Lion of Ireland

by Morgan Llywelyn

  Leti of the Long Knife died quietly in his sleep. His wife and daughters respectfully left the house when Brian came, alone and bareheaded, to say good-bye to his old friend. He brought with him his harp and a gold crucifix he wished buried with Leti.

  The covered form lay in impossible stillness on the bed. Brian lifted the edge of the blanket and laid bare the face. In death, Leti looked as if he had never been alive; even the livid scar he had earned saving Brian’s life was faded and insignificant, a mere track across his waxen skin. There was little resemblance to the old warrior’s virile countenance.

  Brian looked down at him, waiting for the pain. But it was such an easy death; it scarcely seemed to have hurt Leti at all, nor Brian either. “It isn’t the end you would have chosen for yourself, old comrade,” he whispered to the unfamiliar face. “You should have had a sword in your hand and a shield on your arm. They won’t recognize you in heaven if you arrive there looking like this.”

  The pain came then, and he bowed his head and played a last, private lament on the harp for the doughty warrior he remembered.

  “That wasn’t Leti,” he told Padraic, afterward. “It was some old man I didn’t know.”

  “Cairbre said it was a good death, my lord.”

  Brian shuddered. His eyes were like dark smoke. “Not for a warrior, Padraic. He should have been able to look into the face of the enemy that brought him down. I pray God I may die on my feet, with a sword in my hand!”

  In private, he repeated his prayer. If I have found any favor in Your eyes—Whoever You are—spare me Leti’s death.

  So many gone now. He counted them on his fingers. Leti. Illan Finn and Fergus and Brendan lost to Norse axes. Laoghaire the Black dead in an oak forest with a knife in his back; Laoghaire the Red killed in a meaningless quarrel over a woman. Reardon … I have had so much practice at this, why does it never get easier? … Liam … Ardan … Nessa …

  Mahon.

  He clenched his hands into fists, swallowing the fingers into lumps of naked power. Stop thinking about it. Stop counting. Go on. The road is just now opening in front of you; you cannot be defeated unless you defeat yourself. Go on. For Leti and Ardan and Nessa, go on. That is the only way. Just … keep … going.

  The winter was mild. The trees shed their clothes and stood naked, baring their strengths and weaknesses to the world, but the grass retained its color and was still springy underfoot. Hard rain made the bogs more dangerous than ever, and more than once Brian ordered companies of men turned out to search for a lost child or a cottager who had failed to return home.

  The roads became rivers of mud.

  The unrelieved wet weather held Maelmordha captive beneath his roof at Naas, and he began to smolder like wet grass piled too high. He found much justification for his bad humor.

  “Look at this!” he growled at his steward, unrolling a long parchment bound with strips of silk. “The king of Munster has silk to spare, yet he sends demands for more tribute. Just look at this list!”

  Maelmordha ran his finger down the neat rows of figures. “Cattle. Where am I going to get this many cattle? I might even be forced to send him some of my own; I can never collect so many from the lesser tribes at this season! And he wants bales of wool … how did that man know I had wool stored? And malt. And timber.

  “And this!” His finger continued down the sheet and then stopped, stabbing at the parchment in fury. “He has the temerity to demand that I supply weapons for his army! My weapons! Swords, knives, spears, even horse-bits and harness. Leinster needs those things here, not shipped off to Brian Boru!

  “Someone is always trying to rob us; I’d rather be plundered by the Northmen than by Munster. At least the Norse and Danes do it openly; they don’t pretend to be anything other than thieves and looters.” He paused, his eyes burning dark with sudden fever. “The Northmen …” he repeated, smiling crookedly.

  A damp wind blew inland from the Irish Sea, sweeping over the heathered hills, seeking out the cracks of the timbered halls with greedy fingers. Candles flickered and torches cast writhing light; the princes of Meath ordered new logs put on their hearths and fresh rounds of heated wine.

