Chapter Thirty-Six
There has never tasted death fearlessly,
Nor reached the known dead,
The cultivator's soil has never covered
A more wonderful keeper of tradition.
The Annals of Ulster
As Aghen and Cónán’s men formed their ugly shieldwall and the horsemen sallied out of Ráth Naoi, Thorgrim had been watching from the crest of the hill that looked down on the fields below. He had smiled at the sight of it. It was amusing. And if things worked out as they had planned, it would continue to be amusing.
Good, good, he thought, so far, good. The riders formed a line just as he and Cónán had guessed they would. The horsemen would think it no great matter to overrun the men on foot and kill them on open ground. And normally they would be right.
Thorgrim turned to Starri, lying beside him in the grass, looking out over the country below. “How many riders, do you think?” he asked. Starri’s eyesight was as legendary as his prowess in battle.
Starri took a long moment to count. “About one hundred,” he said.
“One hundred,” Thorgrim repeated. “Good. There can’t be too many left in the ringfort. It seems Kevin wants the fighting to happen out here. Eager to see we don’t get too close to his hall.”
“What if Kevin’s not in his hall?” asked Harald, who was lying on Thorgrim’s other side. “What if he’s leading the horsemen? What then?”
“He’s not,” Thorgrim said. Kevin, he was certain, would remain in his hall. Where he thought he was safe.
They heard a shout, then a low rumble building in volume as the line of horsemen suddenly swept forward, charging the shieldwall, ready to crush it under the weight of their attack. Which they would have done, and easily. Those mounted men-at-arms were smart, Thorgrim had no doubt about that. He could see the riders on the flanks intended to sweep around the ends of the shieldwall, come in behind, where they would have slaughtered his men.
But happily they were denied the chance. The riders had not covered half the distance between the ringfort and the shieldwall before the Irish and Northmen broke and ran in apparent panic. They raced for the little valley he and Cónán and Aghen had scouted out the night before. And from the crest of the hill, Thorgrim and those with him—Harald and Godi, Starri Deathless and the other men of Sea Hammer—watched as they disappeared from view down the long slope that led to the pond and the stand of trees below.
Failend was there as well. She had insisted on coming and Thorgrim had not argued. He liked her, and he was starting to think she brought luck, even though she was a Christian.
“That was well done,” Godi said, and Thorgrim nodded his agreement.
“So far,” Thorgrim said. He knew better than to tempt the gods by making a comment about any future success.
There was still a lot that could go wrong, but it was all out of Thorgrim’s hands now, that part, at least. They had done all they could to bend things their way.
Aghen’s man, Jorund, had selflessly volunteered to return to Ottar’s camp and fill Ottar’s head with tales of Kevin’s army coming for him. Jorund had agreed to being slashed by Iron-tooth in order that the disguise would be more believable. The cuts Thorgrim had made were flesh wounds, no more, but they were deep and he knew well how agonizingly painful they were.
But Jorund had endured them with not even a whimper, an act of bravery which by itself should have warranted the approval of the gods, and their help as well. The bleeding man had stumbled off in the direction of Ottar’s camp. Thorgrim hoped that he had met with success, but he would not know until all of this had played out.
Likewise with Cónán. He and Cónán and Aghen had scouted out the valley and planned the moves they would make in the face of the horsemen. Cónán had dismissed all of Thorgrim’s concerns, waved off any suggestion that this might be at all difficult.
“They’re not fools,” Thorgrim had warned. “We did this to them before, they’ll be ready for it this time.”
“Exactly!” Cónán said. “They’ll think they know what we’re going to do. So we’ll do something else.”
Someone who did not know Cónán well might have taken comfort in his overweening confidence. But Thorgrim knew better. He and Cónán had not been together long, but they had seen and done much in that short time. Thorgrim understood that Cónán always projected confidence, regardless of how he really felt.
“Just take care,” Thorgrim said, and Cónán only grinned.
