Andrew Offutt - The Sword of the Gael

But Liadh was slain, and him less than a year on the throne.

“There was little secret,” Ceann Ruadh said bitterly, “and no doubt in the minds of many: it was our brother Feredach had him murdered.”

Cormac sighed, but only nodded. It was the way of royalty in all lands. An a king had but one heir, the succession was endangered by but one fragile life. An he had several sons, to insure the continuity of his clan on the throne, each was in danger of the other.

“Feredach Ruadh-lam!” Samaire whispered viciously through clenched teeth, calling her brother the Red-handed.

And so Feredach was crowned in Leinster. Nor was he popular, a mean grasping man who suspected everyone of plotting as he had ever done. Nervous he was of the popularity of his own younger brother Ceann-and Ceann’s confidante, Samaire, four years widowed and returned to the keep of her family.

“We knew it not then,” Ceann said, with ugliness in his pleasant tenor voice. “But our brother thought it was plotting we were, in the time we spent together.”

“Poor fearful Feredachh feared us!” Samaire put in, and Cormac knew that was as incredible as her voice and manner indicated; she and Ceann were not of such a bent.

“I see the light as of dawn,” Wulfhere Skull-splitter said, holding aside his alesack long enough to speak. “Ye two fell into the hands of Viking-raiders, and while you were out for a ride, from the looks of you. This Feredach did treachery on you, I’m thinking.”

He had indeed. In a scurrilous bargain with the Norsemen just slain, Feredach had his younger brother and sister carried off, that there might be no claim on this throne but his own.

“And it’s well paid his hirelings are after being,” Cormac said snarling, in a castle peopled by ghosts and the crimsoned corpses of slain kidnapers.

None of them knew aught of this place and Cormac assured them it was of Atlantean origin-Wulfhere looking nervous, lest his companion go away into his strange remembering . Ceann and Samaire in turn assured their countryman that Cutha Atheldane had been a sorcerer of considerable skills.

After a time Cormac began to realize what they were assuming, and deliberately he mentioned the ship, and their need of gaining new crew for her. The booty they’d taken away from this ancient keep would see to that.

Samaire looked stricken. She and her brother made clear that they assumed Cormac would return with them to Eirrin, there to aid them in wresting the throne away from the man already surnamed “the Dark”: an-Dubh . Cormac mac Art shook his head.

“I fled under sentence of death,” he said, “and dare not return.” He gave his dark head a jerk. “Besides, Eirrin is no longer my land.”

Samaire and Ceann stared at him. It was she, at last, who spoke.

“There are no former sons of Eirrin, Cormac of Connacht! It’s a spell there is on the fens and the bogs, and the cairn-topped hills of green Eirrin called Inisfail, and it envelops us all at birth like a cloak about the mind. We are forever under it-even those who so long and long ago moved across Magh Rian to Dalriada in Alba. Eirrin-born is Eirrin-bound, as if by stout cords and golden chains.”

With his belly sloshing, Wulfhere sat silent. He stared at the fine cloth covering the floor between bloodstained leggings, and mayhap he thought of the land of the Danes.

“I have not felt such chains, and me twelve years gone,” Cormac said quietly. “I am an exile, a man without a homeland, a Scoti ; a raider.”

The moment Ceann began to speak, Cormac remembered that the prince, third in line to his father’s throne and no plotter he, had oft amused himself and others in the minstrel’s way.

“He is the raven that has no home,

The boat flung from wave to wave;

He is the ship that’s lost its rudder,

He be the apple that’s left on the tree:

This the Exile, a man alone, unfree.

And it’s dark grief and sorrow

Are e’er his boon companions.”

Though he was sagging and nigh asleep, Wulfhere wagged his great shaggy head. “Aye,” he said morosely, and began the difficult task of getting his alesack again to his lips.

“I want no homeland,” Cormac said without grace, “and it’s time for bed.”

He rose, catching up a cloak and half a bale of cloth. “Wulfhere will never leave this room until he next awakens. The next chamber is as well appointed for sleeping; as for me, I shall go out under the sky as I have thousands of times.”

“Cormac-” Samaire began. But he left them.

Behind him he heard Ceann, gently singing:

“Seagirt it lies, where giants dwelt “of old;

This Eirrin Isle sacred to all our fathers…”

Grinding his teeth, Cormac hurried along the corridor and down the steps. Outside, he relieved his ale-filled bladder in the moonlight. A little way from the palace, and shielded from view of the entry from the sea on the very off chance that men might come, he spread his bedding and lay down.

The stars gazed down, and twinkled, and they seemed green like Eirrin. With a snarl, Cormac turned onto his side.

But in the morning Ceann found his sister gone, and was much fearful until she came in from outside, with Cormac, and they announced that it was to Eirrin Cormac mac Art would be going.

Wulfhere added nothing to the discussion as the others talked of Eirrin, and their returning; the Dane suffered from the presence inside his head of Thor and his hammer of thunder.

This was the year of the greal triennial gathering, Cormac was told, the Feis of Tara at Samain. High summer smiled on Eirrin now, and Samain-the New Year of the old faith: November first-was not long off. Once every three years to Tara hill in Meath came all the kings. Came too the historians and poets and judges, the druids-and bishops, now-and doctors of law, for the reading of the old laws, and discussion of the state of the land, and hearing and redress of wrongs, and the great ceremony that was the meeting of all the kings of Eirrin with the Ard-righ or High-king.

“There, Samaire said, her eyes fixed on Cormac’s, “Ceann and I can gain safety, and make our accusation and claim!”

Cormac only nodded. He said it not, but knew they had no claim: Feredach an-Dubh was older. The throne was legally his. So long , Cormac thought automatically, as he lives.

They spent much time amid the booty crowding one room and strewing the throne-hall as well. With some judicious cutting and pins and. brooches, the making of new clothing to replace ruined was little difficulty, though Cormac thoughtfully counseled against the finest fabrics. They chose to carry off not only the most valuable of the Viking-stolen goods that was now theirs by the ancient right of conquest, but the lightest and most easily concealed, as well. Into Wulfhere’s sword-scabbard went the pearls he had coveted. Both Ceann and Samaire armed themselves well. Cormac found a buckler he pronounced better than his old one, and more handsome besides. A jewel-set belt he buckled on under his clothing. Huge enveloping cloaks they created from this bolt of fabric and that, and Samaire cleverly sewed squares of fabric inside, open at the top, for the secreting of valuable treasures.

A torc of solid gold Cormac presented with ceremony to his sword-companion. Wulfhere dutifully thanked him and then brought laughter on them all by showing that the twisted circlet would barely encompass his wrist, much less his bull neck. With a gentleness and gallantry that made Cormac’s eyes pop before he turned away to hide his smile-the Dane presented the gift to Samaire.

Cormac bade her wrap it in leather cut from a Norse boot ere she wore it around her neck, for they must not look too rich.