He looked grim enough, despite his youth, with his dark face and smoldering blue eyes, clad as he was in a full shirt of black mail, mail leggings and a steel helmet with a mail drop, and bearing a spiked buckler. Unlike the rest of the chiefs who preferred their swords in battle, Turlogh Dubh fought with an axe he himself had forged and of all the Gaels, none could match him at axe-fighting. So these chiefs led the warriors of Clare to the slaughter and behind Dunlang came Conn, bearing the Roman helmet.

Close behind the Dalcassians were the two companies of the Scotch with their chiefs, the Stewards of Scotland, Lennox and Donald of Mar, who, long skilled in war with the Saxons, wore helmets with horse-hair crests, and coats of mail. With them came the men of South Munster commanded by Prince Meathla O’Faelan.

The third division consisted of the warriors of Connacht, wild men of the west, shock-headed and ferocious, naked but for their wolf-skins, with their chiefs O’Kelly and O’Hyne. And O’Kelly marched as a man whose soul is heavy within him, for the shadow of his meeting with King Malachi the night before fell gauntly across him.

A little apart from the three main divisions marched the kerns and gallaglachs of Meath, their king riding slowly before them.

And before all the host rode King Brian Boru on a snow white steed, his white locks blown about his ancient face and his eyes strange and fey, so that the wild kerns gazed upon him with superstitious awe. And so the Gaels came before Dublin.

And there they saw the hosts of Lochlann and of Leinster drawn up in full battle array, stretching in a wide crescent from Dubhgall’s Bridge to the narrow river Tolka which cuts the plain of Clontarf. Three main divisions there were – the foreign Northmen, the Vikings, with Sigurd and the grim Broder; and flanking them on the one side the fierce Danes of Dublin under their chief, a sombre wanderer whose name no man knew, but who was called by the general name of his race – Dubhgall, The Dark Stranger; and on the other flank the Irish of Leinster with their king Mailmora, brother to Kormlada. The Danish fortress on the hill beyond the Liffey river bristled with armed men where King Sitric guarded the city.