At the tip of the steel wedge Conan roared his heathen battle-cry and swung his great sword in glittering arcs of death that made naught of steel burganet or mail haburgeon. Straight through a thundering waste of steel-sheathed foes he rode, and the knights of Koth closed in behind him, cutting him off from his warriors. As a thunderbolt strikes, Conan struck, hurtling through the ranks by sheer power and velocity, until he came to Strabonus, livid, among his palace troops. Now here the battle hung in balance, for with his superior numbers, Strabonus still had opportunity to pluck victory from the knees of the G.o.ds.
But he screamed when he saw his arch-foe within arm"s length at last, and lashed out wildly with his ax. It clanged on Conan"s helmet, striking fire, and the Cimmerian reeled and struck back. The five-foot blade crushed Strabonus" casque and skull, and the king"s charger reeled screaming, hurling a limp and sprawling corpse from the saddle. A great cry went up from the host, which faltered and gave back. Trocero and his house troops, hewing desperately, cut their way to Conan"s side, and the great banner of Koth went down. Then behind the dazed and stricken invaders went up a mighty clamor and the blaze of a huge conflagration. The defenders of Shamar had made a desperate sortie, cut down the men masking the gates, and were raging among the tents of the besiegers, cutting down the camp followers, burning the pavilions, and destroying the siege engines. It was the last straw. The gleaming army melted away in flight and the furious conquerors cut them down as they ran.
The fugitives raced for the river, but the men on the flotilla, harried sorely by the stones and shafts of the revived citizens, cast loose and pulled for the southern sh.o.r.e, leaving their comrades to their fate. Of these many gained the sh.o.r.e, racing across the barges that served as a bridge, until the men of Shamar cut these adrift and severed them from the sh.o.r.e. Then the fight became a slaughter. Driven into the river to drown in their armor, or hacked down along the bank, the invaders perished by thousands. No quarter they had promised; no quarter they got.
From the foot of the low hills to the sh.o.r.es of the Tybor, the plain was littered with corpses, and the river whose tide ran red, floated thick with the dead. Of the nineteen hundred knights who had ridden south with Conan, scarcely five hundred lived to boast of their scars, and the slaughter among the archers and pikemen was ghastly. But the great and shining host of Strabonus and Amalrus was hacked out of existence, and those that fled were less than those that died.
While the slaughter yet went on along the river, the final act of a grim drama was being played out in the meadowland beyond. Among those who had crossed the barge-bridge before it was destroyed was Tsotha, riding like the wind on a gaunt weird-looking steed whose stride no natural horse could match. Ruthlessly riding down friend and foe, he gained the southern bank, and then a glance backward showed him a grim figure on a great black stallion in mad pursuit. The lashings had already been cut, and the barges were drifting apart, but Conan came recklessly on, leaping his steed from boat to boat as a man might leap from one cake of floating ice to another. Tsotha screamed a curse, but the great stallion took the last leap with a straining groan, and gained the southern bank. Then the wizard fled away into the empty meadowland, and on his trail came the king, riding madly and silently, swinging the great sword that spattered his trail with crimson drops.
On they fled, the hunted and the hunter, and not a foot could the black stallion gain, though he strained each nerve and thew. Through a sunset land of dim light and illusive shadows they fled, till sight and sound of the slaughter died out behind them. Then in the sky appeared a dot, that grew into a huge eagle as it approached. Swooping down from the sky, it drove at the head of Tsotha"s steed, which screamed and reared, throwing his rider.
Old Tsotha rose and faced his pursuer, his eyes those of a maddened serpent, his face an inhuman mask of awful fury. In each hand he held something that shimmered, and Conan knew he held death there.
The king dismounted and strode toward his foe, his armor clanking, his great sword gripped high.
"Again we meet, wizard!" he grinned savagely.
