The Viking Prince

by Sarah Woodbury

Day Four

  Caitriona

  Nobody who knew Cait well would be surprised to learn that she hated waiting. The year her brother had been away in Wales had been excruciating for her. It had been one of the reasons she’d fought so hard for the chance to come to Dublin. It was a woman’s fate to wait at home, but Cait much preferred to act rather than react.

  But here she was, safe behind Dublin’s walls while the men she loved risked their lives for hers. Against all expectation, Queen Helga appeared to view her as something of a peer, and she had invited Cait to the palace to wait.

  Cait could hardly refuse an invitation from the queen, so she climbed the staircase to the wall-walk in order to stare out at the landscape. There was nothing to see. And there wouldn’t be, possibly for many hours.

  Cait didn’t care. She could be no other place but here.

  “My lady.” The guard nodded. “Prince Godfrid is a mighty man. If anyone will survive today, it will be he.”

  She smiled sweetly, thanking him and grateful there didn’t seem to be any resentment of her burgeoning relationship with Godfrid. She was Irish, even if from Leinster, so there could have been. The guard didn’t even looked askance at her when she perched herself on the top of the rampart and pulled out her needlework. She would wait, and she would think, because she could do nothing else, but she could also keep her hands busy.

  Hours passed with no result, until Cait’s fingers ached from the constant in and out of the needle. Then she heard the scrape of a shoe on the steps, and Helga appeared at the top of the tower. “Wouldn’t it be better to occupy yourself elsewhere?”

  Cait turned her head just enough to look at the queen’s face, and then looked back to the horizon. Storm clouds were gathering on hills in the distance. It would rain before this evening, though since this was Ireland, that was no prescient prediction.

  “If they are dying out there, I can’t be whiling away my time in my brother’s house or yours. What would I do?”

  “Weave? It is what our ancestors did when our men went into battle. How else to spare one’s man from the Valkyries?”

  Cait glanced sharply at her. Helga had moved to stand in the center of the square tower, her hands folded in front of her and a complacent smile on her lips. The guard took one look at her, bowed, and beat a hasty retreat, down one level to the wall-walk below.

  “I am an accomplished weaver,” Cait said, reluctant to admit anything she didn’t have to, “but that is not my tradition.”

  “Come now.” Helga advanced towards her. “We both know that you have found favor in Prince Godfrid’s eyes. Soon enough, you will be a Dane. Though you didn’t know it, that was the choice you made when you came to Rikard.”

  Cait allowed herself a breath in and out. They were within an inch of each other in height, neither tall nor short for women, and Cait was able to look the queen in the eyes. “How did you know about that?”

  “I have known Deirdre my entire life. I lost a friend when she died too.”

  “I am very sorry.” Cait swallowed. “She was dear to me and didn’t deserve her fate.”

  “Who does?” Now Helga moved to look out over the landscape to the west, her head high and her hands clasped at breast height. “Nöd kommer gammel Kierling til at trave.”

  Cait gaped at her, stunned. Helga’s expression remained serene, still looking away towards the horizon, while Cait had a rock in the pit of her stomach. “It was you in the warehouse that night, wasn’t it? Why?”

  Helga didn’t bother to quibble or deny. “Because Dublin needs to survive, and this was the best way I saw to ensure it.”

  “Did your husband know?”

  There was a pause. “He signed the treaty, of course, but he learned of the events of that night only afterwards. He knew it was best to leave these things to me.”

  “But Deirdre—”

  Helga’s answer was immediate. “I did what I had to.”

  The justification made Cait instantly furious, but she felt paralyzed as to what to do with her anger. With Godfrid and Conall with the army, she had nobody to summon to help her, and what guard would believe that it had been Helga in that warehouse all along?

  Then Helga looked down at her hands, showing her first indication of regret. “It wasn’t by my hand, but it might as well have been. I gave the order.”

  “The other day, you implied that Sturla was responsible.”

