The Sign of the Moonbow

by Andrew J Offutt

  Standing beside the squatting Gael, Wulfhere said nothing. Cormac heard his great sigh. Then:

  “Girl-Erris. We, Cormac and I, will aid ye and your queen. For no matter how many men it is that Cairluh and Tarmur… Ro have guarding her prison, we shall send them dripping gore to their goddess. Now-what of this Tarmur Ro? He is to be feared? He is impervious to this?” Wulfhere’s ax hummed in the air.

  “Tarmur Roag,” she corrected.

  “He-he is a… none is so powerful, not even Dithorba!”

  Cormac said, “Dithorba?”

  “Aye. Dithorba Loingsech, the queen’s own adviser and himself a mage. But-”

  It was Thulsa Doom who interrupted. “The two of ye cannot overcome this Tarmur Roag, Cormac mac Art. Release me now, O Cormac of the Gaels, and I swear never to bring harm upon ye or your land or any of its people, wherever they be, and all your friends, and to make you a king among men… King Cormac… more than a king!”

  Cormac swung and stared with his lips held tight. “I trust ye no farther than I could be throwing ye, skullface-uphill! Now be silent, and…” He looked back at Erris. “Erris, prepare yourself for a hideous sight, and remember that he is chained to me by Danu’s own bonds.” He slid an arm back and down and, found her hand. It was not cold. “Thulsa Doom: Be silent. And give over the likeness of Bas the Druid that ye dishonour-assume your own form, creature of death!”

  The undying wizard obeyed. The robes and face of Bas swam, went all murky and tenuous, were gone. The gleaming head of death stared at them from above the dark robe of Cutha Atheldane.

  With a gasping throaty cry Erris lunged up to press hard against Cormac’s back. She clung there, and he felt her shudders. Wulfhere glanced at her back, and down. His eyes widened and he raised pale red brows. The Danish giant looked away-and then at her again, as if helplessly, to admire the young woman’s naked back.

  After glancing at him, Cormac said, “Best ye back away, Erris, and swing that cloak about yourself properly.”

  “He-he-”

  “He has no face. He is a mage. He is in my control. I wear the Moonbow-and ye see it on him, too, downside up. Do as I bade ye.”

  She released him reluctantly, looked at Wulfhere, glanced at Thulsa Doom, and then with the cloak held before her she squatted to catch up its brooch. Unblushingly she swung the cloak about her as he’d suggested, and pinned it above her left breast. The greyish blue mantle enveloped her completely, to the toes. Again she moved to stand close to Cormac.

  “Erris… where be this Dithorba Loingsech? It’s he should be as glad to be our ally as we his, I’m thinking.”

  She shook her head distressedly. “Tarmur Roag mocks his fellow mage by binding him with chains of silver-” Her head jerked up and her eyes were wide as new excitement and hope came upon her. “HERE, outside Moytura!”

  A smile toyed with Cormac’s lips; failed to manifest itself. “Any hands can remove the Chains of Danu, save those of the wearer of the inverted Moonbow-why have ye not released him?”

  Her shiver was conveyed by the rippling of the encompassing cloak of blue-grey woollen. She licked her lips.

  “I was just put forth from Moytura. Dithorba is guarded. I… I…” Erris looked down. “I was too loyal to my mistress. It is why I was stripped and thrust out here… for them. Those who guard Dithorba. Rough weapon men who are like blood-hungry beasts with Tarmur Roag’s sorcerous bidding upon them. I was… I was to be their… ‘Here, wench,’ snarled those who thrust me forth, ‘provide entertainment for the lonely watchers of Dithorba, that they may recreate themselves.’ This was just before you came.”

  Cormac heard the emphasis on the word “you” without making any indication of reaction. Yet at her words of Danan weapon-men about, his and Wulfhere’s hands had gone to sword-hilt and ax-helve as if at a signal. The Dane’s crimson beard twitched, which meant he was smiling, somewhere within that flaming bush.

  “And where is Dithorba, Erris… and his guards?”

  She pointed past them. “Straight there. Along the other branch from… from the Door to Them.”

  Cormac mac Art saw to his shield-straps. “Say not ‘them’ with such a fearful heaviness on ye, Erris… Wulfhere and I, after all, are ‘Them’!” He turned to look at his weapon companion of several years, grim and blood-splashed seagoing years as rievers. “Wulfhere?”