"Keep off!" screamed Tsotha like a blood-mad jackal. "I"ll blast the flesh from your bones! You can not conquer me -- if you hack me in pieces, the bits of flesh and bone will reunite and haunt you to your doom! I see the hand of Pelias in this, but I defy ye both! I am Tsotha, son of -- "
Conan rushed, sword gleaming, eyes slits of wariness. Tsotha"s right hand came back and forward, and the king ducked quickly. Something pa.s.sed by his helmeted head and exploded behind him, searing the very sands with a flash of h.e.l.lish fire. Before Tsotha could toss the globe in his left hand, Conan"s sword sheared through his lean neck. The wizard"s head shot from his shoulders on an arching fount of blood, and the robed figure staggered and crumpled drunkenly. Yet the mad black eyes glared up at Conan with no dimming of their feral light, the lips writhed awfully, and the hands groped hideously, as if searching for the severed head. Then with a swift rush of wings, something swooped from the sky -- the eagle which had attacked Tsotha"s horse. In its mighty talons it s.n.a.t.c.hed up the dripping head and soared skyward, and Conan stood struck dumb, for from the eagle"s throat boomed human laughter, in the voice of Pelias the sorcerer.
Then a hideous thing came to pa.s.s, for the headless body reared up from the sand, and staggered away in awful flight on stiffening legs, hands outstretched blindly toward the dot speeding and dwindling in the dusky sky. Conan stood like one turned to stone, watching until the swift reeling figure faded in the dusk that purpled the meadows.
"Crom!" his mighty shoulders twitched. "A murrain on these wizardly feuds! Pelias has dealt well with me, but I care not if I see him no more. Give me a clean sword and a clean foe to flesh it in. d.a.m.nation! What would I not give for a flagon of wine!"
*THE CAIRN ON THE HEADLAND*
*Strange Tales, January 1933*
_"And the next instant this great red loon was shaking me like a dog shaking a rat. "Where is Meve McDonnal?" he was screaming. By the Saints, it"s a grisly thing to hear a madman in a lonely place at midnight screaming the name of a woman dead three hundred years."_ -- The Longsh.o.r.eman"s Tale "This is the cairn you seek," I said, laying my hand gingerly on one of the rough stones which composed the strangely symmetrical heap.
An avid interest burned in Ortali"s dark eyes. His gaze swept the landscape and came back to rest on the great pile of ma.s.sive weather-worn boulders.
"What a wild, weird, desolate place!" he said. "Who would have thought to find such a spot in this vicinity? Except for the smoke rising yonder, one would scarcely dream that beyond that headland lies a great city! Here there is scarcely even a fisherman"s hut within sight."
"The people shun the cairn as they have shunned it for centuries," I replied.
"Why?"
"You"ve asked me that before," I replied impatiently. "I can only answer that they now avoid by habit what their ancestors avoided through knowledge."
"Knowledge!" he laughed derisively. "Superst.i.tion!"
I looked at him somberly with unveiled hate. Two men could scarcely have been of more opposite types. He was slender, self-possessed, unmistakably Latin with his dark eyes and sophisticated air. I am ma.s.sive, clumsy and bear-like, with cold blue eyes and tousled red hair. We were countrymen in that we were born in the same land; but the homelands of our ancestors were as far apart as South from North.
"Nordic superst.i.tion," he repeated. "I cannot imagine a Latin people allowing such a mystery as this to go unexplored all these years. The Latins are too practical -- too prosaic, if you will. Are you sure of the date of this pile?"
"I find no mention of it in any ma.n.u.script prior to 1014 A. D.," I growled, "and I"ve read all such ma.n.u.scripts extant, in the original. MacLiag, King Brian Boru"s poet, speaks of the rearing of the cairn immediately after the battle, and there can be little doubt but that this is the pile referred to. It is mentioned briefly in the later chronicles of the Four Masters, also in the Book of Leinster, compiled in the late 1150"s, and again in the Book of Lecan, compiled by the MacFirbis about 1416. All connect it with the battle of Clontarf, without mentioning why it was built."
"Well, what is the mystery about it?" he queried. "What more natural than that the defeated Norseman should rear a cairn above the body of some great chief who had fallen in the battle?"