  Helga barked a laugh. “The idea of his guilt appealed to your biases and was what you expected. It seemed prudent to keep you looking in that direction.”

  Her arrogance was both disconcerting and infuriating. “And Rikard? What of him?”

  Helga shook her head. “If you think I would have ordered his death too, had I found him, you would be right. But I did not. I do not know how or why he died.”

  Cait wanted to rail at the queen, but Helga’s attention had been drawn by something on the horizon. Cait looked too, and her heart caught in her throat as one or two at a time, and then by the dozen, men began streaming down the western road towards the city. Cait gripped the top of the palisade wall so tightly she gave herself a splinter.

  When the man in the lead reached the gate, the guard at first refused to let him in, under orders to keep the gate closed and terrified that the Irish were following hard on the soldiers’ heels. Cait glanced around for Helga, but the queen had disappeared.

  So it was left to Cait to lean over the rampart to look at the desperate soldier. “What is happening?”

  He looked up at her. “The Irish had already crossed the Liffey when we arrived! It is a rout!”

  “What of the king?”

  “He fell from his horse. That is all I know.”

  “Let them in!” She almost picked up her skirts then and there and ran away from the tower and the gate, as it seemed Helga had done.

  But she didn’t.

  In her previous life, meaning earlier that morning, she might have given in to her fears, but she had spent the last five hours in the tower, and the waiting had slowly sanded off her sharper edges. She needed to know that Conall and Godfrid were alive. She would wait in the tower until she saw them coming, either of their own volition or on a bier.

  Chapter Thirty

  Day Four

  Godfrid

  Somewhere along the way Godfrid had lost his helmet. He couldn’t remember when or where he’d thrown it off, only that it had been preventing him from seeing what was going on around him. He’d lost his horse too and had picked up another, Irish or Danish he didn’t know. His sword dripped blood, and he had only faint memory of the series of events that had carried him from one side of the battlefield to the other.

  Godfrid’s new horse shifted restlessly. Neither Danes nor Irishmen fought on horseback as a rule because their horses weren’t built for charging. Nor did they have enough cavalrymen to have a real effect on the outcome of a battle. But Godfrid had seen enough of the world to have learned how Normans fought and to know also that he and the men who’d conquered England shared ancestry. He could see why staying on his horse was a good idea.

  The ground they’d ultimately chosen had been bad. They’d known it from the start, even as they’d been forced to set up the shield wall with the river anchoring the right and blocked to the left by rising ground and a thick wood.

  He had seen Ottar go down near the first wave of fighting and Sturla with him. Posted as Godfrid was with the other horsemen to protect the Danish left flank, he hadn’t been able to tell how it had happened. The front ranks were still holding their own, but the moment Ottar’s red feather disappeared, a shiver had gone through the Danish force. They might be good Christians these days, but a longing for Valhalla was in their bones, and Godfrid felt that Ottar was making his way there even now.

  Brodar had started out as a leader of the right flank, anchored at the river so the Bregan army couldn’t get past them to attack Dublin directly. With Ottar’s fall, however, Brodar had left his captain in command an
d taken charge of the entire Danish force. It was his right, and it was really the only reason the Danes hadn’t yet conceded defeat.

  Unfortunately, once Ottar fell, a good two hundred soldiers in the rear of the force had broken off and fled back to Dublin. Half of him thought good riddance, while the other half wished he’d known in advance which men were most likely to flee and put them in the front of the lines from the start. But warriors and the foolish were chosen for the shield wall, his brother now among them. Brodar’s white plume bobbed in the midst of the most seasoned soldiers.

  For the first time, Godfrid cursed the loss of his helmet, because it would have allowed his own men to see him better. He peered over the heads of the men fighting nearby. But then, as the battle ebbed and flowed around him, he found himself on the edge of the fray.

  Then Conall bobbed up beside him, still wearing his hat. His friend had declared himself too old for the shield wall.

  Godfrid glanced at him. “You Irish know how to fight, I’ll give you that.”

