But an inch lower and he’d have lost the arm or been struck to the bone at least; only the linked steel sleeve of his mailcoat saved him from that horror. With the battle-fever on him he felt no pain, only the blow. Promised nevertheless a bothersome arm later and a huge tender bruise, he snarled blasphemous curses and drove his buckler forward with such vicious force that it not only struck the attacker full in the face but snapped the man’s neck.
The last Danan died instantly, to fall without a mark on him.
Chapter Ten:
The Wizard of Moytura
The deadly steel-hued eyes of Cormac mac Art were wild and glittering as he snapped his head this way and that, seeking the next foeman. There was none. It was over that swiftly, in a mad flurry of hand-to-hand ferocity that left six diminutive men of under-earth lying amid a spreading welter of blood whilst the victors had scarce begun to pant.
Wulfhere lowered his red-smeared ax and glared at his comrade. Blood dripped from his arm; it was not from his veins.
“Is that all, Wolf? I’ve not even raised a sweat!”
“Blood-mad demon from the demesne of Hell” the Gael accused, and grinned an ugly wolfish grimace. “What is it ye want? It’s six men we’ve just been after hacking our way through with steel, and ye’re after bemoaning the lack of their number! There-that one moves still; be a kind man and swiften his pace into Danu’s arms that he suffers less.”
Wulfhere first frowned in puzzlement at the seeming verbal attack. Then he began to grin, and his ax slit an agonized man’s throat with surgical precision. Cormac was meanwhile looking across the corpses to the rear of the chamber of earth and stone.
“It’s Cormac son of Art I am, a Gael from the land above. I and this redbeard are come to release ye, man… ye’ll aid us in the freeing of your queen?”
The old man blinked, and one foot shifted amid the loose stones surrounding him like a premature burial cairn. He gazed on Cormac, and there was anguish in his eyes. He spoke not.
Cormac mac Art frowned, looking up from his squat; he was carefully wiping his swordblade on the skirt of a dead man’s tunic.
“Can ye not speak? Can ye move your head, then?”
The old man nodded.
“Ah.” Cormac rose and sheathed his sword. “It’s sorcery done upon ye, is it?” He turned. “Wulfhere, we-”
“Cormac! FALL!”
The Dane’s shout rose high and loud with a definite note of desperation. Cormac knew the, tone, and saw the horrified face, and he knew this urgency signal they had each used in past. It told him that he was sore menaced from behind, could not meet the menace, and must betake himself out of the way instanter. He responded with swift obedience to exigence. Cormac did not fall; he dived to the unyielding floor with a clash of buckler and a twist of his head that allowed helm and hair to absorb the impact.
Prone, he sensed more than heard the overhead whiz of some unknown missile. He was already scrambling around to bring up sword and shield to meet whatever malign force might have materialized between himself and the Danan mage. Aye, materialized, for the experiences with Thulsa Doom had conditioned him to accept the awful reality of sorcerous attacks.
It was Wulfhere and the others who were behind him now, and from that direction he heard something hard smack the stone wall near the entry; the thrown object was not metal. On his back he faced-no one. Nothing. There was only the pile of grey and grey-brown stones, twinkling with flecks of quartz and feldspar, around the bare thin shanks of Dithorba.
Frowning, his mind weighted with the darkness of confusion, Cormac twisted again. Was Dithorba helpless-had the Danan hurled something? But he was chained… Asprawl and raised partway on one elbow, the Gael stared while Wulfhere stooped. The big man straightened, hefting the fist-sized chunk of rock he had picked up.
“This leaped from the pile and rushed at your back, Cor-Cormac! Another!”
Cormac mac Art lay on his back, legs extended toward the cairn, his neck twisted so that he faced Wulfhere. At the Dane’s words his nape crawled. There was no time to give thought to the eerieness, though; again danger threatened imminently. Even as he started to turn his face again in Dithorba’s direction, his left arm moved in a rush. Weaponman’s reflexes sent his buckler sweeping up in protection, however blindly. Luck or the gods of Eirrin guided his arm. Instinctively he swung it up and in before his sprawled body, ere he could see what he was doing.
There was a grating chunking impact on his shield, a smallish round targe, and his arm shivered. He groaned then in pain, for onto his leg dropped the flying stone he had providentially deflected with his buckler. Several pounds in weight, the rock fell on him below the hem of his mailcoat’s short skirt. Leather leggings afforded protection, there, but the blow was forceful and he felt it to the bone.
Staring eyes told him that Dithorba remained helpless. There was no one else there. No one had hurled the stone. Yet it had come flying. Twice then, stones had hurled themselves at him.
While he was starting to rise, another chunk of granite sprang at him from the jumbled pile about Dithorba Loingsech. With a feeling of horror Cormac saw the inanimate thing detach itself from the others, become animate. Agleam with twinkling quartz, it came skimming at him, low so as to catch him in face or neck.
Cormac hurled himself down and aside. He rolled. Suddenly the most important goal of his life was getting himself off the rough floor of stone and earth and into a vertical position.
It had come again.
Dark sorcery stalked him.
Again, Donn, the Dark One, dread lord of the dead, roamed the world, and again his keen eyes had fallen on Cormac mac Art. Again it was not man or beast attacking him, but the mephitic manifestation of the malign power of some wrathful wizard; the uncanny horrors of sorcery; the death that affrighted and confounded even as it came seeking, like a loosed arrow that could not be met with sword and ax or even intelligence-born tactic, but could only be feared and avoided. And yet it was worse than any humming arrow, for such at least was the product of human hands as was the bow that loosed it and even the power that drove it.
Here there was naught to attack, no place to hide and no hand or body at which to direct slaying steel.
But what or who was the source of this attack?
The Moonbow of Danu the Goddess still flashed dully on his breast, and its reversed mate hung still just below the collarbones of Thulsa Doom. Not from that master of frightsome illusions and the walking dead this unnatural assault, then; it was another who struck, and him invisible or directing from afar.
A huge stone shaped like a mollusc of singular size came whizzing, and Cormac dodged convulsively.
“Wulfhere! To your shield-side and along the wall to Dithorba! Erris-keep ye back, girl, for ye’ve no defense against this assault of rock! Thulsa Doom, move not so much as a fing-uh!”
So intent was mac Art on his directions for the circumvention of the indefensible onslaught that he was caught by it; a knobby stone just bigger than Wulfhere’s fist slammed into his right bicep. Sleeve of linked steel rings saved him from shredded skin and broken bone, but his hand flexed and his sword dropped to clatter. Cormac staggered, getting his feet back and out of the way of his own dropped glaive. With his pain-filled eyes on the source of the silent, hair-raising attack, he bent for the sword.
He paused while he reconsidered. Then he retrieved his sword-and sheathed it. Still in a crouch, staring at the cairn as though it were some snarling beast or Donn-sent demon, he backed two paces. He caught up a sword of one of the fallen Danans. As his fingers worked, shifting and shifting the pommel for the feel and balance of this brand shorter than his own, he glanced over at Wulfhere.