The man was quick as a cat; there was no getting behind him to cut the spine. They circled each other, crouched and wary, and the Dane began to chant in derision, “Boru! Boru!” Then he laughed.
Brian locked his fists together in a club and slammed them into the other’s face, swinging his extended arms right through the falling arc of the knife. The Dane staggered backward, rocked by the power behind the blow, and Brian kicked him in the groin.
While the Dane was thrashing on the ground Brian retrieved his weapons, dispatched his enemy with a clean blow of the ax, massaged his aching shoulder muscles ruefully for a moment, and then looked up to select his next opponent.
Long before Maelmordha was willing to concede the battle lost, the Northmen were beginning to desert the field and flee toward Dublin, with the Irish of Leth Mogh and Leth Conn in hot pursuit. Great numbers of the fugitives got as far as the Liffey, only to be slain on its banks or drowned in the desperate fighting that took place in the water. Murrough, laughing, stood waist deep in the icy torrent, swinging an ax and bashing heads.
Harold and a small group of his Norsemen made their stand in a spot of unsurpassed beauty, with the tumble of the river behind them, bordered by green banks and stones still verdant with moss. They fought courageously once Conaing’s men had them trapped there, but in the end they all died, Harold himself falling to Conaing’s sword, and their blood watered the roots of the willows along the bank.
Late in the day Murrough and his personal guard rode their horses at the gallop back toward Glenmama, hoping to meet the rebel prince of Leinster along the way, only to run into a dazed and bloodied company of Leinstermen crying that their leader had deserted them. They were easily herded together and shackled with rope.
“Shall we send word to the kings that Maelmordha has escaped?” one of Murrough’s men asked.
“No man escapes me,” Murrough replied grimly. “You may leave the kings out of it. Brian Boru would doubtless countermand any order I might give, so I will handle this myself and tell him of it later.” He divided his men into search parties and began combing the area as the blue shadows grew longer.
Glenmama welcomed the night. The fighting had subsided, dying in a cacophony of shrieks and moans, and the Irish allies held the earth unquestioned. Brian walked over the trampled ground as he was accustomed to doing after an engagement, looking for faces he recognized, stooping to give water from a drinking skin or sign a blessing above a dying warrior.
Sometime during the long afternoon he had seen part of a man’s head lying in the mud, split open and tossed aside by an ax blow. The inside of the skull lay vulnerable to the sky, pink and delicately ridged, like some seashell just abandoned by the small creature it had housed. Brian had checked his stride to look at it and marvel at its dispassionate beauty. In the Old Religions, he thought, man was always aware of death as a part of life; of the skull beneath the flesh. We would label it horrible, and yet, where is the ugliness in a thing so genuinely lovely, so perfectly designed?
The horror existed while the man still lived, trapped in darkness within that skull, all alone.
He pushed the thought away and went back to the fighting. But as he walked the reddened fields of Glenmama in the twilight the concept came back, unbidden, and he clenched his jaw and made himself think it through. I will not be a coward in my own head!
Alone, in my own head.
The terrible loneliness of being human. It is not that man learned the difference between good and evil, and thus was thrown out of paradise. Man lost paradise when he learned that he was permanently, irrevocably alone. A brain floating in the dark bone vault of a skull. A consciousness that could never truly merge with another human consciousness.
That is the loss of heaven, the beginning of hell.
So Brian Boru—king, human, cursed with life and knowledge—are the gifts worth the cost?
Is the inevitability of suffering too great a price to pay for the glory of a spring day when you are sixteen years old? Are the pain and loneliness of living the price exacted for the gift of life by a sane and loving God? Or does the compassion of Christ fail to extend to His Father?
Would a sane God have doomed all his children eternally as the punishment for Eve’s curiosity in the Garden? If so, it is a terrible retribution, out of all proportion to the crime. What sort of Creator have we? There is something there of the Norse Odin, brutal and pitiless, or the savage, arbitrary elder gods of the Romans.
