“Bid us fare well,” Cónán said as they approached. “Next time you see us we’ll be in Kevin’s hall, counting the plunder that will be ours alone.” He usually said such things in a jesting tone, but that was gone now, and he spit the words at Thorgrim.
“Blathmac?” Thorgrim asked. “Does he go with you?”
“Blathmac’s a coward,” Cónán said, making it clear he considered anyone a coward who would not join him in this venture. Thorgrim said nothing. He forced himself to not react. Cónán tightened his sword belt around his waist and adjusted the way the sword hung at his side. It was a fine weapon, one that Thorgrim had given him just weeks before.
“So, just you and these men?” Thorgrim asked, indicating the twenty-five or so bandits under Cónán’s command. They looked better and more confident than they had when Thorgrim had first seen them on the riverbank, but that was not saying much.
“Yes,” Cónán said, also ignoring the implied criticism. “As you’ve seen, I beat all Kevin’s horsemen with fewer. I’ll do it again.” He looked around at his men, who had finished what little preparations they had to make. “Let’s go,” he snapped. He pushed past Thorgrim without a word and headed toward the edge of camp, and his men filed in behind him.
Thorgrim said nothing, just watched them as they headed off toward the northeast, toward the countryside that Cónán’s scouts assured him was clear of enemy horsemen. If they were right, and if Cónán had some trick that would allow him to take Ráth Naoi with ease, then Thorgrim knew he would look pretty foolish, even cowardly. But he did not think either would prove true.
“What will we do, Father, while they’re off?” Harald asked. It was the very question Thorgrim had been considering as he tried to sort through all the things jumbled together in his mind: indecision, worry, doubt. And foreboding. Mostly foreboding.
“Get the men under arms, get them ready to move if we must,” he said, and Harald hurried off to obey. A minute later Thorgrim’s handful of men were dropping mail shirts over their heads and running whetstones over the edges of their weapons. And while most of his men were donning more protection, Starri was pulling off his tunic and sticking his fingers in the mud underfoot and drawing dark lines on his bare face and chest.
Thorgrim watched as Cónán’s men marched off. He did not move until the last of the Irishmen had climbed the small hillock from which he and Cónán had surveyed the countryside the night before. Once they had all disappeared from view, Thorgrim followed behind.
By the time he reached the top of the rise, Cónán’s men were in a column two hundred yards ahead and moving quickly away. It was a loose and undisciplined line, but if Cónán was certain there were no enemies near he would not feel the need to get his men into any sort of fighting order until they were closer to Ráth Naoi.
Thorgrim pulled his eyes from the Irish bandits and scanned the countryside around, turning so he could take in the full circle of the horizon. Everything was pretty much as it had been the night before. There were no men to be seen, save for Cónán’s. A few hawks circled overhead, and the trees moved a bit in the light breeze. The herd of cows was still there, a bit closer than it had been the night before, the animals milling around in a circle and mindlessly working at the grass. The plume from the distant fire they had seen the night before was gone.
“Nothing,” Thorgrim said to himself. “Not one thing to see.”
He heard footsteps behind, soft on the grassy turf, and Harald was at his side. “The men are ready, Father,” he said, though Thorgrim knew he had not really come to report this. There was no need. They both knew that with these men when an order was given it was as good as completed. In truth, Thorgrim knew, Harald wanted to know what was going on, and he did not blame him.
“Good,” Thorgrim said. He nodded toward Cónán’s column, quickly growing smaller in the distance. “So far it seems he was right. The way is clear, the horsemen back at Kevin’s ringfort.”
“Maybe,” Harald said. “But there’s still miles between them and the plunder.” Harald had an unwavering faith in his father’s judgment, or so it seemed to Thorgrim. Why, Thorgrim could not imagine. By his own reckoning, half his life had been one pathetic blunder after another. Sometimes he thought Harald was the only decent thing he had to show for his forty and more winters in Midgard.
“We’ll get our men moving, keep to the cover of the riverbank,” Thorgrim said. “Cónán’s women can come or stay, as they wish. Are Blathmac’s people moving?”
