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

by James L. Nelson

  The hall was spacious, bigger than his own at Vík-ló, with the roof peaked so high that even the light of the big fire burning in the hearth could not reach it’s very top. There was a great table running down the length of the hall, and at the far end of the table stood the Irishman, Kevin—and he looked very afraid.

  Thorgrim stepped through the door and moved slowly around the table. Kevin was wearing mail, a sword hanging from his belt, but they looked more for show than for actual fighting. Then Thorgrim noticed there was another man there, by Kevin’s side. He recognized the man, but could not place him. Then he remembered. It was Kevin’s translator. What was his name? Eoin, that was it. Thorgrim was surprised he could recall that.

  He walked around the table toward the two men who watched him the way deer will watch a hunter approach, not sure if they should bolt or remain perfectly still. Kevin whispered something to Eoin and Eoin stepped away, came toward Thorgrim, arms open as if to show he held no weapons. He began to talk.

  He was talking in Thorgrim’s native tongue and Thorgrim could have understood the words if he had bothered to listen, which he did not. Instead he continued to approach and Eoin continued to talk and when Thorgrim was close enough he darted Iron-tooth out like a snake striking and drove the point right into Eoin’s heart.

  Thorgrim felt the tip pause, just for an instant, as it hit the mail. He felt it tear through the metal links, deflect off bone and then go straight in with hardly any resistance after that. Eoin’s mouth and eyes went wide, as men’s did when stabbed in the heart. Thorgrim had seen it often enough. Eoin made a gurgling noise, but Thorgrim suspected he was already dead. He jerked Iron-tooth free and Eoin fell with no other sound.

  Kevin had taken a step back from the table and now he was talking, fast and urgent, but he did not speak Norse and Thorgrim could not understand the words. Despite the black mood, the hint of a smile played on Thorgrim’s lips.

  This, he realized, was why he had killed Eoin.

  Without Eoin, Kevin could not use words, and words were Kevin’s most lethal weapon. They were the weapon with which he had killed nearly all of Thorgrim’s men and nearly killed Thorgrim, too. Kevin used words the way other men used swords and axes, and now Thorgrim had taken that away from the man.

  He had not done so because he thought Kevin’s words might have some effect on him. They would not. He had done it to see the terror in Kevin’s eyes when he realized that no matter what he said, his words could not possibly do him any good.

  And Thorgrim was not disappointed. He saw the realization dawn on Kevin’s face and then the unabashed fear. He saw the very moment when Kevin realized that he would not talk his way out of this.

  Thorgrim guessed that Kevin would now try the only option left to him, and he was correct. Kevin jerked his sword from its sheath, took a step forward and brought the blade down like an ax, right at Thorgrim’s head.

  He was fast, faster than Thorgrim would have thought, but not fast enough. Iron-tooth was up, held horizontal, and Kevin’s blade stopped dead as it connected. Kevin whipped his blade around and tried a slashing attack at Thorgrim’s legs, but once again Iron-tooth was there to stop it.

  The panic was now plainly visible on Kevin’s face. Thorgrim was tempted to keep this up, to toy with him, cat and mouse, until Kevin collapsed in exhaustion. But he knew he did not have time to indulge himself that way.

  The next attack was clumsier, more desperate than the first two, an awkward lunge right for Thorgrim’s belly. Thorgrim flicked Kevin’s blade aside, stepped in, and drove Iron-tooth’s bloody steel into Kevin’s heart just as he had Eoin’s.

  Kevin’s eyes bulged; his mouth gaped open. Thorgrim pushed the blade harder, and this time he felt it tear though the mail on Kevin’s back. He stepped up close so he and Kevin were just inches apart, and the only thing holding Kevin upright was Thorgrim’s sword.

  He saw Kevin’s eyes shift, just a hair’s breadth, until he was looking into Thorgrim’s eyes, and Thorgrim had the satisfaction of seeing that the man was still alive, that the last thing on earth he would see would be the satisfied face of the man he had wronged, getting his final vengeance.

