“The god of War rides the night wind,” spoke the wizard suddenly, in a high eery voice. “The kites scent blood. Strange feet tramp the roads of Alba. Strange oars beat the Northern Sea.”
“Lend us your craft, wizard,” commanded Mak Morn imperiously.
“You have displeased the old gods, chief,” the other answered. “The temples of the Serpent are deserted. The white god of the moon feasts no more on man flesh. The lords of the air look down from their ramparts and are not pleased. Hai, hai! They say a chief has turned from the path.”
“Enough.” Mak Morn’s voice was harsh. “The power of the Serpent is broken. The neophytes offer up no more humans to their dark divinities. If I lift the Pictish nation out of the darkness of the valley of abysmal savagery, I brook no opposition by prince or priest. Mark my words, wizard.”
The old man raised great eyes, weirdly alit, and stared into my face.
“I see a yellow haired savage,” came his flesh-crawling whisper. “I see a strong body and a strong mind, such as a chief might feast upon.”
An impatient ejaculation from Mak Morn.
The girl put her arms about him timidly and whispered in his ear.
“Some characteristics of humanity and kindliness remain still with the Picts,” said he, and I sensed the fierce self-mockery in his tone. “The child asks me that you go free.”
Though he spoke in the Celtic language, the warriors understood, and muttered discontentedly.
“No!” exclaimed the wizard violently.
The opposition steeled the chief’s resolution. He rose to his feet.
“I say the Norseman goes free at dawn.”
A disapproving silence answered him.
“Dare any of ye to step upon the heath and match steel with me?” he challenged.
The wizard spoke, “Hark ye, chief. I have outlived a hundred years. I have seen chiefs and conquerors come and go. In midnight forests have I battled the magic of the Druids. Long have ye mocked my power, man of the Old Race, and here I defy ye. I bid ye unto the combat.”
No word was spoken. The two men advanced into the fire-light which threw its fitful gleam into the shadows.
“If I conquer, the Serpent coils again, the Wild-cat screeches again, and thou art my slave forever. If thou dost conquer, my arts are thine and I will serve thee.”
Wizard and chief faced each other. The lurid flame-flares lit their faces. Their eyes met, clashed. Yes, the combat between the eyes and the souls behind them was as clearly evident as though they had been battling with swords. The wizard’s eyes widened, the chief’s narrowed. Terrific forces seemed to emanate from each; unseen powers in combat swirled about them. And I was vaguely aware that it was but another phase of the eon-old warfare. The battle between Old and New. Behind the wizard lurked thousands of years of dark secrets, sinister mysteries, frightful nebulous shapes, monsters half hidden in the fogs of antiquity. Behind the chief, the clear strong light of the coming Day, the first kindling of civilization, the clean strength of a new man with a new and mighty mission. The wizard was the Stone Age typified; the chief, the coming civilization. The destiny of the Pictish race, perhaps, hinged on that struggle.
Both men seemed in the grasp of terrific effort. The veins stood out upon the chief’s forehead. The eyes of both blazed and glittered. Then a gasp broke from the wizard. With a shriek he caught at his eyes, and slumped to the heather like an empty sack.
“Enough!” he gasped. “You conquer, chief.” He rose, shaken, submissive.
The tense, crouching lines relaxed, sat in their places, eyes fixed on the chief. Mak Morn shook his head as if to clear it. He stepped to the boulder and sat him down, and the girl threw her arms about him, murmuring to him in a gentle, joyous voice.
“The Sword of the Picts is swift,” mumbled the wizard. “The Arm of the Pict is Strong. Hai! They say a mighty one has risen among the Western Men.”
“Gaze ye upon the ancient Fire of the Lost Race, Wolf of the Heather! Aai, hai! They say a chief has risen to lead the race onward.”
The wizard stooped above the coals of the fire which had gone out, muttering to himself.
Stirring the coals, mumbling in his white beard, he half droned, half sang a weird chant, of little meaning or rhyme, but with a kind of wild rhythm, remarkably strange and eery.
“O’er lakes agleam the old gods dream;
Ghosts stride the heather dim.
The night winds croon; the eery moon
Slips o’er the ocean’s rim.
From peak to peak the witches shriek.
The gray wolf seeks the height.
Like gold sword sheath, far o’er the heath
Glimmers the wandering light.”
The ancient stirred the coals, pausing now and then to toss on them some weird object, keeping time with his motions with his chant.
“Gods of heather, gods of lake,
Bestial fiends of swamp and brake;
White god riding on the moon,
Jackal-jawed, with voice of loon;
Serpentgod whose scaly coils
Grasp the Universe in toils;
See, the Unseen Sages sit;
See the council fires alit.
See I stir the glowing coals,
Toss on manes of seven foals.
Seven foals all golden shod
From the herds of Alba’s god.
Now in numbers one and six,
Shape and place the magic sticks.
Scented wood brought from afar,
From the land of Morning Star.
Hewn from limbs of sandal-trees,
Brought far o’er the Eastern Seas.
Sea-snakes’ fangs, see now, I fling,
Pinions of a sea-gull’s wing.
Now the magic dust I toss,
Men are shadows, life is dross.
Now the flames crawl, ere they blaze,
Now the smokes rise in a haze.
Fanned by far off ocean-blast
Leaps the tale of distant past.”
In and out among the coals licked the thin red flames, now leaping in swift upward spurts, now vanishing, now catching the tinder thrown upon it, with a dry crackle that sounded through the stillness. Wisps of smoke began to curl upward in a mingling, hazy cloud.
“Dimly, dimly glimmers the starlight,
Over the heather-hill, over the vale.
Gods of the Old Land brood o’er the far night,
Things of the Darkness ride on the gale.
Now while the fire smoulders, while smokes enfold it,
Now ere it leap into clear, mystic flame,
Harken once more (else the dark gods withhold it),
Hark to the tale of the race without name.”
The smoke floated upward, swirling about the wizard; as through a dense fog his fierce yellow eyes peered. As if across far spaces his voice came floating, with a strange impression of disembodiment. With a weird intonation as though the voice were, not the voice of the ancient, but a something detached, a something apart; as if disembodied ages, and not the wizard’s mind, spake through him.
A wilder setting I have seldom seen. Overhead all darkness, scarce a star a-glitter, the waving tentacles of the Northern Lights reaching lurid banners across the sullen sky; sombre slopes stretching away to mingle with vagueness, a dim sea of silent, waving heather; and on that bare, lone hill, the half-human horde crouching like sombre specters of another world, their bestial faces now merging in the shadows, now touched with blood as the fire-light veered and flickered. And Bran Mak Morn sitting like a statue of bronze, his face thrown into bold relief by the light of the leaping flames. And that weird face, limned by the eery light, with its great, blazing yellow eyes, and its long, snow-white beard.
“A mighty race, the men of the Mediterranean.”
Savage faces alit, they leaned forward. And I found myself thinking that the wizard was right. No man might civilize those primeval savages. They were untamable, unconquerable. The spirit of the wild, of the Stone Age was theirs.
“Older than the snow-crowned peaks of Caledon.”