Lion of Ireland (14 page)

He pivoted and brought his shield up just in time. The blow was powerful, rocking him backward, but the shield held. He stepped aside and let the man’s momentum carry him past, then chopped at the back of his neck, below the helmet.

The man reeled as the blade bit into him, then staggered another step before going to his knees. He half turned then, facing Brian, and snarled at him like a wild dog. Without hesitation Brian drove his sword into the open mouth.

Ardan and his slingers had come up, taking as their targets those. Northmen who were not wearing mail.

Brian saw a stone strike one man with great force on the forearm, and heard the clear crack of the bone.

The Northman dropped the ax he carried and rocked to and fro, clutching his arm. Brian ran to him joyously and put him out of his pain. Spears sang through the air, hurled by powerful arms. A good throw at the right distance could put the javelin through chain mail, and Brian saw several of the enemy drop to their knees, trying uselessly to pull the vibrating shafts from their breasts.

“Over here, Brian! Aid me!”

One of the young men who had mocked him most often in camp was engaged in a losing battle with two Northmen who had trapped him between them and were scything the air with their axes. The desperate Dalcassian had ducked and dodged to the limit of his strength as they played with him, cat to mouse, enjoying his helplessness.

When he called to Brian it was already too late, for the terminal ax was falling to cleave him in two. But Brian ran forward anyway, crouching down to slash with his sword at the back of one man’s legs. The Northman screamed, his hamstrings cut, and fell on his face; his companion stepped over the dead body of the Irishman and was within a man’s length of Brian.

There was no element of surprise now. They were a small distance from one another, each with room and time to appraise the situation. Brian had his sword but the Northman had an ax freshly fed. They moved back and forth, each watching for an opening, and Brian thought the man said something to him.

“Save your breath and tell your Valkyries to come for your spirit,” Brian replied, and realized with a sense of wonder that he felt no fear at all.

The Northman lifted the ax shoulder high, holding it with both hands at an angle to his body, and stepped in for the kill. Brian swayed backward, calculating the weapon’s reach, but did not let himself retreat. The huge iron ax-head sang through the air as he dropped to a crouch, feeling it pass so close above his head that the wind from it lifted his hair. Then he turned his crouching movement into a fluid forward lunge, his sword coming up between the Northman’s legs.

In the space of time needed for the downswing, the axman was totally committed to the momentum of his weapon. He was helpless to alter its course or change his own balance, his numbed mind said. He and that brief flash of time was the province of the short sword. Brian heard the scream and rolled sideways to avoid having the man topple on him, but there was no escaping a bath of blood from the severed artery in his groin.

When he got to his feet and wiped his eyes he saw that the battle had moved away from him, and was now thickest around a grassy hill topped by the ruins of a fallen and forgotten stone wall. Mahon was there, his voice bellowing out over the random noise, and Brian made his way toward him. The confusion of his first minutes of combat had cleared a little and he was able to understand some of what was happening.

The Northmen had clearly been a lesser number than Mahon expected, and the fighting had begun with an Irish advantage. The foreigners were beginning to realize that fact themselves, and were dropping back, maneuvering to keep the way open for a retreat.

“They’ll run,” a panting man nearby volunteered. “They don’t think it’s any disgrace, those heathen bastards; any time the fight goes against them you’re likely to see their backsides in a hurry.”

Patches of the grass were slippery with blood. But for all the yelling and fighting there did not seem to be as many dead as one would have expected. Brian came up to Mahon without salutation, joining him in an attack upon a cluster of Norsemen who were trying to scramble over the fallen wall. Mahon was aware of his arrival as just another soldier and sword; they fought side by side, without looking at one another, until the Northmen tumbled among the stones on the far side and ran off down the hill. Brian started forward in pursuit but Mahon put out a hand to stay him.

“Hold, little brother! So that was you just now, eh? You did a good job; it seems you’ve taken training well. But there’s no point in going after the enemy; see, they’re deserting the field and leaving it to us, they’ll probably run all the way back to Cork. That’s a battle won, for once!”

“If we pursue them now we could run them down and kill

them all.”

