Through the mist of the white dawn men moved like ghosts and weapons clanked eerily. Conn stretched his muscular arms, yawned cavernously and loosened his great blade in its sheath.

“This is the day the ravens drink blood, my lord,” he grinned, and Dunlang O’Hartigan nodded absently.

“Come hither and aid me to don this cursed cage,” said the young Dalcassian. “For Eevin’s sake I will wear it, but I had rather go into battle stark naked, by the saints!”

The Gaels were on the move, marching from Kilmainham in the same formation in which they intended to enter the battle. First came the Dalcassians, big rangy men in their saffron tunics, with a round buckler of steel-braced yew wood on the left arm and the right hand gripping the dreaded Dalcassian axe against which no armor could stand. This axe differed greatly from the heavy two-handed weapon of the Danes; the Irish wielded it with one hand, the thumb stretched along the haft to guide the blow, and they had attained a skill at axe-fighting never before or since equalled. Hauberks they had none, neither the gallaglachs nor the kerns, though some of their chiefs, like Murrogh, wore light steel caps. But the tunics of warrior and chief alike had been woven with such skill and steeped in vinegar until their remarkable toughness afforded some protection against sword and arrow.

At the head of the Dalcassians strode Prince Murrogh, his fierce eyes alight, smiling as though he went to a feast instead of a slaughtering. On one side went Dunlang O’Hartigan in his Roman corselet, and on the other side the two Turloghs – the son of Murrogh, and Turlogh Dubh, who alone of all the Dalcassians, always went into battle fully armored.