Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures M Read online

  “That’s God’s truth, my lord. And what of her brother, Mailmora?”

  “Who but he is the instigator of the whole war?” cried Dunlang angrily. “The hatred between him and Murrogh, so long smoldering, has at last burst into flame, firing the whole kingdom. Both were in the wrong; Murrogh perhaps more than Mailmora. Gormlaith goaded her brother on. I did not believe King Brian acted wisely when he gave honors to those he had once warred against. It was not well when he married Gormlaith and gave his daughter to Gormlaith’s son, Sitric of Dublin. When he took Gormlaith into his palace, he took in the seeds of strife and hatred. She is a wanton; once she was the wife of Amlaff Cuaran, king of Dublin; then she was the wife of King Malachi of Meath, and he put her aside because of her wickedness.”

  “What of Melaghlin?” asked Conn.

  “He seems to have forgotten the struggle in which Brian wrested the crown of Ireland from him,” said Dunlang. “Together the two kings move against the Danes and the king of Leinster.”

  As they had conversed they had passed along the bare coast until they had come into a rough broken stretch of cliffs and boulders; and there they halted suddenly. On a boulder sat a girl, clad in a shimmering green garment whose pattern was so much like scales that for a bewildered instant Conn thought himself to be gazing on a mermaid come out of the deep.

  “Eevin!” Dunlang swung down from his horse, tossing the reins to Conn, and advancing, took her small hands in his. “You sent for me and I have come – you have been weeping!”

  Conn, holding the steed, felt an urge to retire discreetly as superstitious qualms touched him. Eevin was not like any other girl he had ever seen; she was small and childish in stature, dark, with soft black eyes and a wealth of black hair. Her whole aspect was different from the women of the Norse-folk and the Gaels alike, and Conn knew her to be a member of that fading race which had occupied the land before the coming of his ancestors; some of them still dwelt in caverns along the sea and deep in unfrequented forests. The Irish looked on them as sorcerers and first-cousins to the faeries, and in after-ages legends lent them complete supernatural aspect, as the “little people.”

  “Dunlang!” the girl caught him in a convulsive embrace. “You must not go into the battle – the weird of far-sight is on me and I know if you go to the war you will die! Come away with me – I will hide you – I will show you dim caverns like the castles of deep-sea kings, and shadowy forests where no man has set foot save my people!”

  “Eevin, my love!” exclaimed Dunlang, greatly disturbed. “You ask me that which is beyond all human power. When my clan moves into battle, I must be at Murrogh’s side, aye, though sure death be my portion. I love you beyond all life, but ask of me something easier, for by the honor of my clan, this is a thing impossible!”

  “I feared as much,” she answered dully. “This is punishment, perhaps, visited on me – for of all my people, I alone love a man of the fair folk. I love and I have lost; for my sight is the far sight of the Pictish folk who see through the Veil and the mists of life, behind the past and beyond the future. You will go into battle and the harps will keen for you; and Eevin of Craglea will weep for you until she melts in tears and the salt tears mingle with the cold salt sea.”

  Dunlang bowed his head unspeaking for her young voice vibrated with the ancient sorrow of womankind; and even the rough kern shuffled his feet uneasily.

  “I have brought you a gift against the time of battle,” she said, bending lithely and lifting something which caught the sheen of the sun. “It may not save you, the ghosts in my soul have whispered – but I hope without hope in my woman’s heart. You will wear it – oh, wear it, my love!”

  Dunlang stared uncertainly at what she spread before him. Conn, edging closer and craning his neck, saw a hauberk of strange workmanship and a helmet such as he had never seen before. The helmets of that age were mainly plain steel caps, sometimes adorned with horns, or in the case of the Saxons and Vikings, with a bronze boar couchant; occasionally furnished with a nasal-piece, or a mail drop behind which fell about the shoulders. Vizored head-pieces had not yet been dreamed of. But the helmet which Eevin held appealingly toward Dunlang was a heavy affair made to slip over the entire head and rest on the neck-pieces of the hauberk. There was no movable vizor, merely a slit cut in the front through which to see. It was fashioned something on the order of the “pot-helmet” worn by the first knights a century later. But the workmanship was of an earlier, more civilized age, which no man then living could duplicate.

