Winter Serpent (40 page)

At the high table Donn macDumhnull staggered to his feet frowning, motioning for the crowd to be still. He strained for something, his hand at his ear.

The wind died before the men could reach the doors, and in the pause the torches flared again. The faces turned to the entrance, eyes squinting a little
against the smoke blown from the fires. The smiles on the flushed faces died slowly. The bagpipes moaned to a stop as the reeds were taken out of the pipers’ mouths. The dancers stopped. The feasters held food in their mouths but did not think to swallow.

They looked at the doorway and were silent.

A ghost stood there. A ghost which would perhaps fade even as they watched, back into the night. It was like a bear, but a bear such as never roamed the woods of Argyll. It was yellow-white, nightmare-sized. It had a man’s hands and a man’s mouth, a terrible one, the lips white with froth and hanging strings of slaver which swayed with each snorting breath.

Its breathing made it real. A woman covered her eyes and whimpered, but the men leaned forward, staring at the demon which had come to enchant them, render them helpless.

The thing put its head forward, pulling at the bonds which held it. It seemed to sniff the scent of human bodies and the smoke from the fires. Now it could be seen that there were two tall men holding the beast, checking it with thongs tied to its paws. Slowly the men bent, their beards and chain mail gleaming with rain and firelight, and cut the beast free.

The beast shuffled forward hesitantly like any wild thing in the dwelling place of men. The packed crowds shrank back, still uttering no sound.

The thing came straight on, shuffling between the tables, between the dancers where a silent lane had formed for him. The fire pit lay in his path and they watched him lumber through it, unseeing, treading among the glowing logs.

A whisper of a sigh went over them. Something dread, as dark and evil as the eternal unknown, was with them. In the sweaty brilliance of the hall the ghosts of ancient ages rose up to plague them.

As the thing passed close they could see that it wept and slobbered with the force of its madness. It was half-blind, mindless, obscene, yet they could not draw their eyes from it.

A woman cried out.

At the sound the men broke from their trance and wordlessly surged against each other. The noise of their feet was loud in the stillness. Men clawed at their women to get to the wall where their weapons were hung.

“Now see the berserkr,” Sweyn Barrelchest roared at the door, “and know that Death has come among you!”

A great scream arose at the sight of the host of Northmen pouring in behind the demon. The Vikings were lashed to a wildness to match that of the beast which led them. They cut into the crowd, shouting their war cries.

The force of their charge was like the sea rushing upon the rocks. The Northmen carried deep into the hall, surging through the retreating mass of struggling Scots. A great wailing began to rise from the wounded.

The clansmen had been stunned by the first sight of the beast, and their desperate efforts were no match for the raging Northmen. Those of the Scots who had found their weapons were off balance in the press, unable to swing their swords or free their spear arms, fouled and tangle-footed in the over-turned trestles and benches, screaming women and old men. No war cries come from them to match the bellows of the Vikings. They stumbled about seeking to form a defensive line.

The Northmen drove deeper, their round shields held before them, following their beast leader toward the high table. The nobles there were in better order. There had been time to snatch what weapons were at hand and brace themselves for the Northmen’s charge.

The demon in the bearskin lunged at the dais. The Macoul hurdled the table in a brave attack aimed at the thing, but as he swung his sword down it struck a low beam, chipping part of it away. He stumbled. The sword flew through the air and buried itself in a woman’s neck. The Macoul stood for a moment, his hands hanging at his side, his mouth open. He took a Viking spear in the chest and fell.

The Northmen engulfed their demon. They roared at the dais, a wave of shields, bulging eyes, and mouths agape in yellow beards. Their size, their ferocity, the noise of their shouts was overwhelming.

Donn macDumhnull roared back his defiance. He tore a spear from the wall and came over the table followed by a monk from Iona with a hunting bow in his hands. A Viking with teeth like fangs sprang before them and gave his spear thrust.

Donn was hit in the shoulder. He tore at the shaft with his good arm. The Viking grabbed at it and the men locked together like wrestlers. The spear came loose suddenly, tearing Donn’s arm out of its socket. The macDumhnull roared again, this time in agony. He fell forward to his knees and the Culdee monk coolly took aim over his head and shot the Northman a death wound through the eye. The two bodies fell at his feet.

Calum macDumhnull looked at his brother’s death in wordless terror. He turned, fighting his way through the chiefs’ wives huddled behind the table. Only Barra, who had been crouched among the Pictish servants, saw him leave, and he scrambled over the benches toward him.

“Toiseach!” Barra cried. He drove his knife into the small of the red-headed man’s back and ripped upward. Calum bent double and Barra caught him as he fell. Barra turned him over, putting his face close to the other’s.

“It is my knife which kills you,” he grinned. He put the tip of the knife to his lips. “It is your blood I taste, in revenge.” But the chief of the macDumhnulls, the Read Fox, was dead.

The noise of the rear door being torn from its hinges came to them, and the vanguard of the Vikings poured back of the dais. There were few left at the high table to defend themselves from this new attack. Comac Neish and Angus Og still fought behind a barrier of the bodies thrown up onto the table. A few paces from them a chieftain of Eti and his son held out against two Northmen in wolfskins and ribboned beards.

Comac dodged the blows of a Norseman with a battle-ax. The man shrugged, stepped back, and began to chop away at the table edge in the powerful, rhythmic stroke of the woodsman. Chips began to fly from the oak, bone and gristle from the barricade of corpses. Suddenly the hacking stopped and the man stepped back one pace, his face outraged. He sank slowly to his hands and knees.

A triumphant woman put her foot on his back and struggled to draw her spear from between his shoulder blades. She was all but naked and Comac stared at her, wondering how she had escaped the carnage below. Before he could extend his hand to pull her across the table she was hacked to pieces by two Northmen. She was dead before she fell.

