Andrew Offutt: The Sign of the Moonbow

“Mystery? Hmp! Cormac, Cormac. The mystery is how she stands before the breeze, and her with so little womanly meat on her.”

Cormac gave him a look and spoke with his lips tightly together. “It is not, Wulf, this girl.”

“I know.” Wulfhere looked down and heaved a sigh. “I know, blood-brother. It’s just the prospect of climbing this accursed hill I descended for naught that makes me more than hesitant.”

“And surly.”

“Aye. Ye’ve noted how much longer hills are when one is climbing than when one is coming down?”

“Why-it’s scant attention I’ve paid, Wulfhere. Could it be age coming upon ye, man?”

Wulfhere stiffened, stared, turned with dignity, and re-entered the woods on the hill side of the glade. Cormac heard him muttering. So were Sinshi and Consaer; they were struck by the colour of Wulfhere’s hair.

Cormac considered the corpses; he decided it were better to gain Daneira swiftly than to attempt to conceal the Norsemen and all signs of their deaths. One trace of blood, found on a blade of grass, would set off a thorough search by their comrades. The people of Daneira could come and dispose of these, later; at present his efforts were better spent getting to them with the warning of danger he and these two would bear.

“Your people have armour? Where are your daggers? Swords?”

She looked at him with large eyes of soft dark doe-brown, and her voice was soft, gentle as that of a frightened or chastised child.

“We have no need, Cormac mac Art.” She was staring-at his eyes. Were grey eyes as unusual to her as her brown glims were to him?

“No need -Blood of the gods! But you must have axes .”

“My sister and I were not on a woodcutting expedition, Cormac mac Art.”

Cormac clamped his teeth in exasperation.

Consaer, asking his sister for help in drawing his tunic up over his head, started to undress. Already nonplussed, Cormac for a moment thought they must both be insane. Then he realized that the lad meant to clothe his sister’s near-nudity in his own garment.

“And then we can strip off at least one of these leathern coats for you, Consaer,” he said, indicating the bodies.

The youth chuckled. His tunic came off to reveal a lean dusky torso, with long stringy muscles that Cormac knew held considerable strength, if only the fellow were not so little above five and a half feet in height.

“I’d not wear such clothing of such men,” Consaer said, and he had to repeat it ere Cormac understood, for the Daneiran youth had forgot to speak with slow care against the difference in their accents and phrasing. “And what fits any of them would be far too large, anyhow.” He slapped his leg. “These leggings are leather, Cormac mac Art. I need no tunic-and Sinshi does.”

Hardly , Cormac thought, but he held silent with only a nod.

His sword sheathed, he gathered the Norsemen’s bucklers and burdened Sinshi with them, once she was enveloped in her brother’s tunic; he was both bigger built and a full eight inches taller than she. An ax the Gael handed to Consaer, who was none so steady on his feet and showed by little winces and the way he held his gashed head that it was a-throb. Cormac carried the other two axes and Thorleif’s sword, with five daggers in their sheaths fastened to his belt.

“Lead me to Daneira. At least four of your people will have shields, and decent weapons. These.”

Consaer and Sinshi but looked at him, whether in pity or incomprehension he could not be certain. Without speaking, they entered the woods. Long black hair trembled and swung down their backs. Cormac followed, but not too close, that there would be space for maneuvering if there was need. About them rose lofty trees in grey and black. A few leaves were green; most were the colourful hues of autumn. No one had ever swung ax here, Cormac knew. Insects flitted and buzzed; birds called and trilled and warbled-and now and again fluttered in bushes so that Cormac looked sharply that way.

He asked; no, there were no animals on this island, save those brought with them here by the Daneirans long and long ago; pigs and goats and sheep, for meat and milk, fleece and silky hair, and hides.

Paradise!

Cormac could hardly believe it. Serpents? Aye, they made reply, there were reptiles… though throughout all the history of Daneira none had got his death from a serpent’s bite. Cormac could but. shake his head. Paradise! The enchanted land of a chosen people!

Aye. An innocent and naif people, menaced by naught and thus unprepared for any menace; open to attack, the perfect prey for a score or two Norsemen unimpressed with gentle people living in idyllic circumstances. There would be no battle. There would be rape and butchery, and none left to know or to keen the red death of Daneira and its gentle people.

Possibly the Daneirans had naught worth coveting or stealing-save the isle itself and their very existence, their lives. No matter to the men of Norge! Their god was War; their gods were warriors. He who was chief among those nigh-guileless warrior-deities had but one eye and hurled lightning, while his simple-minded son used his hammer to create the thunder. He who was most intelligent among them was the villainous and crafty Loki, loved by none. Once the men of ice-ruled Norge got their crops out in the short growing season, they deserted their steadings, leaving the work of growing food to their women and children and oldsters. The younger men fared forth in ships laden with arms to go a-viking: a-reaving; a-killing.

For such, Cormac thought grimly, the Daneirans had enough of value: flesh for the cutting and buildings for the burning… and women and girls.

Following the weaponless, armour-less pair of sheep for Norse slaughterers, Cormac gritted his teeth. He should have stayed away. Did such foolish people deserve aid, rescue?

A short distance into the wood, the trio came onto a clear and well-trod trail, and Cormac realized how woods-wise were Sinshi and her brother. They went swiftly then, the youths in soft buskins and he bare above the waist-aye, and reeling a bit from the wound in his head. Cormac followed cautiously, alertly, marveling at people who were not cautious because they’d never been so-because they’d never had reason to be cautious or alert!

No beasts , he thought. No enemies. No swords!

They wended through the woods, two sheep and a wolf who trod a carpet of leaves in orange and yellow and scarlet, and Cormac wondered whether he felt pity for them-or envy. As for them-what felt they for him, a scarred and blood-splashed man of weapons who clinked when he walked for he wore steel, and whose narrowed eyes were constantly amove, seeking an enemy not there?

Cormac did not know. He could not imagine their lives. His had been a life of arms and combat, all his days. It seemed that he had been born with sword to hand.

In the time when Laegair’s son Lugaid was High-king in Eirrin, Art mac Comail was a member of the powerless bear sept of the clan na Morna of Connacht, though he was kinsman of the ua-Neill , the descendants of that great Niall, High-king. This same Art got a child on his wife, and it was a son. Cormac remembered Art’s telling him of his name.

“He was the greatest king that Eirrin ever knew,” the boy’s father told him, of that son of King Art the Lonely of a time long gone by. “In power and eloquence, in the vigour and splendour of his reign, he has not had his like before or since. In his reign none needed bar the door, no flocks need be guarded, nor was anyone in all Eirrin distressed for want of food or clothing. For all Eirrin that wise and just king made a beautiful land of promise. His grandfather was Conn of the Hundred Battles; his father was Art the Lonely; he was King Cormac. Like you, son, for I have given you the greatest name in the history of our land: Cormac mac Art.