Berserker (Omnibus)

by Holdstock, Robert

  ‘I was at that battle!’ cried Gormgal, delighted that at last he might boast of prowess with a grand old warrior. He rose to his feet. Amalgaid leaned back, enjoying the confrontation. He himself had been too young to fight at the Sinann front, and Gormgal had been but a raw youth. In all the years that Gormgal had been paying visits to his brother’s fort this particular battle had never been mentioned, so Gormgal had a shock coming. It would be good to see.

  ‘I was there, fighting for the Ui Briuin, and in one great advance I carried twenty spears. Flinging all twenty together I observed the sword sluts of the Ui Neill turn and run; they ran so fast that not even the speed of these mightily flung spears could catch them, so I drew in a great breath and exhaled and the wind was so strong that the spears doubled their speed and twenty men fell dead in an instant. Then I drew in my breath again and caused the wind to change so that the spears were plucked from the dead bodies and flew back into my hands. All this between one beat of my heart and the next.’

  The gathered warriors burst into applause, and there were cries of ‘Gormgal cuts the pig.’

  But Bricriu spat on to the fire and waved his sword towards the ceiling. Gormgal was furious, but he conceded to etiquette and sat down and waited. The old man looked around him. When he had everyone’s attention he drew off his green shirt (he was the only man there who wore a shirt). His torso was ridged and his chest deep, and not an inch of his flesh was not raised with the white streaks of scars. Where his arm had once hung the flesh was drawn and puckered. ‘In that same battle,’ he said, ‘while Gormgal here was gasping for breath …’ laughter, ‘ … I found myself alone and faced by twenty of Loegaire’s crack swordsmen. A dead Connachtman lay at my feet and I plucked his sword from his grip so that now I was doubly armed, and I ran at the twenty and slew two of them by the fierceness of my scream alone. But the other eighteen stood their distance and stopped me escaping, while they waited for a hundred more to come and finish me, and these hundred I could see running swiftly across the dead towards me. So …’ he paused for effect, and slapped his arm stump with his blade. ‘Clutching my own thrice forged sword firmly in my left arm, I ran towards the enemy who backed away … but when my speed was as great as I could manage I cut off my own left arm, and the arm flew towards the eighteen and fought them and slaughtered them, and they could not meet the blade with their own, and thus I escaped certain death and returned to the battle proper.’

  Despite everyone around the fire, except Gormgal, having heard this story at least twenty times, they all hooted and yelled their appreciation. Even Gormgal was moved to nod slowly, his eyes wide as his mind searched for some greater brag still to win his first cut of the blackening pig.

  All eyes turned to the menacing features of the visitor as he again rose to his feet, adjusting his shirt and belt. He stroked his black beard thoughtfully and Amalgaid could see the streaks of red showing where the black dye had been rubbed away. He also noticed his son, young Niall, watching with cold, unmoving eyes, but he made no move to push the boy out of sight. Gormgal’s back was to the cubicle and with luck he would not remember what had happened last time he had come here, when young Niall had viciously attacked him.

  ‘This summer past,’ he said, ‘I ventured south, far south, to where the sea cuts deep bays and winding rivers into the land. Swimming in the cold waters of a green river, naked, swordless, I was carried downstream towards the sea, and came ashore near a giant cave. Standing, shivering, I could smell the stench of a bear, but no man alive has seen a bear like this one and lived to tell the tale. Save me.’

  He looked around; he had the unbroken attention of every man. Even Amalgaid could sense the excitement in Gormgal’s breast as he took some simple confrontation, probably from his youth, and embellished it into a mighty and frightening story. There were few bears left in these lands, Amalgaid knew, and none further south than the Boann river … although the mountainous and craggy lands of the southern coasts were mysterious and haunted places, and it was not beyond belief that such an animal could have remained there.

  ‘What a bear it was that came out of that dark cave to kill me. Forty feet high at the hummock of its back; its mouth grinned as wide as a river, and when it reared on its hind legs its muzzle was dimly seen so thick were the clouds that gathered about its upper quarters. I stood my ground, dwarfed by this giant beast, cold in its dark shadow. Even when its claws flicked out, each a shining length of steel-hard bone, twice the width and length of a sword, even then I stood my ground, naked, weaponless.

