The Tower of Death

CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Sirens

The howling roaring wind drove the sea into foaming madness. Lightning slashed the sky like glittering daggers and thunder stalked on the feet of a thousand soldiers amarch to war. Raven rocked and was tossed. Rolling water slammed into her strakes like great fists and the foot-thick mast creaked and quivered as if become an aspen sapling. Her two sea-anchors were almost weightless in a sea gone insane and inimical.

In cap and oilskins, Wulfhere was able to stand at the bow because he clung tightly with gloved hands. He stared at nothing.

The tower was no longer visible though it was not so far as a hundred yards away. The tremulous yellow glow of its beacon had marked it; now that was extinguished. Morbid and horrific thoughts pulled at the mind of the Danish giant though he fought them. Was it Cormac who had extinguished the light, or…

An he and those with him are slain, I’ll flood the sea with blood, he thought ferociously, and then realized that the Gael’s little group had been attacked by bloodless algae, plants of the sea. Any blood he’d spill would be that of his former comrades.

He stared into the night of seagods’ wrath, waiting for another glow to tug at his peripheral vision. For Wulfhere would not take his gaze from where he’d last seen the tower’s light, lest it be rekindled and mislead him. It was the false light he awaited; the wrecker’s beacon.

His crew was silent. They huddled and clung while all about them chaos reigned and water came cascading over the ’midships gunwale to drench them. Beards were bespattered with briny foam like hoarfrost. They did nothing but wait because there was nothing else to do. The water drained sloshing into Raven’s bailing well, where its level rose slowly.

“Hrut!” their captain bawled. “Thorbrand! Blades ready!”

The two men rolled their eyes, but lurched each to an opposite side of the hull. With one hand they clung there, to slippery wood. The other was out for balance, and to draw steel at their leader’s command. The wind dropped with the suddenness no man ever grew accustomed to. Eyes looked this way and that; wind-assaulted ears seemed suddenly to have become hyperacute. Thunder grumbled like an old smith shackled to his forge.

Thorbrand and Hrut Bear-slayer drew swords because the pommels felt good in their hands. The two stood, well-braced on seasoned sea-legs, near the thick taut ropes that vanished over the sides.

“HA! See? See!”

Aye! they saw what Wulfhere descried through the troublous dark. A new glow. A light. A new beacon. It seemed to bob, as though someone with a lantern somehow ambled over the water. The decoy light! With the true beacon out in the old Roman tower; the wreckers had lit their own to entice Raven to her death.

“Oars! Half-sail! Chop!”

Men leaped to their feet and sprang to the oar-racks where their long poles rattled, stowed during the awful wind and plunging waves. Others hauled up the rope bound yard. And as one man Hrut and Thorbrand chopped through the rope. The thick braided lengths, vanished; below, huge boulders dragged them to the seabed. Oars dropped into their locks and stout arms manned the rudder.

“Pull!”

Raven spread her wings. Raven flew.

The wind returned, and men cursed and called on the gods.

“Aegir sleep well!” one said, hoping that underwater lord would not awake and come for them with his giant net.

“Nyrod… in the palm of your hands is Raven your servant!”

“Ran be kind to sons of the sea!”

But that man was stared at; none wished so much as to attract the attention of the goddess of the sea and drowner of those abroad on her bosom.

And Wulfhere muttered the names of Thor and the All-father and Frigg to please Odin, and Freya and her sunny brother and aye, those sea-deities too-and, just in case, he quietly mentioned that Mannanan macLir that Cormac was wont to call upon, for those of Eirrin did insist that it was he lorded it over the sea.

Again the wind whipped the water into white-topped, mobile mountains. They drove like gigantic fists against Raven and the ship rocked with their impact. Rocked, and sped forward. Wulfhere’s commands were constant. Clinging to the side with one hand, the master of Raven made his way slowly, ever watchful, along the narrow planking that ran from bow to stern.

Raven raced through that howling inimical night of dashing leaping waves, and all aboard knew they hurtled toward the doom that was planned for them. Wulfhere’s sea-genius and their own strength could save them-and the gods.

Even as his ship wrestled the ocean and his ruddy face went scarfy with leaping brine, Wulfhere wondered. Did they but chase a phantom, a will-o’-the-wisp that would provide not even a decent battle for axes and swords… but might well give them watery death just the same?

