“A pool of black water,” Samaire said. “I cannot think of anything less appetizing or romantic but everything is pretty today, Cormac, and romantic as well.”
He looked at her. Their arms moved as of one accord; they united their lips again. His heartbeat had quickened when she drew back and suggested a taste of ale.
“I like better what I was just drinking,” he said, and slid a tugging hand onto her waist.
“And is it honeymooners ye think we are, or an iron man yourself? It’s been but a little while-” She broke off, and her face clouded at his look. “No no, my dairlin boy, we’ve time, there’s all the night. Nor will I ever be able to say no to you.”
He smiled, raking her eyes with his gaze, and nodded abruptly: there, then. He opened the sack of leather. Starting to drink, he remembered, and passed it to her. It was long and long he had been out of the company of woman, and of gentlewomen even longer.
She drank, jerked the sack down, spluttering a little.
“Oh Cormac! Wulfhere would hurl you into the Black Pit here, and I’m a mind to, myself!”
Frowning, he took the sloshing sack from her. It was one of those they had filled with water. Cormac fell back, laughing. After a moment she was up on her knees and bending over him, her hands on his throat and pretending to squeeze, while he rolled his eyes and made the proper gagging noises.
It was thus he saw the waving eyeless serpent rise from out of the pit behind her, and swing blindly about until it found her.
Samaire screamed. At its first touch, the eyeless, mouthless snake, a cable the thickness of her wrist and with no end in sight, seemed to lengthen as if by magic. It whipped around her upper body, sliding naturally up toward her throat.
On his back, Cormac sent his two hands leaping up to grasp and pull at the boneless arm that threatened both to strangle her and drag her into its wet black lair. He could not break its hold, and he saw her eyes start to widen as the fleshy cable tightened-and pulled. With one hand Samaire tugged desperately at the thing threatening her life; with the other she flailed until her fingers hooked blindly in Cormac’s belt. With no thought of what she was doing, she clung.
Cormac grasped her wrist, pulled her fingers loose. Holding her wrist tightly, he rolled onto his side and dragged out his sword. He looked up, seeking the place to strike-without striking her.
Her green eyes were huge and her face had gone scarlet. “C-o-r-mmm…” But Samaire could not even get out the rest of his name.
She went over backward. Cormac, clinging almost in panic to her wrist, was pulled up to his knees. He saw what he must do, and that swiftly. Up swept the sword, to rush down in a flash of silver. In one chop Cormac cut all the way through the eyeless serpent, so that his blade struck sparks from the rock edge of that pool of horror. The severed portion whipped back into the pool as blood gouted up his arm. Released, Samaire fell forward. Cormac, still holding her arm, was pulled down with her.
Now he could force the coil from her neck. She gasped, sobbing and sucking air desperately. Cormac, meanwhile, stared in horror at the puckered red marks all about the loveliness of her throat. He looked at the rubbery thing in his hand. Its underside was equipped with suckers! What sort of impossible, eyeless and sucker-equipped snake had they come upon, that it could-
Three more of the fleshy, cold cables came whipping, raking the air, up over the edge of the pool. One found him, and he battered at it, but had to pull his blow lest he shear into his own leg. Another touched Samaire’s leg, and she shrieked in -horror when it whipped about it.
Samaire was once again in the cold clutch of a blindly seeking horror-that immediately slapped down with another serpent-like length, and began to pull and tug at her.
Fighting with the muscles of his leg against the powerful rope of muscle enwrapping it, Cormac struck and had to swerve his blade, desperately, as the girl was drawn a foot backward and he came near to swording her. He and the monster pulling at his leg were of a mind, and his movement to pit’s edge was simple. There he aimed another chop. Pulled off-balance, he saw his sword slide harmlessly along the ropy, writhing thing. The blade pushed a little rumple of scaly skin along it as though he were carefully cleaning a fish.
Then, with a shriek of terror, Samaire was tugged over the lip of that natural well. A splash, and she vanished from sight beneath dark waters that Cormac was sure had gone even darker since the attack.
“SAMAIRE!”
