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

by James L. Nelson

Thorgrim did not hesitate. He stepped in and thrust, but Ottar’s second was there and Iron-tooth bounced off the flat surface of the shield. Then Ottar struck again and Thorgrim was just able to turn the sword aside.

  Shield…Ottar’s shield… Thorgrim thought stupidly, his mind clouded with exhaustion. He had to destroy Ottar’s last shield. Then, with weapons alone, he might use skill and speed to overcome Ottar’s brute force. He stepped up and

  slammed Iron-tooth down on the face of the shield, felt the wood give, then stepped quickly back and to his left, putting Ottar’s second between him and Ottar just as Ottar tried for a killing stroke.

  “Idiot!” Ottar roared as he stumbled against the man who held his shield. He stepped back and once again struck his second on the side of the head. The man staggered under the blow and Thorgrim thrust and once again found Ottar’s left shoulder, driving the point in at nearly the same place he had wounded him before.

  “Bastard!” Ottar roared. With the blood running bright though his beard and staining the front of his tunic, his eyes wild, his mouth hanging open, he looked like the madman he was. His second came hurrying back to his side, but Ottar hit him again and jerked the shield from his hands and tossed it away.

  “Come, Night Wolf!” Ottar screamed, his voice nearing hysterical. “Kill me, or let me kill you!” He slashed at Thorgrim, and Thorgrim parried the blow, their swords ringing out like bells in the morning air. Then Thorgrim slid Iron-tooth forward and thrust once more, but this time Ottar leapt back, clear of the attack.

  With shields gone, so too was the need for an orderly exchange of blows. It was a brawl now, and the fight would go to the fastest and most skilled blade, or the luckiest. The two men circled one another, stepping around the perimeter of the cloak, eyes holding eyes, blades ready. Ottar lunged and Thorgrim parried and lunged in return. Ottar tried to knock the blade aside with his left forearm, but Iron-tooth tore through his sleeve and Thorgrim could feel the weapon’s edge ripping through flesh and scraping bone.

  He expected Ottar to scream, to jerk his arm away, but instead Ottar did the one thing that Thorgrim did not expect at all: he stepped forward and kicked Thorgrim hard in his wounded shins.

  The pain shot through Thorgrim’s legs and into his gut and he felt his knees buckle under him. He shouted with the agony of it, despite himself, and fell to the cloak, coming down on hands and knees, Iron-tooth slipping from his grasp.

  Take up the sword, take up the sword! he thought, his mind in a desperate panic. In the next instant Ottar would deliver the killing blow and he could not die without a weapon in his hand. He had to reach the corpse hall. He had promised Harald he would wait for him there.

  Thorgrim looked up. Ottar was looming over him, sword raised above his head, nothing but air between the blade and Thorgrim’s skull. A look of triumph was already showing on his face as their eyes met. Thorgrim wanted to curse him, to die with defiance on his lips. He opened his mouth, but the words did not come. In their stead came a growl, deep and guttural.

  It was a savage sound, a feral sound. Where it came from Thorgrim did not know. It came from his bowels, it came from his soul, it vibrated in the morning air. And Ottar froze, sword over his head. His eyes went wide and the look of triumph dissolved into terror and he backed away fast, step by step, until he was off the cloak then over the hazel pole.

  And there he stopped, realizing what he had done, stepping out of the square. A murmur ran through the watching men, a low, ugly noise. Ottar looked side to side, the terror gone, humiliation in its place. He lifted his sword once again and bellowed his wounded bull bellow and charged over the hazel pole, running at Thorgrim who was still on hands and knees on the cloak.

  Thorgrim’s hand lashed out and his fingers wrapped around Iron-tooth’s grip. He was aware of the burning agony in his legs, but the pain seemed unreal somehow. He pushed up with his arms, pushed off with his feet, and launched himself into the air like an animal leaping at its prey, Iron-tooth held straight out in front of him.

  He leapt just as Ottar came onto the cloak with sword raised, and he struck with the force of their combined momentum. Iron-tooth’s point hit Ottar in the chest and kept going without the slighted hesitation, ripping out the big man’s back and stopping only when the cross guard fetched up against Ottar’s body.

