Dubh-linn: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 2)

by James L. Nelson

  Thorgrim looked into Arinbjorn’s wide, watery eyes, and through the man’s pain and the waves of nausea he saw only hatred and suspicion. Arinbjorn was lost to him. Even if Arinbjorn had been in his right mind, in full health, Thorgrim understood there was no trust there, and never would be again. Something had happened. Arinbjorn may not have ever been a friend, but he had never been an enemy. Until now.

  “I will do what I can,” Thorgrim said. “I’ll see if there are men enough to fight, if it comes to that.” He turned and ducked out of the tent. The guard was lying in a pool of vomit. He was not moving.

  Thorgrim strode quickly down the row of tents, hoping to find even a knot of men who could make a stand when the killers came from Tara, but he could see no one left standing.

  Hrolleif, he thought. Maybe Hrolleif still stands. It was hard to imagine any poison, or anything else, that could fell that human oak. But which tent was his? As he looked left and right his eye caught a flare of light, off beyond the camp, a dull glow rising up from the ground. And with it a sound, a jingling sound, like a series of tiny bells. It was a sound that Thorgrim could not mistake. It was the sound of mail shirts on marching men. Men holding torches that lit up the dark. Men coming for a stricken enemy.

  Thorgrim shook his head. Any idea of organizing a resistance was

  dismissed; futile, pointless and it probably always was.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Let the gods banish the king,

  pay him for stealing my wealth,

  let him incur the wrath

  of Odin and the gods.

  Egil’s Saga

  “This is a damned business,” Flann said. “A damned, dishonorable business.” His mail shirt was making the particular sound that mail shirts made, like small surf on a shingle beach. The two of them, Flann and Morrigan, were on top of the earthen wall that surrounded Tara. The evening breeze was lifting his long, fine hair and flicking it off to leeward.

  Morrigan sighed. Again? We discuss this again?

  The night was quiet, and by her orders there was no sound coming from within the ringfort, despite the seventy armed men standing ready to do their business once the gates were thrown open. The breeze carried on it a sound she longed to hear, a sound that would not generally have held so musical a quality to her; one hundred and fifty or so Norsemen retching and puking and falling groaning to the earth. One hundred and fifty filthy rapists, murderers and thieves feeling the full effect of dining on suckling pig, spit roasted and spiced with cowbane. It was a recipe she saved for very special guests.

  “You practice your arts,” Flann continued when Morrigan did not respond, “because you do not concern yourself with honor. Not the way a man thinks of honor. Honor on the field of battle, which is how we should have met them.”

  Morrigan pulled her eyes from the Norsemen’s camp and regarded her brother in the light of the torches that flickered up from the ground below, hidden from the enemy by the walls of Tara.

  Honor? she thought. The honor of having your head on a fin gall pike? The honor of having all the women of Tara raped, the men butchered, me a thrall again, to be used like a dog by these Godless bastards? But she did not say it, because she had said it all before and she was sick of saying it.

  “Maybe you value your honor above the lives of everyone in Tara,” she said instead, “but I do not. In any event, we’ve not murdered them. They’ll live. Most of them, I should think.” The cowbane, a short, hollow root that could easily be mistaken for parsley, would have been fatal if given in a sufficient dose. But that was not the intent. Instead, Morrigan had added just enough to the other spices in the rub to see their guests debilitated with nausea. Once that happened, they could be gathered up like fish in a weir, but they would not die.

  It was mostly for Flann’s sake that she agreed to let them live. Her brother was not at all happy about their present treachery, the false good will, the tainted food, and had agreed, in the end, because truly the only other choice was to see the Northmen visit their particular brand of horror on Tara. But Flann would not allow Morrigan to simply murder the Norsemen. His honor, absurd by Morrigan’s way of thinking, could not tolerate such a thing. It was why Morrigan worried that Flann would never make a decent high king. Máel Sechnaill mac Ruanaid, she was certain, would have had no qualms about poisoning them all and watching with delight as they died in agony.

