Andrew Offutt: The Sword of the Gael

“Kull,” he murmured. “Kull… An this great keep was not devised by the men of Atlantis and their slaves that were taken from the men and women of all the world, I am… not the son of Art na Morna, of Connacht, and him not the son of Conla Dair, son of Conal Crimthanni of the Briton wife of that Niall who was High-king over all Eirrin and gnawed at the heels of the Romans even so far as the land of the Gauls…”

“Cormac.”

“…and him the descendant of those worldspanning giants of old who sailed their high-prowed craft over all the seas of the world and came even here to…”

“Cormac,” Wulfhere repeated.

The murmuring Gael twitched, then jerked as though aroused from sleep. His hand dropped automatically to sword-pommel. He looked at the big Dane, and Cormac blinked.

“Why stand we here, when someone time out of mind has put this nice little house here for the cooling of our heels?”

The nervous men about him over-reacted by laughing uproariously.

They started forward, with Cormac suggesting, in a mutter that hardly disturbed the compression of his lips, that they stay not bunched. In that he was right, for when they were within fifty paces of the towering pair of columns flanking the door of that ancient keep, the arrows came.

Bow-loosed shafts came singing like angry wasps, but it was from the roundshields and surrounding stone they rattled, all save one. Wulfhere stared down at the slender stave that stood from his chest.

Then he laughed, and yanked it free of his mail, nor did blood come with it.

“Odin’s good eye,” he grunted, “the man who sped this feathered toy has the strength of a child of the Briton weaklings!”

More arrows whirred, but the little band was well scattered and ready now. They took what cover the terrain afforded, for after the long-dead men had erected the castle, boulders and stones and flattish shards of rock had come slithering and bounding down the cliffs to dot the plain.

Guthrum and Ivarr Ivarr’s son had their bows, and what few arrows they had saved from the greedy sea. They unlimbered bows, nocked feathered shafts, and glanced at Wulfhere. Each man squatted behind a tumbled boulder partially embedded in the earth, and held his bow sidewise. With a confident grin, Wulfhere muttered that he would rise to draw arrows-and reveal thus the positions of their speeders. Ivarr had picked up an enemy arrow; Wulfhere tossed his to Guthrum.

“Wulfhere.”

The voice was Cormac’s. Wulfhere turned questioning eyes on the Gael, who squatted behind a pile of shaly rock that had once been clay.

“Knud,” Cormac said, and when that man and, the giant leader were looking at him: “When the arrows come, Guthrum and Ivarr will both give them back a few. And Knud-you and I are the fleetest of foot. Shall we pretend demons are on our heels and run straight to the door of that keep, you to the leftward pillar?”

Knud grinned. “Aye,” he said, and inspected his buskins’ straps.

All were ready, and after a moment Wulfhere rose confidently to his feet, his legs protected by the massy boulder behind which he’d ducked. He waved his great ax so that the sun caught its silvery head and splashed dazzle-fire from it.

“HO-O-OH!” the Skull-splitter bellowed, and back rolled his voice from the canyon’s walls. “We’ve seen how your CHILDREN loose arrows-be there MEN among ye too?”

Aye, and an arrow sounded ting and rattled off his horned helmet ere he’d bellowed the last few words. More came, and he struck one so hard with his shield that the little deathstick snapped in twain.

All saw now that there was more than one floor within that lofty castle of old, and that it was from two high windows the keening shafts came. Ivarr and Guthrum joined Wulfhere in standing, and strings thunked as they sent arrows into those same windows.

Like runners in one of the races at the Great Fair of Eirrin, Cormac mac Art and Knud the Swift went racing castle-ward. Knud ran straight, trusting to his well-known speed afoot; Cormac wove a bit, for he was none so fleet of foot as the leggy Dane to his left.

Brave or foolhardy, one of the defenders exposed himself to speed an arrow at the Dane and, in a swift movement of hand to waist and back to bow, another at the runner. Cormac felt the arrow strike his belt or the armour there. He grunted and continued running. The castle rushed closer to him, while Wulfhere continued his madman’s bellowing-and from ahead and above came a scream of horror and pain.

Cormac grinned wolfishly. An arrow from Guthrum or Ivarr had paid the defender for his temerity, then, and in steely coin!

Cormac mac Art reached the castle. Despite his efforts to slow his headlong pace, he slammed a shoulder into the pillar. It was strangely white despite its age, and iron hard. No more than a grunt escaped the Gael, who met Knud’s eyes across a distance of several feet. Knud was there first, naturally enough, and himself not winded. Now the two found that the doorway’s width was full the length of a man. Too, it was open. The door itself, massive and ironbound, hung by one huge hinge-strap. It had been chopped well by several axes.

The defenders within did not belong here, Cormac reasoned, but had found this prodigious keep the same as he and his companions, and had hacked and smashed their way inside.

“They’ve left the door open in welcome,” Knud said, showing the other man his drawn steel.

“Shields low and sword ready and in, you to the left.”

They entered thus, in crouching movements that emanated from their toes, both men poised to wheel, run, duck, or drop.

A blank wall of well-cut stone met them. To either side a stone stairway ran up to a landing, turned, and vanished behind a wall. A nice way to greet invaders, Cormac thought; were I on those steps and others entering, I’d hold the place for a day and a night and cover the steps with bodies and gore!

The two men exchanged a look. With a nod they went each to a separate stairwell. Cormac went up cautiously, close-pressed to the inner wall, step after step with sword out and ready. Knud, who was left-handed as well as fleet as a deer, ascended the other stairway in the same manner.

At the landing, Cormac gathered himself and took a deep breath. He bounded all the way across the platform, into the far corner. By the time he alighted there, his eyes were turned upward and his shield covered his crouching body from collarbones to crotch. He’d had experience with bow-men, and good ones, and knew they seldom drove shaft at the more difficult target of head or throat, but at the midsection or below; a man with an arrow through his leg was more likely than not completely out of any fight.

But he was staring up an empty stairwell, and Knud had not been so clever.

Cormac heard him scream, but could not see the other landing. He soon saw the Dane nevertheless, for he came bumping and rolling back down the stairs. An arrow stood from his guts. He struck the floor face down, and a tent appeared in the back of his mailcoat as the weight of his own limp body against the floor drove the arrow all the way through him.

Without a sound, Cormac mac Art bounded up the second set of narrow stone steps. Passing a corridor to his right, he charged straight ahead. On the floor, in a shaft of sunlight from the broad window, a man lay still, with an arrow through his throat. Ivarr or Guthrum had shot well, at a man who had shown them only head and shoulders!

Another archer, crouched by that same window, was already whipping around and loosing a feathered shaft at the charging invader.

Cormac spun his left arm, trusting to the shield to find the rushing arrow. He was rewarded by the sound of ironshod wood ringing off ironbound buckler. Then his right arm came whipping around in a grey blur. He had a vision of enormous blue eyes beneath a small cap. of a helmet, and then eyes and the face in which they were set leaped high and were gone, as his blade sent the head flying from its shoulders-and out the window.