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She followed the direction of his nod.  Ugh, she said rather than groaned, for
the dagger-clenching fist was several feet from any arm. Wulfhere laughed aloud.
 This great warrior had the fellow s hand apart from his body and his entrails
plopping forth with two slashes so swift I could not have swung my ax once in the
same space!, It s a fellow son of Eirrin we ve liberated from the Norse, Cormac.
And by Odin and the blood of Odin, he himself liberated several of their spirits from
their bodies in the doing!
 Cormac! the young man said, and he stared at the man who had returned with
his sister. She had already ripped and slashed a great long strip of cloth from a
tumbled bale of purest white, and anointed his arm with wine as though it were
plentiful as water. Now she was binding up his wound.
Cormac s blue eyes met the seated man s strangely pale, blue-green ones.  Aye,
Ceann mogh Ruadh mac Ulad, Cormac, whom you knew as Partha mac Othna.
 And who my sister knew all too well!
 Still your body and your tongue, darling brother, Samaire snapped,  or I ll
pull both ends of this cloth till your arm drops off! He has just followed me miles
underground, and him in the dark, and forced to face too the grandfather of all
serpents which he slew with so much blood as to redden the Boyne for a week!
Cormac blinked at the fierceness of Samaire s tone, and her poetic exaggeration.
It was Wulfhere who spoke.
 Ho! So that s the way of it methought perhaps you bent your shield so in
falling over your own feet, Cormac!
With a swift, small smile, Cormac hurled the ruined shield at him. Wulfhere
batted it away negligently, though in truth another man might have been bowled over.
 So it s all old friends you Gaels are, then. Ceann Red-hair I have already
exchanged names with. And this be his sister, Samaire? The hulking Dane smiled
upon her.  It s nice heads of hair ye both have I be partial to red!
Samaire looked about that great hall.  So, she said,  I see. There, Ceann, and
try to keep yourself quiet a time, that the wound has time to close. Does it hurt,
brother?
 It hurts. Seeing the waste of that good wine hurts the more, though!
 A warrior indeed! Wulfhere called out, amid a burst of laughter.  An all the
men of Eirrin were as you twain, Cormac and Ceann, it s straight for Dane-mark I d
set my sail, to avoid getting my death at the hands of such ferocious heroes as ye
both be!
Ceann stood up.  It s in your debt I remain now, Parth Cormac mac Art.
Cormac nodded.  I lay no claim, he said.  Now suppose we take up a bit of
food and enough ale for ten 
 Twenty, and I m to have aught! Wulfhere interrupted.
  and get ourselves elsewhere, away from the smell and sight of blood. It s
sword-companions Wulfhere and I have lost this night, and a man deep in ale has no
memory.
Immediately, after the manner of Eirrin, Samaire set up a keening. Wulfhere
glanced at his comrade.
 She does us honour, keening our dead, Cormac told him.  It is our it is the
way of Eirrin.
Wulfhere nodded. He walked to the lamenting young woman, scooping up two
leathern sacks of ale as he went. His hand on her shoulder covered it from throat to
upper arm.
 With thanks, friend of my friend. But let s away from this slaughterhouse and
shriek in our minds.
Well laden, the quartet departed the reeking scene of red horror and destruction,
and went along the corridor none of them had traversed. There they found two
rooms, one after the other, spread with stolen cloths and cloaks of Gaelic
manufacture, Cormac noticed and tables. The arrangement of cloth and furs
showed that the Vikings had slept here. The only four occupants of that palace great
enough for a thousand entered, and sat and drank. And Samaire and Ceann told their
story.
Ulad Ceannselaigh, king of tribute-laden Leinster, had died of a sudden, and
without blood. Naturally he left his throne to his firstborn, Liadh. That elder brother
of Ceann and Samaire sat the high seat well, and retained most of his father s
advisers, creating his brother Feredach his high minister. Her father had long since
wed Samaire to a prince of Osraige, which to everyone but its king was a part of
Leinster, along the western border. Aiding the southern Munstermen in resisting a
Pictish incursion into their lands, Samaire s husband took an arrow in the chest. He
died even as he was being carried back to Osraige. Childless and in difficulties with
her husband s mother, Samaire returned to Carman in Leinster. She had an honoured
place in the household of her kingly brother Liadh, along with Ceann, whose wife
had died in the bearing him of their second child.
But Liadh was slain, and him less than a year on the throne.
 There was little secret, Ceann Ruadh said bitterly,  and no doubt in the minds
of many: it was our brother Feredach had him murdered.
Cormac sighed, but only nodded. It was the way of royalty in all lands. An a
king had but one heir, the succession was endangered by but one fragile life. An he
had several sons, to insure the continuity of his clan on the throne, each was in
danger of the other.
 Feredach Ruadh-lam! Samaire whispered viciously through clenched teeth,
calling her brother the Red-handed.
And so Feredach was crowned in Leinster. Nor was he popular, a mean
grasping man who suspected everyone of plotting as he had ever done. Nervous he
was of the popularity of his own younger brother Ceann and Ceann s confidante,
Samaire, four years widowed and returned to the keep of her family.
 We knew it not then, Ceann said, with ugliness in his pleasant tenor voice.
 But our brother thought it was plotting we were, in the time we spent together.
 Poor fearful Feredachh feared us! Samaire put in, and Cormac knew that was
as incredible as her voice and manner indicated; she and Ceann were not of such a
bent.
 I see the light as of dawn, Wulfhere Skull-splitter said, holding aside his
alesack long enough to speak.  Ye two fell into the hands of Viking-raiders, and
while you were out for a ride, from the looks of you. This Feredach did treachery on
you, I m thinking.
He had indeed. In a scurrilous bargain with the Norsemen just slain, Feredach
had his younger brother and sister carried off, that there might be no claim on this
throne but his own.
 And it s well paid his hirelings are after being, Cormac said snarling, in a
castle peopled by ghosts and the crimsoned corpses of slain kidnapers.
None of them knew aught of this place and Cormac assured them it was of
Atlantean origin Wulfhere looking nervous, lest his companion go away into his
strange remembering. Ceann and Samaire in turn assured their countryman that
Cutha Atheldane had been a sorcerer of considerable skills.
After a time Cormac began to realize what they were assuming, and deliberately
he mentioned the ship, and their need of gaining new crew for her. The booty they d
taken away from this ancient keep would see to that.
Samaire looked stricken. She and her brother made clear that they assumed
Cormac would return with them to Eirrin, there to aid them in wresting the throne
away from the man already surnamed  the Dark : an-Dubh. Cormac mac Art shook
his head.
 I fled under sentence of death, he said,  and dare not return. He gave his
dark head a jerk.  Besides, Eirrin is no longer my land.
Samaire and Ceann stared at him. It was she, at last, who spoke.
 There are no former sons of Eirrin, Cormac of Connacht! It s a spell there is [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]