  At Dublin the wind followed the river, moaning as if in competition with the cries of the gulls who wheeled above the whitecaps in the bay. The weather was mild but the voice of the wind was bitter. Even Gormlaith shuddered at the desolate wail of it and forsook her solitary walk to sit at her son’s hearth, poking the coals with a bronze poker. Her eyes reflected a shower of sparks, gold against emerald.

  The heralds announced the arrival of the prince Maelmordha.

  “Well, brother,” Gormlaith greeted him, “you must have had a wet ride.”

  “I’ll have nothing left to ride soon if I don’t do something to better my situation,” Maelmordha replied glumly. “Where’s Sitric?”

  “Down at the harbor, I suppose; I really don’t know. He doesn’t consult with me about his day’s activities. If something weighs heavily on you, why not discuss it with me instead? There is nothing you would say to Sitric which he would not tell me, and if you need advice, I could …”

  “You haven’t changed, have you?” he interrupted her. “You still want to be involved in everything; it’s a miracle of God that your nose isn’t as long as your arm. Why not go mind your loom, Gormlaith, and leave men’s affairs to men?”

  The look she gave him was frosted with contempt. “Because I don’t know any men, Maelmordha! And as you well know, when I try to use a loom I have six thumbs.”

  “It’s a pity you grew up in a household of brothers, with no good woman to set you a pattern,” he commented.

  “I grew up in a warrior’s household and I’ve never regretted it! I learned early how hard life really is, and what matters in this world. If I had been what you call womanly, I would have cried at father’s knee and begged for a ‘love-match’ instead of being willing to do my duty and make an advantageous alliance for our tribe with Olaf Cuaran. Father told me I was a good soldier, then. He was proud of me. But you—you were always jealous of me, Maelmordha.”

  “Of a woman!? Don’t be ridiculous. I bow to no woman; nor to any man, which is the reason for my visit. And I’ve had enough of this titter-tatter; just call someone to fetch Sitric, for I must have a word with him before another night passes.”

  Sitric arrived, in a good humor from observing the wealth of pirated goods being unloaded from Norse ships in the harbor. He did not seem overjoyed at the prospect of spending the evening with his dark-visaged and irascible uncle, but his pleasant mood lasted long enough to allow the ordering of food and drink in the cavernous timbered hall of the Norse stronghold.

  As always, Gormlaith insisted on sitting at the dinner table with the men. She leaned on her elbow, toying with her food and making an occasional bored response to the conversational gambits of the jarls around her. How ignorant they were, these kinsmen of her son; how boring their interminable talk about boats and seas. To listen to them talk one would suppose that the land was just a convenient stopgap between waters, a place of no consequence. They had no art and no learning. Even the addition of her brother to the scene did not broaden the scope of conversation appreciably, for all he wanted to discuss were his grievances.

  At last she tired of it. “Maelmordha,” she said, leaning forward and breaking into the men’s talk, “you resent the tribute Munster takes from you; you feel it is humiliating and unfair. I, too, have humiliated and treated unfairly, by that maggot Malachi Mor, the other half of this new Irish alliance. You want my son to give you the strength of this Norsemen to resist Boru, and I want revenge against Malachi!

  “I suggest to you that we can do both things together, drive one sword through two foxes. There is enough strength available to us to destroy both men, if we bring it to bear in one place. And if all these Norsemen”—she cast a contemptuous glance around the hall—“cannot do the task, there are Danish fleets off the coast of Alba and the Saxon lands. The
y might be glad to join us for their share of the plunder.”

  Maelmordha narrowed his eyes. “You think it can be done?”

  “Of course it can! It’s to Sitric’s advantage to crush Boru, for that man is a lifelong foe of the Northmen. Eh, Sitric?”

  “I … ah … wasn’t really looking for a war …” Sitric began, over a rising accompaniment of Norse enthusiasm. Battle-heat was already warming the bones of his jarls, and they were banging their fists and their drinking horns on the table. “Kill both the Irish kings!” someone shouted, and there was general laughter.

