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

by James L. Nelson

  No one moved. No one spoke. Eyes shifted from Galti to Aghen and back. Both men remained motionless. For Galti, that condition appeared permanent.

  Einar, to his credit, was the first to recover. “You bastard!” he shouted. He grabbed the hilt of his sword and began drawing the weapon. Aghen still held the poker, held it horizontal, but he, like the rest, was too stunned to react.

  Then Oddi moved. He half-turned and grabbed the poker and pulled it from Aghen’s hand and Aghen let it go. Oddi twisted toward Einar, leading with the poker’s slightly blunted point. He rammed the end into Einar’s stomach, half a fathom of good iron, pounded into shape by Mar’s deftly wielded hammer and trust, with all the strength of a young man who had spent half his lifetime at hard physical labor.

  If Einar had not been wearing mail, the poker would likely have impaled him. But he was wearing mail. All the men there were wearing mail or leather armor and they never took it off as long as they thought the wolf might be lurking. The mail saved Einar, and allowed him to live for another fifteen or twenty seconds.

  He doubled over with the blow, the air bursting from his chest in a great whooshing sound. Oddi pulled the poker back and lifted it high and brought it down on the back of Einar’s bare head. It made the same ugly sound it had made on Galti’s skull and Einar went down just as fast and just as noiselessly. He twitched a few times, which was more than Galti had done, and then he was still.

  No one spoke. No one moved. Oddi dropped the poker. “Now what?” he asked.

  “Well, we don’t go back to Vík-ló,” Aghen said, and the rest nodded and muttered their agreement. “And we can’t just wander around the countryside either,” he continued. He turned and looked toward the west, his face illuminated by the setting sun. “Thorgrim Night Wolf is out there. I know it. Not sure how, but I know it. We’ll go that way. We’ll join with him.”

  The others nodded. No one offered any objection or any other suggestion. No one had a better plan or, indeed, any plan at all.

  Chapter Thirty

  [T]wo kings of the Norsemen, laid siege to the fortress

  and at the end of four months they destroyed and plundered it.

  The Annals of Ulster

  Thorgrim did not like what he saw, which was nothing.

  He and Cónán and Blathmac stood at the top of a small rise, looking out toward the east, along the course of the river they had been following and the open ground to the north of it. There was nothing of interest, good or bad, in sight. A plume of smoke on the horizon that Cónán said was not Ráth Naoi but a smaller ringfort of no great interest. There was a herd of cows off to the northwest, maybe forty of them, about a mile away. But no horsemen, no mounted men-at-arms, nothing but open country, calling to them with the promise of easy marching.

  “My men saw a few riders yesterday,” Cónán said. “Scouts from Ráth Naoi, part of the men we nearly lured into our trap. None today. They’ve gone back to the ringfort. No desire to tangle with us again on open ground.”

  Thorgrim made a grunting noise, which conveyed neither agreement nor the opposite.

  “They’re gone. Nothing to fear,” Cónán said, reassuring and just a bit condescending. Thorgrim could hear the tone in the Irishman’s voice. He did not think he would be able to ignore it much longer.

  It was just the day before that he and Cónán and the others had enjoyed their manic game of wild goose chase with the mounted men-at-arms, a game that might have ended in a great slaughter of the horsemen if Louis the Frank had not betrayed them. After the horsemen had fled, Thorgrim and his party continued on toward Ráth Naoi, but their column was slow-moving. They had camped and taken up the march again that morning. All day they had moved east in their plodding way, with a screen of scouts out ahead looking for signs of the enemy.

  They had found none. Now they were once more stopped for the night, and the leaders of the three factions that made up this strange army were considering the next day’s move.

  “Ráth Naoi is that way,” Cónán said, pointing off to the northeast, “five or six miles. We have to leave the river and move across country.”

  “Yes,” Thorgrim said, “but not until we know we’re not walking into a trap.”

  Blathmac spoke. Cónán replied.

  “What does he say?” Thorgrim asked.

  “He wants to know what we’re talking about.”

