The Sign of the Moonbow

by Andrew J Offutt

  While the queen stood stricken silent, Cormac drew steel and brandished the blade in a shining arc above his head.

  “It’s the Sign of the Moonbow I wear, given me by the People of Danu driven from Moytura by your ancestors, Tarmur Roag… for favouring rule by a Male! Six guards ye set to hold Dithorba; they lie dead and here he stands. Elatha the Whip daily raped the Queen of all Moytura-and Elatha lies dead. Who of those little sniveling cowards and traitors about ye will ye send to take me, Tarmur Roag-who will come to his doom?”

  Cormac mac Art was striving as much to persuade and fire himself as he was engaging in the standard challenging rhetoric and braggadocio of weapon-men throughout the world. And he felt his own spirits surge, the blood seeming to warm in his veins, even while he sought to cut the confidence from beneath those traitorous guardsmen below as the scythe went through the grain-field.

  Cormac descended two steps and stood in a posture of arrogance and confidence.

  Below, sixteen men stood with naked iron in their hands.

  Tarmur Roag’s arm rose and the silvery sleeve slid away from a white wrist as he pointed at the Gael.

  “TAKE him! To him who cuts down that foreigner goes command of the guardsmen… the King’s Guard!”

  The guardsmen hesitated, exchanged glances. Suddenly one started forward, grinning. Command! Then another followed-and then all of them, none wishing to be left behind and all hoping to put death on the foreigner or to be there when it was done and thus hold favour with the next commander.

  While he stood on the steps and glared down at them like a snarling wolf at bay, sixteen armed men began converging on Cormac mac Art.

  It was then that the thunderous booming sound exploded from the other end of the temple and filled the large chamber with rolling echoes. On the temple floor, many men turned to stare at the tall brazen doors on either side of the altar.

  “Balan!” Dithorba muttered, and Cormac knew there was more hope than certainty with the old man. Again someone hammered on that faraway door.

  The voice of Cormac mac Art roared out, with all the volume he could put into it. “Ye unarmed poets and chroniclers of Moytura-draw aside that none may put wound or death on Moytura’s finest!” Then he swung halfway around. “Dithorba-use your power, man! Open that door!”

  Frozen in indecision, Dithorba jerked, blinked. He smiled-and vanished.

  Cormac saw him reappear at the other end of the temple, saw the mage forge swiftly forward to grasp the bars on the great door. No eyes were on him-until Tarmur Roag looked back over his shoulder.

  “Kill that man!” he bawled, pointing.

  “Kill Tarmur Roag!” Cormac shouted, and without looking to see whether the three loyal Danans were with him, he charged down the steps,

  Now men were shouting, and Dithorba’s cry came but thinly: “Take away your weight from the door!”

  The three rearmost of the traitorous guardsmen had wheeled and made for him. One, seeing that so many were hardly necessary to cut down a single old man, swung back to join his fellows against the big dark maniac coming like a charging bear down the steps. At that a second of those making for Dithorba paused, biting his lip; surely two of them were unnecessary for this piddling task, and if it might be his sword that slew the foreigner who opposed his masters… He too turned back. He joined the mass of men who waited, crouching, swords up, for the charge of Cormac mac Art.

  One man continued toward Dithorba, who was pitting all his strength against the massive bar across the door. Again it shook and boomed with assault from the other side. Now two others rushed after Dithorba’s nemisis; unarmed both: poets or chroniclers. At the sound of the slap-slap of their sandals behind him, the weapon-man looked back. He was forced to pause, to turn with upraised buckler and ready sword.

  “Would you do death on Reyan, foremost among poets of Moytura?” one of his pursuers demanded.

  While the guardsman hesitated, full of the high respect for the poet of all men on and within Eirrin, the bar rose-and crashed down outside its iron rest. Dithorba tried to skip away but was bowled over by the inwardly rushing door. Into the temple boiled Balan at the head of a score or so swarming guardsmen of unquestionable allegiance and intent.

  Balan paused. His eager followers brought themselves to a halt at the lifting of his shield, though they glared about like leashed hounds with the scent of blood in their nostrils; twenty men in scalemail armour, shields whose faces were etched in silver with the moonbow of their goddess, and from whose helms projected crescents of silver; men exactly like those with Tarmur Roag and Cairluh. Their pale eyes roamed the interior of the temple.

