Andrew Offutt: The Undying Wizard

At the same time, he pounced like a panther to Ferdiad’s oar. A mighty pull he gave that foremost oar, so that the men behind him felt the sudden ease in their own pulling. Their lean captain’s strength was astonishing. The steersman had responded, and Cormac’s impulsive move added to the ship’s sharp swerve. Ferdiad sprawled; Lugh again straightened and launched an arrow. Like all others thus far, it found no fleshy home.

The ship’s stern was more effective. It crushed a carack in its swing. With a cry, one nearly naked Pict went flying to splash, thrown twice the length of his own body. The other man of that boat was surely more fortunate than brilliant; with a warrior’s reflexes he was able to grasp the tiller even as his boat, spear, oar and bow were lost to him.

Like most of his kind he was a short, dark man with long arms slung from prodigiously broad, meaty shoulders. He clung fast to the tiller. The ship lurched. The steersman cursed. Cormac’s voice rose too, cursing magnificently in two, then three languages.

“The fatherless dog clings to the tiller!” the steersman cried.

“Shake him off!” Cormac wrestled with his oar. “Up oars and sweep: One… Two… Ferdiad! No!”

“It’s shaking him off I’ll be,” the hunter had muttered, and he rose to hurry sternward and put an arrow into the clinging enemy.

Even as Cormac shouted his warning, Ferdiad’s right cheek sprouted a gout of blood and a flint arrowhead. The shaft had entered his other cheek to smash through his mouth and pass completely through his. face. Ferdiad was choking on his own blood even as he fell-onto the third starboard oar. Both that oarsman’s curse and his look of horror were purely reflexive. Again Cormac too cursed; already chaos threatened, rising and shaking its shoulders like a grim spectre over his ship.

Shouts arose both within the Irish vessel and on both sides now, and the ship wheeled insanely. Its oars whipped back and forth less than a meter above water level.

To a god looking down from the dual vantage points of height and immortal lack of concern, the scene might have been amusing.

The Irish ship was like a mighty horse, beset by a swarm of rabid cats. Already it had kicked one-and been scratched. Those to port had started to close just after their comrades on the far side, and then suddenly their prey had swung about, like a mindlessly bucking stallion. It bore down upon them to divide their number yet again or crush one of them under its hard hooves. Next it was bucking like an unbroken colt under its first rider, swinging this way and that, oars lashing out like flying deadly hooves, while one tenacious attacker clung to the hoof that was its tiller.

And now the ship lost momentum. Pictish yells rose triumphant on both sides. They howled like wolves now, not cats.

“Stupid,” Cormac muttered, to none save himself. “Had I known these men to be seasoned competents, and Samaire not aboard, I’d have ordered all oars shipped and allowed this attack, long ago!”

Now battle had been forced upon him, nor was he unhappy.

Jerking in his oar, he bellowed the order for the other rowers to do the same. Then the mail-coated Gael was on his feet and snatching up spear and buckler. The sword at his side was a fine weapon-once the enemy had pressed in too close for good spear-work.

“The mad-dogs want to board!” he bawled. “The worse for them… EIR-R-R-R-RINN-N-N-NNNN!”

It was merely the first rallying shout that sprang into his mind; long a weapon man and a sea-roving reaver as well, Cormac well knew the value to men of a battle cry-any battle cry. It was one more aid to the heating of the blood.

Naturally the shout was instantly taken up by those about him, as would have been any but the most ridiculous. The fire-eyed screamers included the short warrior in the studded leathern cap and strange high boots who’d stood beside him… Samaire that warrior’s name. Samaire of Leinster of Eirrin.

Weighted ropes flew. Some ended in grappling hooks. Others were knotted about stones, one of which sent a son of Eirrin to his knees, clutching his arm. Then Cormac was beside him, his eyes terrible. Without releasing either spear or buckler, the Gael boosted the jagged stone up with his bronze-bossed shield, lifted, and hurled it back over the side.

And ten more came over the bulwarks of the hull, on either side.

The Picts kept up their awful wolf-howling as they attacked, for this was their battle cry both to spur and excite themselves and to shake the enemy. Frail skin-boats rocked as squat men stood in them, tugging at their grapple-ropes. Men from time’s dawn they were, avatars. out of place in this age-and knowing it.

Deagad mac Damain, who’d kissed his plump Dairine farewell and vowed they’d demand her hand of her father on his return, a hero, thrust with his good spear at a burly dark man who stood below, in his boat. The nearly naked Pict deflected the spearpoint with a twisting movement of his shield that turned the jab into a scraping carom accompanied by a grating ear-assaulting noise. At the same time, he miraculously kept his footing in the rocking carack. Without pause the black-haired man drove the tip of his own spear, a jagged wedge of flint the length of his hand, straight up into young Deagad’s eye. It ran deep, destroying eye and pricking brain. Deagad lurched backward with a moan rather than a cry. The Pict, whipping back his spear, cocked his arm and launched the death-tipped stave at another man who leaned over his ship’s bulwark fifteen feet away, engaged in a thrust-and-parry spear-duel with another attacker.

Deagad’s killer looked astonished when a dark, scarred son of Eirrin appeared and, swifter than any man should have moved, bashed the spear away, only inches from its intended victim.

“Take MY spear, Pict!” Cormac yelled.

His hurled spear burst into the chest of Deagad’s slayer with such force that it tore out of his back to the length of a tall man’s foot. Pict and boat went over; only the shining skinboat remained on the surface of the water. Its surface darkened suddenly as with red dye.

Cormac’s crew were not seasoned seamen, nor had any save one so much as seen a Pict before. While they howled like the dread wolves of the forests they loved, the little apelike men the Romans had called Pictii -the very old ones, or aborigines-fought like bulls. They charged, heedless of defense against them. Mothers of Eirrin frightened their children with tales of the awful Picts, with long greasy black hair and woad-daubed faces. It was said too, and often, that a Pict was harder to reduce to that final twitchless death than a cat.

With a battle-mad, blood-loving ferocity and overwhelming momentum, several had gained the ship. It was not that those who should have kept them away were terrified; they were worse: disconcerted, and caught up in memories of old and horrid tales.

Nevertheless Cormac brought death of wound or water on three, and one pouncing man of Pictdom drove his head straight onto the point of Samaire’s spear, which was wrenched from her hands as he dropped into the water. Her arm whipped across her belly under her loose mailcoat and dragged out her sword; Picts were aboard and sons of Eirrin were down.

Hand in hand with the grim god of war, red chaos, the oldest god of all, seized the rocking ship.

Steel flashed in the sunlight like behlfire.

Men-and a woman-shouted and screamed and iron clangour rose loudly. Spears jabbed, knives and swords and two axes flashed and swept. Men reeled on hard-braced feet. Blood spattered and flowed.

A slashing sword taken from the corpse of a slain Irish struck blue sparks from the helm of another son of Eirrin. Beside him another sword struck through hide-armour and flesh and muscle and into bone, and whipped back trailing a flying wake of blood that spattered and smeared ship and woundless men.