  So they would make prisoners of the fin gall, and not carrion. And Morrigan knew that in some small way she was relieved by Flann’s intransigence on that point. The fin gall were pagans; they were killers, cursed by God, but still the thought of simply murdering them all made Morrigan uneasy.

  Despite all the wicked things that she had done, and often done and not confessed, things for which she had not been absolved, she still held out hope that she might reach heaven. It was a hope that was growing more remote as she struggled to hold onto the throne. If she caused all these men – God’s creatures, supposedly - to die in agony, it would put salvation that much further out of reach. So she agreed to sicken them instead, and once sick, they would be taken prisoner. Some would be ransomed, some would be sold as slaves, but they would live, mostly.

  Morrigan turned her eyes back to the fin gall camp spread out on the ground beyond the walls. It was dark and she could not see anything of the men in the camp, but the chorus of retching and groans and wails of agony had grown appreciably in the past few minutes. The timing on this had to be just right. If her men sallied forth too soon, the fin gall might still have some fight in them. If she waited too long, the Northmen might find the strength of stagger off into hiding. And then she would have to call up the hounds.

  “It’s time, brother,” she said, softly.

  Flann made a grunting noise. “Very well,” he said. He turned and found the crude ladder that led down to the ground, and Morrigan followed behind. By the time she stepped off, Flann had taken his place at the head of the column of men-at-arms who stood ready to advance. These were not the lightly-armed guard that had accompanied them, just for show, when they went out to meet the invaders. These were men ready to fight, armed with swords, spears, shields, mail, helmets.

  Behind them, teams of horses stood in their traces, nervously shaking their heads and stomping the earth. They were not accustomed to work at that late hour and they knew something was amiss. Hitched behind them were empty hay wagons, which would be used to haul men who could not walk. Leg irons, and leather thongs for binding wrists, were piled on the wagons’ floors.

  “Go!” Flann shouted, and his voice had the ring of authority that Morrigan liked to hear. This was what Flann loved, Morrigan knew, the field on which he excelled. The plotting, the maneuvering, the manipulating one against another, that was what he could not do. Between them, Flann and Morrigan, they made a fully competent ruler.

  On Flann’s command the big oak doors at Tara’s main gate are swung open and the column moved forward, seventy pairs of feet making a dull sound on the soft ground, and with it the creak and groan of the crude wagons, the jingle of horses in their tack. Morrigan wanted to walk at the head of the column, side by side with Flann, but she knew that would never do, so she stayed back, walking beside the first of the empty wagons. It might not be her place to lead, but neither would she be left out of this affair. She knew the fin gall better than anyone at Tara, and she knew what had to be done to secure this lot.

  Donnel and Patrick were waiting for her, back at the end of the column, and they fell in on either side and a few paces back as the men advanced. They, too, were armed with swords and knives and mail shirts, but they were not a part of Flann’s column, not men-at-arms. They had spent most of their brief lives as sheep herders and their skill with weapons was rudimentary at best. They were Morrigan’s men, and she knew well how to exploit their God-given talents.

  They covered the ground quickly. The guards whom the fat, bearded one had so ostentatiously posted near the gates of the ringfort were lying on the grou
nd, doubled over. Some had managed to crawl a little distance, but most were right where they had fallen. On Morrigan’s order, their wrists were bound and they were tossed into the rearmost wagon, the first of the catch.

  There was no alarm, not shouts, no sound of men taking up arms to meet them. Even the groaning and retching had dropped off, so there was little to be heard over the sound of the wagons and marching Irishmen. The smell of vomit was in the air.

  Flann brought the column to a halt. “Very well, you men,” he called back to the troops. “Round them up. Drag them here if need be and we’ll manacle them and bind them.” There was a tinge of disgust in his voice.

  Morrigan hurried to the front of the column, Donnel and Patrick keeping pace. “Flann! Thorgrim must be secured quickly, he is a danger. Please, may I have four of the men-at-arms with me?”