"In the first place," I answered, "there is a mystery concerning the existence of it. The building of cairns above the dead was a Norse, not an Irish, custom. Yet according to the chroniclers, it was not Nors.e.m.e.n who reared this heap. How could they have built it immediately after the battle, in which they had been cut to pieces and driven in headlong flight through the gates of Dublin? Their chieftains lay where they had fallen and the ravens picked their bones. It was Irish hands that heaped these stones."
"Well, was that so strange?" persisted Ortali. "In old times the Irish heaped up stones before they went into battle, each man putting a stone in place; after the battle the living removed their stones, leaving in that manner a simple tally of the slain for any who wished to count the remaining stones."
I shook my head.
"That was in more ancient times; not in the battle of Clontarf. In the first place, there were more than twenty thousand warriors, and four thousand fell here; this cairn is not large enough to have served as a tally of the men killed in battle. And it is too symmetrically built. Hardly a stone has fallen away in all these centuries. No, it was reared to cover something."
"Nordic superst.i.tions!" the man sneered again.
"Aye, superst.i.tions if you will!" fired by his scorn, I exclaimed so savagely that he involuntarily stepped back, his hand slipping inside his coat. "We of North Europe had G.o.ds and demons before which the pallid mythologies of the South fade to childishness. At a time when your ancestors were lolling on silken cushions among the crumbling marble pillars of a decaying civilization, my ancestors were building their own civilization in hardships and gigantic battles against foes human and inhuman.
"Here, on this very plain, the Dark Ages came to an end and the light of a new era dawned faintly on a world of hate and anarchy. Here, as even you know, in the year 1014, Brian Boru and his Dalca.s.sian ax-wielders broke the power of the heathen Nors.e.m.e.n forever -- those grim anarchistic plunderers who had held back the progress of civilization for centuries.
"It was more than a struggle between Gael and Dane for the crown of Ireland. It was a war between the White Christ and Odin, between Christian and pagan. It was the last stand of the heathen -- of the people of the old, grim ways. For three hundred years the world had writhed beneath the heel of the Viking, and here on Clontarf that scourge was lifted forever.
"Then, as now, the importance of that battle was underestimated by polite Latin and Latinized writers and historians. The polished sophisticates of the civilized cities of the South were not interested in the battles of barbarians in the remote northwestern corner of the world -- a place and peoples of whose very names they were only vaguely aware. They only knew that suddenly the terrible raids of the sea kings ceased to sweep along their coasts, and in another century the wild age of plunder and slaughter had almost been forgotten -- because a rude, half-civilized people who scantily covered their nakedness with wolf hides rose up against the conquerors.
"Here was Ragnarok, the fall of the G.o.ds! Here in very truth Odin fell, for his religion was given its death blow. He was last of all the heathen G.o.ds to stand before Christianity, and it looked for a time as if his children might prevail and plunge the world back into darkness and savagery. Before Clontarf, legends say, he often appeared on earth to his worshipers, dimly seen in the smoke of the sacrifices where naked human victims died screaming, or riding the wind-torn clouds, his wild locks flying in the gale, or, appareled like a Norse warrior, dealing thunderous blows in the forefront of nameless battles. But after Clontarf he was seen no more; his worshipers called on him in vain with wild chants and grim sacrifices. They lost faith in him, who had failed them in their wildest hour; his altars crumbled, his priests turned gray and died, and men turned to his conqueror, the White Christ. The reign of blood and iron was forgotten; the age of the red-handed sea kings pa.s.sed. The rising sun slowly, dimly, lighted the night of the Dark Ages, and men forgot Odin, who came no more on earth.
"Aye, laugh if you will! But who knows what shapes of horror have had birth in the darkness, the cold gloom, and the whistling black gulfs of the North? In the southern lands the sun shines and flowers grow; under the soft skies men laugh at demons. But in the North who can say what elemental spirits of evil dwell in the fierce storms and the darkness? Well may it be that from such fiends of the night men evolved the worship of the grim ones, Odin and Thor, and their terrible kin."
