Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures (5 page)

And while King Brian communed with his chiefs on the plains above Clontarf, a grisly ritual was being enacted within the gloomy castle that was at once the fortress and palace of Dublin’s king. With good reason did Christians fear and hate those looming walls; Dublin was a pagan city, ruled by savage heathen kings, and dark and fearsome were the deeds done therein.

In an inner chamber in the castle stood the Viking Broder, somberly watching a ghastly sacrifice on a grim black altar. On that monstrous stone writhed a naked frothing thing that had been a comely youth; brutally bound and gagged he could only twist convulsively beneath the dripping inexorable dagger in the hands of the white-bearded wild-eyed priest of Odin.

The blade hacked through flesh and thew and bone; blood gushed in horrid torrents to be caught in a broad copper bowl, which the priest, with his red-dabbled beard, held high, invoking Odin in a frenzied chant. His thin bony fingers tore the yet pulsing heart from the butchered breast and his wild half-mad eyes scanned it with avid intentness.

“What of your divinations, priest?” demanded Broder impatiently.

“If ye fight not on Good Friday, as the Christians call it,” said the priest, “your host will be utterly routed and all your chiefs slain; if ye fight on Good Friday, King Brian will die – but he will win the day.”

Broder cursed with cold venom. “A noble choice is left us, by Thor! Yet if I fall, I would take Brian with me to Helheim. Enough of such mummery! We go against the Gaels on the morrow, fall fair, fall foul!” He turned and strode from the chamber.

He traversed a winding corridor and entered another, more spacious chamber, adorned, like all the Dublin king’s palace, with the loot of all the world – gold-chased weapons, rare tapestries, rich rugs, divans from Byzantium and the East – plunder taken from all peoples by the roving Norsemen; for Dublin was the center of the Vikings’ wide-flung world – the head-quarters whence they fared forth to loot the kings of the earth.

A queenly form rose to greet the sombre sea-king. Kormlada, whom the Gaels called Gormlaith, was indeed fair, but there was deep cruelty in her face and in her hard scintillant eyes. Of mixed Irish and Danish blood, she looked the part of a barbaric queen, with her pendant ear-rings, her golden armlets and anklets and her silver breast-plates set with jewels. But for these breast-plates her only garments were a short silken skirt which came half-way to her knees and was held in place by a wide silk girdle about her lithe waist, and sandals of soft red leather. Her hair was red-gold, her eyes light grey and glittering. Queen she had been, of Dublin, of Meath and of Thomond. And queen she was still, for she held her son Sitric and her brother Mailmora in the palm of her slim white hand.

Carried off in a raid in her childhood by Amlaff Cuaran, king of Dublin, she had early discovered her power over men. As the child-wife of the rough Dane, she had swayed his kingdom at her will, and her ambitions increased with her power.

Now she faced Broder with her luring, mysterious smile, but secret uneasiness ate at her. Kormlada was a wanton; she snared all men by her wiles; but there was one man she feared in all the world, and one woman. And the man was Broder. With him she was never entirely certain of her course; she duped him as she duped all men, but it was with misgivings.

“What of the words of the priest, Broder?” she asked lightly.

“In the bleeding heart he read it,” the Viking answered moodily. “If we wait, we lose the battle. If we attack on the morrow, Brian wins but falls. We attack on the morrow – the more because my spies tell me Donagh is ravaging Leinster with a strong band, and cannot reach the battle-field by the morrow. We have sent spies to King Malachi, who has an old grudge against Brian, urging him to desert the King – or at least to stand aside and give no aid to either. We have offered him rich rewards and Brian’s lands to rule. Ha! Thor grant he falls into our trap! Not gold but a bloody sword we will give him. With Brian crushed, we will turn on Malachi and tread him into the dust. But first we must conquer Brian.”

She clenched her white hands in savage exultation. “Bring me his head! I will hang it above our bridal-bed!”

“I have heard strange tales,” said Broder sombrely. “Sigurd has boasted in his wine cups.”

Kormlada started and scanned the inscrutable countenance closely. Again she felt a quiver of fear as she gazed at the sombre Viking, with his tall, strong stature, his dark menacing face and his heavy black locks which he wore braided and caught in his sword-belt.

“What has Sigurd said?” she queried, striving to make her voice casual.

“When Sitric came to me in my skalli on the Isle of Man,” said Broder, “it was his oath that if I came to his aid, I should sit on the throne of Ireland with you as my queen. Now that fool of an Orkneyman – Sigurd – boasts in his ale that
he
was promised the same reward.”