Comac moved to search for the demon bear. There he was, towering head and shoulders above the rest of the Vikings, swinging a two-handed sword stiffly, roaring and weeping.

Comac bit his lip. It was as he thought: the insane thing was helpless before its own violence. The Northmen left a careful space around it as they fought.

Comac jumped to the table top.

“Bearskin!” he roared. He cupped his mouth. “Come to your death!”

A redheaded Viking balanced a spear and flung it at Comac’s chest. The Irishman was an easy target but the weapon missed and buried itself in the logs over his head.

The bear saw Comac then and hesitated. Comac kicked a cup down from the table and it rolled at the beast’s feet. The thing snarled, started toward him. “Come, come to me,” Comac urged. This thing was the leader of the howling enemy, he was sure. To kill it would be like cutting the head from the body. All the Viking frenzy seemed to stem from this one.

He snatched up a helmet from the table and threw it. It hit the beast on the shoulder and bounced off. The bear charged the table, flailing its arms, frustrated by the barrier. It backed off again before Comac could strike.

It suddenly whirled and flung itself again up the step, over the corpses in a lunge, and across the table on its stomach, seizing Comac’s silken shirt.

Comac shouted his challenge. He was grinning. But the bear reached out and pulled him close, using him to haul itself across the table. It wrapped its furred arms about Comac’s body, imprisoning his arms.

The thing bent its head and sank its teeth into the Irish warrior’s neck. Comac cried out. Shaken, he struggled to free his weapons. Fear stirred in

him, fear of this thing which looked to be a man but was really a beast.

The two figures swayed against each other and the heavy table moved and thundered with the shifting of their bodies. The beast clung to Comac, raking his throat and breastbone with its teeth, searching for the veins in his neck. Comac dropped his sword. It was useless; his arms were becoming numb in the other’s grip. He tried to drive the point of his knife into the other’s ribs but it stuck fast in the hide. Blood was wetting his shirt front and spreading stickily over him as the furred skull worked up and down under his chin.

Comac sobbed out. He had fought many men but had never known a fear such as this. He had little time to deal the thing a death wound. He managed to bring his elbow up between them, and tore at the skull with his freed hand. It was laced tightly to the man’s head and he forced its face back with it. The mouth was a bloody hole, slack and senseless.

Comac got the heel of his hand under the snout and threw his strength against it. Now he could see the man’s eyes.

In his shock he almost lost his grip on the skull.

The eyes were colorless, except for needle points of black which were the pupils. The rest had faded. These were the eyes of a monster, a dead thing with no life in it, a fathomless horror which burbled and snarled like an animal. It was not a man. Only a man’s shell occupied by monstrous evil.

Comac groaned. He reached for the thing’s eyes and ripped at them. The only response was a crushing blow on his ribs as the beast tightened its arms. Comac dug desperately for a hold in the eye sockets where he could catch his fingers and gouge.

Darkness was coming over him. His breath strained. His ears were singing keening songs of death. He clawed again, fighting the darkness.

His hands were feeble, useless. He heard the crushing of his ribs as the other ground him in its arms. He felt something break. The bear skull had snapped its lacings and had fallen back, exposing the man’s head and the sheaf of fair hair.

Comac did not see it. The knives of his ribs were killing him. “Doireann!” he screamed.

She heard someone cry her name. She was standing in the corridor holding the child to her, pressed against the boards in terror.

Two Northmen came cautiously down the other end of the dark corridor pulling down the curtains of the alcoves, looking for those who might be hiding there.

They hauled out a woman and a half-grown child.

Doireann turned away. They were hacking at the child, doing terrible things to the woman. She could not stand where she was, waiting for them to seize her.

She inched away down the corridor toward the light. The wooden partition ended abruptly among the warming hearths and the kitchen pots. Now she could see on an angle the battle which raged at the high table, the bodies of the slain, and the tattered curtains of the back entrance. Something lurched from the dais, an animal deserting its kill. It was white, blurred, and the front was red with blood. It was a man wrapped in some sort of skin.

She could not escape. She could not move her feet, could not cry out. She stood with her back to a pile of grain sacks and tightened her arms about the child. She saw the thing stagger through the battlefield before the dais, lashing out blindly at comrade and enemy.

Then it stopped and threw its head up, halted in its frenzy. It knew she was near.

It moved forward a step and then paused. She shrank into the corner but with no hope that it would lose her, that it would turn away.

It began to come through the press of Northmen storming the high table. It dragged its sword now, head up, bright hair gleaming. It was listening, searching for her. She could see the blood which smeared the working, slobbering mouth.

She was mute, frozen, but no longer dazed. If anything, the room was brilliantly, hurtingly clear. She was aware of death, clamor, the cries of the dying, the pitiful ugliness of the corpses at the tables, trodden underfoot. The color of everything was red, bloody, but it was only background for the white robe of the bear. She could not move, chained to stand motionless, alone, before it.

It was close to her now. The thing’s face showed that it was blind with rage, remote and unseeing in that far world to which it had come. The only familiar thing, the only real thing, was the yellow hair. And the scar.

Its sunburned throat vibrated with hideous noises.

“No!” she cried at last, and her voice was strangled with the desire to claw at the bearskin still hanging to him, to tear it away from his body as the head of it had been pulled from his face. She did not look at his eyes or the writhing, foam-crusted mouth, only the skin of his throat and the loop of hair still neatly, incongruously, bound and tied there. She put out her hand to the thing and it backed away.

The sword was still raised to strike her but she did not flinch. The thing stood, weaving from side to side, the heavy weapon poised. But it did not fall.