The Mists of Doom

PART ONE

Chapter One:

The Plotters

The cross jumped and gleamed on the chest of the High-king’s visitor when the man coughed. Watching this priest of Jesus come out of the disguising robe, High-king Lugaid reflected that it must sore have irked Milchu to wear the robe of the Old Faith over his execution symbol. Iosa was the enemy of all other gods; Christianity and its “Saints” were the enemy of all other beliefs; the druids of the Old Faith and the priests of the New were hardly friends!

Lugaid grinned sourly. Toying with the mug of mulled wine, he reflected on how the former shepherd-slave had returned here to Eirrin-from Rome-preaching the New Faith. He attacked the old ways and beliefs directly, that Padraigh or Patriche, claiming that while as all knew the druids could with their powers bring on darkness, only Jesus the Christus brought light. And he had thrown down the great statue of Crom Cruach and its attending statuary on the Plain of Slecht. Nor had that ancient god of Eirrin, no nor Behl either, done aught to avenge the sacrilege.

Those there were who began to say that Padraigh’s god was God. His faith spread throughout the land of mighty warriors. Somehow the sons of Eirrin took the dictates of peacefulness more seriously than the people of the continent; their Saints slew Saints and all the in the name of Jesus whom they called Christus as though it were his name. Soon, Lugaid mused without pleasure, Padraigh had converted many. Aye, even including the wife of High-king Laegair, for he put guilt on her, and on his chief advisor as well, so that Laegair was no enemy of the Saints. Well Lugaid remembered the changes in his mother, and the change in the relationship between her and his royal father.

Yet even that had not been enough for the Saints. They wanted all.

They want all, Lugaid the king thought, and his hand clutched the tighter at his tankard.

Still, the Ard-righ of Eirrin was no enemy of the Old Faith either, so that druids remained welcome throughout most of the land. That proved not sufficiently satisfactory to the dark-robed priests who came to Eirrin after Padraigh. That stern man with his great pointed staff preached that which had aided the toppling of the Empire of Rome and now survived it in quest of an empire of its own.

No, Lugaid mac Laegair mused, gazing on the equally stern-faced opportunist Milchu, the Saints will settle for naught less than ownership of Eirrin-and the world. And this fanatical follower of that dead son of a wright of the Jews…

Lugaid saw Milchu for what he was, for all his ascetic face and pretensions. In the tradition of Padraigh himself was this man, and yet steps beyond him, for the priests had power now in Eirrin, and they were far from averse to using it.

This weasel face seeks only personal power and influence, Lugaid mused, and all in the name of his religion. It’s more willing this man is even than I or my uncle to set aside his moral convictions and the gentle teachings of his god, for after all there is always their Confession to Him… and surely to Milchu mac Roigh the achievement of the goal ever justifies the means used in its attainment! Indeed, when once man on the ridge of the earth feels that the warm breath of his god is upon him, it’s little there is he cannot justify in his mind!

A fitting servant for Lugaid mac Laegair then, Lugaid mac Laegair thought. Once the priest had served his purposes, the man with the ever-set lips and stern brow would easily be handled, one way or the other! For surely I, Lugaid Ard-righ thought, am the superior of any at crafty plotting, though I be plotted against on all sides by so many, at all times.

He was sure, in point of fact, that Milchu the priest plotted independent of him. For who did not? Were it not for the High-king’s supremely powerful uncle Muirchetach mac Erca-and my own genius-Lugaid would surely have been wrested from this highest of abodes years agone. Of this he was convinced.

“Ye passed safely and with ease,” he said aloud, “for surely none would expect to find a priest of Rome abroad, alurk in the oak-green robe of a druid!”

The priest tossed aside the robe-to the floor, and with the movement his pectoral cross of silver flashed, for fire and candles lit the room well if fitfully. Nor did he show amusement.

“It’s no priest of Rome I am, son of L-” he began and broke off to cough. “Son of Laegair, but a priest of Iosa Chriost our Saviour-a priest of Eirrin, as ye be her High-king!”

With a slow blink of both grey eyes amid the disappearance of his smile, Eirrin’s High-king nodded.

“The ways of God are strange,” Milchu said. “I but use the tools he places before me, lord King.” And he spurned that latest tool, the druidic robe, with his well-shod foot.

“Aye. It’s not the psalms of your god ye were to bring me, though; but information. Sit, Milchu. And speak.”

Milchu sat, sipped, leaned forward to fix the king with a gaze from the bright round eyes of a fanatic.

“Information, aye. From Connacht.”

“Ah, Connacht, Connacht. Long did it supply our land with its High-kings… until I, grandson of Niall Noiqiallach, united with the other ui-Neill and even those of Leinster, and overthrew Connacht’s power and strangle-hold on this hill! Dead is my predecessor Ailill Molt; dead is Connachtish power.” He too leaned forward, his hand only toying unconsciously with the design of his mug’s handle. “And doubtless Connachtish nobles plot, and plot! Eh, Milchu? Eh,eh?”

“Aye, High-king. There are those in Connacht who plot.”

“Ah. Against the High-king of all Eirrin!”

“Aye, High-king. Even against yourself.”

“Ah.”

A glow that came not from the fire entered into Lugaid’s grey eyes, for so he had surmised, and with Lugaid who dwelt ever in the shadow of his mighty uncle Mac Erca and the misty fogs of his own suspicions, to surmise in the matter of plotting was to believe. And in truth gladness was on him for Milchu’s confirming his suspicion-become-belief, For had the priest said otherwise, then Lugaid Laegair’s son must suspect him. Which would be to disbelieve him.

And one, Lugaid thought, must believe one’s spies… so long as one has them watched and checked now and again.

“Aye,” Milchu said again. “And plots are laid up in Ulster, too, lord King, and Munster, and even in Leinster-”

“Aye, aye, and in Meath and even here on Tara Hill!” The king’s eyes fair glittered. “But what of Connacht, priest?”

“-and we who are united in Christ and who are everywhere, king son of a king, are your eyes and ears and, with some small increase in numbers, your protection.”

Milchu spoiled his own dramatic effect then, for whilst he sought to fix the king with a meaningful gaze of steel, that feather the fog seemed to have put into his throat tickled again, so that he coughed.

Power, Lugaid thought. Increase in numbers, is it? That means increase in power! I hear ye, priest. I hear even the words ye speak not.

“Milchu.”

“Lord King?”

“Connacht.”

“Let me tell the High-king not of those who plot, but of a perhaps worse danger in Coiced Connachta of the west.”

And Lugaid listened with attentiveness and narrowed eyes grey and impenetrable as fog, and forgot the tankard of ale and the mug of good mulled wine.

“It is of a youth only recently turned fourteen I’d be speaking, lord King.”

“Fourteen! A boy! Milchu-”

Milchu but raised a pale, pale hand a little, fingers up, palm to the king. The king stared, silencing himself. And waiting.

“And is ten and four not the age of manhood, lord King? -and most especially when the youthful man in question is rising six feet in height, with an athlete’s muscle on him, and druid-taught craftiness in him, and a consummate weaponish skill, a natural talent? And when he all alone but a single moon’s passage agone did battle with no less than four Cruithne on the rocky shores of westernmost Connacht, and sustained him but a scratch, and left four Pictish corpses to rot in sun and tide?”

Staring bright-eyes, his knuckles nigh white on his tankard’s zoomorphic handle, Lugaid gestured impatiently with his other hand, for the spy had paused as if to tease.

“This is fact, Milchu?”

“This-” Milchu broke off coughing, and coughed, nor did he bring up aught of phlegm or curses. Blinking, he sipped, drank, wiped at the corner of his eye with a long thin index finger.

“This is fact, son of Laegair. He cut them down all four as trees are felled in the wood.”

“It sounds like legend.”

“Ah! Doesn’t it! It is what Connachtmen are saying of this youth… his name Cormac, son of Art son of Comal.”

“Art!”

“Aye.”

“Gods of Eirrin, what a name! Legend itself: Cormac mac Art! How dare one so named as Art give his son the name of that great High-king of long ago!”

“He does, my lord King, and with calculation. For the lord Art of Connacht has naught of the fool about him, and knew what the sound of that name he gave his son would be, in the ears and minds of all men of Eirrin… your Eirrin, mac Laegair.”

“My Eirrin,” Lugaid said, tasting the words and looking ready to smack his lips over them.

“Now this lad has done deeds to call attention to himself so that his name is heard throughout Connacht. And too, to him is applied another name, now. For it’s yourself has said it, lord King; his deed sounds like one of legend. For not only did he perform this deed with spear and sword and buckler, and him alone, but when afterward others came upon him he stood against a great standing stone on the shore, with the four death-hacked Cruithne at his feet.”

“Four,” Lugaid muttered.

“Winded he was, and splashed with Pictish gore, and he leaned panting against the great rock rising up from the sand. To those who first came onto the strand, it appeared the lad was bound there, that he was dead there, standing… as,” Milchu said on, emphasizing each several word now, “was Eirrin’s greatest hero at his death-”

“Cuchulain of Muirthemne!” Lugaid’s voice was an explosive whisper. Hey pronounced the name of the Irish Akilles or Odysseos/Ulysses; his land’s greatest folk-hero whose deeds were known to every lad. And the colour of the High-king came and went as quickly as the aspen by the stream.

“Even Cuchulain,” Milchu said.

Then Lugaid cocked his head and came nigh to smiling. “So was it at the death of Cuchulain, Chulan’s hound-and was Art’s son of Connact dead, then?”

“Far from it, lord King. Merely dazed and exhausted was the youth and his long-used arms atremble, whilst all victorious he supported himself against a stone taller than he and four times as broad.”

Lugaid’s eyes were ugly and his lips tight. “I much prefer a dead legend to a live hero, Milchu-especially with his parentage and that name.”

“Aye,” Milchu said, and he was silent then, seeing that the High-king pondered.

Known well to Lugaid was Art of Connacht. Well-birthed the man was, a descendant of the family of High-kings so many of whom had come from Connact that it had been called the Cradle of Kings and even Tara of the West. Aye, Lugaid knew of Art mac Comail. A brave and fearless fighter in the service of Connacht’s king the man was. For many a year he had done mayhem among the ever-restless Cruithne, or Picts, on Connacht’s shores.

Art, too, was of the descendants of Niall.

Seventy years dead was Niall, great High-king who had sallied forth into Alba and Britain and even into Gaul over the water. Sons he had in plenty, Fiacaid and Laegair, Conal Crimthanni of the Britonish mother, and Mani, and Conal Gulban and Eoghan and Cairbri and Enna… only thirteen years dead was Conal of Tir Connail. And these were the ui-Neill, the descendants of Niall, and so was Art, Comal’s son of Connact. Yet he was king not in Tara nor in Connacht.

Without real power the man was, and watched even by his own king for what and who he was. Lugaid knew he was popular and a hero, commander of a rath he protected well… a coastal command far from the capital at Cruachan.

I like not the man’s arrogance in naming his son Cormac, for that greatest of High-kings whose father was Art Aenfher, Art the Lonely. Too easily, he mused, staring at Milchu while hardly seeing him, do legends and popular fervors grow. And in Connacht…!

“And so… now even the son of Art of the Connachtish ui-Neill, and him bearing so auspicious and magnetic a name, is a hero…”

“Aye, lord King.”

“And him but fourteen.”

“Aye, lord King.”

“With many years ahead of him.”

“Lord King, yourself has said it.”

Aye, and a threat to the highest crown, Lugaid did not say, a threat to me!

“Now… Milchu… this is fact…”

“Lord King, the information comes from one in my service, and him of Connacht, close to Lord Art.”

“You will tell me his name.”

Milchu bowed to that and made answer at once, for it was no question but a command.

“Eoin mac Gulbain, High-king.”

“Gulban! Ah.”

“Even so, my lord King. The Lord Gulban’s son Eoin is a weapon-man among those who serve the lord Art. A brave man and a loyal warrior, Eoin… though he wears another name, keeping his own under a cloak of deception. For he has with Art a blood-feud-”

“Ahhh. And this time Lugaid did not smile, for possibilities of counteractions took shape in his mind nigh as swiftly as plots.

“Aye, lord King,” Milchu said with a nod. He knew he need not explain the significance to this ever-mistrustful man, this calculating plotter on Eirrin’s highest throne. “Aye. Nor would Eoin mac Gulbain wish good on Art, for he feels that Art was responsible for the ruination of his father and the sinking of his family.”

