But they made a noble effort at pretending to. Failend spoke and Louis listened and when she was done Louis shrugged, as Thorgrim was all but certain he would, because that was what the Frankish people did. And then he spoke.
“Louis says the Irishman took the oars out of the ships before we drove them off. He says he then came to speak with Harald on the beach, and Harald asked him…asked Louis…to join in the talk. Apparently this Irishman was set on sacking the monastery at Ferns but didn’t have men enough. He agreed to give Harald the oars if Harald and the rest of the Northmen would join in the raid. Harald apparently thought he could get the oars and set us in the way of plunder at the same time.”
Thorgrim frowned. He could see how Harald might consider this a good arrangement.
“Do you think the Irishman Harald spoke to is the same one we’re supposed to protect Ferns from?” Failend asked.
“I don’t know,” Thorgrim said. “These Irish…you Irish…are forever sacking each other. But if I had to wager I’d say there’s a very good chance he is.” He looked up at Louis and then over at the hostage. “Ask Louis about the exchange of hostages.”
Failend and Louis went back and forth and then Failend turned to Thorgrim. “The Irishman, he said this young man is his son, and he would exchange him for one of the Northmen of equal rank. To make certain everyone kept to their word. Louis said Harald volunteered himself without asking if any other would go.”
Of course he did…Thorgrim thought. Harald would never ask any man to step into danger before he did. He looked the Irish hostage up and down. He was thin and pale, clearly terrified at being in the wolf’s den, a captive among the Northmen, whom every Irishman knew tore the lungs from their victims just for sport. But he looked more than just frightened. He looked like some sort of idiot.
Thorgrim looked at Louis. “You think this sorry creature is the son of the Irish jarl?” he asked. Failend translated and again Louis shrugged.
“He says he told Harald that he did not believe this moon-calf was the son of a rí tuath, but Harald either didn’t believe him or would not question the Irishman’s word.”
Thorgrim turned to Gudrid once again. “How are we supposed to meet up with these Irishmen, the ones who have Harald?”
“Harald instructed me to tell you we’re to meet with this fellow’s men where the River Slaney meets a smaller river called the River Bann. About ten miles up the river from here. And then we can join with them.”
Thorgrim took a deep breath and held it, then let it out slowly before he dared let himself say another word. The meeting place that Harald had arranged was the same as the one he had arranged with the Irish chief they called Brother Bécc. They might all arrive at the same time, or they may not, but either way their previously complicated situation had just become vastly more so.
Complicated, and yet not so complicated. They needed two things. One was sailcloth. Their survival, their escape, depended on sailcloth. The second was getting Harald free. And those two simple needs gave Thorgrim the luxury of not having to make any hard choices, not yet. Because either way, they were going to Ferns.
Harald was glad for the shelter, meager as it was. No more than a bit of cloth, maybe ten feet square, strung over some poles to form a sort of tent, but it was something at least. The cloth was well oiled and as he sat under it, feeling the mud soaking into his leggings, he was at least freed from the rain that had been falling on him all that day.
Airtre mac Domhnall had more than a piece of cloth over a pole. He had a pavilion, quite an impressive affair that was carried in a cart and had been erected by a dozen of his men. That stood about twenty yards from where Harald sat under his shelter, but Airtre had yet to invite Harald in, and it seemed that he did not intend to do so.
Indeed, since the moment they had ridden inland and disappeared from sight of the beach, Airtre had not, in Harald’s opinion, treated him with the respect due an important hostage. He had been given the horse that Airtre’s son had been riding before the young and frightened man—shamefully frightened, by Harald’s lights, for the son of a rí tuath and a leader of warriors—had been given over to the Northmen in exchange.
That was as it should be, of course. Though Harald had not let on that he was the son of Thorgrim Ulfsson who led the army of Norsemen, he was nonetheless the leader of the men who had driven Airtre’s warriors from the beach, and was therefore due a certain amount of honor. But Airtre had surrounded Harald with men-at-arms as they rode, as if Harald might attempt an escape, or attack them like a mad dog.
