“Here we go!” Thorgrim shouted just as Bécc’s men and Airtre’s began to move, walking at first and then building to a jog as they came from either end of the road, hoping to crush the Northmen’s twin shield walls between them. They shouted as well, the Irish men-of-war’s voices building to an impressive crescendo as they came on, war cries to match the battle cries of the Northmen, and together they sounded like some great mythic fight of evil spirits.
Thorgrim watched Bécc’s men come on, saw the man in front stumble and fall and get trampled by the men behind before he even realized that Failend had brought him down. He turned and looked back at her. She had swiveled around and was loosing an arrow at the men coming from the other way, then snatched a fresh arrow and turned back to Bécc’s men.
They had halved the distance now. Thorgrim saw Failend’s shaft drive into one of the warriors’ chests and he went down like the first and disappeared under the feet of the men behind.
Then once again the shield walls struck, the crunching sound of wood on wood bouncing off the stone walls. The swords of the Irishmen rose and fell, the Northmen met them with shields and steel, spears thrust at the gaps between the men. Thorgrim saw one of the Irishmen take a sword thrust in the throat and fall back on his fellows behind, his helmet askew. He saw one of his own men stagger back, a spear still jutting from his belly. The man behind stepped up to fill the gap as the man beside him yanked the spear free, spun it around and hurled it back at the Irish warriors.
He turned to the other line. Godi anchored the center, and Harald was pressed against the wall of the abbot’s house and they were slashing with ax and sword and working their shields with the rest, fending off the wild onslaught of the monastery’s defenders.
Failend was still mounted on her barrel, arrow nocked, looking for a target, and Thorgrim guessed that with the fight pressed so close she was afraid of hitting one of her own. Starri was standing between the lines, his head swiveling back and forth, his arms starting to take on their jerking movements, the berserker frenzy building.
“Starri!” Thorgrim shouted. “Don’t get in front of the shield wall!” Starri Deathless did not have the discipline to stand in a shield wall, but Thorgrim did not want him getting between his own men and the Irish. No good would come of that.
On the edge of his vision Thorgrim saw something flash by and he spun around in time to see the spear come streaking over the heads of the men in the shield wall and hit Failend, spinning her around and tossing her off the barrel like a child’s toy.
“Bastard!” Thorgrim shouted and moved toward her, just as Starri Deathless came bounding past. In one leap he was up on the barrel, but he did not pause there. He pushed off the top and came down with a foot on Gudrid’s shoulder, and before Gudrid could even react he was off again, launching himself into Airtre’s men, shrieking as he did.
Thorgrim pushed through the second lines of men to where Failend lay on the dirt road, half propped up against the church. The spear had not impaled itself in her; it was nowhere to be seen. Her eyes were open and wide, her hand was clapped on her side. The red blood was oozing out between her fingers.
“Failend!” Thorgrim said, aware that he would not have given any of his other warriors such attention in the middle of a fight, not even Harald. But Failend was not any of the other warriors, a truth he rarely admitted to himself. And never to her.
“I’m…it’s not so bad,” she said, and then gasped, giving the lie to her words.
“Let me see,” Thorgrim said. Failend lifted her hand and Thorgrim peeled the torn, wet, sticky cloth away from her side. He could see her smooth, white skin beneath, the skin he so loved, and he could see where it had been badly torn up by the spear. The point had caught her just above the waist on her right-hand side and passed on by, not embedding itself but tearing up the flesh pretty well as it flew.
“Right, not so bad,” Thorgrim said. Which might or might not be true. He had seen men live through worse—Starri, for one—and he had seen lesser wounds go bad, the wounded men dying as they thrashed and sweated with fever. In any event, it was hard to see the damage through all the blood.
“Go,” Failend said, clapping her hand over the wound again. “Go.”
Thorgrim nodded. “Press hard on that,” he said. He stood, looked right and left. There was a riot of screaming and flailing weapons and men backing away and more coming into the fight off to his left. He knew Starri was at the center of that and there was nothing he could do at the moment.
