Lion of Ireland (32 page)

His vision adapted itself to the diminished light, and he saw the smooth, smoke-gray bark just in front of him, every detail wondrously clear. To his surprise, it was as if he had encountered a human presence there, and he stood before it, hesitant which way to turn.

The Northman came around the other side of the tree and struck him down.

Those men whom Brian had trained to fight with the ax were making great inroads on the Norse army now, swinging their weapons in wild arcs, howling with glee when the blades chopped through the foreign armor. Unlike the Northmen, the Irish held their axes one-handed, the thumb extended along the handle to guide the blow, and this seemed to unnerve their enemy most of all. Frantic, the Northmen plunged against the encircling line and began to break through, streaming back toward Limerick or into the sheltering woods.

Brian galloped beside his men, urging them on though they needed no urging, feeling the ponderous mass of the Norse army disintegrate before the agile attack of the Irish. The sun was in midheaven now and Ivar’s force was in full retreat, sweeping its enraged Irish allies with it. Men lay everywhere on the grass and trampled earth, weltering in their own blood and asking for water or a merciful death from every passerby.

Brian reined in and turned back to seek out Mahon and issue orders for re-forming the companies, so that the most advantage could be taken of the enemy’s demoralization. He sighted Mahon’s banner, slightly torn, fluttering from a pole thrust into the same rise of ground recently occupied by Ivar and his aides. The earth was red with death and victory. Mahon was sitting on a tall brown horse, leaning over the animal’s neck as he listened to a report from one of his officers. When Brian came up he straightened, eyes alight with satisfaction.

”It is a triumph!” he announced.

Brian surveyed the scene coolly. He saw and noted the faces turned toward him in open admiration; a few hours ago these same chieftains had been hostile, ready to desert the king and his radical brother.

Now they were gathered about Mahon’s flag to rejoice in a great victory. They cheered him as he dismounted and walked over to them.

“We cannot be called victorious until Ivar’s back is broken and his fortress burned to the ground,” Brian told them firmly. It was too soon to forgive and forget, too soon to enjoy defeating an enemy who could turn on them at any time and cut them down. “The Northman’s arrogance has betrayed him,” Brian said to the officers, “but he may yet find his pride and stand against us. Don’t waste your breath congratulating yourselves, for this is the time to re-form the army in a tight offensive spearhead and launch it at Limerick.” He addressed Mahon directly: “Brother, if you are still with me, we will be in Ivar’s city tonight picking Norse teeth out of the ashes.”

The naked savagery in Brian’s voice was not lost on Mahon. A team of litter bearers came up just then, carrying Kernac, who lay unconscious, his leg severed below the knee, the shinbone sticking out of the pulped flesh like a splintered reed. Mahon saw Brian’s glance flick to the injured man and then back again with no change in expression.

“We must take time to tend our wounded, Brian,” Mahon said gently, hoping to wipe away the hardened crust forming around his brother. He saw that Brian still vibrated with the tense pitch of battle, an unsated hunger in his eyes; and Mahon felt a sudden strong revulsion against the lust to kill so blatantly expressed.

“We have had our victory, Brian,” he reminded the younger man, leaning toward him and stressing his words. “We must care for the injured now, and let our brave warriors rest.”

Brian stared at his brother. “Have you taken a head wound?

I hope so, for otherwise the sun has addled your brains! More than one battle has been lost because the victors failed to follow up their advantage, and I can’t allow that to happen here!

“As for the wounded ...” he paused and gazed out over

the field. “Wounded men take so much time. Someone must bind up their wounds, we need carts or horses to get them back to Cashel ... if we had some way they could be treated here by a company of nonwarriors ...”

Mahon interrupted him impatiently. “We can take care of them here, now, as we always have. These are our friends and comrades, Brian!”

“And they have taken their injuries in an effort to destroy Ivar,” Brian shot back. “If we let Ivar get away and regroup to fall on us later, their pain will have been wasted. We have had a similar discussion before, brother, and I feel just as strongly about it now. We must finish what we began!”

