Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures by Robert E. Howard Read Free Book Online Page A

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,