Clinging, he glanced forward. The light loomed larger. When Raven climbed up from a trough to balance a moment on a ridge of water, the staring giant had a flashing glimpse of the wrecker’s craft. Weirdly, he saw no sails and the other vessel looked white. Then his own straining ship plunged down a slope of rushing water and he saw only the walls forming the next trough.

Suddenly he gripped the rail with both hands and stared. “ROCKS!” he bellowed, and hurled himself aft along a foot-wide walkway, not even holding, defiant of the wind. “Steerboard oars up! Pull hard aport! Hard, boys, an ye’d ever be dry this side of Valhalla! Quarter sail to steerboard!”

Then the enormous strength of the Skull-splitter was added to that of Ordlaf. The steersman was a strong man, and muscular; Wulfhere’s upper arms were big as his thighs. The sea tried to take the steering oar away from them. Even with so little sail on, the mast creaked and bowed. Ropes of walrus hide strained and seemed to grunt like men. Raven hurtled. Captain and helmsman bent their backs and the muscles of their calves bulged their leggings.

Wood creaked horribly, the ship fought, and turned, and of a sudden the sail flapped.

“Reef sail! Reef sail!”

“Hela’s cold dugs-look at those teeth!”

“Hela indeed-the old bitch hungers for us and would have us join her in Elvidnit this night!”

This from those men aport who saw the awful rocks that had awaited them, wet jagged teeth that would have received Raven and turned her into driftwood in bare seconds. Only just had they saved themselves, by their captain’s seamanship and main strength… and the strong backs of oarsmen who fought wind and leaping, dashing waters.

Even the wind eased, as if otherworld forces were reconsidering their attack.

Swift as a racing horse, Raven plunged past the rocks aport, showering them with a boiling white wake. The vessel shuddered as she slammed into a wall of water that drenched the crew anew. The world vanished; they were under water! No-they were plowing through that wet dune! Then they were out, through it, gasping, the decks streaming-only to glissade like an uncontrolled sled down a long mountainside of water.

“Up quarter sail! All oars-PULL!”

Water sloshed higher in the bailing well. Wulfhere glanced in. No; no men need yet be detailed to that churl’s job.

Wind and wave struck. A man yelled and an arm was broken. Knocked onto her side, Raven dumped water as she rushed along showing her keel. The steer-oar waved ridiculously in air. Then the ship was up, shaking herself like a great wet dog. Her crew spewed water from noses and mouths and glanced around nervously. All were there; the faces of two writhed in pain and that Knud Left-hand’s arm was broken was all too obvious.

“It’s only the right,” he said, and tried to wave, and passed out. Two of his fellow carles sprang to seize him and lash him down. Raven’s second Knud would not be holding shield or oar again, for a long while.

Mighty arms forced the tiller over and Raven bucked wind and sea. Somehow they dragged her about as a strong man drags a screaming stallion for the breaking. Wind and water buffeted her with a viciousness that seemed sentiently deliberate. Again the ship plunged for the light. It seemed to flee now, definitely amove on a swift-moving deck, its attempt to smash them on the rocks having failed. The wind glibbered obscenely and new thunder snarled with the voices of ten thousand rearing bears.

A bolt of lightning created noonday light, and Wulfhere stared at the craft of the wreckers. It was fleeing-and what a vessel was there!

He and his desperate men were far, far too busy to grapple the supernatural wreckers, for so Wulfhere at least now knew them to be. But he’d seen them, oh Odin’s stones he’d seen them across those mountain ranges of water-ere they and their weird and shuddersome barge vanished away into the windswept night.

Aye, vanished, and the cursing crew of Raven set about getting her in.

Next day-late, after weary men woke on dry land beneath bright Hispanic sun-Wulfhere Skull-splitter told Cormac what he’d beheld, and the Gael stared at him. Already he’d seen what he did not want to believe and had been forced by menace to his very life; must there be more? Logic had become unreasonableness-but with reason that was unreasonable, Cormac mac Art resisted.

“Ye mean-women?”

