Lion of Ireland (5 page)

“Ho, Damon!” Mahon called. “Have the wolves been close to the herd?”

“Hunh! We heard them, and Oisin and I took firebrand! and went along the crest of the hill, but we saw nothing of’ them. I think they went in search of easier game. You came out of your warm bed for nothing, Mahon.”

Mahon laughed. “I doubt it. Unless he is much changed, If think Ferdiad has a jug with him, and it would be a meant man indeed who would not share a drink with his friend on a night like this.”

The others laughed too, and invited him to join them. In the lee of the hill was an outcropping of stone which formed a shelf, and beneath this a low cave ran back into the hillside. Over the years, the men of the night watch had made themselves a comfortable room, well insulated and warmed by a fire at the cave’s mouth. Mahon bent double as he passed beneath the rock, then dropped to sit cross-legged, warming his hands at the cheery blaze. Ferdiad’s jug was passed to him and the companionable jesting of the men drowned out the sound of the wind and rain.

Brian was disappointed. He had come out in the night to see his brother destroy a pack of wolves single-handedly—or at least put his spear through one. Instead, Mahon seemed to have ducked into a hole under a hill where he sat, drinking and enjoying himself, leaving the unsuspected little hero worshiper outside in the dark. Uncertain what to do next,. Brian I moved into the periphery of the firelight and Mahon spotted him. I “Well, what have we here! Another brave man come to defend the herd, is it?”

The others shouted with laughter, embarrassing Brian. But Mahon came out of the shelter and scooped up his little brother, rumpling his hair and worrying his head back and ‘ forth on his shoulders. “You are a rare boy, little one,” he * teased. “Wherever I look, there you are at my heels, eh? Do you love me so much you cannot stand to be without me, or are you afraid I need looking after?”

“I thought maybe I could help.”

That brought forth still more merriment, so that Brian was tempted to break out of Mahon’s grasp and run off into the darkness to hide his burning face. But he could not let his brother see him shamed. He knotted his fists and faced the amused men with uplifted chin.

“I can help! There are a lot of things I can do!”

Ferdiad set aside his jug and wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “And what would you do, small one? Feed yourself to the wolves to save the cattle? A wolf would gobble you up in one bite and still be hungry.”

“Yes, indeed,” Oisin added. “Enjoy your freedom to play while it lasts and leave the work to the men.”

Brian put his fists on his hips and fought back the welling of angry tears. He would not cry, not in front of these men, not in front of Mahon. “Why do you call it ‘play’ when I do it, but ‘work’ when you do it?”

he demanded.

Ferdiad guffawed and slammed his jug down so hard that liquid sloshed over the rim. “You’re a sharp little fellow, and I for one would not care to debate that with you!” He laughed. “Bring him in here, Mahon, and let him sit by me. If he doesn’t want to be a child I see no reason why he shouldn’t be a man for this one night; we can always use good company.”

They made room for Brian close to the purring fire. Ferdiad held the jug to his lips and poured a burning draught down the boy’s throat. Brian choked and smiled, and thought himself one of them. He listened to their ribald talk and was careful to widen his eyes as though he understood all of it. He laughed when they laughed, he nodded soberly when they spoke of serious things, and when they included him in their conversation he hoped the night would last forever.

The Norse riverboats glided down the breast of the Shannon and nosed toward the grassy verge where the geese had fed. In the lead boat, Eyrik Gunnarsson stood tall in the prow of the River Serpent, beating his hand against his thigh in time to the cadence of the oars. Death rode with him on the night wind, and he felt pride in carrying it. I The shore lay slumbering and open to him, a dark land-dotted with darker shapes. He felt his blood begin to heat,; and the tumescence in his groin which always accompanied the approach to conquest. The wet air against his face was charged with excitement, as before a storm.

In her bed, Bebinn floundered among the fragments of dreams. It was too soon for the morning to begin, yet the night’s peace had deserted her. She came half awake and stretched out her hand, feeling the hot, solid meat of her husband’s shoulder.

“Cennedi?”

He made a noise in his throat which might have been an answer.

“I had a dream”—she paused, fumbling with mental fingers at images already escaping her—“a bad dream.”