  The giant hefted ax and buckler. Anticipation lit his cerulean eyes with bloody portents for the guards of Dithorba.

  “How many guards be there?” Cormac asked Erris.

  She shook her head. “I know not. Less than ten methinks but no mere two or three-five, mayhap.”

  “Hmp, Wulfhere rumbled. “In that event, Cormac, why don’t ye wait here? I’ll be back from this encounter in a few heartbeats…”

  Cormac gave him a look. “Stay ye well back, Erris,” he said, and the two men set their feet in the direction she’d indicated; the other arm of the Y down the stem of which they had come from outside-Outside. At Cormac’s beck, Thulsa Doom fell in behind them-and Erris stayed well back, indeed, staring at that hairless and gleaming skull.

  They moved along the subterranean hallway with the cautious silence of great stalking cats. An occasional scuff of buskin on hardpacked earth or stone, and a faint clink of mail were the only hints of the advance of two weapon-men followed by a silent, faceless mage and a cloak-swathed young woman. All three men were forced to stoop as they went along that pearl-lit passage within the earth.

  It came upon Cormac to wish he had asked whether the tunnel debouched into such a chamber or “room” as the one in which they’d found Erris. Too late now. If not-fighting in this low-ceiled tunnel with oppressively close walls might well be to the advantage of the Danans, Cormac clamped his lips. He had not come here to fight the people of Danu!

  If only surprise could be with him and Wulfhere…

  They rounded a turning, and Cormac’s eyes narrowed; aye, up ahead was an obvious widening and heightening on the other side of what resembled a doorway notched in the earth. Dithorba Loingsech was not bound in the tunnel itself, then, but within a larger chamber. Good! They approached more slowly now, careful not to jostle each other or to make the faintest sound.

  At what might be called a doorway without a door, they paused. Within lay a chamber of stone that was nigh square, each wall perhaps thrice Cormac’s length. Not a huge room, but big enough for the wielding of ax and sword and buckler, and the swift necessary movement of their feet.

  In the far right corner was piled a cairn of stones, and there too was him they sought. The Moonbow of Danu hung upon his chest at the end of its silver chain, its points downward. This had to be Dithorba, who like Thulsa Doom was captive of the Chains of Danu. A very short and passing thin man he was, with a beard like dirty snow that was plaited on his chest; above, his pate was bald and gleaming. In addition to the Moonbow necklace, the queen’s mage was chained to the wall itself by shackles of silver. Pitifully, the old fellow wore naught but a loincloth.

  Gael gave Dane a querying look; Dane nodded.

  And the bigger man moved. Before Cormac could step forward, Wulfhere entered the chamber of stone. He sidestepped swiftly leftward so that there was room for his companion to enter and range himself beside him-and it fell out that the guards were there, to the left of the entry.

  Two men squatted, and the knuckle-bones in the hand of one struck the floor with a little clatter just as the newcomers came upon them. Four others stood about them. Instantly a dozen pale de Danann eyes fixed on Wulfhere the Splitter of Skulls, and every man showed shock.

  A full half dozen there were, unnaturally pale, grim-faced men who were both armed and armoured. Their widened eyes changed swiftly; now they flared as unnaturally with the scarlet killing-lust. Cormac saw on the instant that Tarmur Roag was their master, and that the traitorous sorcerer of Moytura had made animals of these guards; they were mindless, fearless slayers.

  The two dicers scrambled up and wrappe
d, fists around pommels; six short pale men faced the two who had come so unexpectedly upon them. Surprise had been lost; Wulfhere had not immediately charged. Yet the men of Moytura hesitated, staring at men who to them were weird of hair and complexion-and gigantic of stature. Like their cousins of the Isle, none of these Danans was above five and half feet in height.

  Corselets of scintillant, superbly wrought mail they wore, chain after the manner of Eirrin rather than the short coat of overlapping scales that armoured Wulfhere’s massive frame from collarbones to upper thighs. The links were dark. Each Danan bore a sword rather than ax or spear, and their bucklers were ornately wrought, six-sided and inlaid and painted and enameled as though the makers had sought to make jewellery of the implements of war and red death. Shaped like crescent moons were their helmets, with outcurving wings that Cormac thought were surely silver, welded onto the sides of their round helms of iron.

