"The Sword of the Gael" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)Chapter Four: Cutha Atheldane-Sorcerer– from “The Celts” by D’Arcy McGee Once he’d done railing at mac Art for having slain four without allowing him the pleasure of joining in, Wulfhere-predictably-was for taking the ship and going at once a-roving. “There’s booty here, man,” Cormac told him. “And the captives may well be worth more, in ransom. Prisoners, after all, are kept alive only for the use of men’s lusts or if they are valuable-and I remind you that the The conclusion was obvious, and Wulfhere sighed. Then he nodded: the two red-haired captives of the Norse were of value, to someone, somewhere… and thus surely to himself and his men. Now the giant was for carrying attack on the men in the castle… Again, he acquiesced to Cormac’s proposal. But it was not without grumbling that they all trekked back to the beach. There they shoved the ship off into the shallows and guided it carefully along the moonlit surf. Well down the strand and out of sight of its previous beaching, they again pushed and pulled the craft ashore. Grumbling still, all trekked back to the defile, and along it to the palace. Cormac remonstrated. There were too many Norse, and but a few of his and Wulfhere’s band. They could all use some sleep. Perhaps on the morrow the Vikings could be tricked, divided… This time he did not prevail. All were for attacking, now. The time to strike was when the Norsemen were slowed by full bellies and ale-dulled brains, they insisted. The Gael gave in, because he must, and immediately began counseling caution, a silent attack. “Those we find must be silenced swiftly, and quietly,” Cormac pointed out, as the seven men approached the castle in the wan moonlight. “And permanently” Wulfhere whispered-loudly enough to have been heard ten yards distant. “Who’s that?” a voice immediately demanded, from the shadows beside the broad entry of that towering pile of stone. “Rane? Olaf?” “Sh-h,” Cormac instantly hissed to his companions. Then he groaned, and pushed a staying hand behind while he continued to move forward. The man ahead muttered. Another voice answered. Cormac frowned. As though the unspoken words carried a command, two un-helmeted but spear-armed men stepped from beside the leftward pillar and came his way, hesitantly. “Olaf? Skel? What’s happened? Be ye hurt?” By Odin, these two are not yours alone, you selfish son of a selfish Gaedhil pig-farmer!” The angrily grunted words, miraculously not bellowed, emerged from Wulfhere’s throat. Deliberately he elbowed Cormac-as he charged past him. Steel flashed in the moonlight. The two sentries died within seconds of each other, with Wulfhere neither scratched nor winded. He gave the Gael a leering grin. “Ye’d have done for them both yourself wouldn’t you, ye selfish baresarker!” “I’d have laid them to rest more quietly,” Cormac drily assured him. Then, with finger to lips, he bade the giant hush. In silence, they waited. None came forth from the palace, however, in response to the swift sounds of combat and death. Only loud and jocular voices wafted forth. Unaware of the red doom that had stalked and taken six of their number and was now moving somberly on them, the Vikings laughed and joked, sang and celebrated the success of their latest raid. “The ale be good-but where’s the sorcerous Cutha Atheldane gone to,” a Norseman demanded rather plaintively, “with that nice little morsel of Eirrin-born wench? It’s not by ale alone that a man lives and recreates himself!” “The Druid said he hath business with her,” another Viking answered, “above stairs. Amuse yourself with her pretty brother, there!” There was raucous laughter. Cormac and Wulfhere exchanged grim looks. “They’ve all gathered in the great hall,” the man called Skull-splitter muttered. Their companions had drawn about them now, listening to the revelry within. “Aye,” Cormac snarled, “all save the robed Druid-it’s him I’d be going after!” Wulfhere snorted. “It’s the Cormac earned the sobriquet Wulfhere turned to the others. “They are nineteen now, and we six to fall upon them. There will be thirteen in seconds, an we do our work properly. Fear we those odds?” “Ye should,” Cormac tried one last time, but the grim-faced men made assurance that they did not. “Then Halfdan,” Wulfhere said, “do you cut loose the captive first off, an he be tied. Mayhap he knows how to wield sword or ax, and we’ll be seven. Cormac goes above, to the simpler work of dealing with an old man.” Cormac shot him a look. That was all; again, Wulfhere’s teeth flashed