  ‘Its roar was like the groaning of a hundred winter storms. Its breath was as foul as the field of battle two weeks after slaughter. This was the bear that leaned down to consume me, its great mouth opening so that I could see down to its heaving belly, and within that fleshy cavern I saw …’ he paused, and looked slowly around. A young warrior called Conal murmured, ‘A hundred Ui Neill?’ and there was a ripple of laughter.

  Gormgal’s sword swept through the air, landed stiffly, suddenly, touching the tip of Conal’s nose so that the impetuous swordsman went pale as death and touched two fingers to his lips by way of apology. The killing point was withdrawn.

  Gormgal went on, ‘In its mouth the bones of a thousand …’ he glanced at Conal, thought quickly and hard for a second, ‘A thousand Welsh reivers, impaled and twisted upon its teeth. It would have eaten me too but I was too fast. I leapt upon its back and wrenched its head round with my arms. We fell struggling to the ground, this great bear and I, and soon it began to weaken. I jumped from it, then, and tearing one of the great claws from its paw, used this to sever the cords of its neck. When it was dead I drank the pulsing blood from the wound, and this was food and drink enough to last me fifty days and nights.’

  He straightened and grinned and the gathered clan loudly applauded his fine tale. Gormgal bowed, and accepted the irritable acknowledgement of Bricriu that he was the man who should cut first at the cooked pig, still sizzling and roasting before them.

  ‘A fine story!’ cried Amalgaid.

  ‘And true, every word!’ said Gormgal loudly, lying.

  ‘Gormgal gets the pig!’ shouted another man.

  Gormgal drew his blade and wiped his fingers along its blackened surface, smiling.

  And then: the small voice, the child’s voice, that froze the gathering, brought immediate and horrified silence to the house.

  ‘Gormgal the pig’s pizzle, who brags of killing men of the Ui Neill, but can only show us the heads of peace-loving priests.’

  Gormgal screeched with indignation and fury and whirled where he sat, stumbling to his feet and raising his sword in the gesture of a killing blow. The warriors of the Ui Fiachrach all rose to their haunches ready to scatter, and Amalgaid too stood up, his face ashen, staring at his defiant and half-crazed son, young Niall, who had emerged from his curtained cubicle and now stood within striking distance of Gormgal Dubhfasog and spat at the giant warrior’s feet.

  Niall had listened with growing contempt as this braggard brother of his father’s had asserted his right to an honour he little deserved. But with this lie, this exaggerated story of the bear, the boy’s restraint had snapped and he felt himself impelled towards a rage he did well to control. Something inside him would not sit still for such vicious entertainment, and though he little understood the forces that motivated him, Niall sprang to the attack with his carefully phrased insult.

  The insult hurt. It struck deep at the heart and the pride of the warrior, and there was no man alive who would sit still after such an overt challenge to his integrity. Even from the lips of a six-year-old boy the insult was intolerable.

  As Amalgaid came forward to placate the insulted Gormgal he was swept away by the angry man. Gormgal remembered the boy now; Amalgaid could tell this from the sudden look of recognition in his eyes. The warlord turned to where Tualaith stood holding his sword and when their eyes met the woman tossed the weapon to him and he caught it easily.

  Niall ha
d stood his ground as Gormgal stooped to grab him.

  ‘The boy is ill,’ cried Tualaith, then, and there were tears in her eyes. ‘Let him alone!’

  She was shouted into silence by Amalgaid and she crouched back against the wall, tears and terror staining her face. She glared at Amalgaid, willing him to strike his brother down and save her son, but Amalgaid was strangely reluctant to bring the situation to single combat.

  Beside Tualaith, allowed, by virtue of his relationship to the tribal chief, to be present at the feasting, Feradach grinned at his brother and made a finger gesture of triumph. Niall the Mad Bear saw all this but remained still, unflinching as he was dragged off the ground by his long, bleached hair.

  Gormgal’s grip was powerful and relentless and he hoisted the boy four feet from the ground, holding him so that their faces were close. Niall wanted to cry out as he dangled, his hair threatening to tear out at the roots, but he kept placid and returned Gormgal’s gaze with stony unconcern.

  ‘This is the boy who attacked me,’ cried Gormgal. With his free hand he drew a short dagger. ‘I remember, now. The Mad Bear, the animal boy who went so frenzied and angry and tore a strip out of my arm.’

