall lose his sword and companionship
some day,” Hakon said, staring fixedly as he ruminated, for it came not easily upon him, the thinking.

  “Aye, and his counsel, that crafty calculating warrior’s brain of his!”

  “And it’s not to sword, or arrow or spear we’ll lose Cormac mac Art.”

  Again Wulfhere nodded, and again he uttered the single word: “Eirrin.”

  Chapter Three: Vikings!

  Never until now have I met,

  Since first I saw sun’s light,

  Thy like in deeds of battle-

  Never in my life, O Cormac!

  – from “Cormac the Gael”

  by Ceann Ruadh, the “Minstrel-king”

  As Cormac mac Art ascended, the sun went down. The Gael climbed in the dusk-light with great care, his buskins thonged to his belt. He completed his scaling of that looming natural wall of brooding stone in the gloom of last dusk.

  From the summit, a long and nigh flat mesa, he watched, hardly seeing, while the sun died. The fat orange half-disk squatted on the far reaches of the ocean. Crimson fingers of its light came reaching out along the waters, seeming to bloody the surface, as if the sun were desperately trying to hold on with breaking nails. Failing, it slid off the edge of the world, which was plunged into darkness. The million eyes of the night sky appeared, presided over by the moon’s cold light.

  Cormac sat. He was high above the hidden valley now and above even the highest tower of the castle that should not have been there. He re-laced his buskins. The son of Art of Connacht thought: about Eirrin, about Connacht where he was born and Leinster where he’d taken service, and about Dalriada in Alba where he had also served at arms, before the years of outlaw raiding along those same coasts. “Riever” was the word of his people; “Scoti” was the Romans’ word that meant the same, and before they had withdrawn from their Briton sword-land they had commenced calling Alba “Scot-land” as well as Caledonia.

  A riever he was still, with Wulfhere and the crew of Danes. Or had been, until this day of dark portent.

  Art’s son of Connacht was an exile from Dalriada; an exile from Connacht and Leinster. He was an exile from Alba… and from his own Eirrin. The name given him by his father had made even more nervous a High-king who sat his throne unsteadily, ever in fear of being toppled from it. By means of that High-king’s machinations Cormac had foolishly, youthfully let himself be goaded until he had fought, and slain the man he knew not was in royal pay, and that during the Great Fair.

  That youthful Cormac had broken the King’s Peace at Fair-time, and death was the penalty. He had not waited for it to come seeking him.

  Not in twelve years had he set foot on his native soil, though he claimed it to have been longer. Cormac was more thoughtful and less reckless than Wulfhere, who was older. Cormac pretended to be older, out of regard for his friend and fellow riever. He who was the descendant of kings had the vision and the wisdom of a king-though no regard for them, for by two crowned heads he had been betrayed.

  He wondered, as he kept his brooding seaward watch, if the monarchs of old had been different.

  Nigh onto three hundred years agone, a usurper had slain Art the Lonely, King over the kings of Eirrin. Not long did the murderer sit the throne of the Ard-righ, the High-king, in Tara of Meath. For the son of Art the Lonely slew that man and claimed his father’s throne. It was he who gave his people the safety of peace, and the sea-laws, and too their Book of Rights. Too, he caused to be builded magnificent structures at Tara, and a new dignity was born to the high crown.

  “He was the greatest king that Eirrin ever knew,” Cormac’s father had told the boy. “In power and eloquence, in the vigour and splendour of his reign, he had not his like before or since. In his reign none needed bar the door, no flocks need be guarded, nor was anyone in all Eirrin distressed for want of food or clothing. For all Eirrin that wise and just king made a beautiful land of promise. His grandfather was Conn of the Hundred Battles; his father was Art; and he was King Cormac. Like you, son, for I have given you the greatest name in the history of our land: Cormac mac Art. And you of Connacht as well.”

  He had told the bright-eyed boy Cormac had been how that other Cormac resigned his office in his old age, and after that there ruled other High-kings. Then came Niall of the Nine Hostages, who raided the Picts in Alba and the Romans in Britain-and even into Gaul of the Franks. One wrongful deed Niall had done. He it was who brought home to Eirrin a slave from Britain, who was to return decades later with a new name and a vocation other than the shepherd he’d been, up in Antrim.

  Now he was styled “Patricius” by the chief priest in Rome, and Padraigh by the Gaels of his adopted land. He it was who preached the new faith-which Cormac despised as being unworthy of men and particularly of men Eirrin-born. It was that same “Patrick” who threw down the great gold and silver statue of the ancient chief-god of the Celts who came so long ago to Eirrin: Crom Cruach, on the plain of Magh Slecht near Ballymagauran.

