by Ken Hagan
‘Forty men? Not enough to defend beach or long-ships. Thrandt’s and Hakon’s crews have gone to fetch stores. There are only two crewmen here on ship-watch — and me.’
‘With a ship sighted in the estuary,’ replies Deasún. ‘I thought that Lodin would be on edge; that he would take it as the first step of their invasion. But no, on the contrary, my father-in-law made light of it. As I was leaving, he shouted after me in a jest, “Make sure that Bergthor collects a toll from that ship — I don’t want to lose income for the treasury just because of this unpleasantness from Amlav.”’
*
Bergthor, Deasún and I have our eyes fixed on the bend of the river that leads from the bluffs. We are at the water’s edge at the prow of Thrandt’s long-ship. Tide lapping at the full, running into slack, and still no sign of the ship. Bergthor’s men are at our backs — Lodin, having had second thoughts about the numbers, has sent three score warriors, instead of two, to the landing-beach — they are uniformly clad in studded leather jerkins as they are when guarding the treasury or collecting tolls on the river.
I speak from the corner of my mouth — I don’t want to turn my head and miss a first sight of the ship’s prow, as it noses into the bend. ‘Deasún, you said that at Criadain your women were ready to fight among the men. I take it, bearing in mind your wife’s condition, that you didn’t include her in the number?’
Deasún laughs in return. ‘You’ve seen how Clithna is! Do you think a husband would stop her? She pays no heed to her father’s warnings or mine.’
‘But maybe her mother might have urged her to think of your future child?’
‘No danger of that, Thralson,’ he replies. ‘Lady Aghamora is at Criadain. If need be, she is ready to do battle with us. That is why folk love her, and my Clithna too — by Jesus and Saint Phatric, I am proud to call her my wife.’
‘The ship has come past the bluffs,’ shouts Bergthor.
Deasún strains his eyes in denial. ‘You are sharp as an eagle, Bergthor. I can’t see a thing yet!’
‘Look!’ Bergthor replies. ‘The sun catches ripples on the far shore — that’s from a beam wave. I don’t actually see a ship’s prow yet, but it will show itself any time now.’ He turns to his warriors with a cry. ‘Axes and bucklers!’
The beating of iron on wood — axe-heads on bucklers — echoes over the waters of the river. On Thrandt’s long-ship two bare-foot lubbers shilly up the rigging and peer downriver. Cullynan the midshipman for Hakon blinks and scratches his beard. Deasún unslings spear and shield from his back. I have my battle-axe drawn. The longer shaft of the axe feels the perfect weight in my hand.
SIXTH PART
Chapter 43
Not long after dawn on the river-isle of Inis-tioc. Tide had gone out. The Meuris is beached as before near the Rath. On this second time of beaching on the isle, I have squared up the hull better than before with our stern in line with the cross of St Bhraan. In direct sun, the south shore of the isle has dried to a sandy dust. The people of the Rath have had three weeks without rain. At shad-ford, on the west of the isle, the waters of an-Uir run low. They flow lower still to the east at reed-ford.
At the ebb the river is so shallow there that flat rocks, usually deep under water, are on the surface, and make stepping-stones across from bank to bank. From dewy water-meadows over the river comes an odour of cattle dung and a dusty smell of summer heat. The palms of my hands are sweating, and my serk clings damp at back and chest. Later I will stick my hands in river-sand — an old trick I learned from Cormac. Sand will help me grip the axe-handle. I must have a firm hold, without slip or sweat, when the time comes to take it in hand.
*
Dunchad, Tuathal and King of all Osri, a tall proud man, has dressed in warrior leathers. His grey wavy hair is combed from the forehead, plaited in two strands to the neck. He is shod in foot-skins, tight-laced and ready for combat. It will not be in defence of the Rath — much to the fury of Beyveen’s father.
Tioc Cahaun has shunned Dunchad since last night’s quarrel and declined to be present at his Tuathal’s departure for the plains at Kil Khenna. Dunchad had delayed battle prayers that must be said before his departure in the hope that Tioc would relent from his stubborn stance, but Tioc Cahaun was in no mood for conciliation.