He had said little to Harald, and what he had said had been clipped and curt. Bordering on rude. Harald would not have tolerated such treatment in any other circumstance, but he was not sure how a hostage should react. He had only been a hostage once before, hostage to the king of Tara. But he had not actually known that he was a hostage at the time.
They had left the coastline behind, riding along the muddy, half- drowned road. The foot soldiers, hunch-shouldered, shoes heavy with mud, weapons resting wearily on shoulders, followed behind.
Little wonder he wants us to fight his fight for him, Harald thought. A herd of sheep could have run that bunch off with not much effort.
They had ridden and marched until the settling gloom told them that the sun, still apparently hanging in the sky, was beginning to set, and they made their camp. There were shelters akin to Harald’s for the men, under which they built pathetic fires in hope of cooking their sorry rations. And there was the pavilion of Airtre mac Domhnall.
A whiff of something, a smell that suggested roast meat, passed by Harald’s nose and reminded him of how very hungry he was. He looked around. He doubted the smell had come from the cook fires of any of the men. Probably something being prepared for Airtre and his captains.
I’ll have to go and beg some food from one of these poor bastards, Harald thought. The idea was humiliating. As a valuable hostage he should not have to beg for scraps from men who had little themselves. Harald was not about to complain, at least not out loud, but he was beginning to feel a great grievance in his heart.
And worse, he was beginning to think he might have made a grave mistake.
He saw movement to his left, someone approaching his shelter, and the dark thoughts he had been thinking prompted him to rest his hand on Oak Cleaver’s grip. He felt the muscles in his arms tense, but before he could move any more than that the man stopped just outside the oiled cloth roof and said, “Lord Airtre begs you join him in his tent.”
Harald nodded and stood, hitting his head on the underside of the cloth and causing a great waterfall to spill out, splashing his legs, but, soaked through as he was, he did not really notice. He followed the servant across the soggy ground and stood back as he pulled the flap of the tent open and gestured for Harald to step inside. A warm glow filled the space, a half dozen oil lamps hanging from the poles supporting the roof, a folding table, cups, a jug of wine. Airtre was seated and five of his captains were seated or standing around. It was warm and dry and wonderful.
“Ah, Harald, there you are!” Airtre said as if they were old friends meeting after a long absence. “Come, have a seat. Have some wine. Are you hungry?” He turned to the servant near him. “Go fetch this man some food, you idiot.”
Harald nodded as he was handed a cup and took a drink, the wine sweet and cool.
“Forgive my not calling for you sooner,” Airtre said. “A hundred things on my mind, so much to attend to. But now I hope we may talk.”
Harald nodded again. “Yes, we may talk,” he said. Stepping from the miserable night into the dry warmth of the pavilion and this sudden change in Airtre threw him off balance. He had been angry a moment before, but now he was not certain how he felt, or how he should feel.
“So,” Airtre continued, “my men and I have been speaking about our plans, you know…” Just then the servant reappeared with a plate stacked with slices of roast beef, steaming in the cool air, and thick slices of brea
d coated with butter and set them on the table in the middle of the tent. Struggling as he was to remain aloof, still Harald could not help but glance longingly at the plate, a look that Airtre did not miss.
“Please, please, eat!” he said, gesturing toward the plate. “You eat and I’ll talk.”
Harald nodded and shuffled his chair closer to the table and plopped a slab of meat onto one of the slices of bread and took a big bite, working it with his teeth. It was delicious, at that moment one of the finest things he had ever tasted.
“So, as I was saying,” Airtre continued, “myself and a couple of my men here are going to meet with the man who commands your army of Northmen. His names is…?”
“Thorgrim,” Harald said, swallowing. “Thorgrim Ulfsson. He is known as Thorgrim Night Wolf.”