Now the first act had played out, and it had gone as they had hoped. The horsemen from Ráth Naoi had chased the men of the shieldwall down into the valley. They should have reached the trees ahead of the riders, but Thorgrim could not see into the valley from the hilltop, and in any event, that was Cónán and Aghen’s business now. He had his own affairs to look to. Which, at first, meant waiting.
They waited for hours. They had the day’s last meal on the back side of the hill, with the hill’s crest shielding them from any watchmen on the ringfort’s walls. They kept low so they would not be silhouetted against the horizon. They waited to see if anything more would happen at the ringfort, if more men would emerge, or if the riders would return. But they saw nothing. Just an Irish ringfort slipping peacefully into evening.
The sun went down and soon it was full dark and they could see nothing at all. If the moon was up it was lost behind the clouds, leaving the land as black as it could be. They waited for fires to be lit around the perimeter of the ringfort, but none were. They waited another few hours, but still nothing.
“No fires?” Harald asked.
“Seems not,” Thorgrim said. “I guess Kevin’s confident that the men-at-arms have his enemies on the run.” Which was good.
With the moon and stars lost to sight there was no way to gauge how much time had passed. Quite a lot, it seemed to Thorgrim, and nothing had happened in the ringfort that they could observe. Every once in a while a tiny point of light showed where someone was walking the walls with a torch in hand, and occasionally the glow from a hearth fire was visible. That was it. They saw nothing else, heard nothing at all.
“Let’s go,” Thorgrim said.
He stood and headed down the slope of the hill, walking in the direction of the ringfort, though he could not see it. He heard the others behind him, soft leather shoes on the sod, the light jingling of buckles against mail as they crossed the pitch-black fields. Thorgrim had worked out an elaborate plan for getting past the watch fires unseen. He still thought it would have worked, but they would not find out that night.
They’re making this easy for us, he thought, and that thought made him apprehensive.
The night was so dark that Thorgrim was not entirely certain where the ringfort was, an odd thing to have so large a structure utterly lost to sight. He wondered if they would blunder right into it or walk past it in the dark. Then he saw a glow ahead of him, blooming in the distance like a hint of sunrise. It was not a point of light but a soft illumination, like a fire hidden behind a short wall.
And Thorgrim realized that was exactly what it was. They must have lit a fire on the grounds inside the ringfort. Apparently they wanted to see what was happening within the confines of the stronghold, even if they could not be bothered to illuminate the approaches to the place.
Thorgrim led the others across the open ground, perfectly concealed by the night. They stepped softly and listened close, but there was no sound of alarm, no sound at all that they could hear, save for the occasional watchmen calling back and forth.
“They say ‘All’s well,’” Harald whispered when they were close enough to make out the watchmen’s words. Thorgrim smiled to himself. The men within had no idea.
They were no more than forty feet away from the wall when a watchman appeared, torch in hand. Thorgrim stopped instantly and he heard the others behind him do the same. The watchman was standing on top of the wall where the line of palisades was interrupted by the gate. He seemed to be talking to some ot
hers hidden behind the row of sharpened logs sunk into the crest of the earthworks.
The light from the torch fell on the ringfort walls, an earthen mound heaped fifteen feet high. It was tall enough that it might have formed a significant defense, but the walls, being made of piled earth, were rounded, wider at the base than at the top, and thus not too difficult to scale. The palisade added a further hindrance to someone coming over the wall, but not much.
The watchman with the torch turned and stared out into the dark. He seemed to be looking directly at Thorgrim and his men, but Thorgrim knew the man would be blinded by his own torchlight and would never see them, even as close as they were. Still, with the watchmen and the fires there would be no sneaking into Ráth Naoi. But that was all right.
Thorgrim turned to Starri Deathless, who was standing beside him. In the thin light shed by the watchman’s distant torch he could see that Starri was doing that odd jerking thing he did with his arms when a fight was imminent. He was making a sort of whimpering noise, as he was straining to hold all this terrible power in, as if he could not hold it long. But that was all right, too. He did not have to.
