The Lord of Vik-Lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) (18 page)

  The second Irishman was up before his companion’s head had come down with a dull thump on the dirt floor. He backed away, hands held in front of him, but with an admirable lack of terror on his face. Grimarr was hunched forward, the big sword seeming as weightless as a reed in his hand. He was breathing hard, looking at the second Irishman through the wisps of hair that had fallen across his face. There was silence, absolute silence in the hall, save for Grimarr’s heaving breath.

  Then Grimarr pointed to Lorcan’s man, the one who still lived. “Tie him to his horse,” he said, low but clear. “Tie the other’s head around his neck and send them off. We’ll see if the horse can find Lorcan’s ringfort before the wolves find this pathetic pile of dung.”

  He turned again and moved quickly toward the far end of the hall and the sleeping chambers beyond, and the men who were in his path scattered to get clear of him. He pushed open the door to his own private room. A raised bed piled with furs was pushed against one wall, a table and a stool against the other. His thrall had opened the wooden shutter on the room’s one window. A shaft of sunshine cut though the ever present dust making a column of light that seemed almost solid.

  Five minute before, the light would have enraged him, but the bloodletting had done much to calm his fury. The Irishman’s death had been a sacrifice to the gods, and in exchange the gods were granting him clarity of vision, restoring his ability to think.

  He would have vengeance on Thorgrim and Harald, that was foremost. But what was vengeance if it left him broken, or if he died in the getting of it? Nothing, it was nothing, like two warriors rushing at one another in a mindless attack that left both men dead. Pointless. Real vengeance would mean not just the death of Thorgrim and Harald, but also Grimarr’s increasing his own wealth and power at their expense.

  He had been on the right track all along, he realized. Using Thorgrim and his men to secure the Fearna plunder, making sure they were in the forefront of any fighting. Waste their lives before he wasted the lives of his own men. That plan had been the right one, the course true.

  Now?

 
Thorgrim must die
… Grimarr thought.
He must die before we sail.

  He would still use the Norwegians to fight the Irish, that was just too lovely a solution to let it go. But he could not allow Thorgrim to be part of that. There were a hundred ways he might escape from Grimarr’s grasp once they put to sea. No, Thorgrim had to die, and Harald had to come with them so he could speak to the Irish bitch, and once the Fearna treasure was in Vík-ló he could take his time in killing Harald.

 
Thorgrim will not live to see his son die
, Grimarr realized. That was unfortunate. He would have liked to make Thorgrim suffer even a fraction of the agony that he himself had suffered with the death of his boys but it was not to be. The gods had been generous beyond measure, delivering Thorgrim to his threshold, and he could not ask for more.

I had courage enough,

but they were too many

and I was overcome,

swords singing loud

in the air around me.

                                                               Gisli Sursson’s Saga

Sandarr had had enough of waiting.

  The men whom Lorcan had sent back to Vík-ló with Hrafn were not due to return for another day. They were supposed to bring the girl with them, the one who could supposedly find the Fearna hoard, but Sandarr knew perfectly well they would not. If they returned at all. And he was done with sitting around in that festering ringfort, the pathetic hovel the Irish called a hall, drinking their weak ale, eating the peat moss they called bread.

  “Ronnat!” he called, and the thrall, who was seated on a stool in the corner, jumped up and approached. Sandarr was sitting on one side of the table that ran down the center of Lorcan’s hall and half its length, Lorcan and a few of his trusted men were sitting on the other. The remains of a sloppily eaten dinner were strewn across the surface, various drinking vessels stood amid the debris or tilted over like drunk men who had passed out on the floor.

  “Ronnat, tell Lorcan that we waste our time waiting on Grimarr’s reply. He will most likely kill the messengers, but even if he does not, he still will not send the girl.”

  Ronnat nodded and turned to speak but Sandarr interrupted her. “And say it as I said it, do not soften my words.”

  Ronnat nodded again and turned to Lorcan and let out a spew of Irish nonsense, or so it seemed to Sandarr. He had suggested this to Lorcan before, that they were fools to think Grimarr might strike a deal with them, him for the girl. Sandarr had no illusions about how his father felt; he knew Grimarr would not give a side of bacon to ransom him. If it had been Sweyn or Svein taken prisoner, that would have been different, but he would not give up the treasure in exchange for his oldest son’s life.

  Grimarr was playing for time, making ready to go after the Fearna plunder, and every moment Lorcan waited for a reply was a moment in which Grimarr would build his strength and further his preparations.

  Lorcan had no reaction as he listened to Ronnat’s words. He looked straight at Sandarr as he gave his answer to the girl. Ronnat translated.

