Glendalough Fair: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga) (Volume 4)

by James L. Nelson

  It was different now. Thorgrim guessed that some miles behind them, past the village of the dead, the sea tide was on the rise and it was pushing water up the River Avoca, forcing the current to a standstill, river and sea like the shield walls of two armies shoving against one another. Like all good things, it would not last. In another few hours they would be fighting the current again. But for now it was a relief and it was welcome.

  “We are some miles up the river now, Thorgrim,” Agnarr said, breaking into Thorgrim’s thoughts. “We will reach the Meeting of the Waters by nightfall, I would think. Sooner if the current remains as it is a while longer.”

  “Good,” Thorgrim said. He did not care for this nonsense, rowing through the Irish countryside, rarely able to see beyond the banks that hemmed them in. He was eager to get on with their real purpose, the raid on Glendalough. He was anxious to see if Kevin mac Lugaed would be true to his word, or if he had betrayed them already.

  The fleet had been underway soon after first light, with the river growing more narrow, the banks closing in on either side with each mile made good. There was something menacing about it. Open water meant safety, room to maneuver, but now the land was inching closer in, as if making a stealthy and silent approach. When they passed through the wooded sections it grew more hemmed in and unsettling still.

  Thorgrim’s eyes rarely left the banks. He was watching for watchers, looking to see if any were following their progress from shore. He was looking for riders carrying word of the Norsemen’s approach off to the minor kings who ruled that part of Ireland, men who commanded real warriors, men who could organize a credible defense if they wished. But he saw nothing.

  It was well past the noon hour when Starri, up aloft, spotted the smoke. Not a single, weak tendril this time, but a number of thin columns. They were rising up beyond a stand of trees, a great profusion of green in the distance that blocked the men’s sight of all to the northwest.

  “Not raiders, I don’t think,” Starri called down. “Doesn’t look like a village burning. Not enough smoke there. It looks like cooking fires to me.”

  Cooking fires, Thorgrim thought. He had reckoned they must be nearing the Meeting of the Waters; it could not be much farther upstream. Cooking fires meant men, a host of men, and if plans were unfolding as they should, those men would be Kevin’s. This was where they had arranged to meet. From here the Irish would advance by land while Thorgrim and his men continued to Glendalough in their ships.

  “You men not at the oars,” Thorgrim called out. “Make ready for battle. Mail, helmets, weapons.” He stepped up onto the after deck and looked back in his ship’s wake. Blood Hawk’s bow was no more than forty feet astern of Sea Hammer. Thorgrim held aloft a sword and helmet until Bersi saw him and waved his acknowledgement and ordered his men to arms as well.

  Plans were fine, Thorgrim figured, but readiness was better, because plans rarely played out as intended.

  There was a bend in the river a few hundred yards ahead. Thorgrim could see it now, and he could see the smoke that Starri had reported, thin dark lines against the blue sky. A camp, he was certain. He had seen such things often enough.

  “Thorgrim!” Starri called down again. “I see another river to the west. It meets this one just as that Irishman described.”

  “This must be it,” Agnarr said. “Meeting of the Waters.”

  “It would seem to be,” Thorgrim agreed. “The other river, the camp.” He paused to slip his arms into the mail shirt Segan held up for him, straightened, and let it fall into place. He raised his arms as Segan buckled his sword around him. “Perhaps Kevin has been speaking the truth,” he added.

  Once he had donned his armor Thorgrim stepped off the afterdeck and walked toward the bow, the man stationed there stepping aside as he saw the lord of Vík-ló approach. Thorgrim rested his hand on the tall stem, the leering head of Thor six feet above him. He looked forward. The river was bending a bit to the north, and as Sea Hammer pulled around that bend, more and more of the stretch of water beyond their starboard bow was revealed.

  Meeting of the Waters, Thorgrim thought. He could see it now. Off the larboard bow was the mouth of the other river, the one that met the River Avoca at that place to form a sharp angle like three roads intersecting at a single spot. This is where they had agreed to meet up, Kevin mac Lugaed and his men, Thorgrim and his fleet, on that afternoon in Vík-ló with the rain driving down on the thatch of Thorgrim’s hall. Meeting of the Waters. Kevin had assured them they would know it when they came to it. And he was right.

