He was unable to understand the total lack of sound, unless all the Britons were somewhere outside. In that event, they and his comrades-and Samaire, far more than comrade-might well be at the grim business of death-dealing even now. But he forced himself not to hurry, and paced forward in a semicrouch. He let his soles glide over the dust, so as to make no sound of footfalls.
He moved only as swiftly as he thought he dared, with no more noise than a pacing cat.
Cormac passed the room wherein Wulfhere and Ceann had spent a night, while he had preferred to sleep out under the watchful moon. He passed the room in which Samaire was to have spent that same night. Almost he smiled; she had instead joined him outside, though he had stated clearly that he was exile, and would not return to Eirrin. In the morning, he had announced that he would…
He reached the end of the corridor, and was wary anew.
There was no man in view. There was no sound.
With caution, he moved past the stairway that led down to the narrow cul-de-sac of an entry hail. Here had knelt Norse archers; here was the window from whence they’d sped their whistling shafts at himself and Wulfhere and their approaching band of Danes. Now Cormac obtained the same view those Norgeborn bowmen had. He peered without, and caution eased.
There was only the empty plain and, far off, the entry into the twisting passage through the rock that connected this valley with the beach.
A new feeling of nervousness akin to fear drifted over the Gael like a dark mist. The castle… deserted? And without… no matter how he turned his head to peer this way and that, and strained his ears, there was no sound of shout or clash of arms to seaward.
Cormac mac Art walked the length of that defense-hall, hardly pausing to peer out at each of the other three windows. At the head of the second flight of steps, he glanced back. He saw nothing, no one. He crept down the stairs to the landing, peered around.
Below was nothing, no one.
Re-ascending, he passed around the hall’s back wall and onto the railed gallery that overlooked the vast main hall of the eerily silent castle.
Below, sprawled amid great dark splashes, were the bodies of strong men.
Cormac’s and Wulfhere’s Danes had died down there, three months agone, along with fifteen Norsemen. Cormac had been pursuing Samaire and Cutha Atheldane, a druid among Vikings, and had no part in the terrible battle. Only Wulfhere and Samaire’s brother Ceann survived.
Despite some objection from the more civilized prince and princess of Leinster, Wulfhere and Cormac had deemed this great structure a fine tomb indeed. They had left the dead here, friend and foe alike, corpses all. It was these considerably decayed bodies Cormac expected to find this day.
He did not. Not even the bones of those two-and-twenty men remained.
Instead, the scent of new-spilled blood was on the air. It lay barely dry below in splashes and pools, amid the hideously staring, sprawled corpses of eighteen… Britons!
Chapter Five:
The Living Dead
Cormac was outside in the bright sunlight, summoning Bas the Druid and Lugh, the Meathish hunter whom the Gael had surnamed the Manhunter.
Then came the clamor, and the three men whirled. A clot of weapon-men burst into the far end of the Valley of the Castle. A huge red-bearded, ax-wielding Dane… a small warrior in leathern boots with a bronze-studded leathern helmet… three chainmailed men with bows and feather-bristling quivers… others: all of Eirrin. And with them, a stumbling, mumbling Briton.
The man appeared mad and his gibbering was audible to Cormac long before his main party reached him. Great glazed eyes stared awfully from out a pallid Briton face twisted and set in horror.
“That man looks as if he has gazed upon the face of Death itself,” Bas said.
“Mayhap he has,” Cormac said very quietly. “He is the last of his entire crew.”
The three waited; the fourteen came on. All were united before the gaping dark maw of the castle, where its big iron-bound door sagged forlornly from one rotting hinge.
“You’ve been within?” Wulfhere demanded, ere any other could direct coherent words.
“Aye”
“What… did you find?” Samaire asked.
Cormac jerked a gesture at the sagging Briton. “This one’s companions. All of them save the three Wulfhere and I accounted for. All are dead; all of them. Hacked and stabbed and cut to pieces.”
“Gods of my ancestors,” Samaire said, little above a whisper. “This sniveler spoke true, then.”
Wulfhere’s big hand clamped the back of the Briton’s neck. “Tell this man, Briton. Tell him-and the druid.”
The Briton made as if to hurl himself to his knees before Bas; Wulfhere held him back and on his feet, by main strength. “Speak!”
