“As long as the Vikings cower behind the walls of the city they’re safe,” Donough went on, “since we don’t have enough healthy men to storm the gates and go in after them. But what if we lure them out? We have a herd of their oxen, fine strong beasts, valuable. I propose to begin slaughtering those oxen one at a time on the Fair Green, in plain sight of the palisades. That should bring Sitric’s men out to try to stop us, and we can attack them as they come.”
The cleverness of the stratagem was as familiar as the deep voice. A couple of the captains shouted their enthusiasm.
While burial parties dug graves for foot warriors, other men built sledges to transport the wounded and carry dead chieftains back to their own people. When these preparations were complete, Donough ordered every man capable of wielding a weapon to the Fair Green and gave the order to begin slaughtering the oxen.
Sitric’s men watched from the catwalk atop the palisade.
Donough gave the signal. A two-handed sword blow to the neck cut halfway through the spine of the first ox, and the animal fell to its knees. As it toppled onto its side the Dalcassians shouted defiance toward Dublin.
Sitric’s men responded with a hail of spears that fell short, and a thunder of curses. They vowed to torture every Dalcassian to death and rip out their lungs to leave atop their torsos, forming the Viking “blood eagle.”
“The’ll have to come out here to do it,” Ronan remarked, grinning with anticipation. He took his short-sword from its leather sheath and tested the blade with a practiced thumb. The other Dalcassians were similarly preparing for battle, finding that the prospect eased the stiffness from their joints and the soreness from their muscles.
But Cian of Desmond was unhappy. “Those oxen are spoils of war,” he complained. “They should have been divided among us, not wasted like this. The Vikings may not even come out after them.”
“They will,” said Ronan confidently.
He was wrong. Some pragmatic mind within the city ordered the Viking warriors to stay where they were, safe within the walls.
With Sitric Silkbeard. And Gormlaith.
Chapter Nine
WHEN A BATTLE WAS OVER, NO MATTER WHICH SIDE WON, THE LOCAL women scavenged the battlefield in search of valuables. It was a time-honored tradition to strip the dead of their ornaments and weapons before their fellow warriors could retrieve them.
In the peaceful latter years of Brian Boru’s reign, however, this profitable pastime had been seriously curtailed.
But Clontarf made up for the privations of the previous decade. Dead men littered the ground for miles and the scavengers swarmed over them like bees at the hive. They were still at work on the last unclaimed bodies when Donough ordered the oxen slaughtered.
From where he stood, waiting with fading hope for the Vikings to emerge from the city, he could see some women in the distance. The loyal Irish had all been claimed by then; they were now working on Viking dead, or some of Maelmordha’s followers. As Donough watched they bent to their task like harvesters in a field, stooping over one corpse after another and picking it clean. They were country women; they did not flinch.
“That was a fine idea you had,” Ronan said abruptly beside him, startling Donough from his reverie. “Pity it didn’t work. What are you going to do now?”
“Any suggestions?”
“Me? I should say not, you’re the commander now,” Ronan replied cheerfully. He was enjoying seeing the lad under pressure; it might make a man of him.
Donough gave him a cold stare. “I didn’t say I would take your suggestions, I just asked if you had any.” He meant to deflate the man. Ronan’s lack of respect could prove disastrous if it were communicated to the other warriors. Leading them would be impossible then.
Turning on his heel, Donough strode across Fair Green with no clear destination in mind, although he walked as purposefully as if he had someplace important to go. He paused once to gaze regretfully at the pile of cooling meat that had been twenty-eight fine oxen.
The scheme had not worked. Nothing to do about it.
He bit his lip and went on, feeling the men’s eyes on him, wondering if they were beginning to lose faith in him.
Fergal Mac Anluan, who had killed the last ox, came toward him, wiping his weapon clean.
“Fergal,” Donough greeted him, “tell me—how many of my father’s officers are still alive, do you know?”
Fergal stopped to think. “Not enough. Why?”
