your vow to me or you will rue it.” And turning on his heel, he strode from her chamber.
Kormlada rose, rubbing her arm where the blue marks of his savage fingers marred her white skin.
“May he fall in the first onset,” she said between her teeth. “If either survive may it be that tall fool, Sigurd – methinks he would be a husband more easily managed than that black-haired savage. I will perforce marry him if he survives the battle, but by the ring of Thor, he shall not long press the throne of Ireland – I will send him to join Brian – ”
“You speak as if King Brian were already dead,” a silvery mocking voice brought Kormlada about suddenly to face the other person in the world she feared besides Broder. Her eyes widened as from behind a satin hanging stepped a small dark girl clad in shimmering green.
“Eevin!” Kormlada gasped, recoiling. “Stand back – cast no spell on me, little witch – ”
“Who am I to bewitch the great queen who has bewitched so many men?” asked Eevin mockingly, secure in the knowledge of the queen’s superstitious fears; to the Danish woman the Pictish girl was something fearsome and unhuman – an uncanny sprite of the deep woods.
“How came you in my palace?” demanded Kormlada with a weak effort at imperiousness.
“How came the breeze through the trees?” answered the forest girl. “Your guards watched well enough, but do the oxen know when the field mice run through the wheat? You of the fair folk are like blind men and deaf when the dark people steal among you.”
“Why do you spy on me?” asked the queen angrily.
“To see what the great Gormlaith does when a Viking manhandles her in her own chamber,” taunted Eevin. “So many men have knelt before Gormlaith, it was right merry to see Gormlaith on her knees before Broder.”
At this heckling the Danish queen went white, clenching her hands until the nails bit into the delicate palms and brought trickles of blood.
“I will have you thrown into a dungeon for the rats to eat, you witch!” she whispered, so choked with fury she could not speak louder.
Eevin’s dainty lip curled with contempt.
“You dare not touch me; you fear I might put on you a spell to rob you of that cruel beauty whereby you rule men. Now tell me, quickly: what was it Broder told you before I came into this chamber?”
“He had been consulting the oracle of the sea-people,” Kormlada answered sullenly.
“The blood and the torn heart?” Eevin’s lips writhed with disgust. “Faugh! You Danars are but bloody beasts! What did it portend?”
“The priest bade Broder attack tomorrow,” answered the queen, not considering, with the usual illogic of the primitive, that if, as she believed, Eevin were indeed a witch, she should know without asking.
Eevin stood with bent head for a moment, then turned and, slipping through the hangings, vanished from Kormlada’s sight. The proud queen, who in the last few minutes had been bullied and humiliated for the first time in her cruel life, turned like an angry pantheress and left the chamber in a brooding rage that promised little good for anyone who had dealings with her.
Alone in his tent with the heavily armed gallaglachs ranged outside, King Brian woke suddenly from a fitful and unquiet sleep. The thick torches which burned without illumined the interior of his tent and in their light he saw a small childish figure.
“Eevin!” he sat up, half startled, half provoked. “By my soul, child, well for kings that your people take no part in the intrigues of the conquering folk, when you can steal under the very noses of the guards into a guarded tent. Do you seek Dunlang?”
The Pictish girl shook her head sadly. “I see him no more alive, great king. Were I to go to him now, my own black sorrow might unman him. I will come to him among the dead tomorrow.”
King Brian involuntarily shivered.
“But it is not of my woes that I came to speak, great king,” the girl continued wearily. “It is not the way of the forest folk to mix in the quarrels of the fair folk – but I love a fair man. This night I was in Sitric’s castle and talked with Gormlaith.”
King Brian winced at the name of his divorced queen, but spoke steadily: “And your news?”
“Broder strikes on the morrow.”
The king shook his head heavily.
“I am a true Christian, I trust, and it vexes my soul to spill blood on the Holy Day. But if God wills it, we will not await their onslaught, but will march at dawn to meet them. I will send a swift runner to bring back Donagh and his band – ”
Again Eevin shook her head.
“Nay, great king. Let Donagh live; after the great battle the Dalcassians will need strong arms to brace the sceptre.”
Brian gazed fixedly at her for an instant. “I read my own doom in those words, little witch-girl of the woods; have you cast my fate?”
Eevin spread her hands helplessly. “My lord, Gormlaith the pagan believes me to be a sorceress, breathing spells and black dooms. You are wise and know otherwise, yet even you look on me as a person uncanny. I cannot rend the Veil at will; I know neither spells nor sorcery; not in smoke nor blood have I read it, but a weird has come upon me and I see – vaguely – through flame and the dim clash of battle – ”
“And I shall fall?”
She bowed her face in her hands. “It is written.”
“Well, let it fall as God wills,” said King Brian tranquilly. “I have lived long and deeply. Weep not, little girl of the forest; through the darkest mists of gloom and night, dawn yet rises on the world. My clan shall reverence you in the long days to come. And go now, for the night wanes toward morn and I would make my peace with God.”
And Eevin of Craglea went like a shadow from the tent of the king.
V THE FEASTING OF THE EAGLES
Through the mist of the white dawn men moved like ghosts and weapons clanked eerily. Conn stretched his muscular arms, yawned cavernously and loosened his great blade in its sheath.
“This is the day the ravens drink blood, my lord,” he grinned, and Dunlang O’Hartigan nodded absently.
“Come hither and aid me to don this cursed cage,” said the young Dalcassian. “For Eevin’s sake I will wear it, but I had rather go into battle stark naked, by the saints!”
The Gaels were on the move, marching from Kilmainham in the same formation in which they intended to enter the battle. First came the Dalcassians, big rangy men in their saffron tunics, with a round buckler of steel-braced yew wood on the left arm and the right hand gripping the dreaded Dalcassian axe against which no armor could stand. This axe differed greatly from the heavy two-handed weapon of the Danes; the Irish wielded it with one hand, the thumb stretched along the haft to guide the blow, and they had attained a skill at axe-fighting never before or since equalled. Hauberks they had none, neither the gallaglachs nor the kerns, though some of their chiefs, like Murrogh, wore light steel caps. But the tunics of warrior and chief alike had been woven with such skill and steeped in vinegar until their remarkable toughness afforded some protection against sword and arrow.
At the head of the Dalcassians strode Prince Murrogh, his fierce eyes alight, smiling as though he went to a feast instead of a slaughtering. On one side went Dunlang O’Hartigan in his Roman corselet, and on the other side the two Turloghs – the son of Murrogh, and Turlogh Dubh, who alone of all the Dalcassians, always went into battle fully armored. He looked grim enough, despite his youth, with his dark face and smoldering blue eyes, clad as he was in a full shirt of black mail, mail leggings and a steel helmet with a mail drop, and bearing a spiked buckler. Unlike the rest of the chiefs who preferred their swords in battle, Turlogh Dubh fought with an axe he himself had forged and of all the Gaels, none could match him at axe-fighting. So these chiefs led the warriors of Clare to the slaughter and behind Dunlang came Conn, bearing the Roman helmet.
Close behind the Dalcassians were the two companies of the Scotch with their chiefs, the Stewards of Scotland, Lennox and Donald of Mar, who, long skilled in war with the Saxons, wore helmets with horse-hair crests, and coats of mail. With them came the men of South Munster commanded by Prince Meathla O’Faelan.
