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

by James L. Nelson

  Then Thorgrim stood as well, his hand resting ostentatiously on the hilt of Iron-tooth. He could not recall the last time anyone had been foolish enough to speak to him in that manner, and he could feel the fury rising like a swift incoming tide.

  “My men take no one’s scraps,” he said, his voice low and menacing, his eyes meeting and holding Ottar’s. “Let the Irish take scraps. Let Ottar take scraps. Thorgrim Night Wolf’s men will be first in all things.”

  “Night Pup?” Ottar sneered. “A man who would brag that his son fought his fight for him?”

  Then Iron-tooth was out and Ottar’s sword was out. Kevin shouted something and Eoin stammered a translation. But before either sword was raised there came the sound of men launching a wild and bloody attack on the camp, clear as the call of a wolf on a cold winter night.

  Chapter Eighteen

  If I were a king who reddens spears,

  I would put down my enemies;

  I would raise my strongholds;

  my wars would be many.

  Annals of Ulster

  Either Colman mac Breandan or Father Finnian had done something clever, and Louis’s guess was that it was Father Finnian.

  At the mouth of the River Avoca sat a sorry little fishing village. Finnian had kept riders hunkered down there watching for approaching longships. The Northmen had come an hour before dawn, surprising the village. But the watchers were well mounted and had managed to get out ahead of the raiders. They could hear the screams of the villagers as they raced away, bringing word of the enemy to Glendalough.

  Other men were stationed at some of the little villages along the Avoca and on the roads that led to Glendalough from various directions. When Kevin mac Lugaed appeared with a force of nearly one hundred men, Finnian and thus Colman knew it. As the five longships that had sacked the village by the sea moved up river, the men at Glendalough were kept informed.

  On hearing they would be marching to meet the enemy, Louis gave his poor, exhausted, battered, trainees - including those who had been wounded by their comrades - one hour to rest and then one hour to cook and pack food for two days, and to gather up the most basic of necessities, primarily weapons and what passed for armor. Two hours later the men were pushed into line and marched off, walking in the wake of the house guards who led the way on horseback and left the farmers to march in their dust.

  The rest of their matériel; the tents and kettles and spits, barrels of ale and barrels of fish and pork, would be left for carters at Glendalough to load on wagons and bring the following morning. Medicine, bandages and splints would be sent as well. If Louis had any say in these matters, and he reckoned he did, there would be men in need of those things by the end of the following day.

  One thing that Louis de Roumois had assumed would remain in Glendalough was Colman mac Breandan, but he did not. Even more of a surprise, he brought Failend with him.

  “Do you think it’s safe, bringing a woman to a fight such as this?” Louis asked as they made ready to leave the monastic city, as he realized it was Colman’s intention to bring her. It was not a real question and he did not expect a real answer.

  Colman made a snorting sound. “I told you before, if I leave this whore behind she’ll have half of Glendalough in her bed. She might be too tired even to hump you when you return. If you return.”

  Louis clenched his teeth but did not reply. He did not think he was Failend’s first lover, but still, because of the part that he had played in her infidelity, he was in no position to express outrage at Colman’s ugly words, or take more direct action. At least not yet. He would only be pushed so far, and he could see the limit coming.

  And Failend rode with them to meet the Northmen.

  They moved south, down out of the higher country, advancing through the remainder of the day and setting up the dúnad in a field just as the sun was touching the mountains to the west.

  It was full dark by the time Louis was able to make his way to Colman’s pavilion, which, unlike the other tents, had been stowed and brought on the march. For some minutes Colman made Louis stand fidgeting before condescending to address him.

  “My riders tell me the heathens have made camp on the north shore of the river,” he said. “Just above the Meeting of the Waters. About three miles from here. That traitorous whore’s son Kevin mac Lugaed and five longships filled with the sheep-biting Northmen. My men couldn’t get close enough to say for certain how many warriors they have. Two hundred or so? Their best guess.”

