Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures Read Online Free PDF

rather than shamefully at the end of a rope.”
    King Brian nodded, somewhat absently. “You have spoken well. Take your life; your days of outlawry are at an end. King Malachi perhaps would say otherwise, since it was a man of his you slew – but – ” he paused; an old doubt ate at his soul as he thought of the king of Meath.
    “Let it be,” he repeated. “Let it rest until after the battle – mayhap that will be world’s end for us all.”
    Dunlang stepped toward Conn and laid hand on the copper collar.
    “Let us cut this away; you are a free man now.”
    Conn shook his head. “Not until I have slain Thorwald Raven who put it on my neck. I’ll wear it into battle as a sign of no quarter.”
    “That is a noble sword you wear, kern,” said Murrogh suddenly.
    “Aye, my lord,” answered Conn. “Murkertagh of the Leather Cloaks wielded this blade until Blacair the Dane slew him at Ardee.”
    “It is not fitting a kern should wear the sword of a king,” said Murrogh brusquely. “Let one of the chiefs take it and give him an axe instead.”
    Conn’s iron fingers locked about the hilt.
    “He who would take the sword from me had best give me the axe first,” he said grimly. “And that suddenly.”
    Murrogh’s hot temper blazed suddenly and with an oath he strode toward Conn who met him eye to eye and gave back not a step.
    “Be at ease, my son,” ordered King Brian. “Let the kern keep the blade; he has striven hard to gain it.”
    Murrogh shrugged his mighty shoulders and then his mood changed.
    “Aye, keep it and follow me into battle; we shall see if a king’s sword in a kern’s hand can hew as wide a path as a prince’s blade.”
    “My lords,” said Conn, “it may be God’s will I fall in the first onset – but the scars of slavery burn deep in my back this night, and may the dogs eat my bones if I am backward when the spears are splintering.”

IV
T HE C ASTLE OF THE S EA -K INGS

    And while King Brian communed with his chiefs on the plains above Clontarf, a grisly ritual was being enacted within the gloomy castle that was at once the fortress and palace of Dublin’s king. With good reason did Christians fear and hate those looming walls; Dublin was a pagan city, ruled by savage heathen kings, and dark and fearsome were the deeds done therein.
    In an inner chamber in the castle stood the Viking Broder, somberly watching a ghastly sacrifice on a grim black altar. On that monstrous stone writhed a naked frothing thing that had been a comely youth; brutally bound and gagged he could only twist convulsively beneath the dripping inexorable dagger in the hands of the white-bearded wild-eyed priest of Odin.
    The blade hacked through flesh and thew and bone; blood gushed in horrid torrents to be caught in a broad copper bowl, which the priest, with his red-dabbled beard, held high, invoking Odin in a frenzied chant. His thin bony fingers tore the yet pulsing heart from the butchered breast and his wild half-mad eyes scanned it with avid intentness.
    “What of your divinations, priest?” demanded Broder impatiently.
    “If ye fight not on Good Friday, as the Christians call it,” said the priest, “your host will be utterly routed and all your chiefs slain; if ye fight on Good Friday, King Brian will die – but he will win the day.”
    Broder cursed with cold venom. “A noble choice is left us, by Thor! Yet if I fall, I would take Brian with me to Helheim. Enough of such mummery! We go against the Gaels on the morrow, fall fair, fall foul!” He turned and strode from the chamber.
    He traversed a winding corridor and entered another, more spacious chamber, adorned, like all the Dublin king’s palace, with the loot of all the world – gold-chased weapons, rare tapestries, rich rugs, divans from Byzantium and the East – plunder taken from all peoples by the roving Norsemen; for Dublin was the center of the Vikings’ wide-flung world – the head-quarters whence they fared forth to loot