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

by James L. Nelson

  Hall and Jokul looked at one another. They shrugged. It apparently had not occurred to them to find out. “They’re slaves, seems like,” Jokul said. “So Irish, most likely.”

  That was true enough. Behind them, Harald could see more of the men from Blood Hawk climbing back aboard. They too had clothing and weapons smeared with blood, though none of them were bathed in it the way Starri was.

  “Let’s get Fox and Dragon secured alongside, then we’ll find out what’s going on. And figure what we’ll do next,” Harald said.

  The men from Blood Hawk found lengths of rope under the ship’s deck and with that they hauled Fox alongside and tied her in place with heavy rope fenders between the ships to keep them from grinding together. Dragon was lashed to Fox’s side in the same way, so the three ships formed an odd floating island a mile off the Irish coast.

  Harald turned to a knot of men standing by Blood Hawk’s mast. “Collect up the bodies of the dead. Any slaves dead, get them out of the collars, but leave the others secured. If there are any of our men dead, put them aboard Dragon, wounded aboard Blood Hawk. The other dead, the ones we were fighting, they can go overboard.” Harald did not say to take the valuables from the dead men first; he knew he didn’t have to.

  The men turned to their work and Harald watched them and thought about the others; Thorodd and Fostolf and their crews. What had become of them? This Brunhard was a slaver. If he had captured the men he might have put them in chains to join the other captives. Harald hoped that was the case. If the men were enslaved, then they could be rescued.

  He did not like to think on the alternative.

  Harald stepped across from Blood Hawk and back onto Fox. The slaves at the oars sat silent, watching him. He walked down the center of the ship, between the lines of rowers. There was one man he was looking for.

  He found him just forward of the main mast. The big man who had ordered the others to sit and show their hands, the man whom the others had obeyed. Harald stopped in front of him and looked down. The chained man met Harald’s eyes, and his look was defiant, as if daring Harald to do his worst.

  Harald regarded him for a moment. His hair was a tangle but his beard was not so long, which suggested it had until recently been neatly trimmed. His face was filthy. His tunic had a rent, and there was dried blood around the torn fabric, but it was not as filthy as the man’s skin. The garment was more in the Norse fashion than the Irish, and it looked to Harald like a tunic he had seen one of the men aboard Fox wearing. He wondered if these men had taken the clothing from Fox’s crew after they had killed them.

  “Who are you?” Harald asked the man. He spoke in Irish and he noticed with some small satisfaction the flicker of surprise on the man’s face.

  “My name is Broccáin mac Bressal,” the man said.

  “You command these men?” Harald asked, nodding toward the line of chained oarsmen.

  “I did. Once,” Broccáin said.

  “And now you are a slave?” Harald said.

  “Before we killed the crew of this ship I was a slave. Now I do not know what I am.”

  Harald smiled at the answer. In truth he did not know what Broccáin or any of these men were, either. Trading in slaves was a lucrative business for the Northmen, but he was not so sure his father would want the problems that went along with getting a cargo of human beings across the seas to the slave markets. Thorgrim could not seem to get himself out of Ireland; he would probably not relish the challenge of getting these men out of that country as well.

  “What happened?” Harald asked. “How do you come to be here? Who are the men you killed?” This time he nodded toward the stern where men from Blood Hawk were pulling spears from corpses, searching the bodies for valuables, then tossing them overboard.

  “We were taken in battle, most of us,” Broccáin replied. “In Dubh-linn we were sold as slaves to a Frisian bastard named Brunhard. He set us to the oars. You chased us…at least I’m guessing it was you…and Brunhard set your sail on fire. When another of your ships attacked us…this one,” he added, nodding down at the deck, “Brunhard had his men aboard, armed, and he gave us spears and told us to fight.

  “Your ship was taken, and then the second one the same way.” At that he nodded toward Dragon, tied up alongside. “Then, when you appeared, we convinced the sailors they could not outrun you, but together we could take your ship as we took the others. They were greedy and frightened, so they attacked you as well.”

