“The weather will hold,” Bas said.
It was a statement of absolute fact that made the Dane feel gooseflesh on his bare sweaty arms. Nevertheless he asked, “For a ship named for a god not of Eirrin?”
“The weather will hold.”
Cormac said nothing, but turned to the two of Daneira. “Mayhap this craft and these few things of Norge can be of use to ye,” he said. “It’s sure I am none will sneer at the metal ye bring home! Ye know the way to Daneira from here?
They but smiled at that. The people of Danu’s Isle knew its every inch, sure!
“Then it’s leave we’ll be taking of ye. May your goddess send happiness on ye both and all your people-and many children.” Cormac turned seaward. He was more ready to be off and away, and no love was on him for these weaponless people who had never known travail. It put a fog and a darkness on his mind, just the thought of their easy lives, for when ever had he known ease or lack of strife or the necessity of having his sword by him-aye, and shield?
“Danu be thy light, Cormac mac Art. Danu be thy light, friends of the Danans.”
“Danu be thy light, Cormac mac Art, and thou Wulfhere, and Brian. And thou Samaire-and yourself, holy druid.”
From the ship to which he’d returned to be by Thulsa Doom, Bas nodded.
Cormac boosted Samaire onto Quester and swung up. He gave her a swift crude fondle while there was none to see, and turned to aid Brian aboard. Then the Gael looked down at Wulfhere, who had turned to look back toward Daneira. Heavy laden, the two sons of Danu were lugging Norse utensils into the woods.
“Fare ye well, Wulfhere Hausakluifr,” Cormac said. “Many children. Oh-and may your goddess Danu shed her light-”
Wulfhere swung to glower up at his friend. “May plague fall on ye and the restless worms infest your anus, son of an Eirrish pig-farmer!” And the Dane swung aboard with such vehemence of motion that Quester’s planking creaked and water sloshed.
And this time they held out again to the open sea and, with sail opened to the wind, stood forth northwesterly for Eirrin. The water gurgled past the hull as if delighted to be bearing them homeward. It was a journey that might take a few days-or months, for none could ever be certain. Reckoning was worse than imprecise, and only gods might know or control the weather-which controlled both the sea and all those aboard its undulant plain.
A wind huffed without undue enthusiasm across the sea south of Britain, so that Quester’s green-latticed sail stood out nicely like a merchant’s belly. The Isle of Danu was left well behind and the voyagers were alone, as in a gigantic empty chamber that surrounded them on four sides with water and sheltered them only with a roof of sky that was nigh the same colour as the demesne of Manannan mac Lir.
The world was blue, green-blue, and white.
In the heavens Behl added the warm yellow of his smile. Cormac and his companions wore no armour, now. Mail and leathern coats were stored in the little compartment under the steering platform astern. They had buckled their weapon-belts on again; the sea was ever unpredictable and none wanted his most valuable possession swept overboard amid some emergency of wind, and wave… and three aboard had survived a volcanic eruption that brought new land onto this same ocean.
Nor could they bring themselves to store away sharp-edged steel, even though their dread enemy was now a helpless captive.
Scarlet tunics made in Daneira wore Brian and Wulfhere and Cormac, and on the chest of the latter’s new garment flashed the Moonbow on its silver chain. Rather higher up on the night-dark robe of Thulsa Doom rode his identical Chain of Danu, though with the Moonbow upside down; on him the goddess frowned and from him she turned away her face. The deadliest creature in the world sat at the mast. He was not bound. Nor could he change form or launch attack on mind or body; he wore the necklace. He sat still at the mast as he’d been bade by his master. The undying wizard was the creature of Cormac’s will, now, as before his will had commanded theirs and brought so much horror and agony on them all.
The ship slipped rapidly across the sea under swollen sail, straining toward Eirrin. Those it bore talked of what it might mean, this being in a “different dimension.” It was like unto the world they’d always known-with differences.
“What differences?”
They could not be sure. Perhaps in the world or dimension they had quit, the Isle of Danu was as uninhabited as they’d supposed.
“Mayhap,” Bas said. “Mayhap in our own dimension all that we now know of the People of Danu after our ancestors supplanted them-did not take place. Mayhap there they are not ruled by a woman at all. Or do not exist.”
“Let us hope they do,” Brian said, with a glance at their captive.
“And that a queen rules them,” Samaire added.
Wulfhere chuckled. “A niceness, if Thulsa Doom himself made it possible for us to be his weird for all and all, by bringing us here, where rules the crowned woman to end his foul existence!”
“If such does rule here,” Samaire said, for she was aware of the improbability even more than the others.
“But… where,” Brian wanted to know, “is here?”
“A plane of existence where at least one island does not exist,” the woman said, idly fingering the dark-bordered hem of the tunic made for her in Daneira; it was an almost yellow green. “Remember the isle that was suddenly not there and thereby told Bas we had been dragged here by Thulsa Doom, in his attempts to escape us.” She looked with malice on the undying mage. He sat moveless, an unwilling but helpless slave of the Chains of Danu; a slave of Cormac mac Art.
“A place where a Norseman named Thorleif, son of Hordi, once slew Wulfhere,” Cormac said.
“Hmp! That I refuse to believe! I could slay such as Thorleif all day and still have time for Daneiran maidens the whole night through!”
“They are so far astern now that not even their isle is in view,” Brian said from the tiller, where he was nervously, proudly in training-so long as the sea remained gentle. Nor was his statement made without some small wistfulness. He stared asea, his hair like a cloud about his head and his flaxen eyebrows all but invisible in the sunlight.
“An it be true what Thorleif avowed,” Bas said, “rejoice, Wulfhere. For else it’s two of ye there’d be in this plane-which is now our abode for good or ill!”
“Blood of the gods! Bas-think ye I be here-I mean… that there be two of me here?”
“Ha! An intolerable world then, two of ye, son of an Eirrish raiser of pigs!”
“Wulfhere old friend and drinker with Britons, much as hate’s upon me to tell ye of it and spoil your insults, my father was after being of the descendants of High-king Niall the Great, one of the ua-Neill of Connacht. It was no pigs my father raised. Nor in truth was he a farmer at all.”
“Nonsense, by Thor’s red beard! All the Eirrish raise pigs! Why, pork is surely the national dish and pigs’ bladders the only toy of the young!”
Samaire’s voice came in weary practicality, a whisper that forced them to fall silent in order to hear. “Truly there might be… another Samaire here, and another Cormac, and Brian, and you too, Bas?”
“Aye-but, Behl be praised, only one Thulsa Doom!”
“And only one Wulfhere,” Cormac said, “Behl be thanked nigh equally, if Thorleif did indeed kill you-him. Who could abide two of ye, with your ever-itchy beard and your babbling?”
“Ye look thirsty, Wolf of Eirrin. Could I be aiding ye into the water that ye might quench your pigfarmer’s thirst? Simple matter to hold ye by your heels-”
Samaire slapped her high-booted leg. “An ye two put not an end to your constant childness, it’s a mother ye’ll make me feel yet, the hapless dam of two bickersome boys!”
Wulfhere contritely ducked his head-in the manner, indeed, of a chastened boy. Cormac seemed not to notice her words. He’d gone all thoughtful, and gazed contemplatively at the skull-faced abomination sitting with back to mast. The Gael fingered the Moonbow on his chest.