Brian Boru (4 page)

Mahon was growing weary.

But Brian was not tired. Though they were not welcome, he kept bringing his brother new schemes for overcoming the enemy. ‘If we had men on horseback, like the cavalry the Romans used under Caesar, we could move faster and surround the Viking line,’ he suggested.

‘Only princes ride horses and it’s hard enough to get horses for them,’ Mahon replied. ‘This is another of your wild ideas, Brian. Who ever heard of common warriors on horseback?’

‘I just told you. Caesar …’

‘Forget about Caesar!’ Mahon said angrily. ‘We don’t
fight that way. Those are a child’s fancies.’ Brian’s eyes grew hard. ‘I’m not a child any more.’

‘Then stop thinking like one.’

Brian could not stop thinking, however. Though he knew his brother would not listen, he could not help suggesting another idea. ‘The Vikings use the rivers as roads. Why don’t we build boats of our own and fill them with warriors? Then we could meet the enemy on the water and turn them back before they can do any damage to people in the settlements along the river.’

‘We aren’t sailors, Brian, we are cattle lords. We know the land, not the water.’

‘We could learn.’

Mahon looked at his brother. Now almost seventeen years old, Brian had become the tallest of the Dalcassians, a head taller than Mahon himself. He was lean and rawboned, with a strong nose and a face as freckled as a blackbird’s egg. His hair was long and wild and he combed it only before going into battle.

‘Who would teach our men to handle boats, Brian?’ Mahon asked him. ‘Who has time?’

‘I could.’

‘You’ve never even been in a boat.’

‘I could learn, and teach others. I know how to learn, Mahon.’

‘Are you saying I don’t?’

‘I’m saying you won’t, and that’s a mistake. If you would let me lead just a few men, we could capture one boat and I could take it apart and put it back together to see how it was made. Then we could build our own.’

Mahon rubbed his hand across his tired eyes. ‘You’re howling into the wind, Brian. You’re wasting my time with this foolishness.’ His voice was angry.

The two glared at each other. Without thinking, Brian
knotted his fists as he did when he was about to fight. When he realised what he was doing he opened his hands. ‘We are about to become enemies,’ he said to Mahon. ‘What’s happening to us?’

‘You’re trying to tell me how to lead my army and I won’t allow it! I was named King of Thomond on the sacred mound of Magh Adhair where Dalcassian kings have always been inaugurated. My words command the tribe. You will not argue with me.’

Brian knotted his fists again. ‘I shall when you’re wrong!’

The air between them became white with anger.

The final break came because of Callahan, King of the province of Munster. It was learned that Callahan was not only trading openly with the Danes, but was also letting them take young Irish boys and girls as slaves. When some Dalcassian children were seized in a raid, Brian’s temper exploded.

‘The King of Munster is betraying his own people to the Vikings!’ he roared at Mahon. ‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘What do you expect me to do, march on Cashel?’

‘I do expect it! March on his stronghold at Cashel and overthrow the traitor. Rule Munster in his place. Our grandfather Lorcan once claimed to be King of Munster; you have the right.’

Mahon looked doubtful. ‘That may just have been the boasting of the poets, Brian.’

‘Then make it come true. End the Owenacht control of the south. Many will support you. I’ve been talking to the warriors here and many agree with me.’

‘Others will not. Tribes who have shared in Danish plunder would turn against me, Brian. I would be making more enemies for us if I rose against Callahan.
My duty is to defend Thomond, not to try to seize control of all Munster.’

‘But don’t you see? You can’t defend Thomond unless you do control Munster. The king of the province is supposed to defend the small tribal kingdoms, that’s why we pay him taxes. But Callahan isn’t defending us, we have only ourselves and that isn’t good enough. Challenge him.’

‘If my army can’t defeat a Danish raiding party, how do you expect it to defeat the army of Callahan and seize the Rock of Cashel? You’re dreaming, Brian.’

The young man nodded. ‘I am a dreamer,’ he admitted. ‘But every great deed begins with a dream. You would be surprised how many men in this camp share this one with me.’

‘So that’s it,’ Mahon said bitterly. ‘This isn’t about me challenging Callahan. This is really about you challenging me for the leadership of the Dalcassians. I see it now. You’ve been winning my men away from me behind my back. It is you who is the traitor, Brian. Get out of my sight, get out of my camp!’ Mahon shouted.

