Lion of Ireland (60 page)

Malachi pursed his lips and raised his brows. “You doubted it?”

“I was young. I doubted everything.”

“And now?”

Brian smiled. “Oh, I’m still a doubter. But I also believe.”

“In God,” Malachi said with satisfaction.

“I believe in a power too great for me to imagine, with properties I cannot begin to understand. What I believe in is larger than your concept of God, Malachi, though He is part of it. But yes, I do believe.”

Malachi stared at him. Was the man blaspheming or was he a prophet with a new understanding? It was so hard to know what to think! Malachi squinted up at the man who stood beside him, gazing calmly out over the valley. “I wouldn’t want to try to get to the bottom of you, Boru,” he said at last. “There are coils and twists in there that might entrap me forever.’*

Brian grinned suddenly and clapped him on the shoulder in a gesture almost identical with the one that was habitual to Malachi. “You don’t have to be my soul mate, Meathman,” he laughed. “Only my fighting comrade, and the time for that has come. Look yonder, at the edge of the trees!”

The army of rebellion had had some difficulty in getting under way. There was constant friction between Maelmordha’s Irish captains and the Norse jarls; every command decision was hotly disputed. The Norse wanted to march west and then follow the Shannon to Kincora, loot and destroy Brian’s stronghold, and cut down his army while it was preparing to march. Maelmordha preferred to go south and into the heartland of Munster, hitting Cashel first and leaving a deputation there to seize the vacant kingship for himself as soon as Boru was dead.

After a heated argument, the Norsemen, led by Harold Deadtooth, a son of Olaf Cuaran, and Svein Iron-Knuckle, agreed to accept Maelmordha’s plan. “We will face Boru and the Ard Ri either way, I suppose, and we will be there before they expect us in any case,” Harold said.

“Sitric Silkbeard will not be pleased when he hears of this,” Svein grumbled.

“Then he should have come with us and argued with the prince of Leinster himself. He is my father’s son; his place is at the head of his army.”

“No, he said that if things go wrong it was more important that he be in Dublin to defend it, for the Irish will surely sack the city if they can.”

“Oh, no they won’t! There won’t be enough Irishmen left when we get through with them to attack a cow byre.”

“I hope you’re right,” Svein replied, “but three black crows have been following us since we left the gates of the city, and I take that to be a very bad omen.”

The crows deserted them when they reached Naas, and with a good meal from Maelmordha’s stores in their bellies the band marched southward in a better humor. The Northmen struck up an old saga-song with a good rhythm to it, and the Irish soon joined in, humming and striking their fists on their shields to keep time. The sun was bright, the winter day crisp. They were a giant oaken club, going to batter their enemies into the earth!

The leaders of the straggling columns reached the thinning trees north of Glenmama and stopped in surprise, momentarily stunned at the sight of a vast army spread out before them. But they had little time for reflection, and still less to gather themselves into some semblance of a battle position. Unknowingly, they had already come through the outer perimeter of the Irish, and Conaing and King Lonergan were closing in on them from the rear.

With the wild and timeless scream that was the oldest Celtic war cry, the Irish hurled themselves upon the unprepared Dubliners.

The battle was joined in a rush and the whole boiling, slashing, yelling body of them burst through the trees and poured into the valley, into the waiting ranks of Brian and Malachi.

It was, as the poets said afterward, a red slaughter.

Padraic fought close to Brian, as always. He had just driven his spear through two Norsemen together, pinning them like spitted pigs, chest to back, and turned to see if Brian had noticed the feat. He felt a terrific impact on the side of his head, and even before the pain could reach him, green Ireland and Brian Boru faded into darkness.

Padraic had been guarding Brian’s back, and as he fell a Leinster swordsman cut his way through to challenge Brian to single combat. They dueled hotly, and then Brian brought him down and moved on to the next opponent, unaware that Padraic was no longer behind him.

The king of Munster cut his way steadily across the field, seeking out Northmen, leaving the killing of Leinstermen to others as much as he could. His shield was hacked and battered and the edge of his sword was ruined, scored with ax cuts and dulled on armor. The chain links of the Norse required something stronger. He jammed the sword back into its sheath and picked up a battle ax from the trampled earth, then went forward again.