“I swear,” Wulfhere said, and drew himself up so that he was even more imposing; Wulfhere would have been imposing buried to the knees in mud. “I swear by the All-father’s one entirely sufficient eye and by Thor’s scarlet beard, aye and by the moustache of my dear father’s woman Freydrid-I swear, Wolf: I saw them.”

“Ran’s…”

“Ran’s daughters.”

“Ran’s daughters.”

Wulfhere nodded.

“Women? Sirens?”

“Sirens? What’s that?”

Cormac mac Art waved a hand. “A supposition of the Greeks. Comely women of the seas who entice seafaring men to-”

“Aye!” the Dane nodded emphatically. “Aye! Loki’s eyes and Hela’s dry gourds, Wolf of Eirrin-believe! They were the dread daughters of Ran sure, and afloat on a barge made all of bones.”

“Bones.”

“YES!”

“Bones, asea. In a storm.”

“Bones, son of an Eirrish pig farmer! Nor had any or aught of them an oar in her dainty pale hands, nor was there aught of sail on that barge not of this Midgard!”

And the Splitter of skulls stamped, to assure them both that they still trod the land of mortal-kind. Galicians saw them there outside the king’s hall, and stared, but went on their way. No man wanted aught to do with an argument between those two storied pirates.

“The sea was high, Wulfhere. It’s black the night was as a bear’s cave in winter. It’s glad I am and no man lost asea, old battle-brother. But… how saw ye them in that darkness?”

“Wolf. Ye doubt me yet. Ah Cormac, Cormac-I saw. A fire burned on the deck of-”

“A fire! On the very deck! In the wind and a sea like mountains on the move!”

“YES, damn ye! A fire burned there on that otherworld barge. I SAW it! Without fuel and blazing high, within a sort of circle, a strange sort of circle that… well, it was all picked out in that… that Romish piece-rock. Ah-mosaic.”

Cormac stared at him, and he’d looked more believing.

Wulfhere stared at the Gael, the man he’d escaped gaol with, sailed and divagated with, these three years.

Cormac stared at the.Dane, whose life he’d saved and who’d saved his; his battle-brother and respected companion.

The Dane said, “Well?”

“I believe you, Wulfhere. If my battle-brother Wulfhere Skull-splitter says he saw it, it was there.”

“Aye! Of course it’s impossible, blood-brother. And it was there. As the moving attacking kelp was. Aye, blood-brother, believe, as I believe all you tell me.”

And the two men gazed at each other in the sunlight of a quiet day the praises of which Galician birds trilled, and Wulfhere beamed and Cormac smiled. With his lips closed and his brows up.

“And you, blood-brother. Tell me what befell yourself and those four men with you in the tower.”

Cormac shrugged. “Well, after Freya stopped in and we all supped on one of the cats who’d pulled her chariot, a hundred and thirty-seven Valkyries flew in, and all tall as yourself. And though ’twas boring and sore hard work, we were stout men and managed to serve them all. After that-”

Wulfhere went crimson and his face worked. With doubled fists, he wheeled and walked off. Stiff or no, the huge Dane would make the ax-target suffer this day.

Cormac stood reflecting for a time, and squatted and drew aimless designs in the grass and the dirt. At last he heaved a great sigh. Then he rose and set off after his battle-brother.

CHAPTER TWELVE: A Lovely Afternoon for a Murder

Ran was wife to Lord Aegir the Bountiful, and no kindly she-goddess was she. Any northborn seaman knew that she spread nets of disaster for ships, and delighted in dragging them and their crews down and down to her airless demesne. There she gave laughter whilst watching the pretty bubbles of those men’s last breaths go dancing up to the sunlight. And, as the skalds were wont to refer to the sea as “the whale’s road,” so they called the rolling waves “Ran’s daughters.”

No skald was Wulfhere Skull-splitter. Like all seafaring men all over the world, he was certain that luring sea-women waited to drown good men in their white arms. And what had he seen? A barge made all of bones and women aboard-and there was no doubt of their enmity and destructive purpose. And… would not the very seaweed obey the daughters of Aegir and Ran?

“I saw them, Wolf!” the Dane insisted. “Eerie, blank-eyed bitches with long hair all pale with brine, and cold choking kisses on their lips for any man they can clasp in their arms, I warrant me! The very daughters of Ran, Cormac!”