Head bent, Brian looked down at the dim shape of his hands stretched out before him in the deepening gloom. Hands created—in Whose image?
I have gone to battle in the name of the White Christ against the Red Thor; suppose I am fighting not pagan gods, but God Himself? Choosing one vision of Him against another? Is my battle, then, foredoomed? What if they are all right, Christian and Jew and pagan and the hundred other sects of men, and their gods are mine? What if the men I have killed in His name are, truly, my brothers?
What have I done, dedicating my life to death?
Brian stared at his hands. The greatest warrior in Ireland stood in the center of the rubble of victory, and saw blood instead of glory.
Night thoughts.
Litter bearers came past him, carrying the wounded to the area set aside for the physicians. The sounds of singing and celebration drifted down the valley. Prisoners were being brought in from every direction, some sullen, some head-banging and defeated, a few still kicking and cursing.
There have been so many nights like this, Brian thought. So many.
He turned and made his way to the tent of the physicians. Padraic might be found there, chatting with friends and telling them jokes to make them forget their pain. He felt a need of Padraic’s bright nature. As he reached the tent, Donogh put a hand on his arm.
“Have you seen Padraic?” Brian asked.
Donogh’s lips tightened to a thin line. His eyes were brimming. “Yes, my lord; I helped bring him in just a little while ago. He was hit in the head by a club during the afternoon; I saw it and got to him, and did what I could, then put him into a safe place until the battle ended and the wounded could be collected. He still lives, but it’s a grievous injury.”
Brian’s eyes were bleak. “Norse or Irish?”
“The club-wielder, my lord? A Leinsterman, I believe; he wore a bratt and tunic. After I left Padraic I found him and cut him down.”
Brian could not smile, his lips would not assume the shape, but he put his hand briefly on Donogh’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he said. “I have been given fine sons. Padraic is one and you are another. When next we meet with MacLiag at Kincora, you may tell him I called you that, and that I would like you so honored in his poetry.”
Padraic lay shrunken and small beneath his blanket. At Brian’s command a flambeau was brought and set beside him, so that the king might see his face and his wound. Cairbre himself was summoned to tend it.
Brian did not ask if he would live. He squatted on the other side of the still body as Cairbre’s gentle fingers parted the blood-encrusted hair and the examined the skull beneath. The physician signaled for a basin of water and bathed the wound, then applied a series of ointments to it. Padraic stirred once and moaned, his hand clutching convulsively on the blanket, and Brian took it in his own and squeezed the fingers. They were impossibly cold.
At last Cairbre stood up. “There is nothing more I can do for him, my lord. It is in God’s hands.”
Duvlann of the Horses came running in, having just heard the news, and he panted to a halt beside them, staring down at Padraic’s empty face. His eyes met Brian’s and glittered with tears. “How bad?” he asked hoarsely.
“The skull is damaged,” Cairbre told them, “but whether that has ruined the brain I cannot say. He may live; he may not. If he does he may be an idiot, recognizing nothing, a drooling thing to be wrapped in a blanket and kept out of sight. It often happens with these wounds. There is nothing to do but pray.”
“Yes,�
� Brian answered in a low voice. Still holding Padraic’s icy hands between his own warm ones, he bowed his head over them and knelt in prayer on the ground beside his friend. One more time, God … whoever You are. I am asking You, one more time, to spare a life, to leave someone I love in this world with me. I can go on without my friend, if I must; You have made me strong enough to go on no matter what—and I do not know if that is a blessing or a curse.
But this Padraic is very special, Lord. He is a sparrow who always wanted to fly with the hawks. He has been loyal, all his life, to Thee and me, and if there were any way with which I could bargain for his life I would do it.
He raised his head and looked at the ashen face. Just at that instant Padraic’s lashes fluttered slightly, and his lips curved into the faintest of smiles. A sign?
Brian bowed once more and redoubled the outpouring of his energy—the energy on which he had always based his faith. I beseech You! This one gift, not for myself but for this good man. I will give Brian Boru entirely into Your hands, question You no longer, put all my strength at Your service, believe in You to the exclusion of everything else, if You will just let Padraic wake up in the morning with his mind intact!
