Andrew Offutt: The Mists of Doom

They admitted Ceann-in his patched cloak and a great red mustache. He thrust a bundle at her.

“Samaire: Change clothes at once. At once! Partha: ye must decide. Stay and die, or-”

“We have just said it, Ceann. I… I will… go.” The words were far from easily said; they were nigh as hideous as death itself.

“Then it must be immediately,” Ceann snapped. “My father knows of this meeting; he’s had you watched, Samaire. Even now he sends Bress, with a warrant for you, Partha. Resist and be slain on the spot. Neither king nor High-king cares.”

“Nor Bress.”

“He goes. We go! I will flee with him, Ceann. I love him! We-”

Her brother wheeled on her. “Think, sister! Think! An he flees successfully, evades the men seeking him, will be because the gods smile and he be no fool. But if you go with him-gods of our ancestors, Samaire! Be not foolish! Our father will search the world over for you both! All Leinster will join the search for the man who carried off the king’s daughter!”

She protested, weeping, even while she changed without shame into the peasantish cloth Ceann had brought. And Ceann railed at her. The while, he too was stripping. He took up a shirt and leggings, donned them; was the sleeved blue tunic of a weapon-man. Cormac joined his efforts to make her see reason and sense, though he himself was close onto tears. I love her! I am talking her out of going with me-never to see her again!

Prince Ceann gathered her jewels, every smallest bauble including the pearl-encrusted comb. These he placed in the russet shirt he’d worn, and folded it with care over them, and used his cloak to make a bundle of it. His gaze met Cormac’s; he pressed the valuable bundle into his hands.

“Behl smile and ever shine his light on you, Partha mac Othna. And Crom protect ye, weapon-man; for ye have enemies so powerful a prince shivers to think on’t.”

And Ceann whirled, and snatched his sister’s hand, and practically dragged her from the room. Nor did her wailing cease as he hurried her away.

Cormac stood staring at the door, holding a ragtag disguise… and the jewels of a princess whose father righteously-and in truth, rightfully-desired his death. And Cormac felt as if he’d swallowed a heavy stone-two, for one was lodged in his throat.

Samaire…

Minutes passed ere he jerked, and blinked, and began again to see with staring eyes. He set his brain to work constructively. Known here, he’d betake himself elsewhere before he changed into the beggarish clothing Ceann had brought. He wrapped the little package still again in his military dress cloak of speedwell blue. He made it fast to his belt back of his left hip, behind the scabbard in which rested his accursed sword. He had no buckler; that he’d left behind in Tara. Without even glancing around at that room of sorrow, he swung to the door.

He barely avoided being bashed and swept back by it, when the door was hurled inward.

“Partha mac Othna: It’s the, king’s own warrant we bear, for your arrest.”

“Och, Bress,” Cormac said so terribly quietly, “never have I seen ye in such good cheer.”

Beside Bress mac Keth in the hall stood two others. Weapon-men all, in the familiar colour and leathern corselets of Leinster; swords by sides and shields on arms. The three stared at the fugitive. Then Bress reached across his midsection and drew his sword.

The Meathman was an accident , Cormac thought. But-as well flee or be slain for a boar as for a squealing shoat! This one I’ll enjoy doing to death. And he reached for his own hilt.

The man on Bress’s left started forward, stumbled-into Bress. As they scrambled, the fellow seeming all disjointed legs and arms and Bress cursing, the other weapon-man winked at Cormac. Nor did he or his companion draw steel. Indeed, in the staggering flailing entanglement with Bress, that man’s shield miraculously slid off his arm.

Cormac let his sword be. He’d slain but one son of Eirrin, and he by accident; he’d redden his blade no more in this his own land. In a long stride he stepped forward and all in a rush clamped Bress’s right wrist in his hand and drove his other fist into Bress’s face, just at the left eye. Bress staggered; his fingers came open and his falling sword nearly impaled his own foot. With care, Cormac struck him again, in the mouth. His knuckles came away pained and as bloody as the mouth of Bress, who sagged and fell unconscious.

“Blood of the gods, but that felt good!”

Cormac spun back into the room, fist dripping, hoping he judged the two men aright. He upended the heavy oaken table; gestured. Two grinning weapon-men hurriedly lay down on the floor. Cormac paused to bid them draw their swords. They did, and he laid the upended table on them.

“In no more than minutes, one of them gasped, “the ship of Calba sails from Atha Cliath Harbour.”

Cormac mac Art took up the dropped shield and Bress’s sword, and fled.

From the deck of a wallowing merchant ship, bound north to Alba, a tall youth gazed on the land that slid by to port. A tattered, patched cloak covered him to the eyebrows and he held it from within against the wind that drove the merchanter past Eirrin and onto Magh Rian. Fog clung to the shoreline, and then they were past it and Eirrin fell mistily behind. He turned in order to keep his gaze fixed on that misty emerald land. Already it was becoming but a whitish outline.

Full of sorrow and bitterness, the youth stared back at his beloved land. Under his peasantish attire he wore a king’s golden torc.

My voyage of exile. First from Connacht I fled, from home and hearth and those I knew. And now from Leinster… from all Eirrin. Long have I heard that the worst punishment for a Gael is exile from the land of the Gaels. We have roots, Sualtim said, like trees, and it’s far down in the earth of Eirrin they are locked. Soon will I know. Now it is horror and pain; will it grow worse? Bereft of home and friends and woman, never to hold her in these arms again, gods, never even to see her! Will it grow worse? Can it? Will I come to wish I had stayed and died, at least to lie within the soil that holds my roots?

The tall cloakbound youth swallowed, hard; swallowed again. The sword he had carried aboard was with the ship’s sailing master. He’d gain it back soon enow, were there trouble on this northward voyage, along with the fine mailcoat that had made the man’s eyes go wide. Valuable accoutrements those, to be handed him by a man in a ragged cloak bearing patches, but he had said nothing, with a princess’s garnet-set silver bracelet in his hand.

Now from within his cloak his last-minute passenger drew, surreptitiously, another sword. The sword that had been his father’s. He clutched it, gazed upon it, felt out the familiar design of the hilt, the bear’s head that topped it. He thought of how it had served his father, and then himself, of the Picts it had slain; in vengeance, in protection of Connacht, of Leinster, of Eirrin.

He raised his eyes. He saw the fog close over that land. But a single shadowy mountain peak remained visible, weirdly standing like a ghostly sentinel atop the grey-white bank of fog that was like a cloud come down to earth, to hide Eirrin from his last gaze upon it.

Then he swept his arm out in a backhand stroke, and let go the hilt. His father’s sword sailed out over the Plain of the Sea, that northward sea separating the land of the Scoti from the isle his feet would never again tread. And with scarcely a splash, the sword vanished into the water.

“Holy Mary,” a voice said beside him, “was that a sword ye hurled into the sea?”

Staring, and deep within the black cloud of his thoughts, the youth reacted with a jerk. He looked at the man who’d come up so silently. Was the ship’s sailing master. He returned his sad-eyed gaze to the sea.