"The Sword of the Gael" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

Chapter Three: Vikings!

Never until now have I met,

Since first I saw sun’s light,

Thy like in deeds of battle-

Never in my life, O Cormac!

– from “Cormac the Gael”

by Ceann Ruadh, the “Minstrel-king”

As Cormac mac Art ascended, the sun went down. The Gael climbed in the dusk-light with great care, his buskins thonged to his belt. He completed his scaling of that looming natural wall of brooding stone in the gloom of last dusk.

From the summit, a long and nigh flat mesa, he watched, hardly seeing, while the sun died. The fat orange half-disk squatted on the far reaches of the ocean. Crimson fingers of its light came reaching out along the waters, seeming to bloody the surface, as if the sun were desperately trying to hold on with breaking nails. Failing, it slid off the edge of the world, which was plunged into darkness. The million eyes of the night sky appeared, presided over by the moon’s cold light.

Cormac sat. He was high above the hidden valley now and above even the highest tower of the castle that should not have been there. He re-laced his buskins. The son of Art of Connacht thought: about Eirrin, about Connacht where he was born and Leinster where he’d taken service, and about Dalriada in Alba where he had also served at arms, before the years of outlaw raiding along those same coasts. “Riever” was the word of his people; “Scoti” was the Romans’ word that meant the same, and before they had withdrawn from their Briton sword-land they had commenced calling Alba “Scot-land” as well as Caledonia.

A riever he was still, with Wulfhere and the crew of Danes. Or had been, until this day of dark portent.

Art’s son of Connacht was an exile from Dalriada; an exile from Connacht and Leinster. He was an exile from Alba… and from his own Eirrin. The name given him by his father had made even more nervous a High-king who sat his throne unsteadily, ever in fear of being toppled from it. By means of that High-king’s machinations Cormac had foolishly, youthfully let himself be goaded until he had fought, and slain the man he knew not was in royal pay, and that during the Great Fair.

That youthful Cormac had broken the King’s Peace at Fair-time, and death was the penalty. He had not waited for it to come seeking him.

Not in twelve years had he set foot on his native soil, though he claimed it to have been longer. Cormac was more thoughtful and less reckless than Wulfhere, who was older. Cormac pretended to be older, out of regard for his friend and fellow riever. He who was the descendant of kings had the vision and the wisdom of a king-though no regard for them, for by two crowned heads he had been betrayed.

He wondered, as he kept his brooding seaward watch, if the monarchs of old had been different.

Nigh onto three hundred years agone, a usurper had slain Art the Lonely, King over the kings of Eirrin. Not long did the murderer sit the throne of the Ard-righ, the High-king, in Tara of Meath. For the son of Art the Lonely slew that man and claimed his father’s throne. It was he who gave his people the safety of peace, and the sea-laws, and too their Book of Rights. Too, he caused to be builded magnificent structures at Tara, and a new dignity was born to the high crown.

“He was the greatest king that Eirrin ever knew,” Cormac’s father had told the boy. “In power and eloquence, in the vigour and splendour of his reign, he had not his like before or since. In his reign none needed bar the door, no flocks need be guarded, nor was anyone in all Eirrin distressed for want of food or clothing. For all Eirrin that wise and just king made a beautiful land of promise. His grandfather was Conn of the Hundred Battles; his father was Art; and he was King Cormac. Like you, son, for I have given you the greatest name in the history of our land: Cormac mac Art. And you of Connacht as well.”

He had told the bright-eyed boy Cormac had been how that other Cormac resigned his office in his old age, and after that there ruled other High-kings. Then came Niall of the Nine Hostages, who raided the Picts in Alba and the Romans in Britain-and even into Gaul of the Franks. One wrongful deed Niall had done. He it was who brought home to Eirrin a slave from Britain, who was to return decades later with a new name and a vocation other than the shepherd he’d been, up in Antrim.

Now he was styled “Patricius” by the chief priest in Rome, and Padraigh by the Gaels of his adopted land. He it was who preached the new faith-which Cormac despised as being unworthy of men and particularly of men Eirrin-born. It was that same “Patrick” who threw down the great gold and silver statue of the ancient chief-god of the Celts who came so long ago to Eirrin: Crom Cruach, on the plain of Magh Slecht near Ballymagauran.

Atop the basalt cliffs on the island with no name, Cormac stood, and stretched, and turned to gaze norwestward, into darkness. For there lay Eirrin. And he reflected on his heritage.