And again Cormac mac Art turned away to let his brain wrestle with the ambiguous and the impossible… and seeming impossibilities.

The Daughters of Ran.

Very well. Gods existed of a surety, and their get; a fool and inexperienced was he who averred they did not. Sorcery existed too, as it had since the dim beginnings of humankind; ere Atlantis rose up from the greedy seas, much less sank again long later. Of a sudden mac Art knew that sorcery had existed in Commoria and Valusia and Aquilonia and Brythunia and in dark, jungle-shadowed Stygia, though in truth he was not sure how he knew so certainly. (What places were those?)

He stumbled, frowning. The very air, had seemed to shimmer. No; a glance around showed him that all was normal in sunny Galicia.

Normal! Oh aye, normal… the Daughters of Ran-or the Sirens the Greeks spoke of still-had on their Cleopatran barge an unfueled fire that burned without consuming the craft. Cormac drew in his lips. He sighed. Very well. That seemed plainly impossible. And that meant it was totally inexplicable… by ordinary means.

There was no explanation for motile, seemingly sentient seaweed, or for the fire on that phantom craft.

No natural explanation.

Wandering, thinking, mulling, Cormac hardly took note of a happily chatting couple already causing talk: King Veremund, and Clodia of Nantes. Cormac would report to the king, sometime today; at present he needed to sort out his own thoughts a bit more. For another reason altogether, Veremund hardly seemed ready to discuss last night’s events, either.

Without being fully aware of it, Cormac wandered back to the coast. There he stood gazing upon the endlessly lapping, glassy plain of the sea that was now emerald and now sapphire or lapis lazuli and now pure onyx crowned with ivory and behaving as if demonridden. The sea. Many men plied the sea, and some professed to love it. The sea loved no one. Nor, save now and again, did it seem to hate.

Standing over it, to Cormac’s left reared that white pile, of stone; the accursed tower the Romans had raised for the aid of ships at sea. It was sentry to the land, a brooding watchman over the water.

The sea. It had rolled on and on, Cormac mused, for untold ages, lapping timeless shores that changed only in name and in the peoples that claimed them. Surely the sea had been here forever…

No. Treachery Bay or the Cantanabrian Sea, he suddenly saw, would not be so in future, though his brain held no meaning for the strange word Biscay. And in past…

Again Cormac’s world seemed to shimmer, to stumble.

The sea rolled out green. And grew greener, greener… And then it was gone even as he stared upon it.

Here sprawled rolling plains, and even as he stared, seeing not and yet seeing, he saw how the sun shimmered on burnished mail and silvered cuirasses and gilt-worked helmets. And mac Art was elsewhen; his remembering was upon him.

Horses pranced over grassland and their tails streamed out like fine cloaks. Their proud riders bore lances and swords that had oft dripped with red. Their feet were thrust into leathern boots whose variations of colour he knew derived from having waded rivers of blood like scarlet tides. For so was history made, and he knew then that he was watching history, on the land that had lain there ere the bay swallowed it.

In a neighing shouting jingling leather-creaking squalling chaos that nevertheless bespoke the pride and organization of civilization, steel-clad ranks of gleaming mounted men galloped across that which in the long ago had been well-grassed earth, not sea. And he was looking upon the long, long ago. Guidons and bannerets fluttered like bright butterflies above those mailed men of old.

Before Cormac’s eyes and yet behind them, history rolled back. The intervening centuries were swept away as the fog before the warm sun of morning; as had been whole cities and civilizations swept away in the relentlessness of uncaring time.

And he knew whereon he looked. Names came into his mind, strange names in no language now known, hoary with age and yet all glitteringly exotic.

Asgalun and Amalric and Arenjun, and Shadizar the Wicked had existed, far over there to the east, and Numelia of Nemedia, a place whose name toyed with the tongue. Koth, and Vilayet-what names were these? The bright Road of Kings had wound anciently across this time-forgot land like a sleepy serpent testing the sun of these dreaming kingdoms south of the Hyborian demesnes. Plains rolled verdantly out to a placid river whose name he knew-somehow-was Tybor. Along its bank rose a city whose walls were etched by the sun in fading gold. This was bastioned Shamar, and Cormac knew, just as he knew that once he’d been there, once he’d thefted there, and fought with sharp blade.