  “Has your Irish blood weakened the viking strain in you, Silkbeard?” Svein Iron-Knuckle challenged. “This is a splendid opportunity for brave hearts; the new Irish partnership can be no match for the followers of Red Thor!”

  Sitric had scowled at Svein’s calculated insult, and now he rose with the rest of them, raising his drinking horn high above his head. “I am Olaf Cuaran’s son!” he assured the hall.

  Gormlaith favored him with a radiant smile.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  He was lean again, flat-bellied, the muscles sharply defined beneath skin almost as taut as it had been in his youth. The sculptural quality of his face stood out strongly above the lightly grizzled beard, and his eyes were the calm, savage eyes of a lion. Brian Boru was riding to victory with the warriors of Leth Mogh at his back.

  They were marching north over the Wicklow Highlands, intending to crush the rebellion in Leinster on their way to establishing a blockade of Dublin. A false marching order for a fortnight later had been widely circulated, and now Brian was hurrying to rendezvous with Malachi Mor well ahead of the expected time, in order to add the element of surprise to their attack.

  Just as the army began its march Murrough had arrived, unannounced and unexpected, bringing a large company of men with him. Armed men. They rode into camp with their weapons ready, and a circle of Dalcassians materialized almost magically, to stand with their own weapons in hand around Brian, facing outward as his son advanced upon them.

  Brian, furious, ordered them away. “If my own son is a threat to me, then nothing I am doing has any meaning anyway!” he hissed through his teeth. “Let him through!”

  Murrough halted before his father. The two warriors, one fair and one dark but both with the same face, locked eyes in a tingling silence.

  “I have come to fight beside you,” Murrough said tightly.

  Brian cocked one eyebrow but said nothing, forcing his son to fill the silence further. “This time, we are in agreement,” Murrough continued.

  “And when we are not?” Brian asked.

  Murrough hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said at last, carefully. Then he saluted Brian formally and went to gather his men and position them with the rest of the army.

  The agreed meeting place for Brian and Malachi was the valley of Glenmama, near Dun Lavin, an easily defensible site rising upward toward the slope of Saggard. Malachi brought his men in from the west, having crossed the Liffey and made a wide circle around Naas to avoid alerting Maelmordha’s outposts. The soldiers of the two armies flowed together, north and south, as the waters of two rivers flow into one sea, and soon the men of Leth Mogh and Leth Conn were sharing stories and aleskins.

  “How easily men become friends if someone does not encourage them to be enemies,” Malachi commented, watching the scene with Brian.

  “That’s a pleasant philosophy,” Brian replied, “but the novelty will wear thin soon, and we’ll have two packs of hounds circling one another and snarling unless a hare runs through here for them to pursue jointly.”

  “You have a low opinion of human nature, Boru.”

  “No, I’m merely a lifelong observer of it, and I remember what I see, even if it doesn’t please me to do so. We can all be good-natured and charitable in the abstract, but given the hard realities of a jostled elbow or a stolen supper we tend to return to our most primitive selves. We can unify the Irish so long as we have an invader for them to face, and for that reason even the Northman has his value. I’ve only begun to see it as I’ve grown older, but everything does, truly, fit into some giant plan.”

  Malachi pursed his lips and raised his brows. “You doubted it?”

  “I was young. I doubted everything.”

  “And now?”

  Brian smiled. “Oh, I’m still a doubter. But I also believe.”

  “In God,” Malachi said with satisfaction.

  “I believe in a power too great for me to imagine, with properties I cannot begin to understand. What I believe in is larger than your concept of God, Malachi, though He is part of it. But yes, I do believe.”

  Malachi stared at him. Was the man blaspheming or was he a prophet with a new understanding? It was so hard to know what to think! Malachi squinted up at the man who stood beside him, gazing calmly out over the valley. “I wouldn’t want to try to get to the bottom of you, Boru,” he said at last. “There are coils and twists in there that might entrap me forever.”

  Brian grinned suddenly and clapped him on the shoulder in a gesture almost identical with the one that was habitual to Malachi. “You don’t have to be my soul mate, Meathman,” he laughed. “Only my fighting comrade, and the time for that has come. Look yonder, at the edge of the trees!”

