The shock as the two armies met was like the tumbling roar of a landslide, with flesh and cloth instead of earth, and steel on steel instead of boulder on boulder. Each side clove through the other, man so close to man that the sword bit as it forced its way up and slashed as it found its way downwards again. In such a press, mail-shirts and helmets were hardly more use than the hide helms and metal-sewn jackets that most of them wore. Speed of eye and of arm were what helped a man live, not the weight of his metal in the rising August heat with the stench of blood and of ripped guts and of fright beginning to rise, with the ghosts of past wars; and the flies coming already.
The first climax came; and the first pause, with the golden helmet still flashing on one side and the white mask of the King on the other. Then Thorfinn’s sword flashed again, and he shouted, ‘Back! Back, my men! Back!’
The Irish on Duncan’s side had recoiled. Sending to rally them, white with tension and fury, Duncan did not at first hear the call or realise what was happening. Then someone said, ‘My lord! My lord King, they’re retreating!’
For so long he had planned for this: how should he doubt it, now that it was happening? Duncan threw his head back and laughed. ‘Of course!’ said the King. ‘Maldred’s ship has arrived. The fools think they must fly or be caught between us. Where do you think Archú’s force is waiting now, to rise at their backs? Eh? Where do you suppose Maldred’s other men have been stationed, to give them the warm welcome they all deserve? Come, my stout lads of Alba. Forward, and thrash them!’
The sun reached its height, and hung, burning.
Far above it perhaps, in Valholl, the Hall of the Slain, with its six hundred and forty doorways, Heimdall the Watchman looked down and saw the northern army blown back like the keys of the ash tree, drifting into the thick of the empty peninsula, with the King’s men like a whirlwind pursuing them.
A peninsula empty, at least, of the contingents of Duncan of Alba, which should have been drawn up in the appointed places, awaiting their triumph. The men of Alba who had landed with Maldred and Archú and Muiredach lay among the bog cotton, or corralled wounded in corners, or already laid helpless in the two big-bellied knörrs that should have been lying off-shore to take off their victorious master, but in fact were afloat in midstream, waiting for orders from under a raven banner.
Instead, the three troops of Thorfinn’s which had vanquished them sheathed their swords and raced to join one another in the gentle green heart of Ulladule, with its church and its farmhouse, where the Strathrory river left its glen and wound down to the firth mouth. There, briefly, they waited.
Then men on garrons, who had run all day joining faction to faction, brought them word of Thorfinn their leader’s arrival, and silently the triple company redeployed as they had been told.
Duncan’s army swept through the heath crying victory, unaware that they were beating Thorfinn’s host back into the sword-blades of men who were dead. And the army that rose at Thorfinn’s rear and his flanks and behind Duncan’s own charging host was not the supporting army of Duncan’s triumphant Alba, but the angry men of the land they had invaded.
TWENTY-ONE
HERE BEING conventions in war, as in everything else, it was to these that King Duncan looked for succour when it came to him, finally, that this was a battle he was going to lose.
At first, he did not fully understand his plight, any more than did his leaders. His own army, pursuing, had lost some of its order, although the centre, with himself in the lead, was compact still. Thorfinn’s army, retreating, had lost any pattern it once might have had, and the gilded helm of the Earl his brother flashed like marsh-fire, first in one quarter of the flying army and then in another.
It was an irritation to Duncan, who had expected a standing battle, man to man, of a kind that Thorfinn, despite the conventions, was unlikely to have survived. Or if no accident befell him in the first phase, then the men of Maldred or Arch? or Muiredach would see to it in due course that the campaign received a clean finish, with no tedious aftermath of ransom or oath-taking to trouble about. When Thorfinn’s army broke and ran, keeping so far ahead in their fear that the only fighting was peripheral, Duncan began to feel some concern for his plan, so well protected did Thorfinn appear to be. When Thorfinn’s men began to break pace, in a confusion of yelling, and finally stopped, fenced about with a ring of clean steel, Duncan’s first feeling was one of relief followed by a fervent prayer that vanity would drive his brother out from the centre and into the spearhead of a counter-attack, on which later his skald could produce some deathless battle-elegy. After all, northmen hardly cared how they lived, everyone knew, so long as they ended in glory.