  Thorgrim looked toward the river that joined the Avoca from the west. He could not recall the name and he didn’t really care. That was not the river that would carry them to Glendalough. Thorgrim looked back over the starboard bow, toward the Avonmore, the river up which they would ascend, and he almost jumped in surprise. Here was the one thing he had not expected to see. Longships.

  There were five of them, all run bow-first into the mud of the river bank. They were a couple hundred yards upstream and Thorgrim could see they were made fast with ropes running over their bows to the shore. Their masts were still stepped, yards lowered onto gallows, figureheads still in place.

  Thorgrim turned and walked aft toward Sea Hammer’s stern. “Make ready! There are five longships tied to the shore up ahead,” he called as he walked. “We’ll know soon enough if they are friends or men looking for a fight.”

  Harald fell in behind him – there was not room enough with the sea chests in place for two men to walk side by side – and followed him aft. “Are these the men who sacked that village?” he asked.

  “I would guess they are, but I can’t know,” Thorgrim said. He stopped by the helmsman and turned and looked forward over the bow. “Bring the ship in downstream of those others, right there,” he said, pointing to a spot next to the closest of the distant longships. The vessels, run up on the bank as they were, looked to Thorgrim like horses staked out on a line.

  “Yes, lord,” the helmsman said and nudged the tiller aft.

  “These Northmen,” Harald said, pointing with his chin toward the longships, “what do they want? What brings them here?”

  Thorgrim could not help but smile. His son was strong and brave and tireless, but he was not always the most clever, particularly when the tension was rising. Thorgrim hoped age and experience would cure that.

  “I don’t know, son,” Thorgrim said. “I don’t know anything more of these men than you do.”

  Harald nodded, then turned and looked forward in the direction in which Thorgrim and every man not on an oar was looking. The tide had turned, or perhaps they were too far up river now to feel any effect from the sea, but either way they were pulling against the current and their approach to the landing place was slow, deliberate, and closely watched by the men on shore.

  Thorgrim could see them as they closed the distance. A crowd of men, too many to guess at numbers. He could see points of color that he imagined were shields on men’s arms.

  “Night Wolf!” Starri called. He was still at the mast head.

  “Yes?”

  “I can see tents, a score of tents at least, set just back from the bank. The smoke is coming from there.”

  Tents. A war camp, Thorgrim thought. Whoever these men were, they were prepared for some serious campaigning, ready to leave their ships if need be and advance overland.

  Who are you, you miserable sons of whores? he wondered. Is Kevin there as well? Or did you kill him and his men?

  The helmsman began to turn Sea Hammer to starboard, bringing her in toward the shore. He was doing a good job, playing the current, setting up higher than he normally would and letting the stream push the ship down to where he wanted her to be. Thorgrim did not feel the need to issue orders. Harald left his side and headed forward and with a few other men wrestled out two of the long walrus hide ropes they would use to tie the ship to the shore.

  Starri Deathless came down the backstay hand over hand and dropped
to the deck beside Thorgrim. They were closing fast with the shore. Thorgrim studied the men lining the river bank, watching them. Do we go ashore and confront them, or pull for the middle of the river? This was the moment in which he had to decide, though in truth he knew he had decided already.

  “What think you, Starri?” Thorgrim asked.

  “Those fellows ashore are gawking like farmers at some festival. They are not making ready to fight,” Starri said with undisguised disappointment in his voice.

  “I think you’re right,” Thorgrim said. What men he could see numbered about the same as his. There were a few banners flying on staffs above their heads, but the warriors were not arrayed for battle. If it was a trap, they would walk into it, but they would do so willingly, and they would show no hesitancy or fear.

  Off his starboard side Thorgrim saw the other ships turning as well so that they would each come to rest downstream of Sea Hammer. Then he saw Godi, standing just forward of the afterdeck.