“Some,” Harald said. “Some are still sleeping. Some of them got pretty drunk last night. I don’t think they’re used to having great quantities of ale available to them.”
Thorgrim had to smile at that. “I think you’re right. I don’t think they’re used to having much, beyond a cuff on the ear and a kick in the ass.”
They turned to head back to camp when they heard a noise, far off, from the direction of Cónán’s men. A single, sharp noise, like a cry of alarm. They turned again, looked back the way they had been looking a second before.
Something was happening, but from the distance of half a mile or so it was not clear what. Cónán’s long, straggling line of men was breaking up, men rushing off in various directions. Thorgrim could hear a voice, someone shouting, and he thought it was Cónán, but he could not be certain. The herd of cows was on the move as well, scattering this way and that, just as the Irish were doing. It was an almost comical effect.
“Is it the cows?” Harald asked. “Are they afraid of the cows?”
Absurd as it seemed, that was how it appeared to Thorgrim as well. Then suddenly there were figures among the cows, but higher, like they were on the cow’s backs, men climbing up onto the cows.
“What, by all the gods…” Thorgrim said and then the riders came surging forward and he saw they were not on cows; they were on horses, horses that had been secreted in the grazing herd. Half a dozen, a dozen, more, leaping up onto the backs of horses that had gone unseen, charging through the frightened cattle and riding down on the Irishmen who, unsuspecting, had marched to within a hundred yards of them.
“Ah, Cónán, you’re not the cleverest fox in the woods, are you?” Thorgrim said as he saw this unfold. He turned to Harald. “Come. We need to get the others, go save these sorry bastards.”
They ran down the hill, raced back toward the camp. By the time they reached it Thorgrim’s breath was coming in gasps, but Harald had wind enough to shout, “Cónán’s men! They’re being attacked! Riders were hiding in the cows!”
It was an odd way to put it, but the others sensed Harald’s urgency and they did not question him. Instead, they grabbed up shields and axes and spears. All except Starri Deathless. Starri, who had been sitting cross-legged on the ground, sprung to his feet as if being hoisted on a line, his two battle axes in hand, and without a word he took off running.
Thorgrim sucked in air, trying to find breath enough to order Starri to stop and wait for the others. They had to go in as one; it was the most effective way. But by the time he had filled his lungs Starri was gone, halfway to the hillock at a full run and not likely to be brought back with words alone.
He turned to Harald and Godi, jerked his head in the direction that Starri was running. “Go,” he said. “You know what to do. I’ll see to Blathmac and the other Irishmen.”
Harald nodded, turned and raced off, Godi and the rest with him. Among the men he saw Failend, shield in one hand, seax in the other, and he realized he had nearly done a foolish thing. He called, “Failend, wait!”
She stopped, turned to him while the others ran on. He waved her over, pointed to Blathmac and his men. “I have to talk to them. You’ll translate?”
She squinted at him, unfamiliar with that word.
“You’ll talk? Norse? Irish?” he said and she nodded.
He led the way to where Blathmac stood, fists on his hips, his scowling face all but lost in his beard. Thorgrim looked Blathmac in the eye and said, “Failend, tell
him Cónán’s being attacked and he and his men must come and fight. You understand?”
“Yes,” Failend said.
“Speak loud so they all can hear,” Thorgrim said. She turned to Blathmac and spoke, and though her voice was naturally soft, she managed to make herself heard by all of Blathmac’s people. Thorgrim watched the odd play of reactions on Blathmac’s face: resentment, fear perhaps, and that strange deference with which the Irish always seemed to regard Failend.
But deference or no, Blathmac folded his arms even before she was finished, and when she was done he shook his head and spoke, biting off the words.
“He says no…won’t save Cónán,” Failend said.
Thorgrim could hear shouting now, carried on the breeze, faint at that distance, and he knew that men would die for every second they wasted arguing. Blathmac’s men, ill-trained as they were, made up half the warriors under Thorgrim’s command, and he could not afford to let them loll around in camp when there was fighting to be done.