in his broad grin. They gathered themselves and entered the keep, doom-shadows in the pallid moonlight. The Gael touched two men; they went with him up the leftward stair, whilst Wulfhere and the others mounted by the far steps. The two little parties were soon gazing down the long corridor at each other, having met no sentry. The noises of the merrymaking Vikings had got louder. Wulfhere was right, Cormac mac Art knew. The Norsemen, one less now than a score in number, were disporting themselves in the sprawling main hall, through that central doorway and down the steps. Doubtless they lay luxuriously about, their bellies stuffed with food and the ale they still quaffed. Surprise would surely give the attackers just what Wulfhere had said: six less foes in the initial onslaught. For Cormac there would be only the light work of despoiling the old Druid of his captive. “Give me a small bit of time,” he muttered, and set off along the corridor that ran directly back from the ‘stairs. His goal was easily seen: every ancient door was closed or rotted away to expose the black entry to a dark empty room-save one. Halfway down the corridor, light spilled from an open doorway. Toward that glim Cormac hurried, on feet that moved as silently as he could will them. Then he heard the old voice, dry as blowing leaves in autumn. “Then, my dear Lady Samaire, ye’d wear a chaplet on your head among the Norse, and be far better-off than were ye in the household of your murderous brother!” “And my brother?” “He will live,” the Druid said, and Cormac stepped into the doorway. The room was partially restored, looking warm and comfortable with stolen drapes. A torch stood from a sconce bracketed to a wall of paneled wood. There was a table, with the remains of a good meal and a brace of ale-jacks, and a chair. In it sat the woman, her hair loosened and aflow now, and so golden red as to be orange. She yet wore the dirty white tunic or shirt, since it was sleeved, and the leather leggings that vanished into short boots. Over her stood the tall, reed-thin Druid, his beard six shades of gray and white, his flowing robe of mauve, and a rich fabric as well. Four eyes stared at the man who had come silently upon them, and him with a naked sword. “Samaire!” The familiar face, older now and even better to look upon than when she’d been but a girl and he a boyish soldier in her father’s employ, disconcerted Cormac mac Art. The Druid availed himself of the pause, and that swiftly. He stared, catching and then holding the warrior’s eyes, and dolmen-sleeved arms moved in slow gestures. The old man’s lips were invisible within his mustache and beard, but they moved as he murmured… Knowing some ensorcelment was being prepared, Cormac twisted his mouth and swung his sword into line for a swift thrust. He started forward-and there facing him was his old friend and comrade-at-arms, Wulfhere Hausakliufr of the Danes! Staring, seeing the familiar smile that was ever nigh-mocking, Cormac felt his arm growing heavy. The point of his sword lowered… It was the young woman’s scream of warning that shook the hypnotic mist of Druidic power from the eyes of Cormac mac Art. With a blink, he saw that “Wulfhere” was the tall robed man of the Norse-and that he had filled his hand with a glittering dagger. Already he was stabbing-and Cormac hurled himself desperately out of the path of that downrushing blade It swished past like a striking cobra. The thwarted sorcerer snarled in disappointment. The intended victim had no time to choose the direction of his sideward lunge. The table was there to meet him; with a crash, man and table went to the floor. Cormac’s buckler slammed down noisily on one side and his sword on the other. His feet flew high, and the shock of his backside’s hitting the floor sent pain-shock up into his brain. Darkness eddied before his eyes. Even so his warrior’s reflexes were drawing him together, and he went a-rolling to avoid a killing blow. There was none. Cutha Atheldane spurned or durst not risk another attempt. One long bony hand snatched the torch from its sconce, another clamped the girl’s wrist. Cormac knew the man’s strength, then, for she screwed up her face and writhed in pain. The sorcerer’s shod boot thumped into the paneled wall-and a narrow doorway opened for him, the wood swinging away into a dark passage beyond! The musty odour of ages gone poured into the room to assail Cormac’s nostrils. He was still on the floor when Cutha Atheldane and his captive vanished into the space behind the wall-and the slim door of thick wood began