Andrew Offutt - The Undying Wizard

With others stilled, Wulfhere and Findbar circling, the sound of a single encounter rose loudly now.

Brian and Samaire and Cormac looked in the direction of that constant sound of hammer and hack. They saw Bas well up the beach, backing and backing, his sword not in use as he could only defend against the incessant fierce battering of young Ros of Dun Dalgan.

A thought that was not rational and the more horrible under the circumstances jolted through Cormac mac Art’s weapon-man’s brain: Och, what a beautiful young fighter he is! The magnificent berserker rage has come on him, and him not even one of mine!

He charged after druid and youthful warrior, roaring out a new cry in hopes of disconcerting the fiercely hacking Ros.

But the other hound of Cormac was there before him.

“Ros! Friend, sword-comrade-STOP this!”

Ros turned on Brian. Aye, there was the madness in his eyes, though a deep torment seemed too to haunt them. Brian na Killevy could not believe, as Cormac could not believe Wulfhere’s attack that afternoon on the “Roof of the World”, and it nigh cost him his life. Only a reflexive interposing of his sword saved his entrails from, Ros’s blade-edge. With a screeching ear-torturing crang of steel on steel, Brian’s brand went flying from his hand.

Samaire noted that Ros did not grin in triumph. Later she told the others; there was no victor’s joy on the one youth’s face as he moved confidently to put death on the other.

He was over-confident. A man at death’s-point would either freeze, or accept, or scream and run, or adopt the role of beleaguered wolf-and weaponman-and do all in his power to avoid doom and destroy its bringer. Brian I-love-to-fight, Cormac saw then, was not only a good man, a born weapon-man, but a wolfish Cormac as well.

Viciously and desperately his shield whipped back and forth in a blurring wall of defense that kept Ros’s sword at bay. And Brian braced his left leg, and with the force of rushing adrenalin he kicked his former friend in the calf.

The leg buckled. Ros fell.

“Brian!” he gasped. Staring up, his eyes went bright as though he’d awoken. “Br-got to wake Brian! The wiz-”

Then Brian’s shield-edge smashed down on his nose and drove splintered shards of bone into his brain.

Brian knelt aside the dead man with whom he had found and felt such camaraderie. In his eyes now was the same torment and confusion that had been in Ros’s just before he died.

“Damn you, Ros,” he choked, “you could have bested me!” The pitiful cry was an anguished accusation.

Brian and Bas missed what Cormac saw, then.

With one of those full-circle swings of his terrible ax, Wulfhere took off the head of Findbar of Meath with such perfection that Findbar might have been a stuffed dummy positioned for the stroke. The head, eyes and mouth gaping, rolled on the sand with a grating of its helmet. And… like a stuffed dummy… no blood spurted up from the headless shoulders.

Wulfhere was struck motionless in renewed shock at a foeman who fought on after a crotch-kick that should have ruined him forever, and who now bled not from the loss of his head. In those instants of the Dane’s frozen staring, the arm of the headless man swung. Edge of sword met the rounded side of steel helmet with a great crashing clang. So great was the force of that blow that Wulfhere fell sidewise without a grunt.

The corpse-strewn beach was suddenly horribly silent.

A moment the headless man stood over the fallen Wulfhere Hausakliufr. Then a death’s-head appeared on the shoulders of Findbar, and his body changed, and he stood there in a night-dark robe already rent by sword and arrow. Dark eyesockets gleamed in their depths like rubies and Findbar’s sword whipped high in a fist suddenly become mere skin stretched over knobby bones.

The silence that had closed like a death-shroud over the strand so long chaotically alive with the shouts and clangor of combat was split, seconds after it fell. For the third time that bloody morning the ghastly shrieking cry of a charging Pict clove the air and ululated. The skull of Thulsa Doom jerked sidewise and up, and he was only just able to meet the mad sword-rushing charge of Cormac mac Art.

Blade rang on shield anew. But it had been long and long since Thulsa Doom had entered swordwielding combat; long and long since he and a sorcerous sword had been able to hold off a weakening King Kull for hours.

Three violently slashing strokes bent his shield, split his shield, and then tore it from his arm. The fourth slash Cormac turned into the thrust that he favoured. The long blade of his sword drove into Thulsa Doom as it had that other time, widening the same tear in the robe.

Once again Cormac bore his sorcerous foe back and down, and held him spitted.

The impaled mage groaned, writhed-and struck with his sword. That cut Cormac met with his shield, so that its edge drove into a bony wrist. The fingers flexed open; the sword dropped. Cormac leaned on his own pommel while he shook off his buckler.

“BRIAN! I NEEEED YE!”

Behind him Wulfhere moaned; a score and more feet away Samaire got to her feet. Her face twisting in pain, she began hobbling toward him. Thulsa Doom writhed like a gaffed eel on the impaling sword. Hands cold as a serpent’s hide closed on Cormac’s wrists. He grunted, pressed down. The hilt of his brand ground into the mage’s abdomen. The blade was buried in the beach beneath Thulsa Doom, and Cormac feared the impermanent lack of solidity of sand.

Samaire was staggering laboriously toward him, and he durst not glance back to see if Brian had recovered from his horrified, self-blaming reverie. Then there were crunching footsteps, and Bas was there.

“My buckler, Bas! Lay it there beside him, boss up!”

Bas did as he was bade, without a word. The buckler formed an overturned bowl beside Thulsa Doom, the iron boss gleaming. Cormac’s flesh twitched and raised the million excrescences of horripilation as he thought on the ghastly plan he had devised.

“The blade hurts him and is cold to him,” he grunted through his teeth. “Nor can he vanish or escape whilst he be-uh!-impaled thus!” The mage’s hands were seeking to break his wrist, and those hands were strong . “I dare not let go this sword with either hand-one cannot hold against his sorcerous strength. Here, Bas-LEAN on this brand!”

Almost, while Bas and Cormac exchanged hands on the pommel, Thulsa Doom escaped, for he writhed and strove and his strength was far more than normal. But the maneuver was effected-though Bas gasped in horror when the mage’s face took on the likeness of the Princess of Leinster.

“Bas! Bas! Oh Druid it hurts … please …”

Cormac had risen to stand over the hideous tableau of druid kneeling over Samaire, pinning her to the earth on the point of a sword.

“Obscene monster, we can both see Samaire, but paces away!” And Cormac entered into what seemed ghoulish madness.

Motion followed swift motion as he seized Bas by the shoulders. By main force he tumbled the druid backward onto the sands. The sword came partway forth, and Samaire became Thulsa Doom once more as the real Samaire reached them. Cormac was still in swift action, executing his desperate plan with as much speed as ever he’d shown in his life. He drew his sword free; it emerged easily. Ere Thulsa Doom could take advantage of his instant of freedom, the vengeful Gael turned him over-on the buckler with its upstanding metal boss, fist thick, over three inches long, and not-quite pointed.

Without pause Cormac’s right fist leaped up and rushed down like a hammer. Thulsa Doom emitted a hideous groan and shuddered when he was struck on the back just above the waist and the metal boss drove into his belly.