Ortali was silent for an instant, as if taken aback by my vehemence; then he laughed. "Well said, my Northern philosopher! We will argue these questions another time. I could hardly expect a descendant of Nordic barbarians to escape some trace of the dreams and mysticism of his race. But you cannot expect me to be moved by your imaginings, either. I still believe that this cairn covers no grimmer secret than a Norse chief who fell in the battle -- and really your ravings concerning Nordic devils have no bearing on the matter. Will you help me tear into this cairn?"
"No," I answered shortly.
"A few hours" work will suffice to lay bare whatever it may hide," he continued as if he had not heard. "By the way, speaking of superst.i.tions, is there not some wild tale concerning holly connected with this heap?"
"An old legend says that all trees bearing holly were cut down for a league in all directions, for some mysterious reason," I answered sullenly. "That"s another mystery. Holly was an important part of Norse magic-making. The Four Masters tell of a Norseman -- a white-bearded ancient of wild aspect, and apparently a priest of Odin -- who was slain by the natives while attempting to lay a branch of holly on the cairn, a year after the battle."
"Well," he laughed, "I have procured a sprig of holly -- see? -- and shall wear it in my lapel; perhaps it will protect me against your Nordic devils. I feel more certain than ever that this cairn covers a sea king -- and they were always laid to rest with all their riches: golden cups and jewel-set sword hilts and silver corselets. I feel that this cairn holds wealth, wealth over which clumsy-footed Irish peasants have been stumbling for centuries, living in want and dying in hunger. Bah! We shall return here at about midnight, when we may be fairly certain that we will not be interrupted -- and you will aid me at the excavations."
The last sentence was rapped out in a tone that sent a red surge of blood-l.u.s.t through my brain. Ortali turned and began examining the cairn as he spoke, and almost involuntarily my hand reached out stealthily and closed on a wicked bit of jagged stone that had become detached from one of the boulders. In that instant I was a potential murderer if ever one walked the earth. One blow, quick, silent and savage, and I would be free forever from a slavery bitter as my Celtic ancestors knew beneath the heels of the Vikings.
As if sensing my thoughts, Ortali wheeled to face me. I quickly slipped the stone into my pocket, not knowing whether he noted the action. But he must have seen the red killing instinct burning in my eyes, for again he recoiled and again his hand sought the hidden revolver.
But he only said: "I"ve changed my mind. We will not uncover the cairn tonight. Tomorrow night perhaps. We may be spied upon. Just now I am going back to the hotel."
I made no reply, but turned my back upon him, and stalked moodily away in the direction of the sh.o.r.e. He started up the slope of the headland beyond which lay the city, and when I turned to look at him, he was just crossing the ridge, etched clearly against the hazy sky. If hate could kill, he would have dropped dead. I saw him in a red-tinged haze, and the pulses in my temples throbbed like hammers.
I turned back toward the sh.o.r.e, and stopped suddenly. Engrossed with my own dark thoughts, I had approached within a few feet of a woman before seeing her. She was tall and strongly made, with a strong stern face, deeply lined and weather-worn as the hills. She was dressed in a manner strange to me, but I thought little of it, knowing the curious styles of clothing worn by certain backward types of our people.
"What would you be doing at the cairn?" she asked in a deep, powerful voice. I looked at her in surprise; she spoke in Gaelic, which was not strange of itself, but the Gaelic she used I had supposed was extinct as a spoken language: it was the Gaelic of scholars, pure, and with a distinctly archaic flavor. A woman from some secluded hill country, I thought, where the people still spoke the unadulterated tongue of their ancestors.
"We were speculating on its mystery," I answered in the same tongue, hesitantly, however, for though skilled in the more modern form taught in the schools, to match her use of the language was a strain on my knowledge of it.
She shook her head slowly. "I like not the dark man who was with you," she said somberly. "Who are you?"
"I am an American, though born and raised here," I answered. "My name is James...o...b..ien."
A strange light gleamed in her cold eyes.
"O"Brien? You are of my clan. I was born an O"Brien. I married a man of the MacDonnals, but my heart was ever with the folk of my blood."
"You live hereabouts?" I queried, my mind on her unusual accent.
"Aye, I lived here upon a time," she answered, "but I have been far away for a long time. All is changed -- changed. I would not have returned, but I was drawn back by a call you would not understand. Tell me, would you open the cairn?"