It was trouble King Niall had with Leinster, as did all the High-kings over the matter of the Boru Tribute, which chafed the Leinstermen hide and spirit and soul. Eochaid son of Enna King of Leinster slew Niall then, these six and eighty years gone, and that from ambush, with an arrow.

Many sons Niall left, who scattered to found kingdoms whilst his brother’s son succeeded to the high throne. He too died across the water west of Britain, in the land of the Franks. And his son Ailill was High-king, and none of Niall’s get. Nor were they at rest under their helmets.

Time came when those descendants of Niall, the ua-Neill, gave challenge. With Leinster’s king they met Ailill in great battle at Ocha, and Ailill was overthrown. He was the second High-king of all Eirrin from Connacht-and now Connacht’s power was broke.

“Perhaps he was the last son of Connacht to sit enthroned on Tara Hill and preside over the assembled kings at Feis-mor,” Cormac’s father had said, with his eyes on his stout son who, was so proficient with weapons-and with his brain. “And… perhaps not.”

Cormac had known what he meant, even then. He dreamed.

Now, exiled and marooned dreamless on this nameless isle so many years later, that son gave a sardonic smile to the heedless moon. Turning his back on the northwest, he resumed his seat on a round-smoothed stone. He stared morosely at the sea, which reflected the moonlight now as if it were a plain all of brass. Cormac wrestled with his restive mind; stubbornly it returned to his heritage.

After Ailill, Niall’s son Laegair ruled, and he it was who sat the throne when Padraigh came back on his infernal mission. Once the strange “bishop” with the spear-pointed staff had converted both Laegair’s wife and chief adviser to belief in his selfish Iosa Chriost-who brooked no other gods at all-Laegair gave Padraigh permission to preach throughout the emerald isle. Incredibly, the new religion gained and began to supercede the ancient faith of the Celts. The power of the bishops rose. That of the Druids declined. But not in the household of Art of Connacht, or in the mind of his son.

Art of Connacht, Cormac thought, and amused himself darkly by framing it in his mind as the seanachies and poets might style it:

“And in the time when Laegair’s son Lugaid was Ard-righ on Tara Hill, Art mac Comal, a member of the Bear sept of the powerless clan na Morna in Connacht and kinsman of the ua-Neill, got a son on his wife, and it was after the great king of old they named him: Cormac mac Art.”

That same Cormac mac Art snorted.

“King Cormac,” he muttered, and his scarred face was not pleasant in the pearl-light of the moon. “Good night on you, subjects all,” he muttered, and he lay back, and went to sleep, a marooned exile.

Cormac awoke at dawn, squinting. He resumed his watch and his reverie-but not for long.

It was shortly after dawn that the ship came. Lying prone, he watched it approach the island. When the striped sail vanished from his ken beyond the stern brow of the mesa’s shoreward cliffs, he rose. Cormac ran along the mesa heedless of his snarling stomach, until he found a vantage point for unseen observing.

From the towering cliffs above them he watched the ship’s crew drag her onto the beach. They were bearded, ruddy men in helms with wings and horns, men from Norge-Vikings! Though from the northlands like the Danes, those were no friends of his comrades.

He watched as they fetched their cargo up the beach: sword-gained booty ire sacks and two chests, and two captives as well. The watcher’s deepset, narrow eyes narrowed the more as he gazed on those two.

Both wore sleeved white tunics that were dirty and bedraggled, and leather leggings and soft buskins of leather: riding togs, and not peasantish. They were a man and a woman, slim and seemingly young, and them orange-red of hair.

More booty, Cormac mused, for those be worth ransom, surely.

Among the Norsemen was also a man lean as a reed rising from the fen and long of silvery beard, with a robe on him. A Nordic Druid, dark-robed and tall and with hair just past his shoulders, as his beard lay on his chest. Cormac saw that he was well deferred to, that slim old man. He wondered at his powers, for he who said the Druids were without powers beyond those of other men was a fool on the face of the earth.

The Norsemen came up the beach. Without choice, the captives were meek enough about it.

Cormac waited only long enough to assure himself of what he already assumed: these men knew where they were going. They it was who had found the ancient palace of this island afore him, and left behind the men he had slain. The Vikings, with their Druid and their booty and their prisoners, were bent for that castle now.

Narrow-eyed, the Gael looked longingly at their dragon-prowed ship.

Then backing like a river crayfish until he was sure he could not be seen afoot, he rose and sped back along the mesa. His route was far more direct than that circuitous one through the defile.

The arrow he sped through a window of the palace brought forth his companions soon enough. When they emerged with drawn sword, faces upturned, he motioned them into hiding. Wulfhere nodded and signaled back; the six Danes concealed themselves.