“‘Night Wolf’? Indeed,” Airtre said. “But I’m concerned about a few things. I… and let me say, by the way, that I much admire your command of our language. One rarely hears Northmen who can speak it. Are there others with Thorgrim who can speak the Irish tongue?”
Harald gave a grunt of a laugh. “No,” he said. “None have bothered to learn, which means it falls to me every time.”
“So, if we meet with Thorgrim, there are none there who could speak with us?”
Harald was about to say that was true when he remembered Failend. “There’s one,” he said. “An Irish woman who’s joined us. She speaks your language and she has learned ours as well.”
Airtre nodded and he thought about this. Harald wondered why he would want to know such a thing, but he was too hungry and the food was too good for him to worry much about it.
“This…Thorgrim…” Airtre began again. “He’s new to the lands around here. Not familiar with them. I fear he won’t find the meeting place, where the River Bann meets the Slaney.”
Harald was deep into another bite, so he swallowed that before answering. “I don’t think that will be a problem. He’s seen some of this country. He’s gone to Ferns already, or should have.”
Airtre and the others exchanged glances, and now it was Harald who caught the gesture. Should I have not said that? he thought. It seemed an unimportant thing, but the Irishmen seemed to think otherwise.
“Gone to Ferns, you say?” Airtre said, his eyes back on Harald. “To…raid? To seek God’s forgiveness?”
Now what do I say? Harald thought. He was not sure what the right answer was, the answer that Airtre wished to hear. His father, he knew, intended to go to Ferns to see if they could be paid to make sailcloth, but that did not sound like something Airtre would be happy to hear.
“They went…Thorgrim went…just to get a look at the place,” Harald said. “We heard there was great wealth there, just as you said. Plunder, it’s why we’re here in Ireland. So of course Thorgrim would wish to see if there was a chance at sacking Ferns.”
Airtre nodded, a thoughtful gesture. “But you don’t think he has sacked it yet? If he decided it could be done?”
Harald shook his head. “He wouldn’t make the attempt without the two ships I was sent to get. Or the men who were with me.”
“You had…what? Forty men with you? Is that most of the army Thorgrim commands?”
Harald frowned, as if in deep thought, which he was, but his thoughts were running toward how he should reply to this. “Not most, no,” he said at last. “A third, maybe? I don’t know how many men Thorgrim commands, exactly, but many more than were with me.”
This of course was not true. Thorgrim’s army numbered ninety or so, no more, and nearly half those men had been with Harald. But he was sure it would not be helpful to tell Airtre that, so he didn’t, and he hoped he had spoken his words in a way that would be believed.
“So, Thorgrim was just going to look at Ferns?” Airtre asked.
“Exactly,” Harald said. “He wished to see if it was possible to sack the place with the men we have. That’s why I’m certain he’ll be pleased with what you propose. With your army and his, together, there will surely be enough men to take the monastery, no matter how well guarded it is.”
“I should think so,” Airtre said. “Very well. Me and my captains, we will be off in the morning to meet with Thorgrim at the River Bann and make our plans for Ferns.” He turned to one of the men sitting near him at the table, who, like Airtre, was dressed in a fine- looking tunic, a gold chain with a cross around his neck. “Tipraite, do we still have the tent that belonged to Ailill?”
“We do, lord,” Tipraite said.
“Well, then, let’s see it set up for our guest, Harald,” Airtre said. “A man such as this must be treated with honor!”
Chapter Twelve
Fire I see burning east of the burg,
War-tidings waken, a beacon of warning:
A host shall come hither, with swiftness.
Prose Edda
The sun was entirely lost behind the thick blanket of cloud, but Thorgrim guessed it had not yet reached its midday height by the time they pushed off through the relentless downpour to begin the long pull upriver. The arrival of the two longships had greatly simplified preparations. That morning he had been wrestling with the logistics of getting more than ninety men, with weapons and food, across to the north shore of the river with only a single curach to carry them. Now that was not an issue, nor would he have to listen to the grumbling of men who were made to walk miles in the rain.