I started and gazed at her closely, deciding that she had somehow overheard our conversation.
"It is not mine to say," I answered bitterly. "Ortali -- my companion -- he will doubtless open it and I am constrained to aid him. Of my own will I would not molest it."
Her cold eyes bored into my soul.
"Fools rush blind to their doom," she said somberly. "What does this man know of the mysteries of this ancient land? Deeds have been done here whereof the world reechoed. Yonder, in the long ago, when Tomar"s Wood rose dark and rustling against the plain of Clontarf, and the Danish walls of Dublin loomed south of the river Liffey, the ravens fed on the slain and the setting sun lighted lakes of crimson. There King Brian, your ancestor and mine, broke the spears of the North. From all lands they came, and from the isles of the sea; they came in gleaming mail and their horned helmets cast long shadows across the land. Their dragon-prows thronged the waves and the sound of their oars was as the beat of a storm.
"On yonder plain, the heroes fell like ripe wheat before the reaper. There fell Jarl Sigurd of the Orkneys, and Brodir of Man, last of the sea kings, and all their chiefs. There fell, too, Prince Murrogh and his son Turlogh, and many chieftains of the Gael, and King Brian Boru himself, Erin"s mightiest monarch."
"True!" My imagination was always fired by the epic tales of the land of my birth. "Blood of mine was spilled here, and, though I have pa.s.sed the best part of my life in a far land, there are ties of blood to bind my soul to this sh.o.r.e."
She nodded slowly, and from beneath her robes drew forth something that sparkled dully in the setting sun.
"Take this," she said. "As a token of blood tie, I give it to you. I feel the weird of strange and monstrous happenings -- but this will keep you safe from evil and the people of the night. Beyond reckoning of man, it is holy."
I took it, wonderingly. It was a crucifix of curiously worked gold, set with tiny jewels. The workmanship was extremely archaic and unmistakably Celtic. And vaguely within me stirred a memory of a long-lost relic described by forgotten monks in dim ma.n.u.scripts.
"Great heavens!" I exclaimed. "This is -- this must be -- this can be nothing less than the lost crucifix of Saint Brandon the Blessed!"
"Aye." She inclined her grim head. "Saint Brandon"s cross, fashioned by the hands of the holy man in long ago, before the Norse barbarians made Erin a red h.e.l.l -- in the days when a golden peace and holiness ruled the land."
"But, woman!" I exclaimed wildly, "I cannot accept this as a gift from you! You cannot know its value! Its intrinsic worth alone is equal to a fortune; as a relic it is priceless -- "
"Enough!" Her deep voice struck me suddenly silent. "Have done with such talk, which is sacrilege. The cross of Saint Brandon is beyond price. It was never stained with gold; only as a free gift has it ever changed hands. I give it to you to shield you against the powers of evil. Say no more."
"But it has been lost for three hundred years!" I exclaimed. "How -- where...?"
"A holy man gave it to me long ago," she answered. "I hid it in my bosom -- long it lay in my bosom. But now I give it to you; I have come from a far country to give it to you, for there are monstrous happenings in the wind, and it is sword and shield against the people of the night. An ancient evil stirs in its prison, which blind hands of folly may break open; but stronger than any evil is the cross of Saint Brandon which has gathered power and strength through the long, long ages since that forgotten evil fell to the earth."
"But who are you?" I exclaimed.
"I am Meve MacDonnal," she answered.
Then, turning without a word, she strode away in the deepening twilight while I stood bewildered and watched her cross the headland and pa.s.s from sight, turning inland as she topped the ridge. Then I, too, shaking myself like a man waking from a dream, went slowly up the slope and across the headland. When I crossed the ridge it was as if I had pa.s.sed out of one world into another: behind me lay the wilderness and desolation of a weird medieval age; before me pulsed the lights and the roar of modern Dublin. Only one archaic touch was lent to the scene before me: some distance inland loomed the straggling and broken lines of an ancient graveyard, long deserted and grown up in weeds, barely discernible in the dusk. As I looked I saw a tall figure moving ghostily among the crumbling tombs, and I shook my head bewilderedly. Surely Meve MacDonnal was touched with madness, living in the past, like one seeking to stir to flame the ashes of dead yesterdays. I set out toward where, in the near distance, began the straggling window-gleams that grew into the swarming ocean of lights that was Dublin.