Now Lugaid straightened. Now he took note of his mug, with beaming eye. He drank off a draught of wine.

“What said ye, Milchu, of God’s placing tools before us…”

Milchu smiled, very thinly, as if with reluctance to allow such interference with his ascetic mien.

“Even so,” he said. “And it is of interest that Eoin is baptised as one of us, one of the Saints.”

Lugaid was grinning. Shoulders hunched, he leaned forward on his table. “And will do as bids a priest of his faith?”

“It’s only a priest of Connacht has stayed him from having his feud-vengeance on Art, lord King. Nor does he refrain with much willingness on him. This has he said of his lord, Art: ‘If he did fifty good deeds on me, surely this would be my thanks, I would not give him peace, and him in distress, but every great want I could put on him.”’

“A fine worthy young son of Eirrin! And does he have a brain within him, as well?”

“He stays his hand, lord King.”

“Umm. But unwillingly.”

“Even so, lord King.”

“Ho.” Lugaid drank. “Ha. And were a priest to speak otherwise, counsel the opposite course, perhaps point out that Art is a great enemy of Iosa Chriost-”

“In truth, lord King, he is no friend-”

“Surely then would be this fine young man’s holy duty to avenge his poor father!”

“Surely, my lord. Were he to be so convinced.” And as if he’d forgot and only just thought of it, Milchu coughed again.

“A bad cough,” the High-king commented.

“The… night air… the fog,” Milchu said weakly, bent forward so that his chin was nearly on the table.

He did not move from that strange posture, for the other man’s eyes were upon him. The two gazed steadily at each other. Nor did either misunderstand the other. The fire crackled and played games of light and shadow with their faces, though not with their eyes.

So, the Ard-righ of Eirrin thought, so simple it appears, and now we are come down to it. Will it be so simple, Milchu’s agreement to gain? Methinks not. He waits now… for he wants something. And that something, whatever it may be, lies here in these hands, for I am High-king in Eirrin!

“Shall I ask, Priest?”

“My lord?”

“Seek ye not to play at games with me, Milchu, who has played so many for so long, and who wears Eirrin’s highest crown!”

“My lord High-king. I-”

“Nor will I bargain as with some merchant over pigs or embroidery-work! Ye know well my meaning. What is it ye’d be having, Milchu, Priest, to… counsel with Eoin as to his honour and his duty?”

“My lord!”

Lugaid said nothing. Again his fingers were tracing out the shape and the inlays of his tankard’s handle. He waited.

At last Milchu leaned back, though he did not relax. “Great honour would accrue to my lord God,” he said reflectively, “and to my lord High-king and thus to Eirrin, were it Lugaid. Laegair’s son who approved my buiding a fine church in the town of Ath Cliath, with myself as Bishop once it’s done, to do glory to both God and the High-king who pleases Him.”

For a time Lugaid remained as if frozen. Then he too sat back. He bethought him. Well he knew that men said his crown rested shakily on his thinning russet locks… that he was a man who like a child abroad alone at night saw demain shapes in every shadow…

Such men of course were fools. The demons of treachery, Lugaid was convinced, did lurk in all places. The cleverer he, who with such hidden eyes as those of Milchu could pierce the shadows and draw away the dark veils from those who made plots against him. Fail to discover them and surely he’d not be toppled, for there was his uncle Mac Erca with the weaponish host But… if Muirchetach mac Erca decided that a High-king who had to be protected, nephew or no, were not, worthy of remaining enthroned?

Besides, Lugaid was sure that it was Mac Erca’s plan to make the High-kingship more than it was, not only the highest seat in Eirrin, but actually king over the other kings of the Emerald Isle. And were a western ui-Neill to be no longer available to defend that land against Picts… or… others, and his heroic son to be nipped whilst still abudding like a rose never to be seen, an acorn fed as mast to the pigs rather than allowed to grow into a great strong oak…

Aye.

Not shaky my crown; neither is my seat on Eirrin ‘s highest chair. Solid both, and to be made the more so for my sons to follow. That is, if I prepare the way for those to follow me… preserve crown and throne and thus serve Eirrin best; for how could I do elsewise, the High-king?…by removing any who offer the slightest threat to crown, or throne, or honour, and future… suzerainty!

Art mocks me by naming his son Cormac!

Cormac mac Art challenges me by bearing the name, by his feat, by suffering himself to be called Cuchulain…

Art and his weaponish son threaten Eirrin!

“It seems to me that Art and his weaponish son, Cormac and Cuchulain all combined, are threats.”

Milchu had but waited for him to speak it aloud. “It is why I’m after coming direct to yourself, High-king.

“The best time to meet such threats is before they become manifest and thus even more dangerous and harder to remove.”

“The thinking of a King of Kings, lord King,” Milchu said, and was careful to let his eyes remain flat and bland, lest they bespeak his true opinion of this… this fearful puppet of Mac Erca!

“Methinks the god of Rome-and of Eirrin-should be honoured with a fine chapel in Baile Atha Cliath… would ye be taking such a commission, Priest?”

“My lord King does honour on me!”

“Assuredly.”

“And should I wend my way eastward to Ath Cliath by a westward route, by way of… Connacht, lord King?”

The High-king’s eyes were hooded, but he leaned forward to end the game with plain words and royally extended forefinger.

“Eoin mac Gulbain were better and covered surely with honour an he avenged his father’s loss of honour on the man who replaced that father-and on the son!”

“Milchu nodded. His eyes were agleam. He rose.

“Soon, lord High-king of Eirrin, there shall have been but one Cormac mac Art in Eirrin, and him that great king dead these two hundred years! As for the other… none shall remember him, after his death at age fourteen!”

Chapter Two:

The Bear

A grassy branch popped loudly in the fire and one of the five men gathered about it shot out a foot to wipe the good-sized spark into the ground. He continued rubbing that foot along the ground; little, value a well-made buskin of good cowhide if he burned a hole in its sole. Still, one had to be mindful of the sparks. This forest-Sciath Connaict, the Shield of Connacht-had stood here in southern Connacht far longer than any man had lived, and fire in a forest was a terrible thing.

Huddled in furs to ward off the breeze-brought chill of early March, the five men stared at the fire. Eyes of blue and of grey gazed at the great haunch and leg of fresh-slain elk that sizzled on the makeshift spit they’d constructed of good green wood gathered from close round about. Bubbling fat became grease that dripped down to spat and sizzle and pop amid the flames. The aroma that rose thick on the air was enough to make stomachs rumble, and stomachs did.

Beneath their furs two of the five wore mail, linked in five circles of chain again and again in the manner of Eirrin. Two others wore the far less dear-and more swiftly made-armour coats of boiled leather. Bosses of bronze winked dully. One of these men of weapons, his helm beside him and his dark hair falling loose and sweat-matted nigh to his shoulders within his robe’s hood of hare’s fur, had bossed his leatherncoat with two great blunted cones of iron. Like huge shining blue nipples, they stood forth an inch from either side of his chest. Another of the five had doffed his plain round helm, too, and was combing tangled wheaten locks with his fingers.

The five stared at the meat, waiting. They swallowed repeatedly.

“Best ye get that pot back on your head, Roich, and forget the beauty of your hair.” It was the reddish-bearded man in chainmail who spoke. “This air does a sweaty crown no good, none at all.”

“Damned thing’s heavy,” Roich muttered, but he picked up his helmet.

“That’s because ye’ve a neck like a chicken, Roich,” the man beside him said, he in the thick heavy cloak of grey wolf and hare combined.

Roich pushed him angrily and the speaker chuckled, rocking on his buttocks.

“To gain Midhir’s advice is one thing, Bran, but to have my ears wounded with that raven’s voice of yours is more than a man can bear.”

Bran and Midhir chuckled.

The fifth among them wore an enveloping cloak of brown woollen, to which had been sewn a collar of badger. Around his hair a narrow leathern binding, a sort of head-torc or niamh-lhamn; on his chest a sun-symbol on a woven silver chain. He it was who spoke now:

“It’s with weapon-men of Art mac Comail I set forth as druid companion, and with children about a campfire I find myself. Och, only the youngest among us keeps his peace as a man.”

“Once again Edar the Druid speaks sense and truth,” the mailed, reddish-bearded man called Midhir said.

The four of them looked at him the druid had singled out; a lad he was, his face showing only the adolescent intimation of a beard to come. It would be black. Black the hair falling below his pot-like helm; nor was his skin fair like Bran’s and Midhir’s. Yet his eyes were grey-blue, the colour even in the light of the dancing fire of good sword-steel. Was he wore the other coat of chainmail, over a shirt of soft doeskin and leggings of the same. His gaze moved swiftly from one to the other of his ‘companions, returned to the elk’s leg over the fire. Praised for his mannish silence, he nevertheless spoke now.

“Midhir…“ he said, in, a voice not quite through its change to that of manhood, for he had recently reached that age at which boys were called men whether they were ready or not, and were so called until old age began to set in-usually at about forty, and usually not of long duration thereafter.

“Aye,” Midhir said, looking also at the meat.

Bucking up the knees of his crossed legs, he pressed with his heels. Chain rustled then as he thrust himself easily to his feet without touching the ground with his hands, for all the weight of his muscular self and his chaincoat and helm. His right hand pushed away his furs; his left went in to his hip and came forth with a long dagger.

Behind him, a horse whickered. Another stamped. Midhir paused to glance at the four animals, staked out for the grazing just without the fire’s light. Nearby rested the two carts they had drawn hence from Cruachan. The carts were empty.

Roich twisted half around. “Heard they something I did not?”

“It’s but happiness on them to have delivered the annual tribute to our king and have naught to pull but empty carts,” Bran said. “And less than a day from home.”

“We’ve been still and so have they,” Midhir said. “Morelike they were startled by my getting up to test this meat.” And he leaned in toward the haunch and leg of juicy elk.

It was then the thundersome roar exploded from the darkness of the woods. The noise seemed to shake the very twigs of the trees with their fledgeling buds. With wild calls, startled birds vacated their nests. One of the horses, the red-brown, reared and tugged at his leg-tether.

All five men were on their feet in an instant and staring into the darkness.

Mighty crashing noises, slavering snarls, and another roar announced the coming of… something. The men’s long spears stood from one of the carts like huge needles from a good wife’s cushion, and Roich and Bran lurched into movement toward them as if shoved. Driven they were, indeed, by the weapon-man’s training that became as instinct.

Was Bran who first snatched his spear, and at that instant the great bear came charging into the little encampment.

Like a jealous guardian of the forest privacy he was, angered at the intrusion of men into his wood, and bent on doing death on them all. Up on his two hind legs he was so that he towered over all; a shaggy brown beast rising eight feet in height. A fleeing ring ouzel hurtled across the little clearing on blurring wings, and a sizable shrew, fearing the bear more than the evidence of its nose, rushed in among the men, headed directly for the fire. It swerved sharply, skidded, and was a brown streak that vanished into the forest again.

Bran could not cast or make a running stab; the bear was already too close, and coming. The weapon-man swung his spear to get it in line with the beast even as he backed a pace. One paw the size of Bran’s head snapped the spear, bringing a grunt of pain from him as the haft slammed into his hip. The spear broke, for all its being good seasoned ash.

And then the bear caught Roich, who screamed out in a voice not a man’s.

Ere Midhir could abandon dagger and draw sword, the furs flew in a rustle from the lad at his side, and clumbed to the earth. Surely it was worse than unwise for that tall, beautifully constructed youth to do what he did then, all in an instant; he drew both sword and foot-long knife at the same time as he rushed to Roich’s aid.

That writhing weapon-man had managed to strike the bear in the nose with no more than his knuckly fist, yet with an angry and pained roar the beast hurled him aside. His gaze lit instantly on that which moved: the rushing youth. A huge shaggy arm leaped out to grasp him. The beast emitted such a fierce growling that it might have been heard through all Connacht, and he moved on the youth as if he had a mind not to stop and tear him up at all, but to swallow him at the one mouthful.

The mailed young man reacted in the manner of a seasoned warrior. So deeply did he chop into the furry arm that the bear’s instant yanking back of his limb tore the sword from it’s weilder’s grasp. The brute had shrieked-but attacked in bleeding rage, rather than fled. The other arm swept forth, and then the wounded one as well. The sword dropped free of riven flesh while the animal seized the source of its pain.

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…”

Edar looked at Cormac, and still his brow was creased and furrowed. The others were silent, stilling even their breath. The druid had spoke naught but the truth, and now it was called to mind, neither the bear’s attack nor even its presence seemed… natural.