She forced a laugh. “He was drunk.”

Broder burst into wild curses as the violent passion of the Viking surged up in him.

“You lie, you wanton!” he grated, seizing her white wrist in an iron grip. “You were born to lure men to their doom! But you cannot play fast and loose with Broder of Man!”

“You are mad!” she cried, twisting vainly in his grasp. “Release me or I will call my guards!”

“Call them!” he snarled. “And I will slash the heads from their bodies. Cross me now and blood shall run ankle-deep in Dublin’s streets. By Thor, there will be no city left for Brian to burn! Mailmora, Sitric, Sigurd, Amlaff – I will cut all their throats and drag you naked to my longship by your yellow hair! Now dare to call out!”

And she dared not. He forced her to her knees, twisting her white arm brutally till she bit her lip to keep from screaming.

“Confess!” he snarled. “You promised Sigurd the same thing you promised me, knowing neither of us would throw away his life for less.”

“No! – no! – no!” she shrieked. “I swear by the ring of Thor – ” then as the agony grew unbearable she cried out: “Yes! – yes! – I promised him – let me go – oh, let me go!”

“So!” the Viking tossed her contemptuously onto a pile of silken cushions where she lay whimpering and disheveled.

“You promised me and you promised Sigurd,” said he, looming darkly above her, “but the promise you made me, you will keep – else you had better never been born. The throne of Ireland is a small thing beside my desire for you – if I cannot have you, no one shall.”

“But what of Sigurd?”

“He will fall in battle – or afterwards,” he answered grimly.

“Good enough!” Dire indeed was the extremity in which Kormlada did not have her wits about her. “It is you I love, Broder; I only promised him because he would not aid us otherwise – ”

“Love!” the grim Viking laughed bitterly. “You love Kormlada – no one else. I understand you; but you will keep your vow to me or you will rue it.” And turning on his heel, he strode from her chamber.

Kormlada rose, rubbing her arm where the blue marks of his savage fingers marred her white skin.

“May he fall in the first onset,” she said between her teeth. “If either survive may it be that tall fool, Sigurd – methinks he would be a husband more easily managed than that black-haired savage. I will perforce marry him if he survives the battle, but by the ring of Thor, he shall not long press the throne of Ireland – I will send him to join Brian – ”

“You speak as if King Brian were already dead,” a silvery mocking voice brought Kormlada about suddenly to face the other person in the world she feared besides Broder. Her eyes widened as from behind a satin hanging stepped a small dark girl clad in shimmering green.

“Eevin!” Kormlada gasped, recoiling. “Stand back – cast no spell on me, little witch – ”

“Who am I to bewitch the great queen who has bewitched so many men?” asked Eevin mockingly, secure in the knowledge of the queen’s superstitious fears; to the Danish woman the Pictish girl was something fearsome and unhuman – an uncanny sprite of the deep woods.

“How came you in my palace?” demanded Kormlada with a weak effort at imperiousness.

“How came the breeze through the trees?” answered the forest girl. “Your guards watched well enough, but do the oxen know when the field mice run through the wheat? You of the fair folk are like blind men and deaf when the dark people steal among you.”

“Why do you spy on me?” asked the queen angrily.

“To see what the great Gormlaith does when a Viking manhandles her in her own chamber,” taunted Eevin. “So many men have knelt before Gormlaith, it was right merry to see Gormlaith on her knees before Broder.”

At this heckling the Danish queen went white, clenching her hands until the nails bit into the delicate palms and brought trickles of blood.

“I will have you thrown into a dungeon for the rats to eat, you witch!” she whispered, so choked with fury she could not speak louder.

Eevin’s dainty lip curled with contempt.

“You dare not touch me; you fear I might put on you a spell to rob you of that cruel beauty whereby you rule men. Now tell me, quickly: what was it Broder told you before I came into this chamber?”

“He had been consulting the oracle of the sea-people,” Kormlada answered sullenly.

“The blood and the torn heart?” Eevin’s lips writhed with disgust. “Faugh! You Danars are but bloody beasts! What did it portend?”

“The priest bade Broder attack tomorrow,” answered the queen, not considering, with the usual illogic of the primitive, that if, as she believed, Eevin were indeed a witch, she should know without asking.

Eevin stood with bent head for a moment, then turned and, slipping through the hangings, vanished from Kormlada’s sight. The proud queen, who in the last few minutes had been bullied and humiliated for the first time in her cruel life, turned like an angry pantheress and left the chamber in a brooding rage that promised little good for anyone who had dealings with her.

