A Vengeful Wind
A Novel of Viking Age Ireland
Book Eight of The Norsemen Saga
James L. Nelson
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
Fore Topsail Press
64 Ash Point Road
Harpswell, Maine, 04079
All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by U.S. Copyright Law.
Copyright © 2018 James L. Nelson
Maps by Chris Boyle
All rights reserved
ISBN- 13: 978-0692169216
ISBN-10: 0692169210
To George Jepson, the Rick Blaine of maritime literature, with thanks for all you have done for me, all you have done for all of us, all these years.
For terminology, see Glossary
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Epilogue
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Prologue
The Saga of Thorgrim Night Wolf
There was a man named Thorgrim who was called Night Wolf and he lived in Vik in the country of Norway. As a young man he had been a warrior in the service of a wealthy jarl named Ornolf the Restless and had spent many summers raiding to the westward. Thorgrim was of great service to Ornolf, who favored him above all his men. Ornolf grew even richer from the plunder, and Thorgrim also became a wealthy man. Ornolf gave Thorgrim the hand of his daughter in marriage, and they were happy and prosperous on their farm. They had two sons, one named Odd and one named Harald, and two daughters named Hild and Hallbera.
Many years passed and Thorgrim’s son Odd grew to be a man and married and had a farm of his own. Harald was nearing manhood when his mother, Thorgrim’s wife, whom everyone loved very much, died giving birth to their daughter Hallbera. Thorgrim Night Wolf was grief-stricken at her death, and when Ornolf the Restless asked him to once again go raiding to the west, he agreed, and he brought Harald with him. Harald, like most young men, was eager to prove himself in battle, and Thorgrim felt it was time he should do so. Harald was fifteen years of age when he sailed with his father.
Ornolf the Restless took his ship, which was called Red Dragon , across the seas to Ireland, where he meant to spend the summer raiding and then return with the plunder to Norway when the season was done. But the gods did not intend for them to return so easily, and one obstacle after another was put before them.
Among the riches they plundered, Ornolf and Thorgrim took a crown that was much prized by the people of Ireland, and the men of the Red Dragon suffered many trials because of it. Thorgrim was greatly wounded, such that he could not sail at the end of the season, and he and the others spent the winter in the longphort of Dubh-linn.
The next summer they tried once again to return to their native country, but the gods sent a wicked storm from the east and their ship was driven back to shore. They found refuge in the longphort of V ík-ló, which was then ruled by a lord who was called Grimarr Giant. Now, it happened that Thorgrim and his men had killed Grimarr’s sons in Dubh-linn, though they had not known who the men were. When Grimarr discovered this, he vowed revenge and once again Thorgrim and his men were made to fight lest they be cut down. In this business Ornolf the Restless was killed, though he made a good death. Grimarr Giant was also killed and Thorgrim Night Wolf became the lord of Vík-ló.
Once again, the season for ocean crossings ended and Thorgrim and his men were made to overwinter in the longphort. They spent their time well, repairing the walls, cutting timber, and trading with the Irish who lived nearby and who did not fear to approach the home of the Northmen. They also built two ships, fine vessels with room for more than thirty oars in each. Thorgrim named one Blood Hawk and the other, which he had built for himself, he called Sea Hammer , so that the god Thor might look on it with favor.
It rained very much, as it was wont to do in that country, and despite their labors the Northmen grew restless during their time at Vík-ló. When at last the rains grew less and the season to go a’viking was on them once again, Thorgrim and his men set out to raid a great monastery called Glendalough. But they met with many betrayals during that time, and many were killed, and it was only through great courage and cunning that Thorgrim and the others who lived were able to return once more to Vík-ló.
During this time Harald was always at Thorgrim’s side, and he grew quickly from a boy to a man, both in his size and in his skills as a warrior and a leader of men, like his father. Harald was of no great height, but he was very strong and broad of arm and shoulder and soon he was known as Harald Broadarm.
After Thorgrim and the others were betrayed at Glendalough, they tried once again to sail for Norway, this time hoping to raid along the coast of Ireland and increase the wealth they had already gained, which was considerable. At this time they fell in with a Frisian named Brunhard, who commanded three ships. These ships Thorgrim tried to capture, but Brunhard was a clever shipmaster and he led Thorgrim on a great chase until at last a storm wrecked their ships at a place that the Irish called Loch Garman.
Thorgrim now had four ships, but they were much in need of repair before they could sail to the east, so Thorgrim and his men built a longphort where they could do that work. They were skilled shipwrights, and could work with wood and iron, but they could not make sails because they did not have looms or the skills to make cloth. So instead of raiding the monastery nearby, which was called Ferns, they bargained with the people there, offering silver in exchange for cloth. This, too, led to many troubles, but in the end the cloth was promised to Thorgrim and the others and work on the ships began.
