1014: Brian Boru & the Battle for Ireland Read Online Free Page B

Opponents could be tricked into floundering into a bog and drowning. Or lured into a steep defile where they could not find a way out. Brian soon knew every treacherous piece of ground in Thomond and how best to exploit it. He relied on the element of surprise, striking without mercy and then vanishing back into the trackless mountains he knew so well. Most battles were fought in the daytime, but he was not afraid to attack at night. When he stood no chance of winning, he retreated rather than make a heroic but futile last stand, which would cost the lives of his men.
    Brian put a stop to the mindless, headlong charge practised by the Gael by insisting on drilling his troops. Perhaps he even tied the legs of pairs of men togetheras they marched, as was reported by early chroniclers. His followers may not have liked his methods at first, but they learned to respect him. They also learned to follow orders without question, knowing there was a plan behind them.
    The Norse, whose traditional way of battle was similar to the reckless charge of the Gael, were confused by these tactics.
    Sometime during this period Brian captured a Viking battle-axe. Short-hafted, broad-socketed, intended to be clasped with both hands to give more power to the swing, the so-called Lochlann axe was deadly in hand- to-hand fighting. Brian took his into a stand of young ash saplings and taught himself to use it. Swinging with all his weight behind it, until he thought the muscles of his shoulders and upper arms would tear free from his bones.
    The Viking axe was a singularly savage weapon. While a sword might kill a man outright if very skilfully wielded, it was more likely to cause a wound that would gradually prove fatal, either through loss of blood or a subsequent infection. But one powerful blow from a Viking axe could extinguish life within a heartbeat.
    Exceptional energy and his genius for strategy were enough to sustain Brian for almost two years. Poets were beginning to sing of him in royal halls, which was theultimate tribute to a warrior, but he was losing his followers to attrition. Men he cared about poured out their life’s blood onto stony soil. Meanwhile Mahon’s policies were rewarding members of his tribe with food in the bowl and fat on the knife. No new young Dalcassians arrived to join the outlaws in the hills.
    Their second winter in the wilds was bitterly cold. Ice formed on the Shannon. A savage wind from the Atlantic blew incessantly across Thomond, until no birds would fly. There was no game to be speared and eaten, even the vermin had disappeared underground. Brian’s companions were reduced to gnawing roots dug out of the frozen soil, but these did not provide enough nourishment to sustain a fighting man. For shelter they constructed rude huts made of branches. The wind tore through this meagre protection and chilled sleeping men to the bone, so they awakened shivering and feverish.
    It was hard to admit defeat. The foreigners did not beat Brian, he told himself. The weather did.
    A headstrong and rebellious youth had stormed off into the wilderness. Eighteen months later a haggard, exhausted, but wiser man returned, accompanied by the surviving handful of his warrior band. They were gaunt and hollow-eyed and staggered as they walked, but their heads were held high. When Brian led them into Mahon’shall they brought with them the scent of the wilderness.
    Their fellow Dalcassians stared. Even dressed in rags, Brian of Béal Boru must have been memorable. His contemporaries described him as being exceptionally tall. Julius Caesar had written of the Gaulish Celts, ‘They are taller by the length of a man’s forearm than the tallest of my legions.’ According to anthropologists, the Irish Celts produced large, well built men and women. It would take famine to shrink them to small stature; generations of improved nutrition are reversing the process. Brian also may have been red-haired. The gene for red hair which was