  As though frozen, the Danans stared. Cormac seized the moment.

  “It’s for Dithorba we’ve come,” he said. “Stand ye back all, and live another day.”

  Wulfhere rotated his wrist so that his great ax swung in readiness. The face of mac Art twisted into a sinister and violent expression as he lifted his buckler. In his fist his sword was ready for the letting of Danan blood. A light that seemed to welcome battle blazed blue in his eyes like sword steel.

  The Danans made reply in action rather than words. They came grimly, death-hounds of the land below-earth pitting their hatred-glaring selves against two tigers of the sea, men with hearts of wolves and thews of fire and steel, feeders of countless eaters of carrion; men to whom the death-song was sweeter than the love-croon of a maiden.

  Wulfhere grinned and waited. Far greater men than these had been given pause by that smile that betokened joy in battle. Not so these sorcerously encouraged Danans; they came on.

  Grim of mien, a man of the earth launched a sword-slash with a savagery that bespoke his unreasoning hate for these who challenged his charge-and his blind senseless obedience to the fell conditioning of Tarmur Roag. Only then did the redbearded giant heave up his weapon and with a tremendous swipe of that outsized ax destroy sword and beautiful mail, skin and bone, shoulder and chest so that the attacker was cloven to the pectoral and Wulfhere was forced to fight and worry his ax free. It came away drooling scarlet gore while his victim sank down with only a gasp to mark his passage from this world into the next.

  The man beside and just back of him was shocked at the tigerishly lithe swiftness of the unbearded man with the dark skin. Then he knew shock again when that scarred intruder did not chop, but thrust, in a blurring forward motion of his entire right arm. Steel entered the Danan betwixt his collarbones and sank to the length of his own hand. That hand flexed in a spasm and his sword fell at Cormac’s feet. The short man’s body followed, twitching.

  None cursed or made battle cry; the battle beneath the earth was fought in an awful silence but for the ring and scrape of arms.

  The other diminutive sons of Danu came frothing on in a ravening onslaught so that Cormac and Wulfhere were forced to use all skill and swiftness against the close-bunched foe. Blue sparks flew from the edges of shield and hacking blades and the terrible clangour of war arose.

  A mighty sword-sweep missed the Gael only because he blurred backward a half-pace. Then forward; Danan blade rang off stone wall with an ear-splitting screech that sent a thousand bright sparks aflying. At the same time, Cormac’s point whisked forth like a striking blue-grey serpent and vanished into the eye whose socket it widened. Another sword came rushing at his side; before he could shift up his buckler Wulfhere’s ax-blade came whining to shorten the deadly sliver of death by a halfscore inches. Ten inches of Danan iron clanged and clattered off wall and floor of yieldless stone-and three inches of Gaelic steel destroyed Danan chainmail and opened its wearer’s stomach nigh to his backbone. A dark hand of incredible skill and strength gave the sword a quick twist and jerked it forth so swiftly that it was clear and rushing elsewhere ere the spate of blood followed.

  In the narrow chamber walled all about with closely pressing, echoic stone beneath its low ceil, the clangour of striving weapons was nigh onto deafening.

  At the doorway stood robed man and cloaked woman, watching; Erris had forgot her fear to press against the undying wizard while she stared at a sight she had never before witnessed. So too stared Dithorba, moveless in his bonds amid the pile of loose stones.

  A hideously grimacing head rolled over the floor of hardened earth, sheared from Danan shoulders by the bite of Wulfhere’s ax. At the same time, an ugly grunt was wrenched from Cormac by the impact of the edge of a Danan blade on his sword-arm. His fingers quivered, threatening to drop his own brand.

  But an inch lower and he’d have lost the arm or been struck to the bone at least; only the linked steel sleeve of his mailcoat saved him from that horror. With the battle-fever on him he felt no pain, only the blow. Promised nevertheless a bothersome arm later and a huge tender bruise, he snarled blasphemous curses and drove his buckler forward with such vicious force that it not only struck the attacker full in the face but snapped the man’s neck.

  The last Danan died instantly, to fall without a mark on him.

  Chapter Ten:

  The Wizard of Moytura

  The deadly steel-hued eyes of Cormac mac Art were wild and glittering as he snapped his head this way and that, seeking the next foeman. There was none. It was over that swiftly, in a mad flurry of hand-to-hand ferocity that left six diminutive men of under-earth lying amid a spreading welter of blood whilst the victors had scarce begun to pant.