  The two of them slammed into one another, the impact engulfing Thorgrim in a wave of agony, and they went down in a heap. Iron-tooth slipped from Thorgrim’s grip once again and his every instinct cried for him to get the weapon back in hand. He rolled to the side, came up on his feet, his knees nearly buckling again with the burning pain in his legs.

  Iron-tooth was standing upright just in front of him and he grabbed the hilt and pulled, and only then did he realize that it was upright because it was sticking up from Ottar’s chest.

  Thorgrim held the blade at his side, the blood bright on the steel and dripping on the cloak at his feet. He looked down at Ottar. His eyes were wide and stared unblinking at the sky above. The blood was spreading over his new tunic, a great swath where Iron-tooth had gone through his heart, and lesser pools of blood where he had been wounded in the shoulder and the side.

  Thorgrim took a small, staggering step and he heard the blood in his shoes making a liquid sound. He thought he might collapse again, but then Harald was there at his side, holding him up, and Starri Deathless was on the other side, and the hazel pole square was filling with men coming forward.

  He looked up at the sky overhead. It was blue, a thing he had not seen in a long time. He felt the sun warm on his face. It was an omen. A good omen. And now he knew it was an omen that the gods had meant for him.

  Epilogue

  “And here, my warrior,

  You will rule over all this wealth

  And have dominion over me,

  And we will have riches

  Beyond gold’s measure.”

  Sisli Sursson’s Saga

  The men-at-arms had had enough. Lochlánn could see that just in the way they rode, the way they held their weapons. From the moment they first sallied out of Ráth Naoi things had not gone well, and they had only gotten worse from there. They had driven the Irish and the heathens over the countryside, had come to what they thought was the triumphant end of a long chase when they had run headlong into Ottar’s shieldwall.

  They had behaved like warriors, and Lochlánn was proud of his men, and Niall’s as well, but they had been disorganized and worn out after the lengthy pursuit. They gathered as best they could, charged the heathens, taken some down with their long spears. But they were tired and their mounts were tired and the heathens were ready for them, fresh and eager for a fight. It had not lasted all that long, in the end.

  The horsemen had been driven back, then driven back again, and then one of Kevin’s men had blown a horn, the note long and loud as it sounded over the field of battle. Lochlánn did not know what the horn meant, but he had a good idea, and when the men under Niall’s command began to retreat, and quickly, he knew he was right.

  “Back! Everyone back!” Lochlánn shouted, riding back and forth across the field, calling to his own warriors. “Senach, get the men back! We’ll meet up on that hill yonder!”

  Once he had his own men in motion, Lochlánn wheeled his horse and rode after them, leaving the jeering heathens behind. Down the sloping hill and then up the other side, where Niall’s horsemen were milling around. Lochlánn rode up to the high ground, pulled his horse to a stop, and turned. The heathens were lining the crest of the hill they had just abandoned, but they showed no inclination to keep coming. The hour was late and the heathens doing battle on foot would have a hard time pursuing, and a more difficult time attacking once the riders were able to organize. The fighting for that day was over.

  Lochlánn looked around at the men slumping on their horses, their near-dead expressions. Senach’s face was smeared with blood and his arm was hanging limp from a wound in the shoulder, and the men around him did not look m
uch better. There was no fight left in them, and Lochlánn knew the fighting was over not just for that day but for the foreseeable future.

  Louis de Roumois came riding up and reined his horse to a stop at Lochlánn’s side. There was a rent in his mail shirt and his tunic under the mail was torn and bloody. For a moment he just sat, wide-eyed and trying to catch his breath. Then he said one word.

  “Niall?”

  Lochlánn frowned and looked around, but he could not see Niall anywhere. “Echach,” he called to one of the men-at-arms from Ráth Naoi. “Where is Niall?”

  Echach looked stunned, but he shook his head and then said, “Killed. In the second charge. Spear through the heart.”

  Lochlánn felt sick. He liked Niall and had come to respect him. He respected the man’s courage, and he had no doubt that it was that courage that had gotten him killed. And that made him think of Kevin mac Lugaed, safe back at the ringfort. His proper place was here, at the head of his men. It should have been him dying in the grass, not Niall.

