Raider's Wake: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 6)

by James L. Nelson

  Failend looked back at the merchant ship, studied it a moment, looked back at Thorgrim and shrugged. But then she got to her feet and shuffled forward, stepping carefully on uncertain legs, to where she had stowed her bow and arrows in a place safe from the rain and spray.

  It was some time after they had arrived in Vík-ló that Failend mentioned her proficiency as an archer. She had just made note of it in passing, some comment about how she had always loved to shoot, how she had spent hours at it as a young girl, how she seemed to have a natural, God-given talent for it. Thorgrim could not even recall how the subject had come up, but he had been impressed with the sincerity and enthusiasm of her words, the humility with which she spoke.

  There were any number of bows in the longphort, but they were made for the warriors who sailed on the raiding voyages and Failend was too small to draw any of them. So Thorgrim asked Aghen to make a bow that was her size, and he did, out of seasoned yew, a beautiful example of the woodworker’s craft.

  Failend was delighted, wiping tears away when Thorgrim presented it to her. “Now you have no more excuses,” he said to her. “Now you must show us if you are as skilled as you say.”

  A bale of straw was set on the ground one hundred feet away from where Failend stood with bow and a full quiver. Dozens had turned out to watch, having heard about her supposed prowess.

  The first two arrows went wide of the mark, sailing off beyond the bale to stick like windblown saplings in the ground. The watchers were quiet, uncomfortably so. They liked Failend, and they certainly would not mock the woman who shared Thorgrim’s bed, but her failure was on painful display.

  Thorgrim watched Failend, watched her face. There was no suggestion of trouble, no indication she thought she had done poorly. Her expression was calm, thoughtful. She picked up another arrow, sighted down the length of the shaft, spun it in her fingers, then nocked it on the string. She raised the bow as she had the first two times, drew the arrow back, paused as she looked past the arrowhead to the bale beyond.

  Then she loosed the arrow and dozens of heads swiveled and tracked its flight, straight and true and right into the middle of the bale. Thorgrim heard a murmur of approval. Failend’s expression did not change. She picked up another arrow, examined it, nocked it, aimed and loosed. The arrow drove into the straw not even a hand’s breadth from the first, so deep that just the feathers and the last five inches or so were jutting out.

  At that Failend nodded. She picked up another arrow and sent that one into the narrow space between the first two. “There, I think I have the feel of the bow now,” she said, as much to herself as to the gathered watchers. She put a fourth arrow into the bale.

  There were a dozen arrows in her quiver and she put ten of them into the straw bale, grouped so close their ends could have been covered with a bowl. As the crowd began to drift away she retrieved the arrows and did it again.

  After that, a day did not go by that Failend did not spend some time putting arrows through bales of straw. Rain, wind, none of that mattered. In fact, she took particular care to practice in all conditions. She moved the bales progressively farther away, arranged them so she had to shoot up at them and then so she had to shoot down. She shot from behind obstacles and by firelight and in every situation she could imagine. And she was as good as she had said. Better, in truth. Much better.

  Now she came aft again, bow and arrows in hand, moving a little easier as she found her sea legs. “Do you want me to kill that fellow steering?” she asked as she drew an arrow from the quiver. No need to check how true it was; she had personally selected every arrow she had brought with her.

  “No, not at first,” Thorgrim said. “Just show him you can. Unless he’s a complete madman that should be enough to get him to heave to.”

  Just as Thorgrim said the word “madman” he noticed Starri coming down the aftermost weather shroud, hand over hand, his feet dangling below him. He dropped to the deck, grabbed the hem of his tunic and pulled it over his head and tossed it aside. Around his neck he wore an arrowhead on a leather thong, nearly identical to the one on Failend’s arrow except it was split nearly in two from the tip to notch. It had been shot at Thorgrim moments before a battle and had split itself on his sword. Starri had worn it since then, a sign, he was sure, that Thorgrim was blessed by the gods.

  Thorgrim’s glance moved up to Starri’s face. He had that look in his eyes Thorgrim knew well, one that usually meant someone was about to die.