  Atop the basalt cliffs on the island with no name, Cormac stood, and stretched, and turned to gaze norwestward, into darkness. For there lay Eirrin. And he reflected on his heritage.

  It was trouble King Niall had with Leinster, as did all the High-kings over the matter of the Boru Tribute, which chafed the Leinstermen hide and spirit and soul. Eochaid son of Enna King of Leinster slew Niall then, these six and eighty years gone, and that from ambush, with an arrow.

  Many sons Niall left, who scattered to found kingdoms whilst his brother’s son succeeded to the high throne. He too died across the water west of Britain, in the land of the Franks. And his son Ailill was High-king, and none of Niall’s get. Nor were they at rest under their helmets.

  Time came when those descendants of Niall, the ua-Neill, gave challenge. With Leinster’s king they met Ailill in great battle at Ocha, and Ailill was overthrown. He was the second High-king of all Eirrin from Connacht-and now Connacht’s power was broke.

  “Perhaps he was the last son of Connacht to sit enthroned on Tara Hill and preside over the assembled kings at Feis-mor,” Cormac’s father had said, with his eyes on his stout son who, was so proficient with weapons-and with his brain. “And… perhaps not.”

  Cormac had known what he meant, even then. He dreamed.

  Now, exiled and marooned dreamless on this nameless isle so many years later, that son gave a sardonic smile to the heedless moon. Turning his back on the northwest, he resumed his seat on a round-smoothed stone. He stared morosely at the sea, which reflected the moonlight now as if it were a plain all of brass. Cormac wrestled with his restive mind; stubbornly it returned to his heritage.

  After Ailill, Niall’s son Laegair ruled, and he it was who sat the throne when Padraigh came back on his infernal mission. Once the strange “bishop” with the spear-pointed staff had converted both Laegair’s wife and chief adviser to belief in his selfish Iosa Chriost-who brooked no other gods at all-Laegair gave Padraigh permission to preach throughout the emerald isle. Incredibly, the new religion gained and began to supercede the ancient faith of the Celts. The power of the bishops rose. That of the Druids declined. But not in the household of Art of Connacht, or in the mind of his son.

  Art of Connacht, Cormac thought, and amused himself darkly by framing it in his mind as the seanachies and poets might style it:

  “And in the time when Laegair’s son Lugaid was Ard-righ on Tara Hill, Art mac Comal, a member of the Bear sept of the powerless clan na Morna in Connacht and kinsman of the ua-Neill, got a son on his wife, and it was after the great king of old they named him: Cormac mac Art.”

  That same Cormac mac Art snorted.

  “King Cormac,” he muttered, and his scarred face was not pleasant in the pearl-light of the moon. “Good night on you, subjects all,” he muttered, and he lay back, and went to sleep, a marooned exile.

  Cormac awoke at dawn, squinting. He resumed his watch and his reverie-but not for long.

  It was shortly after dawn that the ship came. Lying prone, he watched it approach the
island. When the striped sail vanished from his ken beyond the stern brow of the mesa’s shoreward cliffs, he rose. Cormac ran along the mesa heedless of his snarling stomach, until he found a vantage point for unseen observing.

  From the towering cliffs above them he watched the ship’s crew drag her onto the beach. They were bearded, ruddy men in helms with wings and horns, men from Norge-Vikings! Though from the northlands like the Danes, those were no friends of his comrades.

  He watched as they fetched their cargo up the beach: sword-gained booty ire sacks and two chests, and two captives as well. The watcher’s deepset, narrow eyes narrowed the more as he gazed on those two.

  Both wore sleeved white tunics that were dirty and bedraggled, and leather leggings and soft buskins of leather: riding togs, and not peasantish. They were a man and a woman, slim and seemingly young, and them orange-red of hair.

  More booty, Cormac mused, for those be worth ransom, surely.

  Among the Norsemen was also a man lean as a reed rising from the fen and long of silvery beard, with a robe on him. A Nordic Druid, dark-robed and tall and with hair just past his shoulders, as his beard lay on his chest. Cormac saw that he was well deferred to, that slim old man. He wondered at his powers, for he who said the Druids were without powers beyond those of other men was a fool on the face of the earth.

  The Norsemen came up the beach. Without choice, the captives were meek enough about it.

  Cormac waited only long enough to assure himself of what he already assumed: these men knew where they were going. They it was who had found the ancient palace of this island afore him, and left behind the men he had slain. The Vikings, with their Druid and their booty and their prisoners, were bent for that castle now.

  Narrow-eyed, the Gael looked longingly at their dragon-prowed ship.

  Then backing like a river crayfish until he was sure he could not be seen afoot, he rose and sped back along the mesa. His route was far more direct than that circuitous one through the defile.