Night Wolf: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 5)

by James L. Nelson

  A great blackened circle on the ground still marked the place where Valgerd had died, and Aghen was pretty sure Ottar would never have it cleared away. It served too well as a silent warning. He might refresh it, add more charred wood and flesh to the pile, but he would not have it cleared away.

  Aghen moved past the cluster of longhouses and shops where those people who had lived in Vík-ló before Ottar, before even Thorgrim, made their homes, and approached the big halls by the gate. As he did, the longphort began to look more like the aftermath of a battle, and Aghen was put in mind of the hours following the great fight with Grimarr and the Irishman, Lorcan.

  Then, as now, there were men strewn about the trampled dirt outside the hall and lying across the plank road. After the fighting, those on the ground had been mostly dead. In truth, some of these men might be dead as well, killed brawling or dead of too much drink. Aghen had seen both, often enough. But most of Ottar’s men, Aghen knew, would rise the way Mar’s Irish wife said her God did, and unlike the Christ God, they would set in to drinking and fighting again.

  He reached the door of the hall and found it was partway open. He looked through, into the dim-lit interior. He could see more bodies tossed around in various odd positions. Ottar, he guessed, must be somewhere among them.

  Aghen pushed the door and it swung open an inch more and then stopped. He pushed harder, felt it move reluctantly. He heard a groan and a muted curse from the other side and realized someone had passed out against the door, so he shoved harder until the man cursed again and the door was open enough for Aghen to squeeze his thin frame though.

  Ottar was on the raised sleeping platform that lined the far side of the hall, a great heap of flesh and cloth and yellow hair splayed out on the furs spread out there. The place was a cacophony of snores, but still Ottar’s made an impressive base note that could be heard above all others.

  Aghen crossed the big room. It smelled of smoke and stale drink, roast meat, vomit and piss. Aghen pressed his lips together. He stopped at Ottar’s side. He considered shaking him, but he did not think Ottar would take kindly to that, and, more to the point, he couldn’t stand touching the man.

  “Ottar,” he said in a voice just above a whisper. “Ottar,” he said again louder.

  Ottar stirred but showed no sign of waking. “Ottar!” Aghen said, nearly yelling, but Ottar just groaned and rolled his massive head.

  Aghen reached out with his foot and nudged Ottar’s shoulder and shouted again. He nudged harder and Ottar stirred and Aghen put his foot down before Ottar’s eyes opened and he saw what the shipwright had done.

  “Ravens tear your liver out,” Ottar muttered as he struggled to open his eyes and prop himself up on his elbows. When he accomplished that, he looked up at Aghen and tried to focus. When he seemed to have some sense of what was happening, he said, “What is it, you whore’s son bastard?”

  “Your ship,” Aghen said. “Raven Eye. It’s taking on water. Well down by the stern already.”

  For a long moment Ottar just looked at him, and Aghen could see the focus leaving his eyes. And then he groaned and fell back once again and he did not move.

  Well, I told him, Aghen thought. I’ve done my part. He left the hall and walked back to the shipyard, certain that Ottar had not understood his words, and that by end of day Raven Eye would be resting on the bottom, half in the water, half out.

  But he was wrong on both counts. A few hours later, fifty of Ottar’s men, led by Ottar himself, came staggering down the plank road, their pain obvious, and stopped on the trampled grass where the ships were built. They blinked in the sun and wiped tears away and looked at Raven Eye, now considerably lower in the water. Ottar began to curse and he kept on cursing for some minutes, and Aghen got the notion that this was not the first time the longship had taken on water.

  Finally a dozen men climbed aboard the ship and found scoops and buckets and began tossing water out of her hull, while others roused out ropes and moved rollers under the bow. The ship was nearly free of water by the time the rollers were in place, and with Ottar still cursing, the men hauled away and the longship came slowly out of the river and up onto the land, like some great sea creature heaving itself up on a rock to warm in the sun.

  Aghen, despite himself, supervised the placing of chocks and supports and saw the ship secured on the rollers when she was finally hauled out on dry land. He looked under the hull. Water was running out from the place where she had been leaking. It told him a great deal about the problem, and experience told him how it should be fixed.