  Cónán turned to Blathmac and spoke to him in their shared tongue. Thorgrim could not understand the words, but he could understand the tone. If Cónán was acting a bit condescending to him, he was being outright contemptuous of Blathmac, or so it seemed. Judging from Blathmac’s expression, Thorgrim guessed he was right.

  Blathmac spit some words back at Cónán. Cónán turned to Thorgrim. “He agrees with everything I say,” Cónán said.

  “So it seems,” Thorgrim said. The three men looked out over the open ground again.

  “First light, we move on Ráth Naoi,” Cónán said. “No reason to delay. They know we’re here, they’ll only get more prepared every minute we give them.”

  What Cónán said made sense. Thorgrim knew it. But he also knew there was something wrong. He could feel it in his gut.

  “We’ll see,” Thorgrim said, and he said it in a way that made it clear he was done with talking. He turned and headed back toward the camp and let the others follow behind.

  Ten minutes later he was back among the people, his handful of Northmen and the Irish bandits. The cooking fires were burning, the women were bustling around, filling pots hanging over the flames, cutting meat from stolen cows and sundry scavenged greens to toss into the boiling water. The men were scattered around the area, segregated into their groups, drinking ale, talking softly.

  This is getting to be like home, Thorgrim thought, looking around, taking in the familiar smells and sounds. This had been their world nearly every night since Cónán had led his band out onto the sand spit on the River Avonmore.

  Thorgrim shook his head. How odd, how very odd this is.

  He ate, he drank, and he talked with Godi and Harald and Starri about what they would do next. But he did not have much to say on that account because he did not know.

  “The way looks clear,” he said as he drained the last of the ale in his cup. It was bitter and stale and generally unpleasant. He could not help but think of the ale they had made themselves in Vík-ló. It was not like this.

  “Cónán wants to leave the river, make a push for the ringfort tomorrow,” Thorgrim continued. “He thinks if we move fast we can overwhelm them. A ringfort’s no real kind of defense, as you know. More to show a man’s importance than to hold off an attack.”

  The others nodded. “So, what will we do?” Harald asked.

  “I don’t know,” Thorgrim said, which was the truth. He did not know. There was nothing more he could say.

  The sun went down and Thorgrim and Cónán talked about the sentries that would be posted and how far out from the camp they would venture. Neither man intended to be caught by surprise. Once both were satisfied, Cónán headed off to bed down with his men and Thorgrim wandered out into the night, moving silently far out from the camp, listening, watching, trying to get a sense for what was going on out in the dark.

  He had wolf dreams sometimes. Dreams where he seemed to see things through wolf’s eyes and sometimes in those dreams he could discover things that were out there, and what he saw in the dreams was generally the truth. Some men, he knew, thought these were something more than dreams, but Thorgrim was not sure.

  Whether they were dreams or not, they could be helpful. They brought visions that would let him know what to do next, or what not to do. But as he grew older he found the dreams came less often. In some ways this was good. The dreams were generally preceded by a mood so foul that no one dared approach him, no one could speak to him, and he could not tolerate the presence of others.

  Except Starri Deathless. Starri was the only man he had ever known who could stay with him
when the black mood descended, the only one on whom he would not turn. It was one of the reasons he liked Starri and tolerated his madness when others generally shunned berserkers. He figured Starri had some magic about him.

  I wish I could see what was going on out there, he thought, looking out into the dark, out toward the countryside now hidden by the night.

  But he knew what he was really wishing for. He was wishing the wolf dreams might come and let him see what was out in the blackness. He had never wished for the wolf dreams before. Thorgrim did not like the black mood. He did not like the thought of what might happen when the wolf dreams came on. Still, sometimes they were helpful.

  But he could not summon them. He was getting older and the wolf dreams were a thing of his youth, he could see that. He turned and made his way wearily back to camp.

  He was lying on a bearskin, mail on the ground beside him, Iron-tooth resting on top of the mail. The night was warm and dry, a gift from the gods, and Thorgrim had no blanket over him. The camp was quiet, the fires dying to embers, heaps of snoring men scattered over the ground.

