The Irish had recovered with admirable speed, aided by the delay caused by the sand. There were three men in front of Harald now. Each had snatched up spears from the beach and held them ready. But Harald could see the uncertainty, the fear in their faces, the hesitancy in their stances.
Not men-at-arms, he thought. Not trained men. This was how it often was with the Irish, he had come to understand. A handful of good, trained warriors to form the core of an army, and many more who could hardly wield a spear to fill it out.
The Northmen, not expecting a fight and not wishing to be weighted down, had not brought shields. The Irish had, but most did not have time to snatch them up. Such was the case of the three standing in Harald’s way. They held their spears at waist height and braced themselves with their legs as if they were hunting boar, but Harald Broadarm was more deadly than that.
He held Oak Cleaver straight and high, and looked for all the world as if he would happily run right onto the tips of the Irishmen’s spears. Three feet shy of doing just that he swung the blade down in a wide arc, knocking the points aside, fouling the spears and the spearmen with one another, not pausing in his charge as he did, not losing the smallest bit of momentum.
Harald Broadarm, nearly sixteen stone, mostly muscle, rushed past the spear points and hit the nearest of the spearmen with his shoulder, flinging him back like he was made of straw, as he slashed down at the legs of the second who went down screaming. He was past the third but knew better than to leave a man with a spear at his back. He spun around, bringing Oak Cleaver up to meet the spear he guessed would be coming at him.
He guessed right. The Irishman had spun around as Harald rushed by, thrusting as he turned. Oak Cleaver caught the shaft of the spear an instant before the point would have found Harald’s chest, but rather than knock it aside, the sharp Frankish blade snapped the spear shaft clean in two, sending the iron point spinning away. The Irishman was still looking at the broken shaft with incomprehension when Harald drove Oak Cleaver into his gut.
He pulled the blade free and looked around. The horsemen were wheeling and slashing with their swords, their mail shirts blinking in the bright sun. They were genuine men-at-arms, Harald knew, because only real fighting men had mail.
The rest, the Irish spearmen, most now bereft of spears, had been pushed back and were trying to make a stand with what few weapons they had. One man had actually shinnied up Dragon’s mast, as if he could somehow escape that way. The rest had abandoned the ships, forming up as best they could around the men who had managed to get weapons. But the Northmen were on them now, a howling, sword-and-ax-wielding horde, frightening and overwhelming.
“At them!” Harald shouted again and charged forward to join those who had already moved past him. Swords hacked on Irish shields, axes knocked spears aside, came down on the unarmored men who held them. Men screamed and fell, horses made their high whinnying sound as they whirled and kicked and snapped with their wicked teeth.
And then, in the way of such skirmishes, it was over. The men on foot broke first, which was no surprise at all. Those in the rear, those who could safely turn their backs and run, did so, throwing aside any weapons they might still hold, racing for the dunes that lined the beach. More and more of the disorganized Irishmen peeled away until the only men left were the horsemen and the panicked soldiers in the front rank, who could not turn and flee.
They could not turn, but they could back away, and they did, faster and faster, taking stumbling steps as they tried to fend off the blows and thrusts of the enemy they were facing, an enemy that greatly outnumbered them now. Harald could hear one of the horsemen shouting orders, but in the fury of the moment he could not make out the words. An admonishment not to run, he imagined. A waste of breath.
The Irish took another step back, put a pace or two between themselves and these killers who seemed to have sprung up from the sand itself, and that was all they needed. They turned, ran, kicking up sand in their panicked flight. Some of the Northmen ran after them, but Harald shouted for them to stop and they did. Their aim was not to destroy the enemy, but to retrieve the ships. To do that they needed only to drive the Irish off.
Behind him Harald heard the sound of hooves pounding sand. He spun around, braced for an attack by the mounted warriors, but that was not their intention. Rather, they too were racing for the dunes, realizing, whether they wished it or not, that the fight was over.
Standing in their wake was Starri Deathless, blood soaked into his tunic, his axes gleaming. At least three of the once mounted men lay dead or dying on the sand, their well-trained horses standing thirty feet away. Harald realized that Starri had by himself kept the mounted men-at-arms from charging into the flank of the attacking Northmen and maybe changing the tide of the fight.
He wondered, not for the first time, if Starri actually thought those things through or if he just got lucky. He knew that Starri would say that the gods directed him in battle, and that seemed as good an explanation as any.
Harald straightened and sucked air into his lungs and felt the sweat running down his face and neck and under his linen tunic. He stepped over to one of the dead Irishmen on the beach and snatched up a corner of his brat. He wiped Oak Cleaver clean and slipped it back into his scabbard. He looked around.
His men, like himself, were catching their breath, cleaning their weapons, looking out for some renewed attack. The Irishmen they had been fighting were gone, disappeared over the dunes, but whether they had run off or were regrouping for a fresh assault, he could not tell.
“Vali!” he shouted to one of his men. “Climb up on that dune and see what those Irish are doing. Go with care, see you don’t get a spear in the gut.”
Vali nodded and trotted off up the beach. Conandil was nearby so he stepped over to her. Their plan had been that she and the other Irishmen would accompany Harald’s band to this point, then the Northmen would put to sea and the others would continue on overland. But he was not sure that would work now.