  And then he remembered that he did not want to fix her at all. He wanted her to sink.

  “Hey there, shipwright,” Ottar said, stepping up behind him, his voice a growl of implied threat. He might have been talking to a servant or a thrall. “You’ll fix that.” It was not a question.

  Aghen straightened, turned, and looked at Ottar. His mind toyed with various responses, but he said nothing. He frowned, held Ottar’s eyes.

  “I said you’ll fix that,” Ottar said again. “You’ll fix it so it don’t leak, unlike the other fools who’ve worked on it. For your own sake you will. I have not forgotten that you disobeyed me, that you didn’t bring your tools to me as I told you. You’ve seen what disobedience gets you with me. So, you have your tools still. I suggest you make use of them.”

  Ottar Bloodax did not wait for a reply, since it was clear there was only one reply he would accept. Instead, he turned and walked away and his men followed behind. They left Aghen Ormsson standing by the dripping Raven Eye, wrestling with the question of whether or not he should obey Ottar’s orders.

  He wanted very much to tell Ottar to piss off. He wanted to refuse to work on Raven Eye. But, to his profound disgust, he knew he would not. He knew he would make the ship whole again.

  And he did. It was not fear of Ottar that served as his chief motivation. Fear did not really motivate him at all, save for the fear of having his tools taken away. It was the ship and the challenge that the leak presented. Ottar Bloodax might be a filthy beast, but Raven Eye was not so bad a ship. A bit boxier and high-sided than Aghen preferred, but not a bad ship overall, and one worthy of his attention.

  So, the following day, Aghen climbed aboard the now dry vessel and lifted the deck boards and peered down into the bilge until he found the place where the horsehair caulking was spitting out from the planks. There the wood had been fractured in some long-forgotten grounding, where some dull-brained ox playing at being a shipwright had made a clumsy attempt at repair.

  Aghen sat for a long while and stared at the injured strakes and saw in his mind the steps he would perform to make it whole again. This, to him, was the real work. Making it all happen in his mind. Once he had done that, then he had only to let his skilled and experienced hands and arms carry out the tasks.

  “Aghen? Aghen the shipwright?” The voice came from behind and it made Aghen jump, so lost was he in his thoughts. He turned, scowling. There was a young man standing there, leaning on the sheer strake. He was not far beyond twenty years, Aghen guessed, a profusion of black hair on his head, thick neck, big of arm. Not the smartest-looking fellow Aghen had seen.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Oddi. I have some skills working with wood. Ottar sent me to lend a hand with the work.”

  Aghen frowned. Ottar had not sent this fellow to help, he had sent him to spy, of that Aghen was certain. But Aghen was planning no mischief, so a spy was not a worry for him. What’s more, this Oddi looked strong, so if he could be put to work carrying lumber and doing the more mindless tasks with ax and adz, that would make things easier on Aghen.

  “All right,” Aghen said. “I’ll welcome your help.” He pointed to a pile of timber. “That is the white oak, there. Find me a board ten feet in length, at least, with a good grain, and set it on the horses.”

  Oddi nodded and showed not the least hesitation as he hopped down off the roller on which he was standing and ambled over to the stack o
f wood. Aghen guessed that Oddi was not among Ottar’s most prized and trusted men, which was why he had been sent on this task, far removed from the others. And it was possible that Oddi did actually possess some skill as a woodworker.

  The next few days proved that to be the case. Oddi was no craftsman. He was more at the level of an experienced apprentice. But he knew the use of ax and adz and saw and drill, and his help went beyond just carrying the heaviest of loads, which, to Aghen’s satisfaction, he was also able to do.

  More surprisingly, Oddi proved to be a tolerable companion, not overly talkative, but not one who maintained a grudging silence, either. He seemed to enjoy hard work and his mood was generally good, which made for a nice change from the bitter, angry feelings that had engulfed Aghen and Mar and all the others at Vík-ló since Ottar had made himself lord here.

