Lion of Ireland (74 page)

Murrough closed with Sigurd and they beat with all their strength against one another’s shields, circling, watching for openings, finding none, and swearing grimly. With a sudden pang of fear, Sigurd felt the absence of his mother’s protective banner in the air above him. The raven must always fly over him in battle, its outstretched wings holding off his enemies! As Murrough’s skillful blows came harder, closer, he shouted again, this time to Hrafn the Red, “Lift my banner!”

Hrafn, immersed in a sea of enraged Dalcassians, screamed back, “Lift it yourself!”

Sigurd stooped low and grabbed up the trampled bit of fabric, trying to thrust it beneath his armor for safekeeping, but in that moment the sword in Murrough’s strong right hand found its opening and struck off his helmet, bursting straps and buckles. As Sigurd lost his balance Murrough pressed in upon him and buried his dagger in the unprotected throat Sigurd Hlodvisson, Earl of Orkney, lay dying at Murrough’s feet, and his red blood stained the black breast of the raven crumpled beneath him.

The invaders began to fall back before the unremitting attack of the Irish, the outnumbered Irish, the despised Irish. The Connachtmen were making strong advances against Dubghall’s Dubliners; the seeming safety of the city called to them, and the Norsemen began to retreat across the single bridge over the Liffey.

Part of the region north of Dublin was covered by the virgin forest known as Tomar’s Wood, and it was here that

Brian’s men had pitched his tent, close to the battlefield but with the strength of the dense trees between the Ard Ri and danger. He could hear the sounds and fearful cries as the day wore on; he could hear the direction of battle change, as the first retreats began.

A battle day seemed long when you were swinging and slashing and the weariness began to chew your muscles; it seemed longer still for the man who waited and listened, no longer able to affect the outcome.

There was one thing left that he could do. His prayer stool was set up by Laiten, his attendant, and a cushion placed for his knees. As Ireland’s greatest battle was fought Brian knelt in prayer on the stool that had once been Mahon’s, and made his supplication to all the faces of God.

The sun passed its midpoint and moved into the western sky. The watchers on the parapets of Dublin had lost their enthusiasm for the battle as the Ard Ri’s army moved toward them, step by bloody step.

The Danes in their full coats of mail seemed marked out for special attack; they were all cut to pieces by the Dalcassians whom Brian had taught to swing the relentless battle-ax. Emer had found the courage to look again and watched transfixed as Northmen and Leinstermen alike began to come staggering back toward the city, defeat written in the sagging lines of their bodies.

Crowds of men were now fleeing along the level shore between Tomar’s Wood and the sea, struggling to reach either their ships or the bridge to Dublin. But Malachi Mor had finally lost the battle with his conscience. As the sun’s lowered position spread a golden light over the carnage, he ordered his Meathmen into the battle at last and they came at the run from their safe position to the west Lake arrows held back too long, they shot into the fray and cut off the retreat of the Dubliners.

The scrambling crowds were caught between the Meathmen on one hand and the sea on the other—and were horrified to discover that the ships lay beyond their reach.

*

Emer gave a cry of wild delight. “The foreigners are making for their natural inheritance, the sea!” she screamed joyfully. “They look like a herd of cows driven mad by gadflies on a summer day!” Exulting in her father’s victory, she beat her hands in rapture against the plank palisades. Sitric’s customary control left him then, and he hit her a fearful blow across the mouth, breaking her teeth against his knuckles, his blood mingling with hers. She did not flinch or cry out, but stood straight and tall before him, Brian Bora’s daughter—and laughed.

With a moan, Gormlaith sank slowly to her knees. Her staring eyes reflected emptiness and flames. She had taken nothing to eat or drink throughout the day, and her lips were so cracked and parched that it was painful to speak, but she said some name, just once, as she drew the hood of her cloak over her head. Whatever she said, it was lost in the sound of Emer’s laughter.

When the battle commenced in the morning the tide was high, and after the long day the tide was again flooding. The dragonships swung on their mooring lines with a vast expanse of water between them and the desperate men on shore, who looked toward them with glazing eyes. Frantic, the Northmen began to wade into the sea, and the Irish went after them. The battle at the Weir of Clontarf would be the bloodiest of the day, and the men who escaped the sword would surrender their lives to the inrushing tide of the Irish Sea.

