Berserker (Omnibus) (31 page)

War, then, spread across the land.

Men came to the isolated fort of the Ui Fiachrach, raiders from the east, and they brought the stink of blood with them.

At this time, aware that a force of men was approaching, the women and young children of the four villages on the island were gathered in the fort. The men camped around the walls in low skin-tents, preparing their weapons and fashioning war amulets, some in the shape of bulls, some the blind heads that symbolised Lug, some the grinning female representation of the goddesses of war: Nemain, who brought panic to the enemy, Badb, the scald-crow, haunter of the living, and Morrigan, the Queen of Demons.

As the war trumpets were sounded, replied to by the trumpets of the approaching army, so the fort was closed to the men and the time of testing was come. There was a while of silence and anxiety, with just the mournful sound of the distant bronze trumpets disturbing the wind-haunted quiet.

Niall joined the men outside the fort, preparing himself in his father’s tent with four older warriors who had fought many previous campaigns. One of them was the one-armed hero, Bricriu.

‘Fight beneath the shadow of the Bull,’ said Bricriu. ‘The Bull is the strength of earth, with the speed of wind.’

So Niall fashioned himself a bull amulet of ivory, and slung it on a thin leather thong around his neck. The Bear in his head was amused, and Niall watched his colleagues with dark eyes as the animal that possessed him walked forward and tried to make him tear the amulet from his throat and carve an ivory medallion in the shape of a bear. But Niall resisted the urge, and ultimately conquered it.

He would fight for the Bull Chief, his father, Amalgaid mac Eochu. And when Amalgaid saw the amulet around his son’s neck he came across the tent and smiled, kissed the ivory and hugged his son to his bosom.

The invader came over the hill and paid homage at the magic well. Distantly, in front of the fort, the Connachtmen gathered and assessed the enemy’s numbers.

Of the men of the Ui Neill there were no fewer than fifty. Fifty against the thirty mature warriors of the Ui Fiachrach on this island. With the youngsters, like Niall, the Connacht numbers stood at over sixty, and with the four women who took sword to battle and the ten older warriors, Bricriu included, the advantage was only very slightly with the Ui Neill.

Sunlight gleamed on bronze and iron armour as the host of men rode down the hill towards the fort. The thunder of hooves drifted on the still air, and their cries and shrieked war-chants evoked a blood fury in all the men of the Ui Fiachrach. Soon they met the approaching army with a clangour of their own.

Amalgaid came out of his tent and exhorted the men to fight like fury. He was clad in a single piece of mail, from shoulder to waist, over which he wore a dun-coloured leather jerkin tied across the front. His war kirtle was short and brightly coloured, and leather straps bound his legs and his boots, which reached to his knees. From his left shoulder hung his short cloak, fixed to the leather of his jacket by a bright yellow brooch. Beneath the forge-blackened links of the mail his body was painted bright red to the waist. Only his neck was free, even his hair being tied up on to his crown, so that his head might be taken cleanly should he fall in battle.

Behind him, emerging from the same tent, came Sneachta Doom, the Mad Bear, fourteen years of age. He carried his snow sword, its blade brighter than
any iron blade, its hilt more richly decorated and snug-fitting to his hand than any other hilt. Niall was a tall lad, powerful and sinewy. He wore the bull pendant around his neck, and a thick leather belt round his waist with a loose pouch that bound him between the legs. He was otherwise naked, preferring to sacrifice protection and warmth for speed and freedom of movement.

The boy’s hair hung free, ungreased. A band of bronze held it to his crown, and kept it from his face. His face was decorated in black, lines around his eyes and mouth, and streaks across his cheeks. He looked every bit his father’s son, angry, confident, strong in will and in body.

Cathabach came forward carrying the large, carved wooden effigy of Lug. All men knelt before this and the Druid capped the statue with the skull that had been taken from Amalgaid’s father when he had died in battle, the head having been won back in single combat by Amalgaid himself. Below the skull, Cathabach hung gold and bronze torques, each one forged and carved over the divine corpse of a warlord or his queen.

