Andrew Offutt: The Sword of the Gael

The Norsemen came up the beach. Without choice, the captives were meek enough about it.

Cormac waited only long enough to assure himself of what he already assumed: these men knew where they were going. They it was who had found the ancient palace of this island afore him, and left behind the men he had slain. The Vikings, with their Druid and their booty and their prisoners, were bent for that castle now.

Narrow-eyed, the Gael looked longingly at their dragon-prowed ship.

Then backing like a river crayfish until he was sure he could not be seen afoot, he rose and sped back along the mesa. His route was far more direct than that circuitous one through the defile.

The arrow he sped through a window of the palace brought forth his companions soon enough. When they emerged with drawn sword, faces upturned, he motioned them into hiding. Wulfhere nodded and signaled back; the six Danes concealed themselves.

Cormac waited.

When the Norse Vikings at last appeared, he counted them as they wended their way onto the valley of the castle. The corsairs from the northlands numbered one and twenty. They entered the castle, and long Cormac waited for their reaction to the disappearance of their sentries. A strangeness: they made no outcry, nor did any man emerge to call. He did hear the sounds happy men make when they begin to let ale glide down their throats to cool the belly and warm the mind. He had known it to happen before, particularly when leadership was not strong or clearly defined. Weary and triumphant from a successful expedition, even good weapon-men had been known to ignore all in their eagerness to relax with food and drink.

Cormac waited long, then waved Wulfhere and the others to cross the valley. They did, making use of all possible cover. Soon, within the shade-darkened defile, the seven held discourse.

Wulfhere Hausakliufr was for attacking the Vikings at once, but listened as ever to Cormac’s quietly voiced logic.

“It’s doling out their sword-gains and celebrating they’ll be, old friend. Let those happy men slake their thirst with all that ale we… saw.” A. smile twisted Cormac’s lips. “They’ll be easier foemen for it.”

They did not mention or consider the prisoners the Norsemen were having such a care with. No sensible man made attempt to “save” a woman from whatever her captors chose to do with her, and despite the impetuous nature of Wulfhere Skull-splitter, he was a sensible man.

Pragmatism prevailed. Having brought both food and drink out with them, the Danes would abide just within the side-cleft of the main defile; they had noted it before, and passed it by. Cormac, meanwhile, would check the strand, and that with care. He would soon know how many guards had been left with the small Viking craft with its striped sail.

“A good craft for us,” Wulfhere said darkly.

“So it will be,” the Gael said. “We will do nothing until night cloaks this land then… agreed?”

“A long wait.”

Cormac ignored the petulant tone, said only, “aye.”

Wulfhere gazed at him and at last gave him a brief nod. Cormac returned it and went away over the mesa again.

A spire-like chunk of granitic rock remained where weather had washed away that around it. In its lee, Cormac settled himself. He had doffed his helmet to cool his black mane, and laid aside swordbelt against its possible clank. Now and then staring briefly out to sea to re-adjust his eyes, he took up his watch on the beach where lay the Viking ship. And its scalemailed guards in their ferociously horned or winged, helms.

At last he was certain: there were four. Restless they were, and surely not happy to be left behind whilst the others adjourned within the shady palace and betook themselves of ale and wine-and perhaps of their captives as well.

Cormac had tossed the bow down to Wulfhere and the others; Guthrum and Ivarr were better with those far-killing weapons, while Cormac had not his match with sword and shield and dagger. Too, the business of fighting and reddening another’s body was to him a personal one. He liked not the bow, or the great siege engines that hurled stone or spear or fire. The world would be an ugly place, Cormac felt and had said, and men the less for it, if ever the time came when wars were fought impersonally, from a distance. For then truly all would be up to the old and unskilled, sitting back in high places while others did their blood-work for them.

He waited, and watched the men on the beach.

When it is dark , Cormac mac Art decided, I will carry death among those four.

He waited.

He had waited before, and was little troubled by it. There were gulls to watch, and clouds and their changing shapes, and the shifting of the sea and the occasional flashing appearance of one of her dwellers. And there were the activities of the men below. Them, however, he watched but little. He was not eager to know the men he must soon go among, carrying steel death.

The sun dragged across the sky.

Cormac waited.

Slowly the sun settled, and Cormac moved when the shade changed, so as to remain in shadow. He had spotted the place where he would make his descent, and that unseen by the men with the ship.

He waited, considering the mystery of the great palace built here so long ago. Into his mind came the words of a dying priest of the new god, over in Britain.

“The serpent-man,” he had gasped out, “the last of that race that preceded humanity in dominion over the world. King Kull slew the last of his brethren with the edge of the sword in desperate conflict, but the Dark Druid survived to ape the form of man and hand down the Satanic lore of olden times.”

Mayhap it was not all those serpentish men Kull of Valusia slew in Atlantis herself , Cormac mused, remembering the wall-etched pictures he had studied yesterday. Then his heart thudded the harder within him, and he fought to thrust castle and wall and pictures and Kull and… “memories” from his head.

“This temple,” the old priest had got out before his death, “is the last Outpost of their accursed civilization to remain above the ground-and beneath it rages the last Shoggoth to remain near the surface of the world. The goat-spawn roam the hills only at night, fearful now of man, and the Old Ones and the Shoggoths hide deep within the earth…”

Cormac mac Art hoped the man had been right. He and Wulfhere had slain raving obscenities in form and ferocity on that occasion, and he was content to confine the edge of his sword to men, not monsters. A frown came onto his face as he thought of the palace back in the valley.

But no; six men had spent the previous night there, aid others had doubtless nighted there many times. The Norsemen would not return here had they seen aught of serpent-men or worse!

Of course , he reminded himself, they have with them their Druid!

As on the afternoon before, the dying sun bathed the westering sea in blood from horizon to shore, and Cormac prepared himself for the descent.

It was then that the four Vikings emerged from the defile, having come from out the castle, and debouched onto the beach. Cormac froze.

Two of the newcomers were none too steady on their feet, and they carried the reason in a leathern ale-sack. They were greeted enthusiastically by the quartet already there-but that, Cormac saw, was because the four newcomers comprised a relief watch. They remained; the others bent their feet castleward for food and drink, nor were they laggardly about it.

Wolf-grinning, Cormac donned helmet and buckled on sword. Then he moved across the lip of the mesa to the sloping talus where rock had slid and fallen. Down he went, and onto the loose rock below. His feet made noise, but the four on the beach made more. They had not, he noted, built a fire.