Ignoring his exhaustion, Brian stayed by Padraic’s side through the night, repeating his prayers and watching the quiet face. Sometime in the dark hours he dozed off, only to be awakened by the repeated clearing of a throat behind him.
In that moment he had been thinking of love, dreaming of the face of God, feeling the wholeness of it at last just within his reach, a full shining sweetness he could actually touch, an ecstasy beyond pain, and at the instant he opened himself joyously to surrender to it he was dragged back into the world of battle nights and aching bones. He tried one last time to gather the threads of thought he had been weaving but they had come undone, their pattern lost, their ends raveled, and one was missing altogether.
“Yes!” he snapped angrily at the officer who stood beside him. Brian’s eyes were swollen and red in the torchlight. “What do you want?”
“It’s Maelmordha, prince of Leinster, my lord. Prince Murrough found him hiding in a yew tree and has taken him prisoner.”
Brian made a mighty effort to collect his fragmented consciousness and become king and warrior once more. He slipped Padraic’s hands beneath the blanket and stood up. “Did my son kill him?” he asked sharply.
The officer was startled. “Oh, no, my lord. Should he have done?”
“God, no!” said Brian fervently. “Go summon Malachi Mor to join us at my tent, and have the prisoner brought before us right now. I think we would both like to have a word with the prince of Leinster.”
“Now, my lord?”
“Now.”
Maelmordha knelt before them, his hands tied behind his back with leather thongs, wetted. His bratt was missing, his linen tunic half-torn from his body; his unbound hair streamed to his shoulders in a wild tangle. He was a tall man, with the stamp of nobility on his fine-boned face, but his fleshy lips were coarse and his eyes were the eyes of a rabid animal.
Murrough stood behind him, the point of his sword set firmly against Maelmordha’s spine. “I bring you this rebel, my lord,” he addressed Brian formally. “Unharmed, as you see, though I had to whip some of my own men off him. Tell me, Brian mac Cennedi—does this at last cancel my debt for Molloy of Desmond?”
His eyes were hot with challenge. It might have been only the two of them, facing one another in an empty hall. Would that it were, Brian thought. Then I could say to you all those things that have been so long unsaid between us, my son. My real son, my firstborn. But not here, not now. This is war, and we have serious business to do.
He tried to put his unspoken feeling into the eyes whose expression he had guarded for so many years. “Yes, Prince Murrough,” he said with courtly courtesy, as he would to any noble addressing him publicly. “The scales are balanced.”
Murrough’s face did not soften. “Very well, my lord,” he replied curtly. “I leave him to you.” With an abrupt gesture he thrust his sword back into its sheath and strode away, his captains trotting behind him.
Maelmordha was sullen, unimpressed by either of the great kings seated before him. He worked his tongue in his dry mouth until he was able to accumulate a pathetic little gob of saliva, then he spat it at Brian’s feet. “You strip the skin from my back with your demands for tribute, Boru,” he snarled.
“Leinster has always paid tribute,” Malachi offered mildly.
“Aye, we’ve always been robbed to fatten some other province!”
“Not this time,” Brian cut in. “Your cattle and grain do not go into the treasury of Munster, they are used for the benefit of all southern Ireland.”
Maelmordha wished he had his hands free, so he could make an appropriate gesture. “And what does that mean?”
Brian answered, “It means schools and churches, and missionaries sent to distant places that lack the word of God. It means good roads, so that people can get their goods to market. It means drained bogs, and food for the poor under the Brehon Law. I don’t take tribute from Leinster for myself, Maelmordha; I spend it where it will do the most good in my judgment.”
“Let me keep all my cattle in my own kingdom, and I’ll feed my poor and ask no help from any man!” Maelmordha demanded.
“Ah, but then who will come to help you when disaster falls? Who will be your brother, Leinster, when the inevitable time comes that you cry out in need?”