Distantly the men of the Ui Neill gathered on the plain and fires, burning high and smokily, told the Connachtmen – who read the simple message in the arrangement of the fire and colour of the smoke – that battle would be joined when the first edge of the sun touched the high Slieve to the west, which would be an hour or so before dusk.

A girl was selected then, and naked she was brought to Cathabach. She was young, no more than fifteen, and she was the daughter of Oenghus mac Airthir, the tribal chieftain of one of the smaller communities on this island. He stood proudly as she knelt before the Druid, and bent forward to kiss the effigy of Lug.

Her breasts shook with the excitement of the moment, and her full, wide haunches took the gaze of every man gathered there, for knowing that no man had lain between them set them all to thinking what joy, what warm sweetness would now be denied all men, restricted only to the god, Lug, who could enjoy a woman for a week of nights and return her as intact as when she had gone to him. For this girl there would be perpetual pleasure and perpetual virginity, and all the girls who watched the sacrifice wept that it had not been they who had been chosen for the honour.

As she knelt there, white in the sun, smooth-skinned, her long red hair hanging to her waist and pulled back from her slim shoulders, so Cathabach cried his prayer:

The girl who knelt before him flung out her arms, fingers spread, not trembling, not shaking, not cowering, threw back her head as Cathabach reached down and grasped her long, red hair, winding it around his wrist.

Her cry was of pure ecstasy, cut short by the swift motion of the knife. Cathabach slashed the blade twice across her throat, from the left, then from the right, and the girl’s head came away from her body. He held it up in the air so that the gathered warriors could gaze upon the sublime features.

He tied the head about the tall wooden statue, fixed it so that its open eyes regarded the plain of battle. Turning to the cadaver, he read good omens from the way it had slumped at death: the hands indicating fortune was with them; the thighs overlapping – another good sign meaning peace will follow battle; the pattern of blood, the sign for the warlord himself …

Cathabach shivered violently, lifted dark eyes to regard Amalgaid mac Eochu, who nodded quickly, understanding, and then regarded the distant host.

At the appointed hour he climbed into his bronze-trimmed war chariot, hefted two javelins and led the way towards the men of the Ui Neill.

They came to the western bank of the winding River Dhearg, a stream narrow enough for a horse to jump it with ease. There Amalgaid turned his bronze chariot to the left, the ritual insult, and watched as the men of the Ui Neill rode up to the eastern bank of the same river, horses whinnying and snorting as they strained to leap the flow but were kept at peace by the masked and mailed riders on their backs.

The two hosts regarded each other across this distance of twenty feet, and Amalgaid tried to pick out who led the men. All were heavily mailed, and coloured leather robes covered their armour from neck to knee. They wore skull-cap helmets for the most part, but a few warriors had faceplates of plain, silvered steel down to their mouths, and regarded Amalgaid through
dark, narrow eye-sockets. All held short iron swords, well polished, newly honed to a razor’s sharpness. Javelins bristled from slings on every man’s saddle, and Amalgaid, feeling the inside of his mouth go dry, recognised many deadly varieties of the Belgic throwing spear. These were truly great warriors, and this was no idle skirmish at the flanks of the main invasion force.

‘Who leads you?’ called Amalgaid mac Eochu.

‘I do,’ said the man across the river from him, and he lifted his left arm in salute.

No hand was there, just a silvered stump from which probed a recurved javelin point. This point was used to fetch the helmet from the man’s face. Amalgaid found himself staring at the scarred and angry features of his banished son, Feradach.

Niall the Mad Bear laughed loudly, hefted his snow sword and edged forward to stand almost in the river itself.

‘Then we’ll fight to the death this time,’ he said, but Feradach spat into the water.

‘I’ll fight no mad animal,’ he said bitterly. ‘These men will cut you down. I shall not even take your head.’

‘You
lead
these men?’ cried Amalgaid, amazed and unbelieving. ‘I led them here,’ said his son.

‘But I led them to war,’ came a voice to Amalgaid’s right. All heads turned to regard the rider who pushed forward into the river and rode upstream to stand between father and son, proud in the saddle, blank metal face turned to watch the warlord.