“I was thinking about appointing a new second-in-command. Ronan’s a good man, but sometimes I don’t think he … has enough respect for me.”
“Fair enough. Well, there are several members of clan Cuinn who were part of Brian’s personal bodyguard.”
“Where are they?”
“Gone north with Brian’s body, I imagine.”
“Will they return to Thomond? Afterward?”
“I should think so, their clanhold is not far from Kincora.”
“Who else knew my father’s ways?”
Fergal began ticking off his fingers. “There’s Carroll, of course. The historian. Brian rarely went anywhere without him, not since together they rewrote the Book of Rights. He had great respect for Carroll’s knowledge of the law. I would say if any man knew the shape of Brian Boru’s mind, it would be Carroll.”
“I know Carroll. He’s too old and too fat, and he’s a scholar not a warrior. No use to me.”
“Perhaps you will find someone when we return to Kincora,” Fergal said hopefully. “We could leave at dawn tomorrow and …”
Donough’s gray eyes flashed. “I’ll decide when we are going to leave. And that won’t be until we’ve taken Dublin.”
Fergal was disappointed. It had become obvious to him that they were not going to be able to capture Dublin. Any further effort to do so would be a waste of time and energy. He wanted to go home.
The battle was over.
He started to say as much, then realized Donough was not paying any attention. The youngster’s gaze was fixed beyond him, on something in the distance. “Who’s that over there, Fergal?”
“Where?” Fergal turned to look. “I don’t see anyone.”
Donough pointed across an expanse of meadowland. “There, beyond that ditch. Where the women are scavenging. Do you not see that slim girl in the red skirt?”
Fergal shaded his eyes with his hand. “They’re nothing more than tiny black figures to me. You take after your father; he always could see a bedsome woman.”
Donough reddened. “I wasn’t …”
“Of course you were, and why not? If you want her, go get her. You’re the commander now, that’s better than being a chieftain when it comes to women. They love a man with a long spear and a hard sword.” Fergal winked.
“I have no intention of …”
The wink was replaced with a knowing look. “You’ve never had a woman, is that it? Do they frighten you? If I had a mother like yours I would be terrified of the creatures myself, but …”
Fergal was talking to empty air. Donough was walking briskly away.
He imagined himself storming the gates of the city and breaking them down through sheer force of will. He saw himself seizing Gormlaith by her red hair and dragging her through the streets screaming for mercy, though no man in Ireland had ever heard her plead for mercy.
Exciting images boiled up in him, heating his blood. He paid no attention to the direction his legs were carrying him. In his mind he was in Dublin.
When the girl in the red skirt stepped in front of him he almost ran into her.
Donough halted in astonishment. Where had she come from so suddenly?
Seen close up she was not really a girl. She had a slim body and youthful posture, but fine lines filigreed the skin around her huge, dark eyes.
Donough’s gaze swept down her body. In spite of the coolness of the day, she was clad only in a simple smock of bleached linen and a heavy skirt of red wool. Her high-arched feet were bare. Though she stood o
n muddy ground they looked white and clean.
Puzzled, he looked back to her face.
“You cannot take Dublin,” she said. “Do not try.”
“What do you know about it?”
“More than you.”
“You live near here? You’re one of the women I saw picking over the corpses?”
“You cannot take Dublin now,” she reiterated. “Take the Dalcassians back to Kincora.”
Her eyes locked with his. He tried to look away but could not.
She raised one hand and extended her fingers toward him. When she flexed her wrist, her fingers trailed through the air in a flowing gesture as if beckoning Donough to follow.
His feet stepped forward of their own accord.
Alarmed, he tried to grab her wrist. She ducked under his arm and ran past him. When he turned to follow her he found himself staring directly into the blazing sun.
He blinked furiously. Patterns of crimson and gold swirled on the inside of his eyelids until he pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and forced a soothing darkness.
When he opened his eyes, the woman was gone.
A thoughtful and troubled Donough returned to the camp. He longed to discuss his experience with someone but he dare not.
