Both wielded sword in the off-hand and buckler in right; both were armoured in leather, though Duach had got a round Norse helmet from the throne room of Kull’s castle. His shield was new and Norse, too, blazoned with a blue dragon on a deep red facing. Samaire’s long-bossed buckler was painted and enameled the blue of Leinster-though it bore the angry boar of her cousin’s husband Cumal. Swiftly Duach learned of her unorthodox methods, learned of Cormac mac Art who’d learned them elsewhere than in Eirrin. Duach was not prepared for the maneuver when her shield flashed out defensively. Though he back-lunged with sufficient swiftness to prevent the stoving in of his face, her buckler’s outside boss tore his cheek.
After that they fought as intelligent weapon-men fight who respect each other, not in a mad flurry of cuts and lunges but with much watchful movement that erupted from time to time into a sudden clangorous exchange.
The two hounds of Cormac were young, exuberant, and skillful. This Lugh learned, though it was his last knowledge gained in this life. The flashing brand of golden-haired Ros tore through mail and flesh and bone and the horrified Lugh stared down at his right arm. It flopped to the sand, spraying scarlet as did its stump. Then the archer only gurgled as Ros slashed away half his face and more.
Without so much as a pause in elation, Ros whirled, another instinctive weapon-man. It was at Wulfhere’s rear he moved. Osbrit and Findbar kept the big red-beard passing busy; he was an easy target.
“STOP AND TURN!”
At that challenging roar Ros froze for an instant, in his youth. Then he spun. The youth found with a blink that he faced Bas the Druid, who had already appropriated Lugh’s sword from the archer’s severed hand.
“Ye’d slay from behind, Boy; I’d not!” And Bas attacked as though he’d borne arms all his days.
“Druid-I-” Ros blocked a fierce cut that dented his shield’s iron rim and buckled the wood so that it crackled and bulged outward. The young man’s pale eyes again mirrored confusion and agony, and he backed. To launch death-bringing blows at a druid…
“Break it, Ros mac Dairb!” Bas bade him sharply. “Break the hold of Thulsa Doom, who is evil incarnate! Fight me not, Ros mac Dairb-it’s a druid of your own people ye face with naked steel in hand!”
Perhaps Findbar heard and perhaps it was but unfortunate coincidence. Again he bellowed out the name of each of his followers, shouted after each name the single word: “Kill!”
And Ros, jerking his head as if arousing from slumber, attacked the druid of his people.
Eyes glinted with the bright madness of slaughter-lust and swords and axes flashed in the sun like silver lightning. Already the sand looked as if torn by a passing horde of galloping horses. Helmets and armour and blades, ever amove, sent back bursts of light at the fire of Behl on its ascent into the heavens. Like a carrion-eating beast the shade of death stalked grimly among the stamping slashing combatants in that horrid battle among comrades and countrymen.
The shade of death, stalked, chose…
Its icy hand fell on Ruadan mac Mogcorf. With an awful cry he fell, his thigh chopped more than half through by Brian’s downward-curving backstroke. Brian gave him no death-stroke but lunged away from Laig’s ferocious chopping slash. Too shocked to do aught for himself, Ruadan lay shuddering while he bled to death.
Samaire was prey to a similar stroke from Duach’s brand. But she had been twisting away, and his steel failed to open her leather-clad leg. She felt as if struck with a battering-ram nonetheless, and fell. A-wallow on the sand, she gritted her teeth and strained to keep her eyes open. Pain was like a dark cloud striving to fall over her brain.
At almost the same instant, a few feet away, Wulfhere’s rushing ax was not even slowed by a thick Briton neck. Osbrit’s head went flying twenty feet on a wake of scarlet. Spatters fell on Samaire and Duach, who was chopping down at her. She rolled with a desperate speed she could not have matched outside the superhuman stimulus of combat and lifesaving desperation. Duach’s sword actually scraped the boiled leather at her shoulder on its downward rush. The blade buried itself in the beach with a crunching of sand on steel.
Like an animal, Samaire was scoot-boosting herself to her feet and then running headlong to stay on them, despite her limp and the screaming of her leg. Wrenching his shining glaive from the sand, Duach rushed after her.
She turned as he made his thrusting charge. Even as her leg failed her and she tilted crazily sideways, the fugitive princess caught his rushing point on a moving shield. Wideswept, the buckler sent the swordblade and Duach’s left arm with it swinging wide of his body. Immediately and desperately he covered with a crossing-over buckler-and Samaire chopped into his right side.
She fell to her knees then, watching the young man’s sky-coloured eyes go enormously wide, watching him gasp and stagger, seeing the appearance of blood at the lips of an inches-deep wound at his belt line. His sword dropped and he clamped that hand to the wound, half-turning-but her following stroke was already in motion.
Grimly, teeth clenched, she chopped again from her kneeling posture. Her edge clove through leather and flesh and then bone, in almost precisely the same area in Duach’s left side. Come far from Slieve Cuilinn in quest of adventure and spoils, Duach Laig’s son of Airgailla became a twinned fountain of blood. He fell, dying as his life’s blood rushed from him-slain by a woman of Leinster.
In horror Samaire turned her face from that former shipmate. But yesterday they had heaved side by side at the ship…
She looked among the others just as Wulfhere booted Findbar so violently under the front of his tunic that both the man’s feet left the ground. And a triumphant Wulfhere nearly died then, for incredibly Findbar caught his balance and seemed unharmed by what should have dropped him with his mouth wide in a soundless scream. Not only that, he slashed, and the astounded Dane had to hurl himself sidewise and full length to avoid the opening of his neck.
Samaire saw him sprawl, saw him roll and flounder away, saw him bash aside Findbar’s next sally, saw the Dane rise unharmed and back a bit while he recollected his shock-scattered wits. A lunatic cry caused Samaire to jerk her eyes to stare elsewhere.
With the Pictish battle scream Cormac put his entire body behind a shield-lunge. His and Cet’s bucklers were in line; the Gael struck the other’s with such force that Cet’s brawny arm was smashed back into his face. Blood spurted from his nose, hot on his arm. He was given no time to reflect on his destroyed nose; Cormac thrust the big Meathish ax-man through the belly and was looking about him ere he’d given his blade a twist and yanked it free.
Seeing that ugly wolfish grin contort Cormac’s scarred face, Samaire followed his gaze with her own. Both Brian’s blood-streaming sword and Laig’s head were still in the air. For a moment Laig’s body stood quivering, and then the crimson jet erupted from the stump between his shoulders. Jerking as though in some horrid dance of the dead, the body fell into its own blood.
With others stilled, Wulfhere and Findbar circling, the sound of a single encounter rose loudly now.
Brian and Samaire and Cormac looked in the direction of that constant sound of hammer and hack. They saw Bas well up the beach, backing and backing, his sword not in use as he could only defend against the incessant fierce battering of young Ros of Dun Dalgan.
A thought that was not rational and the more horrible under the circumstances jolted through Cormac mac Art’s weapon-man’s brain: Och, what a beautiful young fighter he is! The magnificent berserker rage has come on him, and him not even one of mine!
He charged after druid and youthful warrior, roaring out a new cry in hopes of disconcerting the fiercely hacking Ros.
But the other hound of Cormac was there before him.
“Ros! Friend, sword-comrade-STOP this!”