The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 1 (26 page)

Now she faced Brodir with her alluring, mysterious smile, but secret uneasiness ate at her. In all the world there was but one woman she feared, and but one man. And the man was Brodir. With him she was never entirely certain of her course; she duped him as she duped all men, but it was with many misgivings, for she sensed in him an elemental savagery which, once loosed, she might not be able to control.

“What of the priest’s words, Brodir?” she asked.

“If we avoid battle on the morrow we lose,” the Viking answered moodily. “If we fight, Brian wins, but falls. We fight–the more because my spies tell me Donagh is away from camp with a strong band, ravaging Mailmora’s lands. We have sent spies to Malachi, who has an old grudge against Brian, urging him to desert the king–or at least to stand aside and aid neither of us. We have offered him rich rewards and Brian’s lands to rule. Ha! Let him step 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–Brian.”

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

“I have heard strange tales,” said Brodir soberly. “Sigurd has boasted in his cups.”

Kormlada started and scanned the inscrutable countenance. 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 asked, striving to make her voice casual.

“When Sitric came to me in my skalli on the Isle of Man,” said Brodir, red glints beginning to smoulder in his dark eyes, “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.”

Brodir burst into wild cursing as the violence of the untamed Viking surged up in him. “You lie, you wanton!” he shouted, seizing her white wrist in an iron grip. “You were born to lure men to their doom! But you will not play fast and loose with Brodir of Man!”

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

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

She dared not. He forced her to her knees, twisting her white arm so brutally that she bit her lip to keep from screaming.

“You promised Sigurd the same thing you promised me,” he went on in ill-controlled fury, “knowing neither of us would throw away his life for less!”

“No! No!” she shrieked. “I swear by the ring of Thor!” Then, as the agony grew unbearable, she dropped pretense. “Yes–yes, I promised him–oh, let me go!”

“So!” The Viking tossed her contemptuously on to a pile of silken cushions, where she lay whimpering and disheveled. “You promised me and you promised Sigurd,” he said, looming menacingly above her, “but your promise to me you’ll 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’ll fall in battle–or afterward,” he answered grimly.

“Good enough!” Dire indeed was the extremity in which Kormlada had not her wits about her. “It’s you I love, Brodir; I promised him only because he would not aid us otherwise.”

“Love!” The Viking laughed savagely. “You love Kormlada–none other. But you’ll keep your vow to me or you’ll rue it.” And, turning on his heel, he left her chamber.

Kormlada rose, rubbing her arm where the blue marks of his fingers marred her skin. “May he fall in the first charge!” she ground between her teeth. “If either survive, may it be that tall fool, Sigurd–methinks he would be a husband easier to manage than that black-haired savage. I will perforce marry him if he survives the battle, but by Thor! he shall not long press the throne of Ireland–I’ll send him to join Brian.”

“You speak as though King Brian were already dead.” A tranquil voice behind Kormlada brought her about to face the other person in the world she feared besides Brodir. Her eyes widened as they fell upon a slender girl clad in shimmering green, a girl whose golden hair glimmered with unearthly light in the glow of the candles. The queen recoiled, hands outstretched as if to fend her away.

“Eevin! Stand back, witch! Cast no spell on me! How came you into my palace?”

“How came the breeze through the trees?” answered the Danaan girl. “What was Brodir saying to you before I entered?”

“If you are a sorceress, you know,” sullenly answered the queen.

Eevin nodded. “Aye, I know. In your own mind I read it. He had consulted the oracle of the sea-people–the blood and the torn heart,”–her dainty lips curled with disgust–“and he told you he would attack tomorrow.”

The queen blenched and made no reply, fearing to meet Eevin’s magnetic eyes. She felt naked before the mysterious girl who could uncannily sift the contents of her mind and empty it of its secrets.

Eevin stood with bent head for a moment, then raised her head suddenly. Kormlada started, for something akin to fear shone in the were-girl’s eyes.

“Who is in this castle?” she cried.

“You know as well as I,” muttered Kormlada. “Sitric, Sigurd, Brodir.”

“There is another!” exclaimed Eevin, paling and shuddering. “Ah, I know him of old–I feel him–he bears the cold of the North with him, the shivering tang of icy seas…”

She turned and slipped swiftly through the velvet hangings that masked a hidden doorway Kormlada had thought known only to herself and her women, leaving the queen bewildered and uneasy.

In the sacrificial chamber, the ancient priest still mumbled over the gory altar upon which lay the mutilated victim of his rite. “Fifty years I have served Odin,” he maundered. “And never such portents have I read. Odin laid his mark upon me long ago in a night of horror. The years fall like withered leaves, and my age draws to a close. One by one I have seen the altars of Odin crumble. If the Christians win this battle, Odin’s day is done. It comes upon me that I have offered up my last sacrifice…”

A deep, powerful voice spoke behind him. “And what more fitting than that you should accompany the soul of that last sacrifice to the realm of him you served?”