The man did not speak; he babbled, high-voiced, “Druid, Holy Druid, call upon-uhk!”
“I said speak, not beg,” Wulfhere rumbled, squeezing until the Briton’s eyes bulged and his lean fox-face gained a bit of colour.
“I… I… we were… within,” he said, and he shuddered when he cast a fearful glance in the direction of the castle’s doorway. “Drinking, talking of what we’d do with our booty on our return to Silurnum. All was merriment-this demon-haunted keep is overflowing with the loot of a dozen raids!”
“We know that, man,” Cormac said impatiently. He drew deep breath. His gaze flickered up to Wulfhere; back to the Briton. “Your name, man. What be your name? He’d never seen a man so in need of calming.
“Os… Osbrit son of Drostan, of Wroxeter.”
“And I be Cormac, Art’s son of Connacht, Osbrit of Wroxeter. Be mindful of yourself as a surrounded captive, Osbrit Drostan’s son, and attend me: no harm will come to ye. My word on it, before the druid. Now tell me how died those men in there, Osbrit. Who else be on this isle-and how is it you alone made escape?” Cormac raised his eyes. “Wulfhere-let go his neck. He’s a man. He can stand.”
“We… we were… they just appeared, among us, about us! Men of the north countries oversea, all of them. Most were Norse, though too there were Danes-”
“Danes and Norse together? Allies?”
“I swear it! Behl witness-I swear it! Danes and Norse, aye. They just… they were just there. Out of the very air they came, all with axes and swords naked in their hands: No word they spoke-not ever, not one among them uttered aught that I heard. Their faces were grim-set, awful… their business was slaughter! Naught else but to bring red death upon us. Four of our number were down bloody ere we even knew, realized! My cousin Anir… Bedwyr’s brother Cei… oh, ye GODS!” The man paused to shudder and draw a deep uneven breath.
“Then we were snatching up spear and ax and sword and bucklers,” he went on, “wallowing on the floor, stumbling to our feet and defending ourselves as best we could. But… what boots defense, when a man cannot injure his foe!”
“What?”
“Truth! They would not bleed, they could not be hurt. Struck, they bled not. Arms, slashed through, remained attached to body.” A terrible shudder took Osbrit’s body. “They would not die, not even when I passed my spear through the belly of one till the point brast through his backbone.”
“What?”
Osbrit babbled. Tears shimmered in his eyes and spittle flecked his lips to drool upon his chin. “I SWEAR it! I myself faced a Dane, a man with a scar on his cheek like a fork for the snaring of hares, and an ax-haft dyed red and what I took for the emblem of the new faith on his black shield. He-”
Cormac stared with stricken, fixed eyes. “Wait, man. This Dane… his belt buckle… his buckler…”
“The bands of bronze on his black shield I at first thought was the cross of the Christians, and aye, his belt buckle… the face of a wing-eared man it was, moulded of br-”
“Crom and the Dagda!” Cormac gasped. “Wulfhere… it’s Guthrun he describes!”
“He lies! Guthrun Jarl’s son fell beside me these three months agone, in that same great hall of this
keep! You yourself saw his body, with his head attached by only a string of tendon. This fellow lies-he saw Guthrun’s remains within-”
Cormac interrupted. “There are no remains within, Wulfhere. All are gone. There are only the new-dead: eighteen Britons.”
“Aye, Behl show mercy,” Osbrit said with a sobbing catch in his voice. “All eighteen cut down by men who would neither wound nor bleed nor die! I slashed a face, I tell you, and that Norseman did not even bleed! At that I backed away in horror, for I knew there was evil upon us, dark magic. All around me good men screamed as they were hacked to death by… by man-things they could neither slay nor even wound! He came on, him whose face I slashed. He said nothing, he neither grinned nor frowned, but only just stared, stared into my soul, like… like a dead man! His ax caught in my shield. I fell back, stumbled-and then to catch my balance I was sitting in that huge curulechair in there.”
“The huge… what?” Samaire asked.
“The Roman influence,” Cormac said. “He speaks of the throne. So you gave ground because ye must, in horror I’ve no doubt, and ye lost your balance and fell back into the lord’s chair.”
“Aye!” Osbrit nodded madly. “And-and… he drew back. He turned from me! I saw Dyfnwal thrust into him… I saw the point of Dyfnwal’s sword emerge at that man’s back!”
