Norseman Raider (The Norseman Chronicles Book 4) (35 page)

“And what of the king’s ship?” one of them asked as I lost my boot into the bog.  It was the first of several such occasions on the march to Dunadd that day.

“That’s why there are fifteen of you,” I shouted.  I may have cursed at the man.  If I did, it was out of frustration from the buzzing pests and the slop, for he asked a valid question.  “Disperse five of you as an outer perimeter.  Stay awake.  The rest use ropes to dislodge
Raven’s Cross.”

All I heard as I plunged into the muck after the others was a fresh round of swearing and the telltale slap of a man’s hand against the back of his neck.

Swamps and mosquitoes.  And death.

. . .

All day we marched in the thickest, wettest shithole I’ve ever encountered.  The equinox had come and gone, but laboring as we did under the weight of armor, supplies, and weaponry made even the lightest and fittest among us – Killian – sweat and gurgle for breath.  The river was usually within sight on our right side.  Godfrey sent a scout to the far side of the waterway to shadow us and warn us of any danger.  He also ordered a small screen of men to run ahead of us and to our left.  The king took no chances that day, even though he had a reputation for being impulsive.  We even had a rearguard of a dozen men following behind and keeping the king apprised of the situation.

As you may guess, the situation was dismal.  It was wet, stinking, and foul.

“The idiot Germans don’t even put cities in places like this,” said Leif.

Tyrkr smiled at the barb.  He just nodded in agreement while reaching for a branch on
a rotting tree trunk to prevent himself from falling into a sinkhole.

“Why put a capital here?” Brandr asked.  He stunk of hog manure from the booty he hauled from Lismore.  Combined with his sweat
, the hot stench of the bog created a force so powerful that every man kept a solid five paces between the hog man and himself.

Godfrey, who’d seen Dunadd in passing while raiding, remained ebullient.  “Tsk tsk.  It’s all the bastards have got.
  Don’t judge them too harshly.”

“But why do we want this?” I asked.

“Want this?” asked Godfrey.  He swatted a mosquito on his forehead.  It had been sucking his blood for a while and created a horrible mess.  The king, trying anything he could to keep his men’s spirits high, pinched the crushed beast off and popped it into his mouth.  “Ah, the little creatures taste like iron.”  He slapped one on my arm and did the same.  “Want this?  I don’t want this place.  Who would put a city here?  The Picts didn’t even do this.  It was the bastard Irishmen who founded Dal Riata ages ago.  I don’t want this place.  I do want to keep anyone else with any power away from my lands, though.  If King Maredubb is holed up with what’s left of the weak Dal Riatans, we’ll use this as a chance to rid ourselves of both.  We’ll then take Anglesey by the winter’s thaw.”

It made sense.  Since those days, I’ve been a leader.  I’ve been a chieftain of a people wholly unrelated to a
nyone I had ever met before.  What I know is that even simple men who hunt in the forest without any steel and who have never heard of a wheel understand power.  Families try to lord over other families so that their children become rulers in the next generation.  Tribes fight to lord over other tribes so that the prime hunting grounds are teeming with their warriors and not someone else’s.  Godfrey was a king and to stay a king in the cruel world meant that he had to forever beat away the wolves that nipped at his heels.  The wolf was watching the longhouse, always.

Evening had now fallen.  We sat on water-soaked logs that were slick with
snotty algae.  Each man grimly ate whatever he had brought for himself.  There were no fires.  Even if we hadn’t been in hostile territory, finding a square fadmr of land that wasn’t covered in more than an ell of muck was impossible.  I ate two boiled eggs that had become crushed in my pack from the day’s walk.  They dried out my palate.  I washed them down with fresh water from the River Add, which was now more like a creek.  My pot of ale, I vowed to save for after the battle.  I was going to climb that hill fort, no matter the height, and drink my ale while relieving myself on the corpse of Maredubb.  Maybe my piss would cure the rash on his face.  The thought made me grin.  Perhaps I’d take his fancy black boots for myself, though few men’s feet were as large as mine.