“Aye, and perhaps stumble into a larger nest of them and be wiped out. A clean-cut victory is hard to come by; let us be thankful for what we have and not tempt fate more this day.”

He turned away from the disappointed Brian and surveyed the area, where wounded men cursed and moaned and a scatter of weapons lay forgotten. “Olan!” he yelled. “Bring up some men and let’s get our wounded out of here!”

A few scattered men were still fighting, but they soon broke it off through a mutual lack of interest. Brian found Ardan and together they moved across the area, picking up lost weapons.

“Now you can see the value of the sling,” Ardan commented. “All these axes and swords are heavy, but after a fight I need only carry away my sling and my shield.”

Brian ran his hand down the length of his sword, feeling a form of reverence for it. “No doubt you’re right, but I wouldn’t trade this one weapon for anything.”

“Even a Norseman’s ax?” Ardan stooped and lifted one from the grass. “Have you ever tried to use one of these things? It’s a marvel to me how they do it. I know some Celts fight with hand axes, and with hammers, but nothing so heavy as this.” He gave it a tentative swing and it twisted in his hands like a live thing, overbalancing and thudding downward, narrowly missing his foot.

“God! The thing tried to kill me!” he gasped.

Brian picked up the fallen ax and hefted it gingerly, impressed with its weight and balance. There were rusty stains on the axehead. Ardan cast a look of repugnance upon it and turned away. “I wouldn’t bring that thing back to camp with me, if I were you.”

“Why not? I think there would be an advantage in knowing how to use the enemy’s weapon.”

“Well, please yourself; at least you have a horse to carry it for you.”

With a guilty start, Brian thought for the first time of Briar Rose. All around him men were checking themselves for injuries just beginning to be felt,- talking excitedly about their good blows or narrow escapes, but no one stood patiently holding a black horse. He did see a holder go by leading Mahon’s stallion, and a little way distant, Olan’s gray, lying on the ground in a massive heap.

He hurried to it, more sickened at the sight of the dead animal than the slain men. The horse had been disemboweled, its bloody entrails still steaming on the ground, its long yellow teeth bared in the final agony. Brian shuddered and turned away, feeling the ground tilt and spin beneath him. A horse, so large, so strong, could somehow look so much deader even than a man. Briar Rose . ..

“Prince Brian?” A respectful voice, an unfamiliar thing to him, sounded at his elbow. A freckled youth of his own age, Olan’s body servant, was standing there, looking hopeful. “I’ve come to ask for the use of your horse for my master, as his own is dead.”

So now he was called Prince, and asked for favors. Brian turned to the boy with a shrug, saying, “I don’t know where she is. She may be dead, too.” The words were like a slinger’s stones in his throat.

“Oh, no, my lord! She was careening about, getting in everyone’s way, and we all thought she’d be killed; but she has a charmed life, that one. She ran into a Northman, knocked him down, and trampled him, she did; that’s a great horse!” Brian listened in astonishment. “She’s still alive?” “Indeed she is, we should all be as alive as that horse. Someone finally caught her and took her aside, and they’re holding her just over yonder hill.”

Olan came up, then, red in the face and out of breath, to see if the horse had been procured for him. His expression was no more friendly than it had ever been; he looked as if he intended to take the mare by force if Brian did not surrender her.

Sometimes small things have great importance in the larger pattern, Brian thought. Symbols ... I can demand my rights and make an enemy of this man, or I can surrender meekly and he will forever look down on me. Hatred or contempt. There must be a third choice.

He stepped in front of Olan’s body servant, turning half

I

away from the lad to make it appear as if he had not yet had time to listen to his request. He held out his hand to Olan in sympathy.

“Your good gray is dead,” he said with unfeigned regret. “May I suggest you share mine on the return to Kilmallock? We can each ride her in turn for a portion of the day. It’s only a suggestion, of course; you may not care to use her at all. She’s a trying beast.”

Olan’s eyes flicked toward his underling, but the young man wisely looked away, out of the discussion entirely. Olan drew a deep breath, started to answer, thought better of it. At last he said, “That’s gracious of you. I accept,” and turned away with the muscles clenching in his jaw.