Brian stared at him in horror. He had only been trying to help. He could hardly believe Mahon had misunderstood so completely. But he was too proud to argue any further.

I have lost him, Brian thought to himself, as I have lost my mother and my father. The pain stabbed very deep. But he drew himself up to his full height and said only, ‘If that’s what you want, Mahon.’

Then he turned and walked away.

When Brian left Mahon’s camp, he did not leave alone. A number of warriors, particularly the younger ones, were willing to follow wherever he might lead.

He did not ask them to come with him. He reminded them, ‘You are sworn to my brother, the leader of the Dalcassians.’

But they said, ‘Your words do you honour, and that makes us all the more eager to be with you. You’re a better warrior than Mahon. We win when we follow you. When we keep our eyes on his standard, we find ourselves losing too often.’

Brian was pleased at these words, but he could not let them see it. He knew it was wrong to draw warriors away from the king of the tribe, but he also knew Mahon was not leading the men in the direction they wanted to go … to victory.

‘If you are determined,’ he told them, ‘come with me, and I promise we shall do our best to defeat the Vikings.’

Mahon stood in front of his tent, with his arms folded, and watched his younger brother ride away, followed by almost sixty warriors on foot. Their spears gleamed in the sunlight.

Once they were out of sight of Killmallock, Brian made himself put Mahon out of his mind. It was not easy. He knew he was now a leader of men who would expect much of him and judge him harshly if he failed. He also knew he was very young; almost all of them were older. Yet they expected him to show them the way and tell them what to do.

He rode for a time without saying anything. Then suddenly he reined in his horse and slid to the ground. Tossing the reins to one of the spear carriers, he told the men, ‘I’ll walk with you, we’re in this together.’

They were surprised. Leaders always set themselves apart. But Brian was different.

He led them to the hills beyond the Shannon, where he knew every cave and glen and possible hiding place. There they set up a series of camps, so they could move swiftly from place to place. Brian wanted to be ready to fight the Vikings wherever he met them.

Half-buried in mud after a rain storm, he found a Viking battle axe. When he picked it up he saw the fearful way his men looked at the weapon. He set himself the task of learning how to use it with either hand, practising alone until he was as skilful as a Dane. Then he began searching for other axes that might have been lost in the many battles in Thomond. When he had enough, he taught his men to use them.

The next time his warriors met a Viking raiding party, the Irish attacked the Danes with their own weapons. The startled Vikings were terrified. They had never had to face the axes before. They fled, howling.

That night Brian’s men cheered him in the Thomond hills.

‘The axes did not win the battle,’ he told them. ‘We won because we surprised the enemy. We shall surprise them again.’

And so they did.

In his camp at Killmallock, Mahon began hearing of his younger brother’s successes against the Danes. ‘It is not good having this split in the Dalcassians,’ Mahon told his captains.

‘We need Brian here,’ the captains replied. ‘He and his
men should be fighting with us, not off on their own somewhere. It’s your fault, Mahon, that we have lost such good warriors.’

Mahon sent messengers into the Clare hills northwest of the Shannon, which was the part of Thomond to which Brian had taken his men. ‘Tell him I order him to return to my camp at Killmallock, and we shall forget the quarrel between us,’ Mahon told the messengers.

But they returned to him without Brian. ‘We could not find him or his men anywhere,’ they reported.

‘Are they not there?’

‘They are there. But they only come out of their hiding places to kill Vikings. Otherwise your brother stays so well hidden no one can find him, and the people whose homes he is protecting will tell no one where he is. They don’t want to lose him.’

Mahon scowled, wishing he could claim such loyalty.

Brian’s outlaw band in the hills was, however, growing smaller as men were killed in battles with the Danes of Limerick. Brian knew he could not get any more men from his brother. But the tribe whose territory lay just north of Dalcassian land, on the Galway border, had plenty of strong young fighting men. Brian decided to visit them and see if he could persuade some of their warriors to join him.

The slinger called Nessa, who had left Mahon to follow Brian, warned him with a laugh, ‘I hear that the king of that tribe has a number of daughters he wants to marry to princes of other tribes, Brian. Be careful, or you will come back with a woman riding behind you on your horse.’

Brian laughed too. ‘A woman’s arms around my waist would slow me down too much, Nessa. I don’t need a wife,’ he said.

Taking a score of well-armed warriors with him, he rode to meet the king called Edigan. Edigan lived in a ring fort very like Beal Boru, but instead of many sons, he did, indeed, have many daughters. He was eager to have Brian take one of his daughters in marriage.