  “We can think too. I have an idea.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We need to retreat to that high ground.” Conall pointed to a barely discernible ridge two hundred yards to the west. The land around Dublin was for the most part flat, but here and there a ridge like the one Conall indicated or a hill poked up a hundred feet at most above the rest of the landscape. “We need to reform the line there and hold our ground until Leinster comes.”

  “If it comes.” Godfrid spoke absently, without accusation, his eyes on the ridge. Although Conall had sent riders to King Diarmait, for the king to commit to open war against Prince Donnell, the heir to the high king, or, even if he chose to march, that he could get men here in time, had always been an open question.

  But the first rule of warfare was always to seek higher ground, and the only tradition Godfrid cared about was the one that said Danes didn’t ever lose. If they took the ridge, and his countrymen couldn’t hold the wall, his cavalrymen could charge down the slope as a last hurrah before death took them.

  Godfrid eyed the field before him. “How many of the men from Brega will speak Danish? If I give my men an order, will any Irish understand?”

  “Unlikely,” Conall said. “Danish is an impossible language.”

  “Only if your first language is Gaelic.” Godfrid was jesting, not out of a macabre certainty of defeat, but with rising hope.

  After a short conference with the closest of his men, who understood as quickly as Godfrid the necessity of Conall’s plan, Godfrid urged his horse back into the main body of the army, which, for the last quarter of an hour, despite the valor of Brodar and his men, had been retreating step by step back towards Dublin. The Irish would believe the rout was on because they wanted to—and all evidence told them it was inevitable.

  Before he could shout his commands, Holm appeared in front of him, his sword drawn and his hairline bloody. His teeth were clenched, and he spoke around them. “What are you doing?”

  “Turning the battle in our favor.”

  “You haven’t the authority!”

  “King Ottar is dead, Holm. You know that.” Godfrid didn’t have time for this, but the anger and pain in Holm’s demeanor demanded a response.

  “You lied! You’ve been lying all this time.” He threw out a hand to Conall, who was some ways behind Godfrid. “You’ve been working with Leinster since the beginning? Against the king?”

  As in the church, for a moment all sound around Godfrid was muffled, and the world slowed. “Yes.” It was as if a bucket of cold water had been dumped over Godfrid’s head. The relief at being able to speak the truth, at long last, was near-to-dizzying.

  Holm gaped at him and appeared himself near to sputtering.

  Godfrid shook off his own wonder and fixed his gaze on Dublin’s sheriff. “After today my brother will be king, and you will have to decide where your allegiance lies, with the past or with the future.”

  Holm spat out his next words. “As always, I am loyal to Dublin.”

  “Then we shouldn’t have a problem, should we?”

  Holm still wanted to glare, but then he met Godfrid’s eyes, and he eased back in his saddle. “I guess we shouldn’t.”

  Godfrid gave Holm a comradely nod, and then, as Ottar had done before the battle, he stood in his stirrups. In this instance, with no herald of his own, he swung his sword above his head to gain the attention of anyone within hailing distance and then pointed with it. “We will retreat to that ridge and reform the line!”

  It took a moment for his words to penetrate above the shouting and grunting of the men on the ground. Then Holm cupped his hands around his mouth and reiterated the order. Those at the back were the first to understand, and they started calling to their fellows towards the front. Godfrid again pointed west with his sword, hoping that the gesture would confirm the idea to the Irish on the other side of the shield wall that their opponents were in full retreat—and then he spoke in a Danish simple enough for some of them to understand. “Run! Run! Run now!”

  The initial retreat was orderly, but as the pressure on the front lines by those in the rear of the battle was relieved, the retreat got going in earnest. The shield wall collapsed as the men in the front line—Brodar included—threw down their shields and ran.

  Even to Godfrid’s eyes, it looked as if the Danish forces were routed, and Godfrid prayed that, once his men reached the ridge, they would actually stop and not run headlong all the way back to Dublin. Men, once set in motion, could be very difficult to stop.

