“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 THE CASTLE OF THE SEA-KINGS
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.