Conandil turned at Harald’s approach, but before he could speak, Vali called out from atop the grassy dune. “Harald! The Irish are run off! They’re a quarter mile from here, and still moving!”
Harald nodded. That was good. It gave them a short reprieve to get the ships ready for sea.
“Conandil,” he said. “Those men we fought, they’ll likely be back. It will go hard on you and the rest if you’re caught. I think we should all go in the ships. We can row you a few miles north, let you off there. There’ll be less chance these people here will fall on you.”
Conandil nodded and Harald guessed she had been thinking the same thing.
“We had better get the ships in the water now,” Harald said. “We don’t know when they’ll return.”
And then his words were cut off by Gudrid, who shouted a loud and bitter oath. Harald looked up. Gudrid was standing on Dragon’s foredeck, staring down at the bottom of the ship.
“What, Gudrid, what is it?” Harald called.
“The Irish,” Gudrid said. “The bastard Irish. They took all the oars.”
Chapter Seven
For bread I’ll have to barter,
Oh king, my sword and,
Speeder of the clash of shields
My red buckler for bread.
The Tale of Sarcastic Halli
Thorgrim Night Wolf, in his younger days, had seen much of the known world. He had plundered in the kingdoms of Britain and in the land of the Picts, in Frankia and in Ireland. He and his fellow Northmen had appeared from the sea, fallen on villages and monasteries and castles, they had plundered and they had gone.
But he had never remained in any one country, save for his native Vik. He had never known any land as anything more than a low, dark shoreline, visible beyond the confines of a ship. He had never known any place as anything other than a target to be attacked, plundered, abandoned in a blur of violence. And that had remained true for all of his life, right up until the time he had returned to the Irish
shores with Ornolf the Restless.
Now, more than two years later, and despite considerable effort on his part, he was still in Ireland and coming to know the land and the people and their ways. Their odd religion. He had lain with Irish women, and was doing so still. His son spoke their language. It was bizarre and led again and again to even more bizarre situations, circumstances in which Thorgrim would find himself looking around and thinking, How by the gods did I end up here?
And now he was in that situation again. His immediate circumstance was as ideal as one could ever hope for. The sun was bright overhead, the air warm and filled with the smell of grass and earth and the smallest tang of saltwater. Birds were singing. He was sitting in the stern of the curach, his hand resting easily on the boat’s tiller. Failend sat a few feet away, her thick brown hair spilling down the front of her linen leine, her face lovely in the morning sun. Forward, the oars were manned by four of Thorgrim’s men who pulled at a leisurely pace as they watched the green country slide slowly past.
It was all perfect. And still there was a layer of anxiety, uncertainty, over the whole thing.
How by the gods did I end up here? Thorgrim wondered.
“Here, is this the river we follow north?” Failend said. She turned and looked at Thorgrim and Thorgrim realized he had been staring at her profile, the firm line of her jaw.
“What?” Thorgrim said.
“I see a river up ahead, and I wondered if that is the river we are to take north.”
Thorgrim straightened a bit, looked past Hall and Bjorn and the other two men at the oars. They had been pulling up the River Slaney since first light that morning, bound away for Ferns. Thorgrim had intended to make the trek overland, which he did not relish. It was easy to get lost in a strange country, and, with all the dangers that lurked there, he would have to take a decent number of warriors with him. With Harald and his men gone, that would have left the ships woefully unprotected.
But it turned out there was another way, described to them by Abbot Donngal of Beggerin. Thorgrim and Failend had gone over to the monastery in another of a regular series of visits to purchase food and ale, and there Thorgrim had asked the abbot about how he might get to Ferns.
The old man, on hearing that the Northmen meant Ferns no harm, seemed eager to help. No doubt he was happy to direct the Northmen’s attention toward Ferns and away from his own monastery. He told Thorgrim, by way of Failend, that the River Slaney ran north toward Ferns where it met with a smaller stream, the Bann, which in turn ran to within sight of the monastery. Fifteen miles or so, he figured. And so they were on their way, and Failend thought perhaps they had reached the place where the Bann met the Slaney.
“No,” Thorgrim said, looking past the curach’s bow. “I think that’s an island, not a new river meeting this one. But we’ll see.” Thorgrim nudged the tiller over, steering for the northern fork opening up before him, in case he was wrong. But he wasn’t. They rounded the boat-shaped island and met up with the other half of the Slaney on the far side.
“Still some miles, I think, until we reach the Bann,” Thorgrim said. It was an easy pull from Loch Garman to Ferns, Abbot Donngal had assured them. To Thorgrim this was good news indeed. No wandering around the countryside, bracing to be attacked by bandits or some petty king’s house guard. No walking at all, or nearly none. No carrying supplies on their backs.
What’s more, he needed only a few men, because the chances were slim they would be attacked in the middle of the wide river. If they were, they had spears and shields and swords and axes, which they also didn’t have to carry. And they probably would not even need those, since Failend had her bow and several bundles of arrows, and fast and accurate as she was she would likely drop any attackers before they came within spear range of the leather boat.
No, if they had to go to Ferns, which they did, this was the way to go.
