Andrew Offutt - When Death Birds Fly

Cormac drew his thoughts sharply away from that. He had promised himself he would cease to think of Eirrin.

Night came down. The dark was warm, breathing and heavy, like some great live creature embracing the world in arms of black velvet. The stars hung all fuzzy and dim, aureoled in fog. Tendrils of sluggish mist coiled among the stones of the sarsen circle. Somewhere in the wood an owl hooted. No Celt he, some wag said.

In the very center of the ring, a conical stack of logs and brushwood had been heaped. Now three men in their youth came in from the dark, and Morfydd blessed each one as he knelt, tracing a sign before his face. They set to work to make fire. Their labour was hard and long. Soon they were sweating in the warm night, while their hands ached from constantly spinning the large bow and drill.

Gathered outside the stone circle, the people were no less tense. Would this be the year it failed? No fire, however skillfully the chosen ones worked? No renewal of life?

The drill sang its persistent song. The firemakers felt pain become part of the bones of their hands. Sweat ran into their eyes and dropped from their lashes, and they strove while the waiting mass held its collective breath.

Then, at last, came the grey twists of smoke… the glitter of sparks-and the first bright tiny flame! It leaped white in the punk and straw, then grew to feed on wood. The needfire at the center of the stone circle began to crackle.

A wild, joyful cry arose from the crowd, cut short abruptly by awe. Enthroned before the fire, indifferent to its growing heat, was a tall figure, naked, oiled and shining, with the head and antlers of a royal stag. The antlers that won the doe in battle, that grew, and fell, and were yearly renewed in the way of all life. The antlers of Arawn, lord of death and desire and rebirth.

They hailed him in ecstasy, whiles the needfire grew.

Two by two, they slipped between the grey stones and began the Long Dance of Midsummer. It threaded in and out of the circle, moving ever in a sunwise direction. Out there in the dark, on the hillside below the stones, vats of liquor were ready, and the dancers scooped wooden cups full as they went. Moving in the interlocking spirals, they lit torches from the central fire and carried them outward again, until they resembled a swarm of bobbing fireflies.

The dancing grew wilder. It wasn’t on account of the liquor, which in truth was scarcely needed. Fires began to shine fuzzily on other hills, through the light fog, signalled by the beacon of the prince’s blaze.

Seemingly of its own accord, the Long Dance fulfilled its pattern, and ended.

Two powerful figures rushed from opposite sides of the circle. With the high-burning needfire between them and the immobile, antlered form, they met to clash like fighting bucks. Rebounding, they began to circle each other.

One wore leggings of grey wadmal, a black leather tunic and helmet. Pinned cape-fashion across his shoulders was a grey wolfskin. Its fierce jaws snarled beneath his own clean-shaven jaw. He’d a dark face, and grim. His slitted eyes shone in the firelight, cold as winter ice.

The other was gold, as his antagonist was onyx. Yellow-haired and yellow-moustached, he was fair of skin deeply bronzed by the summer sun. Save for golden ornaments and sandals, his tough limbs were bare. He wore a warrior’s tunic of brown leather over a madder-dyed orange shirt. Upon his breast jolted the Egyptian sun-symbol of the golden winged serpent.

Of course, he’d never have dreamed of wearing such a thing into a real fight, to irritate and distract him. Not bouncing free in this wise. He’d have worn it under his tunic, if at all.

Each symbolic combatant carried a shield with a bull’s-hide cover, the dark man’s black, the other’s pied brown and white. Only their actual weapons differed in kind as well as hue.

Cormac’s was a mace. Its handle was made from the heart of a century-old oak, seasoned well and hardened in fire. The grip had been wrapped in black leather and bound tightly with iron wire. The striking head was scarred, battered lead. Although a ceremonial weapon rather than a warfaring one, it could brain a man at a stroke, given a strong man to wield it. Cormac sensed its sorcerous power as he hefted the thing. It suited him. He liked the way it felt in his hand.

Garin’s spear was ancient and ceremonial as the mace. Yet it too was a functional, well-made weapon. Too short for throwing, it had been fashioned for stabbing and thrusting solely. To balance the broad-headed blade of gilded bronze, a solar orb of the same metal had been affixed to the butt. Thus could a man reverse it quickly in his hand to strike with either end.

Garin was playing at that now, a series of showy juggler’s tricks and feints with spearhead and weighted butt alternately.

Cormac mused grimly, It’s little this would gain him in real combat. Unless-

It happened even as he thought of it, a sudden crosswise blow with Garin’s brindled shield. Swift as light-or, more aptly, as a fissure in winter’s ice-Cormac’s shield was interposed. The two rang like muffled drums.

There followed harsh, bruising struggle, spear against mace, shield against shield, shield against spear, shield against mace. The leaping fire threw gold over them, and deep shadows. The warriors lost the sense of being themselves.

In small remote crannies of their minds they remained men, fighting as men-but the major part of their souls was possessed by contending Powers, even as Howel’s. They were ancient as Celts, ancient as Cimmeria and Atlantis, as the world. Garin, the brightness of summer, knew he must drop and lose at last; not because it was arranged and so rehearsed, not even because Cormac mac Art was the better warrior, though he was. No. The thing was inevitable as Fate, as the turning seasons.

Mace slammed on Garin’s shield with an impact that shook all his bones. He thrust with his spear. The point struck through black bullhide and slewed awry, scoring splinters from the wood beneath. Garin reversed the spear sharply and upon the instant, so that the bronze ball on the butt swung over to strike Cormac’s shoulder. Garin pulled the blow at the last instant, not to snap the bone. Cormac’s shield sagged low as it would not have done had they truly been seeking each the other’s life. Garin, excited, thrust into the gap so left in Cormac’s guard.

His spear-point never reached its mark.

Cormac unprecedently lunged with the mace. His arm and the handle formed one straight line, as if he held a sword. The steely strength of his wrist and fingers was taxed to the point of anguish to keep that leaden head from wavering. Yet he did.

He too pulled his blow at the last instant. Instead of crushing Garin’s throat, the blow sent him to the ground choking helplessly for breath. The bronze spear dropped from his twitching fingers. On Garin’s breast, the golden sigil from Egypt jumped flashing with his attempts to breathe. He clenched his left hand spasmodically on the grips of his forgotten shield.

From the people of Bro Erech rose the sound of a faint, drawn-out sigh. Winter stood grimly triumpliant above the champion of warm summer, a promise and a warning that winter would return. Yet it was bearable now, at this time of year. Were it to happen at the Midwinter feast it would be unbearable, a sign that the world would die into bleak darkness forever.

Cormac sighed deeply with them, descending centuries to become himself again. The fire crackled and bellowed at his back.

A wild yell burst from hundreds of throats.

Something terrible came.

Out of the sky it slid on black wings five men’s height in span. They beat fiercely, braking it above the stone circle. The monster dropped sharply. All saw huge flexing talons and fiery yellow eyes like embers from hell.