Cormac waited.

When the Norse Vikings at last appeared, he counted them as they wended their way onto the valley of the castle. The corsairs from the northlands numbered one and twenty. They entered the castle, and long Cormac waited for their reaction to the disappearance of their sentries. A strangeness: they made no outcry, nor did any man emerge to call. He did hear the sounds happy men make when they begin to let ale glide down their throats to cool the belly and warm the mind. He had known it to happen before, particularly when leadership was not strong or clearly defined. Weary and triumphant from a successful expedition, even good weapon-men had been known to ignore all in their eagerness to relax with food and drink.

Cormac waited long, then waved Wulfhere and the others to cross the valley. They did, making use of all possible cover. Soon, within the shade-darkened defile, the seven held discourse.

Wulfhere Hausakliufr was for attacking the Vikings at once, but listened as ever to Cormac’s quietly voiced logic.

“It’s doling out their sword-gains and celebrating they’ll be, old friend. Let those happy men slake their thirst with all that ale we… saw.” A. smile twisted Cormac’s lips. “They’ll be easier foemen for it.”

They did not mention or consider the prisoners the Norsemen were having such a care with. No sensible man made attempt to “save” a woman from whatever her captors chose to do with her, and despite the impetuous nature of Wulfhere Skull-splitter, he was a sensible man.

Pragmatism prevailed. Having brought both food and drink out with them, the Danes would abide just within the side-cleft of the main defile; they had noted it before, and passed it by. Cormac, meanwhile, would check the strand, and that with care. He would soon know how many guards had been left with the small Viking craft with its striped sail.

“A good craft for us,” Wulfhere said darkly.

“So it will be,” the Gael said. “We will do nothing until night cloaks this land then… agreed?”

“A long wait.”

Cormac ignored the petulant tone, said only, “aye.”

Wulfhere gazed at him and at last gave him a brief nod. Cormac returned it and went away over the mesa again.

A spire-like chunk of granitic rock remained where weather had washed away that around it. In its lee, Cormac settled himself. He had doffed his helmet to cool his black mane, and laid aside swordbelt against its possible clank. Now and then staring briefly out to sea to re-adjust his eyes, he took up his watch on the beach where lay the Viking ship. And its scalemailed guards in their ferociously horned or winged, helms.

At last he was certain: there were four. Restless they were, and surely not happy to be left behind whilst the others adjourned within the shady palace and betook themselves of ale and wine-and perhaps of their captives as well.

Cormac had tossed the bow down to Wulfhere and the others; Guthrum and Ivarr were better with those far-killing weapons, while Cormac had not his match with sword and shield and dagger. Too, the business of fighting and reddening another’s body was to him a personal one. He liked not the bow, or the great siege engines that hurled stone or spear or fire. The world would be an ugly place, Cormac felt and had said, and men the less for it, if ever the time came when wars were fought impersonally, from a distance. For then truly all would be up to the old and unskilled, sitting back in high places while others did their blood-work for them.

He waited, and watched the men on the beach.

When it is dark, Cormac mac Art decided, I will carry death among those four.

He waited.

He had waited before, and was little troubled by it. There were gulls to watch, and clouds and their changing shapes, and the shifting of the sea and the occasional flashing appearance of one of her dwellers. And there were the activities of the men below. Them, however, he watched but little. He was not eager to know the men he must soon go among, carrying steel death.

The sun dragged across the sky.

Cormac waited.

Slowly the sun settled, and Cormac moved when the shade changed, so as to remain in shadow. He had spotted the place where he would make his descent, and that unseen by the men with the ship.

He waited, considering the mystery of the great palace built here so long ago. Into his mind came the words of a dying priest of the new god, over in Britain.

“The serpent-man,” he had gasped out, “the last of that race that preceded humanity in dominion over the world. King Kull slew the last of his brethren with the edge of the sword in desperate conflict, but the Dark Druid survived to ape the form of man and hand down the Satanic lore of olden times.”

Mayhap it was not all those serpentish men Kull of Valusia slew in Atlantis herself, Cormac mused, remembering the wall-etched pictures he had studied yesterday. Then his heart thudded the harder within him, and he fought to thrust castle and wall and pictures and Kull and… “memories” from his head.

“This temple,” the old priest had got out before his death, “is the last Outpost of their accursed civilization to remain above the ground-and beneath it rages the last Shoggoth to remain near the surface of the world. The goat-spawn roam the hills only at night, fearful now of man, and the Old Ones and the Shoggoths hide deep within the earth…”

Cormac mac Art hoped the man had been right. He and Wulfhere had slain raving obscenities in form and ferocity on that occasion, and he was content to confine the edge of his sword to men, not monsters. A frown came onto his face as he thought of the palace back in the valley.