to swing shut. – “Cormac the Gael,” Ceann Ruadh Cutha Atheldane and his captive vanished into some dark passage, taking the only source of light; the narrow door commenced to close behind them; Cormac mac Art heard the yelling, clanging eruption of his companions’ attack on the Vikings in the great hall of the old castle. He paid them no heed. His business lay beyond the wall. In desperation, he kicked out both legs with all his strength. His feet thudded into the overturned table, which was catapulted toward the small doorway in the wall. The table groaned and one of its legs broke, but it wedged itself into the opening. The door’s closing was blocked. Gaining his feet, Cormac sprang across the room. It was well he had done his job, so well that he had to lay aside his sword to wrest the table from the small doorway. Within the passage, he leaned the sword against the wall while he made sure the table was again wedged in place. Then, with sword and buckler, he turned to chase down the fleeing Norse Druid like a hungry wolf on the scent-trail. The passage was dark, and narrow, and dusty. Why it was dark when he should have seen the glimmer of the other man’s torch, Cormac soon learned-by running squarely into the wall with a clang and clash of shield and sword. Sparks seemed to dance in the darkness, but he knew they were behind his eyes, not before. He made a cross of himself, extending his sword-arm one way and his buckler the other. Sharp-edged brand struck wall; buckler plunged through emptiness. That emptiness was floored, and Cormac turned leftward. Three steps took him into another wall, and he cursed volubly as he turned to his right. A grin without mirth pulled at his mouth: ahead he saw a flicker of torchlight, already around still another bend in this serpentine passage. He hurried after it. His extended sword apprised him of that turning. Three steps beyond, the dark corridor swung still again. He knew otherwise. The passageway was of course an ancient escape-route, its turnings designed to baffle and slow pursuit. Cormac was slowed, right enough, though he refused to be baffled. Then the dusty floor beneath his feet changed, and he nearly fell headlong. The shaft angled downward, a sloping ramp that dipped steadily, rather than stairs, Shield and sword ready, Cormac mac Art descended. And descended. His feet scuffed through dust so that he blew through his nostrils like a tracking hound, to clear them. Already he was sure that he was below the level of the palace entry, which was on a level with the valley’s floor. A way to the sea? Probably. He tried, with care, to speed his steps. The darkness absolutely forbade running. Down and down he went the further. The passage turned now and again, but twice after sufficient distance to enable him to see the flicker of his quarry’s torch, well ahead. The pursuer dared not race after it; while Cutha Atheldane’s glim would show him any traps this dusty floor might hold, Cormac was in darkness, and forced to a warily slow pace. Dust lay instep deep on this downward angling floor, where no feet had trod for uncounted centuries. With his shield out to warn him of another blank wall and his sword close to his hip, ready to drive forward in a skewering thrust if he came upon lurking ambush, Cormac descended the somber trail into the earth. Now and again the floor leveled for a space, then angled down once more. All was silence; he heard only the susurrant hissing of his feet through dust older than time. Gods of Eirrin, he’d not set eyes on her for a half-score and two years, long years of blood-splashed exile! Another time rose up in his mind… The young Cormac had been a sturdy boy, and that and his auspicious name attracted him notice. Too much notice: High-king Lugaid was a fearful man whose ancient crown rested shakily on his head. And so time came when Cormac’s father was mysteriously slain. Nor did Cormac mac Art tarry for blood-feud, even in his own land of Connacht! Large for his age, well trained at arms and in letters as well by the old Druid Sualtim, Cormac vanished from his homeland. None knew him or his true age, when he took warrior-service in Leinster, using the name Partha mac Othna of Ulahd. He was too young in years even for that, but a good and sturdy soldier was Partha, who kept his counsel as a “man” apart. Soon he had a secret friend who was then a lover: the king of Leinster’s own daughter Samaire, but a year younger than himself. Forfeit would have been his head, had His Majesty known of Cormac/Partha’s off duty activities! Came the day when the