To his right the fighting continued, but he could see it was slacking off, the enthusiasm of the Irish waning as more and more of them were wounded or killed up against the Northmen’s unbreakable shield wall. A gap seemed to open up as the Irish stepped back, now reaching out with weapons from an arm’s length away, utterly ineffectual.
A rider came down the dirt road now, his horse at a trot, shouting as he came. It was Bécc, and though Thorgrim did not understand the words, he was certain the man was calling for his soldiers to renew the fight, to press forward once again. Bécc hit one of the spearmen with the flat of his sword, pointed toward the shield wall, but the spearman took the blow and did not move.
Vestar was five feet from Thorgrim, a spear in his hand. He cocked his arm, brought the spear back, hurled it over the heads of the shield wall, straight and true at Bécc. But Bécc saw him do it and he did not flinch or move much at all, simply slashed the air with his sword as the spear came on, catching the shaft with the blade and sending the weapon clattering against the wall of the abbot’s house.
But in that instant his men decided that they had had enough. Those in the front ranks stepped back, pushing against those behind, and those in the back turned and ran and soon they were all running, leaving heaps of dead and wounded in the narrow alley. And Thorgrim’s men were too exhausted to cheer or do much of anything besides watch them run.
Thorgrim turned toward the other shield wall and saw the Irish there were running as well, those men fighting with Starri now extracting themselves and fleeing back the way they came. Gudrid and two others raced after them and Thorgrim was about to call them back when he realized it was not the Irish they were chasing, but Starri, who was charging down the road, axes raised.
The three Northmen caught Starri and grabbed him by the arms and dragged him back to the shield wall while Starri screamed and flailed and wept like he was at a funereal. And Thorgrim knew he was weeping not because some of his fellows had died, but because he was still alive, and not being lifted by the Valkyrie to Odin’s corpse hall.
A strange silence fell over the place, punctuated by the heavy breathing of worn men and the moans of the wounded. Thorgrim sent two of his men to see to Failend, to try and make her comfortable, as he assessed the damage that Bécc had done to his army.
The Irish had had the worst of it, that was clear. For every Northman who lay in a bloody heap there were three Irish. But then, the Irish had the harder job. Thorgrim’s men had only to stand fast and hold back the tide; the task of the Irish had been to break through that near-solid wall. And they had failed. This time.
Now what? Thorgrim thought. When he had decided to make a stand between those two buildings he had been thinking only of living through the morning. Now they had done that. And now he had to think of what they would do next.
He looked down along the road that opened out into an open space beyond the church. He could see some of the round wattle houses standing in the distance, and a fence with cattle enclosed. There were none of the Irish men-at-arms in sight, but Thorgrim was sure they were just around the corners of those two buildings, ready to fall on the Northmen once they left the protection of the walled-in road.
We’re not getting out of here that way, he thought. He looked up. The roof of the church was a good thirty feet above them and there was no way to get up and over. The abbot’s house was lower, but still there was no chance of leaving the road that way, not without ladders. And they didn’t have lad
ders. But the Irish did, and Thorgrim guessed it would not take them long to think of putting warriors on the roof to rain rocks and spears down on the Northmen. Like fish in a weir.
Louis was stepping over to him now. His mail shirt was rent open and there was blood on his tunic below. His leggings were torn and bloody, but he did not seem to be limping. “Failend?” he said.
Thorgrim made a gesture that he hoped would convey the situation: not good but not so bad. Louis nodded. He pointed up to the roof of the abbot’s house and spoke in broken, barely discernable Norse. “Irish…go there…soon.”
Thorgrim nodded. It was just what he had been thinking. Harald and Godi were joining them now, their clothing and armor as mauled as Louis’s.
“They’ll be back,” Harald said. “And they can take all the time they like. Maybe barricade the ends of the road.”
