The Mists of Doom cma-1

by Andrew J Offutt

  “Eoghan! Cormac called again, and he had a vision of a good young weapon-man no longer able to follow his trade because of a crippled sword arm, and Cormac forgot all. His blade streaked from his scabbard.

  He did not hear the sudden new shouts from the crowd; a battle was being fought with real steel; blood dyed a sleeve of Leinsterish blue-and Meathish earth! Now others turned. They saw the darker man in the blue shirt strike, saw the Meathman catch the blow on his own blade with a ringing grating scream of steel on steel, and they saw Cormac’s sword slide down that other blade and drive four inches of its blade into the Meathman’s chest.

  Onlookers were horrified; moreso Cormac mac Art, for now his full senses returned. He knew from the man’s wound and his face that he’d not live to see another dawn, if indeed he survived to sunset. Cormac knew that he had slain, though he’d had no such intention.

  “I broke the King’s Peace at Fair-time, Samaire! I slew a man! Witnesses there were aplenty; I’m a dead man!”

  She hugged him, pressing hard. “Oh Partha! Oh Crom preserve and Behl protect! Partha…” She was sobbing, heedlessly crushing herself against steel mail.

  “I’d be dead already,” he said wonderingly, for he could hardly believe it had happened yet, days later, nor was he yet able to assimilate it. “But all were as frozen in horror-myself included. What I did does not happen. The law is ancient, and clear: the punishment is death. I’d not be here,” he said, looking about the inn room with eyes that scarcely saw, “but for the fact that all were bemazed, rooted. Then the King’s Watch came bustling through the crowd. And I came awake-and fled. My companions accidentally got in the way of those Meathmen. I came upon a horse. I took it, and rode. I think I did not even slow until I realized I was entering Atha Cliath. Gods, gods! Blood of the gods; I know not even the name of the boy who bore my message to you when I learned your father’s party had stopped here on the way home.”

  “Nor I,” she said squeezing him, “but he’s a circle of silver the richer-Partha! Cormac! We must flee.”

  “Flee? But-”

  She thrust herself back to look into his face, though her hands clung to him still. “Oh dairlin, “dairlin boy! Would ye remain and be slain? Think, my love. The Meathman… he provoked you deliberately. He had no fear on him, of the Law. How is that possible?”

  “I have thought of that. He was assured of pardon, of impunity… and only the High-king himself could have assured him of such safety.”

  “Falsely?”

  He looked down into her green, green eyes. “What?”

  “Oh Partha… Cormac! Don’t you see? The High-king did indeed assure him he’d be pardoned, or somehow taken care of. He wanted swords drawn. He had been well worked up over his captain, the one you tricked that night you gained back the Boruma. But-think! The High-king knows your prowess! My father knows your prowess. They knew you’d do death on their man!”

  “It… must be. Aye…”

  “We must flee, my love. We must.”

  No way now for me to receive any sort of hearing, fair or otherwise, before the Assembly of Kings; it’s a wanted, hunted fugitive I am! She’s right; it’s stay and die, or flee! Gods! Flee! First an exile from Connacht… but… leave Eirrin?

  His voice caught when he said, “Not we, Samaire. I. It’s I must flee.”

  “No! No-oo,” she cried, moaning the word. “Not without me!”

  Was then the knock came, on the door of that inn of Baile Atha Cliath, and when she asked fearfully who was there, a familiar voice replied. “Your brother.”

  They admitted Ceann-in his patched cloak and a great red mustache. He thrust a bundle at her.

  “Samaire: Change clothes at once. At once! Partha: ye must decide. Stay and die, or-”

  “We have just said it, Ceann. I… I will… go.” The words were far from easily said; they were nigh as hideous as death itself.

  “Then it must be immediately,” Ceann snapped. “My father knows of this meeting; he’s had you watched, Samaire. Even now he sends Bress, with a warrant for you, Partha. Resist and be slain on the spot. Neither king nor High-king cares.”

  “Nor Bress.”

  “He goes. We go! I will flee with him, Ceann. I love him! We-”

  Her brother wheeled on her. “Think, sister! Think! An he flees successfully, evades the men seeking him, will be because the gods smile and he be no fool. But if you go with him-gods of our ancestors, Samaire! Be not foolish! Our father will search the world over for you both! All Leinster will join the search for the man who carried off the king’s daughter!”

  She protested, weeping, even while she changed without shame into the peasantish cloth Ceann had brought. And Ceann railed at her. The while, he too was stripping. He took up a shirt and leggings, donned them; was the sleeved blue tunic of a weapon-man. Cormac joined his efforts to make her see reason and sense, though he himself was close onto tears. I love her! I am talking her out of going with me-never to see her again!