  “Lorcan says he knows Grimarr is not to be trusted,” she said, “but he says we must wait for a reply. Sunset tomorrow.”

  Sandarr shook his head. He had caught the word
dubh gall
among Lorcan’s words, which suggested to him that Lorcan had made some disparaging remark about the Danes which Ronnat chose not to relay, but he let it go.

  “Tell Lorcan he is doing exactly what Grimarr wishes him to do,” Sandarr said. “Tell him we must move to the coast at first light. Tomorrow.”

  Ronnat translated that, and for a moment Lorcan just stared at Sandarr and Sandarr stared back. Lorcan was a massive, ignorant brute, in Sandarr’s assessment, an Irish version of his own father. Those men would have been the best of friends if fate had not set them up to be the bitterest of enemies.

  But that was fine with Sandarr. Lorcan and Grimarr might kill one another but such an arrangement would work very well for his own ambitions. He had only to make certain that when they did so, he, Sandarr, would be the last man left on the field.

  He and Lorcan had already worked out what they would do, in those long, dull hours waiting for Grimarr to make a move. There were only so many places along the coast where the treasure might be hidden. Lorcan needed a force that could strike quickly, but one that could stay far enough inland that they would not be seen from the water. Mounted warriors, who could wait out of sight until Grimarr unearthed the hoard and then move in fast for the attack.

  During the past few days, every horse worthy of the name had been collected, and somewhere around seventy animals were now staked out in the fields beyond the ringfort at Ráth Naoi. The mounted warriors would be the first into the fight, with foot soldiers right behind them. But if Grimarr swept in too quickly for the riders to react, then all would be lost.

  Lorcan was muttering to the men on either side of him, but finally he turned back to Sandarr. “When we move our warriors to the coast, we leave Ráth Naoi undefended. We cannot do that until we are certain that Grimarr is going after the hoard.”

  “Why is that?” Sandarr asked by way of Ronnat. “Are your enemies so numerous that they will fall on Ráth Naoi when you are gone?”

  That was translated, and Lorcan’s reply as well. “There is no one in Cill Mhantáin or beyond who would dare make an attempt against this ringfort, whether my warriors are here or not,” he said. “But I cannot be certain that the dubh gall in Vík-ló are not waiting for their chance to strike here.”

  At that, Sandarr nearly laughed. “Grimarr has no interest in this pathetic, stinking, shit-filled pig sty of a ringfort,” he said, giving vent to his true feelings on the matter, certain that Ronnat would make the reply more palatable. “He only wants the silver from Fearna, and he will go after it the very moment he is able. And he’ll keep you dancing around here as long as he can to keep you from moving to the coast where you might stop him.”

  Lorcan’s suggestion that Grimarr might wish to attack the ringfort was absurd, of course, but there was more to it. Beneath the words, even through the girl’s translation, Sandarr could hear the suggestion that Lorcan did not entirely trust him. The Irishman, he knew, suspected that Sandarr might still be working for his own countrymen.

  That, too, was absurd. Sandarr had no countrymen. He was, in his own eyes, a country of one. Dane, Irish, Norwegian, he hated them all and he felt he owed allegiance to none but himself. He and Lorcan had been making their plans for months. It was because of Sandarr that Lorcan knew to attack the longships on the way back from Fearna. Fasti’s hiding the plunder had been something Sandarr could not have foreseen, but he had the sense that Lorcan did not entirely believe that.

  It was no matter to him, however, if Lorcan believed him or not. Sandarr offered loyalty and trust to no one, and he did not expect to receive it. When this was all done he intended to be lord of Vík-ló, and to have no real threat from the Irish countryside. He was not entirely clear on how he would achieve that. He did not possess the resources to make such an outcome happen. But he knew that it would involve bringing Lorcan and Grimarr together so that they might decimate each other’s forces and, with luck, kill one another as well.

  He needed Lorcan to go along with this idea, to fling his warriors at Grimarr’s so both Irish and Dane would be badly hurt. He needed Lorcan to do so unwittingly, and he had reason to hope he would, as Lorcan was a witless creature. But he was starting to despair that Lorcan would listen to reason.

  “See here, Lorcan, you great, stupid ox,” Sandarr said, now finding amusement in Ronnat’s habit of cleaning up his words, “here is a thing you do not understand. These goats that you Irish call horses might move faster than a man may move, but they do not move faster than a longship. If we are not in place and ready for Grimarr, we will have no chance of intercepting him. The wind blows from the northeast today and has this week past. If it continues to do so, it will drive Grimarr’s ships down the coast faster than your fastest horse could run. Ships do not need to stop for food and water. They do not need rest.”

