Andrew Offutt - The Sign of the Moonbow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Ten:

The Wizard of Moytura

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The old man nodded.

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

“Cormac! FALL!”

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

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

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

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