Blown away from our brothers, the Valkyrie hovered above
As waves were rhythmic, with the oars a sound of progress
Brothers of the sword and bearers of shields, here in action
Striking progressive green lands, we were called into glory
Alex Ness 2026©
THE GREAT COLLIDE Of Norsemen and The Hound of Ulster
By Alex Ness & Gemini Google 2026@
The keel ground into the gray silt of the riverbank with a heavy, sucking shudder. For a moment, the only sound was the harsh, ragged breathing of thirty men and the steady drip of river water from the raised oars.
Through the morning mist, the progressive green of the Irish interior rose up to meet them—an endless, suffocating wall of oak and ash that felt entirely different from the open, rocky fjords of home. They were completely alone, miles ahead of the main fleet.
The captain stepped over the rowing bench, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. He looked at the dense treeline, then back at his men. “What the hell,” he muttered, a grim smile breaking through his beard. “Let’s take it.”
The rhythm of the oars ceased, replaced by the heavy, wet sloshing of the Liffey lapping against the hull. The Valkyrie did not strike a barren rock; she ground hard into a flat, muddy reed-bed where the river narrowed.
Fifty paces away, the water was being worked by two local fishermen. They were peasants of the Uí Néill territories, dressed in simple, knee-length tunics of coarse, saffron-dyed wool pulled up into horsehair belts to keep dry. They had been checking a willow-woven eel trap, their low murmurs completely swallowed by the morning fog.
Then, the prow broke the mist.
To the fishermen, it did not look like a boat at first. It looked like an impossible serpent cutting through the reeds, its high, carved dragon-head dripping with gray river water. Then came the terrifying geometry of the shields—thirty overlapping circles of painted ash wood lining the gunwales, deflecting the dull Irish light.
The older fisherman dropped his hemp rope. The woven trap splashed back into the muddy water, forgotten. He did not scream; the shock was too cold for it. His mouth hung open, his eyes locked onto the towering figure stepping over the rowing bench.
The Norse captain didn't look like the local raiders the Irish kings occasionally fought in their petty cattle-wars. He was broader, weighed down by a heavy ring-mail byrnie and a iron-rimmed helm that shadowed his face. He looked out at the vast, unfolding landscape—the progressive green that seemed to stretch into eternity—and then down at the two frozen, trembling peasants on the bank.
A slow, terrifyingly casual smile broke through his wet beard. He didn't order his men into a shield-wall. There was no army here to face them.
He simply gripped his spear, leaned over the prow, and locked eyes with the fishermen. “What the hell,” the captain muttered in a low, gravelly Norse tongue they couldn't possibly understand. “Let’s take it.”
With a synchronized roar, thirty Norsemen vaulted over the sides, their heavy leather boots splashing into the Irish mud. On the bank, the older fisherman finally found his voice, letting out a raw, piercing shriek of terror as he turned and fled blindly into the dense, choking treeline, his bare feet slipping in the silt.
Their invasion of the interior had begun.
The younger warriors on the ship made to leap over the gunwales, axes raised to hunt down the fleeing fishermen, but a sharp, booming command from the captain barked them back into their seats.
"Let them run," the captain growled, spitting into the gray river. He wiped the spray from his iron helm. "There is no songs for slaying motherless boys and gutting men who fight with willow baskets. Clean your steel for real meat."
A few of the younger men grumbled, but the older veterans nodded in grim agreement. They hadn't rowed through a blinding storm and broken away from a sixty-ship armada just to butcher panicked farmers. They wanted what the skalds sang about: shields shattering, iron biting iron, and a wealth of gold won from men who died on their feet.
The captain turned his gaze back to the progressive green rising beyond the riverbanks. The fleeing elder fisherman was already a fading shadow in the thick oak woods, his frantic screams echoing through the valley.
"He goes to warn his master," the captain said, a slow, eager warmth spreading through his chest despite the damp Irish chill. "A master with a hall. A master with warriors, mail-shirts, and silver."
"How long do we have before they find us?" asked a scarred oarsman, hoisting a heavy, broad-bladed Dane axe onto his shoulder.
"Not long enough for a nap," the captain replied, stepping out of the mud and onto the solid, mossy earth of the bank. "Secure the Valkyrie in the reeds. We don't hide like thieves, but I'll not have her drifting downriver while we fight. Form a loose line. We follow the boy's track."