“Starri,” Thorgrim whispered. “Go rid us of those watchmen on the wall.”
With that, Starri was gone. Their stealthy approach had been like a damn holding him back, but with Thorgrim’s words the damn had burst and the irresistible rush of power that was Starri Deathless came surging forward. He ran at the ringfort, his two axes held out at his sides at arm’s length, and he howled as he ran.
The watchman on the wall froze and stared out into the dark, head sweeping left and right.
Stupid bastard, Thorgrim thought. His torch was blinding him and he did not see Starri until Starri reached the edge of the ringfort’s walls and kept on going as if they were not even there. He leapt at the wall and his forward momentum carried him one, two, three steps up the steeply sloping earthwork. The watchman had time enough to swing his torch part way around at Starri’s head before Starri’s ax slammed into him, knocking him back off the wall, the spray of blood visible in the firelight as he fell. Then Starri wheeled and went for the other men on the wall, hidden from Thorgrim’s view.
Starri was not the only one getting into the fight. As soon as he had headed for the wall the others did as well, running hard in Starri’s wake. Harald, Vali and Armod, the youngest of them, were soon a few paces ahead, with Thorgrim and Godi taking up the rear.
They reached the wall less than a minute after Starri and already they could hear the screams of fear and pain on the other side of the earthworks as Starri cleared the path for them. Harald reached the wall and clambered up the sloping side, not as effortlessly as Starri had done, but close, and Vali and Armod were on his heels. Thorgrim and the handful of men with him stopped at the edge of the earthworks, and just a few seconds later they heard the heavy bar of the gates tossed aside and the creak of one of the big doors swinging open.
Thorgrim stepped up and grabbed the edge of the gate and pulled it until it was wide enough for him to slip through, which he did, the others behind him. From the outside the ringfort had seemed like a large affair, but Thorgrim was still surprised by how much area was encompassed by the round earthen wall.
A couple hundred paces away, a massive bonfire was burning in an open area, casting its light in a great circle around the space. The light of the flames danced off the walls of the big hall behind. Sundry other buildings, dozens of them, were just visible, scattered around the ringfort grounds as if they were trying to keep to the shadows.
All this Thorgrim took in with a single glance around. The fighting by the gate was pandemonium and it needed his attention. There was a dead man on the ground, probably the watchman Starri had struck down, and now Starri was engaged with two others on the wall above them. Harald and Vali and Armod had come down from the wall, and after unbarring the gate, had turned to fight the men-at-arms who had come running up at the sound of the commotion.
From the direction of the hall, Thorgrim could hear more men shouting, feet running, the sound of alarm and panic spreading.
Can’t waste time with this, Thorgrim thought. In the flames of the bonfire he could see men running to meet this new threat. A dozen maybe. He hoped there were not too many more than that. He was counting on it.
“Come,” he said to Godi and the others and they flung themselves at the five or six with whom Harald, Starri and the others were engaged. Swords flashed in the orange light and the space near the gate was filled with the sounds of clashing steel and the grunts of men wielding weapons, thrusting, parrying, slashing with wild, desperate strokes.
Two more went down. Dead or wounded, Thorgrim did not know or care as long as they were down, and the other men-at-arms turned and fled, leaving the Northmen alone by the gate. But they would not be alone long. Men were rushing toward them from the direction of the bonfire and the hall behind it.
Thorgrim looked around. The way to the left seemed clear, and that direction would work as well as any.
“This way, let’s go,” he said. “Harald, make certain Starri is with us!” He pushed past Godi and Olaf Thordarson and raced off, skirting the edge of the earthen wall, looking for the nearest cluster of buildings in which they could lose themselves.
There was shouting all around. Thorgrim could not understand the words, but he had a good sense for the meaning. He could hear it in the voices. Confusion. Uncertainty. A bit of fear. There were enemies within the walls, and the men-at-arms whose job it was to protect the ringfort did not know what was happening. But Thorgrim did, because he was the one making it happen.