Having many men of great skill, it was not long before the ships were ready for a sea voyage to the east. Thorgrim, however, was no longer certain that such a voyage was the proper thing for him and his men.
For more than two years the gods had prevented them from leaving Ireland, and Thorgrim was coming to believe that they never would. Though he mostly despised Ireland, where the rain was a constant plague, still he could see it was good land for farming, and though it was wet, it was not at all as cold as his own country. An Irishwoman named Failend had joined the company of the
Northmen, and she acted the part of Thorgrim’s wife. He was well pleased with her, and she made it more bearable for Thorgrim to remain in that country.
During the winter at Vík-ló, Thorgrim and his men had turned that place into a proper longphort, one that could well serve as a home to them, and a good one, and Thorgrim did not doubt he could become lord of it once again.
All these thoughts were in Thorgrim’s mind, and soon he resolved that he would no longer try to leave Ireland, but set himself up once again as the lord of Vík-ló. These thoughts he kept to himself, however, not even telling Harald, for he feared that voicing them would bring bad luck to his plans. But he kept them in his heart and each thing he did he did with the idea that he and his men would return to Vík-ló and there make their homes.
Here is what happened.
Chapter One
Listen! The choicest of visions I wish to tell,
which came as a dream in middle-night…
The Dream of the Rood,
8th Century Anglo-Saxon Poem
Summertime had come at last to Dorsetshire. It had come slowly, grudgingly, as if the springtime were too great a burden to push aside. But finally the rains began to fall warmer and less frequently, the leaves emerged, warily, and finding the weather agreeable had burst forth at last. The seas had stopped their vicious pounding of the long sand beaches and the steep shores of that inhospitable coastline. The shire seemed to be turning its face to the warming sun, like all of those shires that made up the kingdom of Wessex, like all of those kingdoms that made up the land called Angel-cynn.
Along the edge of the sea which formed Dorsetshire’s southern border the air was filled with the smell of ocean brine and wrack pushed up on the sand and drying black in the sun. Those villages, such as Wareham and Swanage, huddled on the edge of the land, were filled with the pungent odor of the fishermen’s catch, tossed to shore from the wide, heavy boats from which the men cast their nets.
The villages themselves seemed to live between the land and the sea, both at once, with their docks thrust out over the water and the shoreline strewn with drying racks, where the cleaned and split bodies of fish lay in the sun like some sacrifice made to gods long since forgotten. Further inland sat the clusters of houses, some walled with rough-cut boards, some neatly built of wattle and daub, some thatched, some shingled. And from each of those houses came a column of smoke from a cooking fire, the odor of boiling fish added to the smell of summer, blessed and welcome summer.
It was not that way in Sherborne, twenty-five miles inland. There the breeze, when it blew strong and steady enough, carried on it the smell of the fields and the new-turned earth, an occasional hint of wildflowers. The breeze brought happy relief from the smell of horses and their leavings, chamber pots emptied in the streets, the acrid smoke from the shops of blacksmiths and silversmiths and goldsmiths, bakers and bead makers, brewers and tanners and cordwainers. It wafted away the odor of corruption from the household scraps heaped in piles by the folks’ small gardens and left in the sun to turn back into rich, dark soil.
Sherborne, a cathedral town, seat of the bishop, largest of all the towns in Dorsetshire, home to many hundreds of people: laborers and artisans and merchants, freemen and slaves, those who served God in the great church and the abbey and those who made their livelihoods serving those who served. After Winchester, where King Æ thelwulf kept court, Sherborne was the most important of all the towns in Wessex.
It sat on high ground, amid a cluster of hills that ran down to the low country beyond. To the south, east and west, another line of hills rose like a defensive wall meant to hold back invaders from the sea, the increasing waves of marauding Northmen who were plaguing the kingdom. Sherborne was partway between two great stretches of water. To the south lay the narrow sea that separated Angel-cynn and Frankia, Frisia, and all the lands to the east. To the north, the body of water known as the Severn Sea thrust like a knife blade driven deep into the western shore, severing the border between Wessex and Wales and pushing right into the left flank of Mercia.
Sherborne was, of course, home to the ealdorman , the king’s man, the nobleman who ruled the shire. There was no place in Dorsetshire other than Sherborne that was important enough for the ealdorman to make his home. Sherborne was the heart of the bishop’s episcopal see, the territory over which he held spiritual dominion. It was the town to which the king traveled when he made his tour of the kingdom of Wessex. It was where people of consequence carried out the important events of their lives.
