And he was right. It wasn’t much.
There was enough wood to make a lean-to stretching down most of Blood Hawk’s side, some sixty feet. A few of Blood Hawk’s men used the deck planks to make ad hoc shelters on board and still more squeezed under the fore and after decks and they all managed to get out of the downpour, mostly. It was a miserable night, but thankfully not so cold, it being midsummer, and the men and women managed to position themselves such that the drips were not directly on their faces and they were exhausted enough that they slept.
The rain had not eased up in the least when they dragged themselves out of their rude shelters sometime after dawn. They stood once again at the surf line, the rain pouring down on them, which at least rinsed the salt water from their hair, skin and clothes, no great comfort, but it was something.
Sea Hammer was nearly ashore, her bow jammed into the beach a few feet above the surf line, her keel resting on the sandy bottom. Thorgrim splashed out to her, peered over the edge of her sheer strake. The water inside her hull was level with the ocean outside, which meant she was leaking so badly the water was washing in and out unimpeded. But leaks could be fixed. The rest of her looked largely intact, which made Thorgrim somewhat confident that she could be made to swim again.
His confidence, he knew, was based more on his desire than a realistic assessment, but he did not care. Sometimes desire was enough.
But whatever could be done, it could not be done where they were. The beach was too exposed, both to the weather and to any potential enemies moving by sea or land. What’s more, there were no trees nearby that Thorgrim could see, and no way to move trees from further inland to the beach. Fixing Sea Hammer would not be an easy task and it would not be quick. Blood Hawk, too, would need repair. They would have to set up a camp somewhere secure. A ship fort. A longphort.
He looked up and down the beach. He turned to Failend who was standing nearby, ankle deep in the water, letting the ragged edge of the incoming water wash over her feet.
“Failend, do you know where we are?”
Failend looked up and down the beach. “Ireland, I think.”
“That’s a start,” Thorgrim said. “Any idea where in Ireland?”
“Until I met you I had never ventured more than twenty miles from Glendalough,” Failend said. “So I’m not much help. But I’ve talked some with Conandil, and I think she’s traveled much of this country. Her father was a merchant and they went to the different fairs to sell goods.”
Thorgrim nodded. He called Conandil over to him, and she came with her husband, Broccáin, in tow. Conandil’s knowledge of the Norse language was good. Not as good as Failend’s, but good.
“Conandil, do you know where along the Irish coast we are now?” Thorgrim asked.
“Not entirely,” Conandil said, and it was clear she had already put some thought into this. “But I have an idea. That headland to the south there, that’s familiar. If we are where I think we are, then the mouth of the River Slaney is just a little south of here. There’s a monastery on the north bank of the river. It’s called Beggerin. My father and I went to the fair there once.”
Thorgrim nodded as he considered this. “This River Slaney, is it a big river?”
“Very big. It reaches far into the country.”
That was what Thorgrim wanted to hear. If they needed to go far afield to get wood for repairs they would need a river to move the logs down to the longphort. A river gave access to the countryside, fresh water, shelter from the ravages of the sea. There was a reason that most Norse longphorts, such as Dubh-linn and Vík-ló, were situated at the mouths of rivers.
“You said there’s this monastery. Are there any other sort of villages or such?”
“Not that I recall,” Conandil said. “The south bank, I think it’s pretty much deserted. Maybe some fishermen’s huts, but not much else.”
This was all sounding better and better, which made Thorgrim nervous, because he always grew nervous when things seemed to be working out as he wished. “Very well,” he said. “If it is as you say, if we are where you think we are, then that sounds like the place we should be to repair our ships. So we had better go see if it is.”
He called his lead men around him, which now consisted only of Harald and Godi, as well as Conandil and Broccáin. Starri joined them, as he always did, oblivious to the fact that he had no business there.
“Why the gods set us back on the beach, I do not know,” Thorgrim said to the handful of people around him, spitting out rainwater as he spoke. “But at least our course of action is clear, at least for the near future. We can do nothing without our ships, so our first job is to make them whole again. And to see if the others, Dragon and Fox are still where Harald left them.”
With cunning and the help of the Irish slaves, Brunhard had managed to capture Thorgrim’s two smaller longships, Fox and Dragon, killing their crews in the process. Harald, in turn, had managed to take them back, but lacking the hands to man those two ships as well as Blood Hawk, he had made the decision to run them ashore in hope that they might be retrieved later. It was the right decision, in Thorgrim’s mind.
Harald, Godi, and Starri nodded their agreement with Thorgrim’s assessment. Conandil translated the words to her husband, but neither expressed any opinion. This was not really their affair.
“We can’t set the ships to rights here,” Thorgrim continued. “Too exposed, and no wood nearby. If we are where Conandil thinks we are, then there might be a suitable place a little south of here. The mouth of a big river.”
Once more the others nodded.
“I’m going to take a few men and go south along the shore, see if we are in fact near the mouth of the river,” Thorgrim said. “Then I’ll know if there’s a place we can move the ships. See if there is a monastery, as Conandil thinks.”
“And if there is, then we’ll move against it right off, Night Wolf?” Starri said. “Sack it before they are alerted to us being here?”
