The Lord of Vik-Lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) (35 page)

  The men in the after section of the ship, who had been thrown to the deck, now scrambled to their feet and began to back away from the surging water. They moved toward the stern, their retreat growing faster and more panicked as the seas flooded in. And then they turned and ran, clawing over one another in their wild and desperate flight. Forty feet, and then there was no place left to go.

  “No!” Lorcan shouted again. He had to issue orders, to take command once more, to lead, to save his men’s lives, but he had absolutely no idea what to do. And so he clutched the ship’s oak stem, alone in the bow, and stared wide-eyed toward the stern as
Water Stallion
split in two. With a terrific rending sound the last of the strakes and then the keel itself gave way and the after end of the ship plunged down under the weight of seventy men crammed in the very stern. The broken, jagged hull rose up and knocked the bow section, where Lorcan stood, off to one side as it rolled to the other.

  The men on the aft section were screaming. Horrible, high-pitched screams. Screams of terror such as Lorcan would never have thought could have come from his men, his warriors, but here was a death for which they were not ready. The after-end of the ship began to roll to larboard and the men scrambled over one another, struggling to stay on the high side.

  And then the hull turned faster still, the forward end lifting high out of the sea, and then it just rolled right over. The bottom, smooth and green with algae, came upright like a turtle’s back and the screaming stopped.

The spinner of fate is grim to me…

                                                                       Egil’s Saga

Grimarr Giant’s sons came to him in his sleep. The dream was as vivid as any experience he had ever had, in any state. The boys stood near the river’s edge at Vík-ló. They held broken swords in their hands and they were covered with blood. Sweyn and Svein, his beloved sons. They said nothing. They did not have to.

  He opened his eyes and looked up at the black sky and said, “Thank you.” He said it softly, so no one else could hear. But now he knew what he had to do. For the first time since the fight on the beach his course was clear and his mind was unclouded.

  He straightened his stiff and aching legs. He put his left hand down on the deck for support and pulled it back as the pain from the knife wound shot up his arm. He put his right hand down and stood. He was on
Eagle’s Wing
’s afterdeck, and before him two-thirds of the men still under his command were sleeping at various places around the ship.

  Off the larboard side, barely visible in the dim pre-dawn light,
Fox
, like
Eagle’s Wing
, lay with her bow in the sand, her men also asleep. Out on the beach, forming a semi-circle around the ships, the sentries were keeping their eyes fixed toward the land. They were not there to fight off an attack by the Irish. They were there to shout an alarm if the Irish came, to run back down the beach, to push the longships back into the water, and, with any luck, to get back aboard before they were killed.

  But the Irish had not come and Grimarr no longer thought they would. Lorcan had a ship now,
Water Stallion
. Taking her had been a big part of his plan, or so Grimarr had come to realize. Perhaps the Irish still wanted the Fearna hoard. Perhaps they knew for certain what Grimarr was only starting to suspect; that the treasure was not on the beach at all. Either way, they did not renew the fight, and Grimarr did not think they would. At least not there.

  Yesterday, in the wake of the fighting, Grimarr had been so twisted up with anger that he could not even give a coherent order to his men. He had been like an enraged bull with dogs snapping all around it, so taken with fury that he did not know which way to turn. Lorcan had caught them by surprise. Not entirely, but surprise enough. Grimarr had taken the precaution of putting the Norwegians in the front, but he had still lost many of his own men. Too many. The Irish had come down a trail the Northmen did not even know was there and had hit them from behind.

  And then they had taken one of the ships of his fleet. It was humiliating. But even so, he still had the satisfaction of knowing that he had the boy, Harald, that vengeance for his sons was still within his grasp. And he had the girl, from whom he could get the truth, one way or another, of where the treasure was buried.

  And then they, too, had slipped from his fingers. And in rescuing them, the fat bastard driving the Norwegian ship had crippled
Eagle’s Wing
by snapping half her oars clean off. They had spare oars, of course, but only a few, not enough to replace the sixteen that had been turned to kindling on the larboard side.