  ‘And he is my son,’ said Amalgaid loudly. ‘Put him down!’

  Gormgal ignored the warlord. He turned to face the warriors of the fort, swinging Niall painfully around so that the boy flinched for the first time and tears came into the corners of his eyes. No sound escaped his lips, however.

  ‘I said then,’ roared Gormgal, ‘That when I came back to the fort, if he insulted me again I would tear his head from his body. He is no son of the Earth, but an animal in human guise and does not deserve human respect. Is there one here who will fight me for the animal’s life?’

  ‘He is my son!’ screamed Amalgaid, fury making him shake in a way he had never shaken before. Gormgal’s eyes rested on his, the half brothers sensing that mortal combat was close and neither, perhaps, desiring that. No other warrior in the room made a move; ritual swords were quickly sheathed. Gormgal was too good for any of them, and iron against bronze was no match anyway. They might try and out-brag him around a fire, but when it came to actual combat, especially in the confines of a house, there was none in this westlands settlement who would risk a limb for the sake of a crazy boy, a boy whose very father wished him dead at times.

  Amalgaid, now, was of a different mind; if it was true he had said harsh things about the boy in earlier years, he could not tolerate the death of his son by this animal brother of his, not in front of his warrior élite.

  ‘Put the boy down. This is my house and I shall kill you before I let you defile it.’

  Gormgal made no move to concede. The muscles of his arm stood out with the effort of holding the boy in the air, and his eyes met Amalgaid’s steadily and arrogantly. A smile touched his lips. ‘That, from a man who told me he would not demand retribution if I stole the life of the lad?’ Amalgaid felt his face blanch as these words, said in private two years ago at a time when he felt desperately afraid of his son’s mania, came back to him. Gormgal laughed: ‘What has happened to change you, brother? Has the Druid found that madness conceals godhead?’ He stared at Niall the Mad Bear. ‘Are you, then, the god of Madness? If so, then perhaps I should make you a sacrifice …’

  His blade rose, came round to rest against Niall’s taut belly.

  ‘You are dead if the boy’s blood spills!’ shouted Amalgaid mac Eochu. His blade came up above his head, ready to strike his half brother. Tualaith, still cowering beside her cubicle watching, screamed. Gormgal glanced at his brother for just an instant, then drew back his arm and would have thrust the blade through his captive’s body.

  But Niall the Mad Bear screamed, suddenly and loudly, and the scream – no human cry but the agonised howl of a wild beast – stopped Gormgal’s killing motion and made him blink with surprise; and in that moment he was lost!

  The boy’s right fist flashed up towards Gormgal’s throat, and all who stood around the fire saw the dull glint of light on the thin blade that the Mad Bear held. The shaft of the dagger buried itself in Gormgal’s throat, probing upwards through mouth and palate and into the soft tissue of the brain. Gormgal tried to scream, but the force of the youth’s blow had pinned his jaws together and he staggered and fell backwards into the fire, still holding Niall by his hair.

  As the giant warrior rolled in the flames Niall tore the dagger from his attacker’s throat and cut his hair so that the man’s grip on him was removed. Then, unbothered by Gormgal’s terrible screams, and the fixed and ferocious gaze that the warrior directed at him, he leaned forward and wrenched the big man’s head around – ‘This for the bear you killed and bragged about!’ – fighting against the threshing body as beard and eyebrows ignited in the flames.

  With a sudden flexing motion Gormgal cast the boy off his body and staggered to his feet. His head was burning fiercely, flame covering his face and licking up to the dry rafters and thatch which began to spark and ignite.

  As he stood there, horrifyingly silent now, beating at his charring head, Niall the Mad Bear calmly used Gormgal Dubhfasog’s own blood-blackened sword to disembowel the big man with a two handed blow that would have made even a well practised warrior proud.