Instead of ending in glory on Maldred’s sword-edge, his brother Thorfinn seemed to have got the idea that he should reverse his army and stand to do battle with Duncan. Duncan had no objection. Urging onwards the spearmen about him, he found a grim satisfaction in the vigour with which his men flung themselves at the foe. Only when engaged and fighting himself did he see that the impetus shown by his host was due to an alien army risen from nowhere behind them.
He looked round for the banners of Maldred and Arch?, and did not see them. Instead, answering his first desire, he saw the helm of Thorfinn his brother driving towards him. And behind Thorfinn, with every face to the front, a massive host, bigger by far than the one he had confronted at Dingwall. A host gaining momentum towards him, undivided in purpose, with no harrying armies at its flanks or its rear. A host of men who were all his enemies, as were the men enclosing his army behind him.
He had lost the battle. That was Duncan’s first thought, even as he found himself fighting, as army crashed against army and his own bodyguard ran to protect him. He had lost the battle, and to save other men’s lives and his own, he ought to surrender. That was the convention.
Someone thrust through the ring of men about him, and he used his sword again. Thorfinn was fighting, too: he could see his helm and his sword-arm thirty feet away in the mass of struggling men. To call his attention, he would need his trumpeter. His chain-mail creaked with his breathing, and the leather beneath scraped his neck. He turned his head and shouted, against the uproar, for his standard-bearer.
The priest was at his side, a reddened axe in his hand. The priest said, shrieking in his west-Cumbrian accent, ‘My lord! Escape while you can! That pagan devil will kill you!’
Duncan stared at the priest. ‘We’re outnumbered,’ he said. He frowned while he protected himself. He had never surrendered before. He had besieged Durham and, repulsed, had simply retreated. When raiders tried to land on his coasts, he had fought them and killed or driven them off, keeping the leaders to ransom. He had never been conquered in battle by an army larger than his own. He said, ‘He is my brother.’
‘Does he remember it?’ said the priest. ‘The prize is great, and he is not noted for piety. In his place, you might have been tempted yourself.’
One of his protectors, fighting about him, had heard. One of them said, ‘We could get you out, my lord King, while the fighting goes on. Then the priest could go forth and call surrender. They’ll stop quick enough. You’ll save lives. There’ll be no ransom to pay or oaths to keep. Quick. We’ll come with you.’
He must have agreed, although he did not remember it, or taking off the mask helm that identified him. Someone found another and rammed it, bloody still, on his head as they fought their way to the edge of the battle. Most of the Irishmen were trying to do the same, and had no eyes for anything but the enemy. The last bit was the worst, and six of the twelve men with him had died before suddenly they were among trees and away. As they went, he thought he heard the noise lessen a degree in the centre, and fancied he saw a flash of white cloth. Then there was no sound but that of their own running feet and their breathing. Duncan threw the helm away.
They had thought to make for the ships, and had started in that direction when they came across another group flying, who told them that Thorfinn had ta
ken the ships. And of course that must be right, for otherwise none of this would have happened. A little after that, they had the first luck that came from the day and found a garron grazing where its rider had been killed, and then a second one. He had seen the hoofmarks everywhere in the soft ground and understood now. So this was how it had been done.
He took one garron and two of his men took another, and they made for the hills, with four armed men at his stirrups. They made for the hills because they had no means to cross water, and the mountains showed the way to the west, where he might escape and be safe.
They also made for the hills because that was where the woman was, and the monk.
When they learned that, he knew the priest had been right and God was with him. For they had almost passed the man by who gave the news to them: a local man, early wounded and left in the heath, where they heard him calling, for he thought they were men of Thorfinn’s. Before he learned they were not, he asked them to take him with them to where the monks were, at the smith’s house. After that, hoping for his life, he told them the rest.