The priest wheeled, the sacrificial dagger falling from his hand. Before him stood a tall man, wrapped in a cloak beneath which shone the gleam of armor. A slouch hat was pulled low over his forehead, and when he pushed it back, a single eye, glittering and grim as the grey sea, met his horrified gaze.

Warriors who rushed into the chamber at the strangled scream that burst hideously forth, found the old priest dead beside his corpse-laden altar, unwounded, but with face and body shriveled as by some intolerable exposure, and a soul-shaking horror in his glassy eyes. Yet, save for the corpses, the chamber was empty, and none had been seen to enter it since Brodir had gone forth.

Alone in his tent with the heavily-armed gallaglachs ranged outside, King Brian was dreaming a strange dream. In his dream a tall grey giant loomed terribly above him and cried in a voice that was like thunder among the clouds, “Beware, champion of the white Christ! Though you smite my children with the sword and drive me into the dark voids of Jotunheim, yet shall I work you rue! As you smite my children with the sword, so shall I smite the son of your body, and as I go into the dark, so shall you go, likewise, when the Choosers of the Slain ride the clouds above the battlefield!”

The thunder of the giant’s voice and the awesome glitter of his single eye froze the blood of the king who had never known fear, and with a strangled cry, he woke, starting up. The thick torches which burned outside illumined the interior of his tent sufficiently well for him to make out a slender form.

“Eevin!” he cried. “By my soul! it is well for kings that your people take no part in the intrigues of mortals, when you can steal under the very noses of the guards into our tents. Do you seek Dunlang?”

The 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 shivered.

“But it is not of my woes that I came to speak, My Lord,” she continued wearily. “It is not the way of the Dark People to take part in the quarrels of the Tall Folk–but I love one of them. This night I talked with Gormlaith.”

Brian winced at the name of his divorced queen. “And your news?” he asked.

“Brodir strikes on the morrow.”

The king shook his head heavily. “It vexes my soul to spill blood on the Holy Day. But if God wills it, we will not await their onslaught–we will march at dawn to meet them. I will send a swift runner to bring back Donagh…”

Eevin shook her head once more. “Nay, great king. Let Donagh live. After the battle the Dalcassians will need strong arms to brace the sceptre.”

Brian gazed fixedly at her. “I read my doom in those words. Have you cast my fate?”

Eevin spread her hands helplessly. “My Lord, not even the Dark People can rend the Veil at will. Not by the casting of fates, or the sorcery of divination, not in smoke or in blood have I read it, but a weird is upon me and I see through flame and the dim clash of battle.”

“And I shall fall?”

She bowed her face in her hands.

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

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

V

The war was like a dream; I cannot tell

How many heathens souls I sent to Hell.

I only know, above the fallen ones

I heard dark Odin shouting to his sons,

And felt amid the battle’s roar and shock

The strife of gods that crashed in Ragnarok.

–Conn’s Saga

Through the mist of the whitening 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 said, and Dunlang O’Hartigan nodded absently.

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

The Gaels were on the move, marching from Kilmainham in the same formation in which they intended to enter 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 ax. This ax differed greatly from the heavy 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 ax-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 warriors and chiefs 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 in his Roman corselet, closely followed by Conn, bearing the helmet, and on the other 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, Black Turlogh fought with an ax of his own forging, and his skill with the weapon was almost uncanny.

Close behind the Dalcassians were the two companies of the Scottish, with their chiefs, the Great Stewards of Scotland, who, veterans of long wars with the Saxons, wore helmets with horsehair crests and coats of mail. With them came the men of South Munster commanded by Prince Meathla O’Faelan.

The third division consisted of the warriors of Connacht, wild men of the west, shock-headed and naked but for their wolf-skins, with their chiefs O’Kelly and O’Hyne. O’Kelly marched as a man whose soul is heavy, for the shadow of his meeting with Malachi the night before fell gauntly across him.

Somewhat apart from the three main divisions marched the tall gallaglachs and kerns of Meath, their king riding slowly before them.

And before all the host rode King Brian Boru on a white steed, his white locks blown about his ancient face and his eyes strange and fey, so that the wild kerns gazed on him with superstitious awe.

So the Gaels came before Dublin, where they saw the hosts of Leinster and Lochlann drawn up in battle array, stretching in a wide crescent from Dubhgall’s Bridge to the narrow river Tolka which cuts the plain of Clontarf. Three main divisions there were–the foreign Northmen, the Vikings, with Sigurd and the grim Brodir; flanking them on the one side, the fierce Danes of Dublin, under their chief, a sombre wanderer whose name no man knew, but who was called Dubhgall, the Dark Stranger; and on the other flank the Irish of Leinster, with their king, Mailmora. The Danish fortress on the hill beyond the Liffey River bristled with armed men where King Sitric guarded the city.

There was but one way into the city from the north, the direction from which the Gaels were advancing, for in those days Dublin lay wholly south of the Liffey; that was the bridge called Dubhgall’s Bridge. The Danes stood with one horn of their line guarding this entrance, their ranks curving out toward the Tolka, their backs to the sea. The Gaels advanced along the level plain which stretched between Tomar’s Wood and the shore.