  Prince Ceann gathered her jewels, every smallest bauble including the pearl-encrusted comb. These he placed in the russet shirt he’d worn, and folded it with care over them, and used his cloak to make a bundle of it. His gaze met Cormac’s; he pressed the valuable bundle into his hands.

  “Behl smile and ever shine his light on you, Partha mac Othna. And Crom protect ye, weapon-man; for ye have enemies so powerful a prince shivers to think on’t.”

  And Ceann whirled, and snatched his sister’s hand, and practically dragged her from the room. Nor did her wailing cease as he hurried her away.

  Cormac stood staring at the door, holding a ragtag disguise… and the jewels of a princess whose father righteously-and in truth, rightfully-desired his death. And Cormac felt as if he’d swallowed a heavy stone-two, for one was lodged in his throat.

  Samaire…

  Minutes passed ere he jerked, and blinked, and began again to see with staring eyes. He set his brain to work constructively. Known here, he’d betake himself elsewhere before he changed into the beggarish clothing Ceann had brought. He wrapped the little package still again in his military dress cloak of speedwell blue. He made it fast to his belt back of his left hip, behind the scabbard in which rested his accursed sword. He had no buckler; that he’d left behind in Tara. Without even glancing around at that room of sorrow, he swung to the door.

  He barely avoided being bashed and swept back by it, when the door was hurled inward.

  “Partha mac Othna: It’s the, king’s own warrant we bear, for your arrest.”

  “Och, Bress,” Cormac said so terribly quietly, “never have I seen ye in such good cheer.”

  Beside Bress mac Keth in the hall stood two others. Weapon-men all, in the familiar colour and leathern corselets of Leinster; swords by sides and shields on arms. The three stared at the fugitive. Then Bress reached across his midsection and drew his sword.

  The Meathman was an accident, Cormac thought. But-as well flee or be slain for a boar as for a squealing shoat! This one I’ll enjoy doing to death. And he reached for his own hilt.

  The man on Bress’s left started forward, stumbled-into Bress. As they scrambled, the fellow seeming all disjointed legs and arms and Bress cursing, the other weapon-man winked at Cormac. Nor did he or his companion draw steel. Indeed, in the staggering flailing entanglement with Bress, that man’s shield miraculously slid off his arm.

  Cormac let his sword be. He’d slain but one son of Eirrin, and he by accident; he’d redden his blade no more in this his own land. In a long stride he stepped forward and all in a rush clamped Bress’s right wrist in his hand and drove his other fist into Bress’s face, just at the left eye. Bress staggered; his fingers came open and his falling sword nearly impaled his own foot. With care, Cormac struck him again, in the mouth. His knuckles came away pained and as bloody as the mouth of Bress, who sagged and fell unconscious.

  “Blood of the gods, but that felt good!”

  Cormac spun back into the room, fist dripping, h
oping he judged the two men aright. He upended the heavy oaken table; gestured. Two grinning weapon-men hurriedly lay down on the floor. Cormac paused to bid them draw their swords. They did, and he laid the upended table on them.

  “In no more than minutes, one of them gasped, “the ship of Calba sails from Atha Cliath Harbour.”

  Cormac mac Art took up the dropped shield and Bress’s sword, and fled.

  From the deck of a wallowing merchant ship, bound north to Alba, a tall youth gazed on the land that slid by to port. A tattered, patched cloak covered him to the eyebrows and he held it from within against the wind that drove the merchanter past Eirrin and onto Magh Rian. Fog clung to the shoreline, and then they were past it and Eirrin fell mistily behind. He turned in order to keep his gaze fixed on that misty emerald land. Already it was becoming but a whitish outline.

  Full of sorrow and bitterness, the youth stared back at his beloved land. Under his peasantish attire he wore a king’s golden torc.

  My voyage of exile. First from Connacht I fled, from home and hearth and those I knew. And now from Leinster… from all Eirrin. Long have I heard that the worst punishment for a Gael is exile from the land of the Gaels. We have roots, Sualtim said, like trees, and it’s far down in the earth of Eirrin they are locked. Soon will I know. Now it is horror and pain; will it grow worse? Bereft of home and friends and woman, never to hold her in these arms again, gods, never even to see her! Will it grow worse? Can it? Will I come to wish I had stayed and died, at least to lie within the soil that holds my roots?

  The tall cloakbound youth swallowed, hard; swallowed again. The sword he had carried aboard was with the ship’s sailing master. He’d gain it back soon enow, were there trouble on this northward voyage, along with the fine mailcoat that had made the man’s eyes go wide. Valuable accoutrements those, to be handed him by a man in a ragged cloak bearing patches, but he had said nothing, with a princess’s garnet-set silver bracelet in his hand.