young weapon-man well represented Leinster in the fighting over Tara’s collection-with the sword, as usual-of the hated Boru Tribute. The aged High-king in Tara soon knew that the hero was Partha mac Othna, a warrior so accomplished that some compared him with the legendary hero Cuchulain of old. And then the High-king learned the real name of that Partha. His gold it was that brought to an end that era of Cormac’s life, at the Great Fair when he was deliberately goaded into slaying. After that his choice was simple: flight or death. Cormac mac Art fled Eirrin. Samaire of Leinster had wept, and assured him that she loved him… What strange whim of the capricious gods of old Eirrin sent her now into his life, after so many years, and her as Viking captive and central in some Druidic plot to gain… whatever ends it was Cutha Atheldane hoped to gain, by seeing her wed to a Norseman. Cursing the wall and himself equally, he turned, and four paces after he made the usual second turn. Then his pursuit down that dim corridor beneath the earth was arrested by a vision, and he stared in astonishment. Before him stood a woman, beautiful, and she having the appearance of a queen. Yellow plaited hair like new quern she had, and folds of fine silk, purple and silver, draped soft skin white as the foam of a seaborne wave. A cloak of gold-worked green silk swung from her shoulder, and sandals of white bronze protected her feet from the tunnel’s dusty floor. Cormac stared. The sword was forgotten in his hand. “All good be with you, warrior of Eirrin.” Her softly spoken words roused him-partially. Though his heart raced and his temples pounded, he made sure he’d got a good grip on his sword. “How… came you here?” Her pleasant expression did not change. “I swear by the gods my people swear by, O warrior, that ahead lie Midir and his son the man you seek, Cutha Atheldane, and with him three times fifty men, and the victory will be with them. Pursue and it’s your own father you’ll be seeing this night, and him in the other world.” Cormac drew breath. “Who are you, who tells me of that yet to come?” “One who wishes only good, and no burial-keening, to so noble a warrior of Eirrin born!” “Swear it then-on my sword!” But the queenly vision shook her head, and smiled. She stretched forth her snowy arms through the folds of her gown. “I will not, but beg you to put it from you, handsome warrior, and tarry here with me in activity less warlike.” “Two things I know,” Cormac bit out through clenched teeth. “That I am not handsome, and that Druid-sent demons cannot abide iron! Be ye shade of the Sidhe, or demon of the Northlands, or yet again this Cutha Atheldane in a new guise, you’re no woman born of woman, and it’s the colour of your blood I’d be seeing!” Lunging forward with the swiftness of those things called serpents he had first seen in Britain, Cormac plunged his long sword between the breasts of the most beautiful woman he had ever beheld. But he did not see the colour of her blood, for she vanished on the instant. Nor was the dust disturbed, where she had stood. Blinking and shaking his head violently to clear it of the Druid-sent vision of temptation, Cormac went on. Ancient dust puffed up about his feet. Along that thrice-old corridor he went, on silent feet, with good steel ready in his fist and his ears sharp as five senses for the sound of his quarry. Around a bend in that dim tunnel he moved, close to the, far wall-and he brought up short. A trio of war-girt men blocked his way, staring at him from feral eyes. Their knuckles were pale as they gripped the pommels of their naked swords. Cormac gazed at them and they stared. Then did his brows rise, and he felt the prickling of his skin. These men who barred his way where the floor’s dust was disturbed only by the footsteps of Cutha Atheldane and his captive… he knew them! The big one with the blond beard and evil eyes and horn-sprouting helm-it was Sigrel of the Norsemen. He it was who had recognized the son of Art and called down attack on him, months ago in Alban Dalriada. And that one-he was Arslaf Jarl’s-bane with his broken nose,’ follower of Thorwald Shield-hewer of little Golara… and that other, the Pict… Cormac knew them all. His sweeping sword had parted Sigrel’s head from his shoulders, and that a year ago; and into Arslaf’s throat had bloodily plunged Cormac’s point but a few months gone, to send the man to his people’s Valhalla; as for the short, dark Pict, Cormac knew not his name but recognized the stocky man by the Roman belt he wore-and had worn nigh two years ago, when