Such a thing was happening on that fine summer day, with the breezes blowing in from the hills to the south, blowing in through the high windows in the cathedral, bringing some relief to the hundreds attending the ceremony. A wedding. The wedding of the ealdorman. As consequential a thing as was likely to happen on a summer day when West Saxons were not at war with either the people of Wales, or of Mercia, or of Northumbria, or the heathens from across the seas.
The wedding mass was nearing its end. The choir, fifty boys and young men, were singing, heads held slightly back, mouths open, their voices filling the big church, reaching to the upper reaches of the roof, sixty feet above. The people in attendance, their clothing dyed bright and tricked out with gold thread, as colorful and varied as a well-tended garden, stood with admirable patience, as they had for the last hour and more.
The ealdorman was kneeling in front of the altar, his bride beside him. His name was Merewald, and he had been ealdorman of Dorsetshire for a bit more than a year. His father, Osric, who had defeated the Danes when they had come to raid the shire a decade before, had been ealdorman of Dorset for as long as most could remember.
Merewald was young for an ealdorman, no more than thirty-one. Still, he was older than his father had been on assuming that title, and he would be lucky to hold it for as long as the old man had. The chances of his being as beloved by the folk as Osric had been were slimmer still.
An ealdorman needed a wife, of course, because he needed offspring, he needed sons, or one, at least. Merewald had been a bit backward in his efforts to find a bride, just as he had been in most things in life—in his studies and his training at arms and his martial prowess and courage on the field of battle. He was not considered particularly accomplished or impressive. It truth, one of the only things he had managed to do of any value or consequence was to be born the first son of ealdorman Osric of Dorsetshire.
The other thing he seemed to have done right was choosing his bride. Her name was Cynewise and she had blond hair, very blond, yellower than the driest straw, and the willowy, slightly gangly quality that well-bred, fair complexioned women often had. She seemed delicate, a fine thing, easily broken. She reminded Merewald of one of those timid forest creatures that peer out of burrows, fearful of predators lurking beyond.
Cynewise was Merewald’s junior by thirteen years. Merewald, out of curiosity, had worked that out after learning Cynewise’s age. But thirteen was an unlucky number and so he struggled to put it out of his mind.
Like Merewald, Cynewise’s chief recommendation—the thing that made her most attractive as a wife—was the luck of her birth. Cynewise was the daughter of a man named Ceorle, the powerful ealdorman of Devonshire, which sat on Dorset’s western border. For Merewald, marriage to Cynewise meant an alliance with Devon. It meant that he and Ceorle would speak with one voice as members of the witan , that collection of noblemen who advised the king.
And Merewald was certain that he was clever enough to see that the voice with which they spoke was his, and not that of Ceorle.
In the few months that Cynewise had resided in Sherborne, making ready for the wedding, she had remained generally silent, and Merewald still knew little about her. But that was fitting for the humble wife of a nobleman, and Merewald was certain she could be counted on to remain a quiet but steady and helpful presence.
She had grown up in an ealdorman’s home and she knew what that meant. She would run the household, see to the preparations wh
en the king made his yearly appearance, play the gracious host to those of rank who might be passing through Sherborne. She would fill the office of wife, and fill it well, or so it was assumed.
The choir finished, the last note seeming to fade away into the gloomy upper reaches of the cathedral. The bishop himself, a man named Ealhstan, was presiding over the service: it could never have been performed by anyone of lower standing. Now he rose with some difficulty from his throne, flanked by younger, stronger priests ready to assist if needed, and shuffled toward the kneeling couple.
He stepped around the high altar, which was set with massive silver chalices and plates and incensors and candle holders, all inlaid with gold and studded with various glittering gems. The communion set had been a gift from Ceorle of Devonshire, arriving with his daughter Cynewise and her entourage.
Ealhstan, still flanked by the priests, stepped over to where Merewald and Cynewise knelt and he signaled for them to stand, which meant that the service was coming to an end. A sense of relief, clearly perceptible, like the breeze, swept through the nave.
“Rise,” Bishop Ealhstan said, making a lifting gesture with his thick arms. “Dearly beloved…” he intoned, and even the importance of the moment, the wedding to the ealdorman of Dorsetshire, could not drive from his voice the weary tone of words repeated many hundreds of times over a lifetime of ecclesiastical service.
Ealhstan had been bishop for more than thirty years; two generations had listened to the monotonous droning of his Latin prayers, the hours-long masses over which he presided in the great cathedral of Sherborne. Ealhstan had grown a bit fat, a bit stooped, with the passing years, and it made his unimposing figure more unimposing still. And that led many, on first meeting the man, to mistake him for someone not terribly clever or formidable. And that was a mistake, indeed. There was a reason that Ealhstan now controlled a diocese that stretched over the shires of Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, and it was not from lack of wit or guile.
A Vengeful Wind: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 8) Page 1