  And then the light in Kevin’s eyes went out and his body shook with a death rattle. Thorgrim tipped his sword down and Kevin’s corpse slid off and fell in a heap at his feet.

  Kevin was still gripping his sword, but Thorgrim did not mind. Kevin was a Christian, like all the Irish, and Thorgrim did not think Christians would be welcome in the corpse hall, no matter how they died.

  And even if they were, Thorgrim was certain that the Valkyrie would not choose a lying, cowardly pathetic maggot like Kevin to sit at the table of Odin. Kevin was gone, and Thorgrim was satisfied that he would never see him again, in this world or any other.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  A slaughter was inflicted on the foreigners

  at the islands of eastern Brega…

  The Annals of Ulster

  Harald Thorgrimson kept his ears on the open door and his eyes on the back of the hall. A wattle wall separated the big room from some others back in the shadows—sleeping chambers or storerooms he guessed, perfect for armed men to conceal themselves and come rushing out with weapons drawn.

  As he watched for movement at the far end of the space, he listened to what was going on out in the night. He heard Starri shriek two or three times in quick succession, he heard orders shouted back and forth, he heard the distinct sound of blades hitting blade, blades hitting shields. If the others were doing what they were supposed to be doing, they were leading Kevin’s men-at-arms on a merry chase through the dark. And they would keep it up for another few minutes, no more.

  Harald kept near the door, Oak Cleaver in hand, as his father advanced on the two men in the room. One was Kevin, the object of their visit; the other was the translator, Eoin. It was Eoin who was stepping toward Thorgrim, hands out. He was speaking their Norse language, welcoming Thorgrim to Kevin’s hall, offering him food and drink.

  Harald shook his head. That was pathetic, even for the desperate ploy that it was. Then, to Harald’s relief, Thorgrim drove Iron-tooth through Eoin’s heart.

  It was Kevin’s turn next, and much as Harald would have liked to concentrate on this final act, he did not take his eyes from the far wall or his ears from the grounds outside the door.

  Now Kevin was talking, and Harald half listened to the words. He heard offers of silver and gold, slaves, promises to aid the Northmen in lucrative raids. Harold could not tell if Kevin, in his panic, had forgotten that Thorgrim could not understand him, or if he hoped Harald would translate, or if he just could not stop himself from talking. The latter, Harald guessed.

  Translating would have been pointless, and Harald did not bother. His father had no interest in Kevin’s words, and there was nothing that Kevin could offer that Thorgrim could not simply take. What’s more, Harald knew that the black mood was working on him. It was odd that it should happen at that hour, but after a lifetime of experience Harald knew the signs perfectly well. They had to finish this business with Kevin and be out of here soon.

  There were few things that Harald Broadarm feared, but one of them was having to deal with his father when the black mood was on him. He swallowed hard, working himself up to say something about the need to hurry, when Kevin drew his sword and took an awkward swipe at Thorgrim’s head.

  Oh, thank the gods, Harald thought. Now it would be over soon, as long as Thorgrim was not tempted to prolong Kevin’s misery.

  Kevin attacked again, and then again, and Thorgrim parried the blows. Harald was just starting to worry that his father would indeed draw this out when he saw Kevin die on Iron-tooth’s long blade. Harald gave his father half a minute to savor the vengeance, and then he hurried over to him, across the big room.

  “Father,” he said, laying a hand on Thorgrim’s arm. “We have to go.”

  Thorgrim turned and looked at him with that expression Harald knew well, the one that
said his father only half recognized him, half knew who he was. But the black mood had not taken hold entirely, Harald could see that, and so he was not surprised when Thorgrim nodded, then bent over and wiped Iron-tooth clean on the tail of Kevin’s tunic. He slid the blade into the scabbard and followed Harald out into the dark.

  They paused just outside the door to Kevin’s hall and listened. The bulk of the noise was coming from around the other side of the building, coming from some place deep within the ringfort.