Cormac had sliced away his sword-hand and sundered the Pict’s heart with his dagger. Cormac’s skin prickled anew, and his black mane stirred as his nape writhed; for a moment his bones sought to become unbaked dough. But he shook it off with a jerk of his head and a hunch and twist of his shoulders. Up came his sword. “Ha, Sigrel! Long since we met, son of a wanderlust mother, and how is it you have set your head again on your craven shoulders?” Sigrel did not answer the challenge with words, but laughed hollowly-and rushed the Gael, sword swinging aloft. Rather than stand his ground to await that ferocious charge, Cormac rushed forward to meet it. His sword he held extended, rather than broad-cutting. Its point plunged, with a grating of its flat on the buckle of the man’s broad belt, into Sigrel’s belly. At the same moment Cormac’s left hand rushed up. The edge of his shield caught the other man’s swift-descending wrist with bone-cracking impact. With his sword wrist broken and more than a hand’s length of steel in his belly, Sigrel was brought to a halt. But again he vented that hollow laugh that sounded as though it came from the pits of the Hel of his people. It did, Cormac realized, and he knew then that the purpose of the woman had been to slow him; so too, was the attack of these three. For they were all dead men, and what he saw were only Cutha Atheldane’s illusions, sent to terrify or, failing that, to slow his pursuer. Cormac laughed. “Och! Get hence and back to the land of eternal shade, all of ye-I have business beyond you!” And he charged, to and through and past them. Nor did he glance back to see them vanish. Dust flew and the slap of his footsteps resounded from those walls hewn from stone time out of mind, as he raced down that dreary hallway. Whence came its twilight he did not know. Nor did the insouciant Gael question that there was light, however dim. He knew the power of the Druids, and he was no sneering “civilized” Roman to scoff at the preternatural. He knew of its existence. Where was mighty Rome now, but beneath the heels that followed those of its Gothic sacker, Alaric? The appearance of the huge green serpent slowed him, even brought him up short. But it struck no terror to his heart, though its size was prodigious. Its jaws, when it opened them to emit a hiss that was like that of a green log on a hot fire, gaped wide enough to encompass his head. Far behind, its tail twitched. “By the blood of the gods! It angered the Gael that he felt sweat in his palm, and he flipped his sword to his shield-hand. Wiping his right hand on his trews, he returned the gaze of eyes that were black slits set vertically in gleaming pupils like new flax. “So now it’s a serpent the length of three Cormacs and thick as his arm, is it!” he called, and the sound of his voice was good. Sweat and gooseflesh evaporated together. “Well, shade-creature, illusion born… get hence! It’s your master I’ve business with!” The snake was ahead and leftward. Cormac strode forward, breaking into a run, past the outsized reptile on its right. Thus did Cormac lose his iron-bossed shield, and very nearly the arm that held it. As it was, that arm was wrenched and sore-bruised. It jerked up with the automatic response of a fighting man, when the serpent moved. It lunged at him, a streak of sleek seagreen hide. The whipping, whirling loop of its body it threw to envelop the man slammed against his interposed shield, and with more force than a man-swung ax. The shield was ruined, badly bent. Its owner was hurled against a wall of earth hardened by centuries to the consistency of stone. His shield-strap had badly gouged his arm, which quivered violently and sent pain-messages on crimson trails to his brain. Another message, too, his brain registered: this time his foe was no illusion! A second sweeping loop of that very real attacker’s body came flipping sinuously at him, with rushing speed. Wallowing in the floor’s dust against the wall, Cormac again whipped up his shield. A groan was torn from his throat as the stout buckler was wrested from him-and the leathern strap tried to slice through his arm. Then the leather gave, and tore. The shield went flying with a clatter. An instant later, Cormac’s sword-arm was pressed close to his body by a tubular coil of reptilian muscle that looped around arm and chest. The coil was thick as the man’s upper arm, and just as powerfully muscled. But it was prehensile as well, a great curling crushing rope of flexible steel. It tightened. Another loop took his right leg when he tried to kick. It