“It is an omen, son of Art,” the druid said, and his stressing the name of Cormac’s father reminded them all that art in their tongue meant no less than “bear” even as it did over in Pretene or Britain, where one Uther had so named his son.

They sat unspeaking, impressed to the viscera, and only after several minutes did Roich break the silence with an enthusiasm born of nervousness.

“It’s no son of this bear Cormac is!”

“Though he will soon have a great enveloping winter’s cloak of its hide,” Midhir said. “I and Aevgrine will soon be seeing to that.”

But the youth looked dark with the shadow of thought on him.

“Omen?” he said. “An omen, Druid Edar? And… see ye it as good or foreboding, Lord Druid?”

Edar but shook his bronze-locked head. “This Behl does not reveal, nor does the Druid-sight that allows us occasionally to glimpse the time-to-come. Though in truth it is by night the beast came upon us, while Behl is absent from the sky and only the cold moon watches…”

Was then Midhir went again to the horses, which were still hardly calm, while Roich and Bran attacked the gloom by commencing the comparison of Cormac with the mighty hero Cuchulain in his strength and in his courage. Too high were the spirits of all to be affected darkly this night by the druid’s words. Cormac beamed, seeming to glow from deep within him, and his unease passed. Nevertheless he kept his stare fixed on the fire, pretending to ignore his exuberant companions and their high compliments. They were after all men in liege to his father…

Midhir returned to the fire. “Here, Cuchulain Bearslayer, this night it’s the champion’s portion for yourself,” he said warmly, bringing forth a dripping gobbet of meat larger than his hand.

The flames commanded Cormac’s eyes, and his gaze was as if trapped by the dancing tongues and feather-shapes of yellow and orange, crimson and white…

The champion’s portion… Cu-Chulain… the Hound of Chulan… Cuchulain of Muirthemne…

– and then Cormac mac Art was oblivious of the proffered meat, and the voices of these his companions, for he was no longer with them…

He stood in a fine shining chariot drawn by two horses with the spirit of spring breezes and springs. Mourning was on him for his driver just slain, his long-time driver and old friend Laeg, and he hurled again his spear of victory into the ranks of the gathered enemy, and its gleaming bronze point drove through a man so that he died and him behind that one was hurled backward by the point’s bursting through the first and nigh entering his belly.

And then another of the gathered enemy leaped forward, and tore free that much-blooded spear, the gau-buaid, and hurled it even as Cormac whipped up his fine team of horses-

No! Not Cormac; no son of Art was he, with sword of blue-grey steel by side, but him born Setalta and later called the hound of the smith, Chulan-Cuchulain he was, and battling the enemy who had never forgot the terrible War of the two bulls, the Brown of Cuailgne and the White-horned of Cruachan Ai. And the spear drove into one of his chariot horses, the finest in all the land, even the Grey of Macha, King of the horses of Eirinn, and him having served Cuchulain so long and so well. And he, he, Cormac who was Cuchulain, cried out, for it was another friend he’d lost this day, and life and time were closing on him the way that in his anguished mind he heard anew the druid’s words of his youth:

“If any young man should be taking up arms this day, his name will be greater than any other name in Eirrin. But his span of life will be short.” And the boy Cuchulain had immediately gone and taken up arms, aye and reddened them that day, and too he had sworn his oath of glory: “I swear by the oath of my people that I will make my deeds to be spoken of among the great deeds of heroes in their strength.”

And indeed his name became thereafter, greater than any in all Eirrin, in Emain Macha or Uladh or Laigen that was Leinster, or Cruachan Ai to become Connacht, or Tuathmumain that was become Munster.

Then, while in the midst of the enemy he anguished over the Gray of Macha that lay kicking before his chariot so that it tore free of pole and harness, he of the enemies of Cuchulain whose name was Lugaid hurled his throwing-spear of enchantment, and Cuchulain grunted and was staggered at feel of the terrible blow.

(By the fire in the wood of Connacht, young Cormac jerked and groaned so that his companions asked in concern if he had wounds on him that did not show.)

He looked down then, he who was not yet Cormac for centuries were in the way of it, and he felt the cold that came after the blow to his body, and he saw then that the spear had gone into him. In anger rather than horror he tore it from his middle, for it was long and did tug heavily at him. But then, liberated, his bowels began to coil out onto the cushions of his chariot. Down fell his arm that held Dubhan his shield, and he could not force his other hand to draw forth Cruaidin Calcidheann, the Hard, Hard-headed One, his great bronze sword of so many deeds, and the Hound of Chulan knew then that his life’s span would indeed be short. For Lugaid had surely given him his deadly wound.

Then did his other horse and companion of so many battles strain, and find that his partner was loose of the chariot, and the Black Sanglain lunged forward into a gallop so that had not Cuchulain gripped the chariot before him he’d have been hurled free. Spears whizzed amid the cries of his enemies, who had stood silent as if in awe and disbelief that he could be so wounded. And the Grey of Macha that was the King of all the horses of Eirinn left there to die among his enemies.

Down onto the strand beside the loch galloped the Balck Sanglain, drawing the chariot alone in his bolting, and it struck a great rock at the water’s edge so that it bounded high and landed on its side, and Cuchulain was hurled from it.

Then did he put shame on his enemies that were shouting after him, and indeed on all men. For he set his teeth and gathered up his guts to himself, and with the aid of his other hand and the chariot, he dragged himself to the edge of the water, and Cuchulain drank and washed himself that he might not die so filthy with dirt and blood and sweat before his enemies. And again by the aid of the chariot, he gained his feet with a lurch and a grunt.

A great slashing cold pain ran all through him from where his hand clutched his entrails to himself, and seeped blood between his fingers. And his enemies stood hushed whilst they stared, for he walked, and with his death-wound on him.

Each time his foot came down on the sandy earth the jar seemed worse than had he leaped from the top of a mighty oak, but Cuchulain walked. His eyes stared only ahead, at the great standing rock rising from the sand, and Cuchulain walked. His feet moved, one and then the other and then the first again, the while he clutched himself the way that his bowels did not spill forth and trip him. And his blood leaked and leaked, and he walked.

He walked, in an agony of pain, and surely when they had gone a million miles, his mind on naught but lifting his one foot and putting it down, and then the other, he had paced along the loch to the standing stone that had been raised there, for it was a pillar-stone.

They see a dead man walk, he thought, and clamped his teeth against a groan when he paused at the stone taller than he, the greatest hero Eirrin would ever know, with his guts slippery in his hands: His head swam and the world was red-tinged though sunset was hours away, and he clung to himself, holding back blood and looping bowels with one hand while with the other he worked.

Hours seemed to pass while he leaned against the pillar-stone, and got loose his breast-belt with a bloody hand, and then his loin-girding belt. Buckled together, he looped them over the standing stone, and set his broad back to it, the while his eyes saw a darkening red fog that was somehow also a sound, a throbbing continuing thunder in his ears. And he made shift to fasten the belt over the hole in him, and secured himself thus to the pillar-stone beside the loch. A terrible grunting groan escaped even his set lips that ground powder from his teeth for he had tugged tight the belt and yet had not the strength to hold tight his jaws the longer. And his mouth came open, and leaked blood upon his chest that was like unto that of a bear.

Yet he knew his ribs would not hold his heart, for his great hero’s heart was turned all to blood within him.

But he stood. He had bound himself upright against the stone, the way he would not meet his death lying down before his enemies, like the normal man he had never been. And though he saw only dimly, he knew then that the host of his enemies came down onto the strand, shields and spears ready, and she knew that he faced them standing erect with heels braced and guts bound up so they could not spill from within him, and even now they in their company were in dread of approaching him closely. Laughter he would have given them then, but he knew he dared not, for the strain of that laughter might sunder the straps of leather holding back the bowels that strained and sought to pour looping from him.

For he was Cuchulain of Muirthemne, and he’d die on his feet and facing his enemies. And a cloud and a weakness rose to come over him, so that his eyes were fixed.

“It is a great shame for us,” said Erc who was the son of Cairbre whom Cuchulain had slain, “not to strike the head off this man, in revenge for his striking the head off my father!”

And Cuchulain saw Lugaid then, Lugaid who had done death on him, and he was reaching for his sword-though Lugaid in truth had gone all reddish and dark and seemed to pulse with the throbbing thunder Cuchulain heard; dusk must be coming on uncommon early this day. And he heard the pounding hooves that told him his beloved horses were coming to seek to save him, and them without Laeg to drive nor Cuchulain their lifelong master to shout them on. For he was beyond shouting.

And they did, the Black Sanglain and even the wounded Grey of Macha or so he thought he saw, both of them that slew many with flashing hooves and terrible warhorse teeth, and they were slain and died, his mighty horses, and Lugaid was coming for him with his sword up and his shieldhand rising the way it would lock in Cuchulain’s hair that Lugaid might strike off his head.

And sadness was on Cuchulain to discover that his body that had served him so well no longer paid heed to his demands of it, for his arms would not rise to grapple with Lugaid, though he had killed ten tens and more of mightier men.

Lugaid’s face came closer, and filled all his vision, and then it seemed to shimmer like the pool into which a stone had been tossed, and it was no longer Lugaid’s face before Cuchulain, but that of the druid of his boyhood, Cathbadh.

“Your name will be greater than any other name in Eirrin,” the druid said, and his face pulsed redly. “But it’s short your span of life will be.”

And this was the death of Cuchulain and this too was the first of the Rememberings to come upon Cormac son of Art.

Then Cathbadh’s face, too, shimmered, even as the bright sunlight of summer off a thousand fine shields or off the broad surface of Loch Cuan.

And it was not Lugaid that he saw. And it was not Cathbadh the Druid he saw, with his face somehow surrounded by flames so that he stared out from within those very flames. Aye, though in truth it was a druid, neither Lugaid nor Cathbadh. Was Sualtim he saw with his agonized eyes.

Sualtim! he thought. This is not possible-that mentor of Cormac mac Art that I will be is not even born yet!

Oh-I am Cormac mac Art! I was Cuchulain. I am Cormac. I am in the woods, not dying though I have died afore in lives other than this one… the woods… campfire… but that is Sualtim Fodla staring at me from the fire!

Aye. Amid the dancing campfire, now opaque so that their white-and-yellow glare was invisible behind him, now opalescent and wavering amid a ruddy glow, now transparent so that he was but a cloud and the flames were completely visible behind him and through him; there stood Sualtim of Wisdom Itself.

Thin he was as ever, gaunt of face so that his skin was as aged white parchment drawn over the bone. A band of soft doeskin two fingers in breadth circled his brow, binding his thin, straight hair the colour of June clouds on a sunny day or the sleek coat of a red-eared white calf. On him not his robe of oak-forest green, but the one of white, the white robe of ceremony that was the colour of the hair of his head and his eyebrows.

The quick, bird-bright eyes stared blue at Cormac mac Art. And the gaunt old face with its lines from nostrils to the corners of his wide mouth was drawn with anguish and… could that be fear? Sualtim?

From the flames in Connacht-Shield Woods, Sualtim spoke.

“Treachery, son of Art! Get ye to the house of your father, you who are boy no longer, for it’s dark treachery stalks the rath this night.”

That was all. The image, flickered with the flicker of the fire, and grew less and less substantial. And then Sualtim was gone.

Cormac would have fallen but for the hands of an anxious Midhir.

“Cormac! What is it on ye, lad? Tell me! Crom protect-it must be that he had injuries within from that great bear!”

“N-no,” Cormac stammered, but still he was weak and disconcerted so that he reeled as he sat, and was held up only by the concerned grip of a weapons-compatriot.

“The boy-” Edar began, and interrupted himself. “Cormac has the look on him of a man who feels his other lives.” Then Edar looked about, frowning, and there was confusion in his voice: “Sualtim?”

“Cormac-”

“I… I am unharmed, Mid-Midhir.”

Cormac forced his brain to work. Cuchulain-never mind that: later!

Sualtim! Well he knew that the druid had been there, had spoken to him-yet he knew that it was not in the flesh Sualtim had come. In a Sending, a samha, he had warned, called…

Shaking off Midhir’s solicitous hands, Cormac thrust himself to his feet like a big cat. He looked about at his companions. They were staring at him.

“I have seen Sualtim. He was speaking to me. Midhir! Ye must be coming with me-now, tonight. Two of the horses we will ride; two we leave to pull the empty carts on the morrow. Edar, Roich, Bran: when day comes, make haste. We leave ye now.”