  “Godi, get my banner,” he said, and the big man nodded and headed forward to find it. Segan had sewed it up back in Vík-ló, and did so with surprising skill. Thorgrim had never had a banner before but he guessed he should have one now to reflect his new status. Segan had cut up some of Grimarr Giant’s old tunics to make the flag, a grey wolf’s head on a red swallowtail pennant.

  Godi pulled the banner staff from where it was stowed on the larboard side and stepped aft, unfurling the pennant as he walked. He stood just behind Thorgrim holding the red flag aloft as Sea Hammer’s bow ran up into the mud and the ship came to a gentle stop. Downstream, the other ships ran up on the shore as well, their oars rising with a neat symmetry and disappearing inboard.

  Under Harald’s direction the men of Sea Hammer ran a gangplank over the bow and out to dry land. Thorgrim, of course, had no qualms about leaping into the mud in which the bow was lodged. He had done it a thousand times. But now there were strangers watching, and they had to see that he was no fisherman or half-starved merchant captain. He was the commander of these vessels, the Lord of Vík-ló, and not a man who muddied his feet going ashore.

  Once things were ready Thorgrim stepped forward, the massive Godi walking behind with the banner snapping overhead. Thorgrim stepped onto the gangplank and walked down the sloping wood. Godi stepped on behind him and his great weight made the board sag and nearly toppled Thorgrim over into the mud, but happily he retained his balance.

  Thorgrim reached the grassy bank and looked around. There were a hundred or more expressionless Northmen watching him, some with shields, some without, some in mail and some not. The sun was dropping lower in the west and washing the host with orange light that glinted off helmets and the bosses of shields. But no one had a weapon drawn, and that told Thorgrim that he had been right. The men on shore were not preparing for battle. Not yet, in any event.

  He ran his eyes along the banners waving above their heads. Boar’s heads, eagles, there were none that he recognized. And then he saw one he did. A green banner, a raven with wings spread splayed across it.

  The Irishman, Kevin…Thorgrim thought. Apparently he has found some other allies.

  Without looking, Thorgrim knew that Harald was at his side and he saw Bersi coming over the bow of Blood Hawk, and knew Kjartan and Skidi would join him as well. And then the crowd of men parted and Kevin was there, smiling his broad smile, his sharp-cut beard as neat as ever, his hand extended. He took Thorgrim’s hand and spoke and Harald said, “Kevin says welcome and they were waiting for us. Won’t you come to his tent where we can drink and eat and talk.”

  As Harald spoke, Thorgrim kept his eyes on Kevin and nodded as he listened. Kevin turned and they walked through the crowd of silent, watching men. Thorgrim followed, and behind him Harald and Godi and then the captains of the other ships.

  The camp was laid out in a field several hundred yards wide and ringed by woods that stood like a palisade wall. The trees hid the camp from view of the countryside beyond, and Thorgrim assumed Kevin had put men in the trees looking out for anyone approaching. It was a good position.

  The camp itself consisted of a few dozen tents and pavilions as Starri had reported, neatly lined up with cooking fires burning in front of several of them, the flames bright in the fading daylight. Kevin’s was the largest tent, a wide, round structure, ten feet tall with scalloped edges where the roof and walls met. Thorgrim always had the impression that Kevin enjoyed his luxuries and that pavilion suggested that he did indeed. Not for the rí túaithe of Cill Mhantáin were the rigors of a military campaign.

  Kevin held the flap open and Thorgrim stepped in. There were candles burning. The light was dim but sufficient to see the three men sitting on small benches on the far side of the tent. They were Northmen. The nearest was a big man, nearly as big as Godi. His hair was blond and long and done in two long braids that hung down on either side of his head. There was a wicked scar that ran from the corner of his right eye to the point where it disappeared into his yellow beard. The scowl on his face seemed settled there, the way a cart, if it is never moved, will settle itself into the earth.

  The man held Thorgrim’s eyes and Thorgrim held his, and neither showed any change of expression or indeed any expression at all. This man would be the leader of the other fleet, Thorgrim guessed. He had learned through long use not to judge someone until he had something on which to base his opinion. But he guessed this big bastard was the one who had brought pointless and bloody death to the pathetic folk at the fishing village, and he was having a hard time not disliking the man on sight.

