And she knew too, with an absolute though never explicable certitude, that she had known at least one of them before.
She was a princess born, and had been wed as a King’s daughter must be, to a prince now dead in his youth. But their relationship had been a tiny and tenuous thing in the immensity of time, even in the limited sweep of this lifetime. He could not have been the man Cormac mac Art was, that prince of Osraige whose loveless wife she had been; nay, not even in his dreams.
And now she was certain too that there was no way she and Cormac could have failed to meet-again-or could part, not ever. She had known him before this life, she now realized, and she would know him again, and again in the unwoven tapestry of the sprawling time-to-come.
Then she looked out before their gliding ship, and what she saw interrupted her reverie and drove it from her mind.
“Cormac-land! Islands!”
And he looked, and gave the orders to swing Quester sharply to starboard, and hold that westward course until they dared turn south again, safely around the Ire of Manannan and the Wind Among the Isles.
Chapter Three:
Death-tide
The man had been roped to the great rounded spire of sea-rooted rock for hours.
From the sea that tall chunk of granite rose, at the very edge of a rocky isle, before which it stood like a sentineclass="underline" With the sun shining down, men had walked to it from shore in no more than a foot of water. At high tide, only its upper two feet were visible.
The monument of water-smoothed white stone rose twice the height of a man.
The man bound to it was tall, taller than tall. Nevertheless, both he and those who had bound him here knew that he was not tall enough. The salt sea was coming for him. The water had lapped about his ankles when his captors had left him, well tied. Now it quivered just below his nipples, and crept ever upward. High tide was but a little over an hour away. Sooner than that, he knew, was death.
First there would be the desperate tipping back of his bearded head, the desperate straining to remain above the salt water that lapped at his lips… into his mouth… until it at last rose to his moustache… and above his nostrils. And then he would see the one-eyed All-father, Odin… if the Valkyries could find him, at the time of tide’s ebb.
Behind the mighty rock and the giant with the fiery beard bound to it, another man sat. Well back up the beach was he, with a goatskin bag to hand. It gurgled with the thin, sour wine of Briton grapes. He had situated himself so that he could see the rockbound man, to whom from time to time he called taunting words.
The seated sentry’s shield lay beside him, upturned, and at his other hand was his spear. Between his outstretched legs, though he expected no trouble, lay his ax, a thin broad blade with a hook at its top edge. Down his back fell a thick straw-coloured braid from just behind his right ear; the left braid lay on his shoulder. Both were wound about with two plaited strips of leather, brown and red and tightly bound.
“I’m having another fine sip of wine, now, son of a Danish dog and a piggish slut; can ye hear its gurgle as it goes down to quench my thirst? Or… can ye hear only the gurgle of… water?” He laughed. “Well, drunken dog of Dane-mark, it’s soon your own thirst will be quenched… with salt water!”
Chuckling, the man drank.
Awaiting death, the Dane made no answer. He was a big man, and many heads had fallen to his ax, and making answer to such a one as his Briton ghoul-guard was beneath him. He’d plead with Odin and Thor, Woden and Thunor, until the end of time itself, to be allowed to come back and meet this taunting midden rat as men should meet, and to end his days… slowly.
“Ahhhhhhh,” the man from Britain sighed, with much exaggeration. First licking his lips, he wiped them with the back of his hand and set the goatskin bag aside.
“Tide,” he called out, “come! Bledyn of Gwent grows weary of watching this ugly Danish body swallowed by the sea!”
“Then rise, Bledyn, pig of Gwent, and let me aid you in the shortening of your vigil.”
For a moment Bledyn froze at that cold voice that came from behind, where no man should be. Then he hurled himself to roll sidewise, snatching at both spear and buckler even as, backing like a crab, he drove himself to his feet by main will.
Brooding dark and menacing before him, a tall man stood, lean and chainmailed. Deepset eyes were only just visible in a scarred, grim face set like death itself. Though this challenger was helmeted, Bledyn saw that he was dark of hair. On his left arm the man wore a small buckler, a targe, with a ferocious boar emblazoned on its face. The shield was seemingly negligently held, nor did the man from the night have a spear. He held a goodly sword whose double-edged blade was nigh straight, and slimmer than Bledyn’s own glaive.
“Who… be you?” Bledyn demanded, speaking with care to keep the quiver from out his voice. “Kull of Atlantis. You Britons profane my castle and raise a stench therein, by your piggish presence.” The accent was none Bledyn knew, and thus was
barbarous. And… Atlantis?
“What… do you want here of me, outlander?”
“It’s yourself’s the outlander, man; ye be not now on your own piteous isle, which you first gave to the Romans and now suffer to be taken by all who come from oversea with a few spears! As to what I want… the man on yon rock. It’s a better man than you he is, and I like not your taunting of him. He dies not this night.”
Bledyn’s fingers tightened sweatily about his spear. From out the haunted dark of this unknown bit of rocky land came this strange dark man, calling himself by no name known to Bledyn of Gwent, and calling that fantastic inland keep his. Holding lips and teeth tight, the Briton spoke.
“Be ye man or shade, the Dane dies. So be the decision of us all, and so be the decree of Bedwyr son of Ingcel, and so it’s to be. Begone, man of night, an ye value your hide.”
“I do not.”
That flat stark statement sent Bledyn’s short hairs astriving against the pressure of his helm. Best to move swiftly and end this menace, this insanity, ere the other made the first move. Spear against sword, the Briton of Gwent was sure, were no contest-particularly when he struck first.
Bledyn of Gwent drove his spear with its long leafshaped blade at the man’s belly. At the last moment he twitched it upward, to skewer the face of this “Kull of Atlantis” whilst he strove to protect his vitals.
The other man’s shield was a blur. There was a clang accompanied by Bledyn’s grunt as his spearpoint struck that small buckler which, twisted slightly in a hand both expert and signally swift, sent his weapon aside. Then in another blurring motion that was silvery in the moonlight, the stranger’s sword swept. Again Bledyn grunted; the blow of the blade not only sheared away two feet of his spear, but slammed its haft into his side with its terrible force.
Rather than follow up the advantage that so shocked his opponent, the stranger was still, staring, hardly so much as crouched in combative stance.
“Quarterstaff against sword be no good match, Bledyn of Gwent. Best pick up that ax, or yield your self. Yield and live.”
Still feeling as though he were a wanderer in some weird dream, Bledyn stared at his decapitated spear a few seconds more. Then he dropped it even as he bent and snatched up his good ax all in one swift motion. Nor had it ended; in a continuation of the same movement, he lunged. The ax-head rushed straight upward. One step backward the dark man took, and then with a frightful clang ax rang off the very boss of the stranger’s shield. It was sped so swiftly aside that Bledyn thought his arm would come off.
“The same tactic twice? Pitiful, Bledyn. Best ye yield, man; I kill only when I must, and there are few enough Britons on the ridge of the world to face off the invaders of your land.”
Bledyn yielded not. Grim, back-prickling fear lent strength to his body and skill to his attack. His great swinging slice was aimed at the other man’s sword-arm.