The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 1 (25 page)

“Dunlang!” The girl caught her lover in a convulsive embrace. “You must not go into battle–the weird of far-sight is on me, and I know if you go to the war, you will die! Come away with me–I’ll hide you–I’ll show you dim purple caverns like the castles of deep-sea kings, and shadowy forests where none save my people has set foot. Come with me and forget wars and hates and prides and ambitions, which are but shadows without reality or substance. Come and learn the dreamy splendors of far places, where fear and hate are naught, and the years seem as hours, drifting forever.”

“Eevin, my love!” cried Dunlang, troubled, “you ask that which is beyond my power. When my clan moves into battle, I must be at Murrogh’s side, though sure death be my portion. I love you beyond all life, but by the honor of my clan, this is an impossible thing.”

“I feared as much,” she answered, resigned. “You of the Tall Folk are but children–foolish, cruel, violent–slaying one another in childish quarrels. This is punishment visited on me who, alone of all my people, have loved a man of the Tall Folk. Your rough hands have bruised my soft flesh unwittingly, and your rough spirit as unwittingly bruises my heart.”

“I would not hurt you, Eevin,” began Dunlang, pained.

“I know,” she replied, “the hands of men are not made to handle the delicate body and heart of a woman of the Dark People. It is my fate. I love and I have lost. My sight is a far sight which sees through the veil and the mists of life, behind the past and beyond the future. You will go into battle and the harps will keen for you; and Eevin of Craglea will weep until she melts in tears and the salt tears mingle with the cold salt sea.”

Dunlang bowed his head, unspeaking, for her young voice vibrated with the ancient sorrow of womankind; and even the rough kern shuffled his feet uneasily.

“I have brought you a gift against the time of battle,” she went on, bending lithely to lift something which caught the sun’s sheen. “It may not save you, the ghosts in my soul whisper–but I hope without hope in my heart.”

Dunlang stared uncertainly at what she spread before him. Conn, edging closer and craning his neck, saw a hauberk of strange workmanship and a helmet such as he had never seen before,–a heavy affair made to slip over the entire head and rest on the neckpieces of the hauberk. There was no movable vizor, merely a slit cut in the front through which to see, and the workmanship was of an earlier, more civilized age, which no man living could duplicate.

Dunlang looked at it askance, with the characteristic Celtic antipathy toward armor. The Britons who faced Caesar’s legionaries fought naked, judging a man cowardly who cased himself in metal, and in later ages the Irish clans entertained the same conviction regarding Strongbow’s mail-clad knights.

“Eevin,” said Dunlang, “my brothers will laugh at me if I enclose myself in iron, like a Dane. How can a man have full freedom of limb, weighted by such a garment? Of all the Gaels, only Turlogh Dubh wears full mail.”

“And is any man of the Gael less brave than he?” she cried passionately. “Oh, you of the Tall People are foolish! For ages the iron-clad Danes have trampled you, when you might have swept them out of the land long ago, but for your foolish pride.”

“Not altogether pride, Eevin,” argued Dunlang. “Of what avail is mail or plated armor against the Dalcassian ax which cuts through iron like cloth?”

“Mail would turn the swords of the Danes,” she answered, “and not even an ax of the O’Briens would rend this armor. Long it has lain in the deep-sea caverns of my people, carefully protected from rust. He who wore it was a warrior of Rome in the long ago, before the legions were withdrawn from Britain. In an ancient war on the border of Wales, it fell into the hands of my people, and because its wearer was a great prince, my people treasured it. Now I beg you to wear it, if you love me.”

Dunlang took it hesitantly, nor could he know that it was the armor worn by a gladiator in the days of the later Roman empire, nor wonder by what chance it had been worn by an officer in the British legion. Little of that knew Dunlang who, like most of his brother chiefs, could neither read nor write; knowledge and education were for monks and priests; a fighting man was kept too busy to cultivate the arts and sciences. He took the armor, and because he loved the strange girl, agreed to wear it–“If it will fit me.”

“It will fit,” she answered. “But I will see you no more alive.”

She held out her white arms and he gathered her hungrily to him, while Conn looked away. Then Dunlang gently unlocked her clinging arms from about his neck, kissed her, and tore himself free.