Dunchad kneels now — much later than planned — at the feet of his priestly son Gil-Phatric to receive the battle blessing. The parting ritual is chanted in the same language as that spoken in worship by the monks at Kildobhan. No one, who hears the holy cadences, can understand the words, but it doesn’t deter the listeners from saying a devout ‘amen’ when the monk pauses for breath between prayers.
Baldr is five ship-lengths away from the devotions — and within hearing. He kneels on the ship’s deck with eyes closed, making a sign of the cross and mumbling a response at each break in the prayers. Kru, also kneeling on the deck, watches Baldr’s brisk gestures of hand and lip and tries faithfully to copy them, but only after a fashion. Both men are staunch believers in the Christian ‘word’, though the garbled speech of the monk remains a mystery to them — as it does to others — falling unknowably on their listening and deaf ears alike.
The mid-summer sun, not long risen over Slieve Bhraan, casts from the east two morning shadows across the face of the Tuathal and those of his assembled men. A thicker shadow, close to the palings of the Rath, is rooted firm as a rock in the holy cross of Saint Bhraan. The other shadow is longer, more slender, and stiffly ruffled by the breeze. It flakes and flutters as if seeking to free itself from its fleshly owner — the tall figure of Gil-Phatric. The Tuathal’s son stands, heavy-sleeved in monk’s robes. He addresses his father and the warriors with his back to the cross. As he speaks and makes signs ancient and magical to bless their battle-march north, I think of young M’lym in the cellar at Kildobhan, writing her strange, sacred words, and learning to make bright-coloured images of them, working on goatskin pages with monks in the scriptorium.
Gil-Phatric pauses to wipe his mouth. He rubs spittle on the sleeve of his robe and continues in prayer:
‘Obsecro itaque vos fratres per misericordiam Dei,
Ut exhibeatis corpora vestra hostiam viventem, sanctam,
Deo placentem, rationabile obsequium vestrum . . .’
While these pious words are being spoken above the warriors’ heads, the people of Inis-tioc are nowhere to be seen. Cow-herders had left the Rath before dawn, though not to graze their cattle. The cattle herd has been gathered into one drove and taken north — not into the plain, where Dunchad is heading — but far upstream to the western fells above an-Uir. Womenfolk have driven their pigs into woodlands west of the river. They crossed only moments before at shad-ford, bearing fleshy new-born piglets like babes in arms. They had lumbering sows chasing after them, splashing at the women’s heels, snorting in distress for the squealing shoats.
*
Last night, shortly before midnight, when darkness and summer mist fell as sudden as a curtain of wool-weave across a clachan doorway, Tioc’s sheep-herders crossed quietly over the exposed stepping-stones at reed-ford. Overnight, with wether-bells tinkling in the mist, they will have chased their flocks to safety over the fell, east of Slieve Bhraan. The horse paddocks were already empty when we arrived yesterday on the Meuris. Neither Tioc nor his family would say where the horses had been taken. The fear was that, if Dunchad had discovered where the horses are, he would have seized them for his battle against Amlav in the plain. By clan law — going by what Beyveen told me last night— a Tuathal has the right in times of war to commandeer his clans’ horses and livestock, and do so without fear of refusal.
‘War or no war, why should father let Dunchad steal our horses?’ Beyveen brushed past me at the clachan entrance, and muttered her angry protest through gritted teeth. ‘It has to be give and take! Father has a right to be angry. The Tuathal hasn’t played fair with us!’
*
This morning Tioc hasn’t shown his face. He is
not on speaking terms with Dunchad. To show his displeasure, he has kept steadfastly to his clachan. Tioc’s wife and daughters sneaked off before first light. Shaynat has told no one of her plan — not even her husband. That is her secretive way. I learned of what was going on from Beyveen, who wakened me breathlessly in darkness at the ship to let me know where she was going, and why. With her mother Shaynat and sister Leasha, she was off upriver to the leet-head gates. The three women will open the sluices, and leave them open. Water laden with peat will gush through the gates, flow into the dry ditch, and flood the dusty meadows.
*
My lads and I slept under the stars beside the Meuris on the shore of the isle. I kicked them awake early before daylight. There is much to do. We have to lift fish-traps out of the river on the west bank and move them to reed-ford — on instructions from Shaynat.