They came at last to a place where four or five buildings stood clustered together. They were round and daub-covered with conical thatched roofs. The nearest stood about fifty paces from the outer wall. Each had a yard fenced off with a wattle fence. They could see hints of animals moving around in the yards, pigs or goats or some such, disturbed in their sleep by this most unorthodox intrusion.
“Here,” Thorgrim said and led the way into the dark area between two of the buildings. He paused there and the others paused as well and they listened. There were men approaching. They could see the light of torches dancing on the earthen wall and the sides of the buildings. They could see men running, but all was still in confusion.
“They’re looking for us,” Harald said in a whisper.
“Yes,” Thorgrim said, biting off the word as he realized that the black mood was enveloping him, the consuming and inexplicable fury that would sometimes grip him in the dark hours. It was odd that it should come on so late into the night, but many things about him were changing as he grew older, and this was one of them.
And there was no denying it; he could feel the mood creeping over him like the first hints of a coming illness. Soon, he knew, he would not be able to tolerate anyone speaking to him. They had to finish this business quick.
“Harald, with me,” he snapped. “The rest of you, go. There.” He pointed with Iron-tooth to a knot of men-at-arms fifty feet away. They were advancing cautiously, torches in left hands, swords in right, searching for the intruders.
“Twenty minutes, no more,” Thorgrim added and the men were off, Starri Deathless once again leading the rush, running, screaming, axes swinging. Thorgrim saw the men-at-arms stop, toss their torches aside and spread out, standing ready for this renewed attack.
And that was all the time Thorgrim could spare for them. “Let’s go,” he said to Harald and he ran off in the other direction, his senses sharp as he moved through light and shadow. He could see men running toward the place where Starri and the others were fighting. Fighting and making all the distracting noise they could before they once again disappeared into the dark.
The bonfire was no more than fifty feet from the big hall and it cast its dancing yellow light on the tall building. There was a door at the far end of the hall and two guards there, men charged with securing the entrance, men who would not be lured away by the sounds of a fi
ght. And inside the hall, cowering as his men fought his battles for him, was the Irishman, Kevin. Thorgrim knew it. He could feel it.
They came out of the shadows and into the great circle of light cast by the bonfire and ran the last hundred feet across the open ground for the door to the hall. Thorgrim could see the guards react as they caught sight of the running men, could see them tense up, take a step in his and Harald’s direction. They would guess these two were not friends, but they could not be sure.
Thorgrim was still fifty feet away, running hard, Iron-tooth held high, when the guards finally understood that they were in serious peril. Their spears, held upright at their sides, came down to the horizontal, the tips slightly raised and aimed directly at the chests of the men coming at them.
Twenty feet, ten feet, and then Thorgrim slowed, coming to an awkward stop, sweeping Iron-tooth down with a backhand stroke, connecting with the wooden shaft of the spear and knocking it aside. He went for the man’s chest with a straight thrust, but the guard was quicker than Thorgrim thought he would be. He dodged aside and swung the spear like a club, hitting Thorgrim on the upper arm and knocking him off balance.
Thorgrim stumbled sideways as the guard tried to pull the spear back to a place where he could thrust it into Thorgrim’s gut. But it was an awkward weapon, too long for such close quarter fighting.
You should have dropped that spear and pulled your sword, Thorgrim thought, even as he thrust Iron-tooth into the man’s neck.
He pulled Iron-tooth free and the guard went down on his knees then toppled on his side, kicking and making a strangling noise. Thorgrim turned to see what Harald was up to, found him standing over the body of the second guard, blood glinting on Oak Cleaver’s blade.
Thorgrim stepped up to the door and pushed and he could feel that it was barred on the other side. He could feel the fury boiling up and he cocked his leg and slammed his heel into the door, waist-height. He felt the door move, a fraction of an inch, and he heard something start to break. He kicked again and the door moved even more. Then Harald stepped up and delivered a powerful blow with the bottom of his foot and the door swung open with a wrenching, shattering sound.
Night Wolf: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 5) Page 36