  “I don’t think we’ll see any fight today,” Thorgrim called out to him. Starri looked back and nodded, but Thorgrim was not certain he understood the words. He turned to Harald. “We’ll have to keep some men by him, see he doesn’t run mad over these poor bastards,” Thorgrim said. Harald nodded.

  Failend had her bow out of the sheepskin cover she kept it in, an arrow on the string. She had gone down to the leeward side, where the sheer strake swept up into the tall sternpost, making the side of the ship high enough for her to brace herself against it. From there the knarr was just visible around the edge of the sail.

  She raised the bow and drew the string and stood as motionless as she could on the heaving vessel, her arm swaying up and down in counter to the pitching of the ship. The men were quiet, fore and aft, watching. There was only the sound of the wind in the rigging, the water on the hull.

  And then the twang of the bowstring. The arrow sailed out over the water, making a bright streak in the air and coming to a stop as it drove itself into the sternpost of the merchant ship, a few feet above the helmsman’s head. Cheers broke out along Sea Hammer’s deck.

  Failend turned to Thorgrim. “This is something I’ve never done, shooting at something moving while standing on something moving. And with so much wind.”

  “Well, you did very well, for all that,” Thorgrim said.

  Failend frowned. “I was aiming for the…the pole…what do you call it?”

  “The mast?”

  “The mast.”

  Whatever she had been aiming at, the arrow sent an unmistakable message, and the master of the merchant ship did not mistake it. It was him, apparently, at the helm and Thorgrim saw him look up at the arrow, look back at Sea Hammer and then begin to wave his arms and shout to his diminutive crew. The men began to run in various directions, taking up the sheets that held the sail taut and casting off the halyard.

  “Stand by to cast off and lower the yard away!” Thorgrim shouted to his own men, but by then they were already moving. He glanced astern. The three other ships in his fleet had tacked again and were struggling to get up with them, but they had half a mile of hard, upwind sailing before them. Thorgrim’s men would have plundered this prize by the time they even arrived.

  The knarr had turned up into the wind, her sail cast free and flogging and the yard came sliding down to mast. Sea Hammer surged up alongside, and her sail was cast off as well as the last of her momentum brought her up alongside the merchantman.

  Starri Deathless leapt up on the sheer strake, a battle ax in his hand. He teetered there for a second, poised to leap, but before Thorgrim could even give the order three men grabbed him and pulled him back, thrashing and screaming, to Sea Hammer’s deck.

  Grappling hooks flew across the gap of water, grabbing hold of the tubby knarr, and hands aboard Sea Hammer hauled the two ships together. Thorgrim finished buckling on his sword belt and strode forward, stepped up on the sheer strake where Starri had been making ready to jump, waiting for the ships to rise together, and stepped over onto the deck of his prize. Behind him he heard others follow him over.

  The merchantman’s crew were on the far side of the deck, standing in a sullen and frightened knot. They had no way of knowing what these Northmen would do, and if they were Frisians or Franks, no way of communicating. There was nothing that Thorgrim could see that would indicate from where this ship hailed.

  And then the master of the merchantman spoke, his voice loud and betraying no fear, the words, even the accent, perfectly
familiar to Thorgrim. “Pray, lord,” he called, “I beg you leave my men unharmed. I won’t waste my breath giving you leave to take what you want, since you’ll take it anyway, but there’s no need to harm my men. They were willing to heave to and put up no fight.”

  They were willing to heave to when they saw Failend could pick them off like birds on a branch, Thorgrim thought, but he did not say the words. Rather, he crossed the deck, eyes on the master, stopped ten feet from where the man stood, broad chested and defiant, his black and gray beard jutting out from his face.

  “You speak my language,” Thorgrim said. “Where are you from?”

  The master straightened a bit. “I am from Vik,” the master said. “In my younger days I went a-viking with a jarl named Ornolf the Restless. If you’re from that country you may know of him.”

  Thorgrim took another step forward, squinted at the man, tried to peer through the thick and graying beard, the weathered and lined face. Tried to see through twenty years of hard life to the man this man once had been. “Kalf Hrutsson?” he said.

