The youth felt hardly heroic; in four charges he had lost spear and horse and slain only two of the enemy. Better had he dismounted! Now a glance told him that the Leinsterman had somehow missed his intended foe and plunged on past. Well down the beach, he was turning the blaze-faced chestnut. The Pict Cormac had struck with edge of blade and haft of spear was sitting up. Though his back was crimson and one leg was obviously broken, he was awaiting the Leinsterman’s return, weapons ready.
The fifth Pict was now rushing Cormac mac Art.
The youth retrieved his sword. He braced himself, knees bent, left side to the running savage, shield presented, sword out to the side, ready. Dark Pictish eyes glared into grey ones, over the shield’s rim. The sword-steel eyes were just as malevolent, for all their youthfulness.
The Pict was no such fool as to continue rushing a man so prepared; he slowed and got his own shield up and between them. This savage had faced Cormac’s kind aforenow, and learned caution-while gaining a steel-headed ax. His knotted arm swung the Celtic weapon as though it were a stick, looping, looping, watching…
Down the beach, the other Gael bellowed a wild cry. Cormac saw his own opponent’s eyes flicker; the Pict knew he must die. He loosed a terrible swing of his ax. Cormac took the desperation blow on his shield. As he began a rising swordcut, he remembered what he’d seen the Leinsterman do. The Pictish shield whipped up and Cormac essayed the nasty tactic.
Aborting the sword-stroke, he took vengeance for the Gael whose ax the Pict wielded. Cormac crotch-kicked the squat, heavily-muscled man.
Then the off-balanced Cormac fell down.
The Pict’s war-howl rose into a scream of pain and became a choking gurgle. Blazing black eyes bulged. His knees bent. His shield lowered as he obeyed the ancient, inarguable urge to clutch his wounded parts. He dropped to his knees.
That way the swishing, almost-circular stroke of the Leinsterman’s sword took off only a little more than half the squat savage’s head, rather than the entire skull at the neck. The Pict was just as dead. Cormac meanwhile was hurling himself aside; his ally’s big horse was a great dark-brown mass as it plunged past, and the pound of his hooves was as thunder in the youth’s ears.
“HA!” the Leinsterman shouted back. “Robbed ye!”
Cormac gave the man’s back a dirty look as he got to his feet. He hurried to where lay the Pict with the broken foot; he’d not have the Leinsterman claim this one too. The courageous savage stuck up his spear; Cormac cut off its head and, on the backstroke, the Pict’s. He whirled to run the doubly wounded last foeman-and watched the Leinsterman come loping up and urge his willing mount into a very thorough job of trampling the dusky form until it was scarlet.
The gazes of two pair of Gael-grey eyes met.
“Ho, ha, easy there, Taraniseach, easy! Ho there, my greedy friend! Seven Picts attacked me and it’s yourself slew three of them!”
Cormac blinked and squatted, thrusting his sword into the sand to cleanse the blade of Pictish blood. “Huh! Calling that one your own, are ye? As well call that horse mine!”
The man came to him on his prancing, headshaking mount. First glancing around to be sure there were no more foes, he flung his sword so that it drove into the sand. It stood quivering. Then he doffed his helmet, to shake out a shortish mop of hair as straight and black as Cormac’s. Cormac saw that the fellow was good-looking, if button-nosed, and that he was surely in his twenties, though his hair was early departing his forehead. His eyes were like old stone, without the hint of blue.
“Aye; your mount I greatly regret, my friend.” He looked at the downed beast; Dubheitte had snapped a foreleg in his fall. “But he be not dead…”
“Yes he is.”
Cormac spoke very quietly. Steeling himself against his own misery at the loss of the fine horse, he used his sword to end Dubheitte’s misery.
The yourthful Gael looked up at the older. “I do hope ye be wealthy, with many fine horses.”
“No such luck,” the man said. “I gave ye my name, weapon-man, and neglected to add that it’s Coichtaigheacht I am, in the king’s forces of Leinster. Ye be no Leinsterman, with that accent; what brought ye to this realm, to aid those so stupid as to be caught afoot by the enemy?”.
“I am Partha son of Othna of Ulster,” Cormac told him, using the name by which he had called himself these two weeks since he’d departed Glondarth. “A weapon-man in search of service, for it’s my father’s third son I am, and my elder brother took even my girl to himself. Nor heard I your name, Captain; I was distracted at the time.”
The man who’d called himself Chief of fifty chuckled. “Forgall mac Aed, Partha mac Othna. And travel no farther. There’s need in Leinster of sword-arms such as yours,’ aye, and your courage. It’s hard-pressed times these are, friend Partha, with the Boruma nigh upon us and rumours too of Pictish restlessness.” He glanced about at the corpses. “Spies, possibly.”
“Mayhap… and mayhap then we should not have done death on them all.”
“We’ll be telling none we could have taken a prisoner or two, eh? An ye be looking for weaponish employment, Partha mac Othna, my lord King Ulad has need of ye.”
“Truth, I ate the last of my provisions earlier today… and am now without a horse, as well.”
Forgall regarded the unfortunate steed. “A fine animal; again, sorrow’s on me that he died because of myself. A fine animal…”
Forgall seemed a bit too thoughtful, on the border of suspicion. Cormac tried to seem both nervous and prideful, all at once: “My elder brother’s,” he said.
Forgall laughed and clapped a calloused hand to a mailed shoulder. “Good for yourself, Partha, for I am a second son myself, and my brother heir to but little! However long ye bestrode yon animal, I’d say ye had better service of him than your brother of a fickle maid-oh, I intend no offense, Partha; the words slipped out.”
“None taken. She’s what ye said, and more. Be there aught of food in that bulgy pack I see behind your saddle, Fifty-chief?”
In truth Cormac had not quite worked out his story, and had already added an unplanned embellishment with the allegation that Dubheitte had belonged to a nonexistent older brother. He preferred that there be no further discussion of his past until he’d had time to fabricate it. Besides, he was hungry.
Three fellows in the forest had caught him asleep but two nights agone. Two had held him moveless with pocked arrows whilst the third packed up the young pilgrim’s belongings. They’d have taken Dubheitte too, had not the animal thrown one of their, number. Taking advantage of that distraction, Cormac had snatched up shield and spear. He caught an arrow in the shield, another, hastily loosed in the darkness, missed. His spear but grazed a man gone suddenly nerveless and running for his own mount. Another arrow made Cormac dodge so that he fell. The three men escaped into the darkness of a forest they doubtless knew. Dubheitte they left; those gems and bits of gold that were all Cormac’s wealth in coin-less Eirrin they took.
Armed and armoured, Cormac had ridden all that night lest those three thieving archers regain courage and return to slay him from well out of his reach.
Though his careful queries had brought nothing that could be construed as a trail to his father’s killer, he remained undaunted. Mac Art was determined to give his life to the quest of those behind his father’s slaying, and had made solemn resolve to that effect. Now he’d been on his way to Baile Atha Cliath, the Town of the Ford of the Hurdles. There he hoped to find some means of earning bread and meat. He had already resigned himself to sleeping on an empty belly this night, when he had heard and entered into Forgall’s imbroglio.
He’d be happy indeed to share the Leinsterish captain’s provisions.
Forgall however, had not been stopping here for the night. He’d but reined in and dismounted to relieve himself. That urge had nearly resulted in his death. He and Cormac solemnly vowed to devise a bag to hang on the forefront of one’s saddle, that one need not dismount to make water.