Alone in his tent with the heavily armed gallaglachs ranged outside, King Brian woke suddenly from a fitful and unquiet sleep. The thick torches which burned without illumined the interior of his tent and in their light he saw a small childish figure.

“Eevin!” he sat up, half startled, half provoked. “By my soul, child, well for kings that your people take no part in the intrigues of the conquering folk, when you can steal under the very noses of the guards into a guarded tent. Do you seek Dunlang?”

The Pictish girl shook her head sadly. “I see him no more alive, great king. Were I to go to him now, my own black sorrow might unman him. I will come to him among the dead tomorrow.”

King Brian involuntarily shivered.

“But it is not of my woes that I came to speak, great king,” the girl continued wearily. “It is not the way of the forest folk to mix in the quarrels of the fair folk – but I love a fair man. This night I was in Sitric’s castle and talked with Gormlaith.”

King Brian winced at the name of his divorced queen, but spoke steadily: “And your news?”

“Broder strikes on the morrow.”

The king shook his head heavily.

“I am a true Christian, I trust, and it vexes my soul to spill blood on the Holy Day. But if God wills it, we will not await their onslaught, but will march at dawn to meet them. I will send a swift runner to bring back Donagh and his band – ”

Again Eevin shook her head.

“Nay, great king. Let Donagh live; after the great battle the Dalcassians will need strong arms to brace the sceptre.”

Brian gazed fixedly at her for an instant. “I read my own doom in those words, little witch-girl of the woods; have you cast my fate?”

Eevin spread her hands helplessly. “My lord, Gormlaith the pagan believes me to be a sorceress, breathing spells and black dooms. You are wise and know otherwise, yet even you look on me as a person uncanny. I cannot rend the Veil at will; I know neither spells nor sorcery; not in smoke nor blood have I read it, but a weird has come upon me and I see – vaguely – through flame and the dim clash of battle – ”

“And I shall fall?”

She bowed her face in her hands. “It is written.”

“Well, let it fall as God wills,” said King Brian tranquilly. “I have lived long and deeply. Weep not, little girl of the forest; through the darkest mists of gloom and night, dawn yet rises on the world. My clan shall reverence you in the long days to come. And go now, for the night wanes toward morn and I would make my peace with God.”

And Eevin of Craglea went like a shadow from the tent of the king.

V
T
HE
F
EASTING OF THE
E
AGLES

Through the mist of the white dawn men moved like ghosts and weapons clanked eerily. Conn stretched his muscular arms, yawned cavernously and loosened his great blade in its sheath.

“This is the day the ravens drink blood, my lord,” he grinned, and Dunlang O’Hartigan nodded absently.

“Come hither and aid me to don this cursed cage,” said the young Dalcassian. “For Eevin’s sake I will wear it, but I had rather go into battle stark naked, by the saints!”

The Gaels were on the move, marching from Kilmainham in the same formation in which they intended to enter the battle. First came the Dalcassians, big rangy men in their saffron tunics, with a round buckler of steel-braced yew wood on the left arm and the right hand gripping the dreaded Dalcassian axe against which no armor could stand. This axe differed greatly from the heavy two-handed weapon of the Danes; the Irish wielded it with one hand, the thumb stretched along the haft to guide the blow, and they had attained a skill at axe-fighting never before or since equalled. Hauberks they had none, neither the gallaglachs nor the kerns, though some of their chiefs, like Murrogh, wore light steel caps. But the tunics of warrior and chief alike had been woven with such skill and steeped in vinegar until their remarkable toughness afforded some protection against sword and arrow.

At the head of the Dalcassians strode Prince Murrogh, his fierce eyes alight, smiling as though he went to a feast instead of a slaughtering. On one side went Dunlang O’Hartigan in his Roman corselet, and on the other side the two Turloghs – the son of Murrogh, and Turlogh Dubh, who alone of all the Dalcassians, always went into battle fully armored. He looked grim enough, despite his youth, with his dark face and smoldering blue eyes, clad as he was in a full shirt of black mail, mail leggings and a steel helmet with a mail drop, and bearing a spiked buckler. Unlike the rest of the chiefs who preferred their swords in battle, Turlogh Dubh fought with an axe he himself had forged and of all the Gaels, none could match him at axe-fighting. So these chiefs led the warriors of Clare to the slaughter and behind Dunlang came Conn, bearing the Roman helmet.