And none gainsaid the boy-man from Eirrin who turned now to ready a pair of horses; the boy-man of fourteen, who was suddenly a man in other than physical deeds, and to be obeyed.

Chapter Three:

Glondrath

The forest called Sciath Connaict debouched amid a sprinkling of alder and bilberry onto a fine long meadow that flowed out green, and planted in summer to a gentle rise on the leftward flank, as one emerged from the woods. Here Connacht defended herself. Two miles beyond the forest and this meadow lay the coast and the western sea. Just seaward of center on this ancient plain, a mighty mound rose on what was called Magh Glondarth: The Plain of Deeds, for in times gone by many a battle had been fought on these acres. The sprawling mound itself bore the name lios. When it was fortified atop so that there clustered what amounted to a warlike village or manor-estate as here, and ringed about with a strong defensive wall of earth, it became a rath.

To Comal’s son Art his king had given command of this key military post, which was both home and holding-for-the-king. Though many called it Rath Airt, naturally enough-Art’s Rath-it remained not his, but a part of the kingdom’s important defenses. For it bristled betwixt the dense forest east of which lay the rest of Eirrin and its kingdoms, and the sea, whence came occasional-raiders from the Northlands and, unceasingly, the Cruithne; the squat dark men the Romans called the Old Ones: Pictii; Picts. And thus it was not Art’s Rath at all, but a highly important outpost of the kingdom born centuries agone as Coiced Connachta; an outpost that took in all these acres and the land even unto the sea, and that for two centuries had borne the name Rath Glondarth, and, more simply by someone’s cleverness, Glondrath.

The Rath of Deeds. And many were the deeds done here by striving men at the game of the Morrigu and the shield-splitting, nor ever had Rath Glondarth fallen to attackers.

Just after dawn, two men on horseback emerged from the woods. To their right the meadowed plain rolled out and out like a carpet laid at the foot of the mountain that rose tall and tall-and gapless; to their left began the long gentle rise that gave way to highland farms and pasturage. Because of the forest with its myriad oaks and plentitude of acorns, many were the fine pigs that were raised hereabouts. Fond of pork, were the sons of Eirrin.

Nearly a mile straight ahead rose the lios and Rath Glondarth, the command of Art mac Comail of the western ui-Neill,

Comal’s fifth son was Art, and little there’d been left for him on his father’s death. Given this command because of his sword and his warlike brain, along with the failure of its previous lord, Art had proven so strong and fair-handed that men and their families had flocked to him. His command had become his estate, and good was the tribute sent by him to his king each year. Good too was Glondrath’s trade; pork fattened on these grasses and roots and acorns was known as far to the east as Carmen and southeast as Caisel and aye, even in Tir Conaill of Ailech to the north. And many were the lords’ halls south and north and east of Connacht that dispalyed on their walls Pictish spears and shields and blades, for those there were in Eirrin who had never seen the Cruithne.

Picts were well known betwixt the forest called Sciath Connaict and the sea.

Both riders who emerged from the woods were cloak-muffled, furs up, for the, dawn-chill had hardly dissipated. They sat their mounts loosely in weariness, and both beasts were winded, blowing with flanks atremble. For hours they had been urged with care through the night-blackened forest. Their riders had held their mounts to a walk while trusting otherwise to the instinct and surefootedness of the animals on the hardpacked roadway. The trail was broad, though, for reasons of defense and the slowing of any possible force of invaders, it wound about abominably.

Winded or no, the horses quickened their trot. One whickered and both strove to stretch reins and riders’ arms to allow a lope. For with home, oats and stable in sight, they were no less anxious to reach that hilltop fortress than the men they bore. Yet despite the haste that had driven them to the long ride through the night, the men held their reins now in stern hands that drew skin tight over knuckles. Neither was anxious, this close, to have his mount go down under him in final weariness.

They but glanced at the apple orchard to the east; the guard, that was ever posted there to surprise interlopers would not bestir themselves and betray their position to challenge only two men. And besides, Midhir mac Fionn was at pains to display in that direction his scarlet-painted shield with its four sun-catching points of silver; a gift from his lord Art that shield, and known farther abroad then hereabouts.

The forced ride had been cruel in more ways than one. There had been the darkness and the danger of a stumbling mount. There had been the sleepiness that came on, with the growing ache in buttocks and thighs. And too the long silent hours of darkness had afforded much time for brain-meandering.

Nor had Cormac mac Art done aught else. His mind would not clear, nor would it consent to remain on any one of his several worries. Of no avail the years of words and mental exercises drilled into him by Sualtim whose counsel was ever that one should get to know oneself, and then to control him one thus knew, to make him the better-and no animal merely reacting.

There had been too much, and all at once. The thrill of bracing that huge bear had been enow. Sure and such a feat deserved to be followed only by a basking in the bright glow of praise, followed by earned sleep. Yet close on the heels of that encounter and that accomplishment had come the… the rune-sent vision, the samha.

Cuchulain! Sure and Cormac knew the tales, which he had heard far more than once. He had dreamed of those times, of those days of great and incredible deeds. But this-!

Had his mental state, the decline in mental and physical heightening from their peak following the slaying of the bear… had these and the eyeseizing, mind-dulling effect of the fire merely sent him into a sort of trance? Had he but seemed to see, to feel himself a participant in those tales of, the Hound of Chulan the Smith?

Or… had Edar’s words held the truth? Cormac, the druid had said, had about him the look of a man remembering his past lives.

Was that what I was about? Was I Cuchulain-or rather am I? Is it possible?

Certainly few in Eirrin questioned the ancient Celtic assertion of immortality by way of the return of the basic life force in a new body. Reincarnation was a part of religion and life. A man came onto the earth, and trod the ridge of the world for a while. The while was called a lifetime. Its length varied. Then he was gone for a time again to that Other Place, Donn’s realm. Thence he returned to begin anew as an infant, the offspring of new parents, a new personality with a new name in a new body. Nor did he remember his previous lives, save in occasional snatches and glimpses. Thus was explained the inexplicable: genius in this or that trade, or at singing, or at any of the arts or skills.

Cormac’s taking to weapons and combat seemed instinctive. Perhaps. And perhaps it was the continuing ability of another life, or lives. So had Sualtim suggested, and few argued with the druids.

Whatever the explanation-if one indeed existed-that strangeness of the “remembering” had been enough, of itself. For Cormac had felt the pain and pangs of dying, physical and mental, with him unable to prevent that death or even take one more foe with him…

And then had appeared Sualtim. To the matter of the bear and the matter of the Remembering was added still a third jarring experience.

Never before had the druidic tutor of his boyhood appeared to him thus, and the man himself not there. Yet Cormac was certain had been no trick of his mind. Illusion, perhaps-but of Sualtim’s mind, of Sualtim’s devising, of Sualtim’s sending. All through the night had Cormac mac Art worried over the meaning of the druid’s all too few words. And still he did, as he and Midhir allowed their mounts to pick up their pace to a trot toward the outer wall of Glondrath.

Aye… and Cormac had known fear, too. He still did.

Treachery, Sualtim had said. Treachery-by whom, from whom? Against whom? To what malignant purpose? For how could treachery be benign, or even neutral?

Even more troublesome to his youthful mind was the dread question: Had the treachery succeeded in its doing and its purpose?

He would find out soon enough. Around him bird sang their gladness of spring’s coming, and he heard them not. The horses were nearing the tall wall of oak and earth. Men gazed down upon the riders, men in armour and, under their helms, faces that Cormac well knew. Dour and drawn were the faces of the two weapon-men on Glondrath’s eastern wall, showing little warmth of welcome to their commander and their chieftain’s son.

Much of his weariness left mac Art, then. A new energy of excitement came on him, born of apprehension and foreboding-and fearfulness.

The way was opened to the two, without a word. They passed within.

“Brychan!” Cormac called. “What’s amiss?”

The two guards exchanged a look. One said, “Amiss?”

Cormac’s stare was nigh onto a glare. “Ye heard ‘me aright.”

Brychan tucked under his lip; his companion made reply. “The druid will tell ye, son of Art.”

Brychan could not help himself. “How-how knew ye aught was amiss, son of Art?”

Cormac but looked at him; Midhir glowered. The weapon man set his teeth in his lower lip and busied himself with the gate’s closing.

The, horses paced into the sprawling townlet that had grown up around the fortress-become-manorhouse. There the main granary. There the other. There the stables. Near it the milk-sheds. There the creamery and buttery, there the cozy home of Midhir and his wife Aevgrine, and there doored mounds over underground storage chambers. Two large smokehouses. The barracks, sprawling, and homes of workmen and maids, drovers and churls, planters, the smith and armourer, the tanner and the horse-manager. Dogs yapped, wagged their tails, and some came running. Cormac’s mount whickered. A woman lugging her wash looked his way, met his eyes, looked a greeting with what seemed embarrassment, looked away. Children were clamorously at play-or work, for that life began at six or seven and sometimes earlier. Yet they seemed subdued, and they hushed at sight of the two riders.

Taller, huger, somehow darker and more gloomily foreboding, loomed the old fortress itself, the house of Art; the fortress-house that had been the home of Cormac mac Art through his memory.

Other people avoided his eyes, or looked away. None smiled. A chill came on Cormac’s very bones.

Something was sore amiss.

From the house of great oaken beams came Sualtim. Aye, and he wore his white robe as he had in his bodiless appearance to mac Art in the early hours of the previous night. Normally Sualtim, and indeed druids in general, wore their robes of deep forest green; the green of the leaves of the oak sacred to Behl.

“Sualtim! Where is my father?”

“Within, lad. Midhir: I would take Cormac in. Will ye be seeing to the horses?”

Midhir glanced about, caught the eye of a youth of eleven or so. Midhir beckoned. Then he returned his eyes-to the druid, even while Cormac slid from his horse. He alit with a clanky jingle of armour and the thwock of leather-shod, wooden swordsheath against his leg.

“Cormac,” Midhir said, and when the youth turned and looked questioningly up at him, “your buckler.”

Cormac gave his longtime trainer a look-and came about to fetch his shield from the saddle. The two had left behind their spears, awkward and indeed dangerous in a fast-walk-night ride through the woods.

“Druid,” Midhir said, as he threw his right leg over. He slid from his horse without glancing to the ground. “Are ye saying that ye want me not with ye two?”

The boy came in response to Midhir’s beckoning gesture; to him Midhir handed over the horses. “Give them good care, Curnan. It’s weary and doubtless hungry they are, but too hot to turn free in this chill.” And Midhir looked again at Sualtim.

Sualtim opened his mouth above the thin though very long beard of grey-flecked white. Ere he could speak, Cormac did.

“Nay,” the son of Art said. “Come ye with us, Midhir.” He started past Sualtim, to the greathouse.

“My pupil,” the druid began, from long habit, and paused to amend. “Cormac… wait.”

The youth, half-wheeled on the old man who remained straight though age was at work to fold his shoulders inward.

“Ye bespoke treachery, mentor,” Cormac said, forgetting he’d not told Midhir of the words of his vision. “No one we’ve seen here has behaved naturally. It’s ill or wounded my father is-”

“I but want to go in at your side, son of Art.”

And so they went. Within, in silence, they walked past the mournful face of Branwen with her deep belly, and then of Conor her nigh-bald husband, and Midhir followed them through the fortress-house to the door of the chamber of Art mac Comail. Was then a hand from the cold bed of a winterbound loch grasped at Cormac’s heart, for Sualtim did not knock.

Not even the druid, not even Cormac, entered the presence of the stern military Art mac Comail without knocking.

Cormac knew then, with his belly going light within him, that he’d be finding druids within the room, and Art lying still and cold in death, and he was right.

His eyes swam-and it was as if they sent a signal to all within Glondrath. Throughout the house and the entire rath then the keening began, for such was the way of Eirrin, and all had but awaited the arrival of the son to begin their clamorous mourning of his father’s death.

Some sons hated their fathers, often with reason. Some loved those who had sired them, equally with reason. Some sons were like shadeflowers all their lives, pale and as if delicate in their lack of forcefulness and accomplishment. Those were indeed sons all their days; sons of fathers, as opposed to men, who were also sons. Aye, and shadeflowers they were indeed, for the great light-blotting shadows of their fathers lay long and oppressive over them. Of these some sought to emerge into the light; others, like fearful rabbits, did not. When those fathers died, many of those sons, those permanent sons, subjects, were so unaccustomed to the light of freedom and decision and deeds that they were as blinded. Unequipped and unable to cope were they; such “men” became never men and were useless. Others kicked up their heels in the sudden freedom of the father-to which they were unaccustomed, and with which they were unable to cope. No longer controlled, they were unbridled. And they too were useless.