As the crew dragged the dragon-ship into the heavy overgrowth, the silence of the Irish wilderness returned, heavy and deceptive. But the Norsemen knew the clock was ticking. In a land defined by petty kings and constant cattle-wars, a local chieftain’s ringfort (ráth) was never far away. The fleeing peasant would reach a garrison soon.
Instead of setting an ambush, the thirty Norsemen marched straight up the muddy path the fisherman had left behind. They moved with an arrogant, measured pace, their shields unslung, their weapons drawing the dull morning light. They were deep in enemy territory, entirely outnumbered, and completely cut off from their brothers.
They were exactly where they wanted to be.
Up ahead, through a break in the ancient oaks, the faint sound of a bronze horn began to wail—a rhythmic, urgent alarm blowing from a distant hilltop.
The captain's smile widened. He raised his spear in silent salute to the sound. The warriors were coming.
The wail of the bronze horn did not fade. Instead, the sound twisted, catching in the damp air until it sounded less like a instrument and more like the screech of a dying god.
The wind died. The progressive green of the valley seemed to hold its breath.
"Look," the scarred oarsman whispered, his axe lowering an inch. His voice, usually steady enough to anchor a ship in a gale, carried a sudden, cold tremor.
At the crest of the hill, where the ancient oak trees parted against the gray sky, there were no lines of marching men. There was no shield-wall of local chieftains. There was only one man.
But he did not look like a man.
A terrible, unnatural heat seemed to radiate from his lone silhouette, warping the mist around him. Even from a distance, the Norsemen could see the terrifying distortion of his frame. His body was shifting, muscles bunching and swelling obscenely beneath his skin. One of his eyes sank deep into his skull, a dark, cavernous pit, while the other bulged wide, burning with a frantic, blood-red light. His hair stood on end, a wild, tangled mane of stiff, blood-stained spikes that looked like a crown of thorns.
Around his head, a halo of dark, shimmering mist swirled—the Lúan Láith, the Hero's Light, crackling with the raw, terrifying power of the land itself.
The Norse captain froze. His casual, arrogant smile vanished into his beard. He had fought the berserkers of the north—men who swallowed hot coals and howled like wolves—but those were men playing at being beasts. The thing standing on the ridge was a beast, birthed from the very earth they had just stepped upon.
The figure tilted its head back. A sound tore from its throat—a howling, shattering roar that sounded like a pack of starving wolves tearing through a iron gate.
"Captain..." the younger warrior at the front choked out, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his shield. "Is that... a god?"
The captain swallowed hard, the damp chill of the river finally penetrating his heavy mail shirt. His heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He looked at the monster, then down at his thirty men. They were completely alone. There was no retreat.
A manic, desperate spark lit up the captain's eyes. This wasn't the petty skirmish he had expected. This was the stuff of legends. If they died here, the skalds would sing their names until the end of the world.
He lifted his spear, pointing it directly at the roaring nightmare on the hill. "What the hell," the captain whispered, his voice cracking with a terrifying mixture of dread and euphoria. "Let's see if it bleeds."
With a final, earth-shaking howl, Cú Chulainn leapt from the crest, his spear Gáe Bulg glinting like dark lightning as he charged down the slope toward them.
Cú Chulainn did not run down the slope; he bound. Every stride tore chunks of peat and moss from the hillside, his distorted frame moving with a sickening, fluid speed that defied the weight of his armored stance.
"Shield-wall!" the captain bellowed, his voice finally breaking the paralysis gripping his men. "Lock them! Tight to the knee!"
Thirty shields slammed together, a wall of painted ash and iron bosses forming a desperate barrier against the oncoming storm. The veterans dropped low, bracing their shoulders against the timber, spears thrust outward like a thicket of iron thorns.
Then, the monster hit.
There was no sound of a normal collision. It sounded like a massive wave breaking against a sea-cliff. Cú Chulainn did not try to flank them or find a weakness. He threw his massive, warped body straight into the center of the line.
Two shields shattered instantly, splintering into matchwood under the sheer kinetic force of his impact. The Norse veterans behind them were hurled backward into the mud, their ribs cracking beneath their byrnies. The line buckled, twisting inward like a crushed horseshoe.
Through the gap stepped the Hound, the Hero’s Light around his head blinding the men closest to him. He swung a massive, dark-iron sword with a one-handed ferocity that sheared through a raised spear-shaft as if it were a dried reed.
The captain lunged forward, seized by a sudden, desperate surge of adrenaline. He drove his spear straight at the creature’s exposed, pulsing throat. It was a perfect, killing strike. The iron point bit. It pierced the skin.