Aye, and once too he’d abode in the proud kingdom that sprawled fertile and beautiful just northwest of Shamar.

Aquilonia.

Aye, Aquilonia, by Mitra! I know you well, Aquilonia, lost in the grey clouds of time and space.

Aquilonia, far from sunburned old Turan… and I… I came down from Cimmeria and was king in Aquilonia, once! Tarantis… be that a name? Aye: Tarantia. My name. No-my woman’s? Perhaps one named Tarantia was queen to me, when I wore crown in Aquilonia so far from my native… not Eirrin for it did not exist… my native Cimmeria… But what is my name?

Amra? But no; amra was a Gaelic word, and how could a man be called by that word: “eulogy?”

The thoughts were swept away. Before mac Art the bodeful mists rolled, eddying, coiling, and history rushed along. The northern barbarians came down onto these plains, and met others, dark men, and the struggle raged… and then all was swept away like smoke before the winds of time.

Aquilonia vanished, with the plains of Poitain and the Tybor; drowned in a convulsion of the earth, and that cataclysm sent green-blue waves rolling into swallow all those realms into that of Manannan macLir.

And history swept on, in a rush, where Aquilonia had basked had also stood a city of horror, a city haunted by a horrid ichthyosaurian shadow that was also somehow human… or almost… and now where Aquilonia had lain there rolled the Bay of Treachery, and the dark dense forests of Galicia blotted the sunlit green of the plains of ancient Poitain.

“Mac Art.”

Cormac blinked and twitched his head. What-? What had happened? Was this a vision? Aquilonia and Poitain? What were those? Blood of the gods! It’s the… the Remembering! It’s come on me again!

“Mac Art?”

Aye, that was his name. Not-not whoever he’d been, in those ages tens of centuries agone, when the race of humankind had risen up only to fall… again. Once more Cormac mac Art jerked his head. He stared at the sparkling sea, he who had known from the time of his first Remembering at fourteen that once he’d been that fabled hero of Eirrin, Cuchulain of Muirthemne. And how many others? For he knew that Rome was not ancient. Rome was a child. Cormac mac Art was ancient; this life-force that had returned to tread this earth again and-

“Mac Art!”

Cormac whirled.

A few feet away stood Zarabdas, not robed but in a peasant’s cowled tunic that was a bit longish for the Sueves, falling skirted over leggings and gaitered buskins. The bald old man with the raven’s-wing beard was staring, and Cormac knew he’d been called more than once.

“Mac Art.”

“Aye. Zarab… das. Aye. What do ye here, Zarabdas?”

“The king has asked for you, and I had observed your pensive walking. I thought you’d have come here, to contemplate that which happed out there last night.” His nod compassed the sea and the tower standing over it. “But-I’ve called your name several times. You are all right?”

“I am all right, Zarabdas,” Cormac said, hardly of a mind to tell this unknown quantity of an eastern mage of his Remembering. To avoid further queries and discussion, he said, “It’s deep I was in thought, Zarabdas. Aye, deep in thought… what saw Zarabdas, the evening past?”

“I saw it, mac Art. I saw the kelp come from the sea like snakes, and I saw how it climbed, and was driven back. I heard your battle in the tower, and I saw the light die.”

“Was I extinguished it, after we beat off that demonstuff from the sea. Saw ye Wulfhere, or… what he saw?”

Zarabdas shook his head and his cowl slipped back; he stood in shade now, anyhow. “No. Only the dark, and the wind and the lightning, and crashing thunder. What did Wulfhere see?”

Cormac was still unsure as to whether to trust Zarabdas, but he told him. The Palmyran shook his head and looked grim.

“Manannan of the white steeds and sunlit waters is not the only god of the sea,” Cormac said darkly, looking upon the waters with one brow cocked. “It’s demons there are in the deep. Creatures that pull down sailors, good men and bad, down and down to their airless demesne… which men know by many names in many lands.”

The Palmyran mage studied him, wearing a strange expression.

“Aye, though probably more exists than you know of, Cormac mac Art.” Zarabdas seemed to stare at nothing and his sockets seemed nearly to swallow his dark eyes. “There are strange cults of Dagon hereabouts, spread about by Imperial legionaires in centures just past. And that dread belief and cult never dies, of the One who sleeps in sunken R’lyeh.”