His rushing sword cleared his leg and left another writhing piece of serpentine horror flopping. It wriggled, as if alive even while cleft in twain. Dropping his sword and drawing his dagger, Cormac took a great breath and dropped feet first into the pit. If there was anything at all for him to be glad of, it was that he wore no armour.
He sank like a stone, nevertheless.
Dark streamers swirled about him, and surely it was not water but some black ichor from the monsters that made their home in this hell-pit. The water-or that strange inky stuff-stung his eyes. He forced them to remain open. A serpentine length brushed him; he ran his dagger into it and jerked it out in the strange water-slowed motion he had experienced before. The stabbed serpent leaked its juices and writhed in pain. The man’s feet kicked desperately. He twisted about in the liquid murk. His flailing hand slipped through water, touched something cold and slippery-and came into contact with cloth.
Reflexively Cormac caught at it, felt the trembling warmth of Samaire’s flesh beneath. His moving fingers touched the cold-blooded cable of living flesh that enwrapped the leg he gripped, and he set the edge of his dagger to it. As if slicing overdone bread, he sawed.
The woman was madly jerking as her captor sought to escape its torment. Blood darkened the water all around Cormac’s wrist. Then the dagger had sawed through, and a flopping dead thing that refused to die jerked and twitched over his arm. Kicking water, he jerked back his blade. His eyes were huge; his hair streamed upward as he began to feel the pressure within his chest. He knew that Samaire’s lungs were in even worse straits, and that she was brief seconds from the awful death of filling her lungs with salt water.
He could see only for a few inches in the horrid murk, deepened by the swirling ink and the blood of the monster. There could be no hacking and slicing, then; the danger was too great of daggering the woman. No, he had to find another of those serpentine ropes with his hand, then set the dagger to it…
Samaire’s body brushed his, moving upward, and Cormac gave her a mighty shove. Up went the woman to the sweet air, and the man hoped it was not too late. The creatures of the dark, pool had realized she was not the source of the sharp-edge attack, Cormac knew, and had released her.
Now they would concentrate on him, not a helpless piece of prey but a dangerous enemy.
Cormac slashed at a grasping cable of muscle. It snapped away, and he kicked hard. Straight up he shot, and he emptied his lungs even before his head broke water. He gulped in another breath and expelled it, seeing that Samaire was alive, coughing and spluttering, her hair straggling and stained. But she was alive. He drew breath again-and was grasped and yanked violently beneath the surface.
Flailing now, for there was none in the dark waters of this monster-haunted pit but himself and the serpents, Cormac mac Art shot downward.
It was then he saw that it was not suction-bellied serpents he fought, but a creature with serpents for arms. Dark it was, and its body was a truncated oval, sprouting those waving arms-and the stubs of those he had slashed away. Through the inky swirls he saw its eyes like huge plates, fixed maliciously on him, and its mouth. More strangeness, for it was the beak of a bird of prey, and like no water creature he had ever seen!
Eight-arm, he thought as he stabbed and kicked and struck, for he had heard tales of those monsters of the deepest waters, though never had he seen one. Until now, and his dagger raked across one bright malignant eye.
The creature went wild in agony and fear. Stumps and tentacles waved and jerked like hawsers in a hurricane.
Cormac was struck, dashed back against the rocky side of the cylindrical pool. He struck back. Again blood spurted from a sliced tentacle. Suddenly, from less than a foot’s distance, he was staring straight into the horrible eye of the monster from a god’s nightmare. He saw the dreadful beak open, as cold, sucker-equipped arms slithered over him.
The desperate Gael drove his dagger straight into the hideous eye until the hilt brought up against cold flesh. Then, grasping a tentacle near its root, he twisted his dagger.
The pool erupted into a maelstrom of convulsive movements. Again Cormac was slammed away. A cable-like arm snapped around his arm, gripped it, whipped away. Another lashed his belly like a thick whip. A third grasped his leg, and held. He was dragged down by the desperately writhing, flailing creature that was surely in the throes of death.
