Fin Gall

by James L. Nelson

  Between Flann and Thorgrim there was a soldier with spear held ready, held low, as if he was going to impale Thorgrim like a charging boar, but he never had the chance. Thorgrim swept the spear aside with his sword, never breaking stride, and leapt into the air, set a foot on the soldier’s chest and launched himself at Flann. He hit Flann square and the two of them went over the far side of the horse and landed in a heap in the wet grass.

  Thorgrim was up in a flash and he slashed at Flann, still on the ground, but Flann was no poorly trained foot soldier. He had his sword up and he met Thorgrim’s attack, turning the blade aside and slashing at Thorgrim, making him jump back and allowing Flann to scramble to his feet as well.

  Thorgrim attacked again, a wild flurry of thrusts and sweeps that Flann turned aside. Ornolf would have loved to sit and watch the fight - wonderful sword work on both sides - but he had fighting of his own to do. Svein the Short was getting the worst of his encounter with a clutch of Irishmen and Ornolf waded over, cut one down from behind before the fellow even knew he was there. Ornolf let Svein deal with the others as he charged into the maelstrom, hacking his way through the line.

  He saw Harald beyond the knot of struggling men in front of him and his heart leapt with joy and with fear that Harald might be killed where he stood. His grandson did not look so well. He was staggering along, his hand clamped on his chest, unarmed, seemingly oblivious to the fighting going on around him.

  “Harald!” Ornolf roared. He ran forward, crashed into the fighting men in front of him, sent them all sprawling, Vikings and Irish alike. He had no thought now but to get to his grandson.

  He was not alone. Out of the fight, spear held low, an Irishman saw Harald too and charged at him, screaming a wild scream. Harald jerked his head up, took a step back. Ornolf saw he had a small knife in his hand, useless against the spear.

  “Oh, you bastard!” Ornolf shouted and he ran like a bull, charged for the man who would strike his grandson down. They were converging on the spot where Harald stood and Ornolf could see he would not make it, that the wicked tip would pierce Harald’s breast before he could get there.

  Ornolf saw the spear point reaching out for his grandson as his grandson fell to the ground, collapsed right there, and the man with the spear could not react fast enough. His feet hit Harald’s prone body and he fell forward and then Ornolf was over him and with one swipe of his sword took the man’s head clean off.

  “Harald!” Ornolf shouted. He did not know what had happened, if the Irishman had struck his grandson down. But Harald was smiling, a weak effort, but genuine, and Ornolf realized the boy had not fallen by accident or injury.

  “Smart lad, smart lad!” Ornolf held out his hand and helped Harald to his feet. “Come along,” he said and he realized that Harald could not stand straight, but rather was hunched over, hand clutching his chest.

  “Let’s see here...” Ornolf pulled the rent tunic aside, saw the vicious wound across Harald’s chest. “Oh, these bastards, I’ll have their guts!

  “Grandfather, we have to get out of here!” Harald said, loud as he could. “Our men are being overrun, we must fall back!”

  “What?” Ornolf looked around, as if seeing the fight for the first time. The Norsemen were on a small rise, a bit of a hill, fighting in a cluster, almost back to back. Thorgrim and Flann were still slashing at one another, but slower now, their arms tiring with the effort. The Irish were coming from every quarter of the field and soon they would have the Vikings enveloped.

  “Red Dragons, make a shieldwall, make a shieldwall! Come on, now, let us fall back!” Ornolf shouted, his great voice booming through the fight. His men were fighting side by side and they overlapped their shields, forming up as best they could in the face of the determined Irish assault, backing away step by step. Ornolf looked back over the vast open land they had to cross before they had anything like cover, before they could flee to the relative safety of their ship.

  “Ah, Odin, All-Father, we’ll lift our horns together on this day, I’ll warrant!” Ornolf shouted to the sky, then giving Harald a supporting arm they limped off toward the shieldwall, fighting their way toward their shipmates and the Vikings’ last stand.

