“There,” he said to the other men on horseback, pointing to the slow-moving ships. “Let’s go.” He kicked his horse into a walk, heading down the far side of the slope, the other riders just a little behind him, the weary foot soldiers trailing in a line behind them.
A patch of woods lay to their right, a mile off, and just ahead the junction of the rivers. The meeting spot.
They were halfway there, halfway across the open ground, when Tipraite rode up alongside Airtre. “These heathens, do you think…” he began. But he got no further.
A shout from the trees to the right, a sudden movement, and Airtre swiveled around, too surprised and unsure to be alarmed. But that did not last long. A line of horsemen came pounding out from where they had been concealed in the shadows, swords raised, shields on arms, some with spears leveled. A dozen to Airtre’s six. And behind the riders, foot soldiers, as many, at least, as Airtre had.
“Form up! Form up! Make a line!” Airtre called to his spearmen, whirling around on his horse. Airtre was not lacking in courage—his wife, Lassar, was the only one who could bring instant terror to his heart—and he had seen fighting enough to remain calm and get his men put into some sort of defensive posture.
As the spearmen ran to form a line, spears forward, Airtre looked over the ground that would be their battlefield. His first thought was retreat, not out of fear but simply because it made the most sense given the surprise attack by a more powerful enemy. It was possible, but it would not be easy. There was no place to run, no shelter within sight. So they would have to fight, and they would have to win or die.
He turned to the other five mounted men. They had taken up their shields and drawn swords, set helmets on their heads. Airtre did likewise. “Let’s form a line and go meet these whore’s sons!” he shouted, kicking his horse into a run, the others following suit.
They charged across the field, six mounted warriors closing quickly with a dozen. Fighting on horseback, this was not something they did often. Usually the horses took them to the battle, and then they fought on foot. But this enemy was determined to make a fast attack, and that meant Airtre and his men had to meet it with the same.
“Through them! Right through them, and at the foot soldiers behind!” Airtre called over the pounding of the hooves on the soft ground. He looked left and right. Grim faces under the rims of helmets, swords held up, reins clutched in hands that held shields.
He looked forward as they closed the last twenty feet with their attackers. Right ahead, coming right at him, Airtre could see the horrible, unmistakable face of Bécc the warrior, Bécc the monk, coming at him with sword raised.
They both reined back, horses protesting, half stumbling as they met. Airtre slashed at Bécc’s helmet-clad head with his sword, making a wide arc in the air, and Bécc met the blade with his own, the steel ringing out like a church bell. Bécc pushed Airtre’s sword aside and swept his blade backhand at Airtre, but Airtre’s shield was up and it took the blade, and Airtre drove his spurs into his horse’s flanks and charged ahead.
Bécc’s mounted warriors were behind him now, and in front, thirty yards back, Bécc’s foot soldiers, and they were the ones Airtre wanted, the vulnerable ones. He wanted to reduce their numbers as much as he could now, weaken them enough that his own spearmen might have a chance.
He charged on, and he could see the hesitancy in Bécc’s men as they braced for the onslaught of Airtre and the other riders with him. Spears were raised, feet planted, eyes wide.
Airtre hit the line and pulled back on the reins. There was a spearman to his left and one to his right and they both thrust the wicked points of their weapons up at him, as he knew they would. The spear on the left he deflected with his shield, the one on the right he knocked out of line with his sword, and as the man tried to recover Airtre thrust straight down at him.
The point stuck and continued on and the spear fell from the man’s hands and Airtre pulled the blade of his sword free, certain the man was dead, or would be seconds after hitting the grass. He whirled his horse, so fast the man on his left had no time to react as Airtre’s sword came around and half-severed the arm with which he was trying to lift his spear.
Not like the Northmen, Airtre thought as he drove his horse at the next in line. Fighting on the beach, it had been his first encounter with Northmen, and he had found they were more dexterous by far than these sorry, spear-wielding farmers. Trying to get a sword into one of them had been like trying to grab an eel out of a stream, and Airtre’s men had paid a price.
