Cormac stared at the father of Consaer and Sinshi, and Duach Fedach’s son gazed mildly back into the dark, scarred face.
“What are Nor-blood of the gods, man! I answer Daneira? Your life, Duach! Your wife and your daughter! It’s savages we talk about, man!”
Duach gazed at him, having merely blinked. He could no more understand the concept than Cormac mac Art could understand Daneira and Daneirans. Close to hand, Sinshi bustled, with many glances from her pretty elfin face at her tall savior, the strange, sky-eyed man in the steel coat who stared speechless at her father.
It was then that another came to the house of Duach.
A very old man, he was deferentially welcomed and bade to enter. Like snow was his plaited beard, and his scalp was nigh onto hairless, shiny and deeply tan. The staff he bore was capped by a moon-sign of considerable age. Cormac’s eyes widened at sight of that gold emblem, for it was like unto a bow, the old man’s moon-sign. Cormac knew it but hazily; it was the ancient symbol of a goddess few thought of in Eirrin. Dana or Danu her name, she whose people were in Eirrin long before the Celts came-for what many said was the second time, after a thousand years-the bow because in addition to her being moon-connected mother goddess, she was warrior as well, remembered among Cormac’s people only as the Morrighan. The Morrighan was believed in, and spoke of-but none worshiped her on her moon-mother identity. It was the goddess Bridgid that had supplanted her, and who was herself worshiped in Eirrin long before that silly follower of Padraigh and the Dead God, Bridget the Gentle, called “Saint.”
Cormac marveled. As astounding were the old man’s clothes: he wore a robe of leaves of the forest, all shiningly enameled so that they made little clacking noises when he moved. Shown much deference, he accepted it with grace, in a manner clearly accustomed. After a glance about the main room of Duach’s home, he came to Cormac.
For some time he but stood there, gazing with fascination into the Gael’s icy steel eyes. Then, the old man spoke.
“You have come to our city from outside to save two of ours from other outsiders, tall man. Ye came here not with those who attacked Consaer and Sinshi?”
Cormac thought: City! But his inner smile did not show when he said, “No. They are of the Norse, from a far land called Norge. Ye know them not?”
The old man shook his head. His almost black eyes swiveled their gaze on Sinshi, who had come to stand close beside the Gael-and to cling to his arm. “No. And yourself?”
“It’s Cormac I am, son of Art of Connacht, in Eirrin-a Gael.”
“Eiru? With that hair and skin? But ye be no Celt-ah! It’s our blood ye bear! I do have knowledge on me of your kind. A Gael-the dark Celts.”
Cormac showed the oldster a wintry almost-smile. He thought of the fair-haired, fair-skinned Celts of Eirrin as pale Gaels.
“Aye,” Cormac said, for it was politick. What meant the oldster, “our blood”? Too, it was disturbing that it was his right arm to which the girl clung, for what knew these naif, unmenaced people of a weapon-man’s discomfort when his sword-arm was not free?
“Cormac?”
Her voice was soft and tiny, gentle as a spring zephyr that hardly riffles the new leaves. He looked down into her upturned face, and thought anew that she was less a child than he’d first thought. Those clever, womanish eyes… calculating? She handed him goat’s milk, in a beautifully wrought and intricately carved goblet of smoothly polished wood. The symbols with which it was indited were not familiar to him.
“With thanks, Sinshi-and it’s begging you I am not to hang on my… drinking arm.”
“Oh!”
With a contrite look, she released him-and immediately transferred her small self and her grasp to his left forearm. Cormac curbed his sigh and accepted what had become the inevitable and unavoidable. But now he would not drink, in the presence of so respected a man as the bald oldster with the plaited beard and lively eyes dark as peat-bogs.
Cormac returned full attention to the old man, who was staring at him. There was much quickness. and intelligence in those old eyes; they seemed to sparkle with life.
“These Norsemen, Gael of Eirrin. What sought they?”
“That which they will seek here, in far greater quantity. It is their way. They sought Consaer’s life and Sinshi’s body.”
The words were brittle and ugly, and so Cormac intended them. Someone had to be shocked into belief, into fear or anger or both, and this man was manifestly a respected leader-a priest, likely.
“They carry axes,” Cormac said into the silence. “They are short of haft and slim of blade, for they are not for the chopping of wood, but of flesh and bone. They carry swords, and they wear metal as I do, or leather with padding beneath and the leather itself hardened as armour against blades. Like those,” he said indicating the Norse blades he’d brought, “and this.”
With his left hand he plucked a Norse dagger from his belt, showed it to the leaf-robed man. The latter only glanced at it.
“And their hair is pale!” Sinshi put in, as though that were all that was different about those who’d sought her rape.
“Not a flensing blade,” Cormac said desperately. “Not a skinning blade, or one for the scraping of vegetable skins or animal hide either. This is for killing, for murder.”
The man of Danu looked more doubtful than affrighted. “Ah. Never have I seen such men. But… my mentor passed on to me a story of such. I had nigh forgot: there’s been no need to remember. Such men came here once, pale-haired men wearing tunics that clinked and carrying axes not for the chopping of wood. They slew. Aye-they slew even goats, my mentor told me.” He shook his head. “For no reason.”
“But Daneira is here,” Cormac said swiftly. “The Norse were repulsed then, driven off. You-may I be knowing your name, father?”
“I am Cathbadh.”
That was all; this man stood high, Cormac knew, and needed no other. Too old and too well known on his own reputation was Cathbadh to bother appending the name of his father to his own.
“It is Cathbadh who makes thanks to ye, Cormac, for the saving of Consaer and this nubile girl, so valuable to our people. And now-”
Cormac interrupted in growing frustration. “Cathbadh! Cathbadh, servant of Danu whom Eirrin’s all but forgot-it’s responsibility ye have here. Ye must prepare! Daneira has not so much even as a wall-Daneira must prepare. The Norsemen-”
From outside, a shriek arose in interruption, and then other cries.
The Norsemen had come to Daneira.
More cries rose from the other end of the sprawling lovely village of complacence, and they spread. Shrieks and screams and yells of warning and horror seemed to move closer. Grey eyes flashing like a lightning-lit sky, Cormac seized Cathbadh by both shoulders. His sudden movement hurled Sinshi’s hand from his arm, and the fine goblet of polished wood went rolling over a sheepskin rug tinted a deep red. Rich yellow milk splashed.
“Cathbadh! They are come! They will rape, and slay and slay, and it’s your homes they’ll be burning. Believe me man, I know! Your men who hew trees in the forest must come with their axes, and those who spear fish, if there are such here. I cannot defeat a shipload of Norsemen alone!”
Releasing the man, Cormac whirled to the door and stepped outside. From there, hardly aware of the small hand that almost instantly closed on his arm-his left arm-he stared the length of Daneira, at the invaders.
Not a mere score was their number, but nigh onto twice as many.
They were tall, grimly warlike men of frostbit Norge, who paused just within the village perimeter, staring about at the strangeness of its buildings and its people. Axes and shield-bosses glinted with sinister flashes. Cormac saw a blooded ax, another. Aye, and already there were captives, a girl squirming by her hair in that man’s big red-furred paw, her clothing torn to the waist, a young boy tugging at the grip around his wrist, the grip of a captor who hardly noted his struggles. A child of eleven or twelve squealed for her mother, for she too was held by the hair and tugged this way and that to keep her off-balance. A woman ran toward her, dark hair streaming and arms outstretched, and was struck easily away by a negligently flicked shield. One Norseman broke from the group to rush a house on the outskirts, and returned grinning, dragging a shrieking young woman by the ankle.