Without a backward glance he mounted his steed and rode away, with Conn trotting easily alongside. Looking back in the gathering dusk, the kern saw Eevin standing there still, a poignant picture of despair.

III

The campfires sent up showers of sparks and illumined the land like day. In the distance loomed the grim walls of Dublin, dark and ominously silent; before the walls flickered other fires where the warriors of Leinster, under King Mailmora, whetted their axes for the coming battle. Out in the bay, the starlight glinted on myriad sails, shield-rails and arching serpent-prows. Between the city and the fires of the Irish host stretched the plain of Clontarf, bordered by Tomar’s Wood, dark and rustling in the night, and the Liffey’s dark, star-flecked waters.

Before his tent, the firelight playing on his white beard and glinting from his undimmed eagle eyes, sat the great King Brian Boru, among his chiefs. The king was old–seventy-three winters had passed over his lion-like head–long years crammed with fierce wars and bloody intrigues. Yet his back was straight, his arm unwithered, his voice deep and resonant. His chiefs stood about him, tall warriors with war-hardened hands and eyes whetted by the sun and the winds and the high places; tigerish princes in their rich tunics, green girdles, leathern sandals and saffron mantles caught with great golden brooches.

They were an array of war-eagles–Murrogh, Brian’s eldest son, the pride of all Erin, tall and mighty, with wide blue eyes that were never placid, but danced with mirth, dulled with sadness, or blazed with fury; Murrogh’s young son, Turlogh, a supple lad of fifteen with golden locks and an eager face–tense with anticipation of trying his hand for the first time in the great game of war. And there was that other Turlogh, his cousin–Turlogh Dubh, who was only a few years older but who already had his full stature and was famed throughout all Erin for his berserk rages and the cunning of his deadly ax-play. And there were Meathla O’Faelan, prince of Desmond or South Munster, and his kin–the Great Stewards of Scotland–Lennox, and Donald of Mar, who had crossed the Irish Channel with their wild Highlanders–tall men, sombre and gaunt and silent. And there were Dunlang O’Hartigan and O’Hyne, chief of Connacht. But O’Kelly, brother chief of the O’Hyne, and prince of Hy Many, was in the tent of his uncle, King Malachi O’Neill, which was pitched in the camp of the Meathmen, apart from the Dalcassians, and King Brian was brooding on the matter. For since the setting of the sun, O’Kelly had been closeted with the King of Meath, and no man knew what passed between them.

Nor was Donagh, son of Brian, among the chiefs before the royal pavilion, for he was afield with a band ravaging the holdings of Mailmora of Leinster.

Now Dunlang approached the king, leading with him Conn the kern.

“My Lord,” quoth Dunlang, “here is a man who was outlawed aforetime, who has spent vile durance among the Gall, and who risked his life by storm and sea to return and fight under your banner. From the Orkneys in an open boat he came, naked and alone, and the sea cast him all but lifeless on the sand.”

Brian stiffened; even in small things his memory was sharp as a whetted stone. “Thou!” he cried. “Aye, I remember him. Well, Conn, you have come back–and with your red hands!”

“Aye, King Brian,” answered Conn stolidly, “my hands are red, it is true, and so I look to washing off the stain in Danish blood.”

“You dare stand before me, to whom your life is forfeit!”

“This alone I know, King Brian,” said Conn boldly, “my father was with you at Sulcoit and the sack of Limerick, and before that followed you in your days of wandering and was one of the fifteen warriors who remained to you when King Mahon, your brother, came seeking you in the forest. And my grandsire followed Murkertagh of the Leather Cloaks, and my people have fought the Danes since the days of Thorgils. You need men who can strike strong blows, and it is my right to die in battle against my ancient enemies, rather than shamefully at the end of a rope.”

King Brian nodded. “Well spoken. Take your life. Your days of outlawry are at an end. King Malachi would perhaps think otherwise, since it was a man of his you slew, but–” He paused; an old doubt ate at his soul at the thought of the King of Meath. “Let it be,” he went on, “let it rest until after the battle–mayhap that will be world’s end for us all.”

Dunlang stepped toward Conn and laid hand on the copper collar. “Let us cut this away; you are a free man now.”

But Conn shook his head. “Not until I have slain Thorwald Raven who put it there. I’ll wear it into battle as a sign of no quarter.”

“That is a noble sword you wear, kern,” said Murrogh suddenly.