When they brought her to Brian his eyes stung at the sight of her, and he whispered, “Briar Rose, Briar Rose,” against the sweaty meat-smell of her neck. The foot soldiers, watching, envied him his love.

On the return to Kilmallock, Brian found that he enjoyed those rimes afoot, for he was surrounded by other warriors, all eager to relive the battle, and in their enthusiasm they made him one of them for once.

An excitement carried them, so that the miles seemed shorter and the sun brighter. There was endless delight in telling and retelling the tales of hit and thrust and kill. The fear was put into some dark place at the back of the mind, its existence covered over with battle flags, its truth denied by the fact that one was still alive.

It was his first taste of that sweet drunkenness.

Brian sought out Nessa. “You were lucky,” the older man told him, not anxious to hear of his exploits.

Nessa had had a bad day. His sword was broken in his first encounter, the sword that had been his right arm for years. He had hurled the javelin, but it was not his weapon, and at last he found himself struggling on the ground with a bronzed youth who almost succeeded in overpowering him. It did not sit well, hearing another youth boast of many kills.

At night they prudently built no campfires, but sat in circles anyway, joking and swapping stories. The hardened warriors became emotional and childlike, easily moved to tears or »

laughter. They freely embraced one another, including even the officers in their fellowship. There had not been that many victories to celebrate.

Brian sat with them, content, until he noticed that Mahon had spread his blanket alone, and at a distance, aloof as the king should be. Special. The King.

No man wanted to go to sleep. “Did you see the way I bashed that big fellow? Got him right in the face, a perfect blow. He was huge, I tell you, but he went down like a felled tree. Shook the earth, he did!”

“This man came up behind me, and I would never have known he was there but I saw his shadow on the grass. So I whirls me around like a wind-swirl, with my javelin in my two hands, and caught him across the throat with it. You should have heard the sound he made!”

“This was nothing, this little skirmish. I remember the battle of Rath Luirc—now that was a battle!”

Against his will, Brian’s eyelids began to itch and grow heavy. He was still for a few moments and his head nodded, bobbing forward and then righting itself with a jerk. He glanced around, embarrassed, but no one was paying any attention to him. He made his way to his pack and carried it a little distance away from the others. To a place that was aloof, special. He stretched out and lay on his back, his hands folded behind his head so that he might look up at the stars. I was good. I was afraid at first, but no one knew. Beyond him, in the night, the trees stood. A breeze stirred them, and they whispered to one another. The sounds from the men faded as each reluctantly sought his blanket, until there was only an occasional cough or snuffle, and the night birds calling.

In the grasses, millions of insects busied themselves with their own miniature struggles of life and death.

The weight of time lay heavy on the hills and valleys. Time without numbers, days without names. The same moon that rode the wispy clouds had seen this place rise from the sea in the dawn of creation, before God ever thought of man.

Brian turned his head and watched the leafy shapes bowing

to one another in the rising wind. How unimportant we must seem, he thought, to a tree. And then he was asleep.

In the king’s sleeping chamber at Cashel, Callachan of the Owenachts lay slowly dying of the wasting disease. His once-powerful body was emaciated, the breath rattling in his sunken chest, and his skin had the yellowish tinge of unhealthy old age, but his eyes still snapped with anger when his son Donogh entered the room and dipped his knee in the ritual obeisance.

“It took you long enough to come.”

“The page just brought me the summons, my lord.”

“Hunh! You were probably tumbling your wife and thought the old man could wait.”

A dull red stained Donogh’s flaring ears and he cast his gaze to the floor, saying nothing.

“That’s what I thought. I’ve worked all my life to leave something of value to my sons, and the only one still living is a womanizer and a fool. All my sacrifices, all my suffering ...” His voice trailed off, though his red-rimmed eyes continued to glare at Donogh. There was no need to finish the diatribe since they both knew it by heart.

Callachan’s voice was surprisingly firm, and he could crack it like a whip when he chose, making people jump back from the edge of his bed and watch him warily. He did this now, enjoying the spectacle of his son fumbling backward to be out of his imagined reach. “Womanizer and a fool,” he repeated loudly.