  Still clutching the sword the boy ran from the house and out into the windy night.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Four winters chased across the land, each culminating in a brief but heavy fall of snow that left the fort and settlement invisible in the white plain that ran from mountain to mountain and to the sea. The children, thick and dark in furs, darted about the inside of the palisade, chasing the sleek-bodied hounds and playing their games of war with slush missiles made of new fallen snow. At this time, during the last winter of the four, Niall the Mad Bear fashioned himself a sword out of the snow, crouched apart from the other children against the steeply rising north wall, where white stone from a nearby rocky beach had been used to strengthen the earth barrier. Smoke rose from the round-houses, and the sound of laughter and storytelling drifted from his father’s great house. The family heads of the small tribe were gathered there to listen to a visiting storyteller from the high fort of Cruchain, where the great Ailill Molt lived, eight days’ run to the east and south, beyond the forest of the goddess Danu, Faraois na Danaan, where only filid dared venture in their search for ancient magic traditions.

  Watching Niall, as he worked, was the old filid, Cathabach, who called himself Druid na Fiachrach, the Druid of the Fiachrach, because the visiting Gaulish Druids practised an art – the casting of spells – that he, unlike the other filid of the tribal lands in this backwater of the province, also practised. A true filid was merely a law-giver and medicine man; a Druid was all these, but was also a student of magic. The draoi, the true magicians of Connacht, men who were not Druids or filids in the true sense, were hard to find, living nomadic lives and hugging the edges of the sprawling forests where the spirits of the great tribe of Danu, dead to the last man this thousand years gone, could still be seen riding between the trees, between their great sidhs, the mounds where their mortal remains glowed golden on every first day of every season.

  As the children of the fort played their war games, Cathabach observed the shaping of the snow sword at the hands of the Mad Bear. It was an arm’s length from hilt to tip of blade; a hand’s span across the gently curved shaft. The hilt was decorated with dung jewels dropped from the goats, and the pommel was long, richly carved by Niall’s thin fingers.

  Several boys raced by him, calling him cu mire, cu mire!, Mad Dog, Mad Dog!, something more familiar to them than a bear. Niall ignored them, watched them darkly until they had finished their taunting, then returned to the decorating of his snow sword.

  The children were re-enacting the heroic deeds of the Ulsterman, Cuchulainn. Feradach, elder brother of the Mad Bear, was playing the hero’s role, stripped naked against the snow, skin white and goose-pimpled, but every muscle in his body taut and tense
as he ritually beheaded each man who came at him, crying, as Cuchulainn had cried four hundred years ago when the warring between the provinces had been fierce and unjustified, ‘Two heads are better than one, oh men of Leinster, but a hundred heads are far better than one!’

  As Feradach feigned the famous warp-spasm, Cuchulainn’s bizarre fury, twisting his body, blowing the muscles into great balloons, narrowing one eye and widening the other, Niall laughed at the sight of his brother deforming himself.

  Feradach sprang at him, furious at being mocked, and his left foot flew upwards to land, flat-soled, against the Mad Bear’s forehead, knocking Niall back against the stone wall. A woman came out of the low store room in the wall and shouted at them to take their childish pranks elsewhere.

  ‘I am the Warlord’s son!’ shrieked Feradach, furious, narrowing his eyes and pointing at her, ‘And at my slightest word my father will strike your hand from your arm!’

  The woman drew back into the tiny place in the stone structure, dropped a thick linen curtain across the hole. Feradach stared down at his brother and grinned. ‘The Mad Bear laughs at me because I pay tribute to a great Eris hero. Does the Mad Bear think he can dodge twenty spears thrown at the same time? The great Feradach, son of Amalgaid, spirit brother of Cuchulainn, true son of the mother whose least impressive bitch birthed this Mad Bear, he can dodge them as they go to strike his body, and clutch them, two to a finger, and send them back!’

  He turned, snapped his fingers, and two of the children flung their stick javelins at him. He snatched them both from the air, whipped them behind him and sent them back between his legs. Each javelin struck the man who had thrown it, despite the owner’s frantic attempt to avoid being struck.

  ‘The Mad Bear,’ chided Feradach, ‘plays with a sword of snow; the sword will melt in strong sun; as with the Mad Bear, the time of the sword is very short. Both will soon drain life into the earth. The sun will take the sword, and Feradach will slit the throat of the Bear when he is allowed to change his practice sword for a weapon of carboned iron, with a bronze hilt studded with the finest green gems. Such a sword. Mad Bear, such a sword has not yet been fashioned for there has not yet been a warrior – save Cuchulainn – who could have the strength and stamina, nor even the skill and determination, to use it. Dread that day, brother; fear it. You shall be my first head.’