The sons of other men somehow emerged from the shadow naturally, perhaps realizing that they had been aided by their fathers and perhaps not. They became men.

And for some the shadows were foreshortened, removed; the great oaks fell before the coming of their time. Many of them sought the father, Father, all their lives. Religion helped; the religion of the Priests of Rome was for them, as it was for all who sought slavery or indeed were slaves, for among them had it been born. Some few of these sons who were early rendered fatherless became men. Perhaps they realized they were fortunate never to have been overshadowed, or to have joined the ranks of the seekers of Father. And for them and their presence in it the world, too, was fortunate.

It remained to be seen into which category Cormac mac Art would enter. Mac Art he was and would remain, though there was no longer an Art.

Art was dead. His son was alive, very alive.

He was not one with those who loved their fathers to fault. He was not one of those consumed with love for the father. Nor was he one of the many who hated the man who both sired and tyrannized-or ignored-him. For Art had been neither ineffective nor tyrant; each bred hatred. Consummate respect had been on Cormac, for Art; his fourteen years of life and his deed had reflected it. He’d He’d had much to prove; Art was to be respected, and to be impressed; he was worthy. And too his son was not the sort to be a basker in the light of another-or a delicate flower either, to dwell tranquilly in another’s shade.

Cormac would not exult in Art’s death. It did not occur to him that a son were the better for breaking free of the shade or having it removed from off his life.

Nor would he grive to excess and know despondence. It was not in him, and respect and love were never the same. As Art had been stern, and military and gruff, and busy so that Cormac had spent much time with the weapon-man Midhir and the sage druid Sualtim. Cormac had indeed respected more than loved his father; sought his approbation more than his attention and demonstrations of paternal love.

All of which was to say that Art’s son Cormac had had a quite normal relationship with his father, though he was blessed in having one worthy of respect and who did not generate hatred. Few such peopled the ridge of the world. Siring sons, as Sualtim had pointed out in warnings to the boy as he approached puberty, were a simple matter. Being father to them was something else again.

Cormac had wept, but not in despair. And he had put by his weeping; there was not time for it just now. Such luxuries must be deferred. Just now…

Art was dead and laid out white on his bed, as had been his wife but two years agone. But was no disease or accident that had laid low Art son of Comal and called him hence to await rebirth and return.

Sualtim had found him yester eve, on the westward side of the barracks. The throat of the master of Glondrath had been slashed open. Nor were there footprints, or other traces of the slayer.

The druid and the women of Glondrath had washed the dead man, and his hair, and had dressed him in his cerements. So he had lain until the arrival of Cormac and Midhir. And Midhir had made a weapon-man’s pronouncement; Art’s throat had been cut, with the blade of a dagger, not a sword or broad blade of a spear.

These few facts the three exchanged and mulled over now, in a dim-lit room within the greathouse. Cormac’s tears had begun to seep again, though he made no sound, Outside, the death-keening rose loud and eerie. Was the way of Eirrin.

“Was someone he knew and trusted, sure,” Midhir said, the words emerging between teeth that were set together. “For no enemy would have got so close as to slit the throat of such a warrior!”

“Aye,” Sualtim said. Catching Cormac’s eye, he looked pointedly at the young man’s beer, that made of wheat and honey. “Aye,” the druid repeated. “Aengus mac Domnail bethought him that he saw a man clambering over the rath-wall a short time before I discovered the bo-discovered the lord Art.”

Midhir’s head jerked up and his face was instantly alert. “Ah.” Aengus was his second, as Midhir himself had been second to Art.

“Aengus is after taking out a company of men yester night, to search. Nor have they returned.”

Cormac sat in silence whilst he gave listen, nor would he use the beer to dull and ease his mind. The while he thought of Art, and of the past, and of himself, and the tears flowed down his cheeks. The sons of Eirrin were men, and sureness of it was on them; they’d no need to hold back or disguise their tears.

Cormac knew himself to be alone now. These two discussed a dead man. He was-he had been Cormac’s only kin. He had not known the sister who died, at less than a year of age, a year before his birth. He hardly remembered the brother on whom illness and death had come, in his third year, when Cormac was but one. His mother was two years dead; in winter she died, as so many did. He was alone. He felt that alone-ness, and knew it would become loneliness.

Despair he would combat, and reject, for he remembered the words of his father on that subject, after the death of Cormac’s mother Sobarche. Despair was not worthy. That he had of his father, and he would keep all that he had of that good and noble man. Was Art too had told him that Eirrin had need of weapon-men, that Connacht did, and so he must observe Midhir, and listed to Midhir, and practice with him. Too, Art had said that the world had need of men who thought, and particularly of such men of weapons, so that he had bade Cormac listen to Sualtim, and made the boy subject to the druid who had earned; the sobriquet Fodla for his wisdom. A man should not draw blade and leap, Cormac had beep told, and told. A man should think, and consider, and let his own self decide, rather than his glands. And then were it called for, he should draw blade and leap-and if possible with the absolute ferocity of a hungry and cornered wolf. Were best not to kill, he had been told, unless it were necessary. If it were-then kill, and kill swiftly.

Someone had thought, and considered, and drawn blade, and slain Art, swiftly.

On this Cormac was reflecting when they heard the horses outside, and then the voices and tramp of men.

Was Aengus, with all his company. They had found naught. In the noonday sun he looked worse than unhappy, for all his freckles that vanished not with the winter; shame was on the face of Aengus Domnal’s son, as for some failure of his own.

Midhir allowed himself to well into a rage that would build to loud railing against his second; Aengus’s face and downcast manner helped, of course, for they were all of them sore in need of an object for their wrath.

A very young man put his hand on the shoulder of Aengus Domnal’s son.

“Thank you, Aengus,” he said, and his eyes were on Midhir, and they were clear of tears and blue-grey as sword-steel.

Aengus looked both sad and grateful. Midhir subsided. They stared at mac Art then, the two stout weapon-men and the long-gowned druid. They saw him anew, and his words now heightened their new feeling for him.

“Sualtim: my father is dead and the slayer escaped. The rath mourns. Prepare him for burial, on the morrow. Midhir: send messengers throughout the land about, and to the king in Cruachan, that Art is dead and his son burying him on the morrow. See that none of those with Aengus go; they have done their best, and are weary.”

He looked at them a moment, and then Cormac turned and re-entered the house.

Sualtim nodded. “I will prepare Art, and prepare for the funerary rites,” he said, though not for the ears of Cormac. “No need for the couriers, Midhir; that I was thinking of this morning and I saw them dispatched.” He gazed solemnly on Midhir and Aengus. “See that no mention is made of this to Cormac. He too thought of it; let it be his word.”

The two men nodded, but they were gazing after the youth-become-man, not at the druid. So big and accomplished Cormac was for his years, and him coming to manhood so suddenly, and his hard encounter with the bear to be swallowed up by this tragedy, the way that he’d never feel the good glory of it was his due. And now, now he was master of Glondrath, and he both knew it and had shown it.

And, they all realized… surely he was in danger.

Amid the keening and the intoning of words in a language far older than Eirrin, Cormac remained silent. Solemn, stern, their life-symbolizing robes of forest green laid aside for the pure colourlessness of white, Sualtim and several assisting druids said the ancient words, their voices rising from mere murmur to volume that was nigh-shouting, and descending again.

Cormac stared dully, stricken, while his father was buried. The belief that Art would be back was a sustaining comfort, but provided little relief for grief and its normal companion, self-pity. Art would not be Art again. He would return as an infant and would bear the new name of that father. Even should his and Cormac’s life-paths cross, they’d know each other not.

Midhir stepped forward, for custom prevailed and was time for personal statements of loss.

“O Art my lord, you were betrayed to your death; your end is sorrowful to us all. You to die and we to be living! Our parting is a grief forever.” His voice caught and trembled as he said, “Farewell, weapon-companion; farewell, my lord.”

And Branwen said, “Dear to me O my lord Art, was your beautiful ruddiness, dear to us all your manly form and your kindness; dear to us your clear grey eye that saw so much and held such wisdom. Dear-” The housekeeper broke down weeping then, and her husband drew her away, nor were the eyes of Conor dry.

Was Aengus moved then to the fore, nearest that which had been Art mac Comail.

“My lord and my commander,” he said quietly. “There has not come your match to the battle; there had not come and been made wrathful in combat, there had never held up shield on the field of weapons the like of yourself, O Art of Comal!”

As Aengus stepped back, Sualtim switched from the Old Language to their own Gaelic: “…for had the world been searched from Behl’s rising to sunset, Art mac Comail, the like would not have been found of your valiant and wise self. And it is breaking my own heart is in my body, to be here speaking so and listening to the sorrowing of the women and men of Glondrath of Connacht, and Connacht to be in its weakness, and without strength to defend itself, for Red Comal’s son is gone from among us.”

Exaggerations all, as were the loud cries of lament and the wringing of hands and beating of breasts.

Was the way of Eirrin, and none was hypocritical of lament or plaint for well-liked had been Art Comal’s son. And when all, others had spoken their last to the man to be received by the earth and by Donn, Lord of the Dead, his son came forward. Tears shimmered like dewdrops on Cormac’s face.

“I am a raven that has no home,” he said, little above a whisper. “I am a boat tossed from wave to wave; I am a ship that has lost its rudder; I am… the apple left dangling on the tree alone, and it’s little thought I had of your being plucked from beside it. Grief on me! My sorrow, my father! Ochone! Grief and sorrow will be with me from this day to the end of time and life.”

After a long silence Cormac added, “May the gods make smooth the path of Return for you, Art mac Comail, athair na Cormaic Aenfher!”

And he who had been called Cormac Pictslayer and Cormac Bearslayer and who now called himself Cormac the Lonely turned away of a sudden. He would not watch whilst they poured dirt over his father, but returned alone to the rath-house whilst those others completed the funerary rites of the murdered Art mac Comail of Connacht.

Chapter Four:

Master of Glondrath

Cormac mac Art had sat alone in his father’s command chamber all the morning. Outside birds twitted and a jay shrieked his raucous cry, as though angry. Otherwise there were only the somewhat muted sounds of the rath’s going about its normal business; the mournful, ear-grating keening for the dead warrior had ended. Art was in the ground. His son sat in the chamber wherein the master of Glondrath had spent most of his last eleven years. This day Cormac gave to grief, and memories. And there was the encroachment of some bitterness.

His father had been a weapon-man all his years, a man with the blood of conquerors and kings in his veins. Yet he had held little power, little land that was his own. A few acres, well away from here, in stewardship. He had known that his wife was far happier there than here; she had said naught, and he had striven for her peace whilst he kept the king’s.

Among those subject to him, the pigs for which Glondrath was well known were more numerous than human beings. The finest pork in Connacht, any agreed; the finest in all Eirrin, some said. And for this was known the descendant of Niall!

Companions most of their adult lives, Art and Midhir had served the King of Connacht willingly and well. The counsel of Lord Art, however, was seldom asked. Nor was he asked to come up to the capital where lesser men glittered. No war came on Connacht, and the constant necessity of beating off the incursions of Pictish raiding parties brought Art mac Comail no great fame or honour. Wealth and power avoided him-or rather were denied him.

Even Art’s command of this southwestern keep came not by birthright or even as result of his strength, but because of the weakness of another.

Gulban mac Luaig had commanded this rath and its people until eleven years agone; was then Gulban embraced the New Faith and commenced to wear the cross rather than the torc and sundisk or lunula. Too, he began to talk of peace with the Picts. With the Picts, who were not considered even so much as men! For the New Faith changed men, as it was changing all Eirrin and thus history-else the sons of Eire would have taken half of fallowing Britain erenow, rather than allow it to be sliced into pieces by pirates from oversea after the Romans’ departure. Battle and slaying were not “right,” Gulban began to say. Honour did not lie therein, as his people had believed for centuries upon centuries. One should turn the other cheek to him who slapped, and do all in one’s power to embrace peace, to spread and maintain peace-without point and edge. This whether the Picts gave heed or no.

Was all well in theory, Cormac remembered Art and Sualtim as saying, despite the obvious fact that the natural state of humankind and that which led it on, ever on-was striving. That striving frequently led to disputes and even war betwixt two strivers or striving peoples. And that led to the survival of the strong over all the ridge of the world. It was hardly unkown that in what remained of the two-headed wolf that had been the Empire of Rome, Christians slew each other with no less zeal than those they were arrogantly pleased to call “heathen” and “pagan.”

