“The gold and jewels in that throne, Wolf, would ransom a king-and perhaps buy the retainers of one… such as Samaire’s murderous older brother.”
“I’ll not be touching it, or have it touched,” Cormac said, gazing upon the great chair. It remained stately, despite the sword-hacking inflicted upon it by Bas. It was as if the chair itself owned and presided over the broad hall.
Wulfhere thought upon that, and nodded. “Another time I’d call ye mad, Cormac. Now, knowing what I know of this place… I’d not touch it either.”
“Then we’ll be asking no other man to theft from the king that caused this throne to be placed-to brood here for thousands of years.”
“Some time,” Wulfhere said, “this year or next or twenty or fifty years hence, others will come here. It’s they will pry forth that silver chasing, the gold inlays, those emeralds and rubies and those strange stones that are like clear glass with their many faces.”
“Diamonds,” Cormac said, “stones that cannot be cut. Aye. But not us.” Then he said, “But there’s naught to stop ye from returning, splitter of skulls, to collect what be here.”
“There is,” Wulfhere assured him. “It’s happy I’ll be to leave this isle behind-and alone!”
Cormac’s voice was almost a whisper: “Aye…”
“It’s Samaire and Ceann her princely brother have such need for… the financing of their enterprise, Cormac. Is it fair to them, to leave all this?”
Cormac looked into the other man’s eyes. Around them, as around his own, years in wind and sun and salt spray had worn and incised fine lines like the nascent erosion of a rain-swept plain. Above the flaming beard, Wulfhere’s face was like old ship’s wood.
“An Prince Ceann wants that throne-I’ll tell him of it-he may return here for it himself!”
Wulfhere’s grunting noise was a comment. He smiled, not with humour. “Ye have little love for our onetime companion… though much, methinks, for his sister.”
“There’s no quarrel I have with Samaire’s brother, Wulfhere, and naught I harbour against him. He is the king’s son of Leinster, and the time I have spent in his company, good times and bad, convince me it’s a good ruler he’d be making.”
“Still…”
“It matters not,” Cormac said, with an impatient jerk of his head.
Ceann he knew only tolerated Samaire’s relationship with him who’d once been a weapon-man in her father’s employ-and more latterly a pirate. Too. Ceann seemed at times to forget his own anomalous position-and who had rescued him and his sister from their Norse captors. Ceann Red-hair acted the role of the king he was not. To Wulfhere, though, Cormac mac Art saw no reason to tell any of this. He had braced Ceann Ceannselaigh afore, and doubtless would again. They’d also fought side by side, and endured and won through much, and accepted each the other’s counsel.
And… though it might mean the state marriage de convenance of a kingly Ceann’s sister and Cormac’s last sight of her, he knew that the time would come when he’d be working to topple Feredach an Dubh and place Ceann on Leinster’s throne.
Cormac glanced over to find that Wulfhere had departed from his side. They had long been companions; the Dane recognized at once when thought came heavily upon mac Art. Thinking was not Wulfhere’s province, and he well respected it in the Gael. Neither of them had a better friend than the other-until, perhaps, Samaire. Cormac noted that the fiery-haired giant had appropriated the largest of the axes dropped on this floor of bloody tiles, and the mailcoat that had belonged to the burliest of the Norsemen.
Alone with the dead, the Gael returned again within himself. Wulfhere had called up Ceann into his mind, but it was of the prince’s sister Cormac thought.
Samaire.
He’d known her long, the princess with the Eirrin-green eyes. Long before his own years and years as blood-splashed reaver, an exile…
Both bright and sturdy had been Art’s boy Cormac; the old druid Sualtim saw to the training of the lad’s mind while his father taught him the wielding of arms. Auspicious the name of Cormac son of Art of Connacht, for it had belonged centuries before to one of Eirrin’s very greatest kings. Unfortunately the boy’s stoutness and skill at arms, combined with the very name, attracted the notice of a man whose crown rested shakily on his aging head; High-king Lugaid was a fearful man on a throne that had been sat afore him by giants among men. Young Cormac knew naught of plots and scheming. His father paid no heed, he who was a descendant of great men though he wore no crown. But treachery was done by a man with fear upon him, and came the time when Art of Connacht was slain, and that mysteriously by an unknown hand.
Young Cormac mac Art was not slow, either to learn or to adapt. His judgment was astonishingly logical, and good, for so Sualtim had trained his good mind. There could be no blood-feud with the Ard-righ, the High-king, not for a boy of Connacht and him both fatherless and motherless.
Not yet a man, Cormac did what he must: he fled Connacht, ere his father’s fate could overtake him.
The Connachtish youth was not recognized as the “Partha mac Othna of Ulahd” who-lying about his years-took warrior service in Leinster. He proved a good soldier and a good man, for all his being not yet a man. He remained apart from his fellow weaponmen in Leinsterish blue, lest they learn age or origin. Partha mac Othna kept his counsel, and was promoted even to the Command of a Hundred. Eventually he had still another secret, a dangerous one: a friend who became more than a friend, a girl but a year younger than himself. Fair and freckled she was, with eyes of a startling green and hair like a rich October sunset.
Forfeit would have been the head of Partha/Cormac, had His Highness known of the young weapon-man’s friend and paramour-the king of Leinster’s own royal and well-betrothed daughter Samaire.
Came the day when young Partha mac Othna well represented Leinster in the too-frequent warring between Leinster and Tara over the latter’s collection of the ancient and much-hated Boru Tribute. Spawn of a long-ago quarrel it was, and like a wedge driven into the heart of Eirrin or an insurmountable fence across the land. But it lingered on; no High-king forewent its collection or declared it banned. Leinsterish kings but tried…
In that year, though the “tribute” was gained, the hero of the skirmishes was Partha mac Othna.
He was so accomplished and valiant a weapon-man that some compared him with the legendary Cuchulain of old. And soon, on Tara Hill of Meath, High-king Lugaid learned the real name of the so-called son of Othna. It was High-kingly gold brought to an end that era of Cormac’s life. He was goaded, carefully and deliberately, into drawing steel at the Great Fair. Thus he slew; thus he broke the King’s Peace; thus he condemned himself. For he who broke the King’s peace at Fair-time stepped instantly outside the law, and must die-or flee.
Samaire had wept that night, and assured him that she loved him. And then Cormac mac Art, driven already from home and home-land, was driven from Eirrin. He fled, outlaw.
Then came the long years in which he was a farmhand, little more, in Dal Riada, on the southern coast of Alba. Next he was a warrior in the service of that king-until once again royal treachery was done on him. Pictish captivity followed, a captivity during which he’d have died had it not been for a Pictish girl, widowed but recently in her youth. After that came escape and the years as coastal raider, and then capture and imprisonment anew… and escape with a prison-made friend, a mighty and outsized man from the cold north.
It was then Cormac and that new friend and comrade, Wulfhere the Dane, became a perfect pairing. With a crew of Danes, they raided every coast save that of Dane-mark and Eirrin-and far Norge.
Was a vicious wind swept them here, an unfathomable whim of capricious gods. Then, by similar caprice, the gods saw that the life-line of Samaire of Leinster again intersected that of Cormac of Connacht, after over a half-score of years.