Andrew Offutt - The Sign of the Moonbow

“An we… free Riora, Erris… it’s you… who’s made it possible.”

“Oh please, please Cormac mac Art-be all right, get up get up oh please…”

A great burly form loomed over her, squatted beside her. “What’s this? Be ye tired from this little fray, battle-brother? What ails ye?”

Cormac looked at him. “I have a headache.”

Wulfhere laughed gustily. Cormac detected the trace of hysteria that denoted relief on the Dane’s part. The man was unequipped to cope with an injury to someone he loved, and the men of his chill land were too sure of their masculinity to avoid stating love for another man. Nevertheless Wulfhere’s way was to lard on bluff jests as cover for nervous concern that made him most woefully uncomfortable.

Work remained to be done, and Cormac willed himself to move. His pushing himself was accompanied by twinges in right upper arm and left thigh. His head seemed to tighten within a deep grey band and he staggered in a long moment of vertigo. Leaning on the Dane, he bent to retrieve the Danan sword he’d dropped. He frowned against the throbbing in his head as he straightened. Cormac turned to Dithorba.

“See that ye move not, Dithorba Loingsech,” he said, and he went to the old man and caught his thin arm in a vising grip.

Dithorba shrank and closed his eyes; the other man wielded sword. With five careful strokes of the Danan blade, Cormac freed the queen’s adviser of his four chains. He gazed a moment at the sword; held it up for Wulfhere’s eyes. The Danan blade was both bent and badly notched.

“Hmp! Ruined, by Odin’s eye! My ax would have cut through thicker links of silver than those without taking note-much less bending!”

“Iron,” Cormac said quietly. “All their swords are of iron, not steel.” He went to one knee beside a corpse, moved to another. “Iron! All their helms, their armour… not steel, Wulfhere, but iron.”

While he spoke and moved among the bodies, Erris moved to Dithorba. With more respect than self-consciousness, she removed Cormac’s cloak and swept it around the spindly old man. Naked, she stood with head deferentially bowed. Dithorba but nodded. He stood looking from one to the other of the strangers, rubbing his arms. Despite their being held immobile by Cormac while he struck through the chains, each stroke had brought a painful wrench. The shackles remained, though but one link of silver chain dangled from each.

Danan and Gaelic eyes met.

“Ye’ve come from above,” the dry, brittle old voice said. “A Gael, with that hair and skin and those eyes. We’ve not forgot what ye look like.”

Cormac nodded.

“But ye come not as enemy.” Dithorba glanced at Wulfhere. “And… you. A giant with hair the colour of the pain-rock that yields iron. Two from above-and not as enemies, but to set me free.” The old man shook his head and the plaited white beard stirred on his chest. Erris was a slave, and he took no note of her while she fussed with the cloak’s clasp.

“Wulfhere-Erris has better use for his tunic than the man lying yonder with no wound on him,” Cormac said. “Dithorba Loingsech: my name is Cormac mac Art. Wulfhere the Dane is my battle-brother… my blood brother, though our mothers knew each other not. It is to release ye we’ve come here. It’s help we can provide each other, you and we.”

Dithorba glanced at Erris, who was gazing with longing on the man of her people who lay dead among the others, him with neither wound nor blood on him, save at his nostrils. Reluctantly, Wulfhere went to that corpse.

Dithorba said, “To rescue me, and aid each other. Why?”

“Together,” Cormac said, meeting the old man’s light-eyed gaze levelly, “we must try to free your queen.” Cormac swung his right arm vigorously, against a stiffening of the bruised bicep.

Dithorba stared for a time into the slitted eyes of the dark, scarred man. He nodded, briefly. “Aye-I’d set my life to that end. But… why yourself?”

Turning, Cormac extended a pointing finger at the tall, dark-robed figure in the doorway. “There stands a mage of much power and evil, and as ye well know this holds him mine.” He touched the Moonbow on his chest. “It is because of him I must have… audience with Riora of Moytura, after she is enthroned with her crown upon her.”

“I must be hearing more of this matter… that creature has no face!”

“Ye’ve said Tarmur Roag knows of our presence here, and was he hurled those stones though he be not here to see us.”

“I wore this chain,” Dithorba said, picking it up. “He saw ye through my eyes-whether I held them open or closed. But-”

“Ye spoke of his sending weapon-men,” Cormac reminded. “Mayhap we’d best be getting ourselves elsewhere for talking.”

Dithorba’s eyes widened and he blinked. “Aye! There’s been so much, so fast… it had actually fled my mind. Aye-armed men will be here in minutes!” And with those words, Dithorba Loingsech vanished.

Chapter Eleven:

The Dungeon of Moytura

Wulfhere Skull-splitter rose from a denuded corpse. He held a tunic of some thin, shining cloth of a pearly opaline hue. “Here, girl, ye can don this or make covering of it-though I seem to have slipped with my dagger, and made a slit or two in places.” Then as he turned his grin faded and he blinked. “Where-Cormac! What’s happened to him we loosed?”

“He… disappeared,” Cormac said dully.

This time Erris’s concern was for covering herself, not the vanished mage or the manner of its accomplishment. She went naked to Wulfhere, took the tunic with a tiny word of thanks, and stepped past him. Though she’d been naked when they found her and but a few minutes agone denuded herself anew to clothe the queen’s adviser, she now kept her back turned while she slipped the soft, thin fabric of the tunic over her head.

“Thor’s beautiful red beard,” Wulfhere said, “but I’d love to be asea again, facing only such trifles as gales, whirlpools, a few boatloads of ravening Frisians and Norse, and a simple sea-monster or three!”

Cormac looked at the other man with complete empathy.

Erris came to the side of the Dane, and looked up; the man towered a foot and a half above her. “Again I make thanks to you for my clothing, my lord Wulfhere-though your accidental slip of the dagger bares both my legs to the waist!”

Before either man could comment, Dithorba was among them again.

Exclamations greeted his reappearance; none was fully coherent. The loinclothed man in Cormac’s cloak lifted bony hands for silence.

“I have been to my own chamber in the palace. It has been searched, and is empty. They have not found my secret room, though, and I took not even time to clothe myself. Erris! Come-we must show them how Dithorba travels!”

Erris drew back, though Cormac saw that there was more nervousness on her than fear. Dithorba stretched forth a hand; slowly one of hers reached out to take it. Bony, wrinkled old fingers gripped smooth young ones no less white. There was no warning, no fading; the two Danans merely vanished. Cormac and Wulfhere jerked at the popping sound, as of two palms slapping together.

The two weapon-men looked at each other.

And Dithorba was back. He stretched forth a hand. “Cormac mac Art. Come.”

“What… what have ye done, man? Where are ye after being?”

“I’ve told you. My secret room in the palace is far from here. There Erris is safe and not unhappy that her handsome thighs are bared; there we can talk and plan. Come.”

“Ye… ye have the ability to… to move yourself, by… some cantrip?”

Dithorba shrugged bony shoulders on which Cormac’s cloak hung like a sail on a windless day. “Time grows short. I can take with me but one at a time. No, no spells or cantrips. I have… such ability to travel. I merely will myself to be elsewhere; someplace I have been and can see in my mind. And I am there. It’s my life you’re after saving, son of the Gaels; I cannot do harm on you! Come.”