Airtre felt a spear point embed itself in his shield. He slashed at the man to his right and felt the blade bite. But now Bécc’s mounted men-at-arms had recovered from the surprise of Airtre’s horsemen charging though them and they were riding down on them once again. That was all the chance he’d have at the foot soldiers, for now anyway.
“Horsemen! At them!” Airtre shouted and spurred his horse into a run, closing fast with Bécc and the others. The two ragged lines of horsemen came together in a flurry of swords and shields, hooves and tossing heads. Sword against sword Airtre found himself with horsemen on either side of him, and he worked blade and shield together to protect himself, to try and find an opening for his sword to do its work.
“Airtre, you bastard, I’ll see you damned!” a voice cut through the din. Bécc. Unmistakable. And Airtre wanted to answer back, but he was so busy trying to keep alive that he could not.
He took a blow on his shield, turned to his right hand, parried a sword thrust and countered the attack. He felt the tip of the blade catch on the man’s mail shirt and tear through, felt it tear through flesh and the man screamed and jerked back, wounded, not dead, but it was the chance Airtre needed to free himself from the fight, just for a second.
He charged past the wounded man, taking another futile swing at him as he did, broke into the clear ten feet from the fighting, looked around. His foot soldiers were running past, some engaging with the riders, some going for Bécc’s spearmen. Some lying sprawled out on the grass. His horsemen were deep into it, surrounded, fighting just to keep from dying now, and for the first time an ugly thought came to Airtre’s mind.
We’re going to lose. And we’re going to die. But in the heat of it, this seemed more an academic exercise, a curiosity, and he kicked his horse and charged into the fight again.
Airtre could hear his own breath, loud in his ears, could hear the clanging of steel on steel, swords hitting the flat wood surfaces of shields, the whinnying of the horses, the stomping of hooves, the furious shouts of fighting men. And then he could hear something else. Something he could not identify. Banging. Shouting. Jeering. But not close. Some ways off.
He looked up from the fight, looked for the sound, and he was aware that others were doing so as well. The sounds of their own battle fell away as the fighting men tried to see where this new sound was coming from, and from whom.
Then he saw them, a quarter mile to the west. It was the Northmen, coming down the slope of a hill, formed up in a long line. Not quite a shield wall, but near to it. They were banging their weapons on their shields and chanting and shouting in their ugly language and they were advancing on the fight.
But there was no fight now. The mounted warriors, the foot soldiers, they had all stopped fighting and were drawing back to their separate ends of the field and watching the Northmen come on. Airtre was sure that every man there was thinking the same thing he was: What will these bastards do now?
There were close to a hundred of the heathens, it seemed, more than enough to kill all of his men and Bécc’s as well. And still they advanced, slow and relentless.
Tipraite rode up to Airtre’s side, nodded toward the heathen line. “These our Northmen, the ones we’re to meet?” he asked.
“I think so,” Airtre said. “But I don’t know.”
“Will they fight with us, or fight with Bécc?” Tipraite asked next.
“I don’t know that either,” Airtre said. He looked arou
nd. Bécc had pulled his men back toward the tree line from which they had come. The Northmen were still advancing, still banging shields, still shouting. Before the heathens would fight Bécc and his men, Airtre understood, they would have to know which side was which, who was fighting who, and there would be no chance of that happening now, if ever. For all he knew, these bastard heathens had changed sides, as they famously tended to do. Maybe they were Bécc’s men now.
“Whatever the damned heathens are going to do, I don’t think we want to wait around and see,” Airtre said. “Get the men together. Let’s get away from this Godforsaken place while we can.”
Chapter Fourteen
A man shall trust not the oath of a maid,
Nor the word a woman speaks;
For their hearts on a whirling wheel were fashioned,
And fickle their breasts were formed.