  Dunlang looked at the armor askance; he had the characteristic Celtic antipathy toward mail. The Britons who faced Caesar’s legionaries fought naked, judging a man cowardly who cased himself in metal, and in later ages the Irish clans entertained the same ideas regarding Strongbow’s mail-clad knights.*

  “Eevin,” said Dunlang, “my brothers will laugh at me if I enclose myself in iron, like a Dane. How can a man have full freedom of limb, weighted by such garments? Of all the Gaels, only Turlogh Dubh wears full mail.”

  “And is any man of the Gael less brave than he?” she exclaimed passionately. “Oh, you of the fair folk are foolish! For ages the iron-clad Danes have trampled you, when you might have swept them out of existence long ago, but for your foolish pride.”

  “Not altogether pride, Eevin,” argued Dunlang. “Of what avail is mail or plated armor against the Dalcassian axe which cuts through iron like cloth?”

  “Mail would turn the swords of the Danes,” she answered. “And not even an axe of the O’Briens would rend this armor. Long it has lain in the caverns of my people, carefully protected from rust. He who wore it was a warrior of Rome in the long, long ago before the legions were withdrawn from Britain. In an ancient war on the borders of Wales, it fell into the hands of my people, and because he who wore it was a great prince, my people have treasured it. Now I beg you to wear it, if you love me!”

  Dunlang took it hesitantly, nor could he know that it was the armor worn by a gladiator in the days of the later Roman empire, nor wonder by what strange freak of chance it came to adorn the body of an officer in the British legion, in the days when the imperial twilight sent forth the waning ranks with broken weapons and strange harness. Little of that Dunlang knew; knowledge and education were for the monks and priests; a fighting man was kept too busy to cultivate the arts and sciences.

  He took the armor and because he loved the dark little girl, he made a vast concession: “Very well, Eevin, if it will fit me, I will wear it for your sake.”

  “It will fit,” she answered. “But oh, Dunlang, I shall see you no more!”

  “It rests in the hands of God, little one,” he answered gently. “Many will fall, and I may fall in the foremost charge; yet it may be that once again we shall walk hand in hand through the green forest when the twilight shakes out her grey mantle over the hills of Craglea.”

  She shook her head and her voice broke in a sob; speechless she held out her childish arms and he gathered her hungrily to him; a moment he crushed her close to him, while Conn looked away, then Dunlang gently unlocked her clinging arms from about his neck, kissed her, and tore himself away.

  Without a word or a backward glance he mounted his steed and rode away, with Conn trotting easily alongside. Looking back, in the gathering dusk, the kern saw Eevin reach out her white arms in a wild poignant gesture of despair, then fall forward in a torrent of weeping.

  III

  THE GATHERING OF THE EAGLES

  The camp fires sent up showers of sparks and illumined the land like day. In the distance loomed the grim walls of Dublin, dark and ominously silent; before those walls flickered other fires where the warriors of Leinster, under their king Mailmora, whetted their axes for the coming battle. Out in the bay the starlight glinted on myriad sails, shield-rails and arching serpent-prows. Between the city and the fires of the Irish host stretched the plain of Clontarf, bordered by Tomar’s Wood, dark and rustling in the night, and the Liffey’s dark star-flecked waters.<
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  Before his tent, the firelight playing on his white beard and glinting from his undimmed eagle eyes, sat the great King Brian Boru among his chiefs. The king was old – seventy-three winters had passed over his lion-like head – long years crammed with fierce wars and bloody intrigues. Yet his back was straight, his arm unwithered, his voice deep and resonant. His chiefs stood about him, tall proud warriors with war-hardened hands and eyes whetted by the sun and the winds and the high places. Tigerish princes in their rich tunics, green girdles, leathern sandals and saffron mantles caught with great golden brooches.

