Andrew Offutt: The Sign of the Moonbow

Nor did Samaire of Leinster in Eirrin assume that there had been ease or would be; this life-force to which hers was connected throughout time was a key one, a volatile one. And now he was Cormac mac Art, and he was safely up the cliff, this man she loved and had loved-throughout time.

She smiled, and turned to join Wulfhere and Brian in collecting the containers to be filled with that which neither Doom-heim nor the sea offered: clear sweet water for drinking. Only Wulfhere made complaint that waterfalls bore not ale.

The rocky cliff, rearing forty or so feet above water, was so rough of face as to afford easy climbing. Cormac soon scaled it. His breathing was hardly accelerated when he squirmed on his belly over the lip of the cliff and onto level ground. The grass began a few feet away; the trees just beyond. He moved onto the grass and looked down the long incline that was crowded with trees and brush. It swept down and down, into the forest that seemed to cover all the island.

A beautiful place, he mused.

Small, grown up completely in greenery, fine oaks and nut-trees rearing high above lesser neighbours. Perhaps half their leaves had fallen with the onset of autumn, to strew the ground already richly carpeted with grasses, moss, creepers, weeds, bushes, and wildflowers that had long since bloomed and gone to seed. Back in the summer just past, it would have appeared as an enchanted isle of eternal summer, all richly green and colour-splashed by the blooms of weeds and wildflowers.

Now autumn had come, and it was little less beautiful.

Such a land, he thought, to be without people!

Then he saw that he was wrong.

There were people.

He froze, staring, a man who had barely heard the myth of Eden told by the adherents of the Dead God but who stood now overlooking paradise-and discovered the serpent. The humans he saw were engaged in the ugly business of their kind-his kind.

A youthful couple, boy and girl or perhaps young man and woman of small stature, were beset in an oak-bound clearing by four weapon-men; These wore round helmets and armour, two in coats of scalemail and two of leather. One was sword-armed; the other three wielded axes. All bore round shields and all four were bearded with flax or gold. The youths were prey, not opponents, for they were neither armoured nor armed-at least not with steel.

In truth they were doing well for themselves with nought but staves, which they plied with uncommon expertise. An ax flashed at the boy in a great half-circle, missed, and a swiftly plied stave, nigh the height of the youth himself, rushed so that the attacker only just interposed his shield.

The long-haired youngsters defended themselves well-but would of course fall before steel in the hands of skilled, armoured men. Nevertheless, Cormac mac Art set his lips and forced himself to turn his back.

Where there were four of the men of Norge, there were more. Their ship was drawn in somewhere on this island’s coast. Perhaps the pair under attack below were escaped captives-temporarily escaped. They are none of my business or concern.

He stared down at his own companions. They had nearly finished collecting their water and transferring it onto the long boat that was their ship, and the men were elaborately-and ridiculously-turning their faces seaward. This so that Samaire could bathe. As Cormac looked down, she doffed her last garment and glanced upward. The slim woman waved gaily and flashed him a smile. Then she plunged into the pool to betake herself in under the waterfall. If she had called out, its roar and splash swallowed the words and her voice.

She’ll not be tarrying , he mused. A few hundred heartbeats and it’s back on the ship she’ll be, swirling her hair in the sun, and the others in the water. Nor is if long they’ll be. I’ll take no turn; it’s dirty and smelly they can accept me! These others… this be no fight of mine, no concern. No. And four Norse on this isle means a ship, and that means twoscore and mayhap more, and-we are but five. We have fought enow! We must needs be going on, and about the business of ridding the world forever of Thulsa Doom!

He knew dismay at that thought; ending the menace of an illusion-spinning mage of eighteen thousand years’ age were bad enow-but to find a woman who ruled , to set him forever at rest-as well seek a serpent amid the green green grass of Eirrin or a shamrock growing from the solid rock of Doom-heim!

He looked all about, with care.

He saw no other ship. Below, Samaire was doubtless splashing and laughing, though the falling water isolated him from sound. No. He’d climb down and tell them now. They’d be off. They’d been at the sword-reddening combat enough and more than enough. An he interfered with the attack of four Norse on seeming innocents, they’d doubtless have then to face the Norsemen’s comrades, and surely in overwhelming numbers. Pretty young men had been slain afore ere they’d shaved and sown their seed, in thousands, in millions. Pretty young women with flying hair had been bruised and raped and slain or left moaning and bleeding, time and time again, time without end. It was the way of the world, and its history. It was no business of a harried weapon-man of Eirrin, and him with awful responsibility on him as well as a woman to cherish and watch over.

No. He’d merely not look. One need not have concern over that which one saw not.

Norsemen…

It was Norsemen their own brother had intrigued with, to have Samaire and her brother Ceann snatched from Eirrin’s own sod. The bloody dogs would rather leave their cold land and slay and steal than eat!

Aye and aye, but this time was no concern of his.

Below, Samaire emerged nude and glistening from the pool, her water-darkened hair falling past the middle of her back. Cormac smiled on the whiteness of her buttocks and the jiggle of bare white breasts, but try as he might it was a different urge he felt. He felt the ache in his jaw, too, and heard the gritting of his own teeth.

Deliberately he looked away from Samaire, who waved up to him. again.

He looked again inland, down the long green hill.

Axes flashed silvery menace in the sun that struck through half-leaved oaks into the glade. Backward the young man fell, against the base of a great-boled oak, and his quarterstaff dropped from unfeeling hands. He lay still. The young woman, moving lithe as a cat and built with the same economy of bone and flesh, rapped a Norseman’s helmeted head with her stave, which she held before her with both hands. She aimed almost instantly at the face of a second with the staff’s other end.

Grinning, the four men dropped their steel. Retaining their bucklers in necessary defense, they closed on her. The boy lay still.

Girl or woman, she was valiant and her hair a fine cloak of black spraying out from the yellow band at her nape. Almost, she might have been Samaire in days past. Or Brian’s sister of Killevy, if indeed Brian had siblings. Or-

Cormac turned and lunged down. Flat on his belly, he hung his head over the cliff and shouted. His companions did not hear him above the waterfall. At the mast, Thulsa Doom stood like a ghastly statue. In her shift, her hair wrung and close-bunched like a sheaf of gold thread, Samaire looked up. Cormac shouted; he saw her smile and shout in return. He heard only the hint of her voice above the sound of rushing water and its splashing below, sweet water into salt. The men turned, hearing her. Their gazes followed-hers upward.

Shoving himself up onto his feet, Cormac drew his sword, pointed inland, and waved sword and buckler.

Cormac turned and plunged down the long green hill, sure his companions had understood his silent message.

He ran as best he could, avoiding trees and berrybushes and entanglements of viny plants. Once he fell, instinctively flailing, wide his sword-arm so that he did not come to grief on his own blade. He rolled and slid, grunting. Getting his body turned crosswise to the slope, he stopped himself, lunged cursing to his feet, and hurried on. Behind him the sound of downrushing water dwindled. Now there were only the calls of birds and the wind of his own swift passage.