The Poetic Edda
“Hold up!” Thorgrim called, raising Iron-tooth over his head, and the long line of Northmen came to a ragged halt. Off to their right, across the field, the warriors on one side of this little skirmish were giving up the fight, the weary and injured foot soldiers walking and limping as fast as they could for the far hills, the horsemen forming a screen behind them.
“That worked well,” Godi said. “Just like you thought.”
Thorgrim grunted. “We’ll see,” he said.
Godi was right in one respect: the appearance of the Northmen, advancing under arms, had served to bring an end to the fight, to scare one side off. But they did not yet know which side. And if the men doing battle were indeed the men Thorgrim thought they were—Bécc and the house guard from Ferns on the one hand, and the man who held Harald hostage on the other—then he and his men were both friend and enemy to each side.
At the very least, Thorgrim figured it would be better if they did not all slaughter one another until it was straightened out.
“Now, let’s see what this one does,” Thorgrim said, pointing with Iron-tooth toward the handful of men clustered on their left.
“Prudent fellow would abandon the place,” Godi offered. “We outnumber him, by far, and he doesn’t know what we intend any more than we know what he does.”
Thorgrim nodded. But if this man was Bécc then Thorgrim did not think he would leave the field. He had spent little time in Bécc’s company, and exchanged few words, and those through Failend, but still he felt he knew what sort of man he was. A warrior, for all his Christ priest’s robes. Not a man who would flee from an enemy when his own men were not in immediate peril.
And it seemed he was right. For a moment Thorgrim and the man on horseback regarded one another across the open ground; then the horseman gave a pull of his reins, turned his mount toward the line of Northmen and headed in their direction, allowing his tired animal to walk. Two of the other mounted warriors trailed just behind, one to either side.
It was Bécc. Fifty feet away Thorgrim could see it, could make out the man’s disfigured face. He was wearing mail now, and a helmet and carried a shield in one hand and a sword in the other, and they suited him better than the robe, Thorgrim thought.
“Failend,” he called and the woman, bow in hand, appeared at his side.
Ten feet away Bécc reined his horse to a stop, slung his shield on the saddle, slipped his sword into its sheath. He stared at Thorgrim, but said nothing. Then finally he spoke.
“He says he thought you had given your word to defend Ferns,” Failend said, “and yet you did nothing but make noise.”
At that, Thorgrim gave a bit of a smile. He could not help himself. And he wondered what Bécc thought he had to gain, goading him in that manner. Maybe it was just who this fellow was.
“Tell him I did not know which side was Ferns and which its enemies,” Thorgrim said. “Tell him I considered killing them all, but thought better of it.”
Failend translated and this time it was Bécc who gave a little smile. He spoke again.
“Brother Bécc wonders if you know who it was they were fighting,” Failend said. “Now that you know which of the men were Ferns.”
“I do not.”
Bécc seemed to consider this answer for some time. Then he spoke again.
“He says it was Airtre mac Domhnall, the rí tuath who is threatening to plunder Ferns. He wonders why Airtre might have been coming here, just as you, too, were arriving.”
“Tell him I can no more predict why an Irishman does things than I can predict why a mad dog does things. And for the same reason.”
At that Bécc nodded, but the expression on his scarred face did not alter. He spoke again, and before Failend could translate the words, he reined his horse around and began walking the animal back to the rest of his soldiers, his two captains following behind.
“He says we’re to follow him. That the men who were here were only a handful of Airtre’s army, and we must move east to meet the rest before they get too near to Ferns.”
Thorgrim stepped forward, sword raised high. “Come along, men!” he shouted, loud enough to be heard down the line. “Let’s follow these Irish bastards to wherever they want us to go.”
He headed out across the open ground, following the track Bécc’s horse had made through the wet grass, Godi on one side, Failend on the other, the rest of his men following in a semblance of a line. But Harald was not with them. Harald was out there, somewhere, hostage to an Irishman. The Irishman who Thorgrim and his men had just frightened into leaving the field.