  Grimarr was rendered incoherent with rage. He had not screamed, had not broken anything, had not killed anyone. He had ordered Bersi to keep up the digging on the beach, to find the treasure, and then he had seated himself on one of the rowers’ benches and said nothing more. He was vaguely aware of the fear that radiated from anyone who came near him, but he did not think on it. In truth, he did think about anything, not in any organized manner. His mind was a jumble of feelings and impressions; fury, hate, impotence.

  They did not find the Fearna treasure. Under Bersi’s direction the diggers worked outward from the place where the girl had first told them to dig. They went down three feet and moved out thirty in every direction. Others scoured the beach for signs of where the gravel might have been disturbed. They worked all day with plenty of men put to the task, and they found nothing.

  Not every man was digging or searching, of course. Many had been wounded in the fighting, some very bad indeed, and they were tended to by those who knew how to patch up wounded men. Others were posted as guards. They had climbed to the top of the cliffs from which the Irish had come, peered hesitantly over the edge of the high ground, and seen only grass and the trampled place where many horses had been. The Irish were gone. From their place high above the beach, Grimarr’s sentries could see for miles in every direction. There would be no second surprise attack.

  When the sun went down and the digging was finished, the funeral pyres were lit. More than a dozen men had been killed, good men, men hard to replace. Those still fit to work, despite their being ready to collapse from a day of digging in the unforgiving gravel, dragged great baulks of driftwood to a spot on the beach. The bodies of the dead were piled on the stack and with some difficulty the wood was set on fire and soon it was blazing high into the night’s sky. And then the living collapsed on the shingle as close as they could get to the flames. They watched the bodies of the dead being consumed by the fire, the earthly remains of warriors who already feasted in Odin’s hall, and they envied them.

  Grimarr remained aboard
Eagle’s Wing
, shifting from the rowers’ bench to a spot in the very stern of the ship where he would not be disturbed, though he did not think anyone would disturb him regardless of where he was. He did not feel like sleep and did not seek out sleep, but eventually the gods brought sleep to him so that his boys might visit him in that world.

  On waking, he stood for a moment on the afterdeck, then stumbled forward, jostling men here and there with his toe until he found Bersi Jorundarson. Bersi grumbled and scowled until he realized who it was who was disturbing him, and when he did he sat up quickly. Grimarr could hardly see him; the outline of a man, a dark shape against the darker deck, but he was upright and he seemed alert.

  “Bersi?” Grimarr said.

  “Yes…Lord Grimarr?” Bersi replied. Grimarr could hear the uncertainty in his voice.

  “We must get underway at first light. Can we do that?”

  Grimarr thought he could see Bersi look around. There was a pause, then Bersi said, “Yes, Lord. The ships are ready to go. We need only call in the sentries.”

  “Good. Then we go.”

  “Lord Grimarr…” Bersi said. He seemed less circumspect now in his speech now, no doubt encouraged by Grimarr’s calm and reasonable tone.

  “Yes, Bersi?”

  “Lord, what of the treasure? You know we found no sign of it.”

  “There’s no treasure here,” Grimarr said, and there was finality on his voice. “That Irish bitch was lying. She’ll save the hoard for Lorcan. Or herself.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bersi said.

  “You recall that Norwegian? Thorgrim?” Grimarr asked.

  “Yes, Lord,” Bersi said. “You killed him.”

  Grimarr squinted, and a warm feeling ran through him like the first mouthful of strong spirits going down the throat. He had killed Thorgrim. With all that had happened he had forgotten that fact, but now Bersi reminded him, and with that memory came a spreading joy that only added to the feeling of well-being and clarity that his dream had brought.

  “Yes, that’s right. I killed him. Do you know why?”

