Over her stood the tall, reed-thin Druid, his beard six shades of gray and white, his flowing robe of mauve, and a rich fabric as well.
Four eyes stared at the man who had come silently upon them, and him with a naked sword.
“Samaire!”
The familiar face, older now and even better to look upon than when she’d been but a girl and he a boyish soldier in her father’s employ, disconcerted Cormac mac Art.
The Druid availed himself of the pause, and that swiftly. He stared, catching and then holding the warrior’s eyes, and dolmen-sleeved arms moved in slow gestures. The old man’s lips were invisible within his mustache and beard, but they moved as he murmured…
Knowing some ensorcelment was being prepared, Cormac twisted his mouth and swung his sword into line for a swift thrust. He started forward-and there facing him was his old friend and comrade-at-arms, Wulfhere Hausakliufr of the Danes!
Staring, seeing the familiar smile that was ever nigh-mocking, Cormac felt his arm growing heavy. The point of his sword lowered…
It was the young woman’s scream of warning that shook the hypnotic mist of Druidic power from the eyes of Cormac mac Art. With a blink, he saw that “Wulfhere” was the tall robed man of the Norse-and that he had filled his hand with a glittering dagger. Already he was stabbing-and Cormac hurled himself desperately out of the path of that downrushing blade It swished past like a striking cobra. The thwarted sorcerer snarled in disappointment.
The intended victim had no time to choose the direction of his sideward lunge. The table was there to meet him; with a crash, man and table went to the floor. Cormac’s buckler slammed down noisily on one side and his sword on the other. His feet flew high, and the shock of his backside’s hitting the floor sent pain-shock up into his brain. Darkness eddied before his eyes. Even so his warrior’s reflexes were drawing him together, and he went a-rolling to avoid a killing blow.
There was none. Cutha Atheldane spurned or durst not risk another attempt. One long bony hand snatched the torch from its sconce, another clamped the girl’s wrist. Cormac knew the man’s strength, then, for she screwed up her face and writhed in pain.
The sorcerer’s shod boot thumped into the paneled wall-and a narrow doorway opened for him, the wood swinging away into a dark passage beyond!
The musty odour of ages gone poured into the room to assail Cormac’s nostrils. He was still on the floor when Cutha Atheldane and his captive vanished into the space behind the wall-and the slim door of thick wood began to swing shut.
Chapter Five: The Power of Cutha Atheldane
The Bochanach and The Bachanachs
And the witches of the deep vales
Shriek’d from the rims of the shields
And keen’d from the blades of the swords.
– “Cormac the Gael,” Ceann Ruadh
Cutha Atheldane and his captive vanished into some dark passage, taking the only source of light; the narrow door commenced to close behind them; Cormac mac Art heard the yelling, clanging eruption of his companions’ attack on the Vikings in the great hall of the old castle.
He paid them no heed. His business lay beyond the wall. In desperation, he kicked out both legs with all his strength. His feet thudded into the overturned table, which was catapulted toward the small doorway in the wall. The table groaned and one of its legs broke, but it wedged itself into the opening. The door’s closing was blocked.
Gaining his feet, Cormac sprang across the room. It was well he had done his job, so well that he had to lay aside his sword to wrest the table from the small doorway. Within the passage, he leaned the sword against the wall while he made sure the table was again wedged in place. Then, with sword and buckler, he turned to chase down the fleeing Norse Druid like a hungry wolf on the scent-trail.
The passage was dark, and narrow, and dusty. Why it was dark when he should have seen the glimmer of the other man’s torch, Cormac soon learned-by running squarely into the wall with a clang and clash of shield and sword. Sparks seemed to dance in the darkness, but he knew they were behind his eyes, not before.
He made a cross of himself, extending his sword-arm one way and his buckler the other. Sharp-edged brand struck wall; buckler plunged through emptiness. That emptiness was floored, and Cormac turned leftward.
Three steps took him into another wall, and he cursed volubly as he turned to his right.
A grin without mirth pulled at his mouth: ahead he saw a flicker of torchlight, already around still another bend in this serpentine passage. He hurried after it. His extended sword apprised him of that turning. Three steps beyond, the dark corridor swung still again.