  Louis nodded as he listened. He noticed that Colman mac Breandan was not quite so mocking and dismissive as he had been, now that they were miles from Glendalough with a powerful enemy, one that would not be easily stopped, out there in the dark.

  “Two hundred men…” Louis repeated, playing with that figure in his head. About the same number as he had under his command, but none of the heathens or Kevin’s men would be farmers wielding spears like clumsy oafs. When the men-at-arms whom Father Finnian was off fetching arrived he would have warriors to match the Northmen, but until then he did not.

  But he did have some advantages. He had surprise. The Northmen would put sentries around the camp but he doubted they would be sending men out into the countryside. Neither would Kevin mac Lugaed. They would not think it necessary.

  “We need to know more of them…how many, exactly, how their camp is defended,” Louis said, as much thinking out loud as addressing Colman. “I will go tonight. I’ll bring Lochlánn. He’s a smart boy, knows the country around here.”

  Colman looked at him for a long moment, as if trying to decide how much lead to give him. Colman may have agreed to make Louis the de facto leader of the troops, but he clearly did not intend to give him free rein.

  “Very well,” he said at last. “If you’re taken I would ask you to have the good sense to die before you reveal our presence.”

  Louis took his leave, found an inviting patch of grass and lay down to sleep, giving instruction that he was to be woken at the change of the watch. It was less than two hours later that the guard shook him and he sat up, stiff and damp. With a grunt he stood and found Lochlánn among the sleeping men. He nudged the boy with his toe, told him to get up and come along. Lochlánn rose with no words of complaint because he was still too much asleep to speak, and mounted one of the horses for which Louis had sent.

  In the weak light of the moon they rode away from camp, the sound of the river tumbling along on their right hand. Finally Lochlánn, recovered enough for words, reined his horse to a stop and said, “We are not far from Cumar an dá Uisce. Meeting of the Waters. Where Colman’s riders said the heathen’s camp was.”

  Louis nodded. Time to leave the horses and continue on foot, quiet as they could. They dismounted and tied the horses to saplings just off the road, then continued on along the cool, wet grass. The land began to slope upwards and Lochlánn pointed to the higher ground just visible in the pale light.

  “They are camped just beyond there, I’ll warrant,” he whispered. They walked cautiously to the crest of the hill, keeping low so they would not be framed against the night sky. Once they were in a position to see, they lay down on their stomachs.

  The open ground sloped down for about twenty perches and then ended in a stand of trees that looked like a solid thing in the dark. Louis could see nothing of the camp save for a few points of dull orange light where the last embers of the cooking fires were burning themselves out.

  “There will be men in those trees,” Louis said, his voice as soft as a breath. The Northmen would be fools to not have watchmen ringing the camp, and Louis knew they were no fools. He had no doubt the tree line was filled with men peering out in their direction. “They will see anyone approaching these last few perches,” he said. “But we can get as close as this hill and not be seen.”

  “Yes…” Lochlánn said. He did not sound at all certain.

  They left the hill and went back to their horses, then Louis led the way toward the river. They ro
de as close to the water as they could, then dismounted and pushed through the bracken that grew up from the bank, moving slowly so that the sound of their passing was no more than that of the wind in the trees.

  They came at last to the edge of the water, then walked downstream toward the field where the Northmen and Kevin mac Lugaed had made camp. The river’s edge was just a narrow strip of land and the two of them moved silently over the soft ground, sometimes wading through water that had come up over the bank, sometimes walking on soft grass or mud, sometimes stepping carefully over the smooth, wet river stones or through the scrubby wood.

  Every few feet they came to a halt and listened. They could hear frogs and insects. They could hear the occasional burst of song from the camp and the lapping of the river on the shore. They could hear no sign of alarm.