The Irish chieftains had listened to this exchange without contributing to it, their eyes flicking from one man to the other; but at the end they were nodding in agreement with Brian. Cahal clapped him on the shoulder and announced in a loud voice, “I’m your man, Boru! You lead and my men will follow, and we will pick up our casualties on the way back. Take us to Limerick or hell beyond, if that’s how far you have to go to get to Ivar!”

“Very well,” Mahon said, his somber gaze fixed, not on the jubilant warriors, but on the ranks of dead and dying being collected on the plain before him. “We will go on to Limerick.” Without looking at Brian again, he kicked his horse and rode away.

They rode knee to knee in pursuit of the fleeing Norse, with their army of Munstermen at their backs, singing the songs of victory. Brian felt his brother’s troubled gaze from time to time but he never acknowledged it; he limited his conversation to giving orders, or an occasional comment to the spear carrier who ran beside his horse.

I know what you want to say to me, Mahon, he thought. I can feel your emotions tugging at me. You would condemn me for the very victory I bring you. You want me to take time for pity, and allow myself to be hurt by the sight of the injured and dead. Like Deirdre, you want me to be vulnerable.

But I cannot. I will not. When the wars are over there may be time or friendship and compassion and all those Christian virtues, and then ‘ may be as kindly as any man. But not jet---fast, we must win.

He rode above his emotions, carefully protecting the thin skin that separated them from his consciousness, safe only as long as that skin held. It was a dam, and agony was piled up Behind it. Brian Boru rode with a closed face, his gray eyes fixed on the road ahead.

The sun burned on their uncovered heads, their bare arms browned and glowed from its warmth. Once, a mass of yellow butterflies came up in a cloud from a dip in the land and danced through the ranks of the marching Irish, fluttering against their faces to be fended away with laughter. “Ivar’s sending spies!”

someone shouted, and a wave of guffaws moved across the sea of men.

They did not stop to eat. Those who had food with them gnawed on it as they marched, and bearers ran along the line with waterskins. The evening brought a rising breeze and some of the men said they could smell the Shannon. In the distance there were clustered pinpoints of light.

Seeing Limerick waiting for them, an unknown quantity, for the second time that day Brian seriously considered the possibility that he might die. In the dark, in the night, in that pagan, alien port. A Northman might strike him down and it would all go black . . .

Watch out! His mind shield away from the idea like a frightened horse. Such imaginings could drain off that peak of confidence that had carried him, and the army with him, all this long day. But the picture remained there, lying across his thoughts, daring him to look at it closely in the fading light.

Would he go to heaven? Pray perpetually in glory with the saints and the angels? And if he did, how would he keep from being bored? Would God forgive him for being bored in His presence?

Dangerous, blasphemous thoughts for a man who might be on his way to die. If Mahon knew he had such thoughts, his expression would be still more troubled.

The rich smell of marsh and meadowland surrounded them; the meaty scent of horse sweat anchored them in life.

I will not die tonight, Brian told himself, and was relieved to find that he believed it. Some other time I can think about dying and the obligations of my immortal soul; I can do penance and all those acts of Christian charity. Some other time, but not right now. Victory may have to serve me as heaven, and I will put off hell until tomorrow.

On the deep level of consciousness he was aware that his mind had carefully skirted specific thoughts of his own mortality, and he was grateful. Visions of the grave, decay, the long darkness . . .

On the road before them, dimly visible in the twilight, a Norse sword lay abandoned and forgotten. An indented ridge ran the length of the blade, that depression the Northmen called the Blood Channel, and it was stained with something dark. They all looked at it as they passed, stepping around it carefully, but no man bent to pick it up.

Limerick lay at the end of the road, huddled on the river bank. The earthen walls were massive, strengthened with timbers and topped by watchtowers where nervous sentries scanned the horizon, peering through the summer dusk. The approaching Irish heard the cry they raised.

The port city was garrisoned and strong enough to withstand a siege, but the Northmen were too shaken by their unexpected defeat to offer more than token resistance. As the first Munstermen reached their gates a few warriors came out to offer battle but then fell back, scrambling for their boats at the river’s edge. Unchecked, the Irish poured into the city.

