The arrow he sped through a window of the palace brought forth his companions soon enough. When they emerged with drawn sword, faces upturned, he motioned them into hiding. Wulfhere nodded and signaled back; the six Danes concealed themselves.
Cormac waited.
When the Norse Vikings at last appeared, he counted them as they wended their way onto the valley of the castle. The corsairs from the northlands numbered one and twenty. They entered the castle, and long Cormac waited for their reaction to the disappearance of their sentries. A strangeness: they made no outcry, nor did any man emerge to call. He did hear the sounds happy men make when they begin to let ale glide down their throats to cool the belly and warm the mind. He had known it to happen before, particularly when leadership was not strong or clearly defined. Weary and triumphant from a successful expedition, even good weapon-men had been known to ignore all in their eagerness to relax with food and drink.
Cormac waited long, then waved Wulfhere and the others to cross the valley. They did, making use of all possible cover. Soon, within the shade-darkened defile, the seven held discourse.
Wulfhere Hausakliufr was for attacking the Vikings at once, but listened as ever to Cormac’s quietly voiced logic.
“It’s doling out their sword-gains and celebrating they’ll be, old friend. Let those happy men slake their thirst with all that ale we… saw.” A. smile twisted Cormac’s lips. “They’ll be easier foemen for it.”
They did not mention or consider the prisoners the Norsemen were having such a care with. No sensible man made attempt to “save” a woman from whatever her captors chose to do with her, and despite the impetuous nature of Wulfhere Skull-splitter, he was a sensible man.
Pragmatism prevailed. Having brought both food and drink out with them, the Danes would abide just within the side-cleft of the main defile; they had noted it before, and passed it by. Cormac, meanwhile, would check the strand, and that with care. He would soon know how many guards had been left with the small Viking craft with its striped sail.
“A good craft for us,” Wulfhere said darkly.
“So it will be,” the Gael said. “We will do nothing until night cloaks this land then… agreed?”
“A long wait.”
Cormac ignored the petulant tone, said only, “aye.”
Wulfhere gazed at him and at last gave him a brief nod. Cormac returned it and went away over the mesa again.
A spire-like chunk of granitic rock remained where weather had washed away that around it. In its lee, Cormac settled himself. He had doffed his helmet to cool his black mane, and laid aside swordbelt against its possible clank. Now and then staring briefly out to sea to re-adjust his eyes, he took up his watch on the beach where lay the Viking ship. And its scalemailed guards in their ferociously horned or winged, helms.
At last he was certain: there were four. Restless they were, and surely not happy to be left behind whilst the others adjourned within the shady palace and betook themselves of ale and wine-and perhaps of their captives as well.
Cormac had tossed the bow down to Wulfhere and the others; Guthrum and Ivarr were better with those far-killing weapons, while Cormac had not his match with sword and shield and dagger. Too, the business of fighting and reddening another’s body was to him a personal one. He liked not the bow, or the great siege engines that hurled stone or spear or fire. The world would be an ugly place, Cormac felt and had said, and men the less for it, if ever the time came when wars were fought impersonally, from a distance. For then truly all would be up to the old and unskilled, sitting back in high places while others did their blood-work for them.
He waited, and watched the men on the beach.
When it is dark, Cormac mac Art decided, I will carry death among those four.
He waited.
He had waited before, and was little troubled by it. There were gulls to watch, and clouds and their changing shapes, and the shifting of the sea and the occasional flashing appearance of one of her dwellers. And there were the activities of the men below. Them, however, he watched but little. He was not eager to know the men he must soon go among, carrying steel death.
The sun dragged across the sky.
Cormac waited.
Slowly the sun settled, and Cormac moved when the shade changed, so as to remain in shadow. He had spotted the place where he would make his descent, and that unseen by the men with the ship.
He waited, considering the mystery of the great palace built here so long ago. Into his mind came the words of a dying priest of the new god, over in Britain.
“The serpent-man,” he had gasped out, “the last of that race that preceded humanity in dominion over the world. King Kull slew the last of his brethren with the edge of the sword in desperate conflict, but the Dark Druid survived to ape the form of man and hand down the Satanic lore of olden times.”
