1014: Brian Boru & the Battle for Ireland (9 page)

Melodramatic as it seems, this whole episode is
corroborated
by the Norse history of the Orkneys. According
to them, it was Gormlaith who had suggested recruiting Brodir.

Brodir did not bother to inform the earl of Orkney about his own arrangement with Sitric Silkbeard. If everything happened as Brodir hoped, Sigurd the Stout would meet with an unfortunate accident on the field of battle and leave the way clear for Brodir to reap all the rewards. He did divulge his plans to Ospak, however. He intended to take twenty shiploads of warriors to Ireland and expected Ospak to provide another ten. Thirty ships from the Isle of Man! Imagine the plunder they would bring home!

Whether they were brothers or just colleagues, Brodir did not know Ospak as well as he thought he did. The conspiracy against Brian Boru was making Ospak extremely uncomfortable. For years he had listened with wholehearted admiration to stories about the Irish king. Brian seemed to be everything that Ospak himself would like to be. As the conspiracy gathered speed he began making different preparations. Ospak was his own man.

CHAPTER SEVEN

C
ALL TO
A
RMS

A
t Kincora Brian was aware of the storm clouds gathering. Ever since the old outlaw days in the hills of Clare he had relied on a network of trustworthy runners to gather news for him. The bog and forest which blanketed much of Ireland made it all but impossible for a man to know what was going on even twenty miles away, but Brian had long since solved that problem.
Fleet-footed
messengers and deep-lunged shouters on hilltops kept him well informed. He knew which of the Leinster tribes were loyal to Maelmora and which were, if not disloyal to their king, at least wavering.

It was no surprise to Brian to learn that Maelmora and Sitric were conspiring against him yet again,
combining
their armies and calling on their allies throughout
Ireland. The two kings had the limited vision common to their time. They thought only in terms of what they could get for themselves. They envied the Árd Rí’s
successes
which they could not emulate, and hated him for the riches and power which were his but not theirs.

In the season of Christmas an unexpected visitor appeared at the main gates of Kincora. The stranger had sailed a fleet of ten Viking longships up the Shannon and beached them below Béal Boru. When he answered the challenge of the high king’s sentries by identifying
himself
as Ospak, from the Isle of Man, and further claimed he was a friend of Brian Boru, he and his party were ushered into the palace immediately. At sword’s point.

We can imagine Brian’s initial suspicion of an unknown Northman accompanied by two hundred warriors. But he was willing to listen. After offering the strangers warm water for washing and ale or buttermilk for drinking – the initial hospitality required under any conditions – Brian gave Ospak his undivided attention.

The pirate described in detail the plans for the invasion of Ireland, holding nothing back. He said that Brodir’s warriors were heavily armed and already sleeping aboard their twenty ships at night. Ospak added that he did not want to be involved in going to war against such a good man, but Brodir had kept pressuring him. Reluctantly,
Ospak had gathered enough warriors to fill ten ships and taken them to an inlet on the other side of the harbour from Brodir’s. Ospak’s oldest son was with them.

Then he told an amazing story. One night a great
commotion
was heard in the sky above Brodir’s ships.
Startled
awake, the men hastily seized their weapons – just in time to be drenched with a shower of boiling blood. They covered themselves with their shields but in spite of this many were scalded. The shower of blood lasted until sunrise. The following day a man died on each one of Brodir’s ships.

On the second night there was another terrifying attack. This time it consisted of the Vikings’ own weapons leaping out of their hands and scabbards, and striking one another in mid-air. The following day one man died on each of Brodir’s ships. The third night, while the
frightened
and exhausted men tried in vain to sleep, an army of ravens attacked them from the sky, rending and tearing their flesh with iron claws. The following day yet another man died on every ship.

Brodir, furious and secretly terrified, went to Ospak and asked what this could possibly mean. Ospak replied that it was a warning from his pagan gods to give up the enterprise. Brodir angrily refused. That same day, Ospak and his warriors had slipped out of the harbour, although
Brodir tried to stop them, and set sail for Ireland.

Brian may have felt a shiver go up his spine at Ospak’s story, but he did not doubt the truth of it. The Gael were as superstitious as the Northmen. Already the battle to come was attracting bad omens – and old women and young warriors were experiencing visitations.

At the conclusion of his narrative Ospak said he had come to Ireland to fight for a man whose nobility meant more to him than his own Viking heritage. To
demonstrate
his sincerity he brought forward his son, and requested that they both be baptised in the Christian faith by Brian’s priest. It was done as he asked. And Ospak and his company were welcomed into Brian’s army to fight side by side with the warriors of the Gael.

As the cold of winter stubbornly dragged on, Brian Boru made ready for one more battle. It cannot have been easy. He had thought the days of fighting were behind him; he had hoped he could enjoy the peace he had constructed. But this was Ireland, and war was again on the wind.

As always, Brian would have overall command of the army. His three oldest sons would receive choice
assignments
. Murrough – now known to friend and enemy alike as the Yew of Ros, after the famous tree that had yielded Maelmora to him – would be senior officer
under the high king. Together with Flann and Conor, he would command the armies of Thomond, the most
successful
warriors in Munster.

Brian appointed his next son to remain at Kincora and administer affairs in his absence. Tadhg, whose mother was Achra, was a serious, level-headed man who could be relied upon to remain steady no matter what happened. Brian’s family and numerous grandchildren would be safe in his care. Until the victory was won and the
triumphant
warriors came home again.

