That first night she had joined him as he lay beneath the sky, in whose chill starlight he’d slept so often. That night he slept but little, and he and Samaire had not been apart since. And now she had told him they’d part no more…
She told me, aye, he mused, and I said naught to the contrary!
Standing in the great hall of Kull’s Castle and gazing in silence upon corpses and skeletons and a floor cluttered too with dropped weapons and shields and helms, the memory-bound Cormac heaved a great sigh-and heard the approach of footsteps from behind. Instantly he turned, to see bright-eyed young Brian.
Once I was bright of eye and clear of mind and bushy of tail, Cormac mused, cheerlessly, but he showed nothing.
First making apology for the interruption of thoughts, Brian said, “All the booty be gathered at the tops of the stairs, Captain.”
Cormac nodded. “It is late of afternoon for the loading of ships-and after that too late to launch them. It must be tomorrow we leave, Brian.”
Brian looked about them with distaste, though Cormac saw no fear on the youth.
“It’s another night we’ll be spending on this isle, then.”
“Aye,” Cormac said. “Though some prefer to be away from this place and remain with the ships, I’ll wager there are others who’d be averse to leaving the amassed treasure!”
Brian grinned. “True. And… Osbrit?”
“Brian,” Cormac said, seeking to be gentle, “it’s… not my second ye be.”
Brian slapped his head. “Och, it’s the Dane who sent me, my lord.”
“Oh. Wulfhere.” Cormac nodded. Without appointment, Wulfhere had become his second in command. “But I be no man’s lord, Brian na Killevy. Hm; Osbrit. A badly frightened man. Not likely to attempt aught against one man, I’m thinking, much less a dozen. Nor likely, either, to want to be apart from the company of others… nor will he be attempting to sail off alone! Only Wulfhere could ever accomplish such as that. A man not to be worried over then, is Osbrit of Britain. Nor I noted has Wulfhere aught against him that be personal, from his captivity of the Britons.”
“I think not, Captain-other than that Osbrit be neither Dane nor yourself! He be unsure of us, methinks, and… we be of him.”
“Osbrit.”
“The Dane, Captain.”
“Wulfhere?”
“Aye,” Brian said. “It be obvious he trusts none and is friend of none save yourself, Captain. We others are, after all, of Eirrin save Osbrit, who is a prisoner. Wulfhere is… neither.”
Cormac faced about to fix Brian’s clear large eyes with his own dark gaze. “Brian: see you that all understand this, though quietly apprised. Wulfhere Hausakluifr is my blood-brother. It’s five men he’s worth, in any passage of arms.”
When Brian looked not just doubting but shocked, Cormac twitched his mouth in what might have been taken for the hint of a smile. He said, “Very well then, Wulfhere be the worth of any five men-save myself. Ah, I see that goes down better-but see ye that ye make me no god, Brian I-Love-To-Fight of fair Meath! And see ye that all know this: it was for years I was the only man of Eirrin among a crew of Danes… his Danes… and we were comrades-at-arms, Brian; it’s brothers we all were.”
Brian blinked more than once. “Champion of Eirrin, I meant not to imply that we respect him not, or that there be any sigh of trouble among us. Only a… certain… lack of comfort.”
Cormac nodded shortly. “My name for that is foolishness; see that all know it. Now there is a place I wish to go, alone.”
The young man took his dismissal with aplomb, as Cormac’s due. He returned to carry the plans to Wulfhere-and the leader’s words, quietly, among the others. Cormac, knowing where he went though not what he might find, took with him the long, long coil of rope he’d used to gain entry to the castle.
Drawn somehow though he knew not by what, he ascended to the second floor again. He paced thoughtfully along the corridor until he reached a well-remembered room. Carrying a lighted torch in his hand and with sword loosened in sheath, he entered the fetid passageway that became subterranean tunnel. The old secret door he braced open after him.
Chapter Ten:
The Roof of the World
Cormac mac Art was not certain why he paced again along this gloomy stone-braced corridor that had been so haunted by sorcery… and was now haunted by footprints of mystery. Perhaps he was deliberately-foolishly-tempting his new enemy, him he had not laid eyes upon.
Foolhardy this trek again beneath the earth, and especially so with Bas, and the Gael knew it. Yet it was… irresistible. He was as if compelled, drawn by unseen hands or command, as those strange shipguiding stones were drawn ever to the north. Nor was it any new mood of Cormac’s, this need to be alone with his busy mind.
Busy his mind was-and confused.
It hummed and thrummed now with that sonorous name of menace: Thulsa Doom, Doom…
Dust whispered beneath his feet and he fought the ugliness, the foreboding drumbeat inside his head. With will and stern determination, he wrestled his mind from its ugly thoughts elsewhere, to beauty…
Samaire.
Face and form to stir a man’s blood and rouse his body, to make his fingers fair tingle for the feel of her under them; these were Samaire of Leinster.
A woman with the highness of pride in bearing and in those wide eyes the colour of grass in high summer, was Samaire daughter of Ulad Ceannselaigh. Slim and well-curved her body, full and well-curved her lips, which, as their ancestors in poet-honouring Eirrin would have told it, were red as the berries of the rowan-tree.
Firm those lips became against him, and warm as if fiery so that there had been times when her mouth had seemed to burn while he listened to her quickening breath and felt her arms about him, felt her straining against him until his own arms were pulling her feverishly close.
Yet there was more to Samaire, far more. Swift and skilled and unblanching in danger and combat she was; a warrior’s companion for she was herself a warrior.
Cormac let his mind slip to her as he paced along the tunnel beneath the earth, breathing its fetid, vitiated air.
She’d been wed, naturally enough, betwixt the time of his leaving Eirrin (when we were both but children, he now thought) and their coming together again on this rocky speck on the ocean. She was wed by her father to a prince of Osraige, a small strip of land that was to all but its proud king a part of Leinster. Samaire was not long a wife. Whilst aiding the Munstermen in resisting a Pictish incursion into their lands, the prince of Osraige took an arrow in the chest. It gave him his death, even as his men carried him homeward. Childless Samaire was, and no friend of her late husband’s mother. She returned to the home of her ancestors.
Already death had visited that home, coming suddenly and without blood upon her father. His firstborn ascended to the high seat of proud but tributeladen Leinster. That son sat the throne well. He became it, as it did him. Though he retained close to hand most of those who had counseled his father, he created his brother Feredach high minister.
Another brother there was stilclass="underline" Ceann mong Ruadh, whose wife had died in her bearing him a child. Widow and widower, Samaire and Ceann became the good friends and companions that they had not been, as children, for friendship were a difficult matter for siblings.
The king was dead within a year, nor was there much doubt that it was his brother Feredach had him slain.
And Feredach was king. He was soon called an Dubh, the Dark. A mean, unpopular, grasping and ever suspicious man was he, with the schemer’s usual suspicion that others were ascheming against him. Much time Ceann and Samaire spent together, for it was much they had in common. Feredach suspected them; Feredach feared them; Feredach did treachery on his younger brother and sister as he had on his elder.