“It rests in the hands of God, little one,” he answered gently. “Many will fall, and I may fall in the foremost charge; yet it may be that once again we shall walk hand in hand through the green forest when the twilight shakes out her grey mantle over the hills of Craglea.”
She shook her head and her voice broke in a sob; speechless she held out her childish arms and he gathered her hungrily to him; a moment he crushed her close to him, while Conn looked away, then Dunlang gently unlocked her clinging arms from about his neck, kissed her, and tore himself away.
Without a word or a backward glance he mounted his steed and rode away, with Conn trotting easily alongside. Looking back, in the gathering dusk, the kern saw Eevin reach out her white arms in a wild poignant gesture of despair, then fall forward in a torrent of weeping.
III THE GATHERING OF THE EAGLES
The camp fires sent up showers of sparks and illumined the land like day. In the distance loomed the grim walls of Dublin, dark and ominously silent; before those walls flickered other fires where the warriors of Leinster, under their king Mailmora, whetted their axes for the coming battle. Out in the bay the starlight glinted on myriad sails, shield-rails and arching serpent-prows. Between the city and the fires of the Irish host stretched the plain of Clontarf, bordered by Tomar’s Wood, dark and rustling in the night, and the Liffey’s dark star-flecked waters.
Before his tent, the firelight playing on his white beard and glinting from his undimmed eagle eyes, sat the great King Brian Boru among his chiefs. The king was old – seventy-three winters had passed over his lion-like head – long years crammed with fierce wars and bloody intrigues. Yet his back was straight, his arm unwithered, his voice deep and resonant. His chiefs stood about him, tall proud warriors with war-hardened hands and eyes whetted by the sun and the winds and the high places. Tigerish princes in their rich tunics, green girdles, leathern sandals and saffron mantles caught with great golden brooches.