“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.