  The army of rebellion had had some difficulty in getting under way. There was constant friction between Maelmordha’s Irish captains and the Norse jarls; every command decision was hotly disputed. The Norse wanted to march west and then follow the Shannon to Kincora, loot and destroy Brian’s stronghold, and cut down his army while it was preparing to march. Maelmordha preferred to go south and into the heartland of Munster, hitting Cashel first and leaving a deputation there to seize the vacant kingship for himself as soon as Boru was dead.

  After a heated argument, the Norsemen, led by Harold Deadtooth, a son of Olaf Cuaran, and Svein Iron-Knuckle, agreed to accept Maelmordha’s plan. “We will face Boru and the Ard Ri either way, I suppose, and we will be there before they expect us in any case,” Harold said.

  “Sitric Silkbeard will not be pleased when he hears of this,” Svein grumbled.

  “Then he should have come with us and argued with the prince of Leinster himself. He is my father’s son; his place is at the head of his army.”

  “No, he said that if things go wrong it was more important that he be in Dublin to defend it, for the Irish will surely sack the city if they can.”

  “Oh, no they won’t! There won’t be enough Irishmen left when we get through with them to attack a cow byre.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Svein replied, “but three black crows have been following us since we left the gates of the city, and I take that to be a very bad omen.”

  The crows deserted them when they reached Naas, and with a good meal from Maelmordha’s stores in their bellies the band marched southward in a better humor. The Northmen struck up an old saga-song with a good rhythm to it, and the Irish soon joined in, humming and striking their fists on their shields to keep time. The sun was bright, the winter day crisp. They were a giant oaken club, going to batter their enemies into the earth!

  The leaders of the straggling columns reached the thinning trees north of Glenmama and stopped in surprise, momentarily stunned at the sight of a vast army spread out before them. But they had little time for reflection, and still less to gather themselves into some semblance of a battle position. Unknowingly, they had already come through the outer perimeter of the Irish, and Conaing and King Lonergan were closing in on them from the rear.

  With the wild and timeless scream that was the oldest Celtic war cry, the Irish hurled themselves upon the unprepared Dubliners.

  The battle was joined in a rush and the whole boiling, slashing, yelling body of them burst through the trees and poured into the valley, into the waiting ranks of Brian and Malachi.

  It was, as the poets said afterward, a red slaughter.

  Padraic fought close to Brian, as always. He had j
ust driven his spear through two Norsemen together, pinning them like spitted pigs, chest to back, and turned to see if Brian had noticed the feat. He felt a terrific impact on the side of his head, and even before the pain could reach him, green Ireland and Brian Boru faded into darkness.

  Padraic had been guarding Brian’s back, and as he fell a Leinster swordsman cut his way through to challenge Brian to single combat. They dueled hotly, and then Brian brought him down and moved on to the next opponent, unaware that Padraic was no longer behind him.

  The king of Munster cut his way steadily across the field, seeking out Northmen, leaving the killing of Leinstermen to others as much as he could. His shield was hacked and battered and the edge of his sword was ruined, scored with ax cuts and dulled on armor. The chain links of the Norse required something stronger. He jammed the sword back into its sheath and picked up a battle ax from the trampled earth, then went forward again.

  Swing and slash, feint and dodge, until the shoulders were a blaze of pain and the back ached like an abscessed tooth. He let go of the ax during an intense grappling struggle with a dark blond man who swore at him in the Danish tongue and carried three daggers in his belt. The foreigner was a head shorter than Brian but years younger, and his reflexes were as sharp as his knives.

  Brian felt his hands slide on the other’s slippery flesh and the Dane tore free of him and spun away, only to move in again, a knife in each hand now, his lips parted in a fierce grin. There was no way to stoop for the ax without leaving himself vulnerable. Brian gripped his own dagger and jerked it free from his belt, twisting painfully backward just in time to avoid the other’s slashing downward stroke.