“How dare you question my strategy?” he demanded in a booming voice that carried clearly to the footsoldiers. “Who do you think you are, you insolent puppy? I have fought the Northmen since you were a child, without your advice, and I know how to deal with them. I make the decisions here, and if you doubt my authority, you can leave your horse and go!”
Brian tightened his grip on the mare’s reins and met Mahon’s eyes with an unflinching stare.
Looking at him, remembering the bright child he had been, Mahon was suddenly struck to realize how far he had come. This was no boy, sitting easily on the prancing horse, but a young man whose hard and slender body vibrated with nervous energy. The softness had melted from his cheeks even before the beard began to cover them; the planes of his face were angular, hawklike. His gray eyes were hungry. Mahon saw a brief mental image of a predator bird.
The gentleness had been stripped from the boy, leaving a tough core, and Mahon felt a momentary regret. “Brian, I …” he began, but then he broke off and did not complete the gesture of reconciliation he had intended to make. Something in Brian’s face warned him. He realized that, if the situations were reversed, Brian would never apologize to him.
He wheeled his horse abruptly and gave the signal to the waiting men to take up their positions. Following Mahon’s plan, they marched on the fortification, and the Norsemen came swarming out to meet them.
Many of the foreigners wore body armor, and all were helmeted, in conical caps of leather and iron, with nose guards. Most of them were taller than the Irish and heavier of bone. They wielded their two-handed axes with a ferocity Brian had not envisioned, though he had heard men speak of it in camp. Wherever the ax struck a spray of blood arose and a man died shrieking.
Briar Rose reared and plunged, excited by the swirl of shouting men, and Brian spent his first few minutes of battle in trying to subdue her. A glance showed him Mahon’s horse plodding staunchly forward until at last Mahon swung from his back and handed him to a horse holder. Brian looked around for the man assigned to his mare, but there was no sign of him, so he stayed mounted rather than turn her loose to run wildly about, an easy victim.
He urged her forward toward the whirring axes, feeling his own enthusiasm for fighting slip further behind with every step.
“Get off that damned horse and fight!” he heard someone yell to him, in a voice that might have been Nessa’s.
The Northmen had spotted him and were closing in on him, knowing that the horse would hamper his movements in close combat. With a moan of despair Brian flung himself from her back and released her. He balanced his sword in his hands the way Nessa had taught him, planted his feet in the fighting stance, and waited for the first man to reach him.
Gunnbjorn Bluescar, having drunk less ale the night before than his comrades, was in the forefront of the force that met the Irish. He had been congratulating himself all morning on his clear head, and enjoying the groans and retchings of those less fortunate than he. He had even delivered a little lecture to Guthrum’s son, Snorri, on the wisdom of vomiting one’s stomach clean before falling asleep—a lecture Snorri had not taken to heart.
Ahead of him a red-haired lad was just sliding off a lathered black horse. The boy was almost beardless, not really a man’s age yet, but Gunnbjorn’s ax liked one throat’s blood as well as another, and an easy kill was a good way to begin the battle. He marked Brian for his own and ran forward, howling to terrify him.
The moment Brian saw Gunnbjorn headed toward him, he knew the man had chosen him. To kill. Everything else in the world ceased to exist for him then, leaving only the Northman, facing him across a sea of grass.
“Christ be with me,” Brian murmured. The random thought crossed his mind that perhaps there were other—older—names whose aid he might invoke, if only he knew of them; then he shrank from the idea, fearing God would punish him instantly for such blasphemy. And the punishment appeared to be at hand.
The Northman looked enormous. Broad-shouldered, with arms the size of Brian’s thighs, he carried his battle ax in front of him as he ran, locking eyes with his intended victim.
Brian had expected to be afraid, although he had tried not to dwell on it. What he had not expected was the paralyzing force of his fear, which held him rooted and still while Death came running. He felt cold all over, though the sun shone on him brightly with late summer heat.