Thorgrim nodded, but now his eyes were on something else, something he had not noticed before. Forty feet away, flush with the walls and thus difficult to see, there were doors, one in the church wall, one in the abbot’s house. They stood opposite each other, and were likely put there so the abbot could go easily from one building to the other.
Iron-tooth was still in Thorgrim’s hand, and he raised it and pointed. He opened his mouth to speak and felt something hard hit his shoulder and drag along his mail shirt. In the same instant he heard a dull thudding sound at his feet.
He looked down. A spear was embedded in the dirt road, its shaft pointing at the roof of the abbot’s house from which it had been thrown. He looked up. Six Irish warriors stood on the peak of the roof, and more behind them, passing along spears.
“Shields!” Thorgrim shouted. “Over your heads!” Some of the men had already seen the threat, already had shields up. Others were lifting them now as one after another the spears came hurdling down. A spear caught one of Thorgrim’s men with his shield half-raised, drove right through his shoulder, tearing through on the far side, spinning him around and dropping him to the road in a bloody, writhing heap.
“Get the wounded!” Thorgrim shouted. “Carry them if you must! The rest of you, shield those who are helping them.”
He turned to look for Failend and saw that Hall already had her in his arms, Vestar standing in front of him, shield raised to the roof above. Failend seemed to have passed out, and Thorgrim was shocked to see how frail she looked, how small and unsubstantial. Her spirit, he realized, made her seem bigger than she actually was.
He looked away, looked right and left. The wounded were being helped or carried by those still fit. A half dozen dead lay strewn about, but there was nothing for that.
“Come on,” Thorgrim shouted. He led the way down the road, keeping close to the wall of the abbot’s house where the men on the roof could not reach. Others, he was sure, were making their way to the roof of the church, which would turn the whole road into a killing field.
They covered the forty feet to the doors and Thorgrim, at the head of the column, stopped at the entrance to the abbot’s house. He pushed on the door and found it was not barred. “In here, in here!” he shouted.
Louis the Frank stood near the middle of the line, the wounded Olaf Thordarson’s arm draped around his neck. “No!” he shouted in his Frankish-inflected Norse. “No!”
Thorgrim frowned. That was not something men said to him, and certainly not Louis the Frank. Louis handed Olaf off to another, came jogging down the line of men pressed against the wall of the abbot’s house. Thorgrim glanced up at the church roof. No one yet.
Louis reached Thorgrim and pointed toward the door of the church. “There,” he said. Thorgrim shook his head. The abbot’s house was smaller, easier to defend from the inside with fewer entryways. “There,” he said, pointing to the abbot’s door.
Harald was with them now and he jabbered at Louis in Irish and Louis jabbered back. “Louis says they can burn us out of the abbot’s house, just set fire to the roof, but they won’t burn down the church.”
Thorgrim frowned. He understood, and it made sense. But he still thought the church was too big to defend, and further he did not care to take the suggestion of Louis the Frank.
“Thorgrim!” Godi shouted from down the line. “There!” He was pointing to the roof of the church. Thorgrim looked up to see the first of Bécc’s warriors coming over the peak, spear in hand. It was a long throw, but it was nearly straight down, as much dropping the spears as throwing them, and they would do their work well. Shields would not stand up to them for long.
Then Thorgrim saw something moving at the far end of the road, a dozen men heaving a wagon across the gap. He looked back the way they had come and saw a wagon closing that end as well. Bécc was trapping them there in the alley where the spearmen could kill them all piecemeal.
“There,” Thorgrim said, pointing toward the church door. He ran across the road, heard the sound of men following, heard a shout of surprise from the Irishmen on the roofs above.
Thorgrim made it to the door and pushed and found it would not open. “It’s barred!” he shouted. “Find a….”
That was all he managed to say. With a shout, Godi came barreling across the road like a great bolder tumbling down the side of a mountain. Harald and Gudrid ran behind him, shields raised, barely able to keep up.
