Andrew Offutt - The Sign of the Moonbow

“This leaped from the pile and rushed at your back, Cor-Cormac! Another!”

Cormac mac Art lay on his back, legs extended toward the cairn, his neck twisted so that he faced Wulfhere. At the Dane’s words his nape crawled. There was no time to give thought to the eerieness, though; again danger threatened imminently. Even as he started to turn his face again in Dithorba’s direction, his left arm moved in a rush. Weaponman’s reflexes sent his buckler sweeping up in protection, however blindly. Luck or the gods of Eirrin guided his arm. Instinctively he swung it up and in before his sprawled body, ere he could see what he was doing.

There was a grating chunking impact on his shield, a smallish round targe, and his arm shivered. He groaned then in pain, for onto his leg dropped the flying stone he had providentially deflected with his buckler. Several pounds in weight, the rock fell on him below the hem of his mailcoat’s short skirt. Leather leggings afforded protection, there, but the blow was forceful and he felt it to the bone.

Staring eyes told him that Dithorba remained helpless. There was no one else there. No one had hurled the stone. Yet it had come flying. Twice then, stones had hurled themselves at him.

While he was starting to rise, another chunk of granite sprang at him from the jumbled pile about Dithorba Loingsech. With a feeling of horror Cormac saw the inanimate thing detach itself from the others, become animate. Agleam with twinkling quartz, it came skimming at him, low so as to catch him in face or neck.

Cormac hurled himself down and aside. He rolled. Suddenly the most important goal of his life was getting himself off the rough floor of stone and earth and into a vertical position.

It had come again.

Dark sorcery stalked him.

Again, Donn, the Dark One, dread lord of the dead, roamed the world, and again his keen eyes had fallen on Cormac mac Art. Again it was not man or beast attacking him, but the mephitic manifestation of the malign power of some wrathful wizard; the uncanny horrors of sorcery; the death that affrighted and confounded even as it came seeking, like a loosed arrow that could not be met with sword and ax or even intelligence-born tactic, but could only be feared and avoided. And yet it was worse than any humming arrow, for such at least was the product of human hands as was the bow that loosed it and even the power that drove it.

Here there was naught to attack, no place to hide and no hand or body at which to direct slaying steel.

But what or who was the source of this attack?

The Moonbow of Danu the Goddess still flashed dully on his breast, and its reversed mate hung still just below the collarbones of Thulsa Doom. Not from that master of frightsome illusions and the walking dead this unnatural assault, then; it was another who struck, and him invisible or directing from afar.

A huge stone shaped like a mollusc of singular size came whizzing, and Cormac dodged convulsively.

“Wulfhere! To your shield-side and along the wall to Dithorba! Erris-keep ye back, girl, for ye’ve no defense against this assault of rock! Thulsa Doom, move not so much as a fing- uh! ”

So intent was mac Art on his directions for the circumvention of the indefensible onslaught that he was caught by it; a knobby stone just bigger than Wulfhere’s fist slammed into his right bicep. Sleeve of linked steel rings saved him from shredded skin and broken bone, but his hand flexed and his sword dropped to clatter. Cormac staggered, getting his feet back and out of the way of his own dropped glaive. With his pain-filled eyes on the source of the silent, hair-raising attack, he bent for the sword.

He paused while he reconsidered. Then he retrieved his sword-and sheathed it. Still in a crouch, staring at the cairn as though it were some snarling beast or Donn-sent demon, he backed two paces. He caught up a sword of one of the fallen Danans. As his fingers worked, shifting and shifting the pommel for the feel and balance of this brand shorter than his own, he glanced over at Wulfhere.

As Cormac had bade, the Dane was moving warily along the wall, advancing toward the corner; thence he would move across the chamber’s rear wall to the corner in which Dithorba was bound.

Cormac’s nape prickled; a chunk of granitic rock lifted without a sound from its piled fellows and went end-over-end at the huger target of the redbearded giant.

“HO!” Wulfhere cried. “Practice does a man good!”

With an almost preposterously expert sweep of his ax, the giant struck the rushing missile away-over an arm’s length from his body.

Another followed close behind, rushing low. Cormac did not wait to see its effect; Wulfhere was prepared, sweating, though from neither heat nor exertion, mac Art rushed toward Dithorba. But the invisible attacker was not distracted. A rock came spinning his way, but a pair of inches above the ground, to catch his shin. He danced, saw another chunk of stone rush off at Wulfhere while still another lofted itself at him, and in dodging he fell.

“Leave this place!” Dithorba’s voice was dry, crackly with age. “Ye cannot free me, so long as I wear the Moonbow points down; Tarmur Roag will put death on both of ye giants. Leave me; this is only death for ye both!”

“Why made ye no reply be- uh -fore!” Wulfhere demanded with some petulance, briefly interrupting himself to fend away a platter-size stone. It scraped across his buckler with an ear-scratching noise.

“Go!” Dithorba Loingsech cried. “I held my silence in hopes Tarmur would not know of your presence and the deaths of the guards he set to watch over me. He knows. More weapon-men will come. Go, go, ye cannot free me; ye cannot fight stones hurled by a powerful mage far from here!”

“Augh!” Wulfhere crashed against the wall. precisely in his armoured stomach a skull-sized stone had struck the Dane, and he slid weakly down the rocky wall with a screeching of steel scales.

“All we need do is pluck that necklace from round your neck, Dithorba Loingsech!” Cormac snarled, and like a vicious animal he used shield to bash away a flying shape of rock that twinkled as if set with a score of diamonds.

“And these chains? Be not foolish, dark man-your comrade is already down and more guards are doubtless on their way!”

Steel will cut silver chain very nicely , Cormac thought, but he said nothing.

Three grey stones leapt up from the dwindled pile; they hurtled at him in a flurry, separating naturally.

With his targe he smashed away the largest, though he heard stout wood crack; in stooping to meet that crotch-aimed lump of rock he bent under the second, which he heard hum past his ear. The third, aimed at his body, struck his helmet with a belling crash and a shower of shivered stone.

His head ringing both at ears and within, Cormac fell and did not rise.

“Wolf!” the Dane called in concern. He was getting himself grunting to his feet with the aid of wall and ax-helve. And two sorcery-driven stones rushed at him.

Cormac’s blue-grey mantle fluttered and bare white legs flashed. Across the floor strewn with stones and corpses and slippery with blood raced Erris of Moytura in a lunatic dash-and in seconds she had reached the shackled mage. As her hands rose to his necklace he swiftly bent his head; the slave snatched away the chain and the Sign of the Moonbow. She hurled it to the floor of hardpacked earth.

Immediately Dithorba went rigid and his eyes closed.

A big flattened rock, just elevating to begin its assault on Wulfhere, clattered back onto the other stones remaining about Dithorba’s ankles. Nor did more stones move.

Totally heedless of her nudity, made the whiter by the slate-hued cloak of Cormac mac Art, Erris squatted beside the fallen Gael. He was up on one forearm, twitching his head, staring dully down. His helmet was dented, though no blood seeped from beneath its rim.