Swing and slash, feint and dodge, until the shoulders were a blaze of pain and the back ached like an abscessed tooth. He let go of the ax during an intense grappling struggle with a dark blond man who swore at him in the Danish tongue and carried three daggers in his belt. The foreigner was a head shorter than Brian but years younger, and his reflexes were as sharp as his knives.

Brian felt his hands slide on the other’s slippery flesh and the Dane tore free of him and spun away, only to move in again, a knife in each hand now, his lips parted in a fierce grin. There was no way to stoop for the ax without leaving himself vulnerable. Brian gripped his own dagger and jerked it free from his belt, twisting painfully backward just in time to avoid the other’s slashing downward stroke.

The man was quick “as a cat; there was no getting behind him to cut the spine. They circled each other, crouched and wary, and the Dane began to chant in derision, “Bora! Boru!” Then he laughed.

Brian locked his fists together in a club and slammed them into the other’s face, swinging his extended arms right through the falling arc of the knife. The Dane staggered backward, rocked by the power behind the blow, and Brian kicked him in the groin.

While the Dane was thrashing on the ground Brian retrieved his weapons, dispatched his enemy with a clean blow of the ax, massaged his aching shoulder muscles ruefully for a moment, and then looked up to select his next opponent.

Long before Maelmordha was willing to concede the battle lost, the Northmen were beginning to desert the field and flee toward Dublin, with the Irish of Leth Mogh and Leth Conn in hot pursuit. Great numbers of the fugitives got as far as the Liffey, only to be slain on its banks or drowned in the desperate fighting that took place in the water. Murrough, laughing, stood waist deep in the icy torrent, swinging an ax and bashing heads.

Harold and a small group of his Norsemen made their stand in a spot of unsurpassed beauty, with the tumble of the river behind them, bordered by green banks and stones still verdant with moss. They fought courageously once Conaing’s men had them trapped there, but in the end they all died, Harold himself falling to Conaing’s sword, and their blood watered the roots of the willows along the bank.

Late in the day Murrough and his personal guard rode their horses at the gallop back toward Glenmama, hoping to meet the rebel prince of Leinster along the way, only to run into a dazed and bloodied company of Leinstermen crying that their leader had deserted them. They were easily herded together and shackled with rope.

“Shall we send word to the kings that Maelmordha has escaped?” one of Murrough’s men asked.

“No man escapes me,” Murrough replied grimly. “You may leave the kings out of it. Brian Boru would doubtless countermand any order I might give, so I will handle this myself and tell him of it later.” He divided his men into search parties and began combing the area as the blue shadows grew longer.

Glenmama welcomed the night. The fighting had subsided, dying in a cacophony of shrieks and moans, and the Irish allies held the earth unquestioned. Brian walked over the trampled ground as he was accustomed to doing after an engagement, looking for faces he recognized, stooping to give water from a drinking skin or sign a blessing above a dying warrior.

Sometime during the long afternoon he had seen part of a man’s head lying in the mud, split open and tossed aside by an ax blow. The inside of the skull lay vulnerable to the sky, pink and delicately ridged, like some seashell just abandoned by the small creature it had housed. Brian had checked his stride to look at it and marvel at its dispassionate beauty. In the Old Religions, he thought, man was always aware of death as a part of life; of the skull beneath the flesh. We would label it horrible, and yet, where is the ugliness in a thing so genuinely lovely, so perfectly designed?

The honor existed while the man still lived, trapped in darkness within that skull, all alone.

He pushed the thought away and went back to the fighting. But as he walked the reddened fields of Glenmama in the twilight the concept came back, unbidden, and he clenched his jaw and made himself think it through. I will not be a coward in my own head! Alone, in my own head.

The terrible loneliness of being human. It is not that man learned the difference between good and evil, and thus was thrown out of paradise.

Man lost paradise when he learned that he was permanently, irrevocably alone. A brain floating in the dark bone vault of a skull. A consciousness that could never truly merge with another human consciousness.

That is the loss of heaven, the beginning of hell.

So Brian Bon,--king, human, cursed with life and knowledge—are the gifts worth the cost?