He did not awaken, but he knew. He threw his heavy arm across her body and drew her close to the mass of him, so that she lay engulfed in the smells of man and sleep. She heard the deep breathing of her children, and the absence of the stopped rain.

They came up from the river in a wave of ferocity, guided by the hospitality fire lit near the gate each night to welcome chance travelers. They poured into the compound unchecked, swords waving, axes slashing, pagan war cries ripping across the nerves of the sleeping Irish. Every obstacle they encountered they battered down or put to the torch. People stumbled from their homes, disoriented with sleep, to find hideous death blotting out the stars.

The Norsemen fanned out, systematically going from building to building. The success of a raid depended partly upon taking the victims by surprise, so there was no time to sound a warning or mount a defense, and partly upon the sheer terror caused by their appearance and savagery. The uglier the death they dealt, the more paralyzing its effect upon the witnesses. A sword thrust cleanly through a man might rouse his friends to opposition, but a man who was cut in half by one mighty downward sweep of the ax reduced the spectators to sickened helplessness.

In the little cave under the hill, behind the crackling fire, the men of the night watch were teaching Brian to sing the rousing songs that kept them awake in the long hours before dawn. The wind had shifted to the north, so that the sounds from Boruma were not carried to them. For a while.

Eyrik Gunnarsson led the men from the River Serpent to the largest house in the compound. “We cut off the head first,” he instructed them, “and we have nothing to fear from the rest of the animal, eh?” So saying, he braced himself on the shoulders of two comrades, drew both his knees up and kicked the door in with an explosion of shattering wood.

They came to meet him, Cennedi and his sons. Naked, for the most part, and armed only with the tools they had snatched up as they stumbled around in the dark, they made a desperate stand in defense of their home. Even little Anluan, coughing and shivering, grabbed one of his mother’s pots and swung it with all his strength against the kneecaps of Torfinn the Tall. Torfinn gave a howl, more of astonishment than pain, before he seized the child by the hair and slung him across the room. Anluan crashed into a post and fell in a little heap at its base, spared the sight of the subsequent slaughter.

Bebinn had known when the door crashed open that it was a matter of moments until her children would begin to die. She ran forward in Cennedi’s wake, hoping she could somehow put her body between those she loved and the axes of the Norsemen.

The only light in the main room was from the embers on the hearth, a deceptive glow that misled more than it revealed. The room was large, but its floor space was cluttered with tables, benches, stools and chests and hearth.

It made an awkward battlefield. Even when a Northman burst through the shattered doorway with a flaming torch it was difficult to see what was happening.

Bebinn stood at the entrance to the sleeping chamber, mouth agape and eyes staring, hands reaching out to grab the nearest child and pull him to imagined safety behind her. But it was not her own flesh and blood she touched. Her seeking fingers felt a brawny arm, and then both her wrists were pinioned in the grasp of the invader.

“Ha!” Ilacquin exulted in the Norse tongue, “I knew there had to be females here somewhere!”

She flung herself violently to one side, but the man held her as easily as Cennedi would have held a haltered cow to receive the bull. With his free hand he felt her bosom and then dragged out the length of her hair, making an admiring sound in his throat. She whipped her body back and forth, kicking, clawing, but he was a strong young man who enjoyed the battle of rape. Before he shoved her backward into the sleeping chamber Bebinn cast a despairing glance over his shoulder and saw, in the torchlight, an uplifted bloody ax beginning its downward stroke.

In the hollow under the hill, Damon stopped singing and held up his hand. “Ssshhh. Do you hear something?”

The others looked at him, the song dying reluctantly in their throats.

“No, nothing, what do you think it was?”

“I don’t know. The wind, wolves. My imagination.” He

stretched out his hand for the jug but froze in mid reach This time they all heard it.

“Someone’s screaming!” Ferdiad whispered in an unbelieving voice.

Mahon’s body tensed, dislodging the drowsy little head that had been propped trustingly against his shoulder since Brian first began to fall asleep. The men leaned forward about the fire, holding their breaths, willing themselves to be wrong. They could all hear the last despairing cry that came from ravaged Boruma.