  Fifty feet from the edge of the camp they stopped. Downstream, hauled up on the mud, Louis could see the dim shape of one of the longships, the others presumably hauled up behind it. In his mind he was picturing approaches and the places where sentries might be posted and when the Northmen might be most alert and when they might be most drunk.

  He turned to Lochlánn. “I’ve seen enough,” he whispered. “Let’s go.”

  It was several hours later, with the morning sun well up, when the two of them returned to camp and Louis made his way to Colman’s pavilion. The sentry at the flap – Colman had sentries now - announced him, but as he had come to expect he was made to stand outside for another ten minutes before he was summoned.

  Failend was at the far end of the tent, seated on a stool, looking as if she was trying to get as far from Colman as she could, which was likely the case. She looked up and met Louis’s eyes, her expression like a plea for help, then looked away.

  Colman was sitting at a small table with a plate of cold roast beef and oat porridge and a cup of ale in front of him. He glanced up, then turned back to the plate. He did not offer Louis a seat, did not even acknowledge him for another minute or so.

  “Yes?” Colman said at last.

  “I’ve been to look at the heathens’ camp,” Louis said. “It’s well positioned, but if we strike fast I think we can do some real hurt to them.”

  Colman grunted and said nothing. Louis stood for another minute, wondering if Colman was expecting more. He was about to offer his thoughts on how an assault might be carried out when Colman spoke.

  “How many men do the heathens have?” he asked.

  “About two hundred,” Louis said. That was the number that Colman’s rider had given; Louis actually had no idea, but he did not want to give an answer that might dissuade Colman from agreeing to an attack.

  “Two hundred?” Colman said, his eyes a bit wider now. “That is as many as we have, and half of our men are ignorant, clumsy bóaire. Are you that big a fool, or so hungry for glory, that you would attack in such conditions?”

  Louis had anticipated this, because it was not a stupid objection. “We will not beat them, and I don’t hope too. I want to hit them, fast and hard as we can, then withdraw. Let our farmers get a taste for a fight. Weaken the enemy, put them on their guard, kill as many as we are able. We know their leadership is divided between Kevin and whoever commands the heathens. Perhaps we can get them fighting amongst themselves.”

  With that Louis shut his mouth. He knew that in his eagerness to be at the enemy he was throwing every argument he could find at Colman, holding nothing in reserve, never a good tactic.

  Colman put a piece of cold beef in his mouth and looked at Louis as he chewed, slowly and thoughtfully. He reminded Louis of nothing so much as a cow chewing its cud, but Louis knew Colman’s mind was working hard. And Colman, for all his faults, was not stupid. Finally he swallowed, which was apparently the last step in his decision-making.

  “Very well,” he said. “The abbot and the rí túaithe say you are to have command of the men, so I would not think to interfere. You may not have my house guard. I will need them to protect my lovely bride on our way back to Glendalough while the heathens are amusing themselves tearing your lungs out. You may go now.”

  It was an odd dismissal, and it left Louis feeling as if he was floating. Colman was not so much giving him leave to act as abandoning him to his own devices with no direction or expectations. Because, of course, Colman expected Louis to lead the men to humiliating defeat.

  He stood for a minute outside Colman’s tent and watched as the camp came awake, men stoking up cooking fires and fetching buckets of water from the river. He saw Aileran, the captain of the men-at-arms, strapping his sword belt on over his mail.

  “Aileran, a word with you!” he called and stepped quickly toward the man, his uncertainty swept away with that one unequivocal action. Louis was all resolve now, and his desire, like lust, to bring the fight to the heathens drove him along. He was happier than he had been at any time since the day of his father’s death.

  But first he had to do the one thing that was so loathed, and yet so common, in the life of a fighting man. He had to wait.

  Chapter Nineteen

  If I were a king who reddens spears

  My wars would be many;

  my words would not be false

  Annals of Ulster

  They would attack at dusk. That was the plan Louis de Roumois discussed with Aileran. As he spoke, Aileran just nodded, and said nothing. When he was done the Irishman grunted and said, “We’ll murder the bastards, we will.”