Is the inevitability of suffering too great a price to pay for the glory of a spring day when you are sixteen years old? Are the pain and loneliness of living the price exacted for the gift of life by a sane and loving God? Or does the compassion of Christ fail to extend to His Father?

Would a sane God have doomed all his children eternally as the punishment for Eve’s curiosity in the Garden? If so, it is a terrible retribution, out of all proportion to the crime. What sort of Creator have we? There is something there of the Norse Odin, brutal and pitiless, or the savage, arbitrary elder gods of the Romans.

Head bent, Brian looked down at the dim shape of his hands stretched out before him in the deepening gloom. Hands created—in Whose image?

I have gone to battle in the name of the White Christ against the Red Thor; suppose I am fighting not pagan gods, but God Himself? Choosing one vision of Him against another? Is my battle, then, foredoomed? What if they are all right, Christian and Jew and pagan and the hundred other sects of men, and their gods are mine? What if the mm I have killed in His name are, truly, my brothers?

What have I done, dedicating my life to death?

Brian stared at his hands. The greatest warrior in Ireland stood in the center of the rubble of victory, and saw blood instead of glory.

Night thoughts.

Litter bearers came past him, carrying the wounded to the area set aside for the physicians. The sounds of singing and celebration drifted down the valley. Prisoners were being brought in from every direction, some sullen, some head-banging and defeated, a few still kicking and cursing.

There have been so many nights like this, Brian thought. So many.

He turned and made his way to the tent of the physicians. Padraic might be found there, chatting with friends and telling them jokes to make them forget their pain. He felt a need of Padraic’s bright nature. As he reached the tent, Donogh put a hand on his arm.

“Have you seen Padraic?” Brian asked.

Donogh’s lips tightened to a thin line. His eyes were brimming. “Yes, my lord; I helped bring him in just a little while ago. He was hit in the head by a club during the afternoon; I saw it and got to him, and did what I could, then put him into a safe place until the battle ended and the wounded could be collected.

He still lives, but it’s-a grievous injury.”

Brian’s eyes were bleak. “Norse or Irish?”

“The club-wielder, my lord? A Leinsterman, I believe; he wore a bratt and tunic. After I left Padraic I found him and cut him down.”

Brian could not smile, his lips would not assume the shape, but he put his hand briefly on Donogh’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he said. “I have -been given fine sons. Padraic is one and you are another. When next we meet with MacLiag at Kincora, you may tell him I called you that, and that I would like you so honored in his poetry.”

Padraic lay shrunken and small beneath his blanket. At Brian’s command a flambeau was brought and set beside him, so that the king might see his face and his wound. Cairbre himself was summoned to tend it.

Brian did not ask if he would live. He squatted on the other side of the still body as Cairbre’s gentle fingers parted the blood-encrusted hair and the examined the skull beneath. The physician signaled for a basin of water and bathed the wound, then applied a series of ointments to it. Padraic stirred once and moaned, his hand clutching convulsively on the blanket, and Brian took it in his own and squeezed the fingers. They were impossibly cold.

At last Cairbre stood up. “There is nothing more I can do for him, my lord. It is in God’s hands.”

Duvlann of the Horses came running in, having just heard the news, and he panted to a halt beside them, staring down at Padraic’s empty face. His eyes met Brian’s and glittered with tears. “How bad?” he asked hoarsely.

”The skull is damaged,” Cairbre told them, “but whether that has ruined the brain I cannot say. He may live; he may not. If he does he may be an idiot, recognizing nothing, a drooling thing to be wrapped in a blanket and kept out of sight. It often happens with these wounds. There is nothing to do but pray.”

“Yes,” Brian answered in a low voice. Still holding Padraic’s icy hands between his own warm ones, he bowed his head over them and knelt in prayer on the ground beside his friend. One more time, God . . .

whoever You are. I am asking You, one more time, to spare a life, to leave someone I love in this world with me. I can go on without my friend, if I must; You have made me strong enough to go on no matter what—and I do not know if that is a blessing or a curse.

But this Padraic is very special, Lord. He is a sparrow who always wanted to fly with the hawks. He has been loyal, all his life, to Thee and me, and if there were any way with which I could bargain for his life I would do it.