One thing was certain. He would not attempt to capture Dublin now. Whether he had seen a supernatural vision or a real person hardly mattered; the omen was too compelling to ignore.
When he reached the command tent he found Cian there, meticulously combing his hair in front of a polished metal mirror. “Leave me, I need to think,” Donough ordered.
Cian’s knuckles whitened on the comb. “This is my tent.”
“I need it now.”
The Owenacht stiffened. “Very well.” His eyes were icy. “Whatever you want, Dalcassian. For now.” He left, his shoulders rigid with outrage.
Donough tardily realized his mistake. It was wrong to antagonize Cian. Brian Boru had worked long and hard to replace the ancient feud between Owenacht and Dalcassian with amicable relations.
I’ll apologize to him later. But … would my father have apologized? I never heard him apologize to anyone. Perhaps I should just let it go …
When he issued the order, there was a general air of relief. “We’re going home,” one man passed word on to another.
“Home to Munster.”
They set out in midweek. As they moved away from the city they were aware of the Dubliners on the walls, watching them go. They forced themselves to walk proudly, as a victorious army should, though many of them had painful injuries and had to struggle not to limp.
Donough glanced back just once. If his mother was among the watchers on the walls, he did not see her.
They made their laborious way west and south, stopping frequently to rest the wounded. Herders and smallholders they met along the way were generally indifferent to them. Some had heard of the battle as news was shouted in the customary way from one hilltop to another, but their life was the land. Princes and chieftains fighting for sovereignty had little significance for them.
“I’ll have to pay tribute to whoever’s in charge anyway,” one smallholder told Donough. “One sheep in twenty. To one king or another. It’s all the same to me as long as I have enough lambs in the spring. You say we won a great victory, but I didn’t fight. I had no reason to fight.”
“For your sake the Ard Ri gave battle to Sitric Silkbeard and the invaders from the north.”
“Vikings, you mean? He fought Vikings?”
“He did. And some Leinstermen who allied with them.”
“The Vikings buy my fleeces and pay well for them. Why would I want anyone to fight the Vikings?”
“They wanted to take Ireland for themselves,” Donough tried to explain.
“They are here anyway, are they not? Have been for years. And how could they take Ireland? Could they tie it to their longships and tow it away? I don’t understand.” Musing on the vagaries of chieftains, the smallholder returned to his home.
Women the Dalcassians encountered responded differently. Some of the younger ones licked their lips or shifted their hips and smiled at the warriors, making a great point of bringing water and medicaments to the wounded. Older women enquired anxiously over relatives who might have been at Clontarf, and threw their skirts over their faces to keen for the dead.
There was ribald talk of women in the camp at night.
Donough listened, half-enviously.
Fergal had guessed correctly, he was afraid of women. Gormlaith was his principal example of the female sex: volatile, sensual, jealous, manipulative Gormlaith, who made trouble for the pleasure of it and had kept the men of Kincora at one another’s throats until Brian at last sent her away.
Gormlaith was a storm Donough did not care to repeat in his own life.
So he looked at women and listened as other men talked about them. From time to time he found himself thinking of the woman in the red skirt; of her high-arched feet.
But he kept himself to himself.
In spite of opportunity, his men did the same. Many of them were too wounded to be interested in any woman, and those who were able-bodied still felt the memory of Clontarf oppressing them. They were not ready for pleasure.
Weary and depressed, they marched on through the province of Leinster toward that of Munster, which contained the kingdom of Thomond, tribeland of the Dal Cais.
At Athy they camped beside the river Barrow to rest and tend the wounded. Willows lined the riverbank, trailing their fingers in the water. As Donough broke off a willow twig to scrub the pastiness from his teeth, he found himself recalling a dark-eyed woman trailing her fingers through the air, beckoning him …
“Abu Gillapatrick!” rent the air. A dozen armed warriors screaming their war cry came bursting through the willows, holding up shields and brandishing spears.