  “Let’s go,” Harald said and he took off running toward the sound, glancing back to make certain that his father was following behind, relieved to see that he was. They ran around the far side of the hall, where the tall building shielded them from the light of the bonfire, and raced off into the dark. There was fighting up ahead, which was good, because without the sound of battle like a horn in the fog Harald did not think he would have ever been able to find his fellows. The ringfort was much bigger than it had seemed from the outside.

  They came around the side of a small building that looked to be a smithy of some sort and Harald could see them, fifty paces away, by the ringfort’s outer wall. They were all but surrounded by men-at-arms. They were outnumbered, but not wildly outnumbered, and not yet overwhelmed.

  “Here we go!” Harald shouted. He drew Oak Cleaver and he picked up his pace and he yelled as he ran at the fighting men, yelled as loud and manic as he could to surprise the Irish men-at-arms and throw them into confusion.

  And it worked. He saw heads turn, men turn, then turn back as they realized there was danger on all sides. He saw one take a sword thrust in the shoulder, courtesy of Thorodd Bollason, on whom he had foolishly turned his back.

  Harald came in with sword swinging, knocked a spear shaft aside, thrust and missed, but he was more concerned about sewing panic, and in that he was successful. He saw men backing away, unsure what threat was the greatest, the men they had been fighting or the new arrivals at their backs.

  And then Thorgrim was among them, Iron-tooth scything the air. His father had abandoned his usual subtle, skilled sword craft and now was slashing and hacking, but the effect was what they sought: the collapse of the Irishmen’s will to fight. Spears and torches were flung aside and the men-at-arms bolted off, running in half a dozen different directions, wanting only to get clear of the Northmen who had so taken them by surprise.

  They would regroup, they would come again, but it would not matter. Thorgrim and the others had done what they had come to do. Now it was time to go.

  Godi stepped up, a grim sort of smile on his face. He looked at Thorgrim, opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. He shifted his eyes to Harald and Harald gave a little shake of the head, and Godi gave a little nod, an all but imperceptible gesture. Godi had been with Thorgrim for a year or more and he recognized the black mood and knew what it meant.

  “Here,” Harald said, sheathing Oak Cleaver and nodding toward the wall. “We’ll go over the wall here.” Starri was there, breathing hard, coming out of his temporary madness even as Thorgrim was lapsing into his. Starri scrambled up the earth wall. He took one of his axes and drove it into the palisade four feet above the earthworks and drove the second in three feet above that. One by one the men went up the sloping wall and, using the axes as steps, went up and over the palisades. They dropped to the wall on the other side, then slid down to the ground.

  It took no more than a few minutes before they were all on the outside of the ringfort once again, lost in the dark. From the far side of the wall Harald heard a cry of alarm. It was followed by more voices and then the sound of running feet and he guessed that the body of the late rí túaithe of Cill Mhantáin had been discovered.

  “Let’s be gone,” he said in a low voice and headed off at a quick pace over the open ground, back the way they had come. They walked for ten minutes before they saw a flicker of light off to their left, though how far off it was impossible to tell. It flashed and then flashed again, a striker on flint, then remained steady as the flames took hold. It made a fixed point in the dark and Harald altered course to make for it.

  They walked for ten minutes before they reached the point of light, which was the flame of a torch held by Cónán’s man, Cerball. Behind him, barely visible, were the horses Cerball had brought, twelve in all, all once the property of Kevin’s men-at-arms. The Northmen mounted up and Cerball and another of Cónán’s men led the way, torches in hand, casting just enough light that they could find their way past the hill, through the little valley with the lake and the woods, and finally to the place where Cónán’s men were secreted away.

  Cónán was there to greet them. He was smiling and looking smugly pleased with himself. He approached Thorgrim’s horse and was ready to start telling the tale of his exploits leading the Irish warriors on their wild goose chase when Harald slid down from his mount and intercepted him.

  “My father’s not really in the mood for talk,” he said in a low voice. Thorgrim, in fact, had said nothing since they had come back over the ringfort’s walls. He had just ridden in silence a few lengths’ distance from the others.

