Wulfhere had landed on the jaggedly rearing rocks below, and was dead. He had seen that. Yet Samaire said the Dane was in the castle a mile distant, drunk and foolishly challenging a power that hacked at Cormac’s horror-distorted mind as with a blade steeped in some numbing, insanity producing toxin. Wulfhere lay dead… Wulfhere was in the castle… Wulfhere’s corpse had vanished. At one and the same time Wulfhere had been here, and fallen to his death, and lain there-and had not been here at all; he had fallen/stood roaring out defiance; he had died, burst and shredded on rearing rocks like gigantic fangs/he was merely, predictably and characteristically, drunk…
No!
No. Fight! Fight to regain control of a mind staggering like a man with an adder’s venom turning his blood to consuming fire. Cormac shuddered-and was hot. He became aware that pain was on his fingers. So tightly did he clutch the edge of the precipice that his knuckles had gone white as the sea’s foam on the rocks so far below. The Gael was hanging onto the solid tangible rock for fear of flying off into a redshot void of black horror and insanity.
He heard her voice. He began breathing deeply, pushing out his stomach as he filled his lungs to bursting before expelling that air to the last flutter and dragging in more. She was begging, she was tearful in her fear for him.
“Samaire!” He spoke to the sky. “Step back. Into the tunnel and out of the way with ye, lustful woman!” he said, trying to cover his staggered mind with lightness. “It’s down I’m coming.”
“Ohh… I’d hoped to come up, love. Oh my love-let me hold you… the tunnel is so dusty, Cormac…”
“Oh. Aye. Of… course.”
Pretending all was aright, she was, that strong magnificent woman he called dairlin girl. Almost, he smiled.
“Is that the very top, Cormac? Cormac?”
She’s fearful as I and needs the sound of my voice constantly-and she has even less knowledge of the why! Which of us be the worse off; I who know and yet know nothing, or she who-
“Aye,” he answered, “Lugh’s ‘Roof of the World.’”
”Won’t you be giving me a hand up, then, love,” she said, too rapidly, and he knew she was covering, too. “I want to see.”
“All… all right,” Cormac said, and steeled himself anew.
Rolling over once more, he gazed down at her wan face. Was that a sparkle of tears? The Gael lowered a hand, and she stretched up hers. But he had to rise and squat, to draw her up with her feet “walking” up the rock. With ease then he handed her up, and fell back as he drew her over the edge and onto the mesa. She fell upon him as he lay there at the edge of that sprawling flatland of stone.
“Oh love,” she murmured, so close he could feel her lips move against his face, “it’s cold you are!”
He was; there was nothing he could think of to say; he said nothing.
He felt a transfer of warmth, hers to him as ‘ the loving woman lay over him, holding him, though he wore mail and she her byrnie of boiled leather.
Tremulously, seeking the comforting texture of reality, his hands slipped up into the richness of her hair while she pressed her warm mouth down on his. Her lips seemed hot, which told him that his own were cold. Soft was her hair against his hands, soft as he’d known it in her cousin’s manse on Tara Hill. Strange, after their days asea and her long wearing of a leather helm under a sun that boiled forth sweat, and them with no extra water for such as the washing of hair. But he had other things to think of now.
Marvelous soft was her hair to his weapon-man’s calloused hands, and her weight on him, too, was good. The needs that rose in him were not of the sort that brooked thought or enhanced the reasoning process.
The sun chilled as it grew distant. It deepened in colour to a gold that shaded into orange and seemed to set Samaire’s tresses aflame. Still the two at the very top of Samaire-heim lay together, moving but a little. Hands and mouths moved restlessly and were not satisfied. Coats of steel chain and leather were discarded with weapon belts, with neither ceremony nor sensible orderliness.
Her large eyes seemed to smoulder and yet at once to deepen into pools for the falling into. His blood was wine coursing in his veins, hot and strong. Restless womanly hands transferred their warmth and their insistence to the very core of him. They moved as his did, tracing out every line and hollow and curve of his hard body as though she were determined to commit all to memory.
God of my father, he marveled as he had before, how at once soft and firm, slim and rounded, is this woman who calls me love!
Though his throat was dry and there was a strong hunger for her on him, he teased, “Companions…”
She did not smile, but stared hungrily as she panted, and she pulled at him with hands that at once begged and demanded, the princess of the landless warrior.
Prim and discreet, the sun hid its face in a great final glow of orange and blood that hurled blotting shadows across the sky. But the shameless moon rode up to stare down at the couple so totally alone on a great seabound chunk of rock like a desert surrounded by ocean. The moon had seen such, millions of times over the eons, hundreds of millions. It took no note but remained cold of light and face. Warmthless light bathed them when they’d shared and transferred their warmth and lay still and lazy while their breathing returned to normal.
Then a shamelessly naked Samaire, her skin all snow and coal in moonlight and shadow, knelt up over the supine man. She smiled down on Cormac mac Art, and lazily he smiled in return. Fear and horror were far from his mind.
And then he saw the glint of steel in her hand, and the skin fell from her face all in an instant so that it was a ghastly apparition he stared up at, his eyes dilated and his hair striving to leave his head.
A faceless fleshless skull grinned down upon him as long bony fingers curled into a fist around the dagger’s hilt, and raised it and drove it down at Cormac’s bare chest, and with a wild cry of horror and soul-deep torment he moved convulsively and hurled, not Samaire, but Thulsa Doom over the cliff to hurtle down as had the other of the only two Cormac mac Art loved on the ridge of the world.
And a shuddering, madness-tinged Cormac mac Art… wept.
Chapter Thirteen:
To Die Twice
Cormac awoke to physical discomfort, as mental agony had tormented him for hours ere he’d sunk into sleep.
A stabbing brightness struck through his eyelids so that he saw blazing yellow without opening his eyes. Realizing that he lay on his back in the open and that the sun of morning was swinging up over him, he kept his lids fast shut until he rolled over onto his side. That brought lancing twinges of pain and a grunt, which was followed by a curse at his own stupidity.
For any person to sleep lying on his back on solid stone was stupid. For a weapon-man to do so, and in his armour with the dampness of sea-breeze on him; that was worse than stupid. It was a sin.
On hands and knees, near the edge of the precipice overlooking the sea, Cormac mac Art was assaulted by memory.
Oh gods and blood of the gods! Wulfhere and then Samaire-even Samaire! O gods, how-
Unworthy!
The Gael set his strength against the horror and despair that were a pall over his mind, as if they were a binding chain on his sanity. By superior strength and a complete exertion of a will more powerful than sorcerous mental chains, he snapped them.
Cormac rose from hands and knees to his feet. He ignored his stiffness of back and limbs and the complaining twinges from every area of his body-including his empty belly. Back went his mailclad shoulders. It was a weapon-man of Eirrin who stood stalwart and proud-and angry.
The sun of early morning flashed off his coat of linked chain as he turned all about; flashed even more blindingly from the broad long blade of the sword he brandished aloft. Atop the mesa that was Samaire-heim high above the sea, he waved his sword high at the end of a stiff-held arm. But it was not the gods to whom Cormac mac Art issued shouted challenge.