The daughter of Leinster’s murdered king was silent for a space, whilst Cormac stared ahead and the sea furrowed past Quester’s prow to ripple all along her length.
“I know not whether to laugh or sigh,” she said at last.
“Nor do I, Samaire. It’s a world of killing we habit, and it’s good at it I am.” His tone and mien were matter-of-fact, and without pride.
“I want to hug you.”
A crease deepened at the edge of his mouth, in the slightest of smiles. “I hear you, dairlin girl. And it’s the hug I’d like to be feeling… but I salute you for the saying of it, rather than the doing.”
“Had I known there’d be so much discomfort for all, I might not have come.”
“’Twas you insisted, Samaire,” he said, noting that she’d said “might” not. A princess asea, among weapon men!
“I remember, dairlin boy.”
“None dare call me boy, save you, woman.”
“Think you I’d suffer being called ‘dairlin girl’ by any other than yourself, man?”
Cormac chuckled. “Likely not. And discomfort is the word. It’s why I insisted that ye dress as ye have, and keep on that mailcoat ungirt. No man asea should have a woman’s form flaunted to his eyes.”
Samaire heaved a sigh and tucked back her nether lip. “It’s not that I meant by discomfort, though I understand it, too.”
“Oh. Well… methinks it hardly inconveniences these men to look away now and again, whiles you do that which is necessary. It’s knowing they all are, too, that on yester day you were a warrior among warriors.”
“It inconveniences them to worry about whether I be looking away!” Samaire assured him, and they chuckled together. “I try, Cormac. And… I miss your touch, your arm around me, and mine about you.”
“Not aboard this ship.”
“I know,” she said, with a hint of exasperation; she need not, Samaire of Leinster was saying, be told that again.
“I have a question of my own,” he told her, turning his face at last toward hers.
The lift of her brows was invitation enough to the asking of it.
“Our… benefactor,” Cormac said. “He who provided money for this boat and crew, your cousin Aine’s husb-”
Samaire was laughing, though not in amusement. “Benefactor! Dealing with Cumal Uais was worse than bargaining in the marketplace of Tara! The tenth portion of what we bring back we must give him, for financing our quest-and that after bargaining him down from the third he demanded! And him the husband of my own cousin… and his coffers full already with the price of five hundreds of cattle won by his wagers on you in the championship games! Benefactor!”
Cormac was smiling. “Well, he did a bit of losing that day, too… sith he also placed wagers on Bress.”
Samaire looked at him in shock, her green eyes huge and indignant. “No!”
“Aye. He did risk more on my prowess, though-fortunately for him. Besides, it were a better return: the odds were against me.”
She shook her head. “Oh gods defend us, why is it thus? Cumal was born wealthy, Cormac! And all his life he’s spent adding to that wealth.”’
“And counting it,” Cormac said. “And eating,” he added, for Cumal’s girth was nigh as fulsome as his tally sheets. “At any rate… it’s his name I wanted to question, Samaire. How could parents nobly born and with wealth, and them residents of royal Tara as well, name a son Cumal Uais… ‘Slavegirl the Noble’?”
For a moment Samaire stared at him. Then she was laughing.
His cool stare stopped her. “Oh, Cormac! It’s not his name… he’s but called that. His name is Tuathal, though he likes not being called after a High-king of four centuries agone, a king whom Cumal considers to have been no good man. He welcomes being called Cumal, ye see, though in truth it began as but a bit of waggery, poking fun at him for his love of gains!”
Cormac understood now. And to think he’d not asked before out of… manners. Until a few months agone it was long and long he was out of Eirrin, an exile for the old “crime” of which he was now absolved by Council, High-king, and druids alike, after his testing. He’d forgot. “Cumal” meant slavegirl, aye. It also meant a unit of exchange, as the Romans used their coins stamped with the faces of rulers with bird-of-prey beaks. A cumal was a unit of exchange worth the value of three cattle; it was by cows, boru, that those of Eirrin had long measured value and wealth.
Not often was Cormac mac Art embarrassed.
Samaire was still a-chuckle. “Hush,” she was bade, and she gave him a look that invited him to force her, even as she ceased.
Cormac was rescued; sensing movement, he turned to see that Bas the Druid had come to join them.
“It’s a god’s blessing ye have on ye, Druid,” the Gael said, “for of all aboard I see no drop of blood on ye.” Then, lest the man think he was being denigrated for having had no part in the battle with the Picts, Cormac added more. “It’s glad I am to have ye aboard, beloved of the gods.”
Bas nodded acknowledgment. “There be two of us, Champion of Eirrin, for as ye proved when ye underwent the Trials of the Fian and had sorcery done upon ye as well, all saw that Behl and Crom do love their staunch defender, Cormac mac Art.”
“I hope it’s right we both are, Druid, and that we live to count many grey hairs. Being a staunch defender, as ye put it, be easier now, and all a true man can do, with the priests of the Dead God upon our land like a plague.”
Art’s son of Connacht was ever wont to call the god of Rome and the bishops “the Dead God,” since all knew he’d been executed on a Roman cross by some forgotten procurator enforcing the sedition laws.
Bas sighed. “Say not ‘No true man,’ mac Art, with so many in high places converted from the ways of Eirrin to the new faith.”
“Perverted,” Samaire corrected.
“There’ll come a time for the dealing with that problem, Lord Bas, and none will find my blade averse to being wetted through black robes!”
“They are holy men, Cormac mac Art-or think themselves so. But I came to ask ye of our destination. How much farther?”
Cormac looked upon the priest of Behl and the ancient god of the Gaels of older Eirrin, Crom Cruach. He did not smile as he said, “I cannot tell you, Druid.”
Bas lifted his brows. “Cannot? Still, this far on our way-and you will not tell me?”
Cormac gave his head a jerk. “No no, Lord Bas of Tara. Cannot, I said, and it’s cannot I meant; Druid or no, be assured that had I meant ‘will not’ I’d have spoke it so. It’s enough years I’ve spent asea that I have an animal’s sense of direction. Though there were changes in the seascape… land rose even as we sailed, and-”
“Land rose?”
Samaire shuddered in memory. “Aye. In fire and thunder! Rock and ash mingled with flame vomited up to slash the clouds and rain down upon us. The winds from that eruption of angry gods drove us far to the south and west, and we missed by mere fingerlengths smashing into a new isle even as it rose from the sea bottom!”
“So that,” Cormac said, “we returned by a somewhat different route, from far off our course. What I know is how we came to the isle that Wulfhere named Samaire-heim. Even so we cannot approach it as we did afore…”
The Gael trailed off. The face of the druid showed thorough confusion; Samaire was smiling.
“Wulfhere Skullsplitter,” she told the druid, “is a Dane. A huge great towering oak of a man with hair and a beard-oh, a great full beard, Bas-like uncarded wool dyed red. He and Cormac are… were…”
“Companions asea,” Cormac swiftly interjected. Most knew he’d been a reaver, a pirate, and he saw no reason to remind Bas, whose sister was the wife of Eirrin’s High-king. “When first we see land ahead, we must swing well to the west. For full ahead lies a combination of horror and death, a whirlpool called the Ire of Manannan, and then the Wind Among the Isles. We discovered them not ere they discovered us, to our dismay. Many jagged little rock-isles cluster there, and the wind that howls among them is insane. First we were whirled and spun and dunked and hurled helpless as a child’s boat when he tires and tosses stones at it. Three-and-twenty of us there were aboard Wolfsail; when we awoke on the beach of a tiny, rocky isle on no maps, we were but nine. The sea ate the rest, and our ship.