A Vengeful Wind: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 8)

by Nelson, James L.

  Fox closed quickly with the beach. Thorgrim studied the closest ship, which they were fast approaching, and though he could not place it, the feeling of familiarity was even stronger. And the vessel had seen some hard use. Thorgrim could see sections of new wood where strakes had been poorly repaired, and other places where tarred cloth had been nailed over what he guessed were leaking seams. A few of the shrouds had apparently parted, and now they were spliced together.

  “One more stroke, then ship your oars!” Thorgrim called forward. The rowers pulled one more time then ran their oars in, held them straight up, then laid them down on the deck like it was some elaborate and well-rehearsed dance. Fox continued on, her forward momentum carrying her right up onto the beach. She stopped with a soft grinding sound and a slight jarring motion as her forefoot plowed into the sand.

  Godi and a dozen men were on their feet even before the ship had come to a stop. They hefted a long gangplank up and ran it forward over the bow and over the small surf. Godi snatched up the long staff on which he had affixed the banner, held it aloft and made his way down the gangplank, the wood bending ominously under his weight. Behind him, a dozen men whom Godi had selected before they had left the longphort, all wearing mail, followed him down the ramp and formed up as a sort of honor guard, with Godi holding the banner high. Harald was among them, of course, as were Gudrid and Hall.

  Starri Deathless was there as well, though he had not been selected by Godi, and to look at, he was one of the least impressive men on board. But it would have been pointless to tell him to stay behind. Even if he remembered the instruction, he would not have followed it.

  Once the men were in place on the beach, Thorgrim made his way toward the bow, walking down the length of the ship, followed by Failend and Louis de Roumois. He stepped up onto the gangplank and walked slowly down toward the sand. He would have been perfectly happy to vault over the side and down into the shallow water, as he had done a thousand times, but he recognized the importance of such a display as this. Still, he could not help but feel like a rooster strutting its way around a barnyard.

  He stepped off the gangplank and into the soft sand, then through the