“The Norsemen of Dublin are my allies!”
“They would cut you down for the gold in your belt, and you know it,” Malachi told him.
Maelmordha made no reply. The bindings on his wrists were drying, tightening cruelly, and long flickers of pain ran up his arms to the shoulder. He looked from one king to the other; from Brian’s impassive face to the round, pleasant visage of Malachi. Beyond the firelight a sentry raised a muffled challenge and was answered. A distant horse whinnied. The watchfires crackled, and there was a smell of snow on the night wind.
“Gormlaith’s son—Sitric Silkbeard—is he with you?” Malachi asked.
Maelmordha sneered. “Not that one. He’s a fox, like his mother. It was a good day for me when I sent her to you and a sorry day when she returned. It was Sitric’s half-brother, Harold, who led the Norsemen, he and Svein Iron-Knuckle. They both quit and ran, the cowards, when the fight could still have been won.”
“The fight could never have been won, Maelmordha,” Brian told him. “You don’t understand how things have changed. It’s no longer just one petty kingdom against another, a mass of unrelated tribes squabbling for advantage. You have rebelled against the entity of Ireland, a new thing which has never really existed before, and you must pay the price of your misjudgment. We will hold you prisoner until we receive hostages of good conduct from Leinster, and not just your expendables, either. The patriarchs of the tribes.”
“Never!”
“I think you have no choice, Maelmordha,” Malachi interposed. “We can go and get them with bloodshed, and our men will do some looting into the bargain, or you can send for them in a spirit of cooperation and everyone will be treated with the dignity their positions merit. But either way, it will be as Boru says.”
“Not everything has to be ‘as Boru says’!” Maelmordha exclaimed in outrage.
Malachi glanced covertly at Brian, but the controlled face told him nothing. “Of course not,” he answered Maelmordha. “We are allies in this and our decisions are made jointly. It is as much my will as his, Leinster, and you must obey it.”
“And what of the Northmen—will you take hostages from them, too?”
Malachi’s color was high and his eyes sparkled. “Better than that, rebel! We’ll take their city!”
Brian was reluctant to seek his bed, though his aching body demanded it. There was a false dawn light in the sky and the night was drawing to a close; he must seek a few moments of oblivion to separate the days. He forced himself to lie on the ha
rd pallet in his tent and close his burning eyes. The fatigue tremors in his calves started immediately and he lay in grim endurance until the gray fog overtook him.
He came instantly and completely awake, with no lingering memory of sleep. His body felt broken. He clenched his teeth and got up, making a perfunctory return to the salute of the guard at his tent-flap, and hurried to Padraic’s side. The morning was leaden with cold.
The familiar face was still uncovered—he was alive, then. Brian turned his back on the rows of other wounded lying in neat, soldierly ranks on the cold earth, and knelt stiffly beside his friend.
“Padraic?” he whispered.
The man moaned a little and a faint color crept into his cheeks. His tongue made a feeble attempt to wet his lips, and Brian looked up with a scowl to summon the nearest attendant to bring water. He gently bathed Padraic’s face and lips himself, then held the cup against the colorless mouth and tilted it to allow a few drops to slide down the wounded man’s throat. He was rewarded with the ghost of a smile.
“My … lord?”
Brian crouched over him. “Yes, friend, I’m here.” He touched Padraic’s hand. “How is it with you?”
“Too much … ale. My head …”
“That’s not ale,” Brian said, smiling a little. “It’s a battle wound, but by God’s mercy you will recover and be yourself again. I give thanks that my prayers were answered for once.”
“You prayed … for me?”
Brian stroked the wrinkled forehead. “With all my heart.”
“Thank you, my lord. Your prayers must have great weight with God.”
“I never thought so until now, Padraic,” he said, glancing up as Cairbre leaned over them. “He’s going to live, physician!”
“Yes, I think he is. When he’s better, we can take him back to Kincora.”
Padraic’s eyes opened but he did not look at them; he only stared upward. “How soon will I be able to march again with my lord?” he asked.
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