  What’s more, Oddi never sang the praises of Ottar Bloodax, as a real, devoted follower might be expected to do. He never once regaled Aghen with tales of the man’s brave deeds, his wisdom or generosity. That was something Aghen would have found intolerable. But it never happened. Ottar was never even mentioned.

  As the days passed, Aghen decided that Oddi was either the worst spy ever, with apparently little interest in finding out what Aghen was up to, or he was the very best, collecting his information while playing at being friendly, slow-twitted, and somewhat bovine in nature. Aghen suspected it was the former. And that led him to realize that Oddi might be able to tell him the tale he burned to hear: that of the last days of Thorgrim Night Wolf.

  They were sitting on benches and eating their midday meal when Aghen decided to broach the subject. “So, Oddi,” he began. “You were there, weren’t you? At the fighting at Glendalough?”

  Oddi nodded. He was chewing.

  “I had many friends there,” Aghen said. “None of them came back. I’ve never heard what happened.”

  Oddi swallowed. “Shameful,” he said. “By the gods, it was shameful.”

  “What was shameful?” Aghen said. This did not sound promising. “The way the men from Vík-ló behaved?”

  Oddi shook his head. “No, they fought like men. Their lord, that Thorgrim Night Wolf? He seemed a good man. Fought with courage. And the rest of them. And then we just abandoned them.”

  “How?” Aghen asked. “How do you mean?” Getting information from Oddi was like using an ax to get a thin strake from a thick oak plank: it had to be got at chip by laborious chip.

  “We’d been handled pretty rough by those Irish. They fought harder than any of us thought they would, to tell you the truth. So, we had a plan for the last battle. Thorgrim and his men went to one side of the field. Ottar and the rest of us to the other. This was at night, you see. Plan was, at dawn we would all attack. But then, in the dark, Ottar orders us all back to the ships. Leaves Thorgrim and the others there for the Irish to kill.”

  Aghen was silent as he considered this new and most surprising information.

  “Shameful,” Oddi offered again.

  “But you served Ottar,” Aghen said. “You didn’t think what he was doing was right?”

  “Right? Of course not. None of us did. Well, that’s not true. Ottar has his men, the men close to him; they’ll do whatever Ottar says and be glad of it. But most of us haven’t been with Ottar so very long, and we weren’t happy about it. That Thorgrim, he seemed a decent man, and he fought with us, and he fought well. And Ottar just left him and his men to die.”

  Once more Aghen remained silent as he thought about those words. There was a lot to consider here, a lot of simple things that Oddi had said that carried with them much deeper implications. But there was one, foremost, that Aghen had to pursue.

  “So, Ottar made you abandon Thorgrim and his men,” he said. “This was before the fighting the next day.”

  Oddi nodded. “It was in the dark. We snuck off like thieves in the dark.”

  “So you didn’t actually see Thorgrim killed? You didn’t see him die?”

  Now it was Oddi’s turn to consider Aghen’s words. “No,” he said at last. “We didn’t see him at the end. But like I said, those Irish fought like bears, and once we were gone they were many times the number of Thorgrim’s men. I don’t know how he could have lived.”

  Because you don’t know Thorgrim Night Wolf, Aghen thought.

  “I’ll tell you someone who’s not sure Thorgrim’s dead,” Oddi went on, “and that’s Ottar. He goes on and on about how he killed Thorgrim, but you can tell he’s not so sure. He hates Thorgrim, because Thorgrim humiliated him. A few times. And to be honest, I think Ottar’s scared of him. Not sure why, but that’s how it seems.”

  Aghen said nothing. He just stared off toward the empty horizon of the sea. He felt as if suddenly everything had been turned on its head.

  They finished the day’s work and packed the tools away and made their good nights. Oddi lumbered off to wherever he went at the day’s end. Aghen, however, remained at the shipyard, the place where he did his best thinking. He paced along the riverbank and sat on the lumber piles as the sun set and darkness washed over the longphort and, finally, a quarter moon rose above the horizon and cast a feeble light on the scene.

  Aghen’s mind was reeling. So much information, so many new questions. He did not know what to make of it. How he should act on what Oddi had told him, or if he should act at all. The hours slipped past as Aghen turned these thoughts over and over like flotsam in the surf.