“Sweet Christ!” Mahon gasped. “It must be the Northmen!” He shoved his little brother from him and bolted out of the cave. Knuckling his eyes, Brian tried to get up and join him, but Oisin pushed him down again. “Hist, little one! Stay right there where it’s safe!” Then he followed Mahon into the open, the other men at his heels.

The heart-rending wail still seemed to echo across the rolling hills. Mahon stared fixedly toward the south for a moment, then bent down and began throwing damp earth onto the fire. “Pick up your weapons,” he ordered in a tight voice as the others crowded wild-eyed around him.

Ignoring Oisin’s instructions, Brian clambered out of the cave to join them, looking up into their faces as he strove to understand what was happening. Then his attention was drawn by something at the edge of his vision and he turned toward the south, and the lurid glow rising in the sky beyond the hills. He stared at it transfixed.

“I want you to get back in that cave and hide like a badger in its hole until I come for you,” Mahon said to him in a strange, tense voice, shoving him back under the rock overhang. In a moment the men were gone, running hard, and Brian was left alone with the smothered fire, all his new-found manhood denied.

They were going to fight the Northmen, and they intended to leave him behind!

The four Dalcassians ran as fast as they could, but the raiders had already completed their work, Eyrik had been infuriated to find that the wealth of the tribe was not in gold and silver, but was instead a wealth of cattle, grazing in a distant pasture. His men were not interested in going for a hike to slaughter cows when there were more immediate pleasures at hand.

There was a community to be sacked and women to be taken, and the men from Limerick were keen and overready Even as Mahon and his men drew near the compound, it was too late. The buildings were all ablaze, illuminating a scene so swift and terrible destruction. The Norsemen were heading back for their boats, dragging with them those young women who were still alive. It was just as well for Mahon that the wind was blowing from north to south, so it did not carry to; him the viking song they sang as they marched away in glory,: their strength revived. ‘

With the groan of a wounded animal, Mahon ran toward! his home. He could smell the odor of burning flesh and hair,! he could hear the cries of the injured, but full awareness of it? did not reach his brain. His mind crouched deaf and blind in his skull, sending up some wordless prayer to a God who did not seem to be listening.

He vaulted over the earthen wall that had protected nothing, and as he landed his feet slipped out from under him in the mud. He fell heavily on his back, the wind knocked out of him momentarily. As he struggled to get up Damon and Ferdiad passed him, ignoring him, each desperate to get to his own house and his own family.

The fall cleared Mahon’s thinking somewhat. When he stood, he was able to really see what lay around him. Every material thing was hacked or burned. The geese lay scattered about the compound in piles of feathers that looked as if they had never known life. Pens were knocked down, sheds overturned, the equipment necessary for everyday life was broken and trampled in the mud.

And the people lay like sacks ripped open, bloody and unrecognizable.

In their contempt for the Irish, the Northmen had not even bothered to make their massacre complete.

Every resister hac been assaulted and hacked down, but many were still alive not deemed worth the additional effort of killing them. The Norse had delivered an insult that was a blessing to the tribe, for some of the Dal Cais would live to see the dawn.

it was burning, the thatch a brilliant torch that had not yet collapsed into the rooms below. Without hesitation he plunged inside. Sobbing, swearing, dodging the shreds of burning straw that rained down on him, he began to drag the bodies of his family out.

He found Dermott just within the doorway, on his knees,

wiping blood from his eyes and cursing. Mahon grabbed him by the arm and propelled him outside, then went back.

There was nothing to be done for Muiredach, and Conn the Quarrelsome was silenced forever. But others were alive, and Mahon struggled to find them and get them out before their roof came crashing down on top of them in a blazing ruin.

He worked in terror and dread. When the thatch gave way with a roar he threw himself out the door at the last possible instant, only to return again, beating back the flames with his .bratt, searching.

Dermott recovered somewhat and came to help him.

Brian waited alone by the extinguished fire, uncertain what to do. Mahon’s word was law, of course, not to be disobeyed, and yet ...

... and yet Mahon might have forgotten all about him by now. At this moment a battle could be raging between the Dalcassians and the Northmen, splendid feats of swordsmanship, with Mahon leading the attack. And Brian not there to see it.