  Flann looked around, which is what he did, she knew, when he required a second to make a decision. He looked at Donnel and Patrick as if to say, you have men, are they not enough? But he did not say it, because he knew the two young brothers were not fighting men. “Very well. You four,” he gestured to the four men directly behind them, one of whom carried a gutting torch. “You go with Morrigan. Follow her orders.”

  Morrigan stepped off without looking back, but she was gratified to hear the sound of the men following. Donnel moved past her and she followed him down the row of tents. He and Patrick had been among the slaves cleaning after the feast, but their work had involved watching and taking note and only pretending to clean.

  Donnel stopped outside the tent that Thorgrim and Harald had occupied. Morrigan turned to the four men-at-arms behind her. “Go in here and secure any you find within,” she ordered. If Thorgrim or Harald had any strength left, then taking them prisoner was a task for real soldiers.

  Four swords scraped out of four sheathes and the first of the men-at-arms threw the tent flap back and plunged in, followed by the man holding the torch and then the others. Morrigan waited and listened. She heard bedding being rifled, saw the weird shadows of the men inside cast by the torch against the tent walls. Half a minute and they were out again.

  “No one in there,” the man with the torch reported.

  Damn it, Morrigan thought. “Very well. Follow me.” The seven of them, the four men-at-arms, Donnel and Patrick and Morrigan, began a sweep of the camp. They looked in each of the tents, rolled over the groaning figures of the fin gall strewn around the field and held the torches close to their faces. No Thorgrim. No Harald.

  As they searched, Flann and his men-at-arms methodically rounded up the rest of the fin gall, dragging those who could not walk to the place where the banquet tables had been set up earlier, clapping leg irons on them, binding their wrists with leather cords. There was no resistance from the Northmen, not so much as a half-hearted slash with a knife, or the feeble swing of a fist. Cowbane was proving to be the most effective warrior Morrigan had ever known.

  Midnight was an hour gone when Flann called for one last sweep of the camp, but no more of the fin gall were found. Any who had been in camp were now bound in the back of the wagons. The victory was bloodless, and it was complete. Or nearly so.

  Morrigan grabbed up a torch and went from wagon to wagon. She looked in the face of every man there. No Thorgrim. No Harald.

  “Flann,” she said, her voice low, her tone urgent. “Thorgrim is not here. He’s escaped somehow.”

  Flann shrugged. “He’s one man. One more or less will make no difference.”

  “His son is with him. And the Lord knows how many others.”

  “Even if he has a dozen it makes no difference. We have all but the entire fin gall army. The other rí túaithe will rally to us now, now that they see we’ve prevailed.”

  Morrigan shook her head. “We cannot allow Thorgrim to remain free. He is too dangerous.”

  Flann looked at her, and Morrigan did not like his expression. “What is it about Thorgrim?” he asked. “Why are you worried so about one man?”

  Morrigan felt her face flush at the question, and hoped the dark would hide it. She had, in a moment of weakness, given herself to Thorgrim, back aboard his ship. He had a strength that she found comforting, and she sensed a decency about him, something she would never have thought to find in a Norseman, but there it was. Thorgrim loved his son very much, she could see that he cared far more for Harald’s life than he did for his own, and that told her a great deal about what sort of man he was.

  And there was no denying that he was attractive. Very attractive. She remembered the thrill that had run through her when he pulled his helmet off that afternoon and she saw him again after all that time. She remembered it, and she was embarrassed.

  But those things, she assured herself, were not influencing her thinking now. “I know Thorgrim well enough to know he’s a danger if he’s loose,” she said, a new hardness in her voice. “We must find him. We must call out

  the hounds.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Let us make our drawn swords glitter,

  you who stain wolf’s teeth with blood.

  Egil’s Saga

  They moved across the open country, Thorgrim and the small band with him. The road would have been better. It would have led them directly to where Thorgrim wanted to go. But they could not take the road. That much was clear. In open country they stood a chance of escape. If the Irish did not have dogs.