  Kevin was speaking again and Harald said, “Kevin says to sit, all of you, please sit.” A servant brought more benches into the pavilion and Thorgrim and his men sat. Harald was at his right side, Bersi on his left, Skidi Oddson next to him. Kjartan, Thorgrim realized, was not there. Strange.

  “Kevin says this is Ottar Thorolfson,” Harald continued, “and he is called Ottar Bloodax and he commands the men of the longships at the river.” Thorgrim nodded, his eyes once again meeting Ottar’s.

  “It was you who sacked the fishing village at the mouth of the river,” Thorgrim said. He spoke in the Norse tongue. He was not asking a question.

  “It was,” Ottar said. “Better that than let them spread word of our coming.”

  Either you are a fool or you take me for one, Thorgrim thought. Slaughtering an entire village would not stop word that the Northmen had come from spreading. Just the opposite. But Ottar was making little effort to sound as if he believed it himself. Thorgrim had already guessed why someone would inflict such savagery on that village, and he saw now that he was right. Ottar liked it.

  Kevin was the last to sit, and when he did, servants scurried around the now-crowded pavilion handing out cups of wine. When each man had a cup, the man sitting beside Kevin began to speak, and to speak in Norse, though with a decidedly Irish sound to the words.

  He has his own man to translate now, Thorgrim thought. Of course he would. It was clear Kevin was looking beyond Vík-ló for the chance to grow wealthy off the Northmen.

  “My name is Eoin, and I am blessed to be able to speak your Norse tongue,” the man said. “Lord Kevin welcomes you and begs I make formal introductions. Lord Ottar, this is Thorgrim Night Wolf, who is Lord of Vík-ló.”

  “I thought Grimarr Knutson was lord of Vík-ló,” Ottar said, his voice like a boar’s grunt.

  “He was,” Thorgrim said. “But he thought I had done him wrong. My son, Harald,” he nodded his head toward Harald, “killed him.”

  Ottar grunted again. That was apparently the extent of his concern for Grimarr Knutson.

  Eoin continued. “My lord says we are very fortunate to have two such men as yourselves, with the warriors under your commands. He says if we move quickly on Glendalough, move together, we can gain riches and help my lord extend the reach of his kingdom. And then he looks forward to further cooperation with his friends.”

  Thorgrim sensed that ugly feeling rising agai
n in his gut and he knew he had been a fool to trust the Irishman. And he knew it was too late now, that he could not pull back and still save face and keep his men together. If he tried, half of them would go off with Ottar. Northmen would follow the bold leader. They would rarely consider whether or not it was wise to do so. It was time to lock shields and advance.

  “Tell Kevin,” Thorgrim said, his eyes still on Ottar, “that he never said anything to me about joining with Ottar and his men. Tell him I don’t care to have plans changed at the last minute.” He wondered if Ottar had also been surprised by all this. The look on the man’s face suggested that indeed he had.

  Kevin made reply and the note in his voice caught Thorgrim’s attention and he turned his eyes from Ottar to the Irishman. There was a hesitancy, a nervousness in Kevin that Thorgrim had not seen before. The man was afraid. He was playing some game here and he was losing control.

  I knew there was a limit as to how far I could trust you, Thorgrim thought. Have we reached that limit now?

  Eoin translated Kevin’s reply. “My lord did not know that Ottar and his men would be at sea when he spoke with you at Vík-ló.”

  “That’s too bad,” Thorgrim said. “Because now we have a problem. Me and my men will not submit to Ottar’s authority, and I don’t guess he and his men will submit to ours.” At that Ottar grunted his agreement. Eoin translated. Thorgrim did not bother to add that neither of them would be willing to submit to Kevin’s authority. He did not have to. That was understood by all present.

  Before Kevin could reply Ottar drained his cup and tossed it aside. He stood, and in doing so he towered over the others in the pavilion. “I do not care what was said and what was not. I don’t care for words at all. I will go up the river and I will plunder this Glendalough and I will take what I wish. The rest of you may follow and you may pick up the scraps me and my men leave behind.”