Andrew Offutt - The Mists of Doom

Few were anxious to be chosen; Fergus looked about and about, and called ten names, one by one. He was roundly cursed more than once.

“Fergus the Horse is in command here-keep ye a close watch! We others will not be after returning till we’ve hacked them with point of spear and edge of blade!”

And ten remained, and the rest followed him in a mob, and Cormac mac Art was a leader of men.

Chapter Five:

Exile of Glondrath

The blood thirsty thrave followed the son of their former lord through the nighted wood. Raging like wolves they were, eyes aglitter with rage and malice under the twinkle of the ever-restless starshine. Once they’d come upon the Pictish trail, it was easily followed, and they fair loped through the dark forest until they came to the low-built house of a woodcutter. Then their cries rose higher with their ire, those men of Connacht, for the house was splashed with gore and the door stood open to the night.

Within, the family had been slain as they sat at table, and horrors had been perpetrated on their bodies. A dread silence fell upon the weapon-men then, and all heard the voice of the youth they followed without question. For Cormac mac Art stood in that house of gore and atrocity and swore by the earth beneath him, by the heaven above him, and by the sun that traveled daily to the west, that he would seek no rest by day nor sleep by night until this peaceful family of innocents was avenged.

A man called out from behind the house then, and once again they were on the trail he had found, a blood-trail now, for Picts were wont to let their axes drip where they would.

Farther into the woods they rushed abristle with spears. Cormac and some few others strove to hold them silent lest the quarry hear, and lie in wait, to set upon the hunters.

But no. The Picts were blooded. The scent was in their broad nostrils, and they sought more. Another house the pursuers found, with its door torn half from its leathern hinges the way that it swung drunkenly. Bright blood splashed that door. Blood splashed the floor within, and ran down the walls. Here again had there been slaughter, and only the good wife of this murdered man was armed; she lay ax hacked and deliberately mutilated, with a carving knife in her fist. There was no blood on it, only on her and round about her. In a lovingly-wrought cradle lay a babe; its face was dark and its neck broken. The marks of powerful fingers were still in the fair skin of its throat.

On through the cloud-haunted night rushed the Gaels of Eirrin, baying the Pictish trail.

Even at the forest’s eastern rim they came upon a third house-and here battle raged. Yelling dark men sought to do massacre on another family. Amid torchlight and blood-chilling Pictish shrieks, a farmer and his big-built, deep-bellied wife battled the yelling savages, and with them their two slim sons. It was farm tools against knife and short-helved ax and flint-tipped spears, and the outcome was inevitable-though the Gaels fought valiantly to set a high price on their lives.

The men of Glondrath broke from the woods like the slavering pack onto the fox they’d long chased. No less than seven Picts were down in their blood ere their fellows knew they’d been counter-attacked. The others turned then, beset by well-armed warriors rather than untrained farmers-and two more Picts went down in seconds. One fell prey to the long handled hoe wielded by a lad of no more than eleven or twelve; the other was opened by the adze of the youth’s father.

“Into your house!” bellowed a man at Cormac’s side.

Good advice for the farm family, with a boiling knot of stout warriors come to their succor. Yet none of the four obeyed, but held their ground before their besieged home while steel blades flashed like streaks of liquid silver in the starlight and carved out a path toward them.

The dusky men of Pictdom pressed back one upon the other; they gave ground toward the house; a good sturdy farmwife swung her scythe to open up one of them, all across his muscular back. A huge-shouldered savage lunged at Cormac with his spear, a Celtic staff with dark iron point. So savagely did Cormac chop down that weapon, just behind the head, that the butt came up hard into the wielder’s armpit and like to have lifted him clear off the ground, for all his muscular weight. Beside mac Art, Dungal Big-head drove his own spear into that Pict and through him, so that Dungal had to let go his haft and draw sword. A spearhead scraped across his buckler and sparks danced; like a ravening wolf Cormac slashed sidewise. In a flash of steel the attacker’s head was made to hang only by a shred of flesh and a twinned fountain splashed both Dungal and Cormac with scarlet.

“It’s a fine team we are, Cormac!” Dungal cried, grinning.

The young son of Art said nothing, nor did he smile.

It is what had happened, that the battle-rage had come upon him. He hacked and slashed and stabbed, even half-braining a foeman with his buckler’s edge. No man should have been able to jerk and slash with the heavy shield in that wise; Cormac in this combat was no normal man. Nor did he smile even in triumph, for he thought only of slaying Picts. On them he laid his needs for blade-reddening vengeance, for he could not slay him who had done death on Art and on Midhir.

A chance use of his sword sent the blade girding deep into the vitals of a dark ax-wielder, and in the back of his mind mac Art recorded the fact that a stabbing thrust was efficacious indeed when all about him were swinging their weapons. Was a lesson learned long and long agone by the Romans, though few others on the ridge of the world used their blades as stabbing weapons.

Around him men groaned and toppled, spitted and hacked so that blood bespattered wounded and dead, dying and unscathed alike. Indeed men with no wounds upon them looked sore blooded, whilst others who had taken severe cuts knew it not in the mindless blaze of battle-lust.

About the farmhouse the night-battle whirled and eddied, blades of steel and iron and flint flaming and flashing.

No Pict escaped. All were slain, with edge and point of sharp-edged steel. A man of Glondrath died cursing like a madman with his last breath this side of Donn’s demesne; two others were sore wounded and a third bore a woundy cut that would be a long-time ahealing; scratches and minor cuts were widespread among the company. Cormac, having suffered only a couple of scratches, had no idea how many apelike savages he’d laid low; he was told he had downed four and wounded a fifth so that another’s ax slew him easily, but mac Art had been as if in a trance and could not swear to so much as one.

Seven and twenty Picts bled their last on the grounds of Labraid mac Buaic, and afterwards weeds grew all too well there. None of Labraid’s family was slain or sore wounded, though the older son had sustained a cut he loudly hoped would leave a scar there on his forearm, and Labraid’s wife Uaithne had wrenched her back-in swinging the curved scythe with which she saved her life from a short-hafted ax. With cloth from their scantling supply the farmfolk tended the wounds of their rescuers, the while they learned that the band of weapon-men was led by the son of Lord Art, and him dead these two days.

Food and ale offered Labraid, though in truth he was no man of wealth. While his men loudly accepted, the new temporary lord of Glondrath made mental note to send both a cask of (better) ale and a fresh-slain boar to this house.

Loud were the cries, and cups were lifted high as Celtic spirits. New and noisy praise was heaped upon the youthful battle-leader. He heard new comparisons of himself with both Cuchulain and that great Cormac afore him. But on this occasion there was no adolescent swelling of the head and chest of Cormac mac Art. On his mien was the stern-set face of a man; in his mind were only two slain men: Art mac Cumail and his friend Midhir.