Andrew Offutt - The Mists of Doom

The arrow was a long wand of ash, tipped with gray goose quill. Two blue stripes ringed the off-white shaft. That was the portion that counted for naught. The small tip that meant life or death, one more drastic change in Cormac’s life and a far greater one in Midhir’s… that tiny portion of the arrow was imbedded in Midhir’s brain.

Cormac moved away from the dead man. Bent to stare at the ground, he paced slowly. Midhir. Dead, all in a moment. Dead. And this second death, this second theft of life that robbed Cormac, too, of so much, was a greater blow than had been his father’s slaying. Not because of a greater feeling on him for Midhir than for Art; no, it was that he had turned in his mind to Midhir, pinned his hopes on this man.

And now both were gone. There was no one. All was gone. Anguish tightened his stomach; desperation swirled about him like murky fog.

Several times he jerked his head to rid himself of the tears that persisted in trying to blind him, though he was not sobbing. Cormac felt even more alone now than he had earlier this day. Now there was no one, and the thought came again and again. Now he-

He discovered the trail of the murderer. The man was afoot.

Cormac used his brain only a little, this time; it was cluttered and clogged and partially paralyzed by grief and sorrow for self. The day was late. Dusk was almost on the forest, and the treetops cut out much of the light of the low-lying sun. The air was becoming chill. The rath was but a few minutes away, with horses and good spears and men who’d be eager in the rage to accompany him in following a good trail.

Cloaked but afoot and without spear, horse, or companions, Cormac nevertheless followed the murderer’s trail through the forest. He felt the weening necessity of taking action on his own, and he did.

After a time he realized that the slayer was angling around, moving in a tight curve, around the northward edge of the rath-lands. He surely could not be headed for the mountains. The coast, then.

Cormac followed, never giving a thought to the fact that now he could raise help merely by shouting out. Thereby though he would warn the murdering archer. Not likely the fellow would be expecting a lone youth to follow him, and bearing only weapons for close fighting. The slayer was moving sloppily, not troubling to avoid twigs that showed Cormac their fresh breaks, or loamy spots that held a footprint or two, or clumps of early grass that were still rising after the flatening by his foot. Here he had wiped animal excrement from his buskin. The trail was that for the following by a child; that of a man confident he had escaped, and was not pursued.

Cormac’s tracking took him from the forest into rocky coastal terrain where the archer was harder to follow. Cormac felt the cold sea-breeze that brought the tang of salt to his nostrils. He moved along the little runnel from a weak spring; found a footprint where the man had hopped it. He hurried on in the direction it indicated.

Now there were no trees, and little shrubs. Stones littered the sandy earth beneath his feet; here reared a great boulder or outcrop of rock, there clung a haw. He heard seabirds, screeking and mewling like cats. Steep cliffs formed over the sea that ran from Eirrin’s western coast to-nowhere, so far as any knew. Here a foot had slid. Here the other had come down hard. Here lay stones partially imbedded; two had been freshly upturned by the passage of a foot.

The trail led the youth down a steep incline created and then scarred anew by erosion. It was only just walkable, and here the archer had fallen. Cormac did not.

It was down onto the strand the man had gone, Cormac thought, and he ran down the long hill to keep from falling. Intelligence and craftiness, now, were submerged in a red rage.

The sound of the battering of water against rocks rose in volume; the tangy scent of brine intensified; the chill grew as his cloak billowed about him. Now great boulders rose round about rearing up like strange plants from the sandy, rocky soil. Coming onto the talus at the foot of the incline, he slowed his steps.

Yet still he pressed forward intently; too intently; he was completely unaware of the possibility of a trap until it was sprung.

They were Picts, and they were three.

With the shrieks that were designed to terrify their prey whilst heightening their own courage and ferocity, they leaped at him from behind a flanking pair of towering boulders whose surfaces were smoothed from long exposure to the saltgritty winds from seaward.

Short men they were, and dark and broad, with black eyes under heavy brow-ridges and stringy, straight black hair caught by bands of leather beaded or decorated with-coral. Two wore buskins and leggings of filthy, greasy leather, and naught else but bronze bracers; the third was doubtless proud of his blue Celtic tunic-still stained with the blood of its former owner. This Pict wielded a shining sword of steel, hardly made by his kind; his companions brandished flint axes and had flint daggers girt at their sides. Huge-bladed things they were, against their chipping and snapping. All three attackers were heavily muscled, massive of arm and shoulder and leg, long of coal-black hair-and ugly. Blue paint rendered them the more savage and hideous; one had added ruddy stripes traced diagonally down his forehead to give him a permanent scowling. appearance.

They came fast and yelling, and Cormac did indeed freeze.

Only the thick bearskin collar of his cloak saved him from the running stroke of a flint-headed ax. The blow staggered him-and was pure reaction that jerked his shield-arm so that the second attacker, him with the sword, was struck hard. Running, he was hurled windmilling twice his length.

Only just was Cormac able to dodge the axstroke of the third Pict. Sword-sharp, the flinty edge whined venomously past his nose.

And then, happy to have foes on whom to vent his sorrow and frustration-on which , as the Cruithne were not considered men but only semihuman-Cormac met their return with full skill and a savagery that matched their own.

An ax slammed down and banged on his bronze-faced buckler. While it was still sliding off, the Gael’s slash caught that savage at the waist with Cormac’s edge. So vicious was the side-swiping blow that the Pict was cut nigh in half and Cormac had to twist his arm and jerk, to free his blade. His sword-arm jerked up under the wrist of a second wielder of short-hafted ax, so that it only just touched his mailed chest. Cormac’s muscles bunched and his shield came around as though weightless. It bashed into that man’s upper arm. The ax fell while the Pict toppled sidewise. The sword-armed one was coming back, and Cormac ignored the man he’d unintentionally disarmed. His eyes glared at the coming Pict like nuggets of frozen starlight.

The Pict should have foregone use of his trophy and held to his familiar ax. With his buckler Cormac easily met the sword of a slain Celt, and his thrust sank a hand’s length of his own brand through blue Celtic shirt and dusky Pictish abdomen and bone, and blood, and organs. Huge-eyed the man staggered back off the point. He dropped his sword; his mouth burbled blood. He fell kicking.

The third remaining Pict was without ax, though he had drawn his long stone dagger. He stared at their intended prey. Sore of wrist and upper arm, armed with a short blade against a long one of steel, seeing that their ambush had resulted in the horribly swift death of his fellows, the Pict turned and fled.

Cormac, battle-lust soaring in him like a fire in his blood, followed the savage downward amid a maze of boulders and rocky outcrops.

He halted just after rounding a rearing chunk of rock half again taller than himself. He stared down at the bloody corpse. Ax-hacked, it was Aengus mac Domnail, Midhir’s second-in-command and thus Art’s third. He lay in a soaked muck of scarlet sand.