While Cormac racked his brain for a convincing way of drawing the Pict into conversation, the minstrel concluded one of his wild chants with a burst of sound and a rhyme that named Eochaidh Mac Ailbe "Wolf of Alba, greatest of raven-saters!"
The Pict reeled drunkenly to his feet, dashing his drinking-jack down on the board. The Picts habitually drank a smooth ale made from the heather blossoms. The fiery barley malt brewed by the Gaels maddened them. This particular Pict's brain was on fire. His face, no longer immobile, writhed demoniacally and his eyes glowed like coals of black fire.
"True, Eochaidh Mac Ailbe is a great warrior," he cried in his barbarous Gaelic, "but even he is not the greatest warrior in Caledonia. Who is greater than King Brogar, the Dark One, who rules the ancient throne of Pictdom? And next to him is Grulk! I am Grulk the Skull-cleaver! In my house in Grothga there is a mat woven of the scalps of Britons, Angles, Saxons-aye, and Scots!"
Cormac shrugged his shoulders in impatience. The drunken boastings of this savage would be likely to bring him a sword-thrust from the drink-fired Scots, that would cut off all chance of learning anything from him. But the Pict's next words electrified the Gael.
"Who of all Caledonia has taken a more beautiful women from the southern Britons than Grulk?" he shouted, reeling and glaring. "There were five of us in the hide-bottomed boat the gale blew southward. We went ashore in Gerinth's realm for fresh water, and there we came upon three Britons deep in the forest-one lad and two beautiful maidens. The boy showed fight, but I, Grulk, leaping upon his shoulders, bore him to earth and disembowelled him with my sword. The women we took into our boat and fled with them northward, and gained the coast of Caledonia, and took the women to Grothga!"
"Words-and empty words," sneered Cormac, leaning across the table. "There are no such women in Grothga now!"-taking a long chance.
The Pict howled like a wolf and fumbled drunkenly for his sword.
"When old Gonar, the high priest, looked on the face of the most finely dressed one-she who called herself Atalanta-he cried out that she was sacred to the moon god-that the symbol was upon her breast, though none but he could, see. So he sent her, with the other, Marcia, to the Isle of Altars, in the Shetlands, in a long boat the Scots lent him, with fifteen warriors. The girl Atalanta is the daughter of a British nobleman and she will be acceptable in the eyes of Golka of the moon."
"How long since they departed for the Shetlands?" asked Cormac, as the Pict showed signs of making a quarrel of it.
"Three weeks; the night of the Nuptials of the Moon is not yet. But you said I lied-"
"Drink and forget it," growled a warrior, thrusting a brimming goblet at him. The Pict seized it with both hands and thrust his face into the liquor, guzzling ravenously, while the liquid slopped down on his bare chest. Cormac rose from his bench. He had learned all he wished to know, and he believed the Scots were too drunk to notice his casual departure from the hut. Outside it might be a different matter to get past the wall. But no sooner had he risen than another was on his feet. Sigrel, the renegade Viking, came around the table toward him.
"What, Partha," he said maliciously, "is your thirst so soon satisfied?"
Suddenly he thrust out a hand and pushed back the Gael's helmet from his brows. Cormac angrily struck his hand away, and Sigrel leaped back with a yell of ferocious triumph.
"Eochaidh! Men of Caledonia! A thief and a liar is among you!"
The drunken warriors gaped stupidly.
"This is Cormac an Cliuin," shouted Sigrel, reaching for his sword, "Cormac Mac Art, comrade of Wulfhere the Viking!
Cormac moved with the volcanic quickness of a wounded tiger. Steel flashed in the flickering torchlight and Sigrel's head rolled grinning beneath the feet of the astonished revelers. A single bound carried the reiver to the door and he vanished while the Scots were struggling to their feet, roaring bewilderedly and tugging at their swords.
In an instant the whole village was in an uproar. Men had seen Cormac leap from the chief's hut with his red-stained sword in his hand and they gave chase without asking the reason for his flight. The partially sobered feasters came tumbling out of the hut yelling and cursing, and when they shouted the real identity of their erstwhile guest a thunderous roar of rage went up and the whole village joined vengefully in the chase.
Cormac, weaving in and out among the huts like a flying shadow, came on an unguarded point of the wall and, without slackening his headlong gait, cleared the low barrier with a bound and raced toward the forest. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him that his escape had been seen. Warriors were swarming over the wall, weapons in their hands.
It was some distance to the first thick tangle of trees. Cormac took it full speed, running low and momentarily expecting an arrow between his shoulders. But the Dalriadians had no skill at archery and he reached the fringe of forest unscathed.
He had outfooted the fleet Caledonians, all save one who had outdistanced his fellows by a hundred yards and was now close upon the reiver's heels. Cormac wheeled to dispose of this single foe, and even as he turned a stone rolled under his foot and flung him to his knee. He flung up his blade to block the sword that hovered over him like the shadow of Doom-but before it could fall, a giant shape catapulted from the trees, a heavy sword crashed down, and the Scot fell limply across Cormac, his skull shattered.
The Gael flung off the corpse and leaped to his feet. The yelling pursuers were close now, and Hrut, snarling like a wild beast, faced them-but Cormac seized his wrist and dragged him back among the trees. The next instant they were fleeing in the direction from which they had first come to Ara, ducking and dodging among the trees.
Behind them, and presently on either side, they heard the crashing of men through the underbrush, and savage yells. Hundreds of warriors had joined in the hunt of their arch-enemy. Cormac and Hrut slackened their speed and went warily, keeping in the deep shadows, flitting from tree to tree, now lying prone in the bushes to let a band of searchers go by. They had progressed some little distance when Cormac was galvanized by the deep baying of hounds far behind them.
"We are ahead of our pursuers now, I think," muttered the Gael. "We might make a dash of it and gain the ridge and from thence the promontory and the ship. But they have loosed the wolfhounds on our trail and if we take that way, we will lead them and the warriors straight to Wulfhere's ship. There are enough of them to swim out and board her and take her by storm. We must swim for it."
Cormac turned westward, almost at right-angles to the course they had been following, and they quickened their pace recklessly-and emerging into a small glade ran full into three Dalriadians who assailed them with yells. Evidently they had not been ahead of their hunters as far as Cormac had thought, and the Gael, hurling himself fiercely into the fray, knew that the fight must be short or else the sound would bring scores of warriors hastening to the spot.
One, of the Scots engaged Cormac while the other two fell upon the giant Hrut. A buckler turned Cormac's first vicious thrust and the Dalriadian's sword beat down on his helmet, biting through the metal and into the scalp beneath. But before the warrior could strike again, Cormac's sword cut his left leg from under him, through the knee, and as he crumpled another stroke shore through his neck cords.
In the meantime Hrut had killed one of his opponents with a bear-like stroke that rended the upflung shield as though it had been paper and crushed the skull it sought to guard, and as Cormac turned to aid him, the remaining foe leaped in with the desperate recklessness of a dying wolf, and it seemed to the Gael that his stabbing sword sank half way to the hilt in the Dane's mighty bosom. But Hrut gripped the Scot's throat in his huge left hand, thrust him away and struck a blow that shore through corselet and ribs and left the broken blade wedged in the dead man's spinal column.