The voice had been a woman’s, a young woman’s! Clad though she was in mail, her full body could be seen, its shape, its slenderness. She held a gleaming sword, held it as casually as she might have held a joint of meat, blade angled downwards, her fingers wrapped tightly around the gilded hilt. The pommel was not jewelled but scored with the tracery of lines that only the craftsmen of Tara could perfect.

‘May we see your face before we kill you?’ cried Amalgaid. ‘Are you a queen, then, a queen of the Ui Neill? Or are the men of the east so frightened that the women have taken over?’

The jibe brought a loud clash of sword against shield, each man on the eastern bank swinging his round, iron-rimmed shield to the front and banging it repeatedly with the flat of his sword. There were no cries, no yells objecting, merely the sign that they were impatient for bloodshed.

The woman in the stream laughed and turned to face away from Amalgaid. She drew off her helmet so that her long red hair fell free and beautiful across her cloaked shoulders. She tossed the helmet to a man on the bank
and he threw her back a golden helmet which she placed on her head, and tied beneath her chin.

‘You wanted to see my face,’ she cried as she reined her horse around. ‘Then see it, men of Connacht, and realise who waits to take your life this day!’

Narrow eyes, thin, cruel lips, parted in a smile of evil triumph – the face lined and sagged, each wrinkle, each rift of ancient malevolence etched in gold – a hag’s face, frightening and repulsive – it watched the Connachtmen, and they felt their souls drawn towards it, felt their minds spin as the woman’s laughter became the hag’s laughter – the demon hag of battle, used against them.

The moment of fear passed. The woman rider turned to regard the full host that followed Amalgaid and the mask she wore became just one more war-mask, to be smelted after the death of the wearer so that no trace would remain of it.

‘I am Grania, daughter of Mugain, who was the daughter of Sodelb, sister of the King of the Laigin who made Tara his own. I lead the green branch of the Laigin because I have proved my worth with weapons. You shall see my true face only if you take my head, and that is unlikely.’

‘What issue,’ said Amalgaid loudly, ‘brings you to fight us?’ He knew the answer. Feradach kicked his horse forward.

‘When the Mad Bear struck off my hand I vowed I should revenge my lost limb with the lives of all who lived in the fort. I have lent my sword and my strength to the green branch for two years, and now my request is granted.’ His voice became softer, and he turned to stare at Amalgaid, after his arrogant survey of all the gathered Connachtmen. ‘Father, leave the field. In all the slaughter that we shall accomplish I do not desire to see you dead. You did what you have to do. It will be sufficient that I kill the rest, and especially that I see the dismembering of the cu mire.’

Amalgaid laughed. ‘That arrogance,’ he said, ‘I shall reward personally.’

‘Enough talk,’ said Grania, turning her steed about and running it up the bank to drier ground. Amalgaid caught a glimpse of her small, round breasts beneath her mail as she swung her cloak behind her and pinned it back so that it would not interfere with her sword arm.

‘Let us ride closer to the sea, where the sun will watch us that much longer,’ called Amalgaid.

‘Agreed,’ called back Grania, and the two hosts moved steadily at a canter along each bank of the river, no man talking or shouting, the men on foot on the Connacht side running ahead of the horses, holding their spears and swords above their heads.

When they came out of the extending shadow of Slieve Mor, close to the calm sea where the blood-red sun was still an hour above the horizon, they
turned again to face each other; the horsemen of the Ui Neill leapt the stream and the fighting began.

For the better part of two hours the Bear that possessed the mind of Niall mac Amalgaid, the Snow Destroyer, had been consuming the young man as he waited, naked and unafraid, for battle.

Though a bull pendant hung around his neck, though he would run and fight in the shadow of the Bull, it was a monstrous bear that breathed with quickening pace, and snarled with the animal noise that had made Niall the Mad Bear so feared in his childhood years. His eyes were wide as the two forces ran along the banks of the river, and every sinewy muscle in his body was tense as the Bear lumbered forward and opened its mouth to cry …