  Sandarr sat back. He expected a wave of Lorcan’s hand, his words dismissed. He expected Lorcan to make a sneering comment to his men that Ronnat would choose to not translate. But that was not how Lorcan reacted, not at all. Somehow the mention of longships seemed to have struck a nerve, and when Lorcan turned and spoke with his chief men, his voice was low, his tone was not what Sandarr would have expected.

  And then Lorcan turned back to Sandarr and spoke, and Ronnat translated, and the words came as a surprise. “Lorcan says, ‘Very well, we will move out on the morrow. All the horse soldiers and the foot soldiers as well. We’ll position them where we discussed and wait for word of Grimarr’s sailing.’” Ronnat paused as Lorcan added more, and then said, “And Lorcan says, ‘You had better hope that you are right.’”

For all the preparation, it was no easy task to get
Far Voyager
moving toward the water. The days of rain had made the ground soft, and the rollers did not roll, and sliding the ship on its cradle proved more difficult than expected. It was only when Aghen had secured buckets of tallow and the skids and the rollers had been well greased that the ship showed any willingness at all to move.

  As the River Leitrim approached its zenith, Thorgrim’s men began pushing against the hull and heaving on lines run aft from the bow. The water was visibly retreating by the time
Far Voyager
floated free. One moment she was stuck fast, a nearly immovable object, and the next her stern floated off and she twisted a bit in the current. And then one more heave and she was alive again, not the dead weight of a vessel on the hard, but the graceful creature she was meant to be, moving to an easy pull of the ropes that ran to the shore.

  And even that, that magic metamorphosis, a moment of joy for every mariner, was not enough to lift Thorgrim Night Wolf from his black mood.

  He had been well enough during the day, despite the aggravation of having Grimarr Giant arrive on the riverfront in an attempt to placate him and win his fealty for the next week at least. Grimarr reckoned he was doing Thorgrim a great honor, making the trek down to the water rather than sending Bersi or Hilder to summon Thorgrim to his hall. Thorgrim understood that, but still felt something less than honored. And then for all that Grimarr raced off with barely a word spoken between them.

 
Far Voyager
’s stubborn resistance to being relaunched was another source of annoyance. It truth it was no more than the general sort of difficulty one encountered when working with ships. There was always something. But Thorgrim was finding it hard to be sanguine about this particular problem. He did not like the fact that his ship seemed reluctant to return to the sea. It did not seem like a good omen to him.

  And so, even after his ship was floating free and was secured to the shore by walrus-hide ropes, Thorgrim felt the black mood enveloping him, this ugly, sometimes violent spirit that on occasion possessed him as the sun went down. It was something for which he was well-known and feared. It had earned him the nickname ‘Night Wolf’, and because of it, those who knew him knew to keep clear when the black mood struck, and they whispered warnings to those who did not. There were rumors that Thorgrim was a shape-shifter, that in the darkness he took on more than just the mindset of a wolf.

  Now, with the sun moving fast toward the hills in the west, Thorgrim stood about fifty paces back from the water, arms folded, his cloak clasped around his shoulders as if he was trying to hide underneath it.
Far Voyager
was pulled as close to the bank as she could get and Thorgrim could tell by the angle of the mast, which had already been re-stepped, that the ebbing tide was starting to settle her in the mud. He felt much the same; mired, stuck.

  His crew had formed a line from the shore to the bow of the ship, like ants swarming over a drop of honey on the ground, and they were passing stores and weapons and gear from the grassy bank to the men who leaned over the ship’s rails. When they were done there would still be a substantial pile left on the shore. They were taking only what was needed for a trip of a week or two; food water, and the gear required for sailing and fighting. The rest would be loaded aboard after they returned to Vík-ló, richer for the Fearna hoard and ready to continue their voyage to Vik.

  Starri Deathless came ambling over. After all the years, Starri was the only man who had ever been able to approach Thorgrim when the black mood was upon him. That worried Thorgrim, in his more lucid moments, because it suggested that his grip on sanity might be no greater than Starri’s.

  When he reached Thorgrim’s side, Starri stopped and turned and the two of them looked across the open ground at
Far Voyager
. There was something oddly calming about Starri’s presence. In part this was because Starri was not afraid of the Night Wolf. He did not step carefully around Thorgrim when the black mood was on him. Also, because Thorgrim knew Starri would not say anything stupid. Starri somehow always knew the words that would dovetail with Thorgrim’s mood.