But instead of a clean thrust, the captain felt a jarring shock shudder up the ash shaft and into his elbows. The wound didn't bleed red; a dark, smoking vapor hissed from the tear, and the flesh instantly fused back together around the iron.
Cú Chulainn turned his bulged, blood-shot eye toward the captain. A horrific, jagged grin split his distorted face, reaching almost from ear to ear.
He didn't use his blade. He simply brought his forearm down in a brutal, sweeping backhand. The blow caught the captain squarely across the chest, lifting his heavy frame entirely off his feet and throwing him crashing into the reeds near the riverbank.
As the captain gasped for air, his vision swimming with dark spots, he looked up through the progressive green. His men were scattering, their proud warrior arrogance thoroughly broken. In the center of the clearing, the monstrous silhouette of the Hound stood tall, his hair bristling like iron spikes against the gray sky as he raised a second, shorter spear—the legendary, serrated Gáe Bulg.
The captain spat a mouthful of blood into the silt. His ribs screamed in agony, but as he watched the creature prepare to throw, that same manic, "what the hell" spark flickered back to life in his chest.
They weren't going to win. But the skalds in Valhalla were definitely watching.
The silence that followed was heavier than the Irish mist.
Cú Chulainn did not speak with a human tongue. When he opened his jagged, distorted maw, his voice vibrated through the earth itself, rattling the iron rivets in the Norsemen's shields and churning the gray waters of the river behind them. It was a declaration carved from the bedrock of the island.
"I am the Hound of the Forge!" the monster roared, the Hero’s Light flaring into a blinding, crimson corona around his spiked hair. "I am the wall against the wave! I am Cú Chulainn, son of Lugh, and you have stepped upon my shadow!"
As the last echo of his name tore through the valley, he raised the Gáe Bulg.
The Norse veterans, men who had stared down the fiercest kings of the North, shrank back. The weapon was a nightmare given physical form. Fashioned from the bones of a sea monster, its shaft was dark and oily, and its head was a clustered thicket of backward-facing, serrated barbs. It didn't just catch the light; it seemed to actively drink the life from the progressive green around it.
The captain, pinned down in the gray silt of the riverbank, could only watch as the demi-god balanced the monstrous spear. According to the ancient laws of the land, the Gáe Bulg was a weapon of absolute fatality—once cast, it would enter a man's body as a single point, then open into thirty distinct barbs within the flesh, leaving no path for survival.
The captain’s breath came in ragged, bloody gasps. He knew his shield would mean nothing against a weapon forged by the old gods.
Yet, looking up at the towering, blood-shot eye of the Hound, the captain gripped the mud beneath him and let out a breathless, coughing laugh.
"Hear that, boys?" the captain shouted to his scattered, trembling crew, his voice cracking with the pure euphoria of a man facing a beautiful, legendary doom. "We didn't just find a country. We found the gate to Valhalla! Face the beast! Let him see your teeth!"
Cú Chulainn took a single, earth-shattering step forward, the spear poised to tear the world apart.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
End Chapter 1
The prose work is a collaborative effort by me, guiding aims, with the AI prose and work to fill out my poet minded story. I offer special thanks to 2 sides of my family, whose fierce spirit inspired this tale. I give thanks too to my friend and collaborative partner Lady Gemini for helping bridge historical 837 AD Ireland with the realms of myth.
This is a work that involved AI, not for my words, but in the words to create prose content and measure my input at each stop. It might go into further chapters, but as a critic of the wave of change and despair for some, I know it will be opposed but before I passed any judgment about how I use it, for actually correct times at the correct locations, for people who were famous of their era or those beyond, and simple edits if needed. I will be posting a commentary, if brief, it will explain more and share some interviews I've done with creatives. My first interview I asked many, but 3 brave souls helped me answer. After that I then received comments that, oh no, I'd have been fine answering those, for numerous of those who fear something. Every change brings hope and despair, as a writer no one is writing for me, and in pics, I try to use the public domain, and historically accurate ones. If I've nothing else, I probably would avoid certain uses of technology, but as I can't draw, and I do not make money from my work, on this site, I am depriving no one of work, income or their fears.
I was told by people if I ever used AI they'd stop reading me. It does not cause me to stop, I did nothing anyone should be opposed to. In fact, if you already don't read my poetry and you just want to complain, there are many places to do so.