  Harald nodded. This made sense. “You had spears,” he said. “But you did not use them on us, you used them on the ship’s crew.”

  Broccáin spat on the deck. “Dogs,” he said. “We were happy to kill them. Frisian swine. We didn’t know what you heathens would do, but we reckoned it could not be any worse than those bastards.”

  We’ll see, Harald thought. “And what became of the crews of these ships? The men you fought?”

  Broccáin looked down at the deck, the first time his eyes had left Harald’s. Then he looked back up again. “Dead. The lot of them,” he said. “Any who lived through the fight, Brunhard had them killed.”

  Harald looked at the Irishman and shook his head slowly. All those men, he thought. He was used to fighting, to slaughter, but to see the crews of two ships wiped away, that was something else.

  They could not get those men back, but they could get vengeance for their deaths at least, and that was something. Thorgrim was already set on getting his revenge on Brunhard, and he had not yet even learned of this outrage. They would see that Brunhard paid for it all. Harald hoped the dead could appreciate it.

  His men had finished dumping the bodies into the ocean so he called out to them and said, “There are spears hidden here by some of the rowers. Find them and bring them aboard Blood Hawk. Search Dragon as well.”

  Harald watched the men absently, his mind elsewhere. Now he had several problems with which to contend. He had three ships and not enough men to row them, unless he kept the Irish slaves. But he was not sure he wanted to do that. Brunhard was somewhere ahead. His father had been counting on Fox and Dragon to chase Brunhard into Sea Hammer’s reach, but those two ships had been taken and the gods alone knew where Brunhard was now.

  “Broadarm!” He heard Starri Deathless’s voice behind him, buoyant now as the madness had run out of him and in its place the good cheer that came with mayhem and slaughter. He stopped at Harald’s side. He was still streaked with blood, a frightening sight, but he had tied his hair back with a leather thong and that was something of an improvement.

  “You see, the gods told me to sail with you,” he continued. “And there’s Thorgrim, floating around in the sea like some wretched log, while we fight like men. And what do we do now?”

  Harald nearly said, “I don’t know,” but he stopped himself. Such an admission was not at all the sort of thing that a man in command would say. So instead he said, “I have an idea, but for the moment…”

  He got no further. Starri’s face lit up brighter and he pointed to the man seated behind Broccáin and he said in a loud voice, “Say! We know this fellow!”

  Harald looked at the man at whom Starri was pointing. “We do?” Harald asked. The man, like the others, was wearing a tunic in the Norse fashion which did not fit him well. His hair was shorter than most, but in the same sort of disarray. He had a week’s growth of beard and his face was as filthy as any of the other men. Harald had indeed noticed the man would not meet his eyes, but he had figured it was out of fear of the new master, and not wanting to attract attention or seem defiant.

  But the man was looking up now, and there was most certainly defiance in his face, and Harald could see Starri was right. Through the dirt and the beard he could see that he did know this man.

  Then it came back to him.

  “Louis?” he said. “Louis, from Glendalough?”

  Louis stared back at him. He did not speak. But Starri did.

  “There, you see, Broadarm! I told you I never forget a
man’s face or the way a ship looks. Yes, that’s him, the Frank, Louis, from Glendalough.”

  Harald stared at the man, mouth open, a storm of thoughts racing through his head, such a tempest that no thought would take solid form. He had not seen Louis in many months. He pictured him leaping out of their hiding place and running toward their enemies who were in pursuit, to expose them and ruin the trap Thorgrim and the Irish bandit Cónán had set. The last time he had seen Louis the Frank he was mounted behind one of the Irish men-at-arms who had been hunting them down and riding off.

  It all came back as he looked at Louis sitting on the sea chest, looking back at him without a hint of regret or fear. “You son of a bitch!” Harald growled. He pulled Oak Cleaver from his sheath, a fast, practiced move, swept it up over his head and down at Louis’s skull.