Were these walls not so smooth, the Gael thought angrily, I’d think this circuitous trail was hollowed here by a man both blind and drunk-and led by a lazy serpent!
He knew otherwise. The passageway was of course an ancient escape-route, its turnings designed to baffle and slow pursuit. Cormac was slowed, right enough, though he refused to be baffled. Then the dusty floor beneath his feet changed, and he nearly fell headlong.
The shaft angled downward, a sloping ramp that dipped steadily, rather than stairs, Shield and sword ready, Cormac mac Art descended.
And descended.
His feet scuffed through dust so that he blew through his nostrils like a tracking hound, to clear them. Already he was sure that he was below the level of the palace entry, which was on a level with the valley’s floor. A way to the sea? Probably. He tried, with care, to speed his steps. The darkness absolutely forbade running.
Down and down he went the further. The passage turned now and again, but twice after sufficient distance to enable him to see the flicker of his quarry’s torch, well ahead. The pursuer dared not race after it; while Cutha Atheldane’s glim would show him any traps this dusty floor might hold, Cormac was in darkness, and forced to a warily slow pace.
Dust lay instep deep on this downward angling floor, where no feet had trod for uncounted centuries. With his shield out to warn him of another blank wall and his sword close to his hip, ready to drive forward in a skewering thrust if he came upon lurking ambush, Cormac descended the somber trail into the earth. Now and again the floor leveled for a space, then angled down once more. All was silence; he heard only the susurrant hissing of his feet through dust older than time.
Samaire!
Gods of Eirrin, he’d not set eyes on her for a half-score and two years, long years of blood-splashed exile! Another time rose up in his mind…
The young Cormac had been a sturdy boy, and that and his auspicious name attracted him notice. Too much notice: High-king Lugaid was a fearful man whose ancient crown rested shakily on his head. And so time came when Cormac’s father was mysteriously slain. Nor did Cormac mac Art tarry for blood-feud, even in his own land of Connacht!
Large for his age, well trained at arms and in letters as well by the old Druid Sualtim, Cormac vanished from his homeland.
None knew him or his true age, when he took warrior-service in Leinster, using the name Partha mac Othna of Ulahd. He was too young in years even for that, but a good and sturdy soldier was Partha, who kept his counsel as a “man” apart. Soon he had a secret friend who was then a lover: the king of Leinster’s own daughter Samaire, but a year younger than himself. Forfeit would have been his head, had His Majesty known of Cormac/Partha’s off duty activities!
Came the day when the young weapon-man well represented Leinster in the fighting over Tara’s collection-with the sword, as usual-of the hated Boru Tribute. The aged High-king in Tara soon knew that the hero was Partha mac Othna, a warrior so accomplished that some compared him with the legendary hero Cuchulain of old. And then the High-king learned the real name of that Partha. His gold it was that brought to an end that era of Cormac’s life, at the Great Fair when he was deliberately goaded into slaying. After that his choice was simple: flight or death.
Cormac mac Art fled Eirrin.
Samaire of Leinster had wept, and assured him that she love
d him…
Samaire!
What strange whim of the capricious gods of old Eirrin sent her now into his life, after so many years, and her as Viking captive and central in some Druidic plot to gain… whatever ends it was Cutha Atheldane hoped to gain, by seeing her wed to a Norseman.
She did not even recognize me, Cormac thought, and blundered into a wall, which meant another turning.
Cursing the wall and himself equally, he turned, and four paces after he made the usual second turn.
Then his pursuit down that dim corridor beneath the earth was arrested by a vision, and he stared in astonishment.
Before him stood a woman, beautiful, and she having the appearance of a queen. Yellow plaited hair like new quern she had, and folds of fine silk, purple and silver, draped soft skin white as the foam of a seaborne wave. A cloak of gold-worked green silk swung from her shoulder, and sandals of white bronze protected her feet from the tunnel’s dusty floor.
Cormac stared. The sword was forgotten in his hand.
“All good be with you, warrior of Eirrin.”