So, at the end of a day in which he had been tricked and tricked again, Duncan had at last been vouchsafed a truth; a morsel of information that might be more important than anything that had befallen him yet. For of course Thorfinn’s wife would not be left to wander at will in the battleground of the peninsula; neither would Dubhdaleithe and his monks. If they were near at all, they could only be waiting there where the peninsula rose to the hills in the body of Ross. The glen of Thor’s goats, the man said, where the river Averon ran down past the smith’s house. Not so far from Strath Rory. Four miles, or five.
They would have her defended, and he had six men, that was all. But it might be enough to snatch Moray at least from the ruins of all he had hoped for. And if everything failed, and his enemies came after him, he would have a hostage beyond price in the woman, and a dead man, he hoped, in the monk.
There was a long view from the Druim na Caerdaich, and sharp eyes among the smith’s children, so that one of his sons was the first to call out that there were horsemen moving on the other side of the river, and that they were making for the little cabins that made up his family’s farm. Two horses, he said, and seven people, and them plunging in and out of the bog like men from chalk country.
‘The monks will sort them,’ his mother said.
The holy monk, the one who had been abbot, was behind the peat stack, and the others were in the rear of the bothies or crouched by the midden. The first thing Duncan knew was a hiss passing one of his ears and a yell from behind, followed by a thud as someone tumbled. He drew rein to wheel, and saw that he was surrounded, just within arrow-range, by a circle of men in brown robes.
The most powerful-looking of them all, a man with a beard like a mat, had emerged, still grasping his bow, by a peat stack. He lifted his voice. ‘Duncan of Alba. If you would wear your helmet again, I suggest you and your friends step down from those ponies and stand in the middle, where we can see you. Is it a battle you’re running from?’
‘Dubhdaleithe Albanach?’ Duncan said. After a moment’s pause, he dismounted. ‘Do you think me your enemy, that I bring six men to visit you when you have twice that number? I wished to speak to you.’
‘You did?’ said Duftah. ‘Now, God forgive me if I have misjudged you. You are here to offer me Kells?’
Duncan smiled. His hair, flattened by the helmet, did not rise even in the wind. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘My father has long since fallen out with his cousins in Ireland. One day, your brother will die and you will be Abbot of Armagh. To be Coarb of St Columba as well would only be just: did your grandfather not hold both offices, as the great soul-friend of Ireland?’
‘Indeed he did,’ Duftah said. He let his bow to the ground and leaned on it. ‘But here you are in the bog, with no throne about you that I can see. How could you make me Abbot of Kells when even Thorfinn will not raise a finger?’
‘Thorfinn is afraid of the power of Columba,’ Duncan said. ‘As you very well know, men will bow to the heathen while he has them in his power, but they will turn to Christ as soon as they are free of him. Come south to Alba and I will show you whether or not I can make you Abbot of Kells.’
‘Is afraid?’ Duftah said. ‘I made sure you had taken the head of him before you came riding for me.’
‘I left that to others,’ Duncan said. ‘Is the Lady here?’
‘Somewhere,’ said Duftah. ‘So you are saying that soon she will be a widow. Now, there is a lasting pity, and she so young. I would be sorry to think that you and your men would dishonour her.’
‘Not unless,’ Duncan said, ‘you would think it dishonour to make her the wife of the King. I have long wished to make her my lady. Will you not bring her so that I can tell her?’
‘Oh, she’s here,’ said the monk, astonished. ‘Would you not have noticed her? The eager one over there, with my sword in her hand.’
He flicked a finger at one of the monks, whose hood, promptly tossed back, revealed a flag of shining red hair and a pair of shining light eyes under brows black as soot. ‘It seems a small army,’ said Groa, ‘to take the north with; but no doubt most of them ran at the sound of your name. Did you wish to offer me something?’
‘A king’s hand in marriage,’ said Duncan. ‘And safe passage for your friends of Armagh, once they lay down their arms. My army is not far away, and I should not like to see them hurt.’ He smiled. ‘Is there a woman alive who would not want the title of Queen? Is there a woman alive who would become it better?’