  But Louis had anticipated the move, apparently, and with both hands he snatched up the chain that hung loose from his neck to Broccáin’s and held it up. Oak Cleaver came down on the chain and stopped inches from the top of Louis’s head. Louis tried to wrap the chain around the sword, to control the blade that way, but Harald jerked his arm back, jerked the blade clear. He set his left foot forward, ready to thrust the tip through Louis’s heart when he felt Starri’s hands on his arm, heard the man’s voice in his ear.

  “Hold there, Broadarm, hold! There’s no honor in cutting down a man in chains! Let us be reasonable here.”

  The absurdity of Starri Deathless telling him to be reasonable broke through the dark fury like sparks from a flint and steel. Harald let his body relax. He lowered Oak Cleaver but he did not sheathe it. And in the place of the fury came a great curiosity.

  “How do you happen to be here?” he asked. “Were you taken in battle, too?”

  It was Broccáin who answered. “He’s here because he saved my wife.”

  Harald shifted his eyes from Louis to the Irishman. Broccáin continued. “My wife, Conandil, was taken when we were. Brunhard’s men were going to rape her. Louis was aboard because he had paid for passage to Frisia. He stopped Brunhard’s men. For his pains, Brunhard knocked him out and made him a slave as well.”

  Conandil? Harald thought. Of all of Broccáin’s words, the name leapt out at him. He had known a Conandil. Could it be the same woman? How strange was this, to keep meeting people he had thought to never see again.

  I have been in this country too long, he thought, and once again he realized he was echoing his father.

  A puff of wind caught his long yellow hair and whipped it around in his face. He brushed it aside as he looked to Broccáin and then Louis, but that motion, brushing his hair aside, had set something else whispering in his head. And then the whispering turned into a word.

  Wind.

  Harald turned from the men on the sea chests and his head reflexively turned in the direction from which the wind was blowing. From the north and east, with a cold touch to it. He realized that in the time his mind had been taken with the fighting and the things that followed, the sky had turned to a milky white, an unbroken dome of gray overhead from horizon to horizon.

  They had enjoyed a long stretch of good weather. Too long. Those spirits of Ireland that controlled such things were not often so generous, and now they were done. Harald had indeed been in that country a long time, long enough to understand the workings of the weather there. He knew that this gray dome would not be breaking up soon. It would not be breaking up until it had played host to its unwelcome brethren, the rain and the wind.

  Wind… Harald thought again. That changed everything. Harald made his thoughts fall into order, like setting a group of warriors into a shield wall. They had to catch up with Brunhard. They had to make certain Brunhard went where they wanted him to go. How best to do that?

  “Broadarm?” Starri said, pulling Harald from his silent thoughts.

  Harald looked down at Broccáin and Louis once more and said, “We’ll see to you shortly, there are more pressing things to do. Come along, Starri.” Then in a loud voice called, “Men of Blood Hawk, to me, come to me.”

  He stepped over Fox’s low rail amidships and back aboard the much bigger Blood Hawk and the rest of the men came quickly behind. “Here’s what we’ll do,” he said, speaking to the assembled crew, a much smaller contingent than would normally be aboard the longship. “The wind is getting up, and that means Brunhard will be sailing,” he said. He wondered if he was once again explaining too much, but he did not have time to consider the issue so he went on. “We’ll never catch him under oars, and I don’t think Fox or Dragon could catch him, either.” The smaller ships could keep up with Brunhard’s fleet, certainly, and could probably out sail them, but to make up the distance they had lost so far, Harald did not think was likely.

  “We’ll have to sail Blood Hawk,” he continued. “We’ll take the sails off Fox and Dragon and sew them together. It will not be a pretty thing, but it will work. And we’ll set up some new shrouds that will bear the weight.”

  “What of the other ships, Dragon and Fox?” someone called out.

  “And these Irishmen, these slaves?” another asked.

  “Let’s see to the sails and shrouds, and then I’ll tell you my plan for that,” Harald said, though what he really meant was that they should get to work on the sails while he tried to think what he would do next. “Go!”

