Pride of Lions (7 page)

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 on 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.

As they drew near Athy, the Prince of Ossory could almost feel Dalcassian blood on his sword. An old grudge was about to be settled. Brian's hard-won peace had died at Clontarf; the good old days, the days of battle and glory and the tribal warfare by which Gaelic chieftains defined themselves, were about to return.

Mac Gillapatrick was actually grinning when he caught his first glimpse of the Dalcasssians. Sitting on his horse, he saw them before his foot warriors could. His jaw dropped, pulling the grin out of shape.

In another moment his followers had seen what he saw. The warriors slowed to an astonished halt.

Facing them was a phalanx of timber stakes cut from nearby trees and driven deep into the earth. A wounded man was bound to each of these stakes, standing upright as the dying Ulster hero Cuchulain had bound himself upright to a standing stone, so he could meet his enemies on his feet.

A few of the men were actually already dead, bodies of the nobility being returned home for burial. But every figure had a weapon in its hand, though in some cases swords had been bound to stiffened fingers with leather thongs.

Beside the stakes stood the remaining able-bodied Dalcassians. The courage of their wounded comrades heartened them as nothing else could.

Every last one of them was prepared to fight to the death, and it showed in their haggard faces.

The terrible army waited for the Ossorian attack.

Mac Gillapatrick's men were dismayed.

"What are you waiting for!" he shouted at them when he had recovered from his own surprise. "There is our enemy; attack!"

His men did not move.

As they watched, the head of a gravely wounded Dalcassian slumped forward in death. But the sword remained in his hand.

Several Ossorians signed the Cross on their breasts. "A bad thing, this," said one of them nervously.

The Prince of Ossory was infuriated.

"Attack them!" he screamed as another Dalcassian sagged in his bonds and died.

One of Mac Gillapatrick's officers said, "What good will it do us to attack dead men?

There's no glory in it."

"You disobey my order?"

The officer glanced back toward his men, reading their faces. In the hierarchy of Gaelic warfare every army was composed of individual bands of men who had sworn loyalty to a leader from their own tribe. Should one of these leaders leave, his men would go with him. Their allegiance was to him, not to the prince he followed.

A second officer spoke up. "We cannot attack such desperate and resolute men," he told Mac Gillapatrick flatly. "It would bring shame upon us."

"But they are Dalcassians! I order you to cut them down as they stand!"

The men looked from him to Donough's army. They had taken up arms during the reign of Brian Boru, when the proudest boast a man could utter was, "I am an Irish man." They had been proud of themselves in those days. They would not set that pride aside now.