  I might just kill that coward myself, Lochlánn mused.

  “There’s nothing more for us to do here,” Louis said, breaking in on his thoughts. “The men are spent, the horses are spent. We must ride back to the ringfort and make our plans there.”

  Lochlánn knew that Louis was right, but the rage born of the day’s events was still boiling in him and his anger and suspicion with Louis had not dissipated. In fact, it had only become worse with Louis’s haughty behavior and his ingratiating himself with Kevin and Niall. But now Niall was dead and Kevin probably would be soon, once Ottar reached Ráth Naoi, and Lochlánn had had enough.

  “Do not tell me what we must do, you Frankish whore’s son,” Lochlánn said. “You’re still my prisoner, pray do not forget that. Once we’ve resolved all this we’ll be going back to Glendalough and there you can explain yourself in a law court.”

  And that was all he had to say to Louis de Roumois. He reined his horse over, called an order to the men, and in a long and weary line they rode back to the ringfort at Ráth Naoi.

  There was no smoke they could see rising from the gable end of the hall as they crossed the open pastureland that surrounded the ringfort. No men on the walls. Nothing moving. It was not until they reached the big gate that they saw someone at last, one of the handful of men-at-arms who had stayed behind to guard the place. He was standing by the palisade, right above the gate, waiting for the riders to approach. He seemed to be weary and holding himself up with his spear.

  Lochlánn stopped ten paces from the gate. He expected it to swing open, but it did not. He looked up at the man on the wall.

  “Will you open the gate?” he asked.

  The man looked down to the ground behind him. He looked left and right. There was apparently no one there to open the gate. Echach rode up to Lochlánn’s right side.

  “You’ve seen us coming for a mile at least,” he said. “Did you not think to open the gate? Kevin mac Lugaed will hear of this, depend on it.”

  “Kevin mac Lugaed’s dead,” the guard said. “And Eoin.”

  “Dead?” Echach asked.

  “Dead. Killed by the heathens.”

  Echach and Lochlánn exchanged glances. “Where are the heathens now?” Lochlánn demanded.

  The man on the wall shrugged. “I don’t know. Run off? They aren’t here.”

  “Well, damn you, open the gate now!” Echach said with greater volume and urgency.

  “There’s nothing left,” the man on the wall said. “The rest of them, the other men-at-arms, they looted this place clean. All Kevin’s hoard, clothes, weapons. They loaded it all on carts and then they were gone, off to the north.”

  Echach looked to the north, as if he might see the others riding off with the wealth of Ráth Naoi. Then he looked to the east as if he might see Ottar’s heathens coming up over the hill. He turned to his men, the remnants of Kevin’s mercenary army. “Off to the north, then,” he called. “We’ll have to ride hard.”

  “What?” Lochlánn said. “Where are you going?”

  “You heard what he said,” Echach replied, nodding toward the guard on the wall. “Bastards plundered the place and now they think they can ride off and keep it all for themselves. Not if I can help it.”

  “But the heathens, they’ll be coming this way,” Lochlánn said, and even as he said it he realized how ridiculous it sounded.

  “Another good reason for us to ride north,” Echach said. “No one’s paying us to fight heathens now.” With that he turned his horse to the north and kicked his heels into its flanks. The tired beast managed to work itself up to a trot, and the rest of the late Kevin mac Lugaed’s men rode after him.

  Lochlánn looked to his left, where Senach was sitting his horse. “No point in us staying,” Senach said. “Even if the men weren’t ready to drop in their tracks, we couldn’t beat the heathens on our own.”

  He was right, and Lochlánn knew it. It was over. The hunt, the fighting. They had come within a hair’s breadth of finishing the work begun at Glendalough, but in the end that achievement had been snatched from them.

  Then Lochlánn recalled that there was one thing they could still accomplish, one important issue they might yet resolve. He looked around at the gathered men. He looked again, his eyes sweeping from man to man, his panic growing as he searched their faces.

  “Senach,” he said, “where the hell is Louis de Roumois?”