The crew chew resolutely on a hasty breakfast of salt-pork rations, and watch the rituals performed by Dunchad’s son. There is no one else around to watch, apart from a group of small children from the Rath — infants briefly abandoned by their piglet-saving mothers. The children have clambered on board our ship to get a sight of Dunchad and his men with their get-up of warrior slings and shiny spears — a strange sight for them to behold — as a rule, none of the children’s fathers or brothers bear arms. It is rare even for Tioc’s gillies, while out hunting, to carry a bow or spear. The gillies prefer to use traps and nets to catch wildfowl on the moorland.
With the long-winded utterings of Gil-Phatric going on and on, the children soon lose interest in the game of watching the warriors. They are more excited to scamper up the rigging of the Meuris, where they have gone to evade the irritable attentions of Fjak. Their nippy, boisterous banter, their giggling and cheeky gestures, and their name-calling to our exasperated ship-mate below on deck clash irreverently with the sacred drone of Gil-Phatric’s prayers.
Dunchad has chosen his best spear-and-sling-men, twenty warriors, to march north with him. They go inland to join their kinsmen in the plain, where Dunchad will lead the men of Osri in battle against King Amlav. The warriors, closely bunched behind their Tuathal, drop dutifully to their knees, while Gil-Phatric chants a blessing.
Brightly sharpened spear-heads — still held erect, while the warriors kneel in prayer — glint upwards in a spiny cluster above their naked shoulders. Sling-straps, drawn tight, nip like harness leathers into the men’s brawny backs. They stretch cross-wise from neck to hip, puckering the warriors’ battle-scarred and weathered skin. As the men kneel, compact and close — their broad shoulders all alike in tawny hue — the naked flesh seems to mould into a single shell, spiky with up-raised spears, brittle, ridged and rugged, like the carapace of a giant killer ant.
Only a few of Dunchad’s clansmen, less than fifty warriors, will stay behind at Inis-tioc under the leadership of Gil-Phatric— a paltry number, and barely a tenth of what was promised. This is the cause of contention between Tioc and Tuathal. Beyveen tells me that her father was beside himself with rage when he heard he would have to depend on ‘wilderlings’ for the defence of the Rath. By all accounts, ‘wilderlings’ are a fearsome rabble, a fierce foe to contend with when their blood is up, but support from them is unreliable; their numbers uncertain, their attendance in battle random and left to chance. Even when the battle-beacon is lit, if they have some lucrative mischief to get up to elsewhere — rustling livestock or extorting grain — they may not bother to respond.
Last night, Tioc openly accused Dunchad of going back on his word, and of leaving him at the mercy of Glun’s invaders. Shaynat said little. She was more sanguine than her husband. She had realised at once that news of Amlav’s forces massing on the plain made the Tuathal’s decision inevitable: if it came to a pitched battle — and it was hard to see how this could be avoided — the men of Osri had to match Amlav’s warriors in the open plain, man for man, otherwise all would be lost. The war would be decided in the plain. The defence of the tide-head, the protection of the Rath were of less consideration to the Tuathal.
‘As our Tuathal, Dunchad,’ she said defiantly, ‘you will do as all kings do in the end, and put your royal interests before ours. So be it! Go fight your battle in the plain. We will manage here without you.’
*
The residue of Dunchad’s warriors — the fifty men he leaves grudgingly for the defence of the isle — are over the river on the edge of the water-meadows, camped on the far bank above reed-ford. They are there to defend the only river-crossing to the Rath from the east. They have been told of the blockade downriver that will close an-Uir to ships sailing north; I was with Gil-Phatric when he harangued his men and explained the purpose of the blockade. A boom of felled willow-trees will be strewn around a barrage — Hakon’s and Thrandt’s two sunken long-ships — to bring Glun’s ships to a halt on the river. This will force Iron-knee’s war party to continue on foot. There is no other way for them to strike north but through the water-meadows.
Gil-Phatric explained, too, that Hakon and Thrandt, with armed crews from their two sunken ships, will lie in wait in woodlands nearby, in birch woods below Cluddy falls — not with the intention of facing Iron-knee’s men head-on, but to snipe and pounce, pick off laggers and stragglers, and run back to cover within the dense thicket of trees. Their aim is to sap the strength of Glun’s men, and hamper their advance towards reed-ford.