His chest ached and his eyes stung. But the desperate man doubled himself in the water, and seized on the tentacle that held him, and set the Saxon dagger to it. It whipped away before it was severed. Cormac lashed at the water with both arms and both powerfully muscled legs, and shot straight up like a bow-launched arrow.
Again his head splashed free of the water of death, and this time he remained unthreatened. Treading water, he tried to spring upward the few feet necessary to grasp the edge of the well-like hole, for there was no handhold on its smooth walls.
“Cormac! Oh Cormac!”
Good, he thought; an she can cry out like that, it’s all right the darling girl is!
His hand encountered something cold and slippery, and with a curse he grasped that severed chunk of tentacle and hurled it up over the lip of the pool.
“Ho! What’s this, greeting us first with a scream and now missiles, is it?”
That was Wulfhere’s voice; he knew when to joke, when a man was alive and valorously fighting to remain so. Hardly so accustomed to horror and battle as to make such instant judgments, Ceann shouted his sister’s name in a voice that was more than alarmed.
Then their two heads were between Cormac and the sky. Ceann and Wulfhere gazed down at him and Samaire.
“I fare well,” Samaire said, before her brother could ask.
Obviously Cormac was too, and Wulfhere shook his head lugubriously. “When ye’ve a mind for a swim, old friend, why not make certain ye can come ashore again before you go plunging in?”
“Wulfhere, I am going to add your severed tongue to that monster’s arm I threw forth-but it’s slowly I’ll be slicing it off ye!”
Wulfhere affected to look extremely shocked. “In that event I’d be a fool to aid ye!” he said, and pushed a huge hand down to Samaire.
She put up her own, which was swallowed in a paw with fingers like ropes of steel. With one hand, and that not with a jerk, the Dane drew her up and out of the pool.
“Why, it’s an octopus ye’ve found,” Wulfhere called down. “Oh Cormac-have ye any idea what marvelous eating they are, man? Here, if you be unharmed and unattacked, then ye’ve killed him-do you dive down and bring him up to us, there’s a good Cormac!”
“Ceann-it’s your hand I’d appreciate the loan of,” Cormac said.
A minute later he was out of the monster’s lair and on rocky land that felt very warm, and more than passing good to the soaked mac Art.
“It’s possible we could make a meal off these,” Wulfhere said conversationally, as though his friend was not spattered with gore and the creature’s black ink of defense, and gasping as well. “But methinks they might be a bit muscular and stringy-”
“Wouldn’t ye consent to go back for it, Cormac? How deep is this black pool of brack, anyhow?”
“Tell me,” Cormac said, swinging both feet against Wulfhere’s legs, “when you come up with our supper.”
With a great splash, the Skull-splitter went flailing into the pool.
Ceann looked horrified, as indeed he had all along, despite the obvious safety of his sister and friend. It was Wulfhere’s attitude had so dismayed this young king’s son; he had participated in little violence and never known the jocular camaraderie of those who’ve faced death together many times.
But Samaire laughed, and once Wulfhere came up spluttering and began launching a volley of highly imaginative curses at them, Ceann Ruadh, too, smiled.
Then Wulfhere dived. Nor did he emerge without the dead beast with its dragging tentacles and stubs. They soon discovered its great weight, once they tried to pull and push it out of buoyant water. With much grumbling, Cormac at last returned to the pool, wherein he and Wulfhere carved up the slain monster and passed up to the others what the Dane insisted on calling steaks.
The creature had been in its deep rocky lair, they decided, when this island had broken loose and been pushed to the surface. As they had surmised, the land on which they stood had not been long above the water. But how had it survived?
“Mayhap there were fish and the like in the, uh, well with it,” Ceann offered, “and they came up along with the beast.”
“Possibly a few,” Wulfhere said, shaking his head. “But we all noted that while Cormac could remember having severed three of its tentacles, the creature had three remaining; two others were missing, and the wounds hardly fresh. My mother’s cousin once had one of these man-arms, which her husband Ivarr brought her. Even though she fed it well-on shellfish, in the main-it ate off three of its own tentacles in less than a year.”