With a great shudder Osbrit sagged. Samaire gripped his arm and the man beside her held the Briton up merely by his presence; Osbrit leaned weakly against lean young Ros mac Dairb, nor did either seem to take note.
At last, dully, Osbrit regained life, and talked on.
“They… they killed them all. All my companions. All… all of them. No Norsemen fell or bled, no Dane, none of them, and they must have numbered a score. Then in the midst of the red carnage they’d wrought, they… they turned. All of them, as though one had given a signal, though none spoke. They turned to face me. They stared. None spoke. They looked upon me like hungry wolves just beyond the firelight, staring in, waiting, hoping… Gods! O mother… in awful silence they just stared at me thus, and none spoke ever, or so much as frowned. Like masks their faces were, with burning pale fires for eyes. I… sat. Behl’s Name, Fire of Life, I could do naught else! I admit it-nay, I swear it: I was frozen with fear! There must have been a score-”
“Sixteen Norse,” Cormac mac Art said in a quiet, dull voice, and he knew horror at his own thoughts, hearing his own matter-of-fact tone and chilled by it, “and… six Danes, I should say.”
Wulfhere stared at him with wide eyes. “Cormac!”
Cormac met those blue eyes. “Aye.” His gaze returned to what had been a man and was now a frightmad, gibbering creature for pity. “Osbrit… and then…”
“I remained where I was. And then… Fire of Life! I swear it by the sun and the moon-they vanished! Like smoke, like mist in the morning sun.”
Cormac laid a hand on the man’s shoulder; he did not drop it there, but laid hand on the other in commiseration, in a strange, understanding tenderness. “I believe you, Osbrit. Think. Describe others…”
Osbrit described two Norsemen, to be interrupted by Wulfhere; with an oath, the Dane swore he’d cloven the head of one of those Vikings from crown to chin, three months agone.
Cormac nodded. He accepted what he must, and turned to Bas.
“It is a castle of dark sorcery, my lord Bas. The Britons were attacked by men already slain… when last we were here! And when we left, those same slain slayers lay on the floor within. Now there is no sign of them. Only the Briton dead. And the throne… somehow it be safe from their attack.”
Bas was silent in thought. None broke that reverie.
“Such things,” Bas said, “are said to be possible… to have been possible. We druids have no such power, nor do we covet it. It is black sorcery, the sorcery of death, the Old Magick. To raise the dead against the living… to cheat the dead of their rest and return for any purpose… Behl protect and Crom defend! It is too horrible. It is against all that is decent on the ridge of the world. Kull’s or no, this is a place of evil!”
“It’s not Kull’s evil, I’m thinking. Will ye go in with me?”
“Cormac! No!”
Cormac ignored Samaire and her hand on his arm. He continued to look questioningly on the. greenrobed servant of Celtic and Gaelic gods, Bas of Tir Conaill who had been a noble of Eirrin.
Bas nodded. He looked about, seeming taller with purpose. He fingered his mistletoe pendant. “Who among ye bears oak? Be there the All-healer among us, an t’uil: Mistletoe?”
“The haft of my ax be oak,” a man said, and so called another, hefting his shiny-bladed ax. Hopefully Ros mac Dairb bared a lunula from under his mailcoat; another drew forth, almost embarrassedly, a dried old sprig of mistletoe from his sword scabbard. His wife, he claimed, had insisted on his carrying it…
Bas took the mistletoe, and an oak-hafted ax Cormac thought too light for war. Its owner had a Briton sword now, given him by Wulfhere in a moment of camaraderie the night previous.
Of course the druid wore a lunula, a moon-disk on a cord woven of gold wire about his neck. Larger it was than those of the three men present who also wore them, and surely more potent. Bas looked at Cormac, who wore the usual Celtic torc, and no other jewellery; the leather band about his right wrist was a brace for his sword-arm, not decoration.
“Yourself?”
Cormac gestured helplessly, in some embarrassment. He had little to do with gods, and never had, nor did he encumber himself with their trappings. Bas only put his hands on the other Gael, mistletoe to flesh, and murmured to himself-and to his gods. All heard the names, Behl of the shining sun and great Crom who was older than Eirrin, and the Dagda-the Good God-his son mac Og, and others as well.