“Aye, my Lord. Murkertagh of the Leather Cloaks wielded this blade until Blacair the Dane slew him at Ardee, and it remained in the possession of the Gall until I took it from the body of Wolfgar Snorri’s son.”

“It is not fitting that a kern should wear the sword of a king,” said Murrogh brusquely. “Let one of the chiefs take it and give him an ax instead.”

Conn’s fingers locked about the hilt. “He would take the sword from me had best give me the ax first,” he said grimly, “and that suddenly.”

Murrogh’s hot temper blazed. With an oath, he strode toward Conn, who met him eye to eye and gave back not a step.

“Be at ease, my son,” ordered King Brian. “Let the kern keep the blade.”

Murrogh shrugged. His mood changed. “Aye, keep it and follow me into battle. We shall see if a king’s sword in a kern’s hands can hew as wide a path as a prince’s blade.”

“My lords,” said Conn, “it may be God’s will that I fall in the first onset–but the scars of slavery burn deep in my back this night, and I will not be backward when the spears are splintering.”

IV

Therefore your doom is on you,

Is on you and your kings….

—
Chesterton

While King Brian communed with his chiefs on the plains above Clontarf, a grisly ritual was being enacted within the gloomy castle that was at once the fortress and palace of Dublin’s king. With good reason did Christians fear and hate those grim walls; Dublin was a pagan city, ruled by savage heathen kings, and dark were the deeds committed therein.

In an inner chamber in the castle stood the Viking Brodir, sombrely watching a ghastly sacrifice on a grim black altar. On that monstrous stone writhed a naked, frothing thing that had been a comely youth; brutally bound and gagged, he could only twist convulsively beneath the dripping, inexorable dagger in the hands of the white-bearded wild-eyed priest of Odin.

The blade hacked through flesh and thew and bone; blood gushed, to be caught in a broad, copper bowl, which the priest, with his red-dappled beard, held high, invoking Odin in a frenzied chant. His thin, bony fingers tore the yet pulsing heart from the butchered breast, and his wild half-mad eyes scanned it with avid intensity.

“What of your divinations?” demanded Brodir impatiently.

Shadows flickered in the priest’s cold eyes, and his flesh crawled with a mysterious horror. “Fifty years I have served Odin,” he said–“Fifty years divined by the bleeding heart, but never such portents as these. Hark, Brodir!–If ye fight not on Good Friday, as the Christians call it, your host will be utterly routed and all your chiefs slain; if ye fight on Good Friday, King Brian will die–but he will win the day.”

Brodir cursed with cold venom.

The priest shook his ancient head. “I cannot fathom the portent–and I am the last of the priests of the Flaming Circle, who learned mysteries at the feet of Thorgils. I see battle and slaughter–and yet more–shapes gigantic and terrible that stalk monstrously through the mists…”

“Enough of such mummery,” snarled Brodir. “If I fall I would take Brian to Helheim with me. We go against the Gaels on the morrow, fall fair, fall foul!” He turned and strode from the room.

Brodir traversed a winding corridor and entered another, more spacious chamber, adorned, like all the Dublin king’s palace, with the loot of all the world–gold-chased weapons, rare tapestries, rich rugs, divans from Byzantium and the East–plunder taken from all peoples by the roving Norsemen; for Dublin was the center of the Vikings’ wide-flung world, the headquarters whence they fared forth to loot the kings of the earth.

A queenly form rose to greet him. Kormlada, whom the Gaels called Gormlaith, was indeed fair, but there was cruelty in her face and in her hard, scintillant eyes. She was of mixed Irish and Danish blood, and looked the part of a barbaric queen, with her pendant ear-rings, her golden armlets and anklets, and her silver breastplates set with jewels. But for these breastplates, her only garments were a short silken skirt which came half way to her knees and was held in place by a wide girdle about her lithe waist, and sandals of soft red leather. Her hair was red-gold, her eyes light grey and glittering. Queen she had been, of Dublin, of Meath, and of Thomond. And queen she was still, for she held her son Sitric and her brother Mailmora in the palm of her slim white hand. Carried off in a raid in her childhood by Amlaff Cauran, King of Dublin, she had early discovered her power over men. As the child-wife of the rough Dane, she had swayed his kingdom at will, and her ambitions increased with her power.