  Harald’s right arm was draped over Thorgrim’s left shoulder, and a man named Osvif, who was of Arinbjorn’s hird and took the oar opposite Harald aboard Black Raven, had his arm over Thorgrim’s right. Twenty paces behind, Starri Deathless staggered along, as did four others, the sum total of those whom Thorgrim could get moving.

  He had ordered them all, all the men in the camp, to rise, to take up arms. He had yelled at them, kicked them, cajoled them, pleaded, but those seven were all that he could get to respond.

  Harald was so accustomed to following Thorgrim’s orders that he turned to with never a complaint, even though he could hardly walk. Starri, too, had moved at Thorgrim’s command, rising to his knees, which he insisted was as far as he could go. Thorgrim squatted beside him and talked to him softly. He planted an image in Starri’s mind of the death he now faced, kneeling before his enemy, a pool of vomit on the grass, too weak to even hold a sword, let alone fight.

  “This is how the Valkyries will find you, Starri. Starri Poordeath they will call you. They’ll leave you to be eaten by pigs.” It was cruel, but it was effective, and it was sincere. Thorgrim did not like the thought of Starri killed, but he could not tolerate the thought of him butchered with never a weapon in his hand. A man who had so courted a noble death, a man who so deserved his time in Valhalla. His friend.

  And those words were enough to convince Starri to stand, with Thorgrim’s help, and stagger off.

  The others, Osvif and a man named Halldor, another of Arinbjorn’s hird, a man from Ingolf’s hird whose name Thorgrim did not know, and Nordwall the Short, were all the men Thorgrim could manage to rally. There seemed to be no reason for it; what they ate, perhaps, or a natural resistance or pure determination; but whatever it was, these few were the only ones of the men who had sailed from Dubh-linn who could still stand and stagger forward.

  Thorgrim’s first impulse was to fight, but when he saw the well-armed column marching from Tara, eighty men at least, with spears and swords and shields and perfect health, and then looked at his own men, who could barely walk, let alone wield a sword, he decided that a hasty departure was the strategy of the day.

  “Come along,” he said and headed off across the open ground, toward where he remembered the edge of the wood began. His men shuffled after him, and he quickly realized that they would never be able to move fast enough to put sufficient distance between themselves and the Irish soldiers. So he took Starri’s arm and Nordwall’s over each shoulder and half supported them, half dragged them a hundred yards toward the wood. There he left them to stagger on and w
ent back for Halldor and Ingolf’s man, and then for Harald and Osvif. And then he took Starri and Nordwall’s arms and began the whole process again. In that way he managed to get his band to a place where they were swallowed up by the dark before Morrigan’s men even reached the camp they had left behind.

  As he moved back and forth, ferrying his men to safety, Thorgrim kept careful eye on the camp, trying to divine what was happening. The torches swirled like flying embers in the dark, and Thorgrim expected to see them sweep across the field as the Irish slaughtered the Norse who lay curled on the ground. The men from Tara would move fast, not because the Northern host represented any threat, but because the work was distasteful, shameful to real soldiers, and they would want to be done with it. But that was not what Thorgrim was seeing.

  Instead, he saw the torches move back and forth, out into the camp and then back to where they had started. And finally in the flickering light he saw wagons.

  Wagons? That could only mean one of two things. Either the Irish had brought wagons to haul the bodies away, or they had brought wagons to haul their prisoners into Tara. And if the latter was the case, then that meant the poison they had been given was not fatal. Morrigan, he knew, was skilled at the use of plants and herbs and he imagined she could get whatever result she wished, be it sickness or death.

  By the time they reached the woods, the wagons were starting to move. Thorgrim hustled his men in through the bracken and into the trees. The cover gave him comfort, though in truth the night had hidden their escape entirely.

  “We’ll pause here a moment,” Thorgrim said. His words earned no response, just the sound of crunching brush as one by one the men crumpled to the ground. Thorgrim peered out through the trees. The wagons were ringed by the torch bearers and rolling away from the camp. Thorgrim watched them swing away from the line of tents. He saw the light from the torches illuminate the gates of Tara and the high earthen walls, saw the gates swing open and the wagons move on through.