Besides, the Picts did not subscribe to such views, either in theory or practice.

Those dark savages would as lief slice the stones off a priest-and later his throat, an they were in a merciful mood-as of a weapon-man. These things Gulban, lord of Glondrath, knew well but seemed to have forgot. Connacht’s king knew, too, and no forgetfulness was on that wise monarch.

Indeed, as reminder, a hideous trophy hung ever on his wall amid the painted shields and flint weapons taken from slain Cruithne, Picts: a pouch stripped from the belt of one of those demons in semi-human guise. It was a hand-made pouch, threaded with drawstrings, made of the breast of a Gaelic woman of Connacht.

Connacht’s king’s reluctance was overcome by his wisdom and concern for his realm; he had Gulban stripped of rank and power. Indeed was said he had bade the man seek employment among the blackbirds, as he called those Romish priests, or at the court of the High-king, who was reportedly leaning in a crossward direction.

Was then that the Connacht-righ handed over command of his important rath to his captain of deeds and strong will and arm, Art, son of Comal. With his wife and very young son, Art mac Comail moved to, Rath Glondarth and took command. Even with the resentment that was on many because of the fall of their former lord and commander, Art had these peoples’ respect at once, their loyalty in a season, and the love of most within a year. For such a man was he.

Cormac well remembered the shame and dishonour on Gulban.

Gulban was changed aforetime, he mused this day after the funeral, and him a good man formerly. It’s no friend of the New Faith, the faith of the Dead God I’ll be, ever, with their carpenter god who makes sleeping dogs of men and would as soon that women were slaves. For such had never been the way of the daughters of Eirrin!

In his father’s chamber, Cormac sat, and he reflected on his growing to youth and manhood here, under the tutelage of Art and of Sualtim and Midhir. Advice he gained, and example, and on some occasions his lessons were accompanied by anguish and grief. Advice in the way of a man he gained, a man of Eirrin; a man of weapons.

Aye, and so he was become, a weapon-man of Eirrin.

First there was respect and later deep friendship with Midhir, his father’s close friend to whom Art always gave listen and whom he trusted to make his son a surpassing warrior. Cormac well remembered that aspect of his life; their practice and practice, their telling of warlike tales at night by the fire, quaffing weak ale often no more than barley-water. For ale was a staple, and children began early the drinking of that which all adults quaffed as a matter of course. And Cormac remembered how he and Midhir had lied’ shamelessly in those taletellings… each with the knowledge of the other.

Within his head the grieving mac Art saw the face of Midhir that day two years agone, and astonishment on that face. Cormac had watched the expression give way to happiness, and pride.

“Ye’ve won, lad! It’s death ye’ve just done on me, Cormac!”

And Cormac recalled with what delight and pride Midhir had conveyed that information to Art mac Comail. Art watched them next day, at their practice. And of course Cormac lost under those eyes, was “slain” three times by Midhir, and when he looked up after that third defeat, Art was no longer there. Naturally within ten minutes the lad had put defeat on the experienced weapon-man, and his father not there to see. But Art knew, and was proud.

Art continued to give his son word and example in the ways of leading men, and Cormac stored away that knowledge. Again he heard within his head the words of Sualtim the Wise:

A sharp mind, that truly brilliant servant of Behl and Crom was fond of saying, weighs a hundred stone heavier than a sharp sword. And Art had bade them both that the word “swift” could be substituted for “sharp,” and he exchanged a long look with Sualtim, who was his friend of mutual respect.

Then Cormac had begun defeating Midhir again and again. The lessons ceased. They became workouts, to keep both men ready and sharp of brain and reflex. Aye, and Cormac remembered his father’s pride-in-son. More than once had Art recounted the history of their land, enumerating the kings of Connacht and the High-kings in Meath. And Cormac remembered the quiet words of a man who showed no bitterness, though he had cause.

“Perhaps Ailill Molt was the last son of Connacht to sit enthroned on Tara Hill and preside over the assembled kings at Feis-more,” Art had said, gazing on his stout and clever son, “and… perhaps not.”

For Art the Bear had seen his own ancestry and high promise come to little, and held far higher hopes for his son, who would be more man, surely, than himself.

Thus with his brain full of manifold and multiform thoughts of the past did Cormac mac Art sit and wallow in days gone by, and avoid thereby thinking of the present and future. And afternoon came, and deepened.

Gods! But two nights agone he had felt strapping big and mature, much the man!

Now he was aware only of being young, with no sureness on him of either his present position or of the time-to-come-even the morrow. There was little to inherit. Nor would his king be handing over command of this important outpost to one of Cormac’s years, no matter whose son he was.

His mind continued to seek pleasant memories. He was undisturbed as he had requested; not even Branwen came to press food on him. He relived in his mind that battle with the Picts, and him alone against their four, dark and squat with blue paint on their powerful bodies. He remembered his fear that day-and how it had gone, vanished, so that he became what Midhir had so long counselled and demanded: a pure weapon-man. A creature of lightning judgment and reflex-and muscle. Thus had he fared, until four Picts lay dead, the last as surprised as the first. And their conqueror was hardly scratched, the lad they’d sought to make easy victim.

And…

Afternoon deepened the more. Light had long since ceased to find its way into the commandroom of Art. At last he who sat there seemed to come awake, as though he’d been asleep or away. He sighed in the manner of an old man. Realization came on him then; he had accomplished naught by sitting and mourning. Naught would ever be accomplished by wallowing in the past. There was much to be accomplished. Questions wanted answering. Art was dead. Cormac lived, and must live.

No questions will be answered by my sitting and mourning, dwelling in the yester days and mooning for a time that was happier! He gave a few seconds to that thought, and he never did it again. Once again Cormac mac Art began to live for today and tomorrow.

He rose, and frowned at the twinge in his back, at the kinks he felt. On impulse he pounced across the room. That was of some value; he paced, lifting his legs exaggeratedly high while cranking both arms, swinging them in half- and then in full-circles, meanwhile dropping occasionally into a squat or bending from the waist, stiff-legged.

Then Cormac left that chamber of memories.

It was not Sualtim’s quiet counsel he’d seek now; let tomorrow be put off a bit longer. He’d find purpose and some release in the lighter-weight company of Midhir. A moment’s reflection put another thought into his head. He’d ask Midhir for a working out with arms.

With that thought, he went to his own quarters. There he donned quilted long jerkin of leather, with its pendent crotch-protector. With his strength he could get easily into his coat of chain, without aid. He spread its oiled leather wrapping on the desk with which his father had surprised him on a birthday five years agone. On it he laid his coat of linked circles of chain. Bending to ease it up his arms, he mused on his growth. He had reached his father’s height seven months agone-and had not stopped growing.

Was his fourth coat of armour, this one that had been Midhir’s. The making and linking of slim steel rings into armour was a lengthy process of painstaking labour and considerable skill, his father had impressed upon him. Grow more, Art had said, and he could have a new coat next year, made for himself. Cormac swallowed. Would he ever see that promised mail?

At present, Midhir’s chaincoat fit. Midhir was thick and brawny; Cormac was built more rangily, with muscles like those of a cat. Already Midhir’s coat fell not so low on the youth as it had on the man of twoscore and one. Having pulled it up his arms and, with a little grunt, over his head-the while being careful about his ears and face-he let it jingle down his body and moved his shoulders under its weight, nigh twoscore pounds. He strapped on his scabbard-belt with its huge clasp of shining brass, pulled his buckler from the wall. Brass-faced and leather-backed it was, over the thick circle of wood, with both its bracer and grip padded with leather over wool. Sliding his hand through the bracer, he fisted the grip and departed the room. His cloak was heavy on his shoulders; the bearskin collar extended halfway down his back.

His stomach snarled, and he made Branwen relatively happy by stuffing his mouth with ham and his hand with pan-bread. Was not enough, she scolded; but he pointed to his overfull mouth, made a few wordless sounds, and left.

Outside he was greeted with restraint, the way that he durst not smile had the urge come on him. Midhir he found armed and wearing a leathern armour-coat, watching two youngsters. They worked away with smallish bucklers and leather-covered swords of wood. The warrior was happy to have his company sought by Cormac, and happy to be drawn away.

They walked in silence to the gate. Midhir gestured; they were passed through and set out across the broad plain. They talked, now.

The fact of death was one thing. That it had been murder was another. Who had slain Art mac Comail? Why? Could it have been an act of the moment, an act of rage; or… had someone wanted the man dead?

“If so,” Midhir said, “then it’s yourself’s in great danger, Cormac. For he’ll want the son in the earth with the father.”

“I cannot believe it. Who?”

“That,” Midhir said as they walked toward the woods, “we must learn.”

Cormac’s brain churned. Aye, And-how?”

“And then it’s vengeance ye must have, lad. It’s a matter for blood-feud.”

“Agreed, Midhir. And-”

“Know that whatever the situation may be or become at Glondrath, Cormac, Midhir mac Fionn will ever be with you.” Midhir slapped his swordhilt. “Vengeance, Cormac! Vengeance for Art!”

“Aye, and I’m thanking ye, Midhir. But-”

“Gods of my fathers-Art murdered! Vengeance I say, blood-feud and vengeance I vow, friend of my life!” And Midhir’s sword scraped partway out of his sheath in his passion.

And of a sudden Cormac mac Art grew older still.

Of a sudden he was aware of a great difference between himself and this pure man of weapons. Cormac had been trained by him, aye, until he was the equal and then the better of the master. He had also been trained, though, by Sualtim Fodla. Trained not to go thundering-blundering ever forward without taking careful stock, and counsel with himself. True, that thinking was to be done with all swiftness. Consideration and planning, these he had been taught-and to seek the answer that was not so obvious as a gnat perched on his nose.

“We have no name, Midhir. Whom shall we suspect? We-”

“We shall have a name!”

“Aye,” Cormac said, with a long aspiration. “Nor do we know whether it’s a plotter we seek, or… someone who… flew into a rage.” He was only just able to govern his voice then, and he paused a moment to gain control. “There is much to learn, Midhir, and more matters to be considered than we have knowledge of.”

“What matter? We find him! If it’s ten of them there be, we find and do death on ten then, Cormac Bear-slayer! Here-this path. ’Ware that fallen branch.”

The coolth and dimness of the woods closed about them. Cormac strove to explain. He had no notion of his own future, much less of his father’s slayer. He was glad he would at least have Midhir for companion, that he be not totally alone, now. Still, he had learned well his lessons from Sualtim and Art mac Comail. When there was opportunity, the two men of wisdom had impressed upon him, and the contemplated act merited action, it must needs be second to thinking and planning.

“And swift,” the voice of hiss father intoned in his mind, “as the situation demands.”

The pure man of action at his side hardly understood, and as they paced into the woods they were nigh to arguing. Midhir but stated that which to him was obvious.

“And shall I be taking spear and buckler and sword, then, and setting out in quest of the slayer?”

Midhir slammed first into palm.

“Aye! O’course!”

“And in which direction, Midhir?”

Midhir walked in silence.

“And what name shall we be putting on him, this man I go after this instant?”

In silence Midhir talked, and with a frown upon him. Cormac knew then that the man was alive because of his arms-expertise, his prowess and strength-and through good fortune. Nor did mac Art know that the time would come when he would team with another man of similar make-up and mentality, and him a huge flame-bearded Dane… and that mac Art’s counsel would prevail.

“Midhir.”

“Aye “

“It’s no family estate Glondrath is, Midhir. On the morrow, or next week, the new lord and commander may come riding.”

Midhir stopped dead still. He stared at the much younger man. “By the gods my father’s people swear by! Cormac!”

“Just so, Midhir. My entire world is-ho, look there.”

“Ah. A sidhe. “

They entered a little clearing among the thickbudding trees and brush. In its center was a cairn, though not a sidhe or fairy-mound. No, Cormac saw, this was a place of worship-rites for the common folk who yet followed the very old ways, as Celts did over in Gaul. Pacing over to the pile of stones, Cormac saw the ash of a recent bonefire. Midhir was just behind him when the youth, noting that the bones were those of small animals, bent to examine them.

He heard the harp-like twang. He heard the highpitched bee-sound come, rushing through the clearing’s air. And he heard the solid thunk.