  Louis de Roumois was about four miles to the north of Ráth Naoi. He had been riding hard, but he could see that his horse might well die of exhaustion, might drop dead right under him as he rode. He had seen that before, had even had two of his own mounts die that way.

  The difference now was the degree of trouble he would be in if that were to happen. The chances of his getting another horse in that country—a place that so many considered a land blessed by God, but one he was sure was cursed—were practically nonexistent.

  So he slowed his horse to a walk and looked back over his shoulder and saw nothing that he did not expect to see. There were fields and stands of trees and birds circling high overhead. There were a few faint columns of smoke on the horizon. There were no shield-bearing heathens, no horsemen riding hard in hopes of running him to ground.

  Seeing that, he reined the horse to a stop and swung himself down to the ground. The horse stood there, too tired even to eat, and Louis stretched and worked the kinks out of his muscles. He looked around. He had only the vaguest notion of where he was.

  Getting clear of Lochlánn and the rest had been easy enough. Defeated men, exhausted men were not terribly vigilant as a rule. Lochlánn, conscientious leader that he was, would always insist on riding at the head of the column, and Senach could be counted on to ride at Lochlánn’s side. Louis had slowed his pace as he rode, and slowed it some more, falling back so gradually that no one took any notice.

  Finally he was at the end of the column and it was just Kevin’s men around him and they did not give a tinker’s damn what Louis did. They were passing the stretch of woods by the pond when Louis told the man beside him that his horse had picked up a stone in its shoe and he had to stop and clear it. The man only shrugged and said nothing, as if wondering why Louis thought he would care.

  So Louis stopped and dismounted and lifted his horse’s foot to clear the imaginary stone and the column of riders moved on without him. And then he mounted again and walked his horse toward the woods and disappeared from the view of the other horsemen. He waited until they were up and over the crest of the far hill before riding hard in the opposite direction.

  And now, for the first time in a very, very long time, he was alone. No monastery, no men-at-arms, no Failend, no heathens, no Irish bandits. Just him and his horse. He sighed and ran his eyes over the great green empty country around him.

  He was alone, but he was not without resources. In the night, at the ringfort at Ráth Naoi, he had managed to get to Lochlánn’s saddlebag and withdraw the small silver chest t
hat had once belonged to Colman and then, after Colman’s untimely and unnatural death, had passed to Failend and now to him.

  Louis felt no guilt about that. The heathens were the enemy of mankind. He had fought them in Frankia and now he had fought them in Ireland. They were doing Satan’s work, and Failend had joined them, and that, to Louis’s mind, meant she forfeited anything of worth. Particularly as this silver, if it had stayed with her, would most likely have found its way into the hands of Thorgrim Night Wolf.

  So Louis had his horse and he had his silver hoard. He had his sword and his considerable skill and experience in the use of it. He had his courage and his wits. If he kept on in the direction he was riding he was pretty sure he would find his way to Dubh-linn.

  Dubh-linn. This whole country of Ireland was nothing but a smattering of ringforts and the seats of ridiculous puffed up farmers who thought themselves minor kings. There was nothing like the cities he knew in Frankia and Frisia. He had never been to Dubh-linn, but as he understood it, it was the only city of any note in all of Ireland, and it had taken the heathens to build it.

  There was one thing he hoped to find in Dubh-linn, one thing he thought it likely he would find, and that was a ship. The Northmen sailed their vessels of war, their longships, to that place, but there were merchants there as well, tubby ships from the lands of the Saxons and the Picts, and from lands further over the seas. There was money to be made in Ireland and that brought the ships and the merchants as well as the raiders and the slavers. And there Louis hoped to find passage back to his home, back to Frankia. He had debts to settle and they would be settled with blood. It was the coin in which his brother would pay.

  Louis put his foot in the stirrup. He hoisted himself up into the saddle and turned his horse’s head north once again, toward Dubh-linn, toward Roumois, toward home.

  There were over a hundred men and two dozen women in the army that Thorgrim Night Wolf had accumulated since shoving Sea Hammer back into the Avonmore River at Glendalough. Now, with the Northmen who had served Ottar and now chose to serve him, he had another seventy five or so.