  Flann’s horse had got between Flann and Thorgrim, and Thorgrim was darting to either side, using the horse as a shield, trying to get a sword into Flann as Flann did the same. No one seemed to be paying attention to the two men, so Ornolf deposited Harald at the shield wall, snatched up a shield off the ground and gave it to him, then lumbered off after Thorgrim.

  Why must it always fall to me to look after these two? he wondered as he hit the horse hard with the flat of his sword, making the animal bolt, and then taking a wild swipe at Flann.

  “Come along, Thorgrim! I have Harald and now we must step away from here!” Ornolf shouted, and shoulder to shoulder the two men backed off, stepped back in the face of Flann’s sword and the men who came at them with sword and spear.

  Thorgrim had a great bleeding gash on his shoulder and his face was smeared with blood from a laceration, bleeding so fast the rain could not wash it away. He had managed to pick up a shield, and used it to ward off the iron wielded by the close-packed Irish.

  Ornolf parried a spear thrust but the attacker was quick, swung the point around, managed to get it under the sleeve of Ornolf’s mail shirt and rip a great gash in his arm before Thorgrim struck him down.

  “Not long now, eh, Thorgrim?” Ornolf shouted, his heart and his sword singing.

  They backed into the shield wall and the men there made an opening for them and they took their place and locked shields with the others. The left and right sides of the shieldwall were bending back, fighting off any attempt by the Irish to get around behind. Soon the ends would meet and the Vikings would be formed up in a square, good for countering mounted soldiers, not very good for escaping.

  “Not long!” Thorgrim agreed, reaching out beyond the shieldwall to lunge at one of the Irish. “Here come more of them, see?”

  He jerked his head back toward the open ground over which Ornolf had led his men, back in the direction of the river and the longship. There were more men-at-arms coming across the field, a hundred at least, some mounted, some on foot.

  Ornolf took a long look, but in the dim, gray light, and with his aging eyes, he could not make out who they might be. But if they were men belonging to this Máel Sechnaill, it made no sense that they should have gone half a mile across the open ground before turning to attack.

  “Now who from the depths of Hel is this?” Ornolf wondered out loud.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Ireland is almost the best

  of all countries one knows about.

  Konungs Skuggsjá

  F

  lann mac Conaing pushed himself forward, his sword held ready, but his opponent was gone, taking his place in the Viking shieldwall. Thorgrim. Flan had been in more desperate fights than he could recall, but it had never even occurred to him, not since the age of nineteen, that an opponent might best him. Until that morning.

  But Thorgrim had broken off the fight on Ornolf’s urging, hoping, apparently, to retreat back to their ship and make their escape. But that would not happen. They were outnumbered three to one, and Flann could see many of the fin gall dead on the ground, run through with spears or hacked down with swords.

  The Norsemen had formed a shieldwall and they were defending a small knoll against the onslaught of the Irishmen. They were putting up a desperate and skilled defense, but they would be overwhelmed, and soon.

  Flann wondered where Máel Sechnaill was, why the king had not come out to the fight. He looked around, suddenly afraid that Máel would appear, staring down from his horse, wondering why Flann was not joining the attack. Flann had lost much favor with the king in the past weeks, with their plan to retrieve the Crown of the Three Kingdoms falling apart and the boy Harald stealing Brigit. Flann feared for his position at Tara. Indeed, if things did not much improve immediately, he fear
ed for his life.

  His horse, a well-trained beast, had not gone far and Flann grabbed up the reins and pulled himself up into the saddle. From that perch he could see the Irishmen racing from the camp to fling themselves at the Vikings. Ornolf and his crew were almost lost from sight behind the wall of struggling men trying to get at them. It would not be long now.

  And then his eye caught movement further away on the open ground, half a mile or so. It was full daylight now, but dark and gray, with the rain still coming in fits, and it was hard to see, and Flann’s eyes had never been the sharpest. But it looked for all the world like men, a line of men, advancing.

  “Donnel!” Flann turned to the former sheep herder who stood behind and to one side of the horse, spear and shield in hand. “Come here!”

  Donnel hurried over. “What do you see, far down the field there?”