Cormac knew the sounds. A released bowstring; a whizzing arrow; its imbedding itself in a target other than straw or wood. Heedless of the ashes, Cormac fell deliberately forward, thrusting forth his shield-arm. He rolled with difficulty, holding shield and wearing sword, and only then allowed himself a look.

Midhir, an arrow standing from his eye, limply bent at both knees and then fell, partway on his side. His left leg kicked twice, then a third time, more weakly-and no more.

Midhir! The thought was anguish and anger combined in Cormac’s mind. Bloodlust and rage leaped up in him and his heart pounded so that his pulse was a drum in his temples. Yet his brain maintained control. Kicking himself half around, he hurled himself into the scant protection of the low bushes amid the trees at the clearing’s edge. No fool of viscera and twitching reaction he, to give way to emotion and rush the supposed hiding-place of the archer; the man would but make good use of another of his goose-feathered shafts ere Cormac found his position, much less reached it.

The arrow had come from directly in front of him, beyond the cairn. He had dived leftward, tumbled arolling, and hurled himself into gorse and doebush. No more than thrice his body length separated him and the bowman, diagonally across a part of the clearing. Cormac scrambled, trying to make himself small behind his shield. Cheek against the ground, he peered around the shield’s edge.

Yes; after a time he was certain he described what he’d not have seen had the season of spring been more on the land. No greenery obscured the man behind that split- or twin-trunked alder over there.

No matter how he strained his eyes, Cormac could not identify the bowman, Cormac was aquiver; not from fear did he shake, but with realization that this was surely his father’s slayer-and that the murderer was surely bent on putting an end to the line. Only minutes agone Midhir mac Fionn had said it: “For he’ll want the son in the earth with the father.”

Aye, Cormac thought, narrowing his eyes. That arrow sang its nasty bee song over my head-had I not bent to the ashes, it would have found its real target-not Midhir!

Cautiously, keeping the shield interposed, Cormac crawled and wallowed behind a thick old oak. He was able to keep it between him and the twin-tree then, while he backed, on his knees and slowly, to another broad-boled patriarch of the forest and then to a third…

Cormac rose then, and faded into the woods and its veiling shadows. He went silently as he was able with sword and buckler and jingly armour, and him on no path. The cloak caught now and again, though he held it close; a hardy, struggling redthorn fought him for possession. The lack of greenery made his passage both easier and more nearly quiet. At last he judged that he’d worked his way beyond the clearing of the cairn, behind the murderous archer.

Shield up and sword aready, he moved in.

His heart pounded and he was sweat-wet; Cormac had never before stalked another human. And then he was there, and disappointed with a feeling of weakness on him as preparedness drained; the man was gone.

Oh, he’d been here right enow. All about the double-trunked tree the new grass was well trampled, particularly here, on the side away from the clearing. Some slim green blades were still creeping slowly erect again, as though fearful of being trodden anew.

For a long space Cormac waited there, roving the woods with his gaze until his eyes stung. He saw nothing. He heard only birds and insects. Yet it was with caution that he paced out to his fallen friend.

Midhir lay still, the arrow rising from his face. Midhir was dead.

Cormac had known it in the mind behind his mind, yet he had resisted the fact and set it aside. Now tears stung his eyes while he examined the arrow that had slain the man he had but minutes agone told himself he’d cling to. Now there was no one. Only Sualtim, a stern old man too wise and old to be a comfortable grandfather, much less a father-substitute.

The arrow was a long wand of ash, tipped with gray goose quill. Two blue stripes ringed the off-white shaft. That was the portion that counted for naught. The small tip that meant life or death, one more drastic change in Cormac’s life and a far greater one in Midhir’s… that tiny portion of the arrow was imbedded in Midhir’s brain.

Cormac moved away from the dead man. Bent to stare at the ground, he paced slowly. Midhir. Dead, all in a moment. Dead. And this second death, this second theft of life that robbed Cormac, too, of so much, was a greater blow than had been his father’s slaying. Not because of a greater feeling on him for Midhir than for Art; no, it was that he had turned in his mind to Midhir, pinned his hopes on this man.

And now both were gone. There was no one. All was gone. Anguish tightened his stomach; desperation swirled about him like murky fog.

Several times he jerked his head to rid himself of the tears that persisted in trying to blind him, though he was not sobbing. Cormac felt even more alone now than he had earlier this day. Now there was no one, and the thought came again and again. Now he-

He discovered the trail of the murderer. The man was afoot.

Cormac used his brain only a little, this time; it was cluttered and clogged and partially paralyzed by grief and sorrow for self. The day was late. Dusk was almost on the forest, and the treetops cut out much of the light of the low-lying sun. The air was becoming chill. The rath was but a few minutes away, with horses and good spears and men who’d be eager in the rage to accompany him in following a good trail.

Cloaked but afoot and without spear, horse, or companions, Cormac nevertheless followed the murderer’s trail through the forest. He felt the weening necessity of taking action on his own, and he did.

After a time he realized that the slayer was angling around, moving in a tight curve, around the northward edge of the rath-lands. He surely could not be headed for the mountains. The coast, then.

Cormac followed, never giving a thought to the fact that now he could raise help merely by shouting out. Thereby though he would warn the murdering archer. Not likely the fellow would be expecting a lone youth to follow him, and bearing only weapons for close fighting. The slayer was moving sloppily, not troubling to avoid twigs that showed Cormac their fresh breaks, or loamy spots that held a footprint or two, or clumps of early grass that were still rising after the flatening by his foot. Here he had wiped animal excrement from his buskin. The trail was that for the following by a child; that of a man confident he had escaped, and was not pursued.

Cormac’s tracking took him from the forest into rocky coastal terrain where the archer was harder to follow. Cormac felt the cold sea-breeze that brought the tang of salt to his nostrils. He moved along the little runnel from a weak spring; found a footprint where the man had hopped it. He hurried on in the direction it indicated.

Now there were no trees, and little shrubs. Stones littered the sandy earth beneath his feet; here reared a great boulder or outcrop of rock, there clung a haw. He heard seabirds, screeking and mewling like cats. Steep cliffs formed over the sea that ran from Eirrin’s western coast to-nowhere, so far as any knew. Here a foot had slid. Here the other had come down hard. Here lay stones partially imbedded; two had been freshly upturned by the passage of a foot.

The trail led the youth down a steep incline created and then scarred anew by erosion. It was only just walkable, and here the archer had fallen. Cormac did not.

It was down onto the strand the man had gone, Cormac thought, and he ran down the long hill to keep from falling. Intelligence and craftiness, now, were submerged in a red rage.

The sound of the battering of water against rocks rose in volume; the tangy scent of brine intensified; the chill grew as his cloak billowed about him. Now great boulders rose round about rearing up like strange plants from the sandy, rocky soil. Coming onto the talus at the foot of the incline, he slowed his steps.

Yet still he pressed forward intently; too intently; he was completely unaware of the possibility of a trap until it was sprung.

They were Picts, and they were three.

With the shrieks that were designed to terrify their prey whilst heightening their own courage and ferocity, they leaped at him from behind a flanking pair of towering boulders whose surfaces were smoothed from long exposure to the saltgritty winds from seaward.

Short men they were, and dark and broad, with black eyes under heavy brow-ridges and stringy, straight black hair caught by bands of leather beaded or decorated with-coral. Two wore buskins and leggings of filthy, greasy leather, and naught else but bronze bracers; the third was doubtless proud of his blue Celtic tunic-still stained with the blood of its former owner. This Pict wielded a shining sword of steel, hardly made by his kind; his companions brandished flint axes and had flint daggers girt at their sides. Huge-bladed things they were, against their chipping and snapping. All three attackers were heavily muscled, massive of arm and shoulder and leg, long of coal-black hair-and ugly. Blue paint rendered them the more savage and hideous; one had added ruddy stripes traced diagonally down his forehead to give him a permanent scowling. appearance.

They came fast and yelling, and Cormac did indeed freeze.

Only the thick bearskin collar of his cloak saved him from the running stroke of a flint-headed ax. The blow staggered him-and was pure reaction that jerked his shield-arm so that the second attacker, him with the sword, was struck hard. Running, he was hurled windmilling twice his length.

Only just was Cormac able to dodge the axstroke of the third Pict. Sword-sharp, the flinty edge whined venomously past his nose.

And then, happy to have foes on whom to vent his sorrow and frustration-on which, as the Cruithne were not considered men but only semihuman-Cormac met their return with full skill and a savagery that matched their own.

An ax slammed down and banged on his bronze-faced buckler. While it was still sliding off, the Gael’s slash caught that savage at the waist with Cormac’s edge. So vicious was the side-swiping blow that the Pict was cut nigh in half and Cormac had to twist his arm and jerk, to free his blade. His sword-arm jerked up under the wrist of a second wielder of short-hafted ax, so that it only just touched his mailed chest. Cormac’s muscles bunched and his shield came around as though weightless. It bashed into that man’s upper arm. The ax fell while the Pict toppled sidewise. The sword-armed one was coming back, and Cormac ignored the man he’d unintentionally disarmed. His eyes glared at the coming Pict like nuggets of frozen starlight.

The Pict should have foregone use of his trophy and held to his familiar ax. With his buckler Cormac easily met the sword of a slain Celt, and his thrust sank a hand’s length of his own brand through blue Celtic shirt and dusky Pictish abdomen and bone, and blood, and organs. Huge-eyed the man staggered back off the point. He dropped his sword; his mouth burbled blood. He fell kicking.

The third remaining Pict was without ax, though he had drawn his long stone dagger. He stared at their intended prey. Sore of wrist and upper arm, armed with a short blade against a long one of steel, seeing that their ambush had resulted in the horribly swift death of his fellows, the Pict turned and fled.

Cormac, battle-lust soaring in him like a fire in his blood, followed the savage downward amid a maze of boulders and rocky outcrops.

He halted just after rounding a rearing chunk of rock half again taller than himself. He stared down at the bloody corpse. Ax-hacked, it was Aengus mac Domnail, Midhir’s second-in-command and thus Art’s third. He lay in a soaked muck of scarlet sand.

All three dead, was Cormac’s first thought-and then he recorded the evidence of his eyes. The swirling red chaos of rage and headlong pursuit fled his mind, and he stared in agonized comprehension.

Chopped in several places and no longer bleeding, Aengus still clutched a bow. His hip-slung quiver had spilled its arrows, and so rapidly was the third Pict fleeing that he’d not tarried so long as to snatch up the fine shafts… shafts tipped with gray goose, and each bearing two woad-stripes of blue.

It was impossible. It was unbelievable-and Cormac had to believe. Here was clear evidence: Here lay his father’s and Midhir’s trusted aide, and the man had slain them both, and had sought to do death on Cormac as well. Mac Art had no notion why this man had done such treachery; on his longtime companions and friends, and his lord commander. His brain had been sore afflicted all the day; now his stomach twisted.

Cormac stared down at the hacked mass of mangled flesh, and on him was as much sorrow as shock and anger.

Oh, Aengus!

He was given no time now to contemplate the dead man’s treachery. Weapons clinked. A Pict called out from up the beach; another answered, and then a third voice rose. Cormac went instantly alert again. There was no puzzle here. A party of the Cruithne, several of their skin-boats full, must have made landing here. By coincidence had they run full onto the fleeing Aengus; mayhap he had a boat waiting, and they had found it. Thus they had taken Cormac’s vengeance for him. They had heard Cormac’s precipitate descent of the long declivity-or thought that Aengus might have others with him fallen behind-and set their trap. Cormac had destroyed it, and two of the ambushers. Now the third had summoned aide.

Their voices told Cormac both that they were hurrying his way and that they formed a goodly number; too many for a sensible man to face alone.

Swifty wiping his sword on Aengus’s leggings, Cormac sheathed the blade. He dragged the corpse behind the tall boulder. Taking up both bow and arrows, he raced back up the slope. He kept his footing and made headway through sheer determaintain and the strength that hurled him upward. At the top, he turned and loosed one of the traitor’s arrows; perhaps its keening and sight of it would force the Picts to take cover for a minute or two.

Whirling, Cormac followed his own and Aengus’s trail back for many yards. He leaped the runnel to leave a deep footprint, stepped back and splashed down it for a dozen yards. From the little stream he pounced onto a boulder whose colour was all too dark to show a wet footprint to any other than close-searching eyes. And he leaped thence to hard ground, and sprinted into the forest.