  Now from within his cloak his last-minute passenger drew, surreptitiously, another sword. The sword that had been his father’s. He clutched it, gazed upon it, felt out the familiar design of the hilt, the bear’s head that topped it. He thought of how it had served his father, and then himself, of the Picts it had slain; in vengeance, in protection of Connacht, of Leinster, of Eirrin.

  He raised his eyes. He saw the fog close over that land. But a single shadowy mountain peak remained visible, weirdly standing like a ghostly sentinel atop the grey-white bank of fog that was like a cloud come down to earth, to hide Eirrin from his last gaze upon it.

  Then he swept his arm out in a backhand stroke, and let go the hilt. His father’s sword sailed out over the Plain of the Sea, that northward sea separating the land of the Scoti from the isle his feet would never again tread. And with scarcely a splash, the sword vanished into the water.

  “Holy Mary,” a voice said beside him, “was that a sword ye hurled into the sea?”

  Staring, and deep within the black cloud of his thoughts, the youth reacted with a jerk. He looked at the man who’d come up so silently. Was the ship’s sailing master. He returned his sad-eyed gaze to the sea.

  “Aye.”

  The sailor of twoscore years or so studied him with eyes set deep in the crags of a face etched by sea and sun and brine-spray, and he seemed to study the youth, to seek a view of his soul.

  “I accepted your sword and that fine mailcoat when ye came aboard, along with that fine bracelet that more than pays your passage. No thought was on me of checking ye for more weapons!”

  “I have none other now, only my dagger.”

  “Pisht: an eating utensil. But… by the Sacred Heart itself, man, why smuggle aboard a sword only to hurl it into the sea?”

  The youth stared at the water flowing behind the ship, lapping. “In my hand it took the life of a man, a poor foolish man of Eirrin who was only the dupe of another and should not have died. Was my father’s sword. He was a good man. I’ll not carry it the more, lest I dishonour it again.”

  “Ah.” The sailing master, too, gazed only at their wake. “A young man of much honour, then. And a brain as well-and prowess. Was it of Ulster your father was?”

  “Na. Of Connacht.”

  “Ah. Connacht. Aye. Connacht… they talk in Connacht of a young man, vanished. Presumed slain by the slayer of his father. A great slayer of Picts the lad was, and one destined for great deeds and fame, even as Cuchulain of old.”

  Cuchulain? The Grey of Macha reared… “Patience, my king,” Tu said… “So you’re a man of deeds, Cimmerian, “ Yezdigerd said, and on his head a crown…

  The youth jerked his head as though to clear it of fog. “Cuchulain died young.”

  “Aye. So I am sure did this young man of whom I speak. A pity. A great pity. There’s another young hero of Eirrin came to an early end, too. One whose deeds made me shed tears, they did. I am of Leinster; Athaircthech, over near Osraige. Was this young hero brought great honour on Leinster, and her king. He outwitted the minions of Tara and took back all the Boru tribute! A great deed! A great hero. Made me shed tears, he did, of joy and pride. He restored Leinster’s honour.”

  “Honour is not worth the pain it puts on a man, Captain.”

  “Methinks ye be wrong in your youth, weapon-man in your beggar’s cloak. Sometimes were dishonour on an entire people, an entire land, for a man to be slain by it. And him a hero, ye see. No, were truly he a man of honour, he’d relieve Eirrin of that burden of dishonour; he’d not let our Eirrin dishonour herself by doing death on him, but sail away under a cloak of disguise. That were honour. The sort of honour that prompts a Gael to break or hurl away a weapon that had slain a countryman.”

  The two men stared in silence at the sea. The sailing master spoke.

  “Were honour, too, for a man who felt gratitude for a deed done for his realm-and by a foreigner at that!-to assume that those two heroes I have mentioned are dead.”

  “They surely are,” the youth beside him said, in a choked voice.

  After another silent time of gazing on the quiet sea, the merchant shipmaster said, “Your sword and mailcoat are yours when we land, and I am proud to hold them for ye till then, Art’s son of Connacht.”

  Cormac stiffened. He continued staring seaward. His jaw was very tight.

  “Art’s son of Connacht is dead, Captain.”

  “Aye. So too is Othna’s son of Ulster. I never saw either of them, but have great feeling for them both. So too is Calba’s son of Athaircthech dead, off a fever in the bloom of manhood. My son.”

  “Sadness seems to rule the world, Captain, not kings and not justice.”

  “Aye, philosopher. An it’s a name ye’ll be needing in Alba, it’s mac Calba ye be welcome to call yourself.”

  “I… I will… remember,” Cormac choked out.

  And then he turned and moved the length of the ship, to turn those cold, cold eyes ahead, up toward fog-shrouded Alban Dal Riada. For there lay the future and behind him was Eirrin and the past, and the past was dead.

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