What good was his short, light sword against the Norse ax? The monstrous thing would surely split his shield at the first blow and then all would be over with him. Before any of his dreams ever came true.
It was that thought that broke his trance. The fear of death chilled him, but being robbed of his dreams enraged him. He had fed on them too long to surrender them so easily. “NO!” he screamed, and launched himself at his attacker.
Gunnbjorn had seen that the lad was frozen in shock, and been pleased. It was tribute to his own terrifying aspect. Two more strides and all would be over. Then, startlingly, the Irishman came to life with a yell quite as loud as his own and leaped forward. Gunnbjorn did not check his stride, he was too experienced for that, but his heart jumped. Then Brian was on him.
He had thrown himself forward with a ferocity he did not know he possessed, forgetting the ax, forgetting everything but his rage. The ax whirled and smashed down, but he was already inside its arc, eye to eye with the surprised Northman. The short sword lay horizontally between them, all Brian’s young weight behind it, and at the last instant he dropped his elbow and twisted the blade upward.
It slid smoothly into Gunnbjorn’s throat, as a knife goes into overripe meat. Brian felt it grate against the neck bones and saw the blue eyes bulge outward, in astonishment rather than pain. He took a step backward and the man came with him, impaled on his sword, hot blood flowing down the incline of the blade.
Brian freed it and let him fall.
As easy as that, his numbed mind said. He is dead and I am not. He wanted to feel it, that peak moment, as he had wanted to feel the experience of his first lovemaking, but once again there was no time. No sooner was his sword free than another man was on him, also carrying a sword—much longer than his own—and slicing at him with it.
He pivoted and brought his shield up just in time. The blow was powerful, rocking him backward, but the shield held. He stepped aside and let the man’s momentum carry him past, then chopped at the back of his neck, below the helmet.
The man reeled as the blade bit into him, then staggered another step before going to his knees. He half turned then, facing Brian, and snarled at him like a wild dog. Without hesitation Brian drove his sword into the open mouth.
Ardan and his slingers had come up, taking as their targets those Northmen who were not wearing mail. Brian saw a stone strike one man with great force on the forearm, and heard the clear crack of the bone. The Northman dropped the ax he carried and rocked to and fro, clutching his arm. Brian ran to him joyously and put him out of his pain.
Spears sang through the air, hurled by powerful arms. A good throw at the right distance could put the javelin through chain mail, and Brian saw several of the enemy drop to their knees, trying uselessly to pull the vibrating shafts from their breasts.
“Over here, Brian! Aid me!”
One of the young men who had mocked him most often in camp was engaged in a losing battle with two Northmen who had trapped him between them and were scything the air with their axes. The desperate Dalcassian had ducked and dodged to the limit of his strength as they played with him, cat to mouse, enjoying his helplessness.
When he called to Brian it was already too late, for the terminal ax was falling to cleave him in two. But Brian ran forward anyway, crouching down to slash with his sword at the back of one man’s legs. The Northman screamed, his hamstrings cut, and fell on his face; his companion stepped over the dead body of the Irishman and was within a man’s length of Brian.
There was no element of surprise now. They were a small distance from one another, e
ach with room and time to appraise the situation. Brian had his sword but the Northman had an ax freshly fed. They moved back and forth, each watching for an opening, and Brian thought the man said something to him.
“Save your breath and tell your Valkyries to come for your spirit,” Brian replied, and realized with a sense of wonder that he felt no fear at all.
The Northman lifted the ax shoulder high, holding it with both hands at an angle to his body, and stepped in for the kill. Brian swayed backward, calculating the weapon’s reach, but did not let himself retreat. The huge iron ax-head sang through the air as he dropped to a crouch, feeling it pass so close above his head that the wind from it lifted his hair. Then he turned his crouching movement into a fluid forward lunge, his sword coming up between the Northman’s legs.