But no; six men had spent the previous night there, aid others had doubtless nighted there many times. The Norsemen would not return here had they seen aught of serpent-men or worse!

Of course, he reminded himself, they have with them their Druid!

As on the afternoon before, the dying sun bathed the westering sea in blood from horizon to shore, and Cormac prepared himself for the descent.

It was then that the four Vikings emerged from the defile, having come from out the castle, and debouched onto the beach. Cormac froze.

Two of the newcomers were none too steady on their feet, and they carried the reason in a leathern ale-sack. They were greeted enthusiastically by the quartet already there-but that, Cormac saw, was because the four newcomers comprised a relief watch. They remained; the others bent their feet castleward for food and drink, nor were they laggardly about it.

Wolf-grinning, Cormac donned helmet and buckled on sword. Then he moved across the lip of the mesa to the sloping talus where rock had slid and fallen. Down he went, and onto the loose rock below. His feet made noise, but the four on the beach made more. They had not, he noted, built a fire.

No. They’d not be wanting others to find this isle-haven!

In the darkness, he walked along the sand toward them.

He was perhaps a ship’s length from them when one cried out in alarm. With his sword naked in his fist, Cormac charged.

He rushed upon them in deliberate silence, knowing that would strike fear and confusion into these loud-mouthed men of the north far more than the most bloodcurdling battle-scream.

Three had drawn swords and lifted shields; one, in the act of rising, had slipped and fallen in the darkness. Him Cormac passed up, for it was his way to attack the strongest first, rather than be set upon by that one while he wasted time and strength on a lesser foe. The strongest generally made himself known… and did now.

“It’s only a man!” a burly Norseman in a great winged helmet called, and he came forward in a crouch, shield and sword up and ready.

Cormac never slowed.

He charged the braver man, and struck at his sword with shield rather than merely catching the vicious sideward cut. At the same time Cormac swung low. It was not a tactic the Viking was prepared to meet.

Even as his sword struck sparks off the metal rim of his attacker’s shield with a frightful clashing clang, hard-swung steel was biting away most of his right leg below the knee. Blood pumped in spurts and the man fell with an awful cry. Cormac was already sweeping his blood-smeared brand viciously back to shear away the blade that came at him from another direction-and that second man’s wrist with it. The Gael’s buckler seemed to leap out of itself to smash back the sobbing Norseman.

The third man of ice-girt Norge made his try from behind, sure of his prey when the latter was busy with two others.

But Cormac was no longer busy.

Whirling, he interposed his buckler to catch another crashing sword in a new burst of firefly sparks. At the same time, he kicked banefully up under the lower edge of the other’s buckler, and crashingly slammed his shield into that one.

The man’s cry was ugly, a sound of dreadful pain and gut-sickness. Both pain and cry were ended by the swishing steel blade that sent his helmeted head rolling over the sand. Blood gouted and, splashed warmly up Cormac’s arm. Without pause he chopped down at the man bent on daggering him in the leg; it was he whose leg the Gael had ruined. Better than dying of blood-loss, surely, Cormac thought, while he swung away to drive his foot up under the chin of the Viking in the act of rising from the sand: the man with no right hand. Jagged jarring pain to his toes made Cormac wince. There was a loud cracking sound and the man, straightened nearly to his feet, flopped sidewise. His head lolled from a broken neck.

Four men had become one.

The fourth, miraculously sobered by the sudden whirlwind ferocity of the attack on these men known for the sudden whirlwind viciousness of their attacks, came a-running with ax and shield. The ax circled the air with a heavy woosh and came rushing down.

Cormac did not ruin his shield by thrusting it up to meet that descending blade, which was hand-broad and long as his head. Instead, he charged into it, and past. The ax was far too heavy for its wielder to change its course. Passing the last guard on his left, Cormac chopped him deeply in the side before the Norseman could recover from the overbalancing effect of chopping mightily into the sand. The man sank down, releasing the, ax, clapping a hand to his side.

“It’s Wulfhere’s choice of weapons that is, and he a man mighty enough to wield it,” mac Art muttered to the man writhing on the sand. “Ye’d have done better with a sword.”

“O-Odin’s name… slay me!”

Cormac was no barbarian to delight in letting a man die slowly and in terrible pain. Nor had the mindless berserker rage come upon him in this brief conflict. He obliged the Viking.

Then Cormac whirled and set off at the run to rejoin his comrades.