*
Beyveen’s father is in low spirits — the clan chieftain has been sitting all morning in darkness in the clachan, his nerves raw after the quarrel with Dunchad. The poor man seems incapable of moving off his stool. I avoided speaking the plain truth to Tioc Cahaun: that only a handful of warriors and two meagre ships’ crews will hide in Cluddy woodlands to ambush and harry Glun’s men. I thought it best not to make much of Bergthor’s presence in the fray or reveal how few men he had with him — all of them veterans long in the tooth, older than Tioc himself. If the chieftain had knowledge of what happened in Vadrar-fiord, before we left to come north, it might further deepen his gloom.
Impossible to tell what bearing Bergthor and his men will have on the outcome at Cluddy woods. Taken at his word, from talk of his past glory, the crafty old warrior may surprise us and clear the field of foes — or he may fall flat on his face at the first rush of arms, and die from age and exhaustion.
Bergthor and only thirteen veterans came with me on the Meuris. They disembarked downriver from the gorge, where Cluddy water runs underground into an-Uir. In the end, only these fourteen ageing men were released from Vadrar-fiord for the defence of Inis-tioc, a mere shadow of the support that Lodin had once envisaged to send to the tide-head.
Chapter 44
A drastic cutting back on the number of warriors to be sent north was the doing of Ingvar.
Two days back, Ingvar and his foster brother Jötunn Ormson had sailed into Vadrar-fiord on the Layrvaan. It was Orm’s horse-ship that Deasún had spotted on the estuary, and that he and I, and Bergthor, had waited for on the beaching-ground of an-Shuir. Ingvar’s unexpected arrival with a ship-full of paid warriors from Vaes-fiord brightened his father’s brow, softened his mother’s heart, and drew secret admiration from his sister — though Clithna was more forthright about his unforgiveable behaviour. She told him it was hurtful to his family to run off without a word, and the height of arrogance to have raised a fighting force of common harriers without their father’s consent.
Whether or not Ingvar was guilty of arrogance, his re-appearance forced the Custodian to think again about the defence of Vadrar-fiord. The Meuris and two long-ships — under Hakon’s and Thrandt’s skippering — had been made ready to sail. Bergthor and over a hundred warriors were on the beaching ground, awaiting orders to embark. But when Ingvar and Jötunn turned up from Vaes-fiord in the Layrvaan, our departure was put on hold, while Lodin considered a proposal from his son.
Lodin saw his son and foster son in the great hall, not in his private apartments at the fort. With the arrival of Ingvar and J
ötunn — and both with a tale to tell — Deasún had ridden to Criadain and brought back Clithna and Aghamora to Vadrar-fiord. He didn’t wait to be asked if this would suit his father-in-law. He sensed that both women would want to greet Ingvar in the flesh, from the natural motherly and sisterly concern for the young man’s well-being. He also knew from experience that if, as he expected, things were likely to change, both would be keen to have a say in the proceedings. Apart from Deasún, and the Custodian’s close family, the only others present in the hall to hear Ingvar’s proposal were the three skippers who would sail north: Hakon, Thrandt and myself.
Ingvar did not hide his impatience. ‘The numbers, Father, think of the numbers!’
Clithna had spoken twice in her brother’s favour with some fervour, and Aghamora had urged her husband to consider their son’s proposal — especially since he and Jötunn were willing to stake their own lives on the plan and lead the attack.
Thrandt and Hakon waited in silence on the outcome of Lodin’s contemplations. It wasn’t for them to interfere in the clash between father and son, or between the Custodian and his outspoken women. In these situations both men are reticent. They will offer advice only if spoken to. And they know of old that, when the Custodian considers a new strategy, he likes to ‘weigh up the wares’ in his head. He can’t abide a clatter of voices in his ears while he balances, in an imagined transaction, one pan on the weigh-scales against the other.
‘Don’t you see, Father? The numbers change everything.’ The urging of Ingvar became increasingly restless and insistent. Previously he would never have interrupted his father’s thoughts for fear of rebuke.
‘Steady, lad!’ Lodin replied softly.
Were he not so grateful to have his son again at his side, he might have hurled a string of oaths and dismissed the young man in disgrace from the hall. As it was, he responded with an indulgent smile. ‘Give me time to ponder. You are young. I understand. I was the same at your age. You have one thought in your head — to give Glun a bloody nose and chase his long-ships back to Linn-dubh.’