Andrew Offutt: The Mists of Doom

Instantly the young man was being crushed against the great beast, which sought his face or neck with its terrible jaws. Was well for the Connachtish youth he had not removed his coat of linked steel chain, else the awful claws would have ribboned his back and torn him to the bone.

Only just was the youth able to wedge an arm beneath the brute’s chin, and his body quivered with strain while he held the yellow-white teeth scant inches from his face. At the same time, his legs braced and the calves knotting within deerskin leggings, the youth plunged his dagger again and again into his ferocious antagonist.

The immediate effect was precious little, though the bear issued more screams of rage that blasted the human’s eardrums and fanned his face with the charnel-house breath of the beast; this omnivorous creature must have come recently from its winter’s nap and found meat almost at once. Now it sought more. Its prey was incredibly strongly held, squeezed in his carapace of steel links-and in imminent danger now of being crushed even as a steelbacked beetle. His entire body quivered in the strain of muscular tension. Surely his life was measured in seconds.

Straining to keep massively powerful jaws and great teeth from his face, he desperately re-directed the aim of his dagger-and plunged it into one glaring feral eye.

Long was the blade, and deep he drove it.

Steel point sundered eyeball and drove back within that vulnerable hollow to pierce smallish animal brain. Reflexively the beast hurled its foe from it, for it was sorely stricken enow to give over battle in favour of sensible flight. The valiant youth was propelled mightily backward against Bran. Both fell. Past them stamped leather-shod feet, and Midhir drove the dagger-long wedge of a spearblade solidly into the brute.

The leaf-shaped blade of iron directly pierced the beast’s heart.

Bleeding in a dozen places, the brown bear fell, rolled, clawed snarling at itself and the earth and air. Its roars and snarls diminished in strength and volume. And then its legs were kicking loosely, aimlessly. It died.

“Th-thanks be to ye, Midhir mac Fionn!” the youth gasped in a strained voice, when Midhir helped him to his feet.

“Thanks to me! Was yourself attacked the monster, Cormac! Be ye hurt?”

“Uh-” The youth swelled his torso in a brace of deep breaths that brought winces on him. “Hurts a little… it’s terrible pain I’d be feeling an my ribs or back were broke or cracked, would I not?”

In the aftermath of the attack and the prodigious fight, Midhir’s chuckle emerged as a giggle uncomplimentary to himself. “Aye, lad,” he said, clapping the youth high on the back. Leaving that hand there, he looked at Roich. “Roich?”

“Bruises. Naught more. First the waggon caught me, then Cormac fell on me-small wonder ye prevailed, son of Art: methinks ye outweigh yon beast!” Roich was feeling over himself with hands that visibly quivered. “He- Crom’s beard! My coat is torn! Torn, as if ’twere naught but linen, this stout coat of leather!”

“Aye, and so is the arm beneath, the druid said. “Come ye back to the fire and let me see to it, mac Lurchain. Cormac-it’s sure ye be there’s no hurt on ye? Let me have look at your back.”

“No need,” Midhir said. “I’ve seen men slashed to the bone, but in the heat of combat they never noticed. But our Bear-slayer’s all right, Druid. A triumph of the skill and steel of Taig the Armourer!”

“And Cormac’s steel ribs ,” grinned Roich, speaking a bit loudly now the danger was past; his hands still shook. “Much thanks I owe ye, Cormac mac Art!”

“Morelike your worthless life you’re owing to him,” Midhir said. His hand on the youth’s back propelled him to the fire on legs suddenly gone all aquiver.

The men moved back to their blaze, the youngest among them fair creaking from the crushing bearish embrace he’d endured. With herbs from his pouch Edar treated Roich’s upper arm, and the druid insisted too on seeing to the few scratches on Cormac’s hand; the hero had not noticed them.

The while, Roich and Bran were stintless in their praise of the bear-fighting youth or New-man. Was praise from Midhir that swelled the bearslayer’s boyish chest, though; this was the man most trusted by Cormac’s father, who called him even Arbenn , chieftain, and not in jest. And it was Finn’s son Midhir too who was most responsible for the training at arms of his lord’s son, as it was Sualtim the Druid who had trained the youth’s brain.

“It’s truly a man ye are, son of Art,” Midhir said very seriously. He was carving their neglected dinner, now overly charred on one side. “Your slaying of those Picts on that day of shield-splitting and now this deed are the sort that birth legends, and it’s sure that ye’ve caught the eye of Connacht’s good king. Cormac mac Art: Bearslayer!”

“And mayhap the High-king as well,” Bran said excitedly.

“The day will surely come,” Midhir said on, “when ye’ll serve our lord king directly, and him with gratitude on him for it, and… peradventure, Cormac, weapon-man, it’s yourself who’ll be winning for Connacht the Championship of Eirrin, even at the Great Fair!”

“Aye, weapon-comrade!” Roich cried.

Cormac said naught, keeping his eyes down while he bathed in the good rich oil of praise.

“Were best not to be attracting the eye of the Ard-righ,” Edar said quietly. “It is known that men have died, aye and with mystery on it, once they’ve caught the ever-roving eye of poor King Lugaid. For our High-king ever sees enemies alurk all about him, and snakes under his very bed.”

“Snakes!” Bran cried.

And laughed, and so did the others laugh with mirth upon them.

For all knew that their fair land of green meadows and swirly mist and high blue-misted mountains possessed no slithering reptiles. Nor had it ever.

“Aye, and if told there be no snakes in all Eirrin,” Roich said with high exuberance, “our High-king would surely be convinced ‘twas a lie, and set a watch over him who told it!”

“Nay, nay, for his own wife would assure him was Padraigh drove all those doubtless-millions of creepy reptiles from our land, belike with that pointed stave he carried!”

And they laughed anew.

Edar was more serious still. “All that Padraigh brought us is a plague of serpents in human form, men who slither about the fens and meadows of Crom and Lugh and Behl in robes of black, seeking to win all to the worship of the gibbet of dying Rome!”

Midhir hastily returned to his bragging on Cormac, for none among them wished to give ear to a druidish lecture on the druid’s deadly enemies. Was the biggest bear ever he’d set the gaze of eyes on, Midhir mac Fionn avowed, and the more courageous Cormac was in bracing the brute single-handedly.

“I was after trying to brace him double-handedly,” the young man said, rather shyly amid the praise, “but he made such an objection to my sword that I threw it away!”

Again there was hale laughter, and a chuckling Midhir said, “Never would I be saying that it was a foolhardy act, son of Art!”

“Oh, never , “Bran cried, and they laughed anew, while the beat of their hearts slowed and the prickle faded slowly from their armpits and the tremors commenced to quit their hands.

“Admittedly,” Midhir said, half strangling on his chuckles, “had the subject ever arisen whilst we were at your training at arms, Cormac, I’d have been advising ye not to attack a bear taller than two men and outweighing four!”

“A… bear ,” Edar murmured slowly, and his frown chased their laughter.

Blinking, thoughtful, the servant of Behl and Crom frowned about at the darkling woods. “Bears have not been seen in these forests for years, for here no caves lie near, to house them as they like it. Even so-were a bit early for one to be up and abroad after his winter’s snooze…”