tightened. Just as the woman-illusion had said, Art of Connacht was about to be joined by his son Cormac in the afterworld-and that but seconds hence.. There was no time for thinking. It was warrior’s reflexes that forced Cormac’s lungs full of air and expanded his chest many inches; that strained his right arm away from his body with all his might-though it moved not a centimeter; that sent his left hand rushing to his hip. There hung his dagger, a seax-knife he had of a dead Saxon. In less than a half-minute, the desperate man drove his dagger seventeen times into the column of muscle that was the serpent’s body. Its blood spurted over him, and it was cold to his skin. Since the days of the serpent-men that preceded Kull’s reign over Atlantis and sought his red death, the warm-blooded rulers of the earth had abhorred snakes and all their ilk. No exception were the men of Eirrin, where no serpent had ever wriggled. Cormac’s shudder was completely involuntary, an ancient atavistic reaction. He stabbed. The tightening coils forcing his arm into his body and the air from his lungs, Cormac mac Art began to die. Even then, weirdly, he wondered why the sons of men ever said that one attacked or slew or died in cold blood. For only here, in this abhorrent thing that had owned the earth before was spawned the race of man, only in its monster body did the blood run ever cold. He stabbed. He stabbed the more. His mailed arm flashed up and down like the wing of some giant hummingbird. Steel bit, and drank deep, and serpentish blood oozed and spurted, and splashed-and the last six feet of that body lashed wildly. “Agonized, pain-crazed, the creature sought to gulp its prey even before it crushed him to the easily-swallowed red pulp it preferred. The head flashed down. Great jaws gaped. Cormac’s arm, whipping up for another stab, slammed up under the creature’s jaw. The arm and its momentum were powerful enough to knock that fearful head aside, with jarring pain to attacked and attacker. Then attacked became attacker. Twisting his wrist, Cormac drove his dagger up into that lower jaw with such force that the point of the blade ripped bloodily through the upper jaw, between the creature’s eyes. The son of Art hardly knew what happened, then. It was as though the world was quake-shaken. Cormac was jerked upward. He lost all equilibrium, all sense of up and down as he was whirled in air. A heavy groaning grunt escaped him when his back was slammed, not against the wall but the ceiling of that tunnel made by man and ruled by reptile. Yet that he’d been able to grunt was a gaining; the serpentine grip had loosened! Whirled aloft in the massive snake’s throes of pain and desperation, Cormac was released. There was a wind in his ears, and he sought with all his concentration to curl his body as he flew through the air- Amid pain and clouds of dust, he struck the tunnel’s floor, and he rolled. The wall stopped him. His bones creaked. His head felt as if it would be snapped off. The world spun and the heaven-lights of a clear winter’s night seemed to dance and race before his eyes. He wallowed on the corridor floor, in the dust, which clung to the reptile’s blood on him. When he was sure of floor and ceiling, and the lights had gone out before his eyes, the aching Gael set hand to wall and dragged himself to his feet. He was coughing; the corridor was full of the swirling dust of centuries. Nor would it soon abate, he saw, for the monster reptile was still writhing and hurling itself wildly about. Between its jaws gleamed Cormac’s dagger. The serpent made no sound. Only the heavy thump of its lashing body against the floor and walls of the tunnel sounded its agony and terror-madness. For a moment Cormac stood staring, blinking, coughing. Then he saw the glint of steel in the dust, and he went forward. Dodging sidewise to avoid a sweeping rope of arm-sized green that slammed into the wall, he darted into the center of the corridor. He paused only long enough to crouch, and snatch steel, and then he was running to be out of the way of a death-dealing hurricane in serpent form. He had his sword back, and he was past. He had no care whether the creature died now or later. Its body’s juices were being forced from it by its own violent lashing. At hand was the business of following Cutha Atheldane, and Samaire. Already he’d been too long delayed, and nearly killed for being fool enough to, assume that because A was equal to B, so would C be. Temptress and attacking men had been illusions; the serpent was unconditionally, prodigiously real! “Fool I, to