“They have a treasure, you know, at Ferns,” Failend said.
“All of these monasteries are stuffed with silver,” Thorgrim said. “It’s why we heathens swarm around them like vultures.”
“No, Ferns has something else,” Failend said. “They call it the Treasure of St. Aiden. It’s supposed to be a vast store, not just of silver but of gold as well. And jewels. It’s well known in Ireland.”
Thorgrim made a grunting noise. “Many things are well known. It doesn’t mean they’re true. You think this treasure is a true thing?”
Failend shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s true that there are tales of treasure in many of these monasteries. If Ireland had as much treasure as the tales say, we’d be able to hire armies to kill all you heathens.”
Thorgrim smiled. “You may kill us all anyway,” he said. “But why are you telling me this? Aren’t you afraid I’ll sack this Christ church? Or are you fully a heathen yourself now?”
Failend smiled as well, but she made the sign Thorgrim had seen Christians make, touching her forehead, stomach and both shoulders. “Even the terrible Thorgrim Night Wolf can do but little damage with just four men and a frail woman under his command.”
They pulled north along the wide river, against the easy current until the sun was just past its height, and then Thorgrim began to look in earnest for the river as the abbot had described it.
It was not long after that that he found it, or thought he did.
“There,” he said, nodding beyond the bow. Failend looked and the men at the oars turned as best as they could and Thorgrim pulled the tiller toward him to give them a better view. Fifty yards ahead they could see a tree-lined gap in the shore of the Slaney where a smaller river came tumbling into the wider one.
“That?” Bjorn asked, giving voice to what they all were thinking.
“The old man said it was the first river we would come to that flows into the Slaney from the north,” Thorgrim said. “That’s the first river.”
“More like a brook than a river,” Hall grunted. The abbot, in his effort to encourage Thorgrim’s going to Ferns, had made this river, the Bann, seem to be as wide and slow as the Slaney itself, but that was clearly not the case. It was perhaps a quarter the width of the bigger river, and that meant the current would be flowing much swifter.
“You’re a lucky man, Hall,” Thorgrim said. “If the river is this shallow it means you’ll never have to row a longship up that way.” He pushed the tiller away and aimed the curach’s bow toward the gap in the bank. Soon they had left the Slaney astern and moved into the smaller river, no more than fifty feet wide, with stands of trees lining the banks on either side.
The current was indeed swifter, as Thorgrim had imagined, but it was still not terribly swift, and the work of rowing against it was not too taxing. But it was not the great river that the abbot had described.
It grew narrower still as they rowed north, and in places there were shallows over which the boat with its five occupants would not pass. At those times they all tumbled over the side and Thorgrim and the four oarsmen would pull the boat up the shallows while Failend, arrow nocked on her bowstring, would scan the riverbanks for enemies. But they saw none. Indeed, they saw no one at all.
The afternoon was getting on when they finally spotted the church spire that told them they had reached Ferns at last. They came out from under a roof of tree branches that hung over the river and nearly touched in the middle. Beyond that, to the north of the river, was an open field with a few dozen cows moving lazily about, and beyond that another field, tilled, with young plants of some kind sprouting in rows and men and women working the earth with no more enthusiasm than the cows.
“There, that must be Ferns,” Failend said. Thorgrim nodded. He could see the long, low earthworks a mile away. They appeared from there to be a straight wall, but Thorgrim knew it would actually be a ringfort, and a big one. Rising above that he could see thatched roofs and columns of smoke and, in the middle of it all, a great stone church with a steeple rising higher than anything around it.
Thorgrim nodded. “Impressive
,” he said. And it was: probably the most impressive monastery he had seen in all of Ireland.
“Does it make you long to sack it?” Failend asked. “To loot it clean?”
“It does,” Thorgrim said. “But I won’t, because we need something more precious than silver, as you know.”
They continued on until they were as near as the river would get to the monastery and Thorgrim ran the bow up into the mud. They tied the curach off to a sapling and headed out across the field toward the earthworks, a half a mile or so distant. There were men and women working in the fields, but they did not notice the Northmen’s approach until the fin gall were nearly up with them.
“Let me ask this man if this really is Ferns,” Failend said as they came up behind a fellow working a hoe in the soft ground. She spoke and the man turned and Thorgrim nearly laughed out loud as he saw the quick changes of expression on the man’s face. There was surprise at first: he had not heard the six of them approach. And then confusion, and then the man’s eyes ran over Thorgrim and the others, over the tunics and swords and axes and silver arm rings that announced them as heathen raiders as clearly as if they had been wearing signs.
The farmer’s eyes went wide as he understood and the hoe fell from his hand. Failend was talking fast now, and Thorgrim guessed she was assuring the man he was in no danger, but either he did not believe her or he was too frightened to understand. He turned and ran and stumbled and straightened and ran some more, a headlong, panicked flight toward the monastery.
“Now see, Failend,” Bjorn said, “you went and frightened the poor man half to death.”
The farmer had put a hundred yards between himself and the Northmen, and now he was yelling as he ran, and from every direction others abandoned their work and fled toward the monastery gates.
Loch Garman: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 7) Page 7