Bas’s voice rose and his words became discernible: “…who protected Cuchulain and the first mac Art, Cormac Mor, and the great Finn… protect this Cormac mac Art too, for no more loyal servant of your reveredness exists on all the ridge of the sprawling world.”
Cormac looked around at the others. “Remain without. Bas and I go within, armed by our faith and his knowledge.”
“I go with you, Cormac mac Art,” Brian na Killevy said, a not-unhandsome young man whose face, Cormac felt, was so smooth because fair young Brian could raise no fur on it. The youth’s hair was the colour of flax.
Another young man pressed forward. “It’s not here I’ll be remaining whilst my captain go into danger.” Ros mac Dairb said, just as firmly.
Samaire said only, “No. I choose not to remain without.” Her lower lip pushed forth, nor did it tremble; Cormac knew the sign.
Wulfhere’s rumble summed up: “Lead on Druid. We go where you go; I go where Cormac goes. Damn you, son of an Eirish pig-farmer, I owe you this life!”
“No,” Cormac said. “No. Wulfhere, ye must stay here with these men, who will not object to being termed… indifferent sailors.” He looked at Brian and Ros, like eager-eyed pups when the master makes hunting preparations. “It’s death inside, and sorcerous death at that. I would not bring the red blood on your bodies for it, south or north, east or west.”
“Would be grief to me all my days, Cormac mac Art, if I went not with you after I’ve declared!” Brian of Killevy in Airgialla showed in his face that he’d not remain outside. “And ye know,” he grinned, “I love to fight!”
“And I, son of Art,” Dairb’s son Ros said, a fair young man and lean, with a golden bush of hair like a halo. “And unless the sky fall on me, or the earth gave way beneath these feet, I will not move from your side.”
“Ye be insane both,” Cormac said. “And ye honour your mothers and your people. Very well. It’s this we know: if we be set upon within, it’s no living hands will bring steel upon us, but dead men. No. You two are ordered to go up onto the gallery which I shall show you, and there remain. On your oath.”
Neither looking very happy, the two young men agreed. Cormac looked at Wulfhere. “An we shriek and scream and there be the clangour of
arms, come not within. Wulfhere old cleaver of skulls, d’ye hear?”
If Ros and Brian were young dogs eager for the hunt, Wulfhere was an old hunting hound, envious, morose; saddened that he was to be left behind. Stiffly, sadly he said, “Aye.” His right forefinger scratched within his beard.
“If such be the case, if ye hear us attacked and we come not forth… take these men from this place, Wulfhere. And slay a fine calf to the end that this dread Samaire-heim joins her mother Atlantis beneath the eternal sea. You’re agreed?”
Unenthusiastically as before: “Aye.”
Cormac nodded. “Bas… Brian… Ros…”
The three stood ready. Bas muttered, but naught that he said was understood by any present.
“Wulfhere?”
“The All-father’s one eye be upon you, bloodbrother.”
Cormac nodded shortly. “Wulfhere… seize Samaire, and hold her fast!”
Though he’d paid her no mind while he issued his instructions, Samaire was unprepared for this treachery. For a moment she was still in shock. Then she started forward, her grass-green eyes widening.
The man who towered behind her, topping her height by more than the length of her two hands combined, enfolded her in arms that were like tree limbs. Instantly she was kicking and squirming.
“NO! Cormac! No no-Wulfhere, you ugly goatsmelling bull-let me GO!”
Wulfhere held fast. Without a word, Cormac and his trio turned to the castle. They passed between the pillars, and were lost to sight.
Behind them Samaire still combined pleading and demanding in no small voice as Cormac pointed to the stairs and issued swift instructions to Brian and Ros. They all ascended. The younger men went round and out onto the gallery; Cormac and Bas descended into the prodigious expanse of the castle’s high-domed main hall.
Great pillars rose from the tiled floor, propping the gallery and the semi-floor that ran all about the walls, ten feet and more above the floor. The walls were engraved and indited with scenes not discernible until one went close, so that all appeared to be mere decor. The bodies of eighteen Britons still strewed the floor, in pools and splashes of the blood that was solely theirs, amid weapons and pieces of their corpses. Full forty good paces away, back of the sprawling hall’s center, rested the carven throne. Despite the lofty pillars, the closely-etched walls, the decorated ceiling; despite even the dead, that regal throne dominated the hall and the castle; it surveyed all and seemed to own all.
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