  The men scattered, some swarming over the lowered yards to unbend the sails from the smaller ships, others fishing out twine and needles with which to sew the sails together. Two men ran a thin rope along the top of Blood Hawk’s bare yard to measure the length so they might figure how much the two sails from the smaller ship would have to overlap to make them the proper length for the bigger vessel.

  Harald watched with satisfaction as the men fell to their various tasks. These were experienced seafarers. They had crossed oceans to get where they were on the coast of Ireland. They knew what to do without Harald’s supervision.

  “Starri, would you go to the masthead and have a look around?” Harald said next. The last thing he needed was a surprise coming from the sea. And Starri nodded and grabbed onto one of the shrouds and headed aloft with all the effort of a man falling into bed.

  Very well, now I must think, Harald thought. He had to sort the random heap of ideas in his head so that he might examine them. He looked over the three ships rafted together, moving in the odd way of ships bound to one another. The wind was already rising a bit and setting them down on the Irish coast, a lee shore, but they were a couple miles off at least and in no danger for some time.

  What is the most important thing? Harald asked himself, by which he meant, what would his father, Thorgrim, consider the most important thing. Get Brunhard, Harald concluded. Run him down. After the incident with the flaming arrow, Thorgrim Night Wolf’s every thought would be directed toward vengeance on the Frisian who had tricked him so.

  That meant the ships Fox and Dragon were secondary. And the slaves as well. Thorgrim did not even know about the slaves. In truth, if he had known that Brunhard’s cargo was mostly slaves Harald doubted his father would have bothered to try to plunder the ships in the first place. Thorgrim owned slaves, had dealt in slaves before, but generally he thought the business not worth the bother. It took a certain kind of man to make a living as a slaver, and Thorgrim was not that sort.

  Harald found himself smiling at the irony. All this for something Thorgrim would not have wanted in the first place.

  And even as that thought came to him, Harald came to a decision. He climbed over Blood Hawk’s side and onto Fox’s deck, then strode along to where Broccáin and Louis were still sitting, chained and waiting.

  “Broccáin,” Harald said. “You Irish, you seem to have learned how to row a ship.”

  “We have,” Broccáin said. “Not a skill we’ve wished to know, but we have.”

  “Here’s what I’ll do,” Harald said. “There’s a beach to the north of here. I’ll unchain you and your men and let you row these two ships to the
beach. You run them ashore and you haul them up on the sand as far as you can and you tie them to whatever you can tie them to. Then you’re free to go. Head off along the shore, make your way back to your homes.”

  Broccáin looked at Harald and did not speak at first, and Harald knew the man was considering this, wondering what trick was being pulled. “That’s it?” Broccáin asked. “You’ll just let us go?”

  “That’s it. I have other things I must worry about. You can have the spears the Frisians gave you as well, so you won’t be without arms.” It would seem to Broccáin that Harald was doing him a great kindness, but in truth Harald had little choice. He had to catch up with Brunhard before Brunhard slipped past Sea Hammer, and that meant he would have to leave the two smaller ships behind in any event. They could never keep up under oars, and even if they could, Harald did not have enough people to man them.

  This way, the ships would be run up on the beach and there was at least the possibility they would be waiting there if and when he and Thorgrim came back for them.

  “You’re not concerned we’ll just row away with your boats, then?” Broccáin asked.

  Harald shrugged. “You can if you wish. The wind’s getting up and soon it will be blowing you hard on shore. Unless you’re fine ship handlers there’s a good chance you’ll be wrecked on the rocks. I’d suggest setting the ships in the soft sand, and quick as you can.”

  Broccáin nodded. This made sense to him.

  “One other thing,” Harald said. “Louis stays with us.” He knew that Thorgrim would not be pleased if he discovered that they had Louis from Glendalough in their hands and then let him go.

  Broccáin frowned. He looked back at Louis and then up at Harald. This was a dilemma Harald had anticipated. Broccáin had a certain quality about him; Harald guessed that he was one of these minor nobles with whom Ireland was overrun. He said that Louis had saved Conandil from Brunhard’s men. A man of honor would not abandon the man who had saved his wife from such a fate, and Broccáin struck him as a man of honor.