The Gael seemed only to twitch, fading rapidly aside while instinctively, jerking up his shield to save his face from an incredibly aimed lash. With a great drumming sound the whip struck his buckler, and its tip came snapping over to send a slash of fire into his forearm.
Pain was a shock; so too was realization of the Danan’s skill and the vicious deadliness of his whip. Blood dripped where its tip had bit, for that long whip ended in a knot about a V-shaped plug of iron.
“Get ye back, Dithorba! He’ll slash out your eyes! “
Dithorba back-paced; Elatha the Whip said nothing but only smiled. A seemingly gentle twitch of his wrist sent his whip scurrying snakelike across the floor to him. Cormac started forward. The whip snapped back, again came racing forward. With the same leftward sidestep and the same swift jerking up of his buckler Cormac again saved his face-and again his forearm was opened to let his blood fall to increase the number of dark spots that covered the floor of the hell-chamber. He bit his lip against groaning out his pain.
Blood of the gods! He durst not rush this demon of a whipmaster; the devil had absolute control over his serpentine weapon and knew precisely how to protect himself against sword-charge by the taller man; either Cormac remained at bay or charged into maiming lashes, or backed-to be followed and cut open-or used brain as he seldom had to in what he saw as simple one-to-one encounters.
Already Elatha’s lash was snaking back to him in response to a flick of his thick wrist. Cormac pondered, poised and trembling like a hound with the nervousness of the hunt on him. From their slitted sockets his sword-grey eyes glittered as he stared at the Danan whipmaster.
The two were some ten feet apart. Cormac knew he dared make no rushing Wulfhereish charge, despite his inclination to do; he’d be cut open or worse ere he reached Elatha. The torturer would but have to retreat a bit then, to place the same distance between them… having gained greater advantage by the infliction of a wound. Silently he stood, daring, mocking; come to me, his grim little smile taunted, try it!
Cormac held his ground, his eyes flicking this way and that. His brain pondered, worked, propounded ridiculous hopes and suggestions. He was helpless to attack; he must hold on the defensive, though he was hardly accustomed to it.
Again Elatha attacked. Swiftly he backed a pace, again strode lunging forward with his sweeping lash, so that the force and strength of his wrestler’s body backed and drove the long whip.
Twice had Cormac dodged leftward; to the right he moved this time, and in a cat-like pounce. The jingle of mail was followed by the great loud cracking sound of a whip’s snapping empty air. Elatha’s eyes had swerved to follow the Gael with his pale glance, but he’d been unable to change the direction of his powerful whip-stroke.
For the first time, he spoke. His voice was as emotionless as the eyes of a serpent. “Ye be fast.”
Cormac said nothing. Having gained the tiniest of psychological advantage, he would now adopt the menacing silence that had been Elatha’s.
After a moment of silence, Elatha’s face moved in a soundless snarl and he cut again. Once more Cormac waited until the torturemaster’s brawny arm came over, and then he moved. This time he did not dodge, but ran. He could not bear the inactivity of remaining only a defender. Several paces rightward he rushed, and then he charged the torturemaster of Moytura’s dungeon.
He was within four feet when the swift sideward jerk of Elatha’s wrist brought his whip leaping over like a striking reptile. It curled around his attacker’s buskined right ankle. The whip wrapped but once for it had not been hard-directed, in Elatha’s desperation.
Cormac stumbled, windmilling arms laden with buckler and brand. His charger was broken. Elatha jerked; the whip came free without yanking Cormac’s legs from under him. As the Gael regained his balance, Elatha paced swiftly backward. His arm was already snapping his length of leather to himself, and behind.
The whip rushed out. It slapped loudly on leather and wrapped four times about Cormac’s right leg. Then came the bite of its iron fang, and leather legging split just above the Gael’s knee. A gust of air leaped from his lungs, with the sound of voice in it. He strove to prepare himself for what must come next; there was no time. The moment the whip began its encircling, Elatha’s bicep leaped and he yanked.
Cormac was jerked to the floor with a crash and a grunt.
Grinning openly, Elatha the Whip transferred his stock to his left hand and spun to wrap the lash once about himself. He was brought thus that much closer-while he drew his short sword of dark iron.
Trapped a-wallow on the floor with his leg caught and held tautly extended, Cormac used all his strength and will.
He flopped onto his back; he sent his buckler racing up to meet a downrushing blade of iron that resembled in its shortness those of the Roman legions who’d lately roamed the world they had claimed to own. Iron blade crashed down on ironbound shield of hardened wood while Cormac’s own blade flicked out like a sliver of blued lightning. With a terrible impact like that of hammer on forge, Elatha’s sword struck the metal rim of the other man’s shield. A stone had cracked the wood of that buckler; now sword driven by powerful muscles actually ate into its rim, iron into iron. Despite his braced, cording muscles Cormac’s buckler was driven down nearly to his body; the sword of Elatha was no less notched than the shield-rim.
The sword of the Gael meanwhile rushed through the whip that stood taut betwixt his leg and Elatha’s waist. Its point missed the Danan’s flesh by less than the breadth of three fingers.
Great shock showed itself on the face of Elatha the Whip, who Cormac was to learn had never felt pain or known any semblance of defeat or fear; the man was accustomed to plying his whip and the other dread tools of his trade on unarmed victims, and them usually with dark despair already on them. His whip was worse than halved; his sword had failed to find flesh and was both notched and bent; the arm that wielded it was beset by a thousand needles from that terrible impact.
The burly Danan spun away, and his face bore no longer an expression of mockery, or triumph.
At the same time Cormac rolled and stood. His leg complained, for blood darkened the leather there where the severed whip dangled. He faced now a man armed with a short whip and a short sword, and it notched, and Cormac mac Art was no longer at the disadvantage.
The Gael was made overconfident thereby.
Elatha was hardly in despair or helpless. A master of whip-wielding needed no more than the yard or so of good leather strap he clutched, and he proved it. Gone was the deadly iron fang at the end of his lash, but it struck the wrist of Cormac’s sword arm so forcefully that it wrapped twice just below the leather bracer and snapped the meaty base of his thumb with its very tip.
The Gael’s arm twitched with a jerk; Elatha yanked; Cormac’s sword flew from his open-flexing fingers to ring skidding across the floor of stone and stone-hard earth.
Elatha was smiling openly and far from prettily. His short sword leaped beneath his foe’s buckler and its point grated hard against Cormac’s ribs. Only the Gael’s armour of steel chain saved him from death then, or from the wound that would have been the next to last. Still he grunted and was staggered by the blow he felt and the grating pressure on a rib. In truth, iron point slipped between linked chain and pierced through padded tunic to touch the skin over the rib. The blade widened back to the point; a circle of steel held it; the rib did not give.
Even while his arm was whipping around in a half-circle and his empty sword-hand grasping the short length of whip between himself and the Danan, Cormac’s smallish round shield rushed up and around to slam its ironbound rim into Elatha’s upper arm.
Another man grunted in pain and another hand flexed open. A second sword clanged to the floor. And another man jerked the whip. Elatha, struck hard in right shoulder and yanked by left arm, was jerked leftward and overbalanced. He staggered sidewise and only now remembered to release the whip-stock.