Andrew Offutt - The Sword of the Gael

The sun was low and the lane darker than twilight when the highwaymen accosted them.

The first two bandits appeared simultaneously, one on either side of the lane. They stepped from the bushes at the edge of the trees, and each had arrow nocked to drawn bow.

“Hold!” called the man with the bushy black beard, staring into Cormac’s eyes. “Hold and keep your hands where they are.”

From just behind the halted horses of Cormac and Samaire, two more men appeared. Each held drawn dagger. One grinned, gazing hungrily at Samaire.

Cormac’s trained eyes took stock and reported quickly to his trained warrior’s mind. All four thieves wore leggings and leather jerkins. That was their only armour; though one of the vests was embossed with steel, none wore mail. Helmets covered the two dagger-men to the brows. A sword was sheathed at the hip of each. One of the dagger-wielders also bore a shield, small and round.

The trio of pilgrims sat unequivocally still. Samaire’s horse shifted nervously; she held a tight rein-hand. Cormac did not so much as glance back at Ceann.

“What will ye have of us, countrymen?”

The blackbeard smiled. “Why, three handsome horses, and whatever else ye’d care to contribute to four poor, worthy countrymen!”

“Nothing!” Ceann’s voice lashed out, from behind Cormac.

“Why then we’ll just have to take what we fancy from your corpses , minstrel. Whirl your mount and flee if ye dare-but when ye hear the twang of two bowstrings, ye’ll know your abandoned companions are dead!”

Both arrows were aimed at Cormac’s chest and one of the two dagger-wielders stood three feet from his left side. The other began edging back, toward Ceann. At this distance, Cormac thought, his concealed armour was not likely to turn those arrowheads of iron or steel.

“Naturally,” the bowman with the broken nose and bushy brown mustache said, “we’ll have to see what… trinkets, milady has hid in her clothes!”

His comrades laughed.

Cormac looked down at the dagger-man to his left. “Stay back,” he said, “I’m dismounting.”

Before any could consider or demur, he drew his right leg up and over. He slid down, wincing and twisting his face when his feet struck the ground and his inner thighs objected vehemently.

The man with the dagger grinned broadly. “Thisun’s crippled ,” he called, and stepped forward with new confidence.

Cormac’s left arm swung out to attract eye and dagger-and for balance. It was his right foot did the damage; it drove directly up into the fork of the smiling fellow’s leggings.

The smile became a look of horror and pain, and the beginning sweep of the dagger terminated in midstab. Rather than draw steel, Cormac clutched the man’s right wrist with one clamping hand and his throat with the other. Crouching, for the man was shorter than he, Cormac swung him rightward, toward the bowmen.

Two bowstrings twanged, almost in unison. Cormac heard one of the archers cry out in dismay, knowing he’d loosed shaft too fast. At the same time, there were two thunk sounds and the man he held jerked. His dark eyes went wide, terribly wide, and his mouth gaped in a silent scream. The highwayman went limp, with both his comrades’ arrows in his back.

At the same time, Samaire was clapping heels sharply inward. Her horse lunged forward while Cormac held his limp human shield before him.

The blackbearded man was too swift in his archery for his own good. In a clever attempt to down the human-shielded man who dared resist, he loosed a second arrow. It hissed between the knees of his late companion, but only snipped Cormac’s leggings as it rushed on behind him on its downward course. If more slowly drawn and nocked, that goosefeathered shaft might well have stopped Samaire’s forward rush.

Instead, her bounding horse covered the ten feet between it and the bow-armed highwayman in little more than two blinks of an eye.

With arrow to string but not full-drawn, the mustached man saw the sorrel bearing down on him. He yelled. In desperation he tried to dodge aside. Only partway he ducked. Then he was struck by the galloping horse and sent flying. Into the bushes he went, his arrow arcing a few feet to drop harmlessly. His bow cracked loudly against a tree. And already Samaire was hauling her mount leftward.

Behind him, Cormac heard a shout, a scraping clink, and a cry of pain, followed by the pound of hooves. But his attention was fixed on the blackbeard, who now forewent attacking him. The man swung his drawn bow and third arrow toward the nearer danger: the woman whose horse had downed his confederate.

Cormac mac Art bellowed with all his throat and slung the shielding corpse from him. His shield hung on his saddle; he had known he’d be feathered if he tried to loose and lift it. He rushed forward. His arms formed a streaking X across his belly and his hands filled themselves with sword and dagger. Fury, the danger to Samaire, and a flood of adrenalin drove away all thought of discomfort in the muscles of his thighs and buttocks.

All he thought of now was the wetting of his steel.

The black-bearded man had jerked at the ferocious yell behind him, as Cormac hoped. Nevertheless his bow twanged. The arrow rushed only a few feet-and struck between Samaire’s breasts. With a cry, she was rocked back and aside, and fell from her horse.

“SAMAIRE!”

Past Cormac galloped Prince Ceann Ruadh. From his gaping mouth tore a shout of horror and rage; the redness of anger was on his brain. The magnificent muscles of his white-stockinged mount bunched and rippled to hurl it forward like a juggernaut. His rider clutched the beast’s barrel sides with both legs; above his head his sword hissed in a flashing arc of silvery steel.

All happened at once. The archer started to turn and shrieked as he saw grim death rushing down upon him; Ceann’s sword began its downward sweep; the horse plunged past the highwayman; the sword cut down through the air with a moan. When it struck, the sound was as of the splitting of a dropped melon.

On past plunged Ceann, reeling in the saddle from the ferocity of his prodigious chop, desperately gripping with both legs. His reddened sword dripped. Cormac stared at the highwayman. Driven to his knees by the force of the sword-blow, blackbeard remained there, with his face divided into scarlet halves from crown to lips. Then he toppled forward, and his legs jerked in spasms.

Blood of the gods , Cormac thought, the man fights like a fiend from the Norsemen’s Hel.

Cormac turned to look back. He wanted to rush to Samaire, but there was the other dagger-man; until Cormac mac Art had himself seen a man fall and lie still but for the blood-kicks, he considered him enemy still.

The fellow was no longer an enemy. Ceann had chopped off his dagger hand, and his horse seemed to have bowled the man over and then stepped with a hind hoof directly on his face. His head was a flattened mass of gore.

Cormac ran to Samaire. Just as he reached her, Ceann’s horse dug in its forehooves and the prince’s feet thudded to the ground beside the other man. Both of them cried Samaire’s name.

“Uch,” she said, remaining flat on her back. “It’s a month I’ll be bruised, and surely this pain when I draw breath will be with me for days and days!”

The two men stared down at her. The arrow lay atop her tunic, which it had pierced in the center of her chest. There was no blood, but within the rent in the fabric there was a ruddy glint.

Lifting a hand to her neck, she tugged at the slender chain of gold there; from within her outer tunic she lifted a disk of the same metal. It was some two inches in diameter-and its center was concave, bent inward.