  The moon had climbed quite a bit higher, bright enough to make shadows on the ground, when Aghen realized he was not alone by the river’s edge. There was something a ways off but moving closer. He could sense it more than hear it. It might have been a person, but he did not think so. It seemed to be something else.

  He looked around, turned left and right, peered into the dark. He could see nothing, and he was about to dismiss the feeling as an old man’s imagination when he heard a sound, low and grating, like something heavy being dragged over stone. A growl.

  He swung around in the direction of the sound and now he could make out a dark shape moving low to the ground, moving with deliberate care. A hunter on the prowl.

  Aghen took a step back and stood absolutely still. The shape continued to advance toward him, silent, save for the low and menacing sound it made. Aghen took another step back and with a sudden burst of power the thing leapt. Aghen gasped, twisted, held his arms up, ready for the impact of the body, the sharp agony of teeth or claws in his flesh. But he heard the thing hit the ground, only a few feet away. He could smell its feral scent, hear its snarling.

  He opened his eyes. It was a wolf. Crouched, ready to leap again, the growl building in its throat until the sound seemed like a physical thing. Aghen could see the wicked teeth in the moonlight, the gleam of its brutal eyes. The wolf looked up at him, looked right into his eyes. They stood there, motionless, both tensed like drawn bows, both ready to move. Aghen felt the fear welling up inside. He had a vision of his throat ripped clean out by this beast; it could do it before Aghen had time to take a single step. He clenched his teeth, waiting for it.

  The growling built in the wolf’s throat, louder and louder, until Aghen thought they surely must be able to hear it at the far end of the longphort. He curled his fists, wondered if he could fight off the attack when it came. And then the wolf turned and with two powerful leaps he was gone, swallowed up by the dark, his flight making no sound at all.

  For a long time Aghen remained where he was, motionless, teeth and fists clenched, his eyes fixed on the place where the wolf had disappeared into the night. His mind was washed clean of any thought. He just stared.

  Then, slowly, his mind came back to the shipyard, the longphort. A word formed in his head, a single word, and it seemed to block out any other thought.

  Kveldulf, he thought. Night Wolf.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I love not the gloomy waters

  Which flow past my dwelling

  The Annals of Ulster

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nbsp; Lochlánn looked left and right, his breathing labored, his mind reeling, the ring of weapons striking weapons loud in his ears. He felt his stomach turn over. Trap, he thought. I took my men right into a damned trap…

  The Northmen had lured them into this garden, a tight, walled-in space like a fishing weir. Lochlánn had gone in after them, leading his men against what he thought was an outnumbered and fleeing enemy. They were besting the fin gall, or so it seemed. And then the other half of the heathen band had rushed in behind, and Lochlánn’s men were caught between them.

  The idea that he had been played for a fool, that he had led his men to their deaths, was the most hideous of realizations for Lochlánn mac Ainmire. Much worse than the possibility of his own death, which did not even occur to him. Brother Lochlánn, well aware of his scant years and his lack of experience, was, of all things, most terrified of being found wanting in his new life as a soldier.

  “Men of Glendalough, to me, to me!” he called in as big a voice as he could find. “To me!”

  The fight in the garden had quickly turned to a dozen individual duels. That was fine as long as he and his men were overwhelming the heathens, but now they weren’t. The second wave of Northmen had come howling through the door. Their battle cries sounded Irish, but they carried swords and wore mail and so Lochlánn knew they were not Irish. Only Irish men-at-arms who served a wealthy lord had those things, and such men did not join with heathens.

  “To me!” Lochlánn called again, and Senach added his voice, echoing Lochlánn’s orders. One by one the men-at-arms broke off the fighting and backed away and soon all of them who could still move were standing at the wall directly across the garden from the heathen raiders.

  “Make a wall! Shield wall!” Lochlánn called next and the men came together quickly, shields overlapping, swords held ready. If they could make a shieldwall, Lochlánn thought, and stand firm, backs to the garden wall, then they might put up enough of a fight to make the heathens give up their attack.