A broad belt encircled his lean waist, holding a long dirk in a leather sheath. On his left arm he carried a small round shield of hide-covered wood, hard as iron, braced and reinforced with steel, and having a short, heavy spike in the center. An ax hung from his right wrist, and it was to this feature that the fisherman’s eyes wandered. The weapon with its three-foot handle and graceful lines looked slim and light when the fisherman mentally compared it to the great axes carried by the Norsemen. Yet scarcely three years had passed, as the fisherman knew, since such axes as these had shattered the northern hosts into red defeat and broken the pagan power forever.
There was individuality about the ax as about its owner. It was not like any other the fisherman had ever seen. Single-edged it was, with a short three-edged spike on the back and another on the top of the head. Like the wielder, it was heavier than it looked. With its slightly curved shaft and the graceful artistry of the blade, it looked the weapon of an expert – swift, lethal, deadly, cobra-like. The head was of finest Irish workmanship, which meant, at that day, the finest in the world. The handle, cut from the heart of a century-old oak, specially fire-hardened and braced with steel, was as unbreakable as an iron bar.
“Who are you?” asked the fisherman with the bluntness of the west.
“Who are you to ask?” answered the other.
The fisherman’s eyes roved to the single ornament the warrior wore – a heavy golden armlet on his left arm.
“Clean-shaven and close-cropped in the Norman fashion,” he muttered. “And dark – you’d be Black Turlogh, the outlaw of Clan na O’Brien. You range far; I heard of you last in the Wicklow hills preying off the O’Reillys and the Oastmen alike.”
“A man must eat, outcast or not,” growled the Dalcassian.
The fisherman shrugged his shoulders. A masterless man – it was a hard road. In those days of clans, when a man’s own kin cast him out he became a son of Ishmael with a vengeance. All men’s hands were against him. The fisherman had heard of Turlogh Dubh – a strange, bitter man, a terrible warrior and a crafty strategist, but one whom sudden bursts of strange madness made a marked man even in that land and age of madmen.
“It’s a bitter day,” said the fisherman apropos of nothing.
Turlogh stared somberly at his tangled beard and wild matted hair. “Have you a boat?”
The other nodded toward a small sheltered cove where lay snugly anchored a trim craft built with the skill of a hundred generations of men who had torn their livelihood from the stubborn sea.
“It scarce looks seaworthy,” said Turlogh.
“Seaworthy? You who were born and bred on the western coast should know better. I’ve sailed her alone to Drumcliff Bay and back, and all the devils in the wind ripping at her.”
“You can’t take fish in such a sea.”
“Do ye think it’s only you chiefs that take sport in risking their hides? By the saints, I’ve sailed to Ballinskellings in a storm – and back too – just for the fun of the thing.”
“Good enough,” said Turlogh. “I’ll take your boat.”
“Ye’ll take the devil! What kind of talk is this? If you want to leave Erin, go to Dublin and take ship with your Dane friends.”
A black scowl made Turlogh’s face a mask of menace. “Men have died for less than that.”
“Did you not intrigue with the Danes? – and is that not why your clan drove you out to starve in the heather?”
“The jealousy of a cousin and the spite of a woman,” growled Turlogh. “Lies – all lies. But enough. Have you seen a long serpent beating up from the south in the last few days?”
“Aye – three days ago we sighted a dragon-beaked galley before the scud. But she didn’t put in – faith, the pirates get naught from the western fishers but hard blows.”
“That would be Thorfel the Fair,” muttered Turlogh, swaying his ax by its wrist-strap. “I knew it.”
“There has been a ship-harrying in the south?”
“A band of reavers fell by night on the castle on Kilbaha. There was a sword-quenching – and the pirates took Moira, daughter of Murtagh, a chief of the Dalcassians.”
“I’ve heard of her,” muttered the fisherman. “There’ll be a whetting of swords in the south – a red sea-plowing, eh, my black jewel?”
“Her brother Dermod lies helpless from a sword-cut in the foot. The lands of her clan are harried by the MacMurroughs in the east and the O’Connors from the north. Not many men can be spared from the defense of the tribe, even to seek for Moira – the clan is fighting for its life. All Erin is rocking under the Dalcassian throne since great Brian fell. Even so, Cormac O’Brien has taken ship to hunt down her ravishers – but he follows the trail of a wild goose, for it is thought the raiders were Danes from Coningbeg. Well – we outcasts have ways of knowledge – it was Thorfel the Fair who holds the isle of Slyne, that the Norse call Helni, in the Hebrides. There he has taken her – there I follow him. Lend me your boat.”
“You are mad!” cried the fisherman sharply. “What are you saying? From Connacht to the Hebrides in an open boat? In this weather? I say you are mad.”
“I will essay it,” answered Turlogh absently. “Will you lend me your boat?”
“No.”
“I might slay you and take it,” said Turlogh.
“You might,” returned the fisherman stolidly.
“You crawling swine,” snarled the outlaw in swift passion, “a princess of Erin languishes in grip of a red-bearded reaver of the north and you haggle like a Saxon.”
“Man, I must live!” cried the fisherman as passionately. “Take my boat and I shall starve! Where can I get another like it? It is the cream of its kind!”
Turlogh reached for the armlet on his left arm. “I will pay you. Here is a torc that Brian Boru put on my arm with his own hand before Clontarf. Take it; it would buy a hundred boats. I have starved with it on my arm, but now the need is desperate.”
But the fisherman shook his head, the strange illogic of the Gael burning in his eyes. “No! My hut is no place for a torc that King Brian’s hands have touched. Keep it – and take the boat, in the name of the saints, if it means that much to you.”
“You shall have it back when I return,” promised Turlogh, “and mayhap a golden chain that now decks the bull neck of some northern rover.”
The day was sad and leaden. The wind moaned and the everlasting monotone of the sea was like the sorrow that is born in the heart of man. The fisherman stood on the rocks and watched the frail craft glide and twist serpent-like among the rocks until the blast of the open sea smote it and tossed it like a feather. The wind caught the sail and the slim boat leaped and staggered, then righted herself and raced before the gale, dwindling until it was but a dancing speck in the eyes of the watcher. And then a flurry of snow hid it from his sight.
Turlogh realized something of the madness of his pilgrimage. But he was bred to hardships and peril. Cold and ice and driving sleet that would have frozen a weaker man, only spurred him to greater efforts. He was as hard and supple as a wolf. Among a race of men whose hardiness astounded even the toughest Norseman, Turlogh Dubh stood out alone. At birth he had been tossed into a snow-drift to test his right to survive. His childhood and boyhood had been spent on the mountains, coast and moors of the west. Until manhood he had never worn woven cloth upon his body; a wolf-skin had formed the apparel of this son of a Dalcassian chief. Before his outlawry he could out-tire a horse, running all day long beside it. He had never wearied at swimming. Now, since the intrigues of jealous clansmen had driven him into the wastelands and the life of the wolf, his ruggedness was such as can not be conceived by a civilized man.