Back at the suburban hotel where Ortali and I had our rooms, I did not speak to him of the cross the woman had given me. In that, at least, he should not share. I intended keeping it until she requested its return, which I felt sure she would do. Now as I remembered her appearance, the strangeness of her costume returned to me, with one item which had impressed itself on my subconscious mind at the time, but which I had not consciously realized. Meve MacDonnal had been wearing sandals of a type not worn in Ireland for centuries. Well, it was perhaps natural that with her retrospective nature she should imitate the apparel of the past ages which seemed to claim all her thoughts.
I turned the cross reverently in my hands. There was no doubt that it was the very cross for which antiquarians had searched so long in vain, and at last in despair had denied the existence of. The priestly scholar, Michael O"Rourke, in a treatise written about 1690, described the relic at length, chronicled its history exhaustively and maintained that it was last heard of in the possession of Bishop Liam O"Brien, who, dying in 1595, gave it into the keeping of a kinswoman; but who this woman was, it was never known, and O"Rourke maintained that she kept her possession of the cross a secret, and that it was laid away with her in her tomb.
At another time my elation at discovering this relic would have been extreme, but, at the time, my mind was too filled with hate and smoldering fury. Replacing the cross in my pocket, I fell moodily to reviewing my connections with Ortali, connections which puzzled my friends, but which were simple enough.
Some years before I had been connected with a certain large university in a humble way. One of the professors with which I worked -- a man named Reynolds -- was of intolerably overbearing disposition towards those whom he considered his inferiors. I was a poverty-ridden student striving for life in a system which makes the very existence of a scholar precarious. I bore Professor Reynolds" abuse as long as I could, but one day we clashed. The reason does not matter; it was trivial enough in itself. Because I dared reply to his insults, Reynolds struck me and I knocked him senseless.
That very day he caused my dismissal from the university. Facing not only an abrupt termination of my work and studies, but actual starvation, I was reduced to desperation, and I went to Reynolds" study late that night intending to thrash him within an inch of his life. I found him alone in his study, but the moment I entered, he sprang up and rushed at me like a wild beast, with a dagger he used for a paperweight. I did not strike him; I did not even touch I him. As I stepped aside to avoid his rush, a small rug slipped beneath his charging feet. He fell headlong and, to my horror, in his fall the dagger in his hand was driven into his heart. He died instantly. I was at once aware of my position. I was known to have quarreled, and even exchanged blows with the man. I had every reason to hate him. If I were found in the study with the dead man, no jury in the world would not believe that I had murdered him. I hurriedly left by the way I had come, thinking that I had been un.o.bserved. But Ortali, the dead man"s secretary, had seen me. Returning from a dance, he had observed me entering the premises, and, following me, had seen the whole affair through the window. But this I did not know until later.
The body was found by the professor"s housekeeper, and naturally there was a great stir. Suspicion pointed to me, but lack of evidence kept me from being indicted, and this same lack of evidence brought about a verdict of suicide. All this time Ortali had kept quiet. Now he came to me and disclosed what he knew. He knew, of course, that I had not killed Reynolds, but he could prove that I was in the study when the professor met his death, and I knew Ortali was capable of carrying out his threat of swearing that he had seen me murder Reynolds in cold blood. And thus began a systematic blackmail.
I venture to say that a stranger blackmail was never levied. I had no money then; Ortali was gambling on my future, for he was a.s.sured of my abilities. He advanced me money, and, by clever wire-pulling, got me an appointment in a large college. Then he sat back to reap the benefits of his scheming, and he reaped full fold of the seed he sowed. In my line I became eminently successful. I soon commanded an enormous salary in my regular work, and I received rich prizes and awards for researches of various difficult nature, and of these Ortali took the lion"s share -- in money at least. I seemed to have the Midas touch. Yet of the wine of my success I tasted only the dregs.