  They saw the poets and chroniclers of Moytura, who had drawn to one side; they saw a mass of their fellow Queen’s Guardsmen in number about equal to their own; they saw beyond them the semicircular stairs with Cormac but two steps from the temple floor, brought to pause by their advent; above them they saw three others, partway descended, swords naked; and at the top of the flight was their queen.

  “Balan!” Cormac shouted into the sudden silence. “Behind me is the real Riora; Tarmur’s creature is slain! As for these-every guardsman ye see belongs to Tarmur and Cairluh, and they’re just after murdering two of their own number!”

  Balan hesitated only a moment. Then he pointed with his sword to the traitors.

  “Yield!”

  Tarmur’s voice bellowed out a moment after: “Slay!”

  So it was to be, and battle was joined in the very Temple of the Moon. The Queen’s Guardsmen were pitted against the Queen’s Guardsmen. Her commander led one band; her treacherous cousin and the sorcerer the other. The groups closed with arching blades crashing through hastily interposed shields in a storm of ringing iron. The two forces were soon indistinguishably intermingled.

  Into that milling mass of sword-wielding men Tarmur Roag durst not unleash his sorcerous powers. Instead, wheeling, he hurled it at the stranger who had brought on this thwarting of his plans and their execution. But a few minutes agone he had been scant seconds from the rule of Moytura; now all his plans were endangered, aye, and his life as well.

  Tarmur Roag gestured.

  A spear of dullest, shadowy black streaked at mac Art.

  He both dodged and struck out at it with his buckler. A sensation as of ice assailed his shield-arm as he scrambled aside, nearly falling from the bottom step. His slitted eyes saw that his buckler had been holed through and through, as though by an awl in the hands of resistless god.

  His nape prickling and his arm still atingle, the Gael sought to avoid further such magickal attacks by rushing the two Moyturans who had not whirled to meet Balan’s men but remained to brace the tall man with the dark skin. Their faces were set as in granite and their eyes were ice. He saw that they were controlled men, fighting animals, like those who’d guarded Dithorba.

  There was a whoosh overhead as another long spear of darkness rushed from the mage. Behind Cormac, gurgles sounded, and then the crashes of falling men. He need not turn to know that the three guardsmen had paid a bitter price for being so slow to follow him to the defense of their queen.

  He advanced on two of their fellows, traitors both. They separated.

  Death came and pressed him close and he hacked and smote, running a shield and bending an iron blade with his own sword of silver-flashing steel. That man recovered swiftly and hewed without troubling over his blade, which now formed a definite curve.

  Spitting a sulphurous oath, the Gael swept his battered, boled shield in a whizzing blurring defensive arc before him; it turned the bent blade and swept away the other man’s so that the fellow was wrenched halfway around. Cormac drove his own sword forward in a terrible disemboweling thrust that sheared through iron scalemail and brought an ugly croak from its victim. His eyes glared at the dark man-who gave his blade a wrenching twist and yanked it free. Blood followed; dropped sword clanged on the smoothness of stone floor; its owner sank beside his blade.

  Cormac had not w
aited to see that man fall. Instead he strode past and swung his blooded blade at the other man. The Moyturan fended it off with his hexagonal shield, which lost half its silver decor thereby.

  Over his shoulder Cormac’s eyes recorded iron ranks at clash and stamp; blood spattered as Balan’s and Tarmur’s men battled with edge of blade and point of sword. Battle-lust ruled the Temple of the Moon and Danu could but watch as her own people fought among themselves. Sharp-edged brands of dark iron flashed and glittered in blue-grey streaks, and sword-hacked men fell vomiting scarlet.

  The center of the temple of the goddess became a sea, a writhing storm-swept sea, of shining mail and blood.

  A hard-driven slash chopped a wedge from Cormac’s weakened buckler in a blow that jolted his arm to the collarbone. His blade streaked his arm with Moyturan blood as he slashed in return. The other man grunted when his carapace of iron scales gave way at the waist to sharp steel sliver driven by steel-sheathed muscles. Cormac’s sword chewed deep. The man was staggered by the blow but stood blinking, not realizing that his own blood washed forth after Cormac had twisted free his blade.

  The Gael started past him; the Moyturan hacked.

  “Crom’s name, man, know ye not ye’re dead?”

