Andrew Offutt - The Sword of the Gael

“No! Dond, NO!” Cormac bawled, but the fisherman paid him no mind; he charged after the fleeing foe.

“Damn! You vicious son of a she-wolf-you’ve bloodied me!” Ceann cried, with a note of incredulity in his voice.

The prince had fought like a man, but now the berserker rage came upon him. It was a vicious animal launched a whistling tree-cutting stroke of his sword that clove his attacker half in two at the waist. Almost instantly, the prince was looking about, blinking as if coming awake. He was in time to see Dondal’s foe break and run-and Dondal run in a different direction!

Past Ceann flashed the boy, and he dropped his sword. At the run he jerked free his fishing spear, and circled the house. Both father and son were gone, chasing the last two survivors of what should have been a Pictish massacre and had become instead a massacre of Picts.

“They’ve gone mad!” Cormac bawled.

With Samaire on their heels, he and Ceann raced around the house and along the path that led to Dond’s diminutive wharf. The three warriors brought up short, for Dond and son were unscathed. They stood staring at each other with the much impressed look of fellow warriors.

One Pict lay half in the water and half ashore; the other was in his longboat. Both had been bloodily transpierced by hurled fish-spears.

Thirteen savages had attacked an easy prey, and had come upon a den of ferocious wolves, and the numbers of Pictdom were reduced by thirteen.

After immortal battles abroad,

In countries many and far distant;

There fought he like the lion,

Then slept the balmy sleep.

– Ceann Ruadh, the “Minstrel-king”

(from Cormac the Gael )

The sun of Munster edged up above the horizon like a forming pearl. Its rays fingered down to pick out the yard of a humble fisherman.

It was a scene of horror and red carnage.

Samaire and Dond were unscathed. Ceann had been scratched and no more, though it was to the blood. He bore too a few fresh bruises, and limped from that whack across the shin. It had left a swelling and a purpling welt, the bone having been bruised. Dondal had sustained a cut on his left leg, above the knee, and another on his right arm. He had noticed neither, nor had he heard much since Cormac’s laying a hand on his shoulder.

“Ye be a warrior born,” he had told the lad.

Mac Art knew such when he saw him, himself having been just as ferocious a youth, albeit better at arms for his training. With his eyes bright and glowing, Dondal sat motionless, gazing into his dreams while his mother treated his wounds. Neither was deep.

Not only had Cormac mac Art gained several new bruises and scratches, he had taken a slice across two fingers of his left hand that would be troublesome. The Pictish dagger had caught his knuckles. A point had slipped betwixt the links of his mail and sunk into his side above the hip, but the steel ring had held so that the stab-wound, was not deep. Samaire was careful to squeeze blood from it before she treated it with the hot water and Lendabaer’s herb remedies. He’d another cut on his sword arm and on the back of that hand.

“It’s the hero-light I was seeing about your head, Cormac,” Dond gushed. “Not since Cuchulain of old has a man so valiantly and awesomely smit his enemies!”

The name Cormac had given these people was a combination of his own and of his old alias: Cormac mac Othna. He and his companions claimed to be of western Munster, far from here. For though its land was not the best and sparsely settled, Munster’s territory was great; it took in fully a third of Eirrin, including the mouth of the River Shannon. Ceann was “Celthair mac Ros,” and Samaire had chosen the simple old name Ess.

“No hero light I saw or felt,” Cormac said smiling, for he was determined not to wince at the burning stuff Lendabaer kept on hand for the treating of wounds. “We did bring a massacre on them though, didn’t we!”

“Indeed!” Lendabaer said. “And what’s a woman to do, with her menfolk become warriors and the lawn all blood and bodies?”

“Rejoice,” Dond said, looking at her, and there was an end to that.

“There’s a gain,” Ceann/Celthair said. “Dond mac Forgall, that excellent Pictish boat and their property-including weapons enow to arm a town and sufficent arrows to take one! They be yours, by conquest.”

“It’s no towns we’ll be taking,” Dond said, glancing nervously at the rigid, entranced Dondal. “But-the other things-it was you three saved us all, and we’ve no doubt about it! Those trinkets-the fine belts they’d got off murdered men, the two who wore armour…”

Ceann was shaking his head. “None of ours. Dond, we’ve hardly told ye all the truth. We-”

“I’ve known that, nor need we hear more,” Lendabaer said. At her cooking, she too glanced nervously at her older son.

Ceann waved a hand. “We have hid about us, even as Cormac and I disguised our armour lest it afright gentler folk, the loot we took from a Viking band. In a raid similar to this Pictish one on yourselves, the Vikings slew and burned, and made prisoners of Samaire Ess and myself. It was Cormac came to our rescue.”

“I’ve no doubt on it!” Dond said, and he looked again on Cormac as though he were a god or at the very least the reincarnation of the legendary Cuchulain of Muirthemne.

“Well-it’s much Viking-stolen booty we have secreted about ourselves,” Ceann went on.

“There’s more,” Cormac said, regarding Dond very seriously. “We were better not dressed as we are. Admittedly we’ve some rents and filth on the clothing we wear, but-”

“Anything in my house that fits any of ye,” the overplump woman at the stove said, “is yours, for it’s our whole family ye saved.”

“We’ll insist on trading a bit of Viking gold, understand,” Cormac said. When he saw that both Dond and his wife were about to argue, he added, “That the conditions of goods-trade may be fulfilled, and none of us in debt to the other.”

“Oh, Mother!” the boy Laeg cried excitedly. “Gold!”

“’Twere danger-fraught for peasants such as we to turn up at market in Rorybaile with such as gold or jewels,” Dond said. “And arousing of suspicion, as well.”

Cormac stretched out a leg and smiled. He was seated in a chair made by Dond himself, and that with high competence.

“Not for you, Dond mac Forgall! Think you those who know ye, aye, and those who do not, will not soon know of what happened here? Why, total strangers even in Rorybaile will know of it, and think not this attack and its outcome will not be spoke of even in Cobh!”

The Rorybaile Cormac spoke of as if it were a metropolis was a little town a few miles distant, where agents came and bartered and took the fish caught hereabout inland. Cobh, with its excellent harbour, was a growing town on the two arms of the River Liagh; its name would be Cork.

The family stared at him-all save Dondal, who continued staring at that which only he could see. “Cobh!” Lendabaer whispered.

Samaire hugged her big soft shoulders. “As for a bit of gold from the Viking thieves,” she said, “why, you got it from the Picts, same as the arms and arrows ye’ll be able to sell, didn’t ye?”

Lendabaer looked at her, blinking. Then Dond laughed aloud.

“I’ve business elsewhere,” he said, and departed them suddenly. He returned anon, beaming, swaggering a little, and carrying two earthen jars, well closed. His wife glanced on them and sighed.

It was ale, and there was celebration rather than work at the tiny keep of Dond mac Forgall of Munster that day.

Those neighbors who came were glad to sip of the man’s good ale and hear the story of the great war that had taken place here. It was not averse they were, either, to lending aid in the planting of Pictish corpses well away from the house of their now more-than-good friend Dond. The day wore on and the story was told again and again. Nor did it fail to gain and grow in telling. It was little-enough there was to talk about on this oceanic border of quiet Munster, and the tale of Cormac son of Cuchulain-for so he had become-and mighty Celthair of the Flaming Head and Ess the Sun-tressed, along with Dond and Dondal and what they’d done with their humble fish-spears, would live and be told for years.