In the space of time needed for the downswing, the axman was totally committed to the momentum of his weapon. He was helpless to alter its course or change his own balance, and that brief flash of time was the province of the short sword. Brian heard the scream and rolled sideways to avoid having the man topple on him, but there was no escaping a bath of blood from the severed artery in his groin.
When he got to his feet and wiped his eyes he saw that the battle had moved away from him, and was now thickest around a grassy hill topped by the ruins of a fallen and forgotten stone wall. Mahon was there, his voice bellowing out over the random noise, and Brian made his way toward him. The confusion of his first minutes of combat had cleared a little and he was able to understand some of what was happening.
The Northmen had clearly been a lesser number than Mahon expected, and the fighting had begun with an Irish advantage. The foreigners were beginning to realize that fact themselves, and were dropping back, maneuvering to keep the way open for a retreat.
“They’ll run,” a panting man nearby volunteered. “They don’t think it’s any disgrace, those heathen bastards; any time the fight goes against them you’re likely to see their backsides in a hurry.”
Patches of the grass were slippery with blood. But for all the yelling and fighting there did not seem to be as many dead as one would have expected. Brian came up to Mahon without salutation, joining him in an attack upon a cluster of Norsemen who were trying to scramble over the fallen wall. Mahon was aware of his arrival as just another soldier and sword; they fought side by side, without looking at one another, until the Northmen tumbled among the stones on the far side and ran off down the hill. Brian started forward in pursuit but Mahon put out a hand to stay him.
“Hold, little brother! So that was you just now, eh? You did a good job; it seems you’ve taken training well. But there’s no point in going after the enemy; see, they’re deserting the field and leaving it to us, they’ll probably run all the way back to Cork. That’s a battle won, for once!”
“If we pursue them now we could run them down and kill them all.”
“Aye, and perhaps stumble into a larger nest of them and be wiped out. A clean-cut victory is hard to come by; let us be thankful for what we have and not tempt fate more this day.”
He turned away from the disappointed Brian and surveyed the area, where wounded men cursed and moaned and a scatter of weapons lay forgotten. “Olan!” he yelled. “Bring up some men and let’s get our wounded out of here!”
A few scattered men were still fighting, but they soon broke it off through a mutual lack of interest. Brian found Ardan and together they moved across the area, picking up lost weapons.
“Now you can see the value of the sling,” Ardan commented. “All these axes and swords are heavy, but after a fight I need only carry away my sling and my shield.”
Brian ran his hand down the length of his sword, feeling a form of reverence for it. “No doubt you’re right, but I wouldn’t trade this one weapon for anything.”
“Even a Norseman’s ax?” Ardan stooped and lifted one from the grass. “Have you ever tried to use one of these things? It’s a marvel to me how they do it. I know some Celts fight with hand axes, and with hammers, but nothing so heavy as this.” He gave it a tentative swing and it twisted in his hands like a live thing, overbalancing and thudding downward, narrowly missing his foot.
“God! The thing tried to kill me!” he gasped.
Brian picked up the fallen ax and hefted it gingerly, impressed with its weight and balance. There were rusty stains on the axhead. Ardan cast a look of repugnance upon it and turned away. “I wouldn’t bring that thing back to camp with me, if I were you.”
“Why not? I think there would be an advantage in knowing how to use the enemy’s weapon.”
“Well, please yourself; at least you have a horse to carry it for you.”
With a guilty start, Brian thought for the first time of Briar Rose. All around him men were checking themselves for injuries just beginning to be felt, talking excitedly about their good blows or narrow escapes, but no one stood patiently holding a black horse. He did see a holder go by leading Mahon’s stallion, and a little way distant, Olan’s gray, lying on the ground in a massive heap.
