Andrew Offutt: The Sword of the Gael

Cormac looked about him. The meadow was long, and broad. Many people were gathered about, hundreds perhaps, to witness this very old and much talked-of rite. Behind them, tall trees brooded over the testing ground like solemn guards. The spearmen were not so close that he could not see their staffs a-coming, nor so far removed that good men should not make good casts.

Beware the dark that hovers about ye, son of Celts.

Again Cormac looked about himself. He saw no dark. Behl’s disk was bright overhead, and brightly dressed were the men and women of Eirrin who looked on, waiting. Wagering, he thought, without rancor.

Wager on Cormac , he bade them mentally.

The marshal’s voice rose, loudly, and across the meadow another, chosen for his great voice, repeated each sentence for all to hear. The spearmen were to make their casts as they saw fit, once the signal was given. By his agility and skill in using his stout staff of hazel and his shield the examinee was to defend himself, and without being struck full on. Nor was he to retreat from the trench.

“REPEAT!” Cormac bellowed.

The words were repeated, and again from the meadow’s far side: the defendant was not to retreat from the trench; it represented his keep.

Cormac nodded. He would not retreat .

He was asked if he were ready.

He nodded.

He was asked again, and he bellowed that he was.

Beware the dark that hovers about ye, son of Celts, when the trumpet sounds.

Cormac watched the line of spearmen from slitted eyes. At either end of that well-spaced line of nine men stood one of the watchful weapon men, and there too stood Tigernach mac Roig. He stared at the spearmen, not at his friend Cormac whom he had tricked into contending for the championship. Well behind the spearmen waited the priest, and near Tigernach was the Druid. A flutter of white cloth tugged Cormac’s gaze to that man, who was moving both arms, staring at the man in the trench, gesturing. His robe flapped.

I see no dark hovering about me, Druid.

Only the sound of a bird, a disapproving jay, broke the absolute silence on that plain of testing. Unconcerned, fluffy white clouds sailed like great ships across the sea-blue sky.

Tugging his gaze from the Druid, Cormac watched the spearmen. They seemed closer, and he sneered at himself for his apprehension. All at once , he wondered, or one by one? Neither , he decided; they have no one to order a concerted cast, but will not dally about it.

The trumpet sounded.

Almost instantly the voice roared out: “THE DARK IS UPON YE, SON OF CELTS!”

…when the trumpet sounds…

Cormac blinked, but took not his gaze from the spearmen, who were lifting their arms, balancing their long shafts, staring at him, sighting.

Suppose they all throw deliberately high or wide, Cormac thought, and then the dark came upon him.

The spearmen became dark, and darker, and then they were shadows.

And then they vanished amid the general midnight that Cormac saw swallow the meadow.

He flared his eyes wide, strained them in his efforts to pierce the deep grey fog. His shield he held close before him, arm doubled behind it, and he crouched, suddenly feeling fear come upon him. He was a helpless target!

A spear swished through the air over his head. He heard it strike the ground well behind him. Well cast, and with strength.

Cormac bellowed his desperate words: “I CANNOT SEE! TIGERRRRRNACH-IS IT DARRRRK?”

Tigernach thought swiftly, for all his confusion and lack of understanding. He answered in seconds.

“NA-A-AYYY! Cormac! The sun’s bright… DEFEND, DEFEND!”

’Blindly, Cormac pushed his shield forward, ducked his head behind it, striving to encase it between his shoulders. He struck out viciously with his hazel staff. At nothing visible, for he could see nothing. He felt the heavy blow against his left arm, heard the loud impacts of two untipped spears on his shield. He felt and heard, too, when the stave he so wildly waved struck one of them-or a third. Enshrouded in blackness, Cormac fought panic. It sought to encase his mind, as the sudden dark did all else.

“THE DRUID!” Cormac mac Art shouted, and it was nearer a scream than any sound he had hurled from his lips in many years. “Tigernach, the DRUID!”

A spear whizzed past, curving, and its tail struck him a jarring rap on the left elbow. Had the shield not been a buckler with attached strap, he’d have lost it, for his fingers flexed without his wish and his elbow tingled maddeningly.

Then up ahead a man cried out, and screamed, and the darkness vanished as swiftly as it had come upon one man of the many on that plain.

Cormac roared out the loudest, throatiest, most savage battle cry he could tear up from chest and throat, and thus the two men who were just in the act of casting were affected. One spear rushed well over his head; the other, even though it was enough to his left that all he need do was step rightward, he met with a slashing blow of his shield. Already another was rushing at him, a streaking line in the air that seemed to extend its tail all the way back to its hurler, for the eye could not record so swift a rushing movement toward it.

Cormac swept his shield up before his face. It was hardly there before the spear slammed into it. He was knocked back by the impact. The rearward lip of the trench caught the backs of his knees, and he sat very suddenly. The shield had gone heavy, and he knew the reason even before the shouts of horror and anger rose all about the field of his testing.

To the side he moved the shield, in order to see, and then Cormac moved faster than ever he had. Two spearmen were casting, simultaneously. In the seconds between their launching and their reaching him, Cormac saw that the rushing javelins would brace him. He could not dodge the one without intersecting the flight of the other.

Deciding in less than a second, he dodged rightward and swung his right arm with all his might.

The leftward spear only touched his shield and sped on past, hardly deflected. With a sharp rap of wood on wood like the crack of a sail in a sudden gust, Cormac’s stave smashed into the other spear that sought him. All his eye could see was its tip, approaching directly. Then there was that great crack sound, and the jolt to his arm. And the spear was no longer coming; he had slashed it from him and saved his eye with centimeters to spare.

For a moment he was still panting, lying back on the sward with his legs in the pit. He quivered with the familiar battle-excitement.

Then he jerked up into a sitting position, and inspected his shield.

From it stood a long spear, down-slanting, aye, but deeply enough imbedded to remain there. The bright steel of its tip showed, and in the trench lay one shard of the false wooden tip that had been so painstakingly made to encase that deadly sliver of steel.

Cormac stayed the hand that would have yanked it forth, and stared with blazing eyes. Surely-the clouds shuddered with the great wave of rising sound from the spectators, but he did not look up to see. Nor did he turn his enraged gaze upon the crowd that ringed him.

He stared at the spearmen. All had cast. All stared back.

“Haaa-YAAAARRRRRGHHHHH!” Cormac roared again, and launched himself up from that trench that had nearly been his grave. As though in a red berserker rage, he charged the spearmen.

They did all he expected. They stared to a man; they glanced at each other, and back at him; they broke. The weapon men, frowning and with hands on hilts, raised their bucklers and looked anxiously to the marshal in his fawn and crimson.

That burly nobleman was otherwise occupied; he crouched, with Tigernach, beside the Druid the latter had downed-dissipating the encircling darkness of ensorcelment that only Cormac had seen.