Mayhap it was not all those serpentish men Kull of Valusia slew in Atlantis herself, Cormac mused, remembering the wall-etched pictures he had studied yesterday. Then his heart thudded the harder within him, and he fought to thrust castle and wall and pictures and Kull and… “memories” from his head.
“This temple,” the old priest had got out before his death, “is the last Outpost of their accursed civilization to remain above the ground-and beneath it rages the last Shoggoth to remain near the surface of the world. The goat-spawn roam the hills only at night, fearful now of man, and the Old Ones and the Shoggoths hide deep within the earth…”
Cormac mac Art hoped the man had been right. He and Wulfhere had slain raving obscenities in form and ferocity on that occasion, and he was content to confine the edge of his sword to men, not monsters. A frown came onto his face as he thought of the palace back in the valley.
But no; six men had spent the previous night there, aid others had doubtless nighted there many times. The Norsemen would not return here had they seen aught of serpent-men or worse!
Of course, he reminded himself, they have with them their Druid!
As on the afternoon before, the dying sun bathed the westering sea in blood from horizon to shore, and Cormac prepared himself for the descent.
It was then that the four Vikings emerged from the defile, having come from out the castle, and debouched onto the beach. Cormac froze.
Two of the newcomers were none too steady on their feet, and they carried the reason in a leathern ale-sack. They were greeted enthusiastically by the quartet already there-but that, Cormac saw, was because the four newcomers comprised a relief watch. They remained; the others bent their feet castleward for food and drink, nor were they laggardly about it.
Wolf-grinning, Cormac donned helmet and buckled on sword. Then he moved across the lip of the mesa to the sloping talus where rock had slid and fallen. Down he went, and onto the loose rock below. His feet made noise, but the four on the beach made more. They had not, he noted, built a fire.
No. They’d not be wanting others to find this isle-haven!
In the darkness, he walked along the sand toward them.
He was perhaps a ship’s length from them when one cried out in alarm. With his sword naked in his fist, Cormac charged.
He rushed upon them in deliberate silence, knowing that would strike fear and confusion into these loud-mouthed men of the north far more than the most bloodcurdling battle-scream.
Three had drawn swords and lifted shields; one, in the act of rising, had slipped and fallen in the darkness. Him Cormac passed up, for it was his way to attack the strongest first, rather than be set upon by that one while he wasted time and strength on a lesser foe. The strongest generally made himself known… and did now.
“It’s only a man!” a burly Norseman in a great winged helmet called, and he came forward in a crouch, shield and sword up and ready.
Cormac never slowed.
He charged the braver man, and struck at his sword with shield rather than merely catching the vicious sideward cut. At the same time Cormac swung low. It was not a tactic the Viking w
as prepared to meet.
Even as his sword struck sparks off the metal rim of his attacker’s shield with a frightful clashing clang, hard-swung steel was biting away most of his right leg below the knee. Blood pumped in spurts and the man fell with an awful cry. Cormac was already sweeping his blood-smeared brand viciously back to shear away the blade that came at him from another direction-and that second man’s wrist with it. The Gael’s buckler seemed to leap out of itself to smash back the sobbing Norseman.
The third man of ice-girt Norge made his try from behind, sure of his prey when the latter was busy with two others.
But Cormac was no longer busy.
Whirling, he interposed his buckler to catch another crashing sword in a new burst of firefly sparks. At the same time, he kicked banefully up under the lower edge of the other’s buckler, and crashingly slammed his shield into that one.
The man’s cry was ugly, a sound of dreadful pain and gut-sickness. Both pain and cry were ended by the swishing steel blade that sent his helmeted head rolling over the sand. Blood gouted and, splashed warmly up Cormac’s arm. Without pause he chopped down at the man bent on daggering him in the leg; it was he whose leg the Gael had ruined. Better than dying of blood-loss, surely, Cormac thought, while he swung away to drive his foot up under the chin of the Viking in the act of rising from the sand: the man with no right hand. Jagged jarring pain to his toes made Cormac wince. There was a loud cracking sound and the man, straightened nearly to his feet, flopped sidewise. His head lolled from a broken neck.