Donough dropped the twig and grabbed for his sword. Other Dalcassians in various states of undress scrambled for their weapons while the wounded lay helpless and watched.
“It’s not an attack,” Ronan advised Donough. “Not with so few men. It’s a delegation of some sort, talk to them.”
Nodding, Donough stepped forward, relieved to feel Ronan move into place behind him.
The foremost of the strangers asked in a hostile tone, “Are you Dalcassians?”
“We are. And you?”
“Men of Ossory.”
Donough turned his head to enquire over his shoulder, “Ronan, are we in the kingdom of Ossory?”
“We are, I believe.”
“You trespass in our territory,” announced the leader of the delegation.
Donough assured him, “We mean no trespass. We’re returning to our homes after the battle.”
“What battle?”
“The war against the Northmen at Dublin. The Ard Ri won in all our names,” Donough could not resist adding.
The Ossorian sneered. “Did he now? I don’t recall asking that Dalcassian to fight for me.”
“If he had not, by this time next season you would be subject to Sitric Silkbeard and sending a sizable portion of your corn and cattle to Dublin as tribute.”
“Not me. I’ll never pay tribute to anyone but Mac Gillapatrick, Prince of Ossory. He sends me to tell you that no Dalcassian is welcome in his kingdom. He is but an hour’s march behind us, coming to give you battle.”
“We’re in no condition to fight!” Donough protested. “Can’t you see? We have a number of wounded men. Surely your prince would not attack wounded men who are only trying to get home.”
The Ossorian replied coldly, “In an hour you will be punished for your trespass, Dalcassian.” He gave his spear a final menacing flourish, then he and his companions trotted back the way they had come.
Fergal was appalled. “This is outrageous! Ossory spits in the teeth of the rules Brian Boru laid down for warfare.”
“Brian is dead,” said Cian succinctly.
“And Mac Gillapatrick knows it
,” Ronan added. “He was an old enemy of the Ard Ri, who once wiped his face in the mud and forced him to submit. He would never dare this if he thought the Ard Ri was still alive.”
“I won’t let him!” cried Donough, clenching his hands into fists.
Cian asked, “Just what do you think you can do about it?”
“I have a plan,” Donough lied.
“It better be more clever than your last plan. Look at these men of yours. They can’t fight a fresh army. And who do you think you are—Cuchulain? Will you try to stand off Mac Gillapatrick all by yourself?”
Cian wants to see me humiliated, Donough realized. Probably they all want to see Gormlaith’s son humiliated.
“If you don’t want to stand with me, Cian, you’re free to go, you and the men you brought with you. You’re not Dalcassian, Mac Gillapatrick has no quarrel with you.”
Cian glowered at Donough. “I have never run from a fight in my life,” he grated through clenched teeth. “But I don’t owe any loyalty to an unweaned puppy who can suggest I might. The strength of the Dalcassians is broken, killed with Brian Boru. Perhaps it is time for Desmond to ally with Ossory.” The Owenacht prince promptly signaled his men to fold his leather tent, and without further discussion he and his fellow tribesmen left the camp.
Donough stood with folded arms, watching them go. There seemed nothing to say. Gradually he became aware of something like a presence—less substantial than a presence—standing with him. Or inside his skull, watching. Something … male. Strong … confident …
At that moment a wounded warrior on a sledge lifted one feeble arm into the sky, fist clenched, and cried with all his strength, “Abu Dal gCais!”
Donough smiled. “Cuchulain, is it?” he said softly.
He began issuing orders.
The men of Ossory came marching through shafts of sunlight, chanting fighting songs. The Dalcassians had been supreme in Ireland long enough. Defeating them would establish the Ossorians as the new champions—for a time.
At their head rode Mac Gillapatrick, a grizzled prince cloaked in speckled green. The news of Clontarf had been shouted across Ireland in the time-honored tradition, exciting the interest of the nobility if not the common people. Mac Gillapatrick had rejoiced in the death of his old enemy while Brian Boru’s body was still on its way to Swords.
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