Andrew Offutt - The Undying Wizard

His re-lit torch roared and streamed fire in his wake with his running along that dark cavern beneath the earth. He raced as though a thousand demons sent from the Norse Hel slavered on his trail. The corridor’s squared turnings he took at the run, so that he struck the wall again and again. And he paid no mind.

Cormac ran, and the dust of centuries flew up from his feet.

He came upon the strange scene, and it brought no horror but only puzzlement-and anger. Cormac took it all in with slitted eyes-while never slowing his pace.

Against one wall of the cavern stood Samaire, pressed to the stone with her arms outstretched. Vermillion hair sprayed out over her leather coat of armour; in their tall boots of gleaming, soft black leather her legs quivered. Indeed her entire body quaked as though freezing cold, while she stood fully clothed and armoured, stretched and tense as if she were frozen in place-or bound by invisible cords or chains.

Behind her stood Osbrit the Briton of Wroxeter.

The only survivor of his crew was steadily tapping the woman’s back with a folded belt. Though he was only tapping her leather-sheathed legs and back, not striking her, the walls echoed Samaire’s constant shrill, throat-tearing cries. She squirmed and lunged against the wall as though bound to it and afflicted with awful torment.

Cormac did not pause to consider or question. With the full unthinking fury of his dash, he charged the Briton. With such force did the Gael smash into Osbrit that the bronze-haired warrior was knocked off his feet and hurled through the air.

Cormac paid the flying body no heed, but plowed to a stop ere he crashed into the cowering woman. His torch he held high; his other hand and arm slid around the seemingly agonized Samaire’s waist from behind.

“Samaire… Samaire!”

Once more the screamed, in mortal agony. Then, “Cormac,” she gasped in a weak sigh, and she sagged back against him. Yet her arms remained in place, stretched along the wall higher than her head. “Oh… oh Cormac… cut free my wrists!”

Cormac’s stomach lurched and his scalp prickled. She was not bound, but thought she was… Wulfhere was not there, but I thought he was… she had not been whipped, but thought she had been… O ye gods, he torments her too!

“There, my love,” he told her, “I have done. You’re free.”

On the instant, her arms dropped, falling as if her hands were leaden weights. With a groan she began sliding down, so that only his hand under her breast prevented her dropping into the dust of the cavern’s floor.

No sound warned the Gael, and he was not aware of seeing aught from the edge of his eye. Nevertheless he twitched his head rightward in a weapon-man’s instinct-to see Osbrit’ Drostan’s son coming at him with naked sword. A malevolent smile of anticipated death-dealing twisted the man’s mouth.

Cormac’s hands were full of torch and limp woman. The one he released, pushing her sideward so that again she sagged against the tunnel wall; the other he swung before him as both defensive shield and fiery offensive weapon. Flame streamed and roared in the tunnel’s fetid air.

The rush of fire gave Osbrit of Wroxeter pause, and that swiftly Cormac’s sword rushed from its sheath. A ferocious delight was upon him; here was something he could fight, here was a living body to receive the frustration and vengeance-need that were like a canker in his guts.

The Gael did not strike, but advanced a foot and thrust with all his strength.

He felt the familiar jolt of glaive-point against mail, metal against metal, and the resistance, then the rushing of his extended arm as scales bent and twisted and snapped and sharp steel buried itself in flesh and blood.

Belly-stabbed, Osbrit stared at the other man.

“Treacherous snake! Was I showed ye kindness, and I alone!” Cormac snarled, and gave his wrist a twist before he yanked forth his blade.

It emerged agleam. No blood followed the emergence of steel blade from sundered flesh.

Osbrit’s lips writhed in a smile. “Aye… so ye did… kindness. For it was you slew serpent and robed Norseman, and freed me from the one that I might animate the other!”

Then that smile widened, and the lips shriveled up as the skin writhed and moved on that tanned face, and it paled and paled while the skin left it, and once more Cormac mac Art stared into the death’s head face of Thulsa Doom.

Knowing the man had shown pain when the sword went into him, Cormac stabbed again. His blade plunged into the robed body just below the ribs. This time he drove forward with knotting calves to hurl the wizard backward and to the cavern floor, impaled on two feet of steel.

Dust flew up as his foeman fell, and again when Cormac dropped beside him, to his knees. Maintaining his grip on his pommel, he ground the sword in, seeking to pin the other man, if man he was, to the cavern’s floor.

“Ahgh-it hurts , lowborn vulture! It-hurts! It’s cold! ”

“But kills ye-not!” Cormac grunted, exerting his strength to twist the impaling blade.

The supine body lurched and writhed. “Aahhhhhh! Son… of a moment’s dalliance… that is pain-n-nn! ”

Cormac kept his eyes on the skull face, his squeezing, downpressing hand on his pommel. “ Samaire -I need you!”

She must have turned then, and seen for the first time what he held pinned down like some unslayable writhing serpent.

“Gods of my-he has no face!”

“Nor blood, but he’s a body, and it’s helpless I have it, and there’s cord enow on my arm to enwrap two such! Hither, love, and bind him with this rope!”

Samaire’s horror at the awful apparition did not prevent her responding to Cormac’s need for aid in subduing… the thing. Already he was changing his squatting position and leaning hard on his pommel with his right hand, while he held out his shield-arm. Samaire hurried to remove the coil of rope.

And Thulsa Doom changed . The gaunt but powerful weapon-man’s body shivered-but the shiver was a shimmer , as eerie metamorphosis commenced. Flesh and bone changed…

“Demon!” Cormac cried out in his surprise.

“Cormac-it’s Bas! ”

“Cor… mac,” gasped the druid, his face stricken. His hands shook as they went to the steel blade that pinned him down, hovered there as if he only just prevented himself from seizing the sharp steel. “Why…? Let me up, Cormac… I… I can exert druidic powers to heal myself… but… not if you will not let me up swiftly-”

Cormac spoke betwixt clenched teeth. And he leaned on his sword, though instinctive horror and unease at apparently thus pinning the druid he respected brought the sweat starting from his palm.

“No, ancient monster! It’s as Wulfhere I’ve seen ye, and then as Samaire herself; there can be no using this trick on me again! This time ye grow desperate, Thulsa Doom! Now I know the horrors of wizardry ye be capable of, I might not be surprised to see the face of Bas become your ugly relic from a boneyard. But… to see you become Bas? It’s not such a fool I am, skullface. I know who ye are, creature, and it’s hard your sorceries have made my heart. So-writhe and wriggle, Thulsa Doom, and if ye choose to retain the face of Bas the Druid-then so be it. I am unmoved by such petty attempts!”

“Barbarian scum! ” Bas snarled. “Nescient as a foal newly born ye are, and proud and crowing of what ye think is knowledge! I cannot be killed, barbarian! Already I have known death, and longer ago by thousands of years than your simple mind can comprehend!”

Cormac braced himself, leaned on his sword with his right hand, and again extended the left arm. “Prate on, wizard. Samaire-the rope.”