  Cormac slammed his shield into the rushing sword. There was the booming grating crash and screech of metal on metal, and the guardsman staggered again. His darker antagonist drove forward, using his shield as an advancing wall heading a body block that would have staggered a horse.

  The charge smote the wounded guardsman like a thunderbolt. He was dashed to the floor. Crimson surged from his side while steel-spring muscles carried the Gael past him.

  Red chaos ruled the temple, which was become a clangourous maelstrom of surging, hacking men.

  Crumpled Moyturans of both sides lay in their glistening blood while their souls raced off to join Donn, Lord of the Dead of Eirrin. Cormac saw the air alive with swords that flashed blue and sprinkled crimson drops. Staggering from woundy blows; men yet strove to fight on; some for queen and throne, others because they were the controlled tools of a wizard with not a care for them, body or soul.

  The Gael saw Balan hurl an attacker from him with a mighty twisting heave of his six-sided shield and, while he roared out his constant cry of “Riora and Danu!,” sent his point leaping out to gird into the breast of another. An iron blade battered down on his helm; Balan trembled, staggered, cursed-and swept his smeared glaive around in a whistling half-circle that sliced away a sword-arm.

  Cormac’s grin was wolfish and ugly. Balan of Moytura not only knew how to use body and blade and buckler, the man reveled in it! His command, the Gael mused, was the result of no woman’s favouritism or political appointment!

  But as Cormac looked about, the ugly little smile gave way to a frown.

  Where was Tarmur Roag?

  The frown became a snarling scowl; the mage had skirted the mass of men, while none dared so much as glance aside from points and iron edges that sought and chewed like the fangs of ravening wolves. Aye, the plump traitor was ghosting betwixt the pillars on the far side of the great hall. He headed for the purple drapes that obscured the wall.

  Fleeing for some hidden door, Cormac thought, and he rushed after the Moyturan wizard.

  The Gael must leap high; a man came staggering back from the ringing combat to crash to the floor at his feet like a felled tree. Cold eyes blazing, Cormac raced on. On his shield-side howling devils crashed their flashing blades through bucklers and flesh; to his right, across fifteen feet of gleaming green floor, the steps rose. A glance told him that the queen stood still there, with Dithorba now at her side.

  It’s danger she’s in, Cormac thought, should one of the traitors see her and bethink himself of charging the steps. A sword at her breast and all fighting ceases-and Balan and the rest of us are butchered! But nay, he reminded himself; Dithorba was there, and could whisk her out of the danger of any traitorous attack in a twinkling.

  Cormac reached the edge of the main floor; plunged past the colonnade of bronze-bound pillars. Ahead of him, Tarmur Roag reached for the violet hangings. The edge of Cormac’s eye remarked a guardsman racing toward the mage, but he knew not whether that man was Balan’s or Tarmur’s.

  With a freezing cry ripping from his throat, the Gael charged Tarmur Roag with all the speed of his powerful legs.

  Having begun his action, the treacherous wizard completed it: he ripped away the heavy curtain ere he responded to Cormac’s shout.

  Behind the drape lay the wall, with two feet of space between. There stood a night-dark robe surmounted by a noisome death’s head; around its neck gleamed a slim chain of silver and on the robe’s breast flashed the sigil of Danu, moon-points down. The undying wizard was otherwise unbound. Beside him stood a redbearded giant who looked nigh naked without ax or scalemail corselet or round Danish helm; in chains he was, and with a gag covering his mouth. Cormac saw that iron links secured Wulfhere’s wrists to his ankles, but without play enough to allow the Dane to get his fingers at his gag.

  That scene Cormac mac Art saw all in the flash of a moment. There was no time for a sigh of relief at seeing Wulfhere alive and Thulsa Doom still immobilized by the Sign of the Moonbow; Tarmur Roag turned at the Gael’s shout and his pallid gaze fell on the dark man who raced at him with naked sword in hand.

  At sight of him who had done such violence to his plans, the Moyturan wizard’s eyes seemed to spark yellow, as with leaping flames of hate. He gestured viciously, as if he were hurling some missile.

  Was instinct saved mac Art; piratic weapon-man’s instinct caused him to lunge sideward. Materialized from nothingness, from the air itself and the arcane power of Tarmur Roag, a long shadow-spear drove at and past him.