  He closed his eyes and, despite the worries pinching at him like swarming crabs, he felt sleep washing over him, warm and seductive. He was almost off to the dream world when he heard a voice, soft and close.

  “Thorgrim?”

  He opened his eyes, confused. It was a familiar voice but not familiar like Harald’s or Starri’s voices were familiar. Failend was crouching beside him, her small frame barely illuminated by the dying fires. She was dressed in her leine, her brat around her shoulders. She held her mail shirt and seax draped over her arm.

  “Failend,” he said, still halfway between sleep and waking.

  “Louis’s gone,” she said. Thorgrim was not sure if it was a question or a statement. In the short time she had been with them, Failend had picked up a surprising amount of the Norsemen’s language. She could generally make herself understood. But she was far from fluent.

  “Yes, he’s gone,” Thorgrim said, figuring that was true regardless of what Failend meant. And if he comes back I’ll kill him, he added, though he kept the words to himself.

  Failend nodded and looked away for a moment, as if trying to make sense of that. She looked back at Thorgrim. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Thorgrim frowned slightly, shook his head, not sure of her meaning.

  “Sorry he…betrayed you,” she said.

  Thorgrim’s frown turned to a partial smile. He reached out, put his hand on her knee. “Not your doing,” he said. He was quiet for a moment, and then asked, “Why didn’t you go with him?”

  Now Failend was quiet for a moment. Then she shrugged. She looked around. “I like heathens,” she said and smiled and Thorgrim smiled as well. She pointed to the ground in front of her. “I sleep here?”

  That took Thorgrim a bit by surprise. Failend was still something of an enigma to him; when he thought about her, which admittedly was not too often, he was not sure what to make of her. He was not sure what she had on her mind now, but he nodded his agreement and shuffled back on the bear skin to make room.

  Failend smiled and nodded her thanks. She laid her mail and sword carefully on the ground, then lay down beside Thorgrim, close but not too close, a foot at least separating them. She smiled at him. “Good night,” she said, then turned over, her back to him, and did not move again.

  Thorgrim looked at her dark hair, her small shoulders, her shapely form through the thin fabric of her leine. Maybe with Louis gone she’s afraid to sleep among the others, he thought. That was reasonable, though none of the Northmen had ever given her cause to worry, and the Irish seemed to treat her like some sort of princess.

  She’s an odd one, Thorgrim thought, and it was the last conscious thought he had before he, too, drifted off to sleep.

  He woke before dawn, as he’d been doing since the Irish had joined them, to the sound of the women getting the fires going again, the women who seemed to have a preternatural means of waking when they wanted, long before any of the snoring men. Failend was pretty much where she had been the night before, maybe a few inches closer, her back still toward him. His hand was resting on her waist. He had no memory of placing it there. He gently lifted it and drew it back. Failend made some soft, sleeping sound but did not stir.

  Carefully, Thorgrim rolled away from her, stood and lifted Iron-tooth and his mail, which made a soft noise like a footfall on gravel, and then was still. He moved away from the sleeping girl and toward where the women were stoking the cooking fires. Cara was there and she handed him a bowl of water and he washed his hands and rubbed the cold water on his face, a reviving act. He ran his dripping fingers back through his long hair. He had not combed it in some time and he felt the effects of that negligence now.

  “Thorgrim.” He turned to see Cónán ambling over to him, stretching his arms as he walked. “I’ve ordered my men to have their breakfast. First light we leave the river, advance across country to Ráth Naoi. Leave the women here until it’s safe.”

  “Are you asking me,” Thorgrim said, “or telling me?” He sincerely hoped Cónán did not think he was giving orders, because that would not end well.

  “Not telling you,” Cónán said. “I thought we agreed that this was what we’d do.”

  Save those tricks of the tongue for Blathmac, Thorgrim thought. He shook his head. “No. I don’t believe the riders have all gone back to…Kevin’s hall, whatever you call it. We can’t allow ourselves to be played for fools.”