  The master leaned forward and squinted the way Thorgrim was squinting. Then he straightened and smiled and exclaimed, “Thorgrim Ulfsson?” Then Thorgrim smiled too and the two men stepped quickly toward one another and embraced.

  “Thorgrim Night Wolf!” Kalf exclaimed again, slapping Thorgrim on the shoulder. “By the gods, I can hardly believe it! As I heard it you have been gone from East Agder for a long time. Gone a’viking again, with Ornolf, I heard.”

  Kalf, Thorgrim recalled, did not live in East Agder but had a farm several leagues from there.

  “There are stories that you were all killed by the Irish,” Kalf continued. “But you live!” He glanced at the men behind Thorgrim. “Is Jarl Ornolf here as well?”

  “Ornolf was killed last year. Killed by Danes. As for me, I still live.” Thorgrim turned and beckoned a confused-looking Harald over to him. “This is my son, Ornolf’s grandson, Harald. Harald, this is Kalf Hrutsson. He and I used to go a’viking with your grandfather. Many, many years ago.”

  “Many years ago,” Kalf echoed. “But you still have the strength for it, I see. Me, I am reduced to this.” He gestured to his fat, wallowing merchant ship. “This life, master of knarr, it’s as exciting as pushing a barrow of vegetables to the market. But it earns me a living and it frees me from my wife, for the summer anyway.”

  Thorgrim smiled. “I don’t know that I have so much strength, Kalf Hrutsson,” Thorgrim said. “I would like nothing better than to return to Vik, and my farm, but the gods have not willed it. How about you? Are you sailing for Vik now?”

  “No,” Kalf said. “The season is young. I’ll sail to Hedeby and then maybe to Frankia if I hear word that the trading is good there. I’ll return to Vik at Haustmánudur, when the harvest is coming in.”

  “I see,” Thorgrim said, and he felt a jab of envy. The gods seemed pleased to let this man come and go as he wished, while he himself seemed unable to ever leave this accursed Ireland. He knew what Starri would say about that: the gods did not care about this fellow Kalf who would rather haul wool cloth and barrels of fish and whetstones to trade rather than go into battle as a real man should. And Thorgrim guessed he was right, hoped he was right, but it did not make him feel so much better.

  And of course, he could not plunder Kalf’s ship.

  “You’re a lucky man, Kalf Hrutsson,” Thorgrim said. “There are longships full of warriors hungry for plunder all along this coast, and you meet up with an old shipmate and neighbor.”

  “I am lucky. That’s why I’m still alive,” Kalf said. “But you’re lucky too, Night Wolf.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because of all the merchants in this sea, I am the only one who will tell you this news. In a day or two, three great merchant ships will sail from Dubh-linn for Frisia. Not pathetic tubs like this, but fine ships loaded with wealth worth the having. I don’t know what the cargo will be. I’ve heard only rumors. But the master of these ships is a Frisian named Brunhard, and I know that wealth follows him wherever he sails.”

  Chapter Eight

  This once I felt when I sat without

  in the reeds, and looked for my love;

  body and soul of me was that sweet maiden…

  Odin’s Love Quests

  It had not rained in three days, the only good thing that had come to Conandil since the morning on the beach when Bressal mac Muirchertach had died. She opened her eyes in the pre-dawn light. The sky was dark, with just a hint of light in the east, and it was hard to tell if it was clear or covered with a uniform blanket of cloud.

  She lay on the ground, wedged between two others, but the warmth of their bodies felt good, and the rough cloth pulled over her gave her some protection from the morning chill and she did not want to move. She did not want to rise and face whatever horror awaited. She wanted to stay right where she was, warm between the men on either side of her. She wanted to remain there, motionless, and let death come softly for her.

  But it would not work that way, and she knew it. Death would not come, not yet.

  She had tried chasing death, flinging herself at death, but it had done no good. She had raised her Lord Bressal’s seax over her head and charged headlong at the Norse raiders as they leapt off their ships. She had shouted her battle cry, meant to warn Broccáin and the others of this new threat at their backs. She had meant to die and, if she was cunning and quick, to help a few of the heathens die as well. She did not intend to be taken as a slave. Not again.

