Andrew Offutt - The Undying Wizard

Before the Dane could swing his weapon into line, a truncated ax-haft struck his shield and then his arm. As silently as he’d done three months before, Cormac’s comrade of erst died again, and there were four skeletons.

Bas jerked erect as though waking from some dark dream.

“Cu Roi mac Dairi,” he said in a shaky voice as his hand closed around the hilt of Cormac’s sword, “son of Behl, servant of Crom, be with me! And… King Kull… pardon!”

With that the druid crashed Cormac’s sword down onto one arm of the priceless ancient throne. The blade bit deep; wood older than old splintered and broke. The throne shuddered-as did Bas’s surprisingly powerful arm.

A man in an iron-banded helm of dented grey rushed past the oaken throne to swing his shining glaive at Cormac mac Art-and Bas the Druid smashed a ragged chunk of chair-arm into the Viking’s back. Released by fingers from which the flesh began instantly to dangle in tatters like old draperies, the Norse sword rushed past Cormac to clang and clatter far across the room. A thrice-banded helmet slipped down over the shining white mound of bone that had been a human head. A skeleton once more, the Norseman fell.

Cormac too had struck, and six skeletons lay on the tiles.

A sword crashed off Cormac’s shield and he saw another rushing in from the side. Desperately he struck at it with his oaken club just as he’d have done with his own good sword-which was now so horribly useless. Ax-haft deflected glaive-blade; the point tore a channel up the Gael’s forearm. Later he would feel pain and be discommoded by the rip in the skin and flesh; now he did not so much as notice. Ax-haft thunked into mailed hip, jerked away, leaped sidewise swift as a striking adder. Oak met skin; skin became tatters; tatters vanished to leave only bone.

The two skeletons fell almost together, with a rattle as of many games of knuckle-bones at once.

The ghastly battle continued. It was two against fourteen now, and one of the two unarmoured. Unhelmeted too he was, and cumbered by rustling robes of woolen girt with a rope composed of four intricately plaited strands.

“Bas, Bas! Back to the throne, man, ere ye be slain for naught! Hack the throne… and hurl the pieces! ”

Bas skipped away from an overweight man of Norge. He turned-and faced an ax that had already commended its downward rush. Reflexively the holy druid jerked up his splintry chunk of ancient oak, and up leaped his other hand to brace it with a grip on either end.

The ax rushed down to cleave through that time-weakened slab of wood so that it was two, and had only slowed the descent of steel death. Bas went to one knee. His shocked arms quivered. From one nerve-tingling hand, even as the un-dead drew up his ax for the death-stroke, a piece of ragged wood fell. It struck the floor and bounded, just a little, onto the buskined foot of the ax-wielding Dane.

From above his head Bas heard a grunt. Then there was the stench of death’s decay eerily accelerated, and then that was gone, as Guthrun Black-shield died once more. Again he returned to pallid smooth bones that clattered on the tiles.

Ten skeletons lay on the floor in their mail or leather; twelve men who were not men shuffled on. Twelve Un-dead men continued to do what they must: endeavour to slay the living. Helpless voiceless minions of the ghoulish sorcery that had raised them, they clove blindly to their one purpose: murder.

Bas of Tir Conaill gained the throne-chair and turned to look upon the awful sight.

The floor was strewn with corpses and man-shaped collections of bones. Bleeding from right forearm and left shoulder where the capping sleeve of his mailcoat was shredded, Cormac mac Art leaped and dodged, ducked and skidded, lunged and jabbed and swung. He danced, armour a-jingle; he raced away to attack again like a great spitting cat amid harrying dogs. Succor he knew lay only in nimbleness; a dash here, a jab there with his headless ax, and duck and dodge to continue the grim work from a new direction.

One advantage was held by the living man among the Un-dead; when his stave struck other than shield or enemy blade, an enemy fell.

The wood of the god-tree met sorcery-driven steel. Another of the resurrected dead was struck. Another skeleton crashed to the floor. A hand broke, and fingerbones rattled free to roll about. It was then Cormac fell backward across a Briton corpse. Ghoulmen who had been enemies, allied now in death, leaped in concert to carve the fallen man like a ham at feast-time.

Bas groaned in horror. But the other Gael was lean and more than passing quick.

Cormac rolled, contriving to hurl himself several feet along the floor with a wrenching twisting exertion that would have crippled the back of a man whose body was not so agile and muscle-sheathed. Armour screamed on tile. A rushing ax chopped down the corpse of the Briton over which Cormac had fallen, and where he’d sprawled but a second before. Already he was scrambling to his feet, aiding himself with his hands like the animals that were his remotest ancestors. To such was he reduced.

A brief glance showed the Gael five foes converging on him. These were uncanny foes, unnatural foes, impervious to aught but the headless ax in his hand. Again he must needs run, fleet as a hare before hounds, racing around and between pillars tall as oaks-which he wished they were.

In shuddery silence, dead men followed, to join him with them.

Bas saw that Cormac was bent on making his way around and back to him. He saw too how the Dane hurried to cut off his former piratic comrade-and the druid hurled the broken piece of oak in his hand. The dead man moved too fast to be struck where Bas aimed, between the shoulder blades. The splinter-bristling chunk of wood fell short.

Yet again the druid was lucky or Behl-blessed; it struck the back of his knotty calf. In seconds he became mere bone. Again the ghastly cycle: man who had turned into corpse and then into bone and then into man-returned to bone.

With cries of rage and challenge that rang and echoed in the room, Ros and Brian burst into the hall of horror. Having heard the clangour and Cormac’s shouts, they’d hurried onto the gallery to stare down at that which erupted their bodies into gooseflesh. The two youths withstood the moveless watching as long as they could without intervening. Swallowing all fear, they came now loping like young hounds with more enthusiasm than knowledge or sense.

“STOP!” Bas bellowed, and it was no small voice the druid possessed. “Hold-only oak slays them- only oak! ”

The two young men looked at him, at Cormac and his assailants-who though eerily silent looked quite natural-and at each other, and back to the druid.

Bas chopped a piece of splintery wood from the ruined airm of the throne of Kull. As though he’d commanded men all his life, as though he wore a crown and mail rather than robe and center-parted black hair that was rope-held about his forehead above his brows, Bas the Druid called out again.

“Come ye hither, both!”

Cormac was parrying a vicious sword-stroke from a man whose sword-wound he’d once treated, off Rechru isle after an encounter with a boat too full of Frisians. His hurried swing of his makeshift stave at the attacker was well caught on oval shield, even as Cormac blunted the ax-swing of a second foe on his own buckler.

“GET TO BAS!” he bellowed, without looking from his foemen.

Brian and Ros, as confused as they were quiveringly excited, were already doing so in obedience to the sword-wielding druid. Like a man whose wife is dying for lack of wood on the fire, the robed man chopped at the magnificent old throne with Cormac’s sword.

Diving headlong between two attackers and beneath their rushing blades, Cormac was able to strike a leg in passing with his strange weapon.