As Cormac nodded, Sinshi pressed close, though already her hip had long warmed his. She squeezed his hand beneath the board, and leaned close to murmur for his ears alone.
“I know what words he’d have with you, Cormac. Please, please, dear Cormac… agree, agree!”
His companions were bade tarry or wend their way to the quarters assigned them, as they would. With Uaisaer and Cathbadh, Cormac adjourned privily to another and smaller room.
“Friend Cormac,” the king quietly said, “ye’ve noted how few we of Daneira are-and how alike.”
“Aye.”
“It was but two smallish tribes of the Danans left Eirrin five centuries agone. We survive today only because this is but the second ‘invasion’ of our isle.”
The king paused, glancing at Cathbadh; the wizard-priest spoke.
“I should not have slain all those Norsemen this day, Cormac. The people of Daneira are weak. We suffer no menaces, but are prey to illness and debilities that worsen as they are passed from parent to child again and again. Many die young, very young. Many women never bear. They cannot; some because the fault is in themselves, others because-we think-the answer lies in the weak seed of our men. We linger, but we do not thrive. Daneira may not survive another hundred years. All for lack of a new strain of blood and strength in us.”
Cormac nodded, thoughtfully.
“We… have great need of you, Cormac of the Gaels,” Cathbadh said most quietly indeed. “And of the handsome lad, Brian, and that gigantic friend of yours, he who is neither Gael nor Danan.”
Cormac mac Art understood. He knew now why earlier Cathbadh had not mentioned the slain man and boy, but had mourned the potential childbearers dead of the encounter with the Norse. And mayhap there had been hope as well as fear with Sinshi, on yester day out there in the forest with Thorleif fighting his way betwixt her legs. Aye, and he understood why he had been thanked by wizard-priest and then king in the same manner: for having saved a nubile maid. Her parents had borne three, and she and her brothers were valuable to the future of Daneira.
Children were the lifeblood of any people.
The blood of relentlessly, helplessly endogamic Daneira was running thin.
And here among them for but a night were three strapping males from outside, of entirely different blood and even race! Aye, Cormac knew why he and Wulfhere and Brian were so welcome here… and perhaps why Sinshi was so extremely, nigh-unconscionably attentive. At that thought his ego suffered a little.
“It’s our seed ye want-and direly.”
King and priest nodded. “Aye.”
Cormac glanced at the closed door behind him. “My lords, this need not have been said. Maidens attend both Brian and Wulfhere, who are men, and long without women. The normal course of nature will see to the sowing of their seed in Daneira, and I hold hope for ye that it falls into rich and fertile soil. An we’re to be a bit… cold about it-”
“As we are,” Cathbadh said; “as we must be.”
“-a fertile plot once seeded need only lie and be tended with care, whilst the gardener moves to another part of the garden. In this wise, my lords, the gardens need only depart to be replaced in the gardener’s chamber by another fertile plot…”
The king nodded. Cathbadh smiled.
“So much for Wulfhere and the lad,” Cormac went on. “As for myself-it’s with my woman I’ve come among ye, and her a weapon-companion as well. With her this night for the first time in so long and with privacy available to us through your kindness, no desire is on me for others. Nay-let there be no argument among us, and us friends, for that is the way of it.”
Their faces had fallen, but his last words and raised hand stilled any pleas or demurrers.
“Methinks Sinshi’s heart will hardly be broke,” Cormac said, with in truth a bit of bitterness, for certainly she had turned his head, and now he knew not her motive. “But it’s a coward Art’s son is in some matters, and this is one. I’ll not be going back into the hall where she sits waiting.” He nodded to indicate a deep red curtain beyond them. “That portal I remember takes me to the sleeping rooms ye’ve offered, lord king of Daneira, and it’s through it I go now, not back to say Sinshi nay.”
And he did.
The two men stared at the drapes that had fallen together behind him, and they knew that with such a man they were unopenable.
“I must… have meeting with Sinshi Duach’s daughter,” Cathbadh said quietly and with thought upon him. “Where are the clothes of the strangers?.”
“They will be brought to you,” Uaisaer said. “But-what of the woman of Eirrin?”
“Mmm.” Cathbadh nodded. “I must have meeting with both Sinshi and Findhu!”
That meeting was swiftly held, ere the guests could act to spoil the plan of the wizard-priest. In the darkness of a most private room of that king’s house Cormac prepared for bed, while to another went Samaire, knowing he had rejected the little Daneiran and would soon come to her, and in a third such private room three people stood while only a candle burned. Above, Danu, Mother and Huntress, rode the sky in Her silver chariot. In the dim-lit room stood Her servant with his staff bearing Her sign, and with his robe of lacquered leaves on him. The candle flickered and lit fleetingly the two who stood before him, Sinshi and Findhu, entirely naked though not quite as the day they were born. And he spoke, and intoned, and muttered and made gestures, speaking to his goddess. And he did place upon them garments that fit them ill, being too large, whereupon lo! Sinshi assumed of a sudden the likeness of Samaire of Leinster and Findhu seemed to become Cormac mac Art.
“Go with the goddess,” Cathbadh said. “Danu be thy light.”
The two departed his company in likenesses other than their own.
Soon, Samaire came to Cormac, and he smiled and called her dairlin’ girl.
But at the same time Cormac went to Samaire in her room, and she smiled and held forth her arms.
On the morning of the morrow, Wulfhere made brag of how he’d had no wish to be selfish, and so had toiled in the gardens of no less than four delightful and delighted maids of Daneira, all of whom he swore fainted in bliss; Brian but grinned and was silent, except to say quietly that he had been… less industrious in the numbers of garden plots, but had plowed more than once in two several Daneiran gardens, and therein sown his seed.
Cormac and Samaire said naught, for. each supposed to have spent the night with the other. And it was many a day ere they knew privacy again, and learned that each had received the other that night though neither had gone, whereupon realization came upon them that they had been tricked to no fell purpose by a great mage and two loving Daneirans, no boy and no girl. After a while they laughed on the matter, and wished Sinshi well, for she, unlike Samaire Ceannselaigh, had surely taken no precautions against get.
Chapter Seven:
Thulsa Doom
Wulfhere ruddered Quester around the Isle of Danu with great care-and skill seldom surpassed. Aboard were two men of Daneira, filled with wonder and going constantly from port to starboard, from stem to prow, ever looking; neither had been asea before. At last the Dane spotted that which they sought: the wolf’s head ship of the Norsemen.
Ashore, the woods trailed off into a short but deep strand that sloped gently to the water. On the sparkling pale sand of that beach, the ship from Norge had been drawn up to the edge of the trees. She’d been turned partially crosswise, for there was little more than sixty feet of depth to the beach betwixt trees and surf, and the Norse vessel was little more than ten feet shorter.
Quester hove in cautiously, without sail.
Those aboard saw no sign of men who might have been left to guard the scarlet vessel; there was naught here but sea and sand and woods and the ship, left whilst those who had plied her so far went ashore-to their deaths.