From Kincora the call to arms went out. The season of the warrior had arrived half a year too early – summer was the traditional time for battle. But in 1014, the first three months of the year were fully occupied with gathering and consolidating armies. The northern Uí Néill were conspicuous by their absence. It was too late for any further conciliatory gestures in their direction anyway.

One of the princes of the Uí Néill did respond
favourably
. Malachy Mór welcomed Brian’s messengers to Dun na Sciath and fed them lavishly on venison and
honeycomb
. They returned to Kincora praising the generosity of the former high king. They also brought his pledge of a thousand warriors.

From before dawn until long after sundown, Brian was busy organising his army and planning his campaign.
had done it all before, so many times. Every detail must be worked out in advance, with contingencies to allow for unexpected problems. Brian had never fought a battle large or small that did not throw up some nasty surprises. He decided against taking his cavalry with him. The enemy they were going to face would be afoot. With a large number of men on the battlefield, horses would get in the way. He would limit them to mounts for himself and his most senior officers, plus one highly mobile band for which he had special plans: before the main body of his army reached Dublin, Brian planned to send his mounted warriors to ravage and burn the region north of the city. Dublin was the only actual town in this part of Ireland, but there were several tiny, outlying Norse
settlements
and some prosperous farms in the region known as Fingal (which means ‘the fair foreigner’). The sight of scorched and smoking earth would greet the invaders as they came ashore. Brian had won more than one battle with what we today would call psychological warfare.

The days sped past. There were unsubstantiated rumours that the invasion fleet was already underway. The precincts of Kincora, which were capable of
garrisoning
three hundred warriors on a permanent basis, were stretched to capacity as tribal armies poured in from every part of Ireland. Hostages remaining in the guesting
houses were summarily released and sent home. Their places were taken by chieftains and princes. The lawns around the palace were black with warriors who slept wrapped in their leather cloaks.

Brian was cheered to see the numbers of strong, eager young men – and not so young men – who hurried to Kincora to answer his call. He went out to greet each of his old allies as they arrived, to exchange news and views, to assure one another that all would be well, and to cast a calculating eye on the size and condition of the weaponry they brought with them. At the back of his mind was always the thought: would it be enough? Without the northern Uí Néill – and those in the south who chose to stand aside for their own reasons – could it be enough?

The ironsmiths at Kincora were kept working, even by torchlight. In battle the Gael employed a variety of weapons. The sword was standard and came in several styles: a leaf-shaped thrusting sword like the Roman
gladius
; a shorter instrument known as a dagger or dart; and a longer sword with a sharp edge and a sturdy hilt decorated with precious metals or animal teeth. The first two types were preferred for close combat. The longer weapon was indicative of high status and usually reserved for single combat. Brian Boru, who was a tall man,
wielded a sword over half his height in length. The hilt reputedly was made of alloyed gold and set with jewels.

Irish battle spears came in several sizes, each with its own descriptive name, and were used both for thrusting and for casting. Their heads were of bronze or iron, made to a high standard. Some were broad and flat, others had a needle-sharp point. Still others were shaped like leaves with slightly rippled edges that would leave an even more grievous wound when they were pulled from the body. An exceptionally cruel weapon was a spear with a forked head and sharp, sickle-shaped barbs on both sides, reputedly modelled on the famed
Gae Bulga
of
Cúchulainn
. Unfortunately, no examples of this have ever been found by archaeologists. The annalists describe the Irish spears that were used at Clontarf as ‘glittering, well-
riveted
, empoisoned, with well-shaped, beautiful handles fashioned of white hazel.’

Another weapon of awesome power was the mace. This consisted of a solid iron ball, usually spiked, to which a chain was attached. The other end of the chain was fastened to a sturdy wooden handle. One swing of the mace could send it crashing through a wall. The mace was heavy and awkward; most warriors preferred the axe. However the basic Irish axe, which had been in use since the Bronze Age, was being superseded by the end of the
tenth century. Under Brian Boru the Gael were learning to use the terrifying Lochlann axe made famous by the Vikings. There was only one way to use the Viking battle axe. It had to be held in both hands and swung from the shoulder with a man’s full weight behind it. But when it struck, it killed.

The sword was the more versatile weapon. It might be used right-handed or left, or tossed from one hand to the other. Depending on the shape, it could slice, slash or thrust. In the case of the long sword, the enemy could be hit with the flat of the blade and knocked off balance or even stunned. Some warriors boasted that they kept their swords sharp enough to shave off a man’s beard.

A very different weapon with an ancient provenance was the sling, the early Irish version of artillery. This
consisted
of a flexible pole with a leather sling affixed to one end. A heavy stone placed in the sling was propelled with great force by a skilful whipping motion of the pole. In the right hands, the pole-sling was deadly, even at a
distance
– weapons experts have speculated that this was what David employed against Goliath.

The shields carried by Brian’s army were circular in shape, made of stout Irish oak cross-braced and edged with iron. They were covered with leather dyed in
brilliant
colours, and bossed with bronze which had been
plated in gleaming brass. These were not full length, whole-body shields, but carried on the arm to allow the warrior maximum agility.

The Gael did not wear armour in battle. At most,
warriors
protected their upper torsos with coats of specially toughened leather. By the end of the tenth century a few may have possessed metal corselets in imitation of the Northmen, but there is no record of any of the Irish troops wearing armour at Clontarf. The often cited ‘portrait’ of Brian Boru, which was first published in 1726 by Bazaleal Creake and used in Geoffrey Keating’s
General History of Ireland
, shows him wearing a spiky crown and solid body armour like one of King Arthur’s knights in a Hollywood movie. This image is not only an
anachronism
but a total fantasy.