Her softly spoken words roused him-partially. Though his heart raced and his temples pounded, he made sure he’d got a good grip on his sword. “How… came you here?”
Her pleasant expression did not change. “I swear by the gods my people swear by, O warrior, that ahead lie Midir and his son the man you seek, Cutha Atheldane, and with him three times fifty men, and the victory will be with them. Pursue and it’s your own father you’ll be seeing this night, and him in the other world.”
Cormac drew breath. “Who are you, who tells me of that yet to come?”
“One who wishes only good, and no burial-keening, to so noble a warrior of Eirrin born!”
“Swear it then-on my sword!”
But the queenly vision shook her head, and smiled. She stretched forth her snowy arms through the folds of her gown. “I will not, but beg you to put it from you, handsome warrior, and tarry here with me in activity less warlike.”
“Two things I know,” Cormac bit out through clenched teeth. “That I am not handsome, and that Druid-sent demons cannot abide iron! Be ye shade of the Sidhe, or demon of the Northlands, or yet again this Cutha Atheldane in a new guise, you’re no woman born of woman, and it’s the colour of your blood I’d be seeing!”
Lunging forward with the swiftness of those things called serpents he had first seen in Britain, Cormac plunged his long sword between the breasts of the most beautiful woman he had ever beheld.
But he did not see the colour of her blood, for she vanished on the instant. Nor was the dust disturbed, where she had stood.
Blinking and shaking his head violently to clear it of the Druid-sent vision of temptation, Cormac went on. Ancient dust puffed up about his feet. Along that thrice-old corridor he went, on silent feet, with good steel ready in his fist and his ears sharp as five senses for the sound of his quarry. Around a bend in that dim tunnel he moved, close to the, far wall-and he brought up short.
A trio of war-girt men blocked his way, staring at him from feral eyes. Their knuckles were pale as they gripped the pommels of their naked swords.
Cormac gazed at them and they stared. Then did his brows rise, and he felt the prickling of his skin. These men who barred his way where the floor’s dust was disturbed only by the footsteps of Cutha Atheldane and his captive… he knew them!
The big one with the blond beard and evil eyes and horn-sprouting helm-it was Sigrel of the Norsemen. He it was who had recognized the son of Art and called down attack on him, months ago in Alban Dalriada. And that one-he was Arslaf Jarl’s-bane with his broken nose,’ follower of Thorwald Shield-hewer of little Golara… and that other, the Pict…
Cormac knew them all. His sweeping sword had parted Sigrel’s head from his shoulders, and that a year ago; and into Arslaf’s throat had bloodily plunged Cormac’s point but a few months gone, to send the man to his people’s Valhalla; as for the short, dark Pict, Cormac knew not his name but recognized the stocky man by the Roman belt he wore-and had worn nigh two years ago, when Cormac had sliced away his sword-hand and sundered the Pict’s heart with his dagger.
They… are all dead! These be dead men, to have their second chance with me!
Cormac’s skin prickled anew, and his black mane stirred as his nape writhed; for a moment his bones sought to become unbaked dough. But he shook it off with a jerk of his head and a hunch and twist of his shoulders. Up came his sword.
“Ha, Sigrel! Long since we met, son of a wanderlust mother, and how is it you have set your head again on your craven shoulders?”
Sigrel did not answer the challenge with words, but laughed hollowly-and rushed the Gael, sword swinging aloft.
Rather than stand his ground to await that ferocious charge, Cormac rushed forward to meet it. His sword he held extended, rather than broad-cutting. Its point plunged, with a grating of its flat on the buckle of the man’s broad belt, into Sigrel’s belly. At the same moment Cormac’s left hand rushed up. The edge of his shield caught the other man’s swift-descending wrist with bone-cracking impact.
With his sword wrist broken and more than a hand’s length of steel in his belly, Sigrel was brought to a halt. But again he vented that hollow laugh that sounded as though it came from the pits of the Hel of his people.
It did, Cormac realized, and he knew then that the purpose of the woman had been to slow him; so too, was the attack of these three. For they were all dead men, and what he saw were only Cutha Atheldane’s illusions, sent to terrify or, failing that, to slow his pursuer.