  “No, Lord,” Bersi said, and Grimarr could hear that note of uncertainty creeping back into his voice. And in truth he had not had any intention of telling Bersi this. But somehow, with the dream, and the memory of Thorgrim’s death, and the darkness that brought a certain detachment to their talk, he felt it was right to do so. Bersi had always been loyal.

  “I killed him because he killed my sons. Sweyn and Svein. He killed them in Dubh-linn.”

  That was met with silence, and Bersi remained silent for some time. And then he asked, “You’re sure of that, Lord? How do you know?” Grimarr heard Bersi’s voice falter with those last words, as if realizing he had gone too far with that question, which he had. Grimarr felt a spark of anger at Bersi’s impudence, but he swallowed and let it fade away.

  “I know,” Grimarr said, in a tone of certainty. “That’s why I killed him. But there is more work to do. I must kill Thorgrim’s son. Harald. My sons came to me tonight in a dream and they reminded me of my duty.”

  “Yes, Lord,” Bersi said, and wisely he let no trace of doubt creep into his words. “But how will we find him?”

  “If they get to sea, I could spend the rest of my days hunting them down. But I know where they will go. My sons told me.”

  “Yes, Lord,” Bersi said, and after a pause said, “Could I ask where, Lord?”

  “They will go to Vík-ló. Their stores are there, and their hoard. They cannot go to sea without going first to Vík-ló. That’s where we will find them. And that’s where we will kill them.”

Far Voyager
’s starboard side oars had been in the water even as
Water Stallion
was bearing down on her. The midships oars were actually touching the submerged reef, keeping the ship from being pushed onto the ledge by the swell. A quarter of her crew were manning those oars. Another quarter were crouched low along the centerline, ready to ship the larboard oars. A quarter were standing ready to haul on the rope made fast to the anchor and deployed one hundred feet ahead of the ship, and the last quarter were forming a shield wall to hide those preparations.

  It had all gone just as Thorgrim imagined it would. Better, in fact. Thorgrim had hoped
Water Stallion
would suffer damage, perhaps get hung up on the reef long enough for
Far Voyager
to make an escape. To see her wrecked entirely, that was too much to ask for. But sometimes the gods did hand a man a gift.

  But never a real gift, not a gift for which no payment would be expected. Thorgrim knew that sometime, in some way, there would be a fee for what the gods had given him that morning. And he would never know when that fee was due until the moment it was.

 
Water Stallion
had come straight at them, to the surprise of Thorgrim and the rest, her rowers pulling for all they were worth. Thorgrim guessed they did not have anyone aboard who was much familiar with seamanship. No mariner worthy of the name would go blustering around with all the speed he could summon in such treacherous and unknown waters.

  He had waited until the Irish were almost upon them, then ordered the men to haul on the anchor line, pull hard with the starboard oars and ship the larboard. In a heartbeat
Far Voyager
had gone from an inert construct of wood, iron, rope and cloth to a living thing leaping clear of its onrushing enemy.

  They saw
Water Stallion
pass astern of them and begin to swing into their wake, but they did not pause to watch her die on the reef. The screams of the men as the water closed on them were horrible to hear. The Far Voyagers were not strangers to death, nor to bringing death to others, but this was something different. These were not men dying with weapons in their hands on the field of battle, they were men being swallowed up by the sea. It was a fate every mariner dreaded. It held none of the honor of dying in battle, and yet was a fate that was all too likely to befall any of them.

  So they tossed the anchor line overboard, not even trying to retrieve the wood and stone contraption, and they pulled hard to distance themselves from the scene of horror astern. Such complete victory would normally have brought shouts and cheers to the throats of the Northmen, but now they remained silent, and wished for the screaming of the Irish to stop.

  And then, abruptly, it did. And that was even worse.

  For an hour at least, no one spoke. The men at the oars pulled with a steady rhythm. The men not at the oars tended to the wounded, or mended gear, or sharpened weapons. Thorgrim steered the ship. Starri took his position aloft, searching the ever-widening horizon. Ornolf quaffed mead.