Andrew Offutt - The Mists of Doom

All three dead , was Cormac’s first thought-and then he recorded the evidence of his eyes. The swirling red chaos of rage and headlong pursuit fled his mind, and he stared in agonized comprehension.

Chopped in several places and no longer bleeding, Aengus still clutched a bow. His hip-slung quiver had spilled its arrows, and so rapidly was the third Pict fleeing that he’d not tarried so long as to snatch up the fine shafts… shafts tipped with gray goose, and each bearing two woad-stripes of blue.

It was impossible. It was unbelievable-and Cormac had to believe. Here was clear evidence: Here lay his father’s and Midhir’s trusted aide, and the man had slain them both, and had sought to do death on Cormac as well. Mac Art had no notion why this man had done such treachery; on his longtime companions and friends, and his lord commander. His brain had been sore afflicted all the day; now his stomach twisted.

Cormac stared down at the hacked mass of mangled flesh, and on him was as much sorrow as shock and anger.

Oh, Aengus!

He was given no time now to contemplate the dead man’s treachery. Weapons clinked. A Pict called out from up the beach; another answered, and then a third voice rose. Cormac went instantly alert again. There was no puzzle here. A party of the Cruithne, several of their skin-boats full, must have made landing here. By coincidence had they run full onto the fleeing Aengus; mayhap he had a boat waiting, and they had found it. Thus they had taken Cormac’s vengeance for him. They had heard Cormac’s precipitate descent of the long declivity-or thought that Aengus might have others with him fallen behind-and set their trap. Cormac had destroyed it, and two of the ambushers. Now the third had summoned aide.

Their voices told Cormac both that they were hurrying his way and that they formed a goodly number; too many for a sensible man to face alone.

Swifty wiping his sword on Aengus’s leggings, Cormac sheathed the blade. He dragged the corpse behind the tall boulder. Taking up both bow and arrows, he raced back up the slope. He kept his footing and made headway through sheer determaintain and the strength that hurled him upward. At the top, he turned and loosed one of the traitor’s arrows; perhaps its keening and sight of it would force the Picts to take cover for a minute or two.

Whirling, Cormac followed his own and Aengus’s trail back for many yards. He leaped the runnel to leave a deep footprint, stepped back and splashed down it for a dozen yards. From the little stream he pounced onto a boulder whose colour was all too dark to show a wet footprint to any other than close-searching eyes. And he leaped thence to hard ground, and sprinted into the forest.

Here was no trail, no path. Here stumps, fallen branches and bushes slowed him. A vermiculate mass of last year’s honeysuckle sought to trip him. Swiftly as he dared-and at that falling once-he made his way back to the edge of the same trail. He ascended a tree that overlooked it. With care not to fall, he hurled one of the arrows-ahead, along the trail, as though he’d dropped it in headlong flight. Then he crouched, almost in darkness. The sky had gone a deep slate, save to the very west, where it had become all bloody- like the land here below , Cormac mused grimly.

He breathed as Sualtim had taught him, and thought the thoughts that Sualtim had taught him, to still his panting and his racing pulse. And he waited. Like a great cat crouched in a tree where he had no business being, he waited soundlessly and without the slightest movement save his breathing.

They came. Quietly they came, these woods-wise devils, so that he heard them only seconds before they were passing beneath his perch: He held his breath. Sword-grey eyes full of malign intent glared down at them, and the Picts knew it not.

They passed like shadows beneath him, squatty broad men numbering a score and more. They went on, moving inland. In the darkness below, they became invisible almost immediately. Cormac heard a cry of delight; they had discovered the arrow. He heard them break into a trot. He released his breath very slowly, drew in another, just as slowly and quietly. He heard nothing. He waited longer. The Picts passed from earshot, and no others came; why post a rear guard when they came from the sea and were pursuing one who fled afore them so precipitately that he dropped an arrow?

Cormac clambered down. He took a difficult, necessarily circuitous route back to Glondrath.

The long march at least served to keep him warm. It was dark in the forest; darkness cloaked the sprawling meadow of Glondrath when he emerged from the woods and took up a trot. As he passed a low house, a dog barked. Others joined that one, as dogs would in the night, whether or no they smelled or saw aught. Lights began to appear. Trotting, Cormac called out his own name, again and again. He heard the people that had been his father’s charges calling back and forth, repeating the identification-with relief. Grimly purposeful, spattered with blood that was not his, he strode past without making reply.

“Cormac! All good be with ye! Nervousness has been on ust that-”

Cormac interrupted the speaker ere he’d finished voicing his anxiety; he recognized Fedelm, called Iron Jaw after a horse’s kick had but bruised his face.

“Be fetching your weapons, Fedelm! Picts are well inland.”

Fedelm blinked. The cloaked youth strode on, a great stalking cat full of purpose. Never had Fedelm mac Conain had words of command from mac Art. Yet there was that about the grim young face, the way the words were spoken… Fedelm turned and set out for the barrack at a run.

Cormac approached the rath-house. There a great ring of black iron swung from the branch of a centuried oak, swung at the end of a rope thick as a man’s wrist. From a peg formed by a broken-off branch hung an iron rod by its rawhide tether. Cormac’s feet had not stopped moving when he had snatched the rod and struck the hoop a mighty blow. Then he thrust the rod through that ring of iron, within which two men could have stood, and began circling his arm.

The clangour of Glondrath’s alarum shattered the night with iron sound, so that even the dogs were shocked into silence.

Cormac paused in his clanging: “PICTS” he bellowed, and clanged the signal-hoop the more. Other voices took up the cry, and others, and ere he had ceased tormenting the iron ring men, were running, some mayhap bright-eyed with the rosy haze of ale fumes, but all bearing arms and armour.

Soon he was surrounded. Weapon-men aided each other into armour of chain and leather whilst they waited with scant patience for the arrival of others, and the words of the son of their dead lord. Some had brought torches, and none failed to perceive that there was blood on the big youth.

“The bow of Aengus Domnal’s son,” he shouted, holding high that weapon of treachery. And then Cormac mac Art told the first of the expedient lies he was never to hesitate to use, throughout his blood-smeared life. Was only a slight omission of fact, this time. “SLAIN, is Aengus! SLAIN, is Midhir! Pi-i-i-ictssss,” he bellowed, turning threequarters of a circle the while he called out the hated word. “Two I slew, and one escaped-and it’s these eyes saw him come up from the strand with a score and more of his ugly fellows. Armed to the teeth they be and tramping through the wood as though they own it-or intend to!”

Cries of horror and anger rose, and he had no more need of words; the men of Glondrath but waited to be led to the enemy that had plagued them for many tens of years.

“Fergus!” Cormac shouted. “Well I remember your injured arm, and cease your striving to hide it! Pick ten men to remain and defend, light torches and arm every woman and child lest the Picts double back! Hurry, man!”