  Donnel looked in the direction Flann was pointing, past the struggling mass of fighting men. His eyes were young and particularly keen.

  “It’s men, my lord,” he said with confidence. “Some on foot, some on horseback. Must be near one hundred and more!”

  Flann frowned and looked down the field. A hundred and more men...? An army, and it could not be any of Máel Sechnaill’s command, or he would know of it.

  “What the devil is this?” Flann demanded out loud, and Donnel, thinking it was a genuine question said, “I’m sure I don’t know, my lord, but I reckon it’s an army of men!”

  Flann scowled at the young man. He wanted to see all the fin gall dead before he sought out Máel Sechnaill, he did not want to speak to his king without some good word to report, but he could not let this go. He wheeled his horse around and pounded off for the big round tent near the center of the camp, scattering men-at-arms before him as he rode.

  The pages were strapping on Máel Sechnaill’s armor as Flann rode up, reining to a stop in a spray of mud and water. Máel Sechnaill looked up at him, annoyed and dismissive at the same time, a neat trick.

  “I pray you have come to tell me these heathen swine are dead,” Máel said. “I thought it would not need my attention. Thought they were easy enough for you to deal with. But as I hear the fighting still going on, I imagine now I had best come and take charge myself.”

  “You’ll do well to arm yourself, my lord,” Flann said. He did not dismount because he knew it irritated Máel Sechnaill to look up at any man on a horse, and he found himself suddenly more interested in tweaking Máel than in looking to his own safety. “There is an army moving across the field toward us, more than a hundred armed men, some mounted.”

  Máel Sechnaill frowned and looked toward the distant field, though from that place he could not see the newcomers. “Who the devil are they?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know, my lord. But the fact that neither of us knows who they are tells me they are not your men. And if they are not your men, then they must be enemies to be fought.”

  The page finished buckling Máel Sechnaill’s breastplate. Máel turned to another page and ripped the helmet from his hand, waved his arm for his horse. When the animal was led up, Máel Sechnaill swung himself into the saddle. Now, eye to eye with Flann, he spoke at last.

  “You have made a damnable hash of everything you have set your hand to, this past fortnight. Now my daughter is stolen, out there somewhere, and we are attacked by two enemies at once, and you do not even know who they are. By God, if you don’t manage to do something right I will see you drawn and quartered, depend upon it!”

  He looked toward the open ground to the east and now he could see the men spread out and making their way toward the Irish camp. “They’re not Norsemen, they don’t attack like Norsemen,” he said. “Niall Caille from Leinster, perhaps, but if so, then he must have more men somewhere ready to fall on us, because he is not such a fool as to attack with so few.

  “In any event, we’ll break off from your pathetic attempt to kill a few mangy Norsemen, which you seem to be failing at in any event, and prepare to meet this new threat. I will see to the center of the line, since you clearly are not competent to do so, and you see to the left flank. I want mounted troops there to sweep in once these bastards get close enough. Now, go!”

  With that Máel Sechnaill put spurs to his horse and charged off for the place where the Vikings and the Irish were still locked in battle, leaving Flann, smarting and humiliated, sitting his horse in the light rain.

  Oh, you are a fine one, Máel Sechnaill, who would be dead a dozen times over were it not for me... he thought as he rode slowly off to the left, to gather up the mounted troops and prepare for a flank attack on this new enemy’s line.

  “You there, you there, form up here!” he shouted to the mounted rí túaithe as he rode past. The men fell into line behind him and he led them off to the left side of the field where he could sweep around Máel Sechnaill’s shieldwall and roll up the enemy’s flank, if they had the chance.

  “Brian Finnliath, round up all the mounted troops, I want them here with us!” The master of the guards nodded and rode off and Flann turned his attention to making certain the horse troops were ready for their work.

  “My lord!”

  One of the mounted soldiers, one of the rí túaithe of a minor holding south of Tara, was pointing toward the tree line off to the north, close by the River Boyne. It took Flann a moment before he saw what the fellow was pointing at, a rider coming toward them, a lone rider, but Flann could make out no more detail than that.

  “Looks to be a woman, my lord,” the rí túaithe added.