  Wulfhere lowered his red-smeared ax and glared at his comrade. Blood dripped from his arm; it was not from his veins.

  “Is that all, Wolf? I’ve not even raised a sweat!”

  “Blood-mad demon from the demesne of Hell” the Gael accused, and grinned an ugly wolfish grimace. “What is it ye want? It’s six men we’ve just been after hacking our way through with steel, and ye’re after bemoaning the lack of their number! There-that one moves still; be a kind man and swiften his pace into Danu’s arms that he suffers less.”

  Wulfhere first frowned in puzzlement at the seeming verbal attack. Then he began to grin, and his ax slit an agonized man’s throat with surgical precision. Cormac was meanwhile looking across the corpses to the rear of the chamber of earth and stone.

  “It’s Cormac son of Art I am, a Gael from the land above. I and this redbeard are come to release ye, man… ye’ll aid us in the freeing of your queen?”

  The old man blinked, and one foot shifted amid the loose stones surrounding him like a premature burial cairn. He gazed on Cormac, and there was anguish in his eyes. He spoke not.

  Cormac mac Art frowned, looking up from his squat; he was carefully wiping his swordblade on the skirt of a dead man’s tunic.

  “Can ye not speak? Can ye move your head, then?”

  The old man nodded.

  “Ah.” Cormac rose and sheathed his sword. “It’s sorcery done upon ye, is it?” He turned. “Wulfhere, we-”

  “Cormac! FALL!”

  The Dane’s shout rose high and loud with a definite note of desperation. Cormac knew the, tone, and saw the horrified face, and he knew this urgency signal they had each used in past. It told him that he was sore menaced from behind, could not meet the menace, and must betake himself out of the way instanter. He responded with swift obedience to exigence. Cormac did not fall; he dived to the unyielding floor with a clash of buckler and a twist of his head that allowed helm and hair to absorb the impact.

  Prone, he sensed more than heard the overhead whiz of some unknown missile. He was already scrambling around to bring up sword and shield to meet whatever malign force might have materialized between himself and the Danan mage. Aye, materialized, for the experiences with Thulsa Doom had conditioned him to accept the awful reality of sorcerous attacks.

  It was Wulfhere and the others who were behind him now, and from t
hat direction he heard something hard smack the stone wall near the entry; the thrown object was not metal. On his back he faced-no one. Nothing. There was only the pile of grey and grey-brown stones, twinkling with flecks of quartz and feldspar, around the bare thin shanks of Dithorba.

  Frowning, his mind weighted with the darkness of confusion, Cormac twisted again. Was Dithorba helpless-had the Danan hurled something? But he was chained… Asprawl and raised partway on one elbow, the Gael stared while Wulfhere stooped. The big man straightened, hefting the fist-sized chunk of rock he had picked up.

  “This leaped from the pile and rushed at your back, Cor-Cormac! Another!”

  Cormac mac Art lay on his back, legs extended toward the cairn, his neck twisted so that he faced Wulfhere. At the Dane’s words his nape crawled. There was no time to give thought to the eerieness, though; again danger threatened imminently. Even as he started to turn his face again in Dithorba’s direction, his left arm moved in a rush. Weaponman’s reflexes sent his buckler sweeping up in protection, however blindly. Luck or the gods of Eirrin guided his arm. Instinctively he swung it up and in before his sprawled body, ere he could see what he was doing.

  There was a grating chunking impact on his shield, a smallish round targe, and his arm shivered. He groaned then in pain, for onto his leg dropped the flying stone he had providentially deflected with his buckler. Several pounds in weight, the rock fell on him below the hem of his mailcoat’s short skirt. Leather leggings afforded protection, there, but the blow was forceful and he felt it to the bone.

  Staring eyes told him that Dithorba remained helpless. There was no one else there. No one had hurled the stone. Yet it had come flying. Twice then, stones had hurled themselves at him.

  While he was starting to rise, another chunk of granite sprang at him from the jumbled pile about Dithorba Loingsech. With a feeling of horror Cormac saw the inanimate thing detach itself from the others, become animate. Agleam with twinkling quartz, it came skimming at him, low so as to catch him in face or neck.