  “Is he all right?” Cónán asked and there was genuine concern in his voice.

  “He’s fine,” Harald said. “It’s just a thing that happens to him. Kevin mac Lugaed’s not so fine, however, and you’ll be happy to know it.”

  And Cónán was indeed happy to hear the news. He and Harald and the others went off to where a small fire burned and the Northmen were given meat and ale and they told their story and Cónán told his. And somewhere, out in the dark, unseen, Thorgrim Night Wolf sat on the grass and let the black mood, the wolf dream, steal over him.

  By the time Ottar Bloodax staggered into his tent that night and lay down on the furs heaped on the ground, he was very drunk and very pleased.

  Jorund’s news had been the most welcome thing he could hear. Not about the deaths of Galti and Einar, of course; they were good men, and he was sorry to lose them. But the news that the wolf was not real, that it had all been the doing of the traitor, Aghen. And the further news that rather than having to go fight Kevin, Kevin was coming to him.

  Ottar had been suspicious at first. He had to be. A man did not reach the position Ottar had reached, and remain alive for very long, if he was not suspicious. But things had indeed turned out as Jorund said they would.

  On Jorund’s word alone Ottar had put his men on a battle footing: weapons, armor, helmets, shields. He had sent scouts out ahead, and they had soon come back to report men on foot and men on horseback coming their way, and coming fast. Ottar arranged his men in a shield wall and waited.

  He had not waited long. The men on foot came tearing over the crest of the hill and Ottar called for the shieldwall to stand ready, but those men had turned to the left and seemed to disappear into a creek bed that was all but hidden from where Ottar and his men stood. He was about to order his men to chase them down when the horsemen came over the crest of the hill. That was when the real fighting started.

  Normally the mounted warriors would have had a great advantage, but not this time. They seemed entirely surprised to find Ottar’s shieldwall standing in their way. They were disorganized and winded from what Ottar realized was a long chase across country. They were in no position to attack; they were hardly able to defend themselves when Ottar’s shieldwall advanced.

  It had not been a slaughter, but something close. The horsemen fought well as they tried to get themselves into some kind of order, but there was not much they could do. The shieldwall hit them and drove them back and put them into even greater disarray. Orders flew back and forth, knots of riders formed and charged in and out with their deadly spears and even managed to wound and kill some of Ottar’s men. But in the end they had been overwhelmed and they used the speed that their mounts afforded them to turn tail and race for the hills to the west.

  When it was over Ottar looked around the field of battle, the wounded, the dead, the bloody weapons held high, and he saw
it was good. “Tonight we feast!” he roared. “And tomorrow we go to Kevin’s ringfort and cut that sorry bastard’s heart from his chest!”

  The men cheered. They cheered loud and with enthusiasm, the cheering of men who had just fought a battle and lived and won. Men who would fight another on the following day with the expectation that they would win again, and in victory gain great plunder. They were men who would now follow Ottar Bloodax with the loyalty he expected and deserved.

  The eating and drinking had gone on late into the night, the black and moonless night, until Ottar could feel his eyes closing, his body slumping. He knew he had to get to his tent before he passed out by the fire, because passing out was a sign of weakness and he could show no weakness. He stood, staggered off, pulled the flap of the tent back.

  A small oil lamp sat on a barrel, its flame dancing in the draft made by the moving tent flap. Like most Northmen, Ottar did not like the dark and those things from the other worlds that might lurk there. It was worse in Ireland, where strange and foreign spirits might resent the intrusion of the men from across the sea. So Ottar ordered his slave to keep a lamp burning and the slave never failed because he understood the price of such failure.

  Ottar had energy enough to unbuckle his sword belt and set it on the ground by his pallet, where he always kept it while he slept, ready to be taken up in an instant. That done, he fell on the pile of furs and a moment later he was asleep.

  It was still night when he came awake again. It was black as death in his tent save for the one tiny flame. His head was still swimming with drink so he knew he had not been asleep very long. But something had woken him. He was not sure what it was, but he felt a chill of fear on his flesh.