Andrew Offutt: The Sword of the Gael

Held aslant, Cormac’s shield guided away the wooden brand, while Cormac’s rang on the top edge of Iliach’s buckler. Up bobbed the shield, automatically. Then an “O-o-oh” rose from the onlookers, for the arm of Cumal’s champion moved so swiftly as to blur in the air like the form of a diving eagle. His sword’s rounded tip pounded against Iliach’s leg just above the knee, and with such force that the Munsterish weapon man staggered.

White cloths dropped and the trumpet blared.

“Wounded” and eliminated, Iliach returned to his backers with a slight limp.

Cormac only backed to the nearest ring-stake, for the next clash was between the personal champions of the kings of Connacht and of Leinster.

Thud and clangour arose, and Cormac nodded. Bress of Leinster was strong, and had a way of using his sword to catch the other’s lunges and cuts. He’d then twist his big hand to turn his opponent’s sword in his grip-or force his wrist to turn the wrong way. At the same time, Bress used buckler to push, following that with a ferocious flurry of stabs and feints and cuts.

Aye , Cormac mused, and he nodded.

Connacht lost, and for a moment the eyes of Cormac and Bress met. The man looked older of course, and even more sneerily supercilious than when Cormac had known him, twelve years past.

“Ye block my view, Boar,” a voice said from behind Cormac.

He turned to see a merchant of some sort, holding by the hand a boy of no more than seven years. Cormac squatted before the man, and held his buckler upright beside him, shielding the child to the shoulders. Happily grinning, the boy watched the subsequent combats from behind the shield of a champion and winner of two bouts.

Pairs of men came and went; the clash of hardwood sword on buckler tore the air again and again. Cormac won again, and Bress as well, and then each again, and the afternoon wore on, and then but four contestants remained. Drawing for foe and position, Bress and “Ceann mac Cor” again exchanged the searching looks of good weapon men.

“One,” Bress announced, regarding his marker.

“Two,” said the truly excellent Ailechman to Cormac’s left.

“Two,” Cormac echoed, and Bress affected to look disappointed.

It was sham, for he faced a man who had been as much blessed with luck as skill this day, and all four of them knew it.

The fellow gave a good defense, at least. But he was actually knocked to the trampled sward by his foeman’s mighty shield-drive.

“Striking with the shield, by the gods of my ancestors!” This from the man beside Cormac, for they two had not troubled to move apart after learning they were to be opponents. “Bress of Leinster fights like a farmer wielding a plow!”

This, Cormac thought in wonder, from a man bearing the name Oisin Pictslayer ? He sounded as though weapons were toys to him, as though he’d never drawn steel in anger or in necessary defense.

“Is use of feet forbidden here?” Cormac asked, with high innocence.

“Feet!” Oisin Pictslayer of Ailech managed to sound both scandalized and scornful.

Cormac gave him a steady, deliberately doubtful look. “Your name says ye’ve slain a Pict or more, Oisin-surely you made use of arms and feet and even teeth, had opportunity arisen!”

“It was three Picts, and I be no animal to use aught but weapons, and it is my lord Oisin, weapon man.”

“Oisin of Ailech, it is our time to contend, and were I a Pict, it’s not alive but dead ye’d be leaving here today,” Cormac growled wolfishly at the other man, who now looked as offended as scandalized. And Cormac added, drawling, “…my noble lord.”

He thought, And it’s a Pictish charge ye’ll soon be facing, my noble lord of the false name.

But while the perimeter of the combat area was large, it was not huge. The man bearing the boar-shield narrowed his eyes still more, seeking a means to mount a good running charge…

The trumpet’s notes cut the air and trembled there. Affecting to ignore his fawning admirers and wearing a supercilious smile, Bress of Leinster watched Cormac and Oisin Pictslayer advance onto the Sward of Srreng.

Astounded spectators saw Oisin strike, saw and heard his wooden blade bang off the shield of the red-tunicked man-and saw that man break and run! His deep auburn braids streamed out behind him as he dashed directly toward the encircling watchers, and the foremost among them became suddenly anxious to possess less status. A great cry arose, of mingled wailing and anger.

It was still in voice when Cormac, at the very edge of the circle of spectators, wheeled in a broad semicircle.

Around he swung, to race back at the staring Oisin. Then many jerked violently, Oisin among them, for a ferocious shrieking cry tore from the throat of this strange champion of Cumal of Tara. His antagonist was as shaken and dumbfounded by that awful ululating cry as the onlookers-and the judges themselves. There was naught in the rules forbidding any of this, but-a charge away and then back, and with the shriek of a blood-enraged eagle on the swoop?

Round his head whirled Cormac’s sword of dark wood, and fell not where any suspected-again including Oisin Pictslayer of northeasterly Ailech!

For at the last possible moment in his maniac’s charge, Cormac half spun, and chopped mightily down on the other man’s sword-arm. Oisin groaned and staggered, trying to cling to sword and regain control of a tingling, fire-assaulted arm that wanted to dangle and be cuddled. Even as the trumpet blared and while dropped signal-cloths still fluttered in air, Cormac’s rounded edge rapped Oisin’s upper shield-arm, and its “point” touched his mail over his ribs with enough force to wrest another groan from the haughty noble.

Cormac backed away. His penultimate combat, like the first, was over ere it had begun. A weapon man had found a way to make a berserker’s charge in the arena of Tara-town, and voices talked on it now as they would for many a day.

Oisin of Ailech, Lord of Tir Connail, the judges decided, had lost one arm, the use of the other, and most probably his life with steel betwixt his ribs. Grasping his sword-arm the defeated nobleman left the field, not without casting venomous looks at his conqueror. Once again a victorious Cormac backed up against the braided ring that encircled the area of contention.

A passing pretty young woman with much golden hair tumbling past her diamond-shaped face, and her in a gown too thin for the mental equilibrium of many, laid fingers with painted nails on Cormac’s mailed arm.

“Marvelous!” she gushed breathily, with obvious excitement; her breast was heaving and flaunting its peaks against the nigh-diaphanous gown. “And whence comes that fierce cry to curdle the very blood, warrior among warrior?”

“I learned it from the Picts,” Cormac told her, without turning.

Others demanded to know what he’d said, and the words were passed back and around. Soon nearly all were laughing and shouting plaudits and “Oisin Pictslain!”-for the Pictslayer had got his defeat at the hands of one who had himself imitated a Pictish savage!

The lips of the woman beside Cormac were close to his ear, and her hand clung to his steelclad arm. “You… have slain Picts?”

He nodded, still without looking at her. That knowledge was spread; he had slain Picts afore; the man of Rath Cumal ua-Neill was a Pictslayer! Wagers flew thick as arrows in a siege.

A bright-eyed girl in her late teens pushed around Cormac on the side opposite his other over-civilized admirer. Spacious were her white-draped hips, bold her eyes, broad and full the bosom that occupied every available inch of her chest and was so firm as to imitate helmets strapped to her.