Andrew Offutt - The Sword of the Gael

Whirled aloft in the massive snake’s throes of pain and desperation, Cormac was released. There was a wind in his ears, and he sought with all his concentration to curl his body as he flew through the air-

Amid pain and clouds of dust, he struck the tunnel’s floor, and he rolled.

The wall stopped him. His bones creaked. His head felt as if it would be snapped off. The world spun and the heaven-lights of a clear winter’s night seemed to dance and race before his eyes. He wallowed on the corridor floor, in the dust, which clung to the reptile’s blood on him.

When he was sure of floor and ceiling, and the lights had gone out before his eyes, the aching Gael set hand to wall and dragged himself to his feet.

He was coughing; the corridor was full of the swirling dust of centuries. Nor would it soon abate, he saw, for the monster reptile was still writhing and hurling itself wildly about. Between its jaws gleamed Cormac’s dagger. The serpent made no sound. Only the heavy thump of its lashing body against the floor and walls of the tunnel sounded its agony and terror-madness.

For a moment Cormac stood staring, blinking, coughing.

Then he saw the glint of steel in the dust, and he went forward. Dodging sidewise to avoid a sweeping rope of arm-sized green that slammed into the wall, he darted into the center of the corridor.

He paused only long enough to crouch, and snatch steel, and then he was running to be out of the way of a death-dealing hurricane in serpent form. He had his sword back, and he was past. He had no care whether the creature died now or later. Its body’s juices were being forced from it by its own violent lashing. At hand was the business of following Cutha Atheldane, and Samaire. Already he’d been too long delayed, and nearly killed for being fool enough to, assume that because A was equal to B, so would C be. Temptress and attacking men had been illusions; the serpent was unconditionally, prodigiously real!

“Fool I, to make such assumption,” he chastised himself. And he ran.

He limped, and he gripped his belt on the right with his left hand, that the aching arm could be kept from swinging. He’d had ribs cracked in his stormy life, and knew that such was not the case this time. Nor were bones broken. The arm would be all right. Heedless of possible traps now, Cormac ran.

The limp went first, and then the left arm began to feel as if it might be worth keeping. He ran.

Ahead were Cutha Atheldane and Samaire, and Cormac had not found her again after twelve years to have his first love, his first woman-though then she’d been but a budding girl-carried off by an illusion-spawning mage from the cold lands of the Vikings!

He plunged along the dark and dusty corridor, strangely twilit now, and odoriferous of a time remotest in the womb of Chronos. He knew he was far beneath the earth. This subterranean burrow must lead to the shore, he thought.

Ahead he saw a wall, and in addition to the eerie lighting of the tunnel itself there was the glimmer of a torch. Cormac’s lips parted in a grim smile of satisfaction. Around that turning then, and he’d be upon them, and it was not as captive he wanted Cutha Atheldane of the northlands!

Three running steps from the turning he heard a scraping, a blow, and a throaty gurgle from a human throat. Then he was there, and swinging leftward again, and he was upon them.

Cutha Atheldane stared at him, but the man made no move to attack or make a gesture of ensorcelment. One hand hung limp. The other scraped along the wall beside him, dragging downward as it tried to support his body. Nails tore and knees cracked as the Druid dropped. Behind him stood Samaire of Leinster, also staring at Cormac. In her hand was a dagger he recognized as the Druid’s. It blade was darkened, and it dripped.

Cutha Atheldane lurched forward and lay still in the dust between the two Gaels.

Bending to snatch up the dropped torch, Cormac let the woman see his smile.

“So, dairlin’ girl, it’s warrior ye’ve become, after twelve years! And robbing me of the pleasure of gaining this Viking slime his death, too.”

She stared at him in silence, looking shocked. Cormac swallowed, knowing she still did not recognize the man the smooth-cheeked boy had become-a man of scarred and sinister face beneath his dented helm.

“A plucky woman indeed. Aye, and a true daughter of Eirrin, whose women have for centuries gone to the warring with their men-folk! But come, dairlin’ girl-it’s a smallish pack of wolves I had with me, and they may well be hard put to account for all our captors!” He sheathed his sword and extended his hand.

“P-Partha? Cormac?”

“Aye, Samaire. Partha and Cormac, both at once, but it’s my own name I’ve used these past few years. Now-”

But she had taken his proffered hand, and the willowy woman with the loosened mane of sunset-coloured hair clamped it tightly enough to let him know it was no weakling had slain Cutha Atheldane.

“Partha!” she cried, and gripped his other arm. “I mean, Cormac-” And she burst into joyous laughter that wavered on the brink of hysteria. “God in heaven, you be so-so-oh Cormac!”

There was woman-scent in her hair, and woman-feel in her, even when it was against his steely mailcoat she pressed herself, with both arms around him.

Cormac stood awkwardly. Twelve years had passed, and no daughter of a king remained unwed-and there was business, elsewhere. Heaving a great sigh, he filled his hand with the softness of her hair… but clenched his teeth. He pulled back.

“It’s later we’ll greet and talk, Samaire,” he told her. “There are my companions…”

She shot him a look from eyes green as a cat’s, and nodded. In a sinuous movement the mannishly-dressed woman scooped up the dropped dagger.

“Aye, then, Cormac! Hurry then, and let’s reap a red harvest among those sneering Norsemen-and call me what you did of old, not Samaire, or it’s this blade I may be tempted to slip betwixt your links!”

Laughing a great laugh, Cormac swung an arm around her, turned, and lofted his torch to light their long way back.

“A king’s daughter,” he called, “and she talking of bloody slaying-and wanting to be called ‘dairlin’ girl’ as a boy of Connacht once called her? Och, it’s a strange world Eirrin’s become since my leaving of it!”

“Faster,” she urged, striding out in leatherclad legs. “And aye, and careful with your tongue, Cormac mac Cuchulain, for it was no boy to whom I gave my girlhood in Carman-on-the-sea, what seems a century ago!”

Laughing, Cormac strode back the way he had come.

My mind is upon Eirrin,

Upon Loch Lene, upon Linny,

Upon the land where the Ulstermen are,

Upon gentle Leinster and upon Meath.

– Ceann Ruadh, the “Minstrel-king”

(from Voyage of the Exiles )

Their rapid pace and the circuitousness of that subterranean burrow prevented Cormac mac Art and Samaire from exchanging many words. He did learn that the other prisoner was her brother Ceann, and that their father was dead nigh two years.

No inimical serpent awaited them in that dusty and echoic corridor. The vast reptile was dead when they came upon him, though Samaire was frightened enough. Cormac was both surprised and troubled to learn that she had seen no sign of the snake, ere now. Had it erupted from some side passage he had failed to note, then, last survivor of an ages-agone war? Or-had Cutha Atheldane possessed even more power than suspected, and Samaire slain a sorcerer of considerable note?

The snake had thrashed until the lethargy of death overcame it, and left a lake of blood they must walk through. Cormac was more than happy to sweep his “dairlin’ girl” up in his arms and carry her across to dry dust, though she railed at him.