The narrow streets were thronged with people. Mothers darted from doorway to doorway, searching desperately for their older children while clutching squalling infants to their breasts. Individual Northmen stood with their weapons, thinking to turn back the tide; but it was too late, and they soon broke and ran, adding to the general confusion. Merchants with their wares piled on carts or strapped to their backs fled before the long-pent-up wrath of the Irish, only to be trapped in narrow alleys and stripped of their valuables and their lives.

The sight of Ivar’s city inflamed its attackers. Irishmen who had wept with impotent rage when their own homes were burned were quick to put the torch to the Norse dwellings, laughing as they did so with a fearful echo of viking mirth. Doors were battered down, women and children knocked aside as the conquerors reached for revenge with greedy hands.

They began mutilating those who fell before them.

Brian had felt the tension building in the Irish as they neared the city, and he knew it could not be contained, any more than water could be held in a ruptured cistern. He saw his brother’s commands ignored and felt a remote pity; how like Mahon to misjudge the temper of the men he led! Brian pushed his way through the yelling, frenzied mob until he was at Mahon’s side and at last had to seize his brother’s arm to get his attention.

“It’s no good, Mahon!” he yelled above the roar of the screams and the fire. “Let them go! This is what they’ve fought for and dreamed about; there’s no way you can control them now.”

Mahon’s face was contorted with anguish in the lurid light of the burning buildings. “This was never my intention, Brian, not this . . . this barbaric massacre!” He recoiled in horror as a young woman, her hair in flames, dashed from the funeral pyre of her dwelling only to collapse at their feet. The fire engulfed her and a terrible stench of burning hair and cloth reached them, together with a sweeter, subtly more nauseating smell that Brian remembered from long ago, in the ashes of Boruma. Frying fat sizzled and popped.

Mahon threw himself on his knees beside the destroyed woman, beating uselessly at the flames with his bare hands, and Brian saw that he was crying.

The Norsemen who should have stood to defend their city were gone, most of them, already safe aboard their ships and pulling desperately for the open water, leaving the bitter smoke and the fire-stained sky behind them. The few who valued their treasures above their lives lost both, and the Irish scrambled over their dead bodies as they raced one another for Ivar’s hall and the hoard abandoned within it; Ivar and Ilacquin had been on the first ship into the river.

The hungry flames that were devouring the wooden city had not yet reached Ivar’s hall when Brian got there. His men stood aside to let him enter, and his first impression of the Norse palace was stunning enough to bring him to an abrupt halt. He stood in the center of the vast room, turning slowly, his eyes wide, and the Munstermen who came crowding in after him did the same.

The torches were still burning in their holders, illuminating a scene that might have been the debris left after some colossal flood. The floor was calf-deep in filth and old rushes. Stools and benches were knocked over and strewn about, and even the huge banqueting tables were overturned as mute evidence of the frantic flight of the masters of Limerick.

And everywhere, everywhere, was the treasure.

“Sweet Christ!” someone gasped in a voice thick with awe.

“This is the loot of half Ireland,” Brian said in wonder.

Piled as high as a man’s head against the walls and spilling in mad profusion over the benches and tables was a king’s ransom of merchandise. Irish gold, silver, platters, goblets, flagons; bolts of silks; bales of furs; stacks of samite, shining scarlet and green; chased leather saddles inlaid with jewels; boxes of coins and caskets of rare woods; chalices, croziers, and reliquaries from the monasteries; bracelets and bangles, and rings, golden bells and mirrors of silver; jugs and jars and casks; oil and wine and spices.

Cowering in the fabulous wreckage was a score of young slaves, cuddlesome maidens and well-formed youths. Abandoned by their owners and paralyzed by terror, they mutely awaited whatever fate was to befall them, their eyes blank with shock. They all wore shackles about their ankles, and they all were Irish.

Brian gritted his teeth and made his way to the nearest, kicking aside piles of beautifully woven wool and a splendid rack of elk antlers, scrolled round with silver and tipped with pearls. He reached down and hauled a young man to his feet, a sweet-faced boy with golden hair and freckles like butter on his hairless cheeks.