“Much untoward has befallen us since last we saw ye, Wulfhere. Methought the mage had been busy enow with the two of us so that ye’d not been troubled. But-”
“Ye’ve seen him? Him, himself?” “Aye.”
“It’s much we’ve been through,” Samaire said.
Cormac nodded. “It’s to be feared, and talked of.” Cormac’s voice was passing quiet; he spoke for Wulfhere’s ears only. “The sorcerer is still here, and he cannot be slain. Not for the lack of our trying!”
“He-has no face,” Samaire said, not without a bit of shudder in her voice.
“No f-” Wulfhere broke off, staring from one to the other of them.
“A skull,” the Gael told him. “And more… Since yester even, when last I saw ye, it’s several faces I’ve seen him wear. A serpent’s, and Samaire’s, and that of Bas, and… yours, Wulfhere.” Cormac swallowed and reached out to touch the other man’s great knotty arm, as if to assure himself his old friend was indeed yet alive and unscathed.
Wulfhere clamped his jaws and his eyes blazed. He too sought reassurance; his hand rose to touch his fiery beard, then tarried there to scratch within the curling long hairs. “He… this ghoulish raiser of the dead imitates others? He wore my face?”
“And body, and voice,” Cormac told him quietly. “And he fought as you fight.”
“Fought?”
“Aye-” Cormac broke off and almost smiled, eyebrows curving ruefully up. He was covering; he did not care to tell Wulfhere just now that he had… slain the Dane, only last night. “Heard ye that?”
The Dane went all fighting man and looked about. “What?”
“I heard it,” Samaire said. “Cormac’s stomach! Our bellies are angry, Wulfhere, and snarl like gryphons. We are long without food, and have endured much.”
“Ah. But ye must tell me-”
“In a little,” Cormac said. He glanced down the strand, at Bas. “Mayhap it were best to save our chatter yet awhile, till it’s off this misnamed isle we are, and asea. For now, though-an all provisions are on the ships, it’s onto the ships Samaire and I go. Hunger’s upon us Wulfhere, and we thirst.” He slapped the other man’s belly, unarmoured and tautening his tunic of faded red. “You understand that.”
“Aye, but-” Wulfhere broke off. He bobbed his head in a swift nod. “Feed your belly then, gluttonous son of a pig-farmer, an that’s all ye can think of. But it’s no need of armour ye have, in this unseasonable sun.
Cormac glanced skyward, squinting. Though the time of autumn was upon land and sea, Behl seemed not to know it. Closer to Samain, the sun seemed to celebrate Beltain. The Gael’s eyes dropped to lock onto the Dane’s.
“Haven’t I?”
Wanting no answer, Cormac and Samaire walked to Quester.
“Missed the work ye have, Captain,” Ros mac Dairb called, grinning. More seriously he added, “We’ve worried over ye.”
Cormac nodded, but made no answer to the implicit question despite the hopeful, even expectant gazes of the other men. Their hustle and bustle had come to pause; their converse and jibing jests had ceased.
“We’ve broke no fast since yester day,” Cormac said, reaching up to the ship drawn onto the sperkling sand. “Where be food stored?”
“And water,” Samaire said fervently, “or ale.”
They had returned into the Castle of Kull to find no one and nothing, not so much as a morsel of food or a discarded skin with the slosh of ale remaining in it. Nor had they tarried for the intimacy they both wanted, perhaps needed. The skull-faced wizard was still abroad, in addition to the hunger and thirst that drove them to hurry from castle and through the wall of rock to the shore.
Now, aboard Quester, they quaffed ale and chewed dried meat. Cormac regarded the empty skins. Too much space had of necessity been given over on this voyage to water and ale, with their attendant weight. Even so, they had expected to be aweigh again yesterday, and barren Samaire-heim offered nought to quench the thirst that slew more swiftly than hunger or even the fever born of one of those wounds that swelled and sent a red line out from themselves to bring babbling delirium upon a man.
The Gael jerked his head up and his hand actually started toward his pommel when Osbrit fared close. Cormac quelled the motion and Osbrit stared, having stopped very still.
“In peace, Osbrit Drostan’s son,” Cormac told the man in the feathered cap and streaky blue tunic, and the Gael’s face was pleasant enow. On the instant, he decided to speak and end their sapping suspense. “Has been a short time, indeed,” he said in no quiet voice, “since I fought him responsible for the deaths of your fellows and the… resurrection of mine. And he wore your face and form.”
Osbrit continued to stare, and like Wulfhere he put a hand to his own features. Cormac saw a tic come into the Briton’s face, while his raised hand was atremble. “Ye’ve… fought a mage.”
“Aye.” Cormac squeezed Samaire’s arm. “Both of us.”
“And ye be unscathed?”
“Our minds bear scars. Our bodies, none.”
“And… him?”
Cormac bit, chewed, looked at the other man. Around them, others had stopped all motion to stare at the Gael. They listened, Cormac knew, and he thought it best to say it. In enemy country, one did not hold back knowledge of the enemy, however fearsome; all must be ever on guard.
“I killed him.”
Osbrit’s eyes flared, then grew less wide than be tore. Osbrit smiled; a cheer rose and smiles flashed on Celtic faces round about.
Cormac rose from his seat on a rowing bench, and he raised the hand that held a gnawed brisket. The noise subsided; smiles remained, as did veneration in blue eyes and grey. It will soon die, he mused, with a sigh.
“I slew him, aye… six times.”
Sunny smiles faded as though cloud-darkened. A deathly silence enwrapped them all. Every man stared. Lips moved; no voice rose.
Cormac spoke for all ears, now.
“A wizard has stalked us like a plotting spider. Was he dragged back the dead themselves from their rest and set them against us. Was he last night came upon me in the form of Wulfhere and sought to slay me by a treacherous swift stroke of his ax-or what appeared to be Wulfhere, splitter of skulls. Was he sought me again, this time monstrously in the form of Samaire that I might be even more off guard, and sought to dagger me in the night. Was he seized her yester night, and inflicted a foul illusion on her so that she thought she was being whipped to death in sheets of blood.”
Cormac paused, looking around at faces gone pale even in the bright sunlight.
“His name be Thulsa Doom, and it’s older than old he is. Old? It’s dead he is; he died long ago! I slew him as Wulfhere, by a fall none could survive, though I but defended myself for then I did not understand his evil powers. As Samaire too I saw him die, in the same way. Corpses of those two, my boon sword-comrades and friends on all the ridge of the world, lay blood-splashed on rearing rocks a dozen shiplengths below. And both vanished in seconds, so that I knew they were the enemy.”
The faces of strong fighting men turned one to the other, and they frowned and muttered. Dead long ago… vanished corpses… the likenesses of others…
“I slew him later as you, Osbrit! And as Bas yonder too, and as a serpent. As his own dread self too I put death on him, for he flickered from guise to guise swift as the jagged god-spear flashes across the sky. With this steel, I slew them all-him all.” His sword scraped out to glitter and gleam in the sun, catching every eye. “Nor have I wiped it since plunging it through his several bodies.”
“Behl protect,” someone whispered. “He… cannot be slain?”
“So it seems,” Cormac told him, without apparent emotion.
“By all the gods!” Wulfhere’s voice came loudly. “Then what do we do, Wolf?”
Cormac looked at him. “We retain our armour and arms, and we depart this isle of sorcery with all swiftness!” He looked at them. “And we stay all in the sight of each-”