Waiting in his tent beyond the trees, Brian knelt, his head bowed over clasped hands. From time to time he sent Laiten to inquire of his guards as to the situation on the battlefield.

“The armies are mixed up together so that one cannot be told from the other, my lord,” Laiten reported during the long afternoon. “I can hear their blows; it sounds as if a vast multitude were hewing down Tomar’s Wood with axes. But I climbed a tree and I could see your banner floating above the banners of the other princes of the Dal Cais, so Prince Murrough is still safe.”

Brian gave the boy a distracted smile.

The day seemed endless, and he sent Laiten to climb his tree once more. “By now they are all so covered with blood that no living man could distinguish among them, my lord,” Laiten came back to tell him. “But I could see the flag of the three lions clearly, moving toward Dublin.”

Brian stood up and stretched his stiff shoulders. “AH is well, then,” he said with relief. “As long as my men can see that standard they will fight with valor.”

A terror had seized the Northmen and infected the men of Leinster. Doom was heavy in the air, thick as the smell of blood. Visions seemed to move among the trees. Voices cried out to them, warning. They were trapped; there was nowhere to flee. Wherever they turned they stumbled over the bodies of their fallen allies.

The Irish were certain of victory now. Murrough led a group in pursuit of first one fleeing band of Northmen and then another, although he was aware, through the fog of weariness, that the day was fading into evening and the peak of the battle had passed. One little knot of Northmen, centered by Anrad the Brave, was making a final, desperate stand on a slight rise littered with bodies. Catching sight of Murrough beneath Brian’s banner Anrad dashed toward him furiously, screaming.

The Dalcassian prince had thought himself already so tired that he could not swing a sword one more time, but the shrieking Northman unlocked some deep reserve within him, and he stepped forward to meet the man. He carried a sword in each hand, but Anrad’s ax sang its song and knocked both blades from his tired grip. He stepped inside its swing and grappled with the Dane then, managing somehow with an act beyond mortal will power to drag the chain mail upward over his enemy’s head and face. He hurled Anrad to the ground and fell on top of him, striking him again and again with his dagger.

Dying, Anrad struggled to free one hand—the hand that

gripped his own dagger—and drive it upward.

*

One more time, Brian asked Laiten for a report. This time the boy was longer in returning. He came walking through the circle of Brian’s guard with his head down, as if he were reluctant to meet the eyes of the Ard Ri.

“What is it, lad? Tell me, what news!”

Laiten squared his narrow shoulders. “The ranks are very thin, my lord, and only a few heroes still stand to give fight It seems to be a complete victory—for us, for the Irish! Sigurd of Orkney and Maelmordha of Leinster have both been identified among the dead and the army of Northmen is destroyed!”

Brian’s voice was sharp. “But ... ?”

Laiten would not look at him. “The banner that went with Prince Murrough is fallen, my lord. I saw it go down with my own eyes.”

Murrough felt the bite of the knife in his side; felt it sink deep in a blinding blaze of white pain that drove the breath from his lungs. He fell to one side and lay gasping on the grass, waiting until the agony diminished a little. When he moved, a hot flood burst within him and he knew the wound was mortal, though there might be hours of life left before it claimed him. He struggled to one elbow and managed to get the attention of his men,, and they all ran to him, even the standard-bearer, letting the banner of the three lions drop onto the trampled earth as he stooped to help his lord.

He tried to ask them to take him to the Ard Ri, only to discover, with a strangely detached sense of wonder, that the power of speech had already left him. He regarded the fact as interesting, but hardly frightening. Even the pain was ebbing into a hazy softness. Death was speeding toward him on a dark horse and he found himself awaiting it with only mild regret. He thought passingly of Fedelma and his children—especially Turlough. And then of Brian. He tried once more to speak but could not.

Ah, well, he that, it does not matter. The important things have already been said.

They carried him to a dim place that seemed crowded with groaning men, and he was aware that hands explored his

wound, but some sort of barrier sealed him off from sensation. A priest bent over him and made the Sign of the Cross. Our Father Who art . . .

Brian clutched Laiten’s shoulder with iron fingers, digging in. “You say Murrough has fallen?”