“No,” Thorgrim said. “If there is a monastery, then we go and make peace.”
This to Starri was an utterly foreign idea. “Peace? With Christ men?”
“Yes, peace. Our chief problem now is getting the ships repaired. To do that we need to be left alone. If we sack the monastery then it will not be long before one of these petty kings is leading an army to drive us off. We’ve lost too many men. We do not need a fight right now.”
“Very well, Night Wolf,” Starri said, but he did not look nearly as upset at that prospect as Thorgrim might have thought.
“Aren’t you disappointed, Starri?” he asked, yielding to his curiosity.
“No, Night Wolf,” Starri said. “Because every time you say such a thing, there ends up being more fighting than a man could wish for, so I’m not concerned.”
Thorgrim made a grunting noise. He knew if he thought about it he would see that Starri was right, so he didn’t think about it.
“Meanwhile, you two”—he nodded toward Harald and Godi— “keep the men salvaging anything they can. Secure Sea Hammer and Brunhard’s ship, the one that still floats. And any treasure as well. There was a tolerable amount of our silver and gold on board Brunhard’s ship and it might come washing up in the surf.”
“What about the Irishmen?” Conandil asked. Harald had promised them their freedom, but they were sufficiently outnumbered that Thorgrim could enslave them all again if he so chose.
“When I get back I intend to send about half my men north to see if our other longships are still on the beach,” Thorgrim said. “If you Irish could wait and accompany them, it would be a benefit to both. More men, more weapons, in case you’re set upon.”
Conandil translated the words to Broccáin. Broccáin looked at Thorgrim and nodded.
“Good,” Thorgrim said. He turned to Godi. “Find one of those barrels that has food in it and break it open, feed the men. There should be a barrel of ale among those we pulled from the water as well. Let them eat and then set them
to salvaging the wreckage.”
Godi nodded. Thorgrim turned to Harald. “I’ll need some of the silver from Blood Hawk,” he said.
When they had sailed from Vík-ló, not intending to return, they had brought with them the cumulative riches gained in their time in Ireland, and it was substantial. Part of that was aboard Blood Hawk, as well as the silver that had been aboard Dragon when Harald had left her on the beach. The silver from Fox had been in Brunhard’s ship and now was on the bottom of the sea, and the Northmen could only hope it would wash ashore.
Harald looked confused but he was too disciplined to ask, but Starri was not. “Silver?” he nearly shouted in surprise. “For what, by the gods, do you need silver?” He looked up and down the beach as if there might be a market he had not noticed.
“Conandil thought there might be a monastery at the mouth of the river. If there is, they might have some of the many, many things we need.”
“Ha!” Starri laughed. “That’s beautiful! You are bringing silver to a monastery. It is supposed to work the other way, you know.”
“I know,” Thorgrim said. “But we have enough to do without also fighting the whole countryside. We need friends more than we need silver. And there is nothing like handing out silver to make friends.”
Chapter Three
And they scolded at him, and expressed evil words,
that he might kill them, and that it might be on him
the curse of the fin gall should alight.
Annals of the Four Masters
They walked south along the beach. The sand was particularly soft and fine, so they walked at the edge of the surf where it was firmer and the going less exhausting. They walked through the relentless rain that poured down on them, then tapered off, then poured again.
There were six of them—Thorgrim Night Wolf and the handful he had chosen to come with him—Vali and Armod, who had been with Thorgrim for some time, and Gudrid and a man named Onund who had both come to them from Grimmar’s army but who had already proven themselves to be good and reliable men.
Failend was the sixth. She was dressed in a way that Thorgrim had rarely seen her, wearing a brat and leine, the dress of an Irishwoman, and not the Norse tunic and leggings she had adopted. In the driving rain she looked like some small forest creature, drowned and washed up on shore.
She was there because Thorgrim enjoyed her company and because she was Irish and he thought he might need a translator whom he could trust. Harald had a decent command of the language, but it was not perfect. If there were negotiations to be carried out Thorgrim wanted someone who would not miss the subtleties of word and tone, and that would best be a person who had spoken the language from birth.
“I can see the land turns away up there,” Thorgrim said, pointing down the beach, and the others squinted through the deluge. A mile away the beach seemed to abruptly stop, as if a great section had washed away, leaving a mile-long gap between that point and the place where the land took up again to the south. It might indicate the mouth of a river, or it might just be a wide bay. There was only one way to find out, which was to do what they were doing, going to see for themselves.
Failend, walking at Thorgrim’s side, picked up the end of her brat and wrung the water out of it, as pointless a gesture as Thorgrim had ever seen, but it seemed to give her some satisfaction.
They had discussed the clothes at length, and who and what they might encounter. If there was a monastery then they would need Failend to speak for them. There was no possibility of convincing the Christ priests that Failend was Norse; her accent would give her away the moment she spoke. An Irishwoman armed and dressed like a Northman? The priests would not be too kindly disposed toward such a woman. A thrall, then? A prisoner of the heathens? That might get some sympathy.