‘She would have to be willing to marry you, of course,’ Edigan said. ‘We observe the old Irish law, the Brehon law, and that says no woman can be married without her consent.’

‘The Dalcassians observe the same law,’ Brian replied. ‘But I have not said I am willing to marry.’

Edigan smiled and stroked his big red beard. ‘Let me send for my daughters. At least see them.’

One by one, the young women entered the lodge. Some were thin and some were sallow, but one was beautiful. She had dark curls and the sweetest face Brian had ever seen. He could not take his eyes off her.

Edigan smiled again. ‘You are seventeen, Brian mac Kennedy,’ he said. ‘It is time for you to be married. Give me a bride-gift of twelve cows for that girl and she is yours. We will then be related by marriage and I shall allow warriors of my tribe to join your band of fighting men and protect your homeland from the raiders.’

Brian was building a name for himself as the bravest of men. But his courage deserted him when he tried to ask the dark-haired girl to marry him. He could hardly even say her name, which was Mor. His tongue stumbled over the word and he felt his cheeks burn.

Mor was blushing too, but there was also laughter in her eyes. She knew from the first moment she saw Brian that she wanted to be his wife. His shyness delighted her. He was so very tall, and so very muscular, she had not expected he would be gentle as well. Yet when he took her hand in his and asked her to marry him, he held her
fingers as if they would break, and she knew he would never hurt her.

I will be safe with this man, she thought. ‘I shall marry you, Brian mac Kennedy,’ she agreed.

Brian felt as if the sun had just come up.

He did not even hear the way his men teased him. ‘Nessa was right,’ they said, ‘and our brave leader has fallen into the oldest trap of all.’

Brian only smiled dreamily. ‘She has blue eyes,’ he said. ‘Did you ever see such blue eyes?’

He returned to Thomond with a score of Edigan’s kinsmen to add to his band of warriors. At once he sent word to his brother Marcan, who was now a priest, telling him that he was to be married and asking Marcan to say the Christian words at the ceremony.

Brian also sent a message to Mahon, inviting him to come to the wedding, which would be held at a small stone church north of Beal Boru. Brian instructed the messenger, ‘Tell my brother to bring only a small party of my closest kinsmen with him. He must leave his warriors on duty, guarding Thomond more keenly than ever, while he is away from them. Tell him to be certain he has plenty of men posted along every road and path the Limerick Danes use into our land. And sentries on the high ground along the river,’ Brian added.

When Mahon received this message, he had mixed feelings. Brian had invited him to the wedding, which meant the quarrel between them was set aside. But Brian was still trying to tell his older brother how to order his army!

‘The Vikings are quiet at this time of year,’ Mahon told his captains, ‘and there is no need for every man we have to be on guard. I want them with me, to remind my brother and his followers how powerful the King of
Thomond is.’

So a huge party was gathered. The Dalcassians all wanted to attend Brian’s wedding. Not only were his deeds making him famous, but also everyone knew that if anything happened to Mahon, Brian himself would become King of Thomond, Chieftain of the Dalcassians. So it was important to be seen at his wedding.

When Brian saw the crowds arriving he knew Mahon had ignored his words. The king had brought his army with him to the wedding.

Brian bit his lip and did not say anything about it to his brother. He was very glad to see Mahon. Perhaps it would be all right. He did not want to start another argument, so he hugged Mahon and bade him welcome.

Mahon was relieved. Perhaps I will be able to take him and his warriors back to Killmallock when the wedding is over, he thought to himself, after the honeymoon – the month-long period when Brian will want to be alone with his new wife and the two of them drink honey mead together.

‘How did you win such a beautiful girl?’ Mahon asked his younger brother.

Brian shook his head. ‘I truly don’t know. Perhaps it was when I played my harp for her.’

Mahon grinned. ‘You are a harper as well as a warrior. A man of many talents. No wonder we keep hearing stories about you and your deeds. They’re calling you the Lion of Thomond.’

Brian dropped his eyes. How good it felt to have his brother with him again, and to hear such words from Mahon.

The sun shone, the day was beautiful. Marcan married Brian and Mor in the sight of God, and then the singing and dancing and feasting began. It should have been the
happiest day of Brian’s life. And yet … from time to time he found himself looking towards the skyline as if he expected to see Vikings in the distance, waving axes …