‘You’re right,’ said Groa. ‘Except that I have, to my knowledge, a husband living.’
‘What of it?’ said Duncan. ‘It is a marriage that death, or the church, can annul for you. Here is my horse. Let me take you away from this wilderness.’
The girl thought, digging the point of the sword-blade into the turf, both hands wrapped round the pommel. She raised it and leaned the flat on one shoulder. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘at least you took thought to come, with all the other matters that must occupy the mind of a king at such times. There are some who take no heed how their womenfolk fare, from one year’s end to another.… I will go with you. Or, at least, I shall when you have got the Earl Thorfinn behind you there out of the way.’
Duncan jumped.
So silently had his enemy come through the trees that neither he nor his men had heard a hint of them. So close had been his success: so near his moment of escape. And now, ringing the clearing behind him were thirty axemen or more, led by one of unnatural height with a face like the beak of a dragon-ship within his expensive gilt helmet.
Thorfinn of Orkney, his brother, put up a finger and thumb and eased off the helmet. His rumbling voice, like his height, was ridiculous. He said, ‘I am afraid the question does not arise. There has already been a slight contest, which I have won. You, my lady, are still my wife, and the King here is now my prisoner.’
The powerful, handsome man beside Thorfinn disagreed with his master, it seemed. He said, ‘Then you’re a fool. The King came here to get rid of you. Kill him.’
‘He doesn’t want to die,’ Thorfinn said. He walked forward, taking his time over it, until he was so close that Duncan could smell the sweat and the blood and see the battle-tiredness, like his own, bitten into his half-brother’s face. Thorfinn said, ‘Give me your sword.’
It would have been easy to make one savage slash, and Duncan drew breath to do it. Then his eyes ran round the men standing waiting, and he set his teeth and held out his sword. Thorfinn’s companion, moving forward, disarmed the men who were with him.
Thorfinn said, ‘I have paid the shipmasters to take the rest of your men back to Berwick. You may go with them. First, you will come with me and, in the presence of your men and mine, swear that as Earl of Caithness I hold all the land north of Eskadale free of any duties or tribute towards the High King of Alba. You will swear that I owe Alba nothing for Orkney. You will swear that as Mormaer of Moray I
shall pay Alba what Findlaech my stepfather paid, with the same rights. And you will repeat the promise you made on your accession, that after me the rule of Moray will be invested in Lulach my stepson. All that you will swear.’
Again, the older man with Thorfinn interrupted. A man who spoke in pure Norse, and with a familiarity that identified him. This was Thorkel, one remembered: Thorfinn’s foster-father. Thorkel saying, ‘Of course he will swear it. And come back next year with a bigger army. Thorfinn, you can’t do it this way.’
‘There is no other way,’ said Thorfinn shortly.
‘Yes, there is. Kill him,’ said his foster-father. ‘Or if you’re too nice for that, let me kill him. Or if that doesn’t suit you, why not the traditional duel, the holm-gangr? We haven’t got a holm, but I’m sure my lord your brother would prefer that to outright execution. If he kills you, I swear I’ll release him.’
‘What?’ said Thorfinn’s wife.
‘This is murder,’ said Duncan. He cleared his throat.
The foster-father went on interfering, and no one told him to be quiet. He said, ‘It would be murder to let die all those who laid down their lives today, thinking to buy peace for the north, only to find that the whole war has to be fought again because Thorfinn couldn’t face up to his duty. I’ll fight him if you like, but you should. In a fenced ring, with no other helping, and with whatever weapons you please. It was how your father settled his people’s quarrels, and your stepfather. If you had chosen it at the start, a lot of Caithness men would be living today.’
It was demeaning to appeal to a servant. If, as it seemed, Thorfinn had no will of his own, then it could not be avoided.
‘It is murder,’ said Duncan to the man Thorkel. ‘Look at the difference between us. He said I could go. Do you doubt my oath? Of course I should agree to all that he asks. He has won the right, in fair battle. Let us go back to the ships. This monk can hear my oath on a Christ’s book.’
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