Four men had become one.
The fourth, miraculously sobered by the sudden whirlwind ferocity of the attack on these men known for the sudden whirlwind viciousness of their attacks, came a-running with ax and shield. The ax circled the air with a heavy woosh and came rushing down.
Cormac did not ruin his shield by thrusting it up to meet that descending blade, which was hand-broad and long as his head. Instead, he charged into it, and past. The ax was far too heavy for its wielder to change its course. Passing the last guard on his left, Cormac chopped him deeply in the side before the Norseman could recover from the overbalancing effect of chopping mightily into the sand. The man sank down, releasing the, ax, clapping a hand to his side.
“It’s Wulfhere’s choice of weapons that is, and he a man mighty enough to wield it,” mac Art muttered to the man writhing on the sand. “Ye’d have done better with a sword.”
“O-Odin’s name… slay me!”
Cormac was no barbarian to delight in letting a man die slowly and in terrible pain. Nor had the mindless berserker rage come upon him in this brief conflict. He obliged the Viking.
Then Cormac whirled and set off at the run to rejoin his comrades.
Chapter Four: Cutha Atheldane-Sorcerer
The Druid’s altar and the Druid’s creed
We scarce can trace,
There is not left an undisputed deed
Of all your race…
– from “The Celts” by D’Arcy McGee
Once he’d done railing at mac Art for having slain four without allowing him the pleasure of joining in, Wulfhere-predictably-was for taking the ship and going at once a-roving.
“There’s booty here, man,” Cormac told him. “And the captives may well be worth more, in ransom. Prisoners, after all, are kept alive only for the use of men’s lusts or if they are valuable-and I remind you that the male was kept alive.”
The conclusion was obvious, and Wulfhere sighed. Then he nodded: the two red-haired captives of the Norse were of value, to someone, somewhere… and thus surely to himself and his men. Now the giant was for carrying attack on the men in the castle…
Again, he acquiesced to Cormac’s proposal. But it was not without grumbling that they all trekked back to the beach. There they shoved the ship off into the shallows and guided it carefully along the moonlit surf. Well down the strand and out of sight of its previous beaching, they again pushed and pulled the craft ashore.
Grumbling still, all trekked back to the defile, and along it to the palace. Cormac remonstrated. There were too many Norse, and but a few of his and Wulfhere’s band. They could all use some sleep. Perhaps on the morrow the Vikings could be tricked, divided…
This time he did not prevail. All were for attacking, now. The time to strike was when the Norsemen were slowed by full bellies and ale-dulled brains, they insisted. The Gael gave in, because he must, and immediately began counseling caution, a silent attack.
“Those we find must be silenced swiftly, and quietly,” Cormac pointed out, as the seven men approached the castle in the wan moonlight.
“And permanently” Wulfhere whispered-loudly enough to have been heard ten yards distant.
“Who’s that?” a voice immediately demanded, from the shadows beside the broad entry of that towering pile of stone. “Rane? Olaf?”
“Sh-h,” Cormac instantly hissed to his companions. Then he groaned, and pushed a staying hand behind while he continued to move forward.
The man ahead muttered. Another voice answered. Cormac frowned. Come out of those thrice-damned shadows, he bade them mentally, that I may see your number.
As though the unspoken words carried a command, two un-helmeted but spear-armed men stepped from beside the leftward pillar and came his way, hesitantly. “Olaf? Skel? What’s happened? Be ye hurt?”
By Odin, these two are not yours alone, you selfish son of a selfish Gaedhil pig-farmer!” The angrily grunted words, miraculously not bellowed, emerged from Wulfhere’s throat. Deliberately he elbowed Cormac-as he charged past him.
Steel flashed in the moonlight. The two sentries died within seconds of each other, with Wulfhere neither scratched nor winded. He gave the Gael a leering grin.