“Of Dagon I know. but… Releeyuh? That word I know not.”

“R’lyeh. A most, most ancient cult-and foul. It’s said the horrid demons emanated from off this plane, and were on the earth afore our own kind arose from the slime.”

Cormac studied him, thinking. “Zarabdas… think ye any hereabouts yet practice the rites of this… R’lyeh…”

“…no no, that is the place, a city or mighty palace…”

“…who might be… calling up such… gods, or demons, or creatures whatever they be? Living moving kelp, and maidens on a ship of bone?”

“I have no knowledge of it.”

“Hmmm. Well… and the king is after asking for me, it’s best I return to his hall. Suppose we both be telling him what we know, and ask him about cultists, hereabouts.”

And so they did, met partway back to the old city by a mounted troop… The two men went to the king in his hall. There they gave him their knowledge and their surmises and their un-knowledge. And did the king know aught of any who practiced such dark cultism in his realm? Nay, but Veremund called in his Hispano-Roman advisor.

That hawk-beak, who bore the ancient name Vindex, came. With haughty Patrician distaste he did assurance on them that he knew of no such activity. Nor drew he too close to the Gaelic pirate. Vindex wore a lovely tunic of apple-green silk all broidered with goldwire thread. It was passing sweet, that garment, mac Art thought.

“Yet I’d not be wholly surprised at such a cult here,” Vindex said austerely, wearing his eyebrows halfway up his forehead. “Most peasants here are still pagan in basic belief, though they do profess adherence to the One Church.”

At this Veremund firmed his lip. Cormac held back his smile: he’d been apprised of the existence, in the king’s own most private quarters, of a most private little Remembrance of the old goddess Ertha; and Irnic Break-ax flaunted the device on his shield: it was the horned head of Arawn, the Old God of the fair people of Germania and Gallia and Britannia.

“Shall I inquire?” Vindex asked.

Staring at the king, Cormac shook his head almost violently. Veremund saw, and said nay. He also advised Vindex to keep silent on the matter altogether. The curly-haired man departed, tunic skirt swishing, eyebrows high, eyes just above the plane directly before them. Just the sort of fellow for whom being tripped would do a great deal of good, Cormac thought. Ah Caius Julius who was surely nigh as great a king as my namesake, what have ye wrought, and to what have your followers come?

“It is a matter to be investigated,” Zarabdas said. “I shall be most discreet, lord King.”

“So be it,” Veremund said, “and be so. Cormac?”

The Gael shook his head. “We must try again, of course. It’s several questions I have, King, but few answers. Methinks I’ll do a bit more pacing and cudgelling of this poor brain of mine.” No help here, he thought. Sure it’s long been said that Behl lends aid to him who aids himself!

Zarabdas gave him a look askance, with an eyebrow raised, and Veremund smiled. This uncatchable reiver was hardly known for a “poor” brain!

And once again Cormac mac Art went awalking, to be alone with his thoughts. He and his companions had come close to death in that tower. There must be another way to deal with the demon-weed, even though the door was being replaced at this moment-with bronze.

He walked. He liked this land well enow, with its green and blue-misted hills and dark forests beyond which grasses waved on rolling land often wetted by rain; not all that different from green, wet, sea-ringed Eirrin, was Galicia of the Suevi. It was a lovely afternoon for a walk. Despite his cares he felt light and springy, unweighted by armour or helm and with his left arm free of his shield’s fifteen pounds.

Meandering, he entered and paced through the dim coolth of a smallish wood, mostly oak and the chestnuts beloved of Galician swine. He thought much, but decided nothing. Indeed he found it hard not to dwell on the strangeness of that past-vision that came on him from time to time. With his sword he sliced the green shoot of a branchlet, and chewed it as he walked, ambling. Many months had passed since he’d dared walk carelessly abroad; was good to be welcome, someplace.

The gentle tinkling of bells impinged on his outer awareness just enough to cause him to turn his steps along a side path. Soon he emerged onto a long broad stretch of meadow. Here was beauty, under the sun and misted by the air of this seaside land of much rainfall.

Like the plains of Poitain…

Mac Art shook off that thought. “Galicia,” he muttered aloud, with firmness.