  In that desperate dodgery Cormac lost his footing. He fell, armour crashing and grating on the floor of glaucous stone.

  Tarmur Roag whirled and with both hands whipped the Chain of Danu from around the neck of Thulsa Doom. He tossed it away, and plucked a dagger from a sheath up the sleeve of his silvery robe. Instantly the eyesockets of the skull blazed the red of witchfire on a foggy night. The will of the undying wizard had been returned to him-and with it returned his sheerest malevolence and lust for vengeance.

  Cormac rose in time to see two things: the charging Moyturan weapon-man had swerved to attack him, not the wizard-and Wulfhere’s chains did not prevent him from lifting his hands as high as Tarmur Roag’s neck. The Dane grasped the mage by the throat with a suddenness and violence that jarred the dagger from Tarmur Roag’s hand.

  The guardsman came on for Cormac. It’s no time I have for this interfering idiot, the Gael thought, angered at the delay. He took one step forward while he launched a sword-cut with such irresistible strength and savagery that it met his attacker’s stroke and sheared through his blade as though it had been cheese.

  Half the traitor’s blade flew through the air to ring clanging and skirling on the floor. The other half completed its chop, though weakly; Cormac’s raging blow had nigh broken the man’s arm along with his sword. Now, just as viciously, Cormac kicked him up under the hem of his mailcoat, bashed him in the head with his buckler as the retching fellow started to fall, making sick noises. Then the Gael’s sword came whizzing back to cleave into the other’s face at the nose. The gory corpse sprawled and Cormac had to set a foot against it to free his blade of the Moyturan’s skull.

  Tarmur Roag’s face had taken on colour for the first time in his life. It went red, then began to blacken. His eyes bulged and his tongue quivered out. His heels cleared the floor as Wulfhere lifted, and a great shudder went through the Moyturan mage. Then, as Thulsa Doom marshaled his senses and started past, the Dane swung that ugly corpse so as to stagger the ancient wreaker of evil.

  Tarmur Roag’s body fell limply. Thulsa Doom rose from his knees and turned blazing red eye-pits on the giant. In the wizard’s bony hand was Tarmur’s dagger.

  “Wulfhere! Pig of a blood-bearded barbaria
n… for you I can spare a moment!”

  A long sword of shining steel whizzed down in a blurring streak of silver. The dagger drove at Wulfhere-and was carried away with the arm that wielded it. No blood splashed as Thulsa Doom groaned and turned his awful faceless head toward his attacker.

  With a second wild sweep that narrowly missed the Dane’s swelling chest, Cormac’s sword lifted the skull of Thulsa Doom from his shoulders. The flying death’s head struck a pillar, rebounded to the floor with a loud cracking sound, and rolled.

  “HAIL THE QUEEN! RIORA REIGNS!”

  Cormac recognized the bellowing voice; it was Balan, triumphant. He and his remaining men had defeated their erstwhile fellow guardsmen. And Tarmur Road lay dead. And the undying wizard was beheaded.

  But he was not dead.

  The headless, one-armed robe turned, stopped when its front was turned toward the yellow-white object that gleamed on the floor fifteen feet away.

  Then Thulsa Doom started for his head.

  Cormac was already striking away the chains that linked Wulfhere’s feet to the wall. On one knee then to sever the length that connected the Dane’s ankles, Cormac saw the horror that brought silence on all else who witnessed: the tall, headless robe bent, clutched up the skull, and set it upon the center of its shoulders. Instantly it adhered and was fast.

  A ringing peal of satanic laughter burst from the death’s head mouth and echoed from the temple’s stone walls.

  Then Thulsa Doom ran, with astonishing speed, toward the steps at whose top stood the Queen of Moytura.

  Bellowing “Dithorba!” Cormac leaped after the undying wizard. Behind him, chains clinked as Wulfhere started to follow.

  Dithorba had said he possessed but few talents beyond that of his strange travel-by-mind. At last he demonstrated; his was the Danu-given power of Cathbadh. A wall of flame leaped up a few feet in front of the running Thulsa Doom. Cormac saw that the fire rose not so high as those of the mage of Danu’s Isle, and was pale blue rather than yellow and orange. Nevertheless the fire-wall served its purpose. The skull-surmounted robe skidded to a stop and back-paced hurriedly.