  But she could not make the heathens kill her, and that was something she had failed to understand. They had not come to kill. They had come to take slaves, maybe the most valuable plunder to be found in Ireland. Certainly the most abundant.

  The Northmen had allied themselves with Eochu, Bressal’s perennial enemy. That was why Eochu’s men had taken pains to drive them down to the beach, where the Northmen could come from the sea. The partnership offered benefits to both parties. Eochu was free of Bressal, the Northmen gathered slaves, they all enriched themselves with silver. It had worked out very well.

  None of this Conandil knew when she charged at the heathens, her every thought aimed at killing or being killed. She headed straight for the nearest of them, a man who had been watching her approach for a minute at least. He stood with a grin on his face and Conandil could only think of using the seax in her hand to cut that grin away, along with half the man’s face. It would be easy. The heathen had his shield down at his side, the point of his sword resting on the sand.

  Conandil was still shouting when she brought the seax back over her shoulder and slashed at that infuriating grin. She saw the polished blade come around and then the Northman’s shield was up in front of him and the seax hit the wooden face with a deadened thump.

  She felt the shudder of the blow ripple through her arm and then the shield dropped again and she saw the man’s fist come swinging around wide. She was just starting to react when the fist connected with the side of her head and she lost focus and balance and any connection that she had to the world around her. She was aware of falling sideways but was unable to do anything to help herself. She was aware of coming to a jarring stop in the wet sand, and the feel of hands rolling her over and sharp cords cutting into her flesh as her wrists were bound tight.

  What little she could see—the sand, the surf beyond, the back end of one of the longships—seemed to swim in her eyes, blurred and unreal. She felt herself pulled to her feet, spun around, and then the world turned upside down and she had a vague thought that this heathen had thrown her over his shoulder, and then it had all gone dark.

  She was in the bottom of the longship when she woke, tossed on the rough deck like a sack of oats, her head pounding, wrists burning in pain. The steady rain had given way to a light mist, but Conandil was as soaked through as if she had been thrown into the sea.

  The wooden boards beneath her were not steady, but seemed to be heaving and rolling
. She thought that sensation was due to the blow she had taken to the side of her head, and it took her some time to connect the motion with the fact that she was on a ship. Which was apparently at sea.

  With that realization she felt a wave a nausea overtake her. She was a captive again, a slave, a thrall. This was not supposed to happen. She was supposed to die fighting the heathens. But now she understood that for one such as herself, not a warrior but a woman, and a small one at that, she was not going to die if her enemy did not wish her too.

  And then another thought came to her and it swept the nausea and the horror and the fear away. Broccáin! She tried to sit up and failed. Lying on the deck, wrists bound, it would take some maneuvering to shift her position.

  She glanced around. She could see men she recognized lying tossed around like the dead after a battle. They were also bound, and most were bleeding. Conaill and Dímmai, two of her husband’s house guard, were just feet away. Conaill’s face was covered in blood, but he was moving, and moaning slightly.

  They would not have taken dead men on the ship, Conandil thought.

  She rolled onto her back, shuffled backward until she found something solid to push against. The side of the ship, she guessed. She wedged her shoulder against it and pushed herself into a sitting position and looked around.

  The big square sail was set and the ship seemed to be moving fast. Conandil was too low to see over the side so she did not know if they were near land or miles out to sea, and at that moment she did not really care. Her eyes moved over the dozens of men who crowded the deck, lying on backs and sides and stomachs, some squirming, most lying still. Broccáin had been wearing a mail shirt when she had last seen him, one of the few Irish so equipped, but Conandil guessed the Northmen would have stripped him of that.

  What was he wearing? She tried to picture him, standing on the earthen wall of the rath, before he donned his armor. A red tunic, rust red… She looked desperately around. Nothing. No one wearing a tunic such as that Broccáin had been wearing, not even any of the fifty or so Northmen who crowded around the windward side of the ship, laughing, joking, swilling ale.