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.