I scarcely had a cent to my name. The money that had flowed through my hands had gone to enrich my slaver, unknown to the world. A man of remarkable gifts, he could have gone to the heights in any line, but for a queer streak in him, which, coupled with an inordinately avaricious nature, made him a parasite, a blood-sucking leech.
This trip to Dublin had been in the nature of a vacation for me. I was worn out with study and labor. But he had somehow heard of Grimmin"s Cairn, as it was called, and, like a vulture that scents dead flesh, he conceived himself on the track of hidden gold. A golden wine cup would have been, to him, sufficient reward for the labor of tearing into the pile, and reason enough for desecrating or even destroying the ancient landmark. He was a swine whose only G.o.d was gold.
Well, I thought grimly, as I disrobed for bed, all things end, both good and bad. Such a life as I had lived was unbearable. Ortali had dangled the gallows before my eyes until it had lost its terrors. I had staggered beneath the load I carried because of my love for my work. But all human endurance has its limits. My hands turned to iron as I thought of Ortali, working beside me at midnight at the lonely cairn. One stroke, with such a stone as I had caught up that day, and my agony would be ended. That life and hopes and career and ambitions would be ended as well, could not be helped. Ah, what a sorry, sorry end to all my high dreams! When a rope and the long drop through the black trap would cut short an honorable career and a useful life! And all because of a human vampire who feasted his rotten l.u.s.t on my soul, and drove me to murder and ruin.
But I knew my fate was written in the iron books of doom. Sooner or later I would turn on Ortali and kill him, be the consequences what they might. And I had reached the end of my road. Continual torture had rendered me, I believe, partly insane. I knew that at Grimmin"s Cairn, when we toiled at midnight, Ortali"s life would end beneath my hands, and my own life be cast away.
Something fell out of my pocket and I picked it up. It was the piece of sharp stone I had caught up off the cairn. Looking at it moodily, I wondered what strange hands had touched it in old times, and what grim secret it helped to hide on the bare headland of Grimmin. I switched out the light and lay in the darkness, the stone still in my hand, forgotten, occupied with my own dark broodings. And I glided gradually into deep slumber.
At first I was aware that I was dreaming, as people often are. All was dim and vague, and connected in some strange way, I realized, with the bit of stone still grasped in my sleeping hand. Gigantic, chaotic scenes and landscapes and events shifted before me, like clouds that rolled and tumbled before a gale. Slowly these settled and crystallized into one distinct landscape, familiar and yet wildly strange. I saw a broad bare plain, fringed by the gray sea on one side, and a dark, rustling forest on the other; this plain was cut by a winding river, and beyond this river I saw a city -- such a city as my waking eyes had never seen: bare, stark, ma.s.sive, with the grim architecture of an earlier, wilder age. On the plain I saw, as in a mist, a mighty battle. Serried ranks rolled backward and forward, steel flashed like a sunlit sea, and men fell like ripe wheat beneath the blades. I saw men in wolfskins, wild and shock-headed, wielding dripping axes, and tall men in horned helmets and glittering mail, whose eyes were cold and blue as the sea. And I saw myself.
Yes, in my dream I saw and recognized, in a semi-detached way, myself. I was tall and rangily powerful; I was shock-headed and naked but for a wolf hide girt about my loins. I ran among the ranks yelling and smiting with a red ax, and blood ran down my flanks from wounds I scarcely felt. My eyes were cold blue and my s.h.a.ggy hair and beard were red.
Now for an instant I was cognizant of my dual personality, aware that I was at once the wild man who ran and smote with the gory ax, and the man who slumbered and dreamed across the centuries. But this sensation quickly faded. I was no longer aware of any personality other than that of the barbarian who ran and smote. James...o...b..ien had no existence; I was Red c.u.mal, kern of Brian Boru, and my ax was dripping with the blood of my foes.