“You were born for this,” whispered Killian in the night.  “I see it on your face that despite the conditions and the pending terror, you live for this.”

I shook my head.  “Now, maybe.  Before and after, no.  One day I want to be a raider.  The next I want to raise cattle.  I’ve wanted nothing more than a woman to rut and land to till for my entire life.”

“Your entire life?  Are you even eighteen?”

“I’ve lived twenty-one winters as best I can tell,” I said defensively.

Killian patted my shoulder.  “You’re young, that’s all I meant.  You’ve got many years to find your dream and then live it.”

Or, I wondered, did I have many years to waste following things my heart only thought it wanted?

The moon was cresting the horizon.  I could see the priest’s face.  He was a good man trapped in a world that he would not have created had he been given the choice.  Or, maybe he was living right where he wanted.  It was just hard for him to accept
.  “Thank you,” I said.

“Do you mind if I pray for you and for our king and for our mission?” asked Killian.

“Now?  With me?  Why not just pray out loud for the whole mess?  Plenty of others are Christians.  I’m what you call a pagan, remember.”

“I recall well enough,” Killian said.  “If you’d rather I didn’t, I won’t force it on you.”

Something about his demeanor at that moment made me say, “No, I want you to pray.  Go ahead.”

Pleased now, Killian began by crossing himself.  Before closing his eyes and bowing his head, he physically stuck his fingers on my eyelids and closed them.  He also shoved my head down so that my chin sat on my chest.  Then he began his talk, first in Latin, then in his native tongue, then in Norse.  It was a fine prayer.  He mentioned men and deeds about which I knew nothing at the time.  He spoke of a man named Gideon, especially. 
Killian finished by saying what I now know as a Psalm of King David.  “Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands for war, and my fingers for battle.  My goodness, and my fortress, my high tower, and my deliverer, my shield, and He in whom I trust; who subdueth my people under me.”

When I repeated his word, “Amen,” I looked up.  All around me the men, Christian and followers of the old gods alike, had listened to Killian’s words.  The priest’s face brightened more than I’d seen it in some time.  He’d again found the Christ.

Splashing in the river caused every man to jump.  Bows were drawn, spears raised, and swords pointed at the sound.  “It’s Loki!” called Loki in a harsh whisper.  He moved into the soggy clearing.  His eyes widened when he saw all of our raised weapons.  “Easy, I’ve got nothing but news.”  We relaxed.

“Speak,” ordered Gudruna
.

“We’re close.  Across the river the plain gradually rises up out of this slurry as you move south.  There are even some late crops still standing in the field where farmers were able to walk without sinking up to their knees.  Then, Dunadd rises up out of the earth.  It sits there.  It’s a fortress on a rock.  It’s got two rows of outer curtain walls made from stone.  Inside each of those, I saw simple structures, small houses and the like.  Higher up the hill, two more rows of curtain walls act as a
n open air keep.”

Several men whistled in awe at the description.  A harsh glance from Godfrey shut them up.

“Tell me about sentries and activity,” said the king.

“Fires burned bright
ly throughout the fort.  I heard laughter and singing.  There were many men, but I have no idea about numbers.  I saw sentries walking around the curtain walls.  There were a few men walking down the paths of the plain, but I avoided them.  We won’t go in unnoticed,” warned Loki.

“We were invited so I don’t think that Maredubb will be surprised if we show up at his doorstep,” said Killian.

“Where are all Maredubb’s ships if he’s here?  Wouldn’t he have come in the same way?” I asked.

“Likely no,” said Killian.  “We came from Lismore to the north.  If he came directly from Anglesey, Maredubb’s vessels are strewn about on the southern coast.”

“If he’s even here,” muttered Godfrey.

“He’s here,
” said Aoife.  She was blanketed with mud and mosquito bumps from the walk in.  The men ignored her.  I furrowed my brow at the girl.

Godfrey agreed with her though.  “He’
s here.  The only question I have is how we take that hill without a prolonged siege.  We’re not equipped for the coming cold.  We’re not a big enough force to encircle it.”

“Aye,” said Killian.  “There’s a well on the hill.  They could sit there a long while.”