  Flann squinted but still could make out nothing, but a thought was forming in his head and it demanded attention. “All of you, remain here,” he ordered, “and I’ll see what is acting here.” With that he rode off, spurring his horse to a canter, closing with the figure on the horse. He saw the person dismount and come running toward him. The closer he got the more he could see, and soon even he was certain that it was a woman, and by her gait and her shape he was soon convinced of what woman it was.

  Twenty paces away he reined the horse to a stop and leapt from the saddle. “Princess Brigit!” he shouted, and Brigit, stumbling, weeping, now smiling with relief, fell to the ground. Flann raced over to her, held her in his arms and she pressed her face into his tunic and cried, sobbed uncontrollably.

  “There, there,” Flann said, thinking that was the sort of thing to say. He was a soldier and not good at such things as this. “You’re safe now...”

  He could hear a change in the pitch of battle. He guessed Máel Sechnaill was realigning the men, drawing them off from the Vikings and forming a shieldwall. He had to get his flank attack organized. There was no time to spend comforting a weeping girl.

  “Brigit, my dear, I must go. Let us share my mount and I will ride you to safety.”

  Brigit looked up at him. Her eyes were red, her face was streaked, her hair tangled. Flann had never seen her looking so bad. “Flann mac Conaing,” she said, and her voice cracked. “First, I have a message for you. For you alone.”

  Brigit stammered as she told him the words. Words from Morrigan. Flann frowned.

  “Say that again, I beg you,” Flann said. Brigit said the words again, slowly. Flann realized then they were Norse, the message was in the language of the fin gall so that only he and Morrigan, of all the Irish, would understand.

  Flann nodded as the meaning became clear. “Very good, Brigit, my dear. Let us mount and ride to safety.”

  Flann helped Brigit up onto his horse - he did not think she had the strength to sit the horse she had been riding - then climbed up behind her and rode off. He deposited her at Máel Sechnaill’s tent, then rode back to the mounted troops he was organizing. They were the rí túaithe, the minor lords without whom Máel Sechnaill would be powerless. That was what made the Crown of the Three Kingdoms so powerful - it would assure the allegiance of the rí túaithe. The strength of the king depended on the support of these men.

  And they liked Flann and trusted him.r />
  “Listen you men!” he shouted as he tried to control his restless mount. “You know our orders?”

  The rí túaithe responded with shouts, raised swords and shields. They knew their orders.

  “Now, listen,” Flann said, in a lower voice. “Our king, Máel Sechnaill, rides into battle today! There is always danger in battle, and our king has no heir! Have you men, who wield such power in Brega, put thought to who should assume the crown if, and pray God it should never happen, Máel Sechnaill should fall in battle?”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I, battle-oak, have brought

  death’s end to many a man,

  making my sword’s mouth speak.

  Gisli Sursson’s Saga

  T

  his is a fine place to die, a good place, Thorgrim thought as he worked his sword over his shield. He felt a spear tip catch in his hair as it thrust past. He tried to cut the man who wielded it but he could not reach.

  The Vikings’ shieldwall had bent around until the right and left flanks met. The Vikings were formed up in a square now on top of the small rise, surrounded by the Irish men-at-arms, like a great bear baited around by dogs.

  Harald is here, and Ornolf, and we will die together. Freya will lead the Valkyrie over the Bifrost bridge and they will take us all to Asgard where we will feast in Valhalla...

  It was a pleasant thought, and hungry as he was, the idea of feasting at Valhalla, where he always imagined the food was excellent and plentiful, was very inviting indeed.

  If only they were on their native soil, and not soggy, miserable Ireland, damned by the gods, then all would be fine.

  Now someone was shouting something, shouting in Irish, shouting to be heard above the fighting. Over the tops of the warriors’ heads Thorgrim could see a man on horseback. He wore a bright, shining helmet trimmed in gold, and a cape trimmed in fur over a mail shirt. His sword gleamed dull in the morning light. Thorgrim wondered if this was that Máel Sechnaill he had heard of, the one Morrigan called the king of Brega.