Here was no trail, no path. Here stumps, fallen branches and bushes slowed him. A vermiculate mass of last year’s honeysuckle sought to trip him. Swiftly as he dared-and at that falling once-he made his way back to the edge of the same trail. He ascended a tree that overlooked it. With care not to fall, he hurled one of the arrows-ahead, along the trail, as though he’d dropped it in headlong flight. Then he crouched, almost in darkness. The sky had gone a deep slate, save to the very west, where it had become all bloody-like the land here below, Cormac mused grimly.

He breathed as Sualtim had taught him, and thought the thoughts that Sualtim had taught him, to still his panting and his racing pulse. And he waited. Like a great cat crouched in a tree where he had no business being, he waited soundlessly and without the slightest movement save his breathing.

They came. Quietly they came, these woods-wise devils, so that he heard them only seconds before they were passing beneath his perch: He held his breath. Sword-grey eyes full of malign intent glared down at them, and the Picts knew it not.

They passed like shadows beneath him, squatty broad men numbering a score and more. They went on, moving inland. In the darkness below, they became invisible almost immediately. Cormac heard a cry of delight; they had discovered the arrow. He heard them break into a trot. He released his breath very slowly, drew in another, just as slowly and quietly. He heard nothing. He waited longer. The Picts passed from earshot, and no others came; why post a rear guard when they came from the sea and were pursuing one who fled afore them so precipitately that he dropped an arrow?

Cormac clambered down. He took a difficult, necessarily circuitous route back to Glondrath.

The long march at least served to keep him warm. It was dark in the forest; darkness cloaked the sprawling meadow of Glondrath when he emerged from the woods and took up a trot. As he passed a low house, a dog barked. Others joined that one, as dogs would in the night, whether or no they smelled or saw aught. Lights began to appear. Trotting, Cormac called out his own name, again and again. He heard the people that had been his father’s charges calling back and forth, repeating the identification-with relief. Grimly purposeful, spattered with blood that was not his, he strode past without making reply.

“Cormac! All good be with ye! Nervousness has been on ust that-”

Cormac interrupted the speaker ere he’d finished voicing his anxiety; he recognized Fedelm, called Iron Jaw after a horse’s kick had but bruised his face.

“Be fetching your weapons, Fedelm! Picts are well inland.”

Fedelm blinked. The cloaked youth strode on, a great stalking cat full of purpose. Never had Fedelm mac Conain had words of command from mac Art. Yet there was that about the grim young face, the way the words were spoken… Fedelm turned and set out for the barrack at a run.

Cormac approached the rath-house. There a great ring of black iron swung from the branch of a centuried oak, swung at the end of a rope thick as a man’s wrist. From a peg formed by a broken-off branch hung an iron rod by its rawhide tether. Cormac’s feet had not stopped moving when he had snatched the rod and struck the hoop a mighty blow. Then he thrust the rod through that ring of iron, within which two men could have stood, and began circling his arm.

The clangour of Glondrath’s alarum shattered the night with iron sound, so that even the dogs were shocked into silence.

Cormac paused in his clanging: “PICTS” he bellowed, and clanged the signal-hoop the more. Other voices took up the cry, and others, and ere he had ceased tormenting the iron ring men, were running, some mayhap bright-eyed with the rosy haze of ale fumes, but all bearing arms and armour.

Soon he was surrounded. Weapon-men aided each other into armour of chain and leather whilst they waited with scant patience for the arrival of others, and the words of the son of their dead lord. Some had brought torches, and none failed to perceive that there was blood on the big youth.

“The bow of Aengus Domnal’s son,” he shouted, holding high that weapon of treachery. And then Cormac mac Art told the first of the expedient lies he was never to hesitate to use, throughout his blood-smeared life. Was only a slight omission of fact, this time. “SLAIN, is Aengus! SLAIN, is Midhir! Pi-i-i-ictssss,” he bellowed, turning threequarters of a circle the while he called out the hated word. “Two I slew, and one escaped-and it’s these eyes saw him come up from the strand with a score and more of his ugly fellows. Armed to the teeth they be and tramping through the wood as though they own it-or intend to!”

Cries of horror and anger rose, and he had no more need of words; the men of Glondrath but waited to be led to the enemy that had plagued them for many tens of years.

“Fergus!” Cormac shouted. “Well I remember your injured arm, and cease your striving to hide it! Pick ten men to remain and defend, light torches and arm every woman and child lest the Picts double back! Hurry, man!”

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.

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.”

“So I felt. A fell strangeness was on your face and voice, Druid. Foolish is he who believes not druids in their saying of the time-to-come, and that look on their faces. Foolish is he who believes Sualtim Fodla not, in any matter! I do not misdoubt you, Sualtim Fodla.”

They walked for a time in silence, and then Sualtim’s age forced them to skirt to the edge of the declivity down and up which Cormac had yesterday run, so that they added to their journey. Even so, when they were on level ground once again, Sualtim had need of rest.

“I’d fain hold further converse in the matter of myself, Druid.”

“Sualtim,” the old man corrected; they were awalk again, entering the wood.

“That comes not easy on me, Sualtim. Is no easy matter, this being a respectful boy one day and a man the next.”

“I know, lad. Many things have happed, one tumbling over the other.”

“Too many. Too swiftly.”

“I’ll not be denying it, Cormac.”

“Aengus,” Cormac said, with a sad and uncomprehending shake of his head.

“If such was indeed his name. Surely he was only a minor peg of others in a game of Brandub, Cormac. A follower of Iosa Chriost-in disguise! Peradventure he wore his real name, too, under a hooded cloak?”

“Then who?”

“That,” Sualtim said, “is to be learned.”

Cormac said nothing. He walked, trying to make his chaotic mind concentrate only on keeping his strides short.

“Cormac-”

“I’ve none to seek blood-feud with. And naught for me here but despair, and bitterness and… death, as ye’ve seen for me.”

“I can deny none of that, Cormac. Your life has been changed. Like skeins taken up by a new blind weaver, the threads of your life are different, all at once. Nor can the same pattern be taken up again.”

“Why? Why am I singled out, Druid?”

“Perhaps for something else. Perhaps the gods put geas on you to do that which ye’ve yet to learn. And perhaps not, but only that you may weave your own life, become truly a man.”

“Alone.”

It was an ugly word in any language; Cormac’s tone made it the uglier. The druid had no ready reply, and they trudged in silence through the forest.

“In truth,” Sualtim said after a time, “methinks Behl has no personal interest in any individual. There are too many of us to be overseen.”

“The-the followers of the Dead God say that His father has personal interest in each person, and animal, and each happening on all the ridge of the world.”

“So they do.”

“Methinks Behl is the wiser,” Cormac said, after a time of mulling. “A god must have better things to do and think on than to be interested in Cormac mac Art.”

“Or should, indeed.”

“It’s more alone I am than any of those who believe in the Dead God, with His personal interest in them. It’s little praying I’ll be doing in this life, Druid.”

Sualtim made no reply. They walked, enveloped in woods budding into spring and each man deep in his own thoughts. Though in truth each of them thought on but one of them.

For a long while they moved thus in silence through the forest, until at last Cormac forced himself to say that which had come to the fore of his mind, again and again, to be thrust back in something approaching horror.

“I leave, Sualtim.”

“Cormac-”

Cormac had said the words; was easier now to say the rest. The decision was made; remained but to make it true, first with words and then with the deed: “I leave at once.”

“Cormac-” Sualtim trailed off. Then, “I understand. Aye. It is a man’s decision, Cormac.”

“Sualtim,” the youth said with what was nigh onto sternness, “I do not need that.”

The druid’s robe-sleeved arm moved, reached out to the tall youth. It dropped without touching his mailed arm. Great sympathy was on Sualtim, and nervousness, too. Yet there was pride; for was he and Art mac Comail-aye, and poor Midhir-who had trained and created this youth who was so strong both in mind and body-and now was forced to prove it.

“The best horse in Rath Glondarth, Cormac. Art’s horse. You will fly for safety to the northern kingdoms?”

“It is best, surely.”

“Methinks it is. And with a sumpter horse behind, and gold in your pack. Cormac. Attend me. I vow to yourself and to Behl that I shall give myself over to discovering the murderers, the identity of the plotters. And when I have information, I’ll be sending for you. Cormac-here. Tarry a moment.”

They paused amid the trees while Sualtim removed the plain lunula he wore on other than ceremonial occasions. Borrowing the much younger man’s dagger, he scratched a simple rune on its back. The druid returned the knife and bade Cormac note the mark, and commit it to memory.

“Should one bring this lunula to you, know that Sualtim has learned somewhat and has information and has sent for you. Even so, Cormac-come with care.”

Cormac nodded wordlessly; in truth just now he trusted not his throat to speak. They walked on through the wood, and Sualtim talked, and talked; his words held advice for a man now, and him alone, without family or land amid strangers. Cormac essayed to be attentive though his mind strove to wander off along the murky and fearfraught paths of might-be.

When they reached Glondrath, the two had agreed to tell none others of the decision and plan. Cormac took that which was his: his father’s sword and its’ sheath though he left behind the well-known buckler. Art’s great bearhide mantle he took as well, and a few trifles. None would question Sualtim; he it was who loaded himself with salable treasures and supplies sufficient for several days’ travel without hunting. With those packs Sualtim entered the wood until he was out of sight of the rath. Cormac, on his father’s fine black horse, rode along another trail and turned to wend through the trees only when he too was invisible to the people that had been his father’s.

The two came together in a little glade nigh in the little-used trail that led northeastward through the trees to the northern kingdoms of Eirrin: Ailech where lay Tir Connail, and Airgialla, and Dal Ariadi wherin lay both Dalriada and Ulahd that was Ulster, site of the New God’s main bishopric in Armagh.

Supplies and wherewithal they transferred to the broad back of Dubheitte: Blackwing, with Sualtim muttering that it was past time the sons of Eirrin emulated even the Romans in some things, and struck coins to simplify trading. The two gazed upon each other, and then Cormac remounted the big black horse that was ever anxious to gallop. Again the two men gazed one upon the other with misty eyes, until the younger suddenly set his jaw very tightly and rode away along the trail that would take him around the mountain that was Glondrath’s northern border. Nor did he look back.

After him Sualtim called words Cormac had heard from afore: “Cum do ghreim, Cormac, ’s than eagal duit.” And Sualtim Fodla repeated the injunction: “Keep your calm, Cormac, and there is no fear on you.”

Cormac heard, and rode, and did not look back.

Perhaps an hour later he drew restless Dubheitte to a halt. He sat, staring at naught, easing the rein so, the horse could worry the short new grass and taste its sweetness. Frowning, Cormac reflected.

Gods, what thoughts! Behl protect and Crom defend-that it’s to this I’ve come!

The ugly thoughts, persisted. He had trusted Sualtim all his life. Aye. And so had his father, and Midhir. As all three had trusted Aengus.

Now, his life shattered at the bloom of manhood and all three men torn from him by treachery and murder, he was no longer certain of anything… or anyone. Dared he trust even his lifelong mentor, a druid of the gods themselves?

Sualtim would learn nothing, Cormac mused. Sualtim would never send for him.

And if he did… how could Cormac be sure that he was not thus summoned into a trap?

O ye gods and blood of the gods! Surely not Sualtim…

But he could not be certain.

And only Sualtim knew wither he was bent.

Nay, he dared trust no one he knew, and no one in this land at all, or in the northern kingdoms; Sualtim knew he was headed thence, and others would guess.

In an agony that had been unremitting for days and was far more than any youth or man should have to bear, Cormac decided. He would ride not north, but eastward, to Leinster. That southeastern kingdom was shrouded by a long history of rivalry with both Connacht and Meath where lay Tara. Aye! And there would he keep open his eyes and ears. Leinster was full of priests; priest-ridden Laigen, Art had called it. There he would seek-with care!-to discover hint of the identity of those who’d ordered his father slain, those who had subverted Aengus mac Domnail.

And when he learned the name or names, found the men, whether they abode in Leinster or Meath, Munster or little Osraige, Connacth or Ailech, Airgialla or Ulahd or DalRiadia to the far northeast… then would the son of Art take his revenge. Aye and with Art’s own sword, and none would deter him.

With his youthful face set as granite, he tugged at Dubheitte’s reins, jerking up the horse’s head so that the beast snorted and half reared, eyes rolling for enemy or quarry. Then Cormac clucked and loosed the reins a little, so that Dubheitte set off eastward, toward Leinster, and a new life-and the unknown. Thus did Cormac mac Art depart Rath Glondarth, and Connacht, like a thief in the night. Nor did he glance back.