The roar of conflict was dying away, though here and there struggling clumps of warriors still dotted the plain. Down along the river half-naked tribesmen, waist-deep in reddening water, tore and slashed with helmeted warriors whose mail could not save them from the stroke of the Dalca.s.sian ax. Across the river a b.l.o.o.d.y, disorderly horde was staggering through the gates of Dublin.
The sun was sinking low toward the horizon. All day I had fought beside the chiefs. I had seen Jarl Sigurd fall beneath Prince Murrogh"s sword. I had seen Murrogh himself die in the moment of victory, by the hand of a grim mailed giant whose name none knew. I had seen, in the flight of the enemy, Brodir and King Brian fall together at the door of the great king"s tent.
Aye, it had been a feasting of ravens, a red flood of slaughter, and I knew that no more would the dragon-prowed fleets sweep from the blue North with torch and destruction. Far and wide the Vikings lay in their glittering mail, as the ripe wheat lies after the reaping. Among them lay thousands of bodies clad in the wolf hides of the tribes, but the dead of the Northern people far outnumbered the dead of Erin. I was weary and sick of the stench of raw blood. I had glutted my soul with slaughter; now I sought plunder. And I found it -- on the corpse of a richly-clad Norse chief which lay close to the seash.o.r.e. I tore off the silver-scaled corselet, the horned helmet. They fitted as if made for me, and I swaggered among the dead, calling on my wild comrades to admire my appearance, though the harness felt strange to me, for the Gaels scorned armor and fought half-naked.
In my search for loot I had wandered far out on the plain, away from the river, but still the mail-clad bodies lay thickly strewn, for the bursting of the ranks had scattered fugitives and pursuers all over the countryside, from the dark waving Wood of Tomar, to the river and the seash.o.r.e. And on the seaward slope of Drumna"s headland, out of sight of the city and the plain of Clontarf, I came suddenly upon a dying warrior. He was tall and ma.s.sive, clad in gray mail. He lay partly in the folds of a great dark cloak, and his sword lay broken near his mighty right hand. His horned helmet had fallen from his head and his elf-locks blew in the wind that swept out of the west.
Where one eye should have been was an empty socket and the other eye glittered cold and grim as the North Sea, though it was glazing with approach of death. Blood oozed from a rent in his corselet. I approached him warily, a strange cold fear, that I could not understand, gripping me. Ax ready to dash out his brains, I bent over him, and recognized him as the chief who had slain Prince Murrogh, and who had mown down the warriors of the Gael like a harvest. Wherever he had fought, the Nors.e.m.e.n had prevailed, but in all other parts of the field, the Gaels had been irresistible.
And now he spoke to me in Norse and I understood, for had I not toiled as slave among the sea people for long bitter years?
"The Christians have overcome," he gasped in a voice whose timbre, though low-pitched, sent a curious shiver of fear through me; there was in it an undertone of icy waves sweeping along a Northern sh.o.r.e, as of freezing winds whispering among the pine trees. "Doom and shadows stalk on Asgaard and here has fallen Ragnarok. I could not be in all parts of the field at once, and now I am wounded unto death. A spear -- a spear with a cross carved in the blade; no other weapon could wound me."
I realized that the chief, seeing mistily my red beard and the Norse armor I wore, supposed me to be one of his own race. But a crawling horror surged darkly in the depths of my soul.
"White Christ, thou hast not yet conquered," he muttered deliriously. "Lift me up, man, and let me speak to you."
Now, for some reason I complied, and as I lifted him to a sitting posture, I shuddered and my flesh crawled at the feel of him, for his flesh was like ivory -- smoother and harder than is natural for human flesh, and colder than even a dying man should be.
"I die as men die," he muttered. "Fool, to a.s.sume the attributes of mankind, even though it was to aid the people who deify me. The G.o.ds are immortal, but flesh can perish, even when it clothes a G.o.d. Haste and bring a sprig of the magic plant -- even holly -- and lay it on my bosom. Aye, though it be no larger than a dagger point, it will free me from this fleshly prison I put on when I came to war with men with their own weapons. And I will shake off this flesh and stalk once more among the thundering clouds. Woe, then, to all men who bend not the knee to me! Haste; I will await your coming."