“Poor beast,” Samaire murmured, looking down at the hacked-off pieces of the monster that had sought to make a meal of her. “To exist, it ate of itself-and now we’ve blundered upon it and here it lies, all its efforts for nought.”
“And that’s your feeling, daughter of an addle-pated chicken, it’s leaving ye I’ll be doing next time, and not wetting myself in your rescue.”
She looked at Cormac with a stricken expression, but he was smiling.
It was then that Ceann Ruadh remembered, and pointed out that they had no wood with which to make a fire for the creature’s cooking.
And it was then that Cormac mac Art shoved Wulfhere Skullsplitter back into the pool.
Chapter Nine: The Emerald Isle
O land of my birth, what a pride, what a
pleasure
To plow the blue sea!
The waves of the fountain of deluge to measure,
Dear Eirrin, to thee.
– Ceann Ruadh, the “Minstrel-king” (from Voyage of the Exiles)
It had been many days since Samaire of Leinster had been kidnapped off her own coast, and that in riding togs. A strip of green ribbon from the Vikings’ spoils held her hair back and was laced among the red-orange tresses. But there had been no other makeup available.
Both the men and the women of Eirrin wore their hair long, and both wore jewelry. Brooches held the clothing together; torcs of gold or silver decorated the neck, seeming to writhe about it. Both sexes spent much time on their hair, braiding, creating spiral curls, in the case of the women, that dangled profusely-or binding up the hair, to be held in place and decorated by gold rings and pins. Women of more leisure buffed their nails and frequently dyed them crimson, while occasionally using dyes of this and that vegetable base to tint their faces. Eyebrows were nearly always dyed black with berry juices, whether the woman was blond or redhead or brunette.
Though they had no octopus “steaks,” Samaire did make use of the inky stuff the creature exuded in its alarm: she darkened her brows. And was advised by two of her companions that she gave off the odour of fish. (Wulfhere’s unexpected and heretofore unknown galantry forbade him to make mention of the fact.)
With sea water, Samaire washed away the sea-creature’s ink-and then scratched, again and again, at salt-encrusted brows…
With good winds their longboat skudded over the dark blue waters, ever north and westward. And Ceann played and muttered, and sang.
Days straggled past, and islands.
“That,” Wulfhere said, “is the Sea of Eirrin-and that Britain.” He pointed to a misty coastland to northward.
Nor did Wulfhere bring the ship half about, to glide up the waterway that separated the islands of what the Romans called Brittania and Hibernia or Ivernia. Ceann asked, and they conferred.
“We are no force to be inviting a fight,” Wulfhere said. “The Sea of Eirrin is seldom empty of renegades from both lands, as well as my own countrymen, and Norsemen on the Viking path… and Picts, and occasional Jutes and Saxons as well.”
Gazing green-eyed at him, Samaire heard and felt that half the world must be conspiring to prevent their return to their own land.
“An we did sail on up, in hopes of avoiding all those and finding safe landing on the Coast of Meath,” Cormac said, “It’s your own dairlin’ Leinster ye’d be passing, and her great port of Atha Cliath, which some call Dubh-linn: Dark Pool, Wulfhere. For us, it might as well prove to be the latter!”
Ceann sighed, glancing wistfully over his shoulder at the way they would not take. “Aye… and it’s no friendly reception we’d be getting in our own land, now! But… where, then?”
“The coast of Munster, I’m thinking, near Cobh. Well above the Isle of Cat, but… a safe ninety or so miles below Carman of Leinster. Thence to Cashel, I’m thinking, and up into Meath between Leinster and Connacht-where I might well be welcome… and might not.”
“Up the Shannon,” Cormac told her, “but inland from its east bank, aye.”
The young woman heaved a great sigh. “All this time and now this terror-fraught long voyage… and then it’s days and days overland we must make our way. I despair of seeing Tara…” Up came her sun-glinting hair and dimpled chin. “Amend that! I’ll never despair, until the black of death closes over these eyes!”
“That’s a dairlin girl,” Ceann said, appropriating the words he’d heard Cormac apply to his sister so frequently these past few days.
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