Cormac was sure that the Dane’s shame was unfeigned. Mayhap he had foolishly made alliance with the wrong men, who’d turned on him when he spoke too much of their destination and what it held-though he’d split many skulls indeed, Wulfhere might too have been surnamed “the Impetuous.” Or mayhap he had indeed fallen deep into his cups and blabbed to some Roman-descended Briton temptress who knew how to love a man and bring his secrets from out him-particularly when they were bragging matters. And mayhap there was another explanation altogether.
It did not matter. Cormac knew he’d been told the greater part of the truth, and that assured him Wulfhere remained the same, and his friend. The Dane had ever been too much given to the moment’s call and too little to thinking a bit. It was a fortunate good pairing they’d made, after they’d met in that foul prison years ago; the Dane had always bent ear to his Gaelic comrade’s counsel, and nearly always abided by it.
With a few swift movements of his knife, Cormac cut Wulfhere loose. He waded back onto the beach while the giant stood flexing his great arms and sucking up vasty breaths.
Following, Wulfhere picked up the Briton ax. He hefted it, plucked up the buckler, with its large protruding boss-which Bledyn had failed to use as he should have done. Wulfhere rushed the ax through the air, swung the shield in a blow that would have sent a foeman flying.
“Nice of ye not to carve up his shield, old Wolf!”
“It was on you my mind was, o’course. I fear his armour won’t be fitting you, though.”
Wulfhere chuckled. “Well, it seems to be leaky in the area of the stomach, anyhow. Mayhap this.” But no, the helmet would not encompass his head. He tossed it aside. “Where be your ship?”
“You know. Down below the spur of rock that cuts down to sea’s edge and ends this pretty beach.” “Umm. How, many men have we, Cormac?”
“I have ten, not counting Samaire-and I do. The Picts robbed me of a few.”
“Samaire!” But Wulfhere said no more. If he refrained from asking aught of mac Art-such as what he was doing traveling asea from Eirrin with the princess he’d taken so much trouble to convey there-perhaps Cormac would ask no more questions either.
“There be two-and-twenty with Bedwyr-oh.” Wulfhere looked down at his former death-watcher, and his big strong teeth flashed in a grin. “One-and-twenty, and Bedwyr. Good odds, surely: one for each of your men and seven for me. Ye can handle five, Crom’s own son?”
“Four is what your accounting left for me, ye rapacious barbarian.”
Wulfhere shrugged. “Four, then. Whatever. Saw you their ship?”
“Hours ago.” Cormac pointed; Wulfhere nodded.
The beached longship of the Britons, so painstakingly hide-covered, lay ten tens of paces up the strand. Cormac had come along the beach from the opposite direction. It was the ship he’d had as goal in his reconnoitering; his discovery of Wulfhere and Bledyn had been accidental.
Wulfhere nodded. “Bedwyr left two men aboard.” The Dane scratched under his beard.
“Two. Apparently they be earless!”
Wulfhere made a foul noise. “You know how it is with men fit for naught but crewing, when their chief’s not at hand to bid them scratch their itches. They were drunk hours ago.” Having recalled that sore subject to his mind and his friend’s, Wulfhere looked away. “That leaves a score for us to brace. Tonight, or by ambush on the morrow, when they return from the castle.”
“Mmm. Ye recall how we hid the Norsemen’s ship, when last we bode here?”
Wulfhere’s teeth flashed. “Aye! Your men are with your ship?”
“Aye.”
The Dane hefted his new ax. “Do you fetch them then, old friend, whilst I stroll up the beach and discuss possession of yon ship with its present occupants.”
“Ye’ve no armour man, and no helmet, and ye be wet and muscle-tight from long strain, and…”
Cormac’s voice trailed off. Wulfhere had turned to look at him.
The Gael read what was in those blue eyes, and he understood. Wulfhere had lost much face, and nearly his life. Helpless as a hare in a Dumnonion snare, he’d had to be rescued from death, and that rescuer had not so much as left him Bledyn for the venting of his spleen and the betterment of his sore-wounded pride. Wulfhere wanted atonement, and needed it. Those two Britons on the beached ship would be only a beginning, but his bracing them alone, Cormac knew, would help. Too, he knew that this giant Dane with his prodigious reach and mighty thews was a match for any five men… and probably eight of Britain.
Besides, Wulfhere had said the two men were drunk.
With a nod, Cormac turned without a word. He set off back along the moon-sparkled strand, to bring his crew for the floating and concealing of the Briton ship.
Chapter Four:
The Castle of Atlantis
The ship of the Britons, its two guardians afloat facedown, was concealed near the Irish vessel. The latter, just in case, was hidden even more thoroughly.
This island south of Britain was a bare and inhospitable one, despite the incredible structure inland. There was only one slender strip of sandy, sparkling beach that split a coast otherwise stony and high and forbidding, and… of rock. Brooding granite rose like a bulwark just back of the beach, and the darker stone too of basalt, igneous rock that was like petrified sponge.
Their visit here before had established it: Samaireheim was one great wall of stone like a giant’s castle. Even its coast consisted mainly of precipitous stony faces, totally without promise. It seemed minded to wear an attractive face, like an aged and tired tavern-doxy: the dark, high coastline gleamed jewel-like here and there with veins of lipartite and studs of twinkling quartz.
They were a lie, as the sandy beach was a lie. There was no life on this island of stone, no hint of green.
Into the wall of rock ran a slim declivity, like an unceiled tunnel that was braced on either side by nature’s high-looming walls. So narrow was the passageway in places that two men could not walk abreast, while elsewhere it widened to accommodate five. In addition it wound about, as though some whimsical god had raised walls on either side of a path laid out by a meandering cow, time out of mind.
Well back within the grim shadow of the barren cliff-walls, that natural corridor widened to become a canyon, which debouched into a valley carelessly strewn with pebbles and boulders ranging up to the size of houses in Eirrin.
Save for the winding natural “hallway,” the canyon was bounded about by rocky cliffs, more often sheer and unscalable than not. Yet at its far end, against that rearward cliff that dropped sheer to the sea, rose other walls: man-made walls. The castle of Atlantis. There last night had slept the Britons; from there today they must come.
Cormac and his nine men, with Wulfhere and Samaire and Bas the Druid, awaited them. Their vigil had been taken up before dawn. When the men of Britain came along the narrow, twisting defile, doubtless bearing booty, half their number would be down ere they could draw steel. Ambush was the only sensible course when twelve men sought to best a score; the druid, of course, would not take up arms.
But the sun was high, and the Britons had not come.
Long and too frequently had Cormac stayed his companions. Now he, too, was beyond curbing his natural impatience. The sun’s light should have brought the foe happily along the natural hallway walled with sombre basalt and roofed with naught but cloud-strewn sky. Surely they were anxious to see Wulfhere’s corpse… and to load, their ship with what Cormac and Wulfhere had found here months before, at summer’s beginning: the sword-won spoils Norse reavers had stored in a castle whose origin and existence they doubtless never questioned.
But the Britons came not.
At last Cormac took Lugh and Bas, and scaled a talus formed by the slippage of rock over thousands of years. Up they climbed, onto the nigh-flat mesa that was the island’s main surface. Over one shoulder Cormac bore many loops of stout rope.