  Fortunately, the cavalry had taken the lead, easily outpacing the men running on the ground. The intent was that they wouldn’t stop until they were over the ridge. Once they were below the curve of the hill, they would turn and demarcate the ultimate line of defense.

  His chest nearly bursting with fear and anticipation, Godfrid scooped up a running boy, who couldn’t have been older than sixteen and who’d dropped both his shield and his axe.

  A moment later, the boy, who’d managed to seat himself behind Godfrid, pointed ahead. “Look there!”

  Godfrid had been so focused on the men running around him that he hadn’t looked up to the ridge again. Now he saw dozens of banners—Irish not Danish—waving over the heads of hundreds of men lining the ridge before them.

  It took a moment for the symbols to register, by which time Conall was whooping and caterwauling, showing more emotion than Godfrid had ever seen from him. “Diarmait has come! Diarmait has come!” He actually threw his hat into the air.

  In an instant, the whole tenor of the battlefield changed. What had been triumphant roars from the men of Brega, who’d started gleefully forward at the collapse of the Danish shield wall, turned into shouted commands as the leaders attempted to curtail the headlong rush of their men after the falsely retreating Danes. Those Danes at the back, some of whom had pelted through their fellows at a startlingly impossible pace, almost keeping up with Godfrid’s riders, turned to look. And jeer.

  It was an old trick, skillfully played. A Norman might protest that the deception had been dishonorable, but these were Danes, and they knew that the only thing that mattered was winning.

  In short order, the Danish line reformed along the ridge amidst the fresh men of Leinster. Except for a few scattered fools who’d led their fellows too far east, the Bregan line had halted and was being held back a hundred yards away by their commanders. The Bregans weren’t blind. They could see that the odds might no longer be in their favor.

  The Bible said, “Put up again thy sword into its place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” The Irish had been Christians longer than the Danes, but that didn’t stop them from turning the proverb on its head, believing that a man should never unsheathe his sword unless he intended to use it. The men of Leinster had unsheathed their swords and axes, and if they’d been horses, they would have been champing at the bit, ready to fight even if their very appearance may have already won
the battle.

  Conall was right that King Diarmait himself had come, and by the time Godfrid trotted up to the ridge, the king was deep in consultation with Brodar, with Conall translating as needed.

  All of a sudden, Godfrid was exhausted to the bone, to the point that he hardly cared to join the conversation. He let the boy he’d rescued slide to the ground, dismounted himself, and tossed his reins to Holm’s man Alf, who appeared out of nowhere, missing his helmet and with a slash to his cheek, but otherwise unharmed.

  Diarmait’s captains were forming the new shield wall, and Godfrid found himself moved back—politely for the most part—away from the front line, and fetched up beside Holm again.

  The sheriff’s eyes were alight, and he slapped his thigh. “It is done, my lord. Look! Our enemy retreats.”

  Sure enough, the men of Brega were backing away from the field. Their few cavalry held a line at the closest edge, prepared to engage again if the men from Leinster offered battle, but meanwhile allowing their foot soldiers to escape in an orderly fashion, ultimately to recross the Liffey and return to Brega.

  The army from Leinster continued to jeer and call, but no amount of ridicule was sufficient to entice their opponents to turn and engage. In the end, the Bregans had achieved nothing of what they came for. Prince Donnell would have to retreat to Connaught with his tail between his legs, his only accomplishment the death of Ottar, who’d been his ally and co-conspirator.

  Dublin was saved for Danes, and it remained to be seen if anything was left of King Diarmait’s alliance with High King O’Connor, or if it had also been left for dead on the field.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Day Four

  Caitriona

  The great hall, in what had been Ottar’s palace, had been given over to King Diarmait and his household troops. Helga had fled with her young son—to where Cait didn’t know. The Isle of Man was her best guess. In victory, Brodar had been magnanimous and had chosen to let her go. With Ottar dead, she had no power, and he viewed her loss of the throne as suitable payment for her crimes. Besides, nobody wanted to see the former Queen of Dublin hanged for ordering the death of a slave.