Andrew Offutt - The Mists of Doom

Cormac blinked and squatted, thrusting his sword into the sand to cleanse the blade of Pictish blood. “Huh! Calling that one your own, are ye? As well call that horse mine!”

The man came to him on his prancing, headshaking mount. First glancing around to be sure there were no more foes, he flung his sword so that it drove into the sand. It stood quivering. Then he doffed his helmet, to shake out a shortish mop of hair as straight and black as Cormac’s. Cormac saw that the fellow was good-looking, if button-nosed, and that he was surely in his twenties, though his hair was early departing his forehead. His eyes were like old stone, without the hint of blue.

“Aye; your mount I greatly regret, my friend.” He looked at the downed beast; Dubheitte had snapped a foreleg in his fall. “But he be not dead…”

“Yes he is.”

Cormac spoke very quietly. Steeling himself against his own misery at the loss of the fine horse, he used his sword to end Dubheitte’s misery.

The yourthful Gael looked up at the older. “I do hope ye be wealthy, with many fine horses.”

“No such luck,” the man said. “I gave ye my name, weapon-man, and neglected to add that it’s Coichtaigheacht I am, in the king’s forces of Leinster. Ye be no Leinsterman, with that accent; what brought ye to this realm, to aid those so stupid as to be caught afoot by the enemy?”.

“I am Partha son of Othna of Ulster,” Cormac told him, using the name by which he had called himself these two weeks since he’d departed Glondarth. “A weapon-man in search of service, for it’s my father’s third son I am, and my elder brother took even my girl to himself. Nor heard I your name, Captain; I was distracted at the time.”

The man who’d called himself Chief of fifty chuckled. “Forgall mac Aed, Partha mac Othna. And travel no farther. There’s need in Leinster of sword-arms such as yours,’ aye, and your courage. It’s hard-pressed times these are, friend Partha, with the Boruma nigh upon us and rumours too of Pictish restlessness.” He glanced about at the corpses. “Spies, possibly.”

“Mayhap… and mayhap then we should not have done death on them all.”

“We’ll be telling none we could have taken a prisoner or two, eh? An ye be looking for weaponish employment, Partha mac Othna, my lord King Ulad has need of ye.”

“Truth, I ate the last of my provisions earlier today… and am now without a horse, as well.”

Forgall regarded the unfortunate steed. “A fine animal; again, sorrow’s on me that he died because of myself. A fine animal…”

Forgall seemed a bit too thoughtful, on the border of suspicion. Cormac tried to seem both nervous and prideful, all at once: “My elder brother’s,” he said.

Forgall laughed and clapped a calloused hand to a mailed shoulder. “Good for yourself, Partha, for I am a second son myself, and my brother heir to but little! However long ye bestrode yon animal, I’d say ye had better service of him than your brother of a fickle maid-oh, I intend no offense, Partha; the words slipped out.”

“None taken. She’s what ye said, and more. Be there aught of food in that bulgy pack I see behind your saddle, Fifty-chief?”

In truth Cormac had not quite worked out his story, and had already added an unplanned embellishment with the allegation that Dubheitte had belonged to a nonexistent older brother. He preferred that there be no further discussion of his past until he’d had time to fabricate it. Besides, he was hungry.

Three fellows in the forest had caught him asleep but two nights agone. Two had held him moveless with pocked arrows whilst the third packed up the young pilgrim’s belongings. They’d have taken Dubheitte too, had not the animal thrown one of their, number. Taking advantage of that distraction, Cormac had snatched up shield and spear. He caught an arrow in the shield, another, hastily loosed in the darkness, missed. His spear but grazed a man gone suddenly nerveless and running for his own mount. Another arrow made Cormac dodge so that he fell. The three men escaped into the darkness of a forest they doubtless knew. Dubheitte they left; those gems and bits of gold that were all Cormac’s wealth in coin-less Eirrin they took.

Armed and armoured, Cormac had ridden all that night lest those three thieving archers regain courage and return to slay him from well out of his reach.

Though his careful queries had brought nothing that could be construed as a trail to his father’s killer, he remained undaunted. Mac Art was determined to give his life to the quest of those behind his father’s slaying, and had made solemn resolve to that effect. Now he’d been on his way to Baile Atha Cliath, the Town of the Ford of the Hurdles. There he hoped to find some means of earning bread and meat. He had already resigned himself to sleeping on an empty belly this night, when he had heard and entered into Forgall’s imbroglio.

He’d be happy indeed to share the Leinsterish captain’s provisions.

Forgall however, had not been stopping here for the night. He’d but reined in and dismounted to relieve himself. That urge had nearly resulted in his death. He and Cormac solemnly vowed to devise a bag to hang on the forefront of one’s saddle, that one need not dismount to make water.

Noting that Forgall glanced at a sky gone slate with only a puddle of molten red-gold to mark the sun’s passage, Cormac assured him he could wait a while longer for viands. Forgall was on his way up the coast from the capital, he said, to collect men from a little fort just south of Atha Cliath. This troop must then go back down to Carman with him, to train and receive their instructions for the Boruma . Captain of fifty or coichtaigheacht , Forgall said, he was in need of five more… four, with Cormac joining his company.

Carman-on-the-Slaigne, Cormac remembered, was on Leinster’s very northern border, at the estuary of the Slaigne-indeed, Carman’s nearest neighbour was no town, but the isle of Beg-Eri. Munster’s capital of Cashnel was but sixty or so miles west of Carman, and Tara less than a hundred miles to the north. Leinster-Laigen-formed a nearly perfect triangle, perched on one point. Munster and Meath bordered it, and, along the entire eastern coast, the Sea of Eirrin. Atha Cliath was only a bit south of Tara; the fortress Forgall was bound for, then, lay only five or so miles up the coast.

Neither man was interested in anything belonging to the Cruithne , and Cormac’s pack, on his dead horse, was empty. They did gather the weapons of metal the Picts had carried, taken from slain Erainn , men of Eirrin. On a shared whim, with grins, each man took from a dusky corpse a little leather-strung Pictish amulet, black.

Twice Cormac said he would walk; thrice Forgall bade him ride. Taraniseach-Thunderhorse-he said, would carry another fourteen stone without noticing. Though tall, the rangy youth from Connacht weighed hardly so much-and Thunderhorse indeed made no objection to carrying them both. Cormac rode behind Forgall, whose pack was before him, on the base of Thunderhorse’s darkmaned neck. Afoot Forgall was but a couple of inches shorter than his saviour; mounted, Cormac was easily able to see over the other man’s head.

“It’s a youthful terror with a sword ye be, Partha. That bit of mustache looks as though it’s just coming in.” Forgall spoke without turning.

“My height came on me early, but my face-hair is running several years late.”

Cormac/Partha was not about to reveal his extreme youth. Others might make him their butt, and for all he knew Leinster allowed none of his few years on its weaponish rolls.

Forgall but grunted without pursuing the matter. They rode in silence for a time, whilst night closed down over the sea and Eirrin’s eastern coast. Cormac bethought himself of the lies he’d told, of those he must tell. He wondered how long such a life must continue, with him wearing even his very name under a cloak of darkness. Had he realized that it would be a matter of years, his dismay would have been far greater.