Andrew Offutt - The Sign of the Moonbow

Awkwardly he caught her hair in his shield-hand, betwixt head and binding; his sword sliced swiftly through the rope that had forced her head up and back. It was allowed to assume a natural position. Her eyes focused-and she cried out. Dithorba’s call of alarm crowded close on hers.

Her Guardian had appeared in the queen’s prison chamber.

Cormac had hardly expected to face here a foe of his own height and apparent build, nor had he ever seen a man so helmed and armoured.

No skin of the Guardian was visible. His scalemail coat fell from neck to knees; beneath it he wore leggings of good mail that vanished into short boots. Mailed gloves covered the hands that clutched sword and six-sided shield; faced with bronze it was and on it a death’s head had been picked out in awl-punched dots filled with black enamel. But once had Cormac seen such an eye-covering helm, on an arrogant Roman commander. From that visored helmet depended a camail of mail, which was connected in front to the nosepiece of the helmet so as to conceal the tall figure’s entire face.

Cormac faced a grim and silent foe covered all in iron.

With some nervousness on him though without sinking heart, the Gael remembered to crab-step from the bound queen of Moytura. She must not receive a chance slash.

“It’s your queen this be, man. Elatha is-no more. I am come here to set her free, and if ye insist I’ll be doing it through yourself. Sheathe sword and stand Ye back to serve your queen, for she will be free.”

The ironclad Guardian said nothing. Cormac could not see so much as eyes, to read their expression. Stance and ready-lifted buckler, with the upraising of the broad long sword in mailed hand, were indication enow of his reply and intent.

The man of iron paced forward, not toward Riora but at Cormac.

“Ye’ll be dying then, for all your armour,’ Cormac said, and moved but the tips of his fingers, ensuring his grip on shaped hilt.

He would let the other strike first, move while he took the stroke on his shield, and attack instantly and viciously. No such traitor as this, and him stupid besides, deserved to draw breath.

The Guardian’s arm came around in a blur. Cormac’s shield caught the sword-edge and his arm turned to let the sword slide on, thus allowing the attacker’s momentum to continue-while the Gael moved rightward and drove his blade forward. The impact of sword on shield was tremendous, a jolting surprise to mac Art’s arm and mind, as was the fact that the other’s bronze-faced buckler moved so rapidly. Yet it did not quite catch his rushing thrust; rather than plunging as he’d intended into an armoured side, Cormac’s blade screamed through iron links and completely transpierced his foe’s shield-arm, near the shoulder.

Cormac yanked his blade forth. It was well for him that he did not assume the fray to be over then, but remained mindful of the other’s long brand and his shield.

He had already seen; no blood marked the blade of mac Art.

Nor did his opponent seem to take note of his wound; he backswung and Cormac had to skip while thrusting back his shield to avoid the prodigiously powerful slash at his neck. Again the iron sword crashed on the Gael’s shield with a sound to torture the head, eardrums, and again the terrific impact shook his arm and rattled the teeth in his head.

He moved two rushing paces on, for a few snatched moments to relieve his shield-arm… and to try to hurl from his brain the numbing influence of shock.

Again he looked at the blade of his sword; he could not believe what he had seen-or rather not seen. It was true. The steel shone bloodlessly. Nor did any so much as ooze from his ironclad foe’s arm, which should have been pouring scarlet, if not spurting with his heartbeats.

Still without so much as a grunt or a curse, he who had been set to prevent the queen’s rescue struck again.

This slash came high, and Cormac at the last instant chose not to meet it with his buckler. Nor did he counterattack with his usual thrust; he ducked low and chopped deeply into the Guardian’s left thigh.

That titan in iron chain staggered-and back came his arm, in a hardly interrupted backswing.

This time Cormac dived away, and again he saw with hair-raising incomprehension that his blade was unblooded. His antagonist swung to follow; again he staggered a little on a leg that nevertheless held him erect-and bled, not.

Mac Art did not wait but struck hard, side-armed and with all his strength. The Guardian’s shield dropped swiftly into line so that Cormac’s blade chopped half through it. The wood held. The iron man was cleaving; Cormac lunged desperately forward to be within that sweep-and to crash his buckler into his foeman. Into the junction of arm and torso it smashed, so that iron shield-rim slammed both chest and arm and the boss centered between them drove into the hollow just above the silent attacker’s armpit.

The Guardian’s slashing glaive struck naught but air though his mailed arm rapped Cormac’s back. The Gael bore on, to hurl backward a foe who should have been down and half bled.

The Danan staggered back with a harsh jangle of overlapping iron scales that covered him from nose to toes and fingers. His left thigh, shorn half through, gave. He began to topple. Bracing himself, Cormac jerked his sword arm with a rapid up and down movement. With a screech of steel on wood and bronze, the blade came free. Panting, Cormac watched his silent foe crash backward to the floor.

Under such circumstances a man either yielded or died. Cormac stepped swiftly forward.

“Yield ye! Drop the sword or it’s no hand I’ll be leaving ye to wield it again against a friend of your queen!”

A mailed leg and booted foot kicked at him. Cormac had been right. The Guardian was stupid, without sense in him to leave off when he was defeated. Up rushed a mailed fist to drive Danan sword at Cormac mac Art in a vicious slash.

Though surprised, Cormac was not astounded; he had been prepared to make movements in response to such insanity. He backpaced two swift steps, tarried but an instant poised on the balls of both feet, while he watched the big iron sword swish. It swept by in a blurred semicircle of dark blue-grey before his body. The strength of its wielding carried it on; Cormac rocked himself forward again, knees bending deeply.

He carried out his threat. His slash sent his fallen opponent’s sword flying. Its hilt was still grasped in mailed fist.

And the Danan’s hard-swung shield slammed into Cormac’s hip as though the Guardian had sustained no terrible wound to his upper arm.

Cormac was swept violently aside; had the rim rather than cloven face of that six-sided buckler struck him so, bone would have cracked. Nor had Cormac mac Art ever known a man who fought ever again after sustaining a cracked hip. In pain he ran to remain vertical, and slammed into the wall. That scraping clang rose simultaneous with the clatter across the room; sword in mailed, severed hand had rebounded from the opposite wall to ring on the floor. Cormac too rebounded, gritting his teeth against the pain in his right hip.

Jerking his head and willing himself to ignore pain and dark incomprehension, Cormac swung about to renew assault on a foe seemingly impervious to wounds.

He was in the act of striking still again at the armour-covered figure stretched on the floor when he saw that which jolted his brain and made him shiver. From the stump of his severed wrist, the Guardian poured forth no blood.

“Blood of the Gods,” Cormac snarled, with no thought on him for the singular inappropriateness of his favourite oath.

His brain staggering, the Gael aborted his ruined sword stroke. Sudden intense heat prickled over his body and sweat seemed to leap from every pore. In that instant he went pure professional, for so he’d been and was still, though in the paid employ of none. His brain moved to another level; became icy cold; functioned at high speed.