Andrew Offutt: The Sign of the Moonbow

“Balan!” Cormac shouted into the sudden silence. “Behind me is the real Riora; Tarmur’s creature is slain! As for these-every guardsman ye see belongs to Tarmur and Cairluh, and they’re just after murdering two of their own number!”

Balan hesitated only a moment. Then he pointed with his sword to the traitors.

“Yield!”

Tarmur’s voice bellowed out a moment after: “Slay!”

So it was to be, and battle was joined in the very Temple of the Moon. The Queen’s Guardsmen were pitted against the Queen’s Guardsmen. Her commander led one band; her treacherous cousin and the sorcerer the other. The groups closed with arching blades crashing through hastily interposed shields in a storm of ringing iron. The two forces were soon indistinguishably intermingled.

Into that milling mass of sword-wielding men Tarmur Roag durst not unleash his sorcerous powers. Instead, wheeling, he hurled it at the stranger who had brought on this thwarting of his plans and their execution. But a few minutes agone he had been scant seconds from the rule of Moytura; now all his plans were endangered, aye, and his life as well.

Tarmur Roag gestured.

A spear of dullest, shadowy black streaked at mac Art.

He both dodged and struck out at it with his buckler. A sensation as of ice assailed his shield-arm as he scrambled aside, nearly falling from the bottom step. His slitted eyes saw that his buckler had been holed through and through, as though by an awl in the hands of resistless god.

His nape prickling and his arm still atingle, the Gael sought to avoid further such magickal attacks by rushing the two Moyturans who had not whirled to meet Balan’s men but remained to brace the tall man with the dark skin. Their faces were set as in granite and their eyes were ice. He saw that they were controlled men, fighting animals, like those who’d guarded Dithorba.

There was a whoosh overhead as another long spear of darkness rushed from the mage. Behind Cormac, gurgles sounded, and then the crashes of falling men. He need not turn to know that the three guardsmen had paid a bitter price for being so slow to follow him to the defense of their queen.

He advanced on two of their fellows, traitors both. They separated.

Death came and pressed him close and he hacked and smote, running a shield and bending an iron blade with his own sword of silver-flashing steel. That man recovered swiftly and hewed without troubling over his blade, which now formed a definite curve.

Spitting a sulphurous oath, the Gael swept his battered, boled shield in a whizzing blurring defensive arc before him; it turned the bent blade and swept away the other man’s so that the fellow was wrenched halfway around. Cormac drove his own sword forward in a terrible disemboweling thrust that sheared through iron scalemail and brought an ugly croak from its victim. His eyes glared at the dark man-who gave his blade a wrenching twist and yanked it free. Blood followed; dropped sword clanged on the smoothness of stone floor; its owner sank beside his blade.

Cormac had not waited to see that man fall. Instead he strode past and swung his blooded blade at the other man. The Moyturan fended it off with his hexagonal shield, which lost half its silver decor thereby.

Over his shoulder Cormac’s eyes recorded iron ranks at clash and stamp; blood spattered as Balan’s and Tarmur’s men battled with edge of blade and point of sword. Battle-lust ruled the Temple of the Moon and Danu could but watch as her own people fought among themselves. Sharp-edged brands of dark iron flashed and glittered in blue-grey streaks, and sword-hacked men fell vomiting scarlet.

The center of the temple of the goddess became a sea, a writhing storm-swept sea, of shining mail and blood.

A hard-driven slash chopped a wedge from Cormac’s weakened buckler in a blow that jolted his arm to the collarbone. His blade streaked his arm with Moyturan blood as he slashed in return. The other man grunted when his carapace of iron scales gave way at the waist to sharp steel sliver driven by steel-sheathed muscles. Cormac’s sword chewed deep. The man was staggered by the blow but stood blinking, not realizing that his own blood washed forth after Cormac had twisted free his blade.

The Gael started past him; the Moyturan hacked.

“Crom’s name, man, know ye not ye’re dead? ”

Cormac slammed his shield into the rushing sword. There was the booming grating crash and screech of metal on metal, and the guardsman staggered again. His darker antagonist drove forward, using his shield as an advancing wall heading a body block that would have staggered a horse.

The charge smote the wounded guardsman like a thunderbolt. He was dashed to the floor. Crimson surged from his side while steel-spring muscles carried the Gael past him.

Red chaos ruled the temple, which was become a clangourous maelstrom of surging, hacking men.

Crumpled Moyturans of both sides lay in their glistening blood while their souls raced off to join Donn, Lord of the Dead of Eirrin. Cormac saw the air alive with swords that flashed blue and sprinkled crimson drops. Staggering from woundy blows; men yet strove to fight on; some for queen and throne, others because they were the controlled tools of a wizard with not a care for them, body or soul.

The Gael saw Balan hurl an attacker from him with a mighty twisting heave of his six-sided shield and, while he roared out his constant cry of “Riora and Danu!,” sent his point leaping out to gird into the breast of another. An iron blade battered down on his helm; Balan trembled, staggered, cursed-and swept his smeared glaive around in a whistling half-circle that sliced away a sword-arm.

Cormac’s grin was wolfish and ugly. Balan of Moytura not only knew how to use body and blade and buckler, the man reveled in it! His command, the Gael mused, was the result of no woman’s favouritism or political appointment!

But as Cormac looked about, the ugly little smile gave way to a frown.

Where was Tarmur Roag?

The frown became a snarling scowl; the mage had skirted the mass of men, while none dared so much as glance aside from points and iron edges that sought and chewed like the fangs of ravening wolves. Aye, the plump traitor was ghosting betwixt the pillars on the far side of the great hall. He headed for the purple drapes that obscured the wall.

Fleeing for some hidden door , Cormac thought, and he rushed after the Moyturan wizard.

The Gael must leap high; a man came staggering back from the ringing combat to crash to the floor at his feet like a felled tree. Cold eyes blazing, Cormac raced on. On his shield-side howling devils crashed their flashing blades through bucklers and flesh; to his right, across fifteen feet of gleaming green floor, the steps rose. A glance told him that the queen stood still there, with Dithorba now at her side.

It’s danger she’s in , Cormac thought, should one of the traitors see her and bethink himself of charging the steps. A sword at her breast and all fighting ceases-and Balan and the rest of us are butchered! But nay, he reminded himself; Dithorba was there, and could whisk her out of the danger of any traitorous attack in a twinkling.

Cormac reached the edge of the main floor; plunged past the colonnade of bronze-bound pillars. Ahead of him, Tarmur Roag reached for the violet hangings. The edge of Cormac’s eye remarked a guardsman racing toward the mage, but he knew not whether that man was Balan’s or Tarmur’s.

With a freezing cry ripping from his throat, the Gael charged Tarmur Roag with all the speed of his powerful legs.

Having begun his action, the treacherous wizard completed it: he ripped away the heavy curtain ere he responded to Cormac’s shout.