All of the gear and supplies that Thorgrim’s small army would need for the work ahead, those things they had thought they would need to carry on their backs, were loaded aboard the two longships. The vessels were heaved out into the water and the men clambered aboard, taking their places at the long oars. Thorgrim, standing on Dragon’s afterdeck, took the tiller and swung the bow northwest, toward where the estuary narrowed into the river. The ship, considerably smaller than Sea Hammer, seemed stunted and insubstantial to him, but he knew she was solid built, a good sea-boat and easy to work under oars.
The shoreline closed in on them as the wide bay, formed where the river emptied into the sea, narrowed down to the mouth of the river itself. Thorgrim steered for the river mouth, Fox directly in their wake. He was glad now for having made the trip upriver in the curach. There would be few surprises, at least with regard to navigating the waterway.
Thorgrim scanned the countryside ahead, the delta narrowing in on them as the longship moved west. The land was low and nondescript and in that light looked like no more than an irregular dark gray wall from the north to the south. Wisps of low cloud, barely visible through the driving rain, hung over the shoreline like windblown tufts of wool caught on some unseen snag.
Starri Deathless was standing beside him, smiling despite the downpour. “This will be good, Night Wolf, this will be good,” he said, spitting out rainwater when he was done. “I can feel it.”
Thorgrim made a grunting sound. It was not good, it was ridiculous—Bécc and this Irishman who held Harald both picking the same spot to meet. What would happen if they all appeared there at the same moment? He had given his word to the chief man at Ferns and Harald had given his word to this other one. On whose side would Thorgrim and his men fight? This was starting to look like the finest joke the gods had ever played on him.
“You’re worried about Harald,” Starri said. It was not a question.
“Of course I’m worried. He’s hostage to a man I’m expected to do battle with.”
“You don’t know that this is the same one the Christ men asked you to fight,” Starri said.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” Thorgrim said, giving the tiller a little pull. “I agreed to help protect the monastery at Ferns. We need to protect the monastery, because that’s the only way we get the cloth for our sails. So anyone attacking the place, that’s who we fight.”
“I just realized something,” Starri said.
“What’s that?”
“Well, it’s a funny thing, isn’t it? Here we are, protecting a monastery! Stopping someone else from
plundering it. That’s a strange turn of events.”
“You just realized that?” Thorgrim asked.
“Yes! But I’m clever that way, you see? I can see such things when other men cannot.”
Thorgrim shook his head, just slightly, and smiled despite himself.
“But see here,” Starri continued. “You shouldn’t be so worried about Harald Broad Arm.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because Harald’s not a boy anymore,” Starri said. “I know it, every man here knows it. Except you. He’s strong as a bull, and he’s thoughtful and clever. I never met his mother, as you know, but I guess his cleverness comes from her. Not from you and certainly not from Ornolf. Strength, maybe. But the cleverness comes from someplace else. Still, the gods smile on him, as they smile on you.”
“If this is smiling I’d ask the gods to frown a little and see what happens then.”
“Ah, Thorgrim!” Starri said. “You are such a fool. You’re lucky I’m here. You know how well I see with my eyes, how I can see farther than any man here?”
Thorgrim nodded.
“Well, it’s not just the things of this world I can see. I can see farther than most men in many, many ways.”
Thorgrim pulled his eyes from the shoreline and looked at Starri, who was now staring out beyond the ship’s bow. Generally he dismissed Starri’s words as the rambling of a half-mad berserker, though one, to be sure, whose company he enjoyed. But now he wondered if he was not giving the man his proper due.
Dragon passed from the wide delta into the mouth of the river that was perhaps five hundred feet across, like a great watery gash though the wet, green country. They continued on for another few miles, rowing against the current, which thankfully, with the tide halfway through the flood, was not running too hard. Finally Thorgrim pushed the tiller slightly away from him, turning Dragon’s bow more northerly, following the northward bend of the river.
Loch Garman: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 7) Page 11