It was cattle he’d heard, he now saw, and belled; probably to prevent their calving in the woods and eluding their masters. Busy at the grass-pulling, these independent few; the rest of the herd lay about in that grove of piebald birch, chewing and belching and chewing.

It was a lovely afternoon.

Cormac ambled toward them, in the open now, and feeling ridiculous with his sword swinging at his hip in this pastoral setting. The farmers hardly wore swords! The farmers… peasants… What shrine or cleared area like a druid’s glade might lie hid in the deep darkness of that forest? He’d only just entered it, after all, traversing its bare edge. These peasants might well…

From the far side of the birch grove two horsemen appeared agallop, the one atop a bay, the other riding a garnet-hued animal. Both men wore leathern coats and, carried spears and shields, and both booted their galloping steeds. They appeared not to be Suevi, though one could not be certain; both men were helmeted. The tunic of one was of cross-hatched double-stripes, green and red on bland white homespun, while the other wore a sleeveless tunic of plain blue under his long leather vest bossed with copper whorls. Though mounted, neither man wore leggings.

They were galloping his way. They swerved around the cows. Strange, armed and armoured men, here in the pasture-

They were galloping at him. They were attacking!

Though it was a peaceful country of late afternoon he was in, and among friendly peoples, mac Art was glad now that he had eschewed going about naked; sword and dagger hung at his hips. Of a sudden he was sorry that he wore neither helmet nor mailcoat, and carried no shield.

Yet that would have been ridiculous. Who’d have dreamed he would find himself about to be murdered in such a place on such a lovely day?

He was; the horsemen galloped at him, bending forward now, with lances poised to slay. Clumps of turf from a soil seldom dry flew from the pounding hooves of their mounts.

Though he was poised and full ready to draw steel, Cormac pretended to stare stupidly at them. Let them think he could not believe their mission, these silent racing assassins! They separated, with blue-kilt’s bay digging up more grass and sod as he swerved to Cormac’s right. The Gael decided; that man he watched, turning slowly. The fellow was a bit too distant to make a good unavoidable cast…

Cormac sprinted directly ahead, drawing steel and turning his face to the other man after he’d begun to run. He felt marvelously fleet, nigh sixty pounds the lighter without helmet, chaincoat, and buckler. Sword and dagger had long since become as part of him.

His timing had been so excellent it was as if Eirrin’s ancient god Crom of Connacht had tugged him forward under Behl’s shining sky-eye; with a whistling whizzing sound the lance of the man in the tartan kilt passed through the space wherein Cormac had just stood. That ironshod lance would have transpierced him from behind. As it was, the spear’s head drove heavily into the earth, twenty paces away; thirty from where Cormac now stood.

So much, for a few seconds, for that attacker. Cormac swung his face back to the bay-mounted man.

That one had reined about and was charging in from the side, bent low with his eyes squinted against whipping mane. His spear was held on a downward angle. Cormac saw that he had no chance of running to the other lance, pulling it free, and wielding it in time to meet this attack. This idiot was gripping his mount with muscularly bulging calves and thighs, and obviously meant to skewer the unarmoured Gael. Surely the shock of impact would knock the fool off his mount…

That was hardly high among Cormac’s concerns. The fellow obviously did mean to do it. Perhaps his horsemanship was that good and his legs that strong. It didn’t matter; even if he did fly backward off his steed on impact, that same impact would drive the spear through Cormac’s body. Here came death, at the gallop.

The horse plunged at him, seeming to grow bigger and bigger, its neck stretched forth and its teeth showing. Was it so ferocious? Almost in desperation, Cormac decided to find out. He bellowed out as loudly as ever he had in his life. At the same time he feinted left and dived rightward. He struck the ground to roll over and over, hanging onto his sword.

Without ever coming to a halt he hurled himself onto his feet and started a spring for the other lance, standing at an angle from the ground.

He never glanced back to see that the assailant on the dark horse had tried to follow the feint, missed, and was galloping on, rocking precariously in the saddle and using his shield-arm to tug his mount around. Mac Art was interested only in the imbedded lance-and the first horseman, the blue-kilted man on the wiry bay.

Their course was set to intersect. The man wanted his lance back, and could naturally snatch it from the ground as he raced by; these men were, after all, horse-soldiers. Not only did the Gael want that spear, he did not want its owner to retrieve it.

