Toward this formidable array the Irish advanced at quick pace in more or less open formation and with scant attempt at orderly ranks. But Malachi and his warriors wheeled suddenly and drew off to the extreme left, taking up their position on the high ground by Cabra. And when Murrogh saw this he cursed beneath his breath and Black Turlogh growled: “Who said an O’Neill forgets an old grudge? By Crom, Murrogh, we may have to guard our backs as well as our breasts, before this fight be won!”
Now suddenly from the Viking ranks strode Platt of Danemark whose red hair floated like a crimson veil about his bare head. The hosts watched eagerly, for in those days few battles began without preliminary single combats.
“Donald!” shouted Platt, his blue eyes blazing with a reckless mirth, flinging up his naked sword so that the rising sun caught it with a sheen of silver. “Where is Donald of Mar? Are you there, Donald, as you were at Rhu Stoir, or do you skulk from the fray?”
“I am here, rogue!” answered the Scotch chief as he strode, tall, gaunt and sombre from among his men, flinging away his scabbard. Highlander and Dane met in the middle space between the hosts, Donald wary as a hunting wolf, Platt leaping in, reckless and head-long, his eyes alight and dancing with a kind of laughing madness. Yet it was the wary Steward’s foot which slipped suddenly on a rolling pebble, and before he could regain his balance, Platt’s sword lunged into him so fiercely the keen point tore through the scales of his corselet and sank deep beneath his heart. Platt yelled in mad exultation and the shout broke in a sudden gasp. Even as he crumpled Donald of Mar lashed out with a dying stroke that split the Dane’s head and the two fell together.
Thereat a deep-toned roar went up to the heavens and the two great hosts rolled together like a vast wave.
And then were struck the first blows of a battle such as the world was never to see again. Here were no maneuvers of strategy, no charges of cavalry, no flight of arrows. There forty thousand men fought on foot, hand to hand, man to man, slaying and dying in one mad red chaos. The issue was greater than to decide whether Dane or Gael should rule Ireland; it was Christian against heathen; Jehovah against Odin; it was the last combined onslaught of the Norse races against the world they had looted for three hundred years. It was more; it was the titanic death-throes of a passing epoch – the twilight of a fading age. For on the field of Clontarf the death-knell of the Vikings was struck and Ireland won her last great national victory. Darkness lay behind and before the age of Brian Boru and Clontarf, which was but a brief age of light, swiftly fading into the gloom of anarchy and civil discord that culminated in the coming of the Norman conquerors.
But the men who fought at Clontarf guessed none of this. Red battle broke in howling waves about their spears and they had no time for dreams and prophesies.
The first to shock were the Dalcassians and the Vikings and as they met both lines rocked at the impact. The deep-throated roar of the Norsemen mingled with the wild yells of the Gaels and the Northern spears splintered among the Western axes. Foremost in the fray was Murrogh, his great body leaping and straining as he roared and smote. In each hand he bore a heavy sword and smiting right and left he mowed men down like corn, for neither shield nor helmet stood beneath his terrible blows. And behind him came his warriors slashing and howling like devils.
Against the compact lines of the Dublin Danes the wild tribesmen of Connacht thundered, and the men of South Munster and their Scottish allies fell vengefully on the Irish of Leinster.
Across the plain the iron lines writhed and interwove, slaughtering and dying. Conn, following Dunlang and Murrogh, grinned savagely as he smote home with dripping blade, and his fierce eyes sought for Thorwald Raven among the spears. But in that mad sea of battle where wild faces came and went like waves, it was difficult to pick out any one man.
At first both lines held without giving an inch; feet braced, straining breast to breast, they snarled and hacked, shield jammed hard against shield. All up and down the line of battle the blades shimmered and flashed like sea-spray in the sun and the deep-toned roar shook the ravens that wheeled like Valkyries above. Then when human flesh and blood could stand no more, the long serried lines began to roll forward or back. The Leinstermen flinched before the savage onslaught of the Munster clans and their Scottish allies, giving back slowly, foot by foot, cursed by their king who fought on foot with a sword in the forefront of the fray.
But on the other flank the Danes of Dublin under the redoubtable Dubhgall had held against the first blasting charge of the western tribes, though their lines reeled at the shock, and now the wild men in their wolf-skins were falling like garnered grain before the Danish axes.
In the center the battle raged most fiercely; the wedge-shaped shield-wall of the foreign Vikings held and against its iron ranks the Dalcassians hurled their half-naked bodies in vain. A ghastly heap ringed that grim wall and Broder and Sigurd began a slow but steady advance, the inexorable onstride of the Vikings, hacking deeper and deeper into the loose formation of the Gaels.
On the walls of Dublin Castle, King Sitric, watching the fight with Kormlada and his wife, exclaimed: “Well do the sea-kings reap the field!” Kormlada’s beautiful eyes were blazing, her white hands clenched in cruel exultation.
“Fall, Brian!” she cried fiercely. “Fall, Murrogh! And, fall, too, Broder! Let the keen ravens feed!”
But at the foremost point of the Gaelic advance, the line held. There, like the convex center of a curving axe-blade, fought Murrogh and his chiefs. The great prince was already streaming blood from gashes on his limbs, but his heavy swords flamed in double strokes that dealt death like a harvest and the chiefs at his side mowed down the corn of battle. Fiercely Murrogh sought to reach Sigurd through the press but the chance of battle had thus far held them apart. Murrogh saw the tall Jarl looming across the waves of spears and heads, striking blows like thunder-strokes, and the sight drove the Gaelic prince to madness. But he could not reach the Viking lord, strive as he would.
“The warriors are forced back,” gasped Dunlang, seeking to shake the sweat from his eyes. The young chief was untouched; spears and axes alike splintered on the Roman helmet or glanced from the ancient cuirass, but he was unused to fighting in armor and felt weighted, hampered, prisoned – like a chained wolf.
Murrogh spared a single swift glance; on either side of the clump of chiefs the gallaglachs were being forced back, slowly, savagely, selling each foot of ground with blood, but unable to halt the irresistible advance of the mailed Northmen. The Vikings were falling too, all along the battle-line, but they closed their ranks and forced their way forward, legs hard-braced, bodies straining, spears driving without cease or pause; through a red surf of dead and dying they ploughed on.
“Turlogh!” gasped Murrogh, dashing the blood and sweat from his eyes. “Haste – break from the fray and go to Malachi! Bid him charge, in God’s name!”
But the frenzy of slaughter was on Black Turlogh; froth was on his lips and his eyes were those of a madman.
“The Devil eat Malachi!” he snarled, splitting a Dane’s skull with a stroke like the slash of a tiger’s paw. “Here is the sword-feast before us!”
“Conn!” exclaimed Murrogh, gripping the big kern’s shoulder and dragging him back from the sword-strokes. “Haste to Malachi – we cannot long abide this press!”
Reluctantly Conn drew away from the fray, clearing his way with mighty strokes. Across the reeling sea of blades and rocking helmets he saw the towering forms of Jarl Sigurd, Broder, Anrad, Hrafn the Red – the billowing black folds of the raven banner floating above them as their whistling swords hewed down men like wheat before the reaper.