Cormac laughed. “Och! Get hence and back to the land of eternal shade, all of ye-I have business beyond you!” And he charged, to and through and past them.
Nor did he glance back to see them vanish.
Dust flew and the slap of his footsteps resounded from those walls hewn from stone time out of mind, as he raced down that dreary hallway. Whence came its twilight he did not know. Nor did the insouciant Gael question that there was light, however dim. He knew the power of the Druids, and he was no sneering “civilized” Roman to scoff at the preternatural. He knew of its existence.
Where was mighty Rome now, but beneath the heels that followed those of its Gothic sacker, Alaric?
The appearance of the huge green serpent slowed him, even brought him up short. But it struck no terror to his heart, though its size was prodigious. Its jaws, when it opened them to emit a hiss that was like that of a green log on a hot fire, gaped wide enough to encompass his head. Far behind, its tail twitched.
“By the blood of the gods! Another one!”
It angered the Gael that he felt sweat in his palm, and he flipped his sword to his shield-hand. Wiping his right hand on his trews, he returned the gaze of eyes that were black slits set vertically in gleaming pupils like new flax.
“So now it’s a serpent the length of three Cormacs and thick as his arm, is it!” he called, and the sound of his voice was good. Sweat and gooseflesh evaporated together. “Well, shade-creature, illusion born… get hence! It’s your master I’ve business with!”
The snake was ahead and leftward. Cormac strode forward, breaking into a run, past the outsized reptile on its right.
Thus did Cormac lose his iron-bossed shield, and very nearly the arm that held it.
As it was, that arm was wrenched and sore-bruised. It jerked up with the automatic response of a fighting man, when the serpent moved. It lunged at him, a streak of sleek seagreen hide. The whipping, whirling loop of its body it threw to envelop the man slammed against his interposed shield, and with more force than a man-swung ax.
The shield was ruined, badly bent. Its owner was hurled against a wall of earth hardened by centuries to the consistency of stone. His shield-strap had badly gouged his arm, which quivered violently and sent pain-messages on crimson trails to his brain.
Another message, too, his brain registered: this time his foe was no illusion!
A second sweeping loop of that very re
al attacker’s body came flipping sinuously at him, with rushing speed. Wallowing in the floor’s dust against the wall, Cormac again whipped up his shield. A groan was torn from his throat as the stout buckler was wrested from him-and the leathern strap tried to slice through his arm. Then the leather gave, and tore. The shield went flying with a clatter.
An instant later, Cormac’s sword-arm was pressed close to his body by a tubular coil of reptilian muscle that looped around arm and chest. The coil was thick as the man’s upper arm, and just as powerfully muscled. But it was prehensile as well, a great curling crushing rope of flexible steel. It tightened. Another loop took his right leg when he tried to kick. It tightened.
Just as the woman-illusion had said, Art of Connacht was about to be joined by his son Cormac in the afterworld-and that but seconds hence..
There was no time for thinking. It was warrior’s reflexes that forced Cormac’s lungs full of air and expanded his chest many inches; that strained his right arm away from his body with all his might-though it moved not a centimeter; that sent his left hand rushing to his hip. There hung his dagger, a seax-knife he had of a dead Saxon.
In less than a half-minute, the desperate man drove his dagger seventeen times into the column of muscle that was the serpent’s body. Its blood spurted over him, and it was cold to his skin. Since the days of the serpent-men that preceded Kull’s reign over Atlantis and sought his red death, the warm-blooded rulers of the earth had abhorred snakes and all their ilk. No exception were the men of Eirrin, where no serpent had ever wriggled. Cormac’s shudder was completely involuntary, an ancient atavistic reaction. He stabbed.
The tightening coils forcing his arm into his body and the air from his lungs, Cormac mac Art began to die.
Even then, weirdly, he wondered why the sons of men ever said that one attacked or slew or died in cold blood. For only here, in this abhorrent thing that had owned the earth before was spawned the race of man, only in its monster body did the blood run ever cold.
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