Cormac ran as fast as he could, yelling, brandishing his sword.

Neither of them got it. Cormac was on the horseman’s right, and that hand was empty, set to grasp the spear. The attacker’s shield was on his horse’s other side. He could try yanking his mount about-and perhaps cause it to fall or, if he succeeded, get himself or his horse sword-slashed. Cursing, the fellow raced on, with a leftward swerve. The spear remained.

And Cormac heard hooves pounding behind him.

His own curses filled the air and he slashed wildly at the spear as he fled past. Pause to grasp it, he knew, and he’d be skewered from behind, or crushed beneath flailing forehooves. As it was, he too veered leftward, and his sword-blow, while it failed to slice through the spear’s haft, did knock it flat to the ground. It wouldn’t be easily regained from horseback, now.

Once again the Gael had little time for thinking or planning. On the run, he circled, and saw the garnet-coloured horse bearing down on him, seeming big as a ship with a strange horsehead prow. Desperately, he hurled his sword. A continuation of that all-body movement sent him lurching leftward.

The horse snorted, then squealed almost humanly as only a horse can. The sword, turning in air, struck it crosswise just above the pale softness of its nose. The animal jerked up its head, trying to hurl itself aside. The thrown sword, without wounding, had served Cormac’s purpose.

His attacker, rocking in the saddle, had to lever his right arm out for balance-and a ravening maniac, black hair flying and eyes burning like blue fire, pounced in to grasp the haft of his spear betwixt point and grip. And the horse lunged away leftward.

There was no brace for the rider’s feet and thus no leverage for his body. Himself falling, Cormac pulled the tartan-kilted attacker off his own mount.

Both men struck the ground hard, with whump sounds and grunts. In a drier clime they might have broken bones. The assassin’s impact was much greater than that of his intended victim, and he loosed his hold on his spear. Even so, as Cormac clung to the haft, it came treacherously up into its owner’s armpit. His groan was loud, and pained.

That shoulder and arm would have given the would-be assassin a bad night and remained sore on the morrow as a family of boils, had not Cormac lunged to his feet and, twitching his hands into a new grip as he moved, driven the ironshod spear into its owner’s guts. The man squealed with the sound of a gelded hog.

The Gael’s biceps sprang up and under his tunic his pectorals leaped, as he gripped the spear with all his might and gave it a good twist while he drew it forth. Blood poured from the large wound. The man kicked weakly while with both hands he sought to stem the red tide from his stomach.

Cormac was already whirling, hardly winded, to brace the other man with the dripping spear. He’d noted it was not barbed, as were those of the Sueves.

The other man was heeling his bay, racing in at his prey. Bent low, he swung the ax he’d pulled on its haftthong from his saddle. Now he saw that he was alone, that his spear was irretrievable from horseback, and that his prey stood waiting-in a weapon-man’s crouch, long spear ready for the skewering.

A dozen yards from the Gael, his attacker suffered an attack of wisdom. He leaned leftward while he changed the pressure of his heels against his mount’s flanks. The horse swerved readily. Angrily Cormac ran after it as it galloped away. The Gael paused long enough to launch the spear-seemingly disarming himself in his zeal for vengeance.

The lance fell well short of the racing horse. Cormac’s glance told him that now he was but four paces from the other spear, and he tried to look helpless, afoot and unarmed.

Blue-tunic gave himself no opportunity to fall into the trap. He went bucketing on without ever turning to glance back. Reins streaming, his partner’s horse galloped in his wake.

Cursing fiercely and imaginatively enough to blue the air about him, the cheated Gael sought out and found his sword. He’d speared one man and driven off the other, and his blade wasn’t even blooded. He returned to the man he’d unhorsed and speared. Feeling vengeful and robbed, mac Art would right happily tickle the bastard’s stones with his sword point until the fellow told him a few things.

He found he’d been cheated twice.

The man’s eyes were already filmed, and the merest glance from Cormac’s experienced eyes told him his attacker had already poured out over half his blood. He’d never suffer from the peritonitis a belly wound always brought, and he’d never be telling Art’s son who he was or who’d sent him, either.

Cormac cursed sulphurously.