Cormac had fled away, in misery, ere he could be taken and executed. By then he knew treachery had been done on him by a rival, and by a king-and surely too the High-king himself. Crossing the plain of the sea to Dalriada in Alba up in the north of Britain, he left behind him a girl most beloved-and half his belief in the justice of kings. And too he left behind the sword of his father, for in his hand it had slain a Gael in Eirrin. The sea had it, now.
How young he’d been then, this scarred, slit-eyed pirate of Raven!
In Dalriada, he sought obscurity and low employment. In the employ of peasants, he worked the land like a peasant for nigh onto a year. Close and silent he’d been, and unknown to any he had remained. Partha he’d called himself; Partha of Ulahd, a name he had used aforetime to cloak his own.
Yet Dalriada, founded long before by Gaels of Eirrin some called Scoti, was menaced ever by Picts from the Caledonian heather. Was not a place where a born fighter could remain forever obscure. Forever? In truth, that better part of a year was remarkably long. He toiled, and one day there came a Pictish attack on his master’s lands. Heart and hand and weapon-man’s training flashed awake in the peasant labourer. He did destruction on the shock-headed dark men with a reckless ferocity even they lacked power to match, and he emerged blooded but alive-perhaps because he hardly cared whether he died. The Pictish survivors fled, a thing seldom known. Picts were wont to slay to the last, or die in like fashion.
And so distinction in combat came again upon Cormac mac Art, now Partha mac Othna. Gol, King over Dalriada, had invited him into his service, and good service had the youth given…
Good, however brief. It happened that the king’s own daughter of Dalriada took undue interest in this Partha Pictslayer, mighty and envied weapon-man who had swiftly shown himself the best among her father’s warriors. The king had eyes to see it. Now a king must and will protect his own and marry them well, and so it was arranged that Partha fell into the hands of the Picts.
For others this fate befell, the invariable result was death not long delayed. For this Partha Pictslayer-who had earned the name-the stocky, short men had plans more ornate.
They played with him right gently at first, whilst they argued the merits of all the contradictory, irreconcilable ends they wished to give him. Their prisoner even kept all limbs and members, so tender with him were his captors-though he was not left unmarked. At last they settled on slow starvation, with exposure and beatings at times.
They chose awrong. The lengthy process gave Cormac opportunity to escape. He was free again-and unwelcome in still another land. But there was the sea. From captive he became outlaw, nursed by bitterness. He gathered a band about him and took to the sea on a lifted curragh. And he came to know who had betrayed him into Pictish hands, and why.
On the wild coasts of Dalriada he left what had remained of his belief in kingly honour. His youth he left there as well, and him then not yet twenty. Nor did he meet with difficulty in making the men he led believe him older.
In vengeance and bitterness and hatred did the reiver Cormac savage the shores of Gol’s kingdom. Mothers frightened miscreant youngsters with stories of Captain Partha, Captain Wolf, the scarred raider with eyes grey and cold and glittering as the metal of his sword. Cormac an-Cliuin he was: Cormac the Wolf.
Came the time when he must quit those waters, for they had grown too scalding even for him, and his crew was quivering on the edge of mutiny. Came then a long voyage down the coasts of Britain, and Gallia and Hispania. Those Gaelic reivers had reached even Africa, where they made themselves known too well to the Vandals. Yet return to the western isles he had, lest Gol forget the man on whom he’d done a king’s treachery.
Time came when civil strife in Eirrin resulted in the sundering of Cormac’s crew. Time came when he was captured again, and tossed into prison quarters colder and more filthy than even the Picts had given him. Here he awaited execution. Another prisoner in the same plight languished there, for company. Wulfhere Hausakliufr his name, and he admired the genius of the darker man who used their meagre victuals as food for the prison’s rats, who provided nourishment for the two prisoners…
“Cormac.”
The sound of his name returned him to the immediate now. She had been saying his name for some time, to no result; he’d been deep in the past, surrounded by this Eirrin-like land. Though he eased his abstracted walking, he did not turn to look at Clodia. She spoke his name again, on a falling note, and fell silent.
The young woman behind him bit her lip. By no means was it subtly that he conveyed to her that she was unwanted! Yet she durst not return to the ship and all those men. Not without Cormac. That fearful crew of fiery-headed pirates, and those genially brazen hands of Wulfhere who was big enow to wrestle bulls for pastime!
Clodia nerved herself. Whate’er it was gnawed within this reiver made this the wrong time entirely, and not being a fool the auburn-haired girl knew it. Yet there might not be other times. Besides, she felt a touch of anger. With a ship and forty swords at his back, what had the great dark man to gloom so about?
That a ship and forty swords could be appallingly little on occasion, she did not consider.
“Cormac,” Clodia said hesitantly. “What-what do you mean to do with me?” She bit her lip, swallowed, and then rushed on, finding that she feared an answer.
“This land is strange to me as to you. We have been friends, Cormac. That I’d have liked to be more in the old days, you know.” Already they had become the old days to her, distant and dim. “That you ofttimes desired me, I know. Then what is it turns you so hard? You know how a woman fares with barbarian war-bands, an she lacks one single protector. Can you not bear the thought of being my protector, Cormac?” And then, her voice rising to shrillness, “Look at me!”
Cormac turned, and looked. Clodia’s strong and high-breasted body was bared to him, her skirt and bodice a crumpled heap on the alien sand. Shame, desire and desperation commingled to heat the blood that darkened her face. He was astonished to see how far from the ship they had wandered along the strand, whilst thoughts had enveloped him to no purpose.
She came swaying, smiling, seducing…
Anger seethed in him, cold and sudden and inexplicable. The last simpering resort: her body. And see the tavern-girl trying to look the temptress! She reached him then, smiling-and of a sudden he caught her hard and clasped her hard.
Clodia yelped in shock. His arms tightened and the links of his mail pressed into her skin, hurting, marking her. She arched her back and set her palms in urgency against his steel-clad chest, pushing hard and then harder. Cormac lifted her off her feet, swung her around. Her struggles grew wilder. She cried out. Her lower body stretched out at right angles to his as he swung-
Cormac let her go.
There was a wild waving of white limbs in the morning sun, and a resounding splash that drowned a high-pitched squeal. Clodia was no swimmer, as her frantic paddlings testified. Nor did Cormac mean to drown her; the water was shallow, he saw, and the strand very near. When her feet touched bottom it would occur to the wench that she might stand and wade ashore.
Cormac left her to do so. He made his way back to Raven. This is Galicia. This is now. Eirrin is the past. Eirrin is but a word. The past is dead as last year’s leaves.
“Now that was no long absence!” Wulfhere greeted him. “And where be the vine that clings to the wolf?”
“Swimming.”
Laughter rose, but the Gael’s tone and expression made short work of it. “Now tell me, what have we found?”
“We, do ye say?” Wulfhere lifted red thickets of brow. “Hmm. While yourself and the lassie strayed, Ivarr mounted yon rise for a vantage view. He has seen a great high tower that looks to be the source o’ yester-night’s beacon light.”