Bas straightened up. “A mystery we can think on later,” he said. “He be not before us, and he be not in the castle either.”
“Nevertheless,” Samaire said, and she unsheathed her sword.
The three went on, in silence.
The odour of the decay of death came to their nostrils before they reached the physical evidence. With wrinkled noses, they came to where lay the remains of the mighty serpent that had attacked Cormac.
He told Bas of how he had nearly died from his error then; since he had been twice set upon by those that were not truly there, he had assumed the serpent-three times his length and more thick than his arm-to have been the same.
“It was real enough,” he said. “And it took a lot of killing.”
Despite the odour of putrefaction, Bas was pacing along the curving length of the dead reptile. Turning away, he sucked in a deep breath and released it, then sucked in another, which he held. The druid squatted beside the dead monster.
“What is it, lord Druid?”
“It is a dead serpent of impossible size, Cormac. A sea monster, one must suppose, for all know such frightful monsters inhabit the keep of Manannan mac Lyr. A serpent… dead, from the smell and the extent of its decay, less than a month.”
Nor, could all Cormac’s and Samaire’s gasping and denials belie the evidence.
Fact: near unto death in squeezing coils and with his shield ruined and his sword-arm pinned to his side, the son of Art had drawn his dagger, lefthanded, and stabbed his reptilian attacker many times in the space of a few seconds. Fact: he had slain the serpent, and gone on in pursuit of Samaire and the anomaly of a druid of the Norse. Fact: when they two had come back this way not long after, the great creature had lain dead as now, though without any decay at all. There had been a lake of blood, and Cormac had retrieved his sax-knife from the monster’s mouth.
Fact, then: this enormous snake had been slain three months agone.
Evidence: that it had begun to decay but a few more than a score of days before now; it had lain here two full months before began that ugly and stenchy process that begins in all creatures immediately after death, whether there be flies to lay their maggot-spawning eggs in the swelling corpse or no.
There was no explanation. No… natural explanation.
They went on, and soon Cormac was saying, “Ah. It was just beyond this bend that I came upon them at last-Cutha Atheldane and Samaire.”
“I like not the way ye do put his name first,” Samaire said with a smile.
Bas did not smile. “And here ye killed him.”
“No no-here Samaire killed him! It was she who was the captive maid, ye see, and I the pursuing warrior. I suppose he heard my approach, and turned from her to stand ready to face me-doubtless to use his eyes and brain, and my eyes and brain, to confound me with more illusions. But the poor son of a donkey had turned his back on a warrior, not a helpless girl he’d kidnaped! He dropped to his knees and then stretched his length just as I caught sight of him… it was his own dagger he wore in him, to the hilt.”
About to follow the turn of the passage, Cormac glanced back to show one of his almost-smiles. He directed at Samaire a look that saw past the prettiness of face and well-wrought womanly form. Then he went on and stopped with an oath.
The others crowded in to look upon what his astonished eyes beheld: nothing.
Of course they were certain, Samaire and Cormac told Bas with some heat; here had lain Cutha Atheldane. Aye, and he was dead. Here, this was his blood, Cormac said, holding up the dark-threaded dust.
But Cutha Atheldane lay there no longer.
The three stood close. None of them even approached comfort in the mind.
“The footprints…”
“Aye…”
“A dead man… walked out of here…”
“And… raised… others to await our return!”
“Bas!” Cormac’s eyes were grimly bright. “That dead Norseman ye made to speak-can you remember that ye asked him twice for his name? First he commenced to reply ‘Cuth,’ and then said ‘no,’ for it was the wrong name. It was after ye asked him again that he pronounced that other name.”
Bas nodded. “It’s right ye must have it, Cormac. It’s Cutha Atheldane Samaire slew, and Cutha Atheldane is dead. His body walks the earth, though, a husk now, guided by the brain of another. An undying brain, and how it came to be here, or where it lay all these centuries, who can say? But that brain is amove again, within a human body, and it seeks an ancient revenge, Cormac, on you.”
“O ye gods,” Samaire murmured, “why talk ye so? Surely such things cannot be-a man from the past, who can resurrect the body of a man slain in the present-his future, and-”
“A man,” Cormac said, with an arm across her back and a hand on her waist, “with naught for a face but bones-a death’s head!”
Bas spoke, and in that place of eeriness and deathconquering sorcery his voice was passing quiet.
“The man ye slew here, Princess Samaire, is dead, make no mistake. Like those we defeated today, and yet unlike them, he is… un-dead. For though he lay here in death, now he walks and plots again-Cutha Atheldane, driven by the vengeful mind of an ancient wizard… Thulsa Doom!”
Chapter Nine:
Memories
The men of Cormac mac Art went through the halls and rooms of the castle, collecting the booty stored there by Norse rievers or reavers: raiders from the sea. They gathered it in a glittering pile along the defense-hall across the fore of the castle. From there it would be carried down and through the winding pass to the shore, and thence onto the ships.
Aye, ships, for now they possessed two, though their number totaled but fourteen: Cormac, and Bas the Druid, and Samaire and Wulfhere Skullsplitter of the Danes, and their Briton captive Osbrit, and nine men of Eirrin.
Few of the company had ever seen so much wealth or such splendour. Often they paused in their work to exclaim or merely stare, dazzled by the brilliancy of jewels and the handsome richness of fine fabrics.
There were bales and folded piles of standard fabrics-and of fine linens and silks and wools that were dyed in divers hues and often purfled or cunningly broidered with panels and strips of other colours. There was even a strip of cloth-of-silver, twice the length of Cormac-the second tallest man among them, after Wulfhere-and just under half as wide. Men blinked at its lustre.
Earrings there were, and brooches and torts, and other ornaments. Two of the torts were so large and ornate as to constitute carcanets rather than the normal neck-rings worn by nearly every Celt of every land, whether Eirrin or Gaul or Britain. No less than a dozen good bracelets from the hand of the same artisan they discovered, in folds of the imperial red cloth of the Romans. Trade articles, Wulfhere opined. Of wrought bronze the wristlets were, and inlaid with gold, each decorated too with insets of agate and jasper in dark green and opaque yellow.
Cormac and Samaire conferred briefly; soon nine men, aye and the armoured woman among them, happily wore each a new bracelet.
Pearls there were too, though few really precious gems. A number of belts, scabbards, and two bracelets were studded with the red volcanic stones so popular among the Romans, porphyry.
A single gold plate, so finely wrought that it must have been stolen by the Romans from the Greeks, they found too: surely it had been stolen in turn by the Vikings off the ship of some wealthy Roman en route to-or, more likely, from-Britain. Its value was obviously considerable. Samaire soon made it vanish amid folds and folds of excellent white linen-which was surely of Eirrin.
Wulfhere approached the expedition’s leader, who stood thoughtfully in the great hall of butchery. The giant gestured.