He hurried to it, more sickened at the sight of the dead animal than the slain men. The horse had been disemboweled, its bloody entrails still steaming on the ground, its long yellow teeth bared in the final agony. Brian shuddered and turned away, feeling the ground tilt and spin beneath him. A horse, so large, so strong, could somehow look so much deader even than a man. Briar Rose …
“Prince Brian?” A respectful voice, an unfamiliar thing to him, sounded at his elbow. A freckled youth of his own age, Olan’s body servant, was standing there, looking hopeful.
“I’ve come to ask for the use of your horse for my master, as his own is dead.”
So now he was called Prince, and asked for favors. Brian turned to the boy with a shrug, saying, “I don’t know where she is. She may be dead, too.” The words were like a slinger’s stones in his throat.
“Oh, no, my lord! She was careening about, getting in everyone’s way, and we all thought she’d be killed; but she has a charmed life, that one. She ran into a Northman, knocked him down, and trampled him, she did; that’s a great horse!”
Brian listened in astonishment. “She’s still alive?”
“Indeed she is, we should all be as alive as that horse. Someone finally caught her and took her aside, and they’re holding her just over yonder hill.”
Olan came up, then, red in the face and out of breath, to see if the horse had been procured for him. His expression was no more friendly than it had ever been; he looked as if he intended to take the mare by force if Brian did not surrender her.
Sometimes small things have great importance in the larger pattern, Brian thought. Symbols … I can demand my rights and make an enemy of this man, or I can surrender meekly and he will forever look down on me. Hatred or contempt. There must be a third choice.
He stepped in front of Olan’s body servant, turning half away from the lad to make it appear as if he had not yet had time to listen to his request. He held out his hand to Olan in sympathy.
“Your good gray is dead,” he said with unfeigned regret. “May I suggest you share mine on the return to Kilmallock? We can each ride her in turn for a portion of the day. It’s only a suggestion, of course; you may not care to use her at all. She’s a trying beast.”
Olan’s eyes flicked toward his underling, but the young man wisely looked away, out of the discussion entirely. Olan drew a deep breath, started to answer, thought better of it. At last he said, “That’s gracious of you. I accept,” and turned away with the muscles clenching in his jaw.
When they brought her to Brian his eyes stung at the sight of her, and he whispered, “Briar Rose, Briar Rose,” against the sweaty meat-smell of her neck. The foot soldiers, watching, envied him his love.
On the return to Kilmallock, Brian found that he enjoyed those times afoot, for he was surrounded by other warriors, all eager to relive the battle, and in their enthusiasm they made him one of them for once. An excitement carried them, so t
hat the miles seemed shorter and the sun brighter. There was endless delight in telling and retelling the tales of hit and thrust and kill. The fear was put into some dark place at the back of the mind, its existence covered over with battle flags, its truth denied by the fact that one was still alive.
It was his first taste of that sweet drunkenness.
Brian sought out Nessa. “You were lucky,” the older man told him, not anxious to hear of his exploits.
Nessa had had a bad day. His sword was broken in his first encounter, the sword that had been his right arm for years. He had hurled the javelin, but it was not his weapon, and at last he found himself struggling on the ground with a bronzed youth who almost succeeded in overpowering him. It did not sit well, hearing another youth boast of many kills.
At night they prudently built no campfires, but sat in circles anyway, joking and swapping stories. The hardened warriors became emotional and childlike, easily moved to tears or laughter. They freely embraced one another, including even the officers in their fellowship. There had not been that many victories to celebrate.
Brian sat with them, content, until he noticed that Mahon had spread his blanket alone, and at a distance, aloof as the king should be. Special. The King.
No man wanted to go to sleep. “Did you see the way I bashed that big fellow? Got him right in the face, a perfect blow. He was huge, I tell you, but he went down like a felled tree. Shook the earth, he did!”
“This man came up behind me, and I would never have known he was there but I saw his shadow on the grass. So I whirls me around like a windswirl, with my javelin in my two hands, and caught him across the throat with it. You should have heard the sound he made!”
“This was nothing, this little skirmish. I remember the battle of Rath Luirc—now that was a battle!”
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