That, of course, was the other reason Thorgrim and his men had not joined in the fight. As it was, this Irishman, this Airtre or something like that, might well construe the Northmen’s presence on the hill, weapons in hand, as a betrayal of the arrangement Harald had made. If so, Harald’s life would be in great danger. But Thorgrim had been careful to leave it uncertain as to whose side he was joining. He hoped that would be enough to keep Harald alive until he and the rest could come for him.
By the time they reached the far end of the field, Bécc had assembled his men, riders in the front, the foot soldiers following behind, and set them to marching eastward. Thorgrim fell in behind the column of spearmen and the whole parade headed off, skirting the stands of trees on their left hand, between which Thorgrim could catch the occasional glimpses of the River Bann.
His mind wandered back to that afternoon, rowing up that river in the curach, Failend wearing her leine, the men pulling easy at the oars, the sun shining down. He liked that thought. He preferred it to the many, many other things swirling in his head.
They did not walk long. The afternoon had already been well advanced by the time the fight had taken place, and now the general gloom of the day was growing gloomier still as the sun moved toward the west. Or seemed to be doing. They had not actually seen the sun in some days.
“Smoke,” Starri said from just behind Thorgrim, and Thorgrim, who had been looking at the ground as various thoughts tumbled through his head, looked up now. There were indeed columns of smoke rising up above the trees up ahead, several thin, dark lines against the dark gray sky.
“A camp,” Starri said next. “I’ll wager it’s a camp.”
He was right. They rounded the trees and came out into another field and there, spread out before them, was the camp that Bécc’s men had made. A few tents, a few fires, their orange flames bright in the failing light. A larger tent that Thorgrim took to be Bécc’s. Some horses staked out. In all, not a very impressive affair.
Bécc’s horsemen slipped down out of their saddles and the foot soldiers fell out of their line and made their way to the fires, tended by their fellows. Bécc ambled over to Thorgrim with the gait of one who had spent the entire day in the saddle.
“He asks if we have our own provisions,” Failend said after Bécc had spoken.
“Tell him we had them on the ships. He didn’t give us time to get them.”
Bécc did not look pleased with this news, in part, Thorgrim imagined, because it meant he would have to provide food
for the heathens, and in part because it was his fault that he did. He spoke again.
“He says we may bed down wherever we like,” Failend said. “He says he’ll have food and ale brought to us. And he asks that once you have eaten, would you come and speak with him?”
Thorgrim nodded. He looked around at the open ground. Plenty of room to bed down, but with no tents, no furs, no blankets. Bécc’s men might not be terribly comfortable, but his own men would be much worse, and that did not please Thorgrim, not at all.
He made a grunting sound and led his men over toward an open patch of grass. “All right, we’ll set up camp here,” he said. He paused and looked around, feeling his mood growing worse. There was a pile of split wood, a few shovels off by where the Irish had made camp.
“Godi, Gudrid, get some men and go fetch some armfuls of that wood and those shovels,” he said, pointing, and the men hurried off. Thorgrim remained where he was. He did not trust himself to go with them, was not sure how he would react if any of the Irish objected.
And a few nearly did. Thorgrim saw men stand and glare at Godi and the others as they loaded up with wood, even saw one man take a step toward them. But that was as far as any got. Godi alone would be enough to frighten the confrontation out of any man, and the rest of the well-armed Northmen were enough to stop all of it cold.
The Northmen returned with the wood and the shovels and Thorgrim instructed them to dig a shallow pit and build a big fire and to take any more wood they might need from the Irishmen’s pile. Soon meat and ale arrived and once the fire was burning high each man set about cooking rations and drinking as much as he could as quickly as he could.
Food, drink, a grand fire, these things did much to improve the Northmen’s mood. Thorgrim could see it, but he did not feel it himself. Indeed he felt his mind grow darker, and he realized with a start that the black mood was coming, that time when, as the sun went down, he would grow contentious and surly to the point that others would avoid his company.
Loch Garman: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 7) Page 13