  “There’s a time for caution,” Cónán said, “and a time to be bold. Now is the time to be bold.”

  “Don’t think you can teach me such things,” Thorgrim said, his voice more of snarl than he had intended, but Cónán’s words were goading him. “You may be master of the cow pastures around here, but I have crossed oceans and fought men you could not imagine.”

  Thorgrim could see the muscles in Cónán’s jaw working. The Irishman looked away, composing himself before he made a response. They were both proud men and they were both leaders. So far they had been in agreement on what needed to be done, and that was lucky, but it could not last forever.

  Cónán turned back to Thorgrim, looked him in the eye. “My men say the way is clear.”

  “And I say it is not. We cannot go blundering across the open ground.”

  Thorgrim hoped that Cónán would not ask how he knew that, because in truth he knew nothing. It was a gut feeling. And worse, it was a gut feeling that told him to take the cautious route, a route Thorgrim generally shunned, a route that could lead to whispers of cowardice. But Thorgrim also knew that such feelings were often the sound of the gods whispering to their chosen and were not to be ignored.

  “I spoke with some of your men,” Cónán said. “Godi, Starri. They agree with me.”

  Thorgrim felt the rage, red-hot, like iron in a forge. His hand shot out and he grabbed a fistful of Cónán’s tunic and pulled the Irishman toward him until they were inches apart. “Don’t you talk to my men behind my back. I’ll break you in two, you little bastard,” he snarled. Cónán’s teeth were clenched as he too felt the rage sweep over him. His hand clamped down on Thorgrim’s wrist as he tried to wrench the Northman’s hand away.

  Cónán was strong, very strong. Thorgrim could feel it in his grip and in the force with which he levered his arm. But he was not strong enough to break Thorgrim’s hold on his tunic. Not when Thorgrim was driven by the sort of rage he felt at that moment.

  “Father?” The voice came sounding through Thorgrim’s fury. He looked over. Harald was there, and Godi and several of Cónán’s men. They looked worried, and they looked ready to fight, each for their own leader. If he went on like this, Thorgrim realized, they would all kill one another, right there in camp, long before Kevin’s riders had a chance at them.

  He released Cónán, giving him a little push as he did. “Do as you wish,” Thorgrim said and turned and walked away.

  Chapter Thirty-One

 
The heathens were driven from Ireland…and they abandoned a good number of their ships,

  and escaped half dead after they had been wounded and broken.

  The Annals of Ulster

  What Cónán wanted to do was to march his men overland and attack the ringfort at Ráth Naoi. That was clear. No sooner had his altercation with Thorgrim ended than he went back to where his people were gathered and told them in a tone that brooked no debate that that was exactly what they would be doing.

  “I don’t think his men were too happy about it,” Harald told Thorgrim as they ate their breakfast of porridge and dry bread. He had remained close to Cónán’s camp so he might overhear their discussion. “He told them about the plunder to be had at the ringfort and that seemed to help a bit, but still they didn’t seem too happy.”

  “I’ll bet not,” Thorgrim said.

  Unless Cónán had another wily trick to play, he was looking at a stand-up fight against Kevin’s trained men-at-arms, which would be a slaughter, and nothing less. But Thorgrim understood that pride was driving Cónán now, and he would lead his men to their deaths, and his as well, before he would admit he could not do this without Thorgrim, or that Thorgrim could be right.

  Thorgrim might have thought such actions a waste and stupid, if he had not known for certain that he would do the same thing himself.

  Breakfast finished, Cónán’s men at the far side of the camp stood, and those who had mail pulled it on and those who had leather armor put that on and they strapped on the swords they had been given by Thorgrim, who in turn had plundered them from Ottar’s men, and picked up their shields which were still foreign to their arms. Some men stretched and yawned, and Thorgrim knew that was a sign of fear, not weariness.

  He sighed, tossed his wooden trencher away and stood. He could see when a ship was heading for the rocks and disaster, and such was happening here. “Let us go and speak with Cónán,” he said and led Harald and Godi and Starri across the camp to where the Irish were making ready.