Godi hit the door with a terrific crash. Thorgrim saw the door jump, heard the sound of splintering wood, but the bar did not yield. Godi shouted, backed away from the door while Harald and Gudrid did their best to provide him cover. A spear came sailing down from the roof and embedded itself in Harald’s shield. It sagged down like a wilting stem as Harald struggled to hold the shield up.
Then Godi charged again, shouting louder this time, his face twisted in fury. He slammed into the door with shocking force and this time the unseen bar yielded with a muffled snapping sound. The door swung open and Godi stumbled through, into the dark interior.
“Go, go, go!” Thorgrim shouted. He stood a few feet from the wall of the abbot’s house, his shield held over his head, swinging Iron-tooth in a gesture meant to hurry them along.
But they needed no encouragement beyond the iron-tipped shafts that were raining down from both roofs now. A spear embedded itself in Armod’s shield and he tossed the shield away as he raced through the dark doorway. The man at his heels was not so lucky, a spear missing his shield and taking him square in the back. He stumbled and fell, dead or soon to be.
Harald was the last of the men to go, and then only Thorgrim was left and he ran across the space as fast as his legs would carry him, shield held over his head, dodging left and right to make things more difficult for the spear men. He reached the door and plunged through, into the cool of the great church, the wide-open space, the roof arching above them, impossibly high. There were candles burning here and there, and some dull sunlight coming in through the colored windows, but it was dark beyond that.
Thorgrim paused ten feet into the church, leaned over and gasped for breath. Behind him he heard some men slamming the door shut and dragging some heavy thing to push against it and keep it closed.
He stood and looked around. Louis the Frank was ten feet away. Their eyes met and Louis gave Thorgrim a half smile, a wry look. He said one word, said it in his Frankish tongue. Thorgrim did not know what the word meant. It sounded like “Sanctuary.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
On all sides saw I Valkyries assemble,
Ready to ride to the ranks of the gods…
The Poetic Edda
They looked to the wounded first. They made beds for them from the robes and stoles and sundry other lengths of cloth they found in a room on the side of the church. They laid bleeding Northmen down on the Christ priests’ richly embroidered vestments, and bound wounds with strips of cloth torn from garments of fine white linen.
Thorgrim looked to Failend himself. He knelt over her and with his dagger carefully cut away the blood-soaked cloth of her tunic. She gasped once, and once gave a sharp intake of breath, but s
he was silent for most of it.
Louis the Frank appeared, a gold chalice in one hand, a wine bottle in the other. He knelt down beside her and for Failend’s sake Thorgrim tried to hide his irritation. He was not sure if Failend would welcome his presence or not, but she was apparently in too much pain to care.
Louis held up the chalice. “Water,” he said. Thorgrim nodded and Louis began to wash the blood away from Failend’s wound. Failend made a series of sharp, guttural sounds, as if she was swallowing cries of pain, and her body tensed, but that was the extent of her protests.
Her skin, seen through the rent tunic, was pale and smooth, beautiful skin, skin Thorgrim loved to caress, and part of that skin was now torn up by the passing of an Irish spear. It was an ugly wound. The spear had not just lacerated her side, as Thorgrim had first thought, but had pierced it and gone right through, making a ragged mess as it did. Had she been bigger, the spear might have lodged in her, but it did not, and instead it left this gaping wound.
Louis raised the wine bottle and Thorgrim frowned. He did not know how much wine there was in the church, but he would have to find out and make certain his men did not drink themselves insensible. A little wine would get the fighting spirit up. Too much and the Irish would have little trouble finishing them off.
But Louis did not drink the wine. Instead he poured some of it over Failend’s wound, the dark red liquid mixing with the brownish red of her blood. Failend gasped and Thorgrim grabbed Louis’s wrist and twisted his hand and stopped the wine from pouring.
Louis spoke. He held Thorgrim’s eyes as he did, but he did not speak in his broken Norse.
“He says,” Failend said, her words coming out in little gasps, “that pouring wine on a wound…keeps it from going bad. Used to do it to his soldiers.”
Loch Garman: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 7) Page 33