  They were an array of war-eagles: Murrogh, Brian’s eldest son, the pride of all Erin – tall, broad-shouldered, mightily muscled, with wide blue eyes that were never placid, but danced with mirth, dulled with sadness or blazed with fury; Murrogh’s young son Turlogh, a slender, supple lad of fifteen with golden locks and a frank eager face – tense with anticipation of trying his hand for the first time in the great game of war. And there was that other Turlogh, his cousin – Turlogh Dubh – Black Turlogh, who was only a few years older, but who had already his full stature and was famed throughout all Erin for his berserk rages and the cunning of his deadly axe-play. And there was Meathla O’Faelan, prince of Desmond or South Munster, and his kin – the Great Stewards of Scotland, Lennox, and Donald of Mar, who had crossed the Irish channel with their wild Highlanders – tall men, somber and gaunt and silent. And there was Dunlang O’Hartigan, and O’Hyne, chief of Connacht. But O’Kelly, brother chief of the O’Hyne, and prince of Hy Many, was in the tent of his uncle, King Malachi, which was pitched in the camp of the Meathmen, apart from the Dalcassians, and King Brian was brooding on the matter. For since the set of the sun, O’Kelly had been closeted with the King of Meath and no man knew what passed between them.

  Nor was Donagh, son of Brian, among the chiefs before the royal tent, for he was a-field with a band ravaging the holdings of Mailmora in Leinster.

  Now Dunlang O’Hartigan approached the king, leading with him Conn the kern.

  “My king,” quoth Dunlang, “here is a man who was outlawed aforetime, who has spent vile durance among the Gall, and who has risked his life by storm and sea to return and fight under your banner. From the Orkneys in an open boat he came, naked and alone, and the sea cast him all but lifeless on the sand.”

  Brian stiffened; his memory was as sharp as a whetted sword, even in small things.

  “Thou!” he said. “Aye, I remember him. Well, Conn, have you come back, and you with your red hands?”

  “Aye, King Brian,” answered Conn stolidly. “My hands are red, it’s true, and so I would like to wash off the stain in Danish blood. I slew wrongfully, well I know, but no sorrow of mine can undo the act.”

  “And you dare stand before me, to whom your life is forfeit?”

  “This alone I know, King Brian,” said Conn boldly. “I am the son of a man who was with you at Sulcoit and the sack of Limerick, and before that followed you in your days of wandering, and was one of the fifteen warriors who remained to you, when King Mahon your brother came seeking you in the forest. And I am the grandson of a man who followed Murkertagh of the Leather Cloaks, and my people have fought the Danes since the time of Thorgils. You need men who can strike strong blows and it is my right to die in battle against mine ancient enemies, rather than shamefully at the end of a rope.”

  King Brian nodded, somewhat absently. “You have spoken well. Take your life; your days of outlawry are at an end. King Malachi perhaps would say otherwise, since it was a man of his you slew – but – ” he paused; an old doubt ate at his soul as he thought of the king of Meath.

  “Let it be,” he repeated. “Let it rest until after the battle – mayhap that will be world’s end for us all.”

  Dunlang stepped toward Conn and laid hand on the copper collar.

  “Let us cut this away; you are a free man now.”

  Conn shook his head. “Not until I have slain Thorwald Raven who put it on my neck. I’ll wear it into battle as a sign of no quarter.”

  “That is a noble sword you wear, kern,” said Murrogh suddenly.

  “Aye, my lord,” answered Conn. “Murkertagh of the Leather Cloaks wielded this blade until Blacair the Dane slew him at Ardee.”

  “It is not fitting a kern should wear the sword of a king,” said Murrogh brusquely. “Let one of the chiefs take it and give him an axe instead.”

  Conn’s iron fingers locked about the hilt.

  “He who would take the sword from me had best give me the axe first,” he said grimly. “And that suddenly.”

  Murrogh’s hot temper blazed suddenly and with an oath he strode toward Conn who met him eye to eye and gave back not a step.

  “Be at ease, my son,” ordered King Brian. “Let the kern keep the blade; he has striven hard to gain it.”

  Murrogh shrugged his mighty shoulders and then his mood changed.

  “Aye, keep it and follow me into battle; we shall see if a king’s sword in a kern’s hand can hew as wide a path as a prince’s blade.”

  “My lords,” said Conn, “it may be God’s will I fall in the first onset – but the scars of slavery burn deep in my back this night, and may the dogs eat my bones if I am backward when the spears are splintering.”

  IV

  THE CASTLE OF THE SEA-KINGS

  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.”