“Yes, my lord. They are crying on the battlefield that he has been slain . . . But we have won!” he added desperately, writhing in Brian’s grip.

“We have won,” Brian echoed tonelessly. He came to himself and released the boy, and Laiten stood, rubbing his shoulder.

“It’s a splendid triumph, my-lord. The foreigners are utterly routed and fleeing in every direction. Your own guards are barely able to contain themselves, they’re so wild to join in the last of the fighting. I could take you away from here, to some safer place, so that they might go on and share the final glory .. . ?”

There was eagerness in Laiten’s voice, but Brian was beyond urgency.

“Tell them to go to the battle, if they will,” he answered gently. “And go with them that you may share it; you can tell about it for the rest of your life. I need no guards now. What good would it do to protect my life? My battles are all over, my victories won. If Murrough is fallen then the valor of Erin is dead; I have suffered the last loss—I do not wish to suffer more.”

Laiten was horrified. “We cannot leave you, my lord!”

Brian stood very straight; all at once he seemed taller, and his deep voice was firm. A young man’s voice.

The look in his eyes frightened Laiten. “Go,” he repeated. “That’s an order! I will be all right, I have my sword and my strength; I can wait here until all is over.”

When Laiten still hesitated, Brian raised his voice once more into the thunder of the Ard Ri. “Go!”

Laiten fled.

The Weir of Clontarf was a tangle of dead bodies and broken weapons. In their last race for the escape that did not exist, the Northmen had been trapped there by the returning sea, and their pursuers with them, as the water swept over them to tangle invader and defender together in an unholy alliance of triumph and tragedy.

A brawny Northman floated face downward in the bloody water, an Irish dagger protruding from his back. The boy who had killed him drifted beside him in the lapping wavelets, his hands still clutching his enemy’s yellow hair, his body quiet with the peace that had come too soon to Turlough mac Murrough O

Brian.

Alone at the entrance to his tent the Ard Ri stood, wrapped in his grief, watching the darkening sky.

And then it was that the beauty of Erin came to him like a lad’s first love, bringing with it the magic of the timeless land, kissing his brow with mist, crowning his head with stars.

Death was all around him, but out there—in the night—Ireland was alive. The strength and pride of the Northmen lay dead at Clontarf; the viking fury would not come again. Other lands and other peoples would fall victim to the dragonships and the thirsty axes, but Ireland, at last, belonged to the Irish.

He could make out the chant now. He could hear it clearly in the distance, a rhythmic music like the beating of a heart, the volume swelling as the Irish claimed their victory.

“Bora!” they cried exultantly into the night wind.

“Boru! Boru! Boru!”

chapter 54

The dark and desperate man ran through the woods, ducking to avoid the grasping arms of the trees, pausing to yank his black hair free from the clutching fingers of the undergrowth. The forest itself seemed to be part of the conspiracy against him. He was panting hard and there was a stitch in his side. His body was a mass of bruises and cuts that would hurt dreadfully, come morning.

If morning ever came. If the horrible night could be survived. Behind him, the Norse might he had believed invincible lay in ruin. The walls of Dublin were still unbreached, but the army meant to protect them had been annihilated, cut down by the swords and the sea. Defeated by the magic, and the beauty, and the cruelty of Ireland. Red Thor stalked the bloody battlefield, and the Valkyries must even now be swooping down from the heavens to claim their heroes for Valhalla.

Brodir ran for his life.

There was an opening in the trees, a clearing ahead with a glimmer of light. He reached the edge of the woods and saw the tent set there, seemingly deserted. He took a step forward and a shadow moved on the tent wall, between it and the single lamp burning within. Brodir hefted the reassuring weight of his double-edged battle-ax. “Old Dragon-Tooth,” he murmured fondly, stroking its shaft with his free hand.

He moved into the clearing and squinted his eyes, trying to get a better look at the tent in the gloom. The sides were of fine leather, and there were painted symbols, Celtic intertwinings.

Suddenly Brodir grinned; a mere skinning back of his lips from his square white teeth. The prophecy would be fulfilled after all! It was the tent of the Irish Aid Ri that stood before him, miraculously unguarded, and when he strode to the flap and peered inside he knew that the man kneeling on the prayer stool could only be Brian Boru. He lifted his ax and entered the tent.