make such assumption,” he chastised himself. And he ran. He limped, and he gripped his belt on the right with his left hand, that the aching arm could be kept from swinging. He’d had ribs cracked in his stormy life, and knew that such was not the case this time. Nor were bones broken. The arm would be all right. Heedless of possible traps now, Cormac ran. The limp went first, and then the left arm began to feel as if it might be worth keeping. He ran. Ahead were Cutha Atheldane and Samaire, and Cormac had not found her again after twelve years to have his first love, his first woman-though then she’d been but a budding girl-carried off by an illusion-spawning mage from the cold lands of the Vikings! He plunged along the dark and dusty corridor, strangely twilit now, and odoriferous of a time remotest in the womb of Chronos. He knew he was far beneath the earth. This subterranean burrow must lead to the shore, he thought. Ahead he saw a wall, and in addition to the eerie lighting of the tunnel itself there was the glimmer of a torch. Cormac’s lips parted in a grim smile of satisfaction. Around that turning then, and he’d be upon them, and it was not as captive he wanted Cutha Atheldane of the northlands! Three running steps from the turning he heard a scraping, a blow, and a throaty gurgle from a human throat. Then he was there, and swinging leftward again, and he was upon them. Cutha Atheldane stared at him, but the man made no move to attack or make a gesture of ensorcelment. One hand hung limp. The other scraped along the wall beside him, dragging downward as it tried to support his body. Nails tore and knees cracked as the Druid dropped. Behind him stood Samaire of Leinster, also staring at Cormac. In her hand was a dagger he recognized as the Druid’s. It blade was darkened, and it dripped. Cutha Atheldane lurched forward and lay still in the dust between the two Gaels. Bending to snatch up the dropped torch, Cormac let the woman see his smile. “So, dairlin’ girl, it’s warrior ye’ve become, after twelve years! And robbing me of the pleasure of gaining this Viking slime his death, too.” She stared at him in silence, looking shocked. Cormac swallowed, knowing she still did not recognize the man the smooth-cheeked boy had become-a man of scarred and sinister face beneath his dented helm. “A plucky woman indeed. Aye, and a true daughter of Eirrin, whose women have for centuries gone to the warring with their men-folk! But come, dairlin’ girl-it’s a smallish pack of wolves I had with me, and they may well be hard put to account for all our captors!” He sheathed his sword and extended his hand. “P-Partha? Cormac?” “Aye, Samaire. Partha and Cormac, both at once, but it’s my own name I’ve used these past few years. Now-” But she had taken his proffered hand, and the willowy woman with the loosened mane of sunset-coloured hair clamped it tightly enough to let him know it was no weakling had slain Cutha Atheldane. “Partha!” she cried, and gripped his other arm. “I mean, Cormac-” And she burst into joyous laughter that wavered on the brink of hysteria. “God in heaven, you be so-so-oh Cormac!” There was woman-scent in her hair, and woman-feel in her, even when it was against his steely mailcoat she pressed herself, with both arms around him. Cormac stood awkwardly. Twelve years had passed, and no daughter of a king remained unwed-and there was business, elsewhere. Heaving a great sigh, he filled his hand with the softness of her hair… but clenched his teeth. He pulled back. “It’s later we’ll greet and talk, Samaire,” he told her. “There are my companions…” She shot him a look from eyes green as a cat’s, and nodded. In a sinuous movement the mannishly-dressed woman scooped up the dropped dagger. “Aye, then, Cormac! Hurry then, and let’s reap a red harvest among those sneering Norsemen-and call me what you did of old, not Samaire, or it’s this blade I may be tempted to slip betwixt your links!” Laughing a great laugh, Cormac swung an arm around her, turned, and lofted his torch to light their long way back. “A king’s daughter,” he called, “and she talking of bloody slaying-and wanting to be called ‘dairlin’ girl’ as a boy of Connacht once called her? Och, it’s a strange world Eirrin’s become since my leaving of it!” “Faster,” she urged, striding out in leatherclad legs. “And aye, and careful with your tongue, Cormac mac Cuchulain, for it was no boy to whom I gave my girlhood in Carman-on-the-sea, what seems a century ago!” Laughing, Cormac strode back the way he had come. |
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