So an Irishwoman’s dress it was. Failend waded out to Sea Hammer’s side and pulled herself aboard and fished the old clothes out of her sea chest, which was still lashed to the deck.
She made a case that she should be allowed to wear her seax, arguing that if they met with trouble she would not be able to help if she was not armed. But it was a weak argument, and Thorgrim knew the real issue was that Failend, in the way of all Northmen, liked the feel of the weapon at her side and felt uncomfortable if she was not armed. But now she was playing a thrall, and thralls did not go about with weapons hanging off their belts, and so she grudgingly agreed to leave the blade behind.
They reached the place where the land seemed to end and followed the beach around as it made an abrupt turn to the west, and as they did a wide bay opened up before them. The rain made it difficult to see terribly far, but it seemed to be a good four miles across.
If it was just a bay or the mouth of a river, Thorgrim could not tell. But he could see sandbars breaking the surface of the water at various places, and such sandbanks often marked the mouths of rivers, so he was encouraged.
“That would be some tricky going,” Gudrid said and Thorgrim grunted his agreement. Bringing a ship through those shallows would be a task, to be sure.
“You’d have to feel your way along, every inch,” Thorgrim observed.
They continued on around the point of land that made up the northern entrance to the bay, and then as the shoreline tended toward the west they stopped. From the water’s edge the beach sloped gently up for a hundred yards or so before it rose sharply into sandy dunes twenty feet tall, topped with tall, coarse grass, like a rampart defending the land beyond.
Their eyes, however, had been drawn to a series of unidentifiable dark shapes in the distance, maybe half a dozen, scattered along the beach. They speculated as to what they might be, but it was not until they were within fifty feet that they could make them out as curachs, those odd leather-covered wood-frame boats used by the Irish. Opposite the curachs Thorgrim could see a break in the dunes that might have been a natural thing or might have been cut there as a way through. He pointed and led his band across the sand, up the dune and through the gap to the land beyond.
The six of them spread out along the top of the dune and looked north at the low, flat, marshy country stretching away before them. There were fields that were no doubt a brilliant green in the sun but now looked dull and nearly colorless, like the needles of pine trees. There were streams meandering between the fields, and flights of birds rising and coming down in the places where the water formed standing pools.
The Northmen were looking at none of that. From the gap in the dunes a wide brown path wound its way inland for a mile or so, and at the far end, as if tethered to it, was the monastery.
“Seems Conandil guessed right about where we are,” Thorgrim said. From their vantage point they could see the earthen wall that surrounded the place, a round wall, no doubt, but they could not tell as much from there. There was little to see beyond the wall other than a single tall stone structure, its roof high and sharp-peaked, a tower rising above one end. A Christian church, and a fairly substantial one.
There were a few other buildings as well, the thatched peaks of round houses, typical of the Irish, and a few more rectangular buildings that would be part of the monastic grounds. Even through the rain they could see columns of smoke rising, the tantalizing suggestion of fires burning in hearths.
Onund gave a low whistle. “I can well imagine the riches to be found there,” he said.
“Not for us,” Thorgrim said. “Not this time.”
He led the way forward, down the backside of the dune and along the dirt path, which was mud now and harder going than the firm sand at the water’s edge. They walked past marshy fields and ponds on which floated hundreds of ducks and other waterfowl.
They were within a hundred feet of the gate before anyone challenged them. A voice called out, the rhythm of the words familiar, the words themselves foreign to Thorgrim’s ears. Through the rain he could just make out the helmeted head on a guard on the earthen wall.
The men hung back and Failend alone stepped forward. She knew what to say
; she and Thorgrim had worked out the words as they walked down the muddy path.
She and the guard called back and forth and then she turned and came back to Thorgrim. “He has sent for someone with more authority,” she said. This was what Thorgrim had expected. Generally the man guarding the gate was not the one who could decide when it should be opened.
A short time later a few more heads appeared, these wearing the cowls of the Christ men rather than the helmets of soldiers. Failend stepped up again, listened, came back to Thorgrim.
“They say, ‘How do we know this is not some heathen trick?’”
“Tell them they can see for miles around. No army is going to sneak up on them. It is just us, five men and a woman. Surely they can defend against such a force.”
Failend went back again. Then she came back to Thorgrim. “They say you can come in and talk to the abbot. But you must surrender your weapons.”
Thorgrim and the other men exchanged glances. It was not an unreasonable request, but Northmen did not care to ever go unarmed.
“If we need weapons we can just take them from whatever sorry excuse for guards they have here,” Vali offered and the others nodded their agreement.
Failend returned once more to the gate and a moment later the big oak doors swung in, just wide enough for the men to pass through. They entered one at a time, Thorgrim leading the way, and were greeted by the men in the monk’s robes and a dozen guards with spears at the ready. Thorgrim smiled at the sight.
I wish we were half so fearsome as these Irish think we are, he thought.
The men unbuckled their sword belts and handed the weapons to two of the priests who stepped forward to take them. Another, an older man, his face half-hidden by his cowl, spoke, and Failend said, “He says those will be returned when your business is done, and we are to follow him.”
Loch Garman: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 7) Page 3