“Ye’d have done for them both yourself wouldn’t you, ye selfish baresarker!”
“I’d have laid them to rest more quietly,” Cormac drily assured him. Then, with finger to lips, he bade the giant hush.
In silence, they waited. None came forth from the palace, however, in response to the swift sounds of combat and death. Only loud and jocular voices wafted forth. Unaware of the red doom that had stalked and taken six of their number and was now moving somberly on them, the Vikings laughed and joked, sang and celebrated the success of their latest raid.
“The ale be good-but where’s the sorcerous Cutha Atheldane gone to,” a Norseman demanded rather plaintively, “with that nice little morsel of Eirrin-born wench? It’s not by ale alone that a man lives and recreates himself!”
“The Druid said he hath business with her,” another Viking answered, “above stairs. Amuse yourself with her pretty brother, there!”
There was raucous laughter. Cormac and Wulfhere exchanged grim looks.
“They’ve all gathered in the great hall,” the man called Skull-splitter muttered. Their companions had drawn about them now, listening to the revelry within.
“Aye,” Cormac snarled, “all save the robed Druid-it’s him I’d be going after!”
Wulfhere snorted. “It’s the wench ye’d be going after, Wolf!”
Cormac earned the sobriquet an Cliuin, the Wolf, in his pre-Wulfhere rieving years. Now he gave the other man a challenging look, but the Dane was smiling.
Wulfhere turned to the others. “They are nineteen now, and we six to fall upon them. There will be thirteen in seconds, an we do our work properly. Fear we those odds?”
“Ye should,” Cormac tried one last time, but the grim-faced men made assurance that they did not.
“Then Halfdan,” Wulfhere said, “do you cut loose the captive first off, an he be tied. Mayhap he knows how to wield sword or ax, and we’ll be seven. Cormac goes above, to the simpler work of dealing with an old man.”
Cormac shot him a look. That was all; again, Wulfhere’s teeth flashed in his broad grin.
They gathered themselves and entered the keep, doom-shadows in the pallid moonlight. The Gael touched two men; they went with him up the leftward stair, whilst Wulfhere and th
e others mounted by the far steps. The two little parties were soon gazing down the long corridor at each other, having met no sentry. The noises of the merrymaking Vikings had got louder.
Wulfhere was right, Cormac mac Art knew. The Norsemen, one less now than a score in number, were disporting themselves in the sprawling main hall, through that central doorway and down the steps. Doubtless they lay luxuriously about, their bellies stuffed with food and the ale they still quaffed. Surprise would surely give the attackers just what Wulfhere had said: six less foes in the initial onslaught. For Cormac there would be only the light work of despoiling the old Druid of his captive.
It’s back with them I’ll be, he thought, ere sword and ax have stopped drinking Norse blood!
“Give me a small bit of time,” he muttered, and set off along the corridor that ran directly back from the ‘stairs.
His goal was easily seen: every ancient door was closed or rotted away to expose the black entry to a dark empty room-save one. Halfway down the corridor, light spilled from an open doorway. Toward that glim Cormac hurried, on feet that moved as silently as he could will them.
Then he heard the old voice, dry as blowing leaves in autumn.
“Then, my dear Lady Samaire, ye’d wear a chaplet on your head among the Norse, and be far better-off than were ye in the household of your murderous brother!”
Samaire, Cormac thought. A daughter of Eirrin. And with the same name as his… friend, of many ears past. And he offers her wedlock to some Viking one of those below, or be there treachery in the heart of this Cutha Atheldane? He heard the captive woman’s reply:
“And my brother?”
“He will live,” the Druid said, and Cormac stepped into the doorway.
The room was partially restored, looking warm and comfortable with stolen drapes. A torch stood from a sconce bracketed to a wall of paneled wood. There was a table, with the remains of a good meal and a brace of ale-jacks, and a chair. In it sat the woman, her hair loosened and aflow now, and so golden red as to be orange. She yet wore the dirty white tunic or shirt, since it was sleeved, and the leather leggings that vanished into short boots.
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