  Dusk was a risk, but a tolerable one. With luck the heathens would have spent the day drinking and eating, certain, as night came on, that no enemy was coming. The fading light would make it easier to hide their approach and the sun would be more or less at their backs. The darkness that would come soon after would cover their retreat.

  A night attack would have been best, of course, a surprise in the dark hours, but Louis did not think his bumbling farmers were capable of such a thing. The added difficulty of organizing and fighting in the dark was an invitation to disaster.

  Ten hours after he made his plans with Aileran, Louis led his men toward the Meeting of the Waters. They took three hours to cover the distance, moving slow and quiet with scouts flung out ahead, and they approached the heathen’s camp unseen as far as they could tell. Now he and Lochlánn were once again moving along the bank of the river, seventy men-at-arms and spear-bearing farmers behind them. The rest of the men from Glendalough were secreted behind the rise that he and Lochlánn had climbed in the dark hours of the morning. They were waiting for Louis and his column to get in place.

  Louis held up his hand and the men behind him came to a stop and instinctively stepped toward the tree line, even though they were not yet visible from the heathens’ camp. Louis could see the longships from where he stood. His view was partially obscured by the trees, but still it seemed to him there were more than the five that Colman’s riders had first reported. There seemed to be more like ten ships there. He frowned, but in truth he did not think it mattered.

  Louis was not looking to win a victory. He did not plan on losing many men. He wanted to launch an attack, take the heathens by surprise, kill as many as he could, and then go. In a head-on battle, shield wall to shield wall, his men would be cut down in minutes. Less than half of them even had shields.

  Bear baiting. That was the only way to stop the heathens’ advance. Nip at them, weaken them, make them angry. Bite them and let them bleed.

  Louis stared off toward the slow-moving water of the Avoca and listened. He could hear the occasional shout or burst of laughter from the heathen camp, the sound of some heavy thing dropped to the ground. There was a breeze moving through the heavily leafed branches of the trees and that was good as it hid any sound his men might make moving through the brush. The sun was near the edge of the mountains to the west, the shadows growing long. The smell of evening was in the air.

  The other half of the army, the men behind the hill under Aileran’s command, would attack first. Aileran had wanted to send the spear-men
in first, to fling the untrained soldiers at the enemy, send them crashing into their ranks, leading with the wicked points of their spears. Most of the spearmen would die, but they would make the enemy stagger, and then the men-at-arms would come in after, climbing over the spear-men’s bodies to get at the warriors arrayed against them.

  It was the way that sort of thing was generally done, but Louis had insisted they turn it around. Send the men-at-arms in first, let their courage bolster the farmers behind, who would then advance and do great execution with their iron-tipped spears. And behind the farmers, a few more men-at-arms to see the spear-men advanced when they should, and to cut down any who showed an unacceptable tendency to hesitate.

  That was how Louis envisioned it playing out. He was seeing it again in his mind when he heard the battle cry cutting through the cool air, clear as if the man had been twenty feet away. Just one shout, a high, undulating yell, and then silence. Silence that lasted no longer than the time it took startled men to register what was going on and to respond in kind.

  Louis felt himself stiffen and sensed those behind him do likewise, heard the soft sound of his men taking a step forward in anticipation. He held up his hand to steady them. From beyond the trees that screened them from the heathens’ camp he could hear the shouting build, and with it, running, the clash of weapons snatched from where they had been set down. Panic and surprise were spreading, and he pictured Aileran leading his men-at-arms down the slope of the hill toward the line of trees and the first string of sentries positioned there.

  He could hear cries in the ugly language of the Northmen, and in Irish as well, but he could not make out the words. The sentries had done their first duty, which was to alert the camp. Now, with luck, they would do their second, which was to sacrifice themselves to slow the attackers, to die under the men-at-arms’ swords until the rest could grab up weapons and get into the fight.