We looked at one another, each hoping the other would have an answer.  No one did.

“When I saw Dunadd from a distance long ago, I thought I recall seeing that the River Add passed closely by the fort.  But you say that we’ve got to cross a plain,” said Godfrey, trying to find out any way to easily overcome its defenses.

“Add turns.  It flows north past the hill, then turns west to wind its way to the sea.  The walls of the hill fort directly face that side.  The other sides of the hill aren’t burdened with walls, for they don’t need to be.  The natural slope of the hill is, well, it’s near vertical.  Our heads would be shoved into a rain of steel if we tried any of the ways,” answered Loki.

“
Yes, I remember that, now,” the king breathed. Godfrey’s knuckles turned white while he pulled on his beard and thought.

“Assault on two sides,” offered Randulfr.  “That way if one of us fails, the other still has a chance.”

Leif shook his red head.  “No matter their numbers, they’ll work on their interior lines and support their men wherever they are needed before we can even send word from one of our groups to the other.  They’ll chop us up piecemeal.  Both teams, in turn, would be defeated.”

Randulfr agreed quietly.
  He frowned at having been corrected by such a young man.

“The only way is straight on, hard and fast, like we did at Watchet,” said Godfrey, resolving himself to the carnage that would follow such an order.
  Gudruna gripped her king’s shoulder.  She was nodding.

“Unless we did both,” I said.

Confused and more than a little perturbed, the men looked at me in the moonlight.  Before anyone could protest, I laid out my plan.  Loki, the only one of us who’d seen the fort up close, agreed that it could work.  Leif agreed.  Killian nodded, so did Brandr and Randulfr.  The king and queen furrowed their brows.

Godfrey sucked a deep breath in through his nostrils.  He reached into a pouch that hung from around his neck and pulled out his bundle of smooth rune stones.  Killian muttered about blasphemy.  The king cupped his hands together and rattled them.  “Give me a dry surface,” said Godfrey.  A man produced a jerkin and we stretched it between us and pulled it taut so that it
became a tabletop.  The king didn’t hesitate.  He scattered the stones.  Gudruna peeked over her king’s crouched form.

We had no real soothsayer of old among us so that it was up to Godfrey to read them himself.  Two stones with their runes right side up rested directly in front of the king.  I knew that upon seeing them, Godfrey would command us forward.  We’d follo
w my plan and attack Dunadd.  Evil grins from the king and his queen confirmed this.

The rune stones were gathered and returned to the bag that hung from Godfrey’s neck.  He and the others began preparations to immediately move as I suggested.  I sank down with my rump in the mud.

You see, Godfrey and Gudruna saw two runes face up.  The first, the Teiwaz, told him to allow things to take their course.  In other words, he ought to follow my proposals.  The second rune, the Fehu, said that he should share his fortune with others.  Well, he’d have nothing to share if the result of the battle was anything short of victory.

I had kneeled
opposite the king as we stretched the jerkin.  I saw the same two runes facing the king as plain as day.  From my vantage point, they were reversed.  The upside down Teiwaz warned against hasty actions.  The transposed Fehu instructed us to avoid premature celebrations.

Which viewpoint was correct?  I knew not.

And it mattered not, for my plan was already in motion.

. . .

I suppose it is fitting that I led a group of mostly miscreants across the river that night.  What other type of men could I be expected to lead?  Godfrey saw my value early on.  He gave me a ring-pin for it.  Mellow and friendly, quick to laugh, lover of women and ale, all of it described me when peace was at hand and the night surrounded the longhouse.  When the dawn broke, however, and brought with it, not its traditional blanket of moisture, but instead a dew of swords, that is when Halldorr Olefsson gained in stature.  I was a hard-nosed savage in the shield wall.  In those times I had true value, for I gave my actions no thought.  My body knew them long before my mind.  Training didn’t give me this insight.  Battle exercises honed my natural gifts as I aged, but practice certainly didn’t bestow on me my ability to wage war.  It was Odin’s gift.  That night as we splashed up the other side of the River Add, I asked Thor to thank his father for me.