Andrew Offutt - The Mists of Doom

And still was he quiet when he led his company back through Connacht-Shield Wood, having reminded them of those who waited at Glondrath, and knew not whether to keen or cry joy. Behind them along the broad path they followed this time, those triumphant men of Connacht dragged seven and twenty Pictish corpses. And two men bore Eochu Fair-hair, to present to his sorrowing parents and sweetheart.

Though weariness was on him, mac Art detoured to take up himself the body of Midhir, that no forest beast might feast on the man.

Joy at the triumphant return outweighed sorrow in Glondrath, and was long afore many were asleep, and in truth the result of that undertaking was a rich harvest of babes, nine months thence.

Wounded Eber and Curnan survived the night, and druids and attending women announced that both would live to fight another day-though the former would most probably limp. Early on that morning of the morrow, a white-bearded druid and a beardless youth went to the house where Midhir’s wife Aevgrine keened her grief. When they emerged the tall, rangy youth bore the arrow he himself had drawn from Midhir’s eye.

Sualtim Fodla had watched the boy-man steel himself to that unhappy task, and he saw now that Cormac was not ill of his night of bloodletting, followed by this ugliness. And Sualtim frowned. For men who never knew illness after battle, and were not nauseous at such as the drawing of an arrow from the eye of a dead friend, were to be feared. Cursed of the gods they were said to’ be, and destined thereby for lives in which blood ran in scarlet rivulets. In a flash of manadh , or druidic foresight, Sualtim saw that indeed so would it be for Art’s son. He knew too in that instant that the youth must not tarry here.

“Cormac.”

Cormac looked at the druid.

“Glondrath holds your doom, Cormac mac Art.”

Cormac blinked, though he did not pale. “It held my father’s,” he pointed out.

“Remain here and it’s no other birthday ye’ll be seeing, mac Art. It is what I see for you, an ye remain in Glondrath, that nothing of your skin or your flesh will escape red doom, except what the birds will bring away in their beaks and claws.”

Cormac compressed his lips. “Walk with me, mentor.”

They walked, and in the meadow’s northern end Cormac drew an arrow from beneath his cloak and handed it to the druid, along with that which had slain Midhir.

“What see ye, mentor?”

“Call me Sualtim, Cormac; ye be boy no longer. Hmm-I shall not be saying that I see two arrows.” He studied both shafts. “I see two arrows made by the same hand, from the wood of the same tree.”

“So.”

“An ash. Aye, and feathered by the same goose, or I miss my guess and these eyes are become older than I’m thinking.”

“Ye see well, mentor. Two arrows from the same tree indeed, and from the same goose their fletching, made by the same hand. And-from the same quiver.”

“Aye. Those two stripes, now, are no emblem familiar to me.”

“Nevertheless, m-Sualtim, it’s these arrows will lead us to the slayer of Midhir.”

“Aye.”

“And, most probably, of the slayer of my father as well.”

“Probable.”

And Cormac led the druid through the forest, and Sualtim made no plaint at the length of their trek, nor even the difficulty of its other end. Then they stood over the body of Aengus Domnal’s son.

“One of these arrows ye saw me draw forth, from Midhir, Sualtim Fodla. The other I took from that empty quiver there at Aengus’s hip. Here be Midhir’s murderer.”

The druid stared at him, and then his shoulders drooped with his sigh. “Aye,” he said, and it was a whisper. “And if I must believe that, and I must indeed, then I believe too that Aengus slew the Lord of Glondrath.”

Cormac said naught.

The druid stooped by the corpse, found before them only by the birds they’d frightened away; was why Cormac had on yester eve covered Aengus’s face. The dead man wore a sundisk of bronze, on a beaded cord of leather. It flashed in the druid’s hand. Surely for no particular reason unless it was a flash of prescience or intuition, Sualtim turned over that sigil of the Old Religion of the Celts. He made a grunting sound of surprise then, as if struck. He looked up at Cormac. The latter bent, and stared.

Scratched into the back of the sundisk of Behl was… the cross. of Iosa Chriost.

Slowly Sualtim straightened, and Cormac heard the old man’s joints pop. He looked at Cormac, and his usual solemnity of mien was clouded over with deep concern.

“This bodes no good, son of Art. None. It’s more there is to the murder of Art and the attempt on his son that mere murder of a man or two. A lord has died; the lordling has narrowly escaped, and think not that it was pure accident and your own whim made ye bend just as that arrow was loosed, Cormac.”

Mac Art stared at him, saying nothing. Gulls wheeled and screamed against a sweet blue sky, the birds jealous of these men who had chased them from their morning find. Aengus had after all eyes for the pecking.

“More here than a simple blood-feud, surely,” Sualtim said. “Where the New Faith is involved, there are seldom simple motives.”

“The Dead God , “Cormac said, his teeth set and his lip curling.

“Aye. But so long as he has followers, and Romish plotters every one-even those of Eirrin-he lives, Cormac.”

“Was known my father was no friend of him or his priests!”

“So it was, and is. Nor is that all of this matter; I’d vow on it.” Sualtim looked down at the corpse. “Disguised, but he wanted his god by him and so marked the symbol on the back of his sundisk-sacrilege! He dared much.” With a sigh Sualtim added, “He accomplished much. Well. There is naught I can do for this man I thought I knew, who turned his back on the faith of his followers and followed the foreign god-even to murder. Will ye be doing aught for-”

Cormac interrupted his lifelong mentor. “I will not! The birds covet his eyes; let them have those orbs of Aengus Bradawc -Aengus the Treacherous!”

“It’s bent on a vindictive path ye be, my pupil?”

Cormac met the soft grey eyes with his own suddenly icy-hard ones. “I am. It is what is left me, Sualtim. Come. I have shown you what I must, and it’s a long trek back we must be making.”

Cormac turned away to go. For a few moments Sualtim gazed most thoughtfully at the young man’s broad back. Then, with the tiniest suggestion of a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth, he nodded and stepped forward past the youth-become man. They set out to return to Glondrath.

After a time Sualtim said, “Ye spoke to me just now as though ye were Lord Cormac, my…” he swallowed the word he’d have uttered-“pupil”-and said, “son.”

“I meant no offense to the mentor of my youth and life.”

“None was taken, Cormac. Indeed, in some ways you have been as son to me, and to a man with maturity on him, it’s prideful pleasure he feels when the boy becomes so obviously a man.”

Cormac went on for a time in silence. Then, “Men followed me last night, mentor, as though I were Lord Cormac.”

“And-”

“We both know I am not,” Cormac said, and heard Sualtim sigh with relief. So he was worried I had big notions, was he?

“And you know you can never be lord of Glondrath,” Sualtim said, very quietly, and far from happily.

“I know,” Cormac said, as easily as he could sound; it had been but a brief dream. “Today or tomorrow or the day after, someone will come from Cruachan, with fine skirts and jewels on him. And he’ll be telling all in Glondrath the name of the king’s new commander. Nor will it be anyone here.”

“It was no idle word I spoke, Cormac, when I told you you’d not live out a year an you remain in Glondrath.”