He took two quick steps forward, so fast Blathmac had no time to react. Thorgrim’s hand shot out and he seized the Irishman’s great beard. Blathmac’s eyes went wide and his hands were coming up when Thorgrim jerked the beard hard, pulling Blathmac’s head down as he brought his knee up.
Blathmac’s face and Thorgrim’s knee met at about belt height, the concussion making a dull thud, like a horse stamping its hoof. Thorgrim let go of Blathmac’s beard and Blathmac’s head snapped up again, blood streaming from his nose, his mouth open in shock, surprise, and pain. Thorgrim grabbed his arm and spun him around. He planted a foot on Blathmac’s rear end and shoved, sending the little man sprawling in the dirt. He turned and pointed at the man he took to be Blathmac’s second in command.
“Ask him if he wants to be next,” Thorgrim said. Failend translated and then translated his reply, which was not entirely necessary. There was no defiance, only shock on the men’s faces as they grabbed up their weapons, and that told Thorgrim all that he needed to know. He turned and ran off for the distant hill, Failend at his side.
Chapter Thirty-Two
In rings I’m not rich, but –
I revel in telling it –
I hoodwinked those heroes,
Hurling dust in their eyes.
The Saga of the Confederates
Thorgrim ran toward the growing sound of battle and he could hear the rest of Blathmac’s men following. Up over the rise and the fight was spread out before him, a wild melee covering an acre of ground in the distance. The riders were racing off in every direction, chasing after Cónán’s men who were dodging and sprinting like rabbits trying to get away. It was exactly what the horsemen would have hoped for: to have the men on foot panicked and scattered so they could ride them down and kill them, one by one.
And that was what they were doing. Thorgrim saw one of the Irish bandits in a flat-out run, one of the mounted warriors charging up behind. The man, sensing he was being overtaken, turned to fight, turned just in time to take a spear thrust in the chest. Thorgrim saw him go down, disappearing in the thigh-high grass as the rider jerked the spear free and wheeled, looking for his next victim.
His own men were halfway to the fight, running across the open ground, and if the riders had seen them at all, they were ignoring them. And why not? The Northmen did not yet pose any threat, and the further they had to run the more exhausted they would be when they finally got into the fight.
Not all the Northmen were so far from the fighting, however. Starri Deathless was outpacing the others and had nearly closed the distance to the nearest rider. As he ran he let out his berserker shriek, that terrifying howl that Thorgrim knew all too well, the last sound on earth that more than a few fighting men had heard. Thorgrim had to marvel at a man like Starri. Nearly dead three weeks earlier, now he could run that far, that fast, and still have wind enough to shriek at such a volume that Thorgrim could hear him from near two hundred yards away.
I guess Starri’s on the mend, he thought, but he knew that the gods infused berserkers with powers normal men did not have or even understand. Starri himself did not understand it.
Thorgrim pushed on, trying to watch the fight even as he ran to join it. He saw one of the riders turn and make for Starri, spear down. He saw a flash of dull metal, Starri’s battle axes wheeling and slashing. He saw the rider come down off his horse, half pulled, half falling, and then a second later Starri was up in the saddle, feet in the stirrups, axes in each hand. He kicked the horse and the animal seemed to obey, turning and racing back for the fight.
How does he ride so well? Thorgrim wondered. He had never known Starri to have any great familiarity with horses and had been surprised at the man’s ease when they had taken the mounts from the Irish a few days earlier. Starri might have been a skilled rider all his life, Thorgrim realized, or he might have never been on horseback before. With Starri it was hard to tell.
The swifter of Thorgrim’s men were getting up with the fighting now, but Thorgrim did not want them racing in one man at a time, because that would make it much easier for the riders to kill them all. He considered shouting out orders, but he didn’t think he had the breath to make himself heard, far back as he was. The others had gained a considerable lead on him while he was forced to waste time with Blathmac.
Then he heard Harald’s voice shouting just the orders he would have shouted, in just the words and tone he would have used. “Men of Vík-ló! Men of Vík-ló! Form on me! Form a shield wall!”
Good boy, Thorgrim thought. They needed some sort of defense, some way to make a stand. If Cónán and his men could get free of the riders, get into the shieldwall, they might be able to do something.
He turned. Blathmac’s men were right at his heels. Many of them, he suspected, could have easily outrun him, but they seemed in no hurry to get into the fight any sooner than they had to. Thorgrim held up his hands and the men stopped and he indicated that they should move up to where Harald was gathering the others. He would put the men with shields in the front, form two lines, see what they could make of that.
His own men were taking up their places in the shieldwall, weapons ready, shields overlapping. About a third of Cónán’s men were lost from sight now, dead or wounded or hiding in the grass, Thorgrim could not tell. But those still standing were fighting back. Cónán had his bow, and he stood like a rune stone, firing arrow after arrow, turning and firing, dropping the riders who came charging at him before they could get close enough to him to use sword or spear. But Cónán’s supply of arrows was not unlimited.
Thorgrim reached the shieldwall at last. He pushed Blathmac’s men left and right, got them positioned as he wanted them. “Advance! Advance!” he shouted and the front rank of Northmen and a handful of Irish stepped off and the second rank followed. They were Irish and did not understand the words, but the meaning was obvious, and they did not want to be left standing there without the shieldwall.
Come on, come on, Thorgrim thought to himself as he watched the horsemen and Cónán’s bandits doing their weird, frantic dance though the grass. He needed the riders to see the shield wall and react to it, to give Cónán’s men the few seconds reprieve they needed to join with them.
“Shout!” Thorgrim ordered, “Loud as you can, shout!” Godi led off, bellowing like a gored bull in his deep voice. Harald joined him, his voice deep but not as deep as Godi’s, and soon they were all yelling as they advanced, the Northmen calling insults the Irish would not understand, the Irish shouting words Thorgrim did not know.
But the effect was what Thorgrim had been looking for. He saw horsemen pull back on reins, wheel their mounts, turn to this new threat. He saw arms pointing, could hear the sounds of instructions flying back and forth as the riders realigned themselves, turning their attention to this new line of attack.
“Stand fast, here they come,” Thorgrim shouted as the horsemen turned, one after the other, and came charging down on the shield wall. Thorgrim stood behind the ranks, and
in front of him one of Blathmac’s men stood gawking stupidly, his spear held vertically in his hand. Thorgrim stepped up and grabbed the spear and lowered the point until it was just above horizontal, thrust out over the shoulders of the men in the front rank, then handed it back to the Irishman with a menacing look. All along the short line the other spearmen followed suit.
Stupid, useless bastards, Thorgrim thought.
And then the riders were on them, pounding toward the shieldwall, but the front rank was made up mostly of Thorgrim’s men and they knew their only chance at living was to stand firm. The Irishmen among them were brave enough, but they were strangers to this sort of thing, shieldwalls, fighting on open ground. Yet they followed the Northmen’s lead and did not flinch.
Thorgrim prowled behind the second rank, making certain their spears were level and that none of them broke and ran. He held Iron-tooth in his hand and he made it clear that he was more of an immediate threat than the riders coming at them.
Ten feet from the shieldwall, well short of the reach of the iron-tipped spears, the riders broke left and right, shearing off in either direction, their charge ineffective, lacking coordination. They turned and rode back up the field, but Thorgrim knew they would regroup and come again. He had seen all this before.
He looked past his own men, past the riders farther off. Cónán, as he had hoped, had made use of the momentary reprieve. With most of the horsemen occupied with the shieldwall, and the rest chasing a laughing, howling, still-mounted Starri around the fields, Cónán had gathered his men and now they were racing in a wide circle for the dubious safety of the shield wall.
There were not so many of them. Ten maybe, of the twenty-five Cónán had led out of the camp. The mounted men-at-arms had done considerable damage, but they’d not gone unscathed themselves. There were riderless horses wandering through the grass, trained animals who remained calm despite the chaos around them. The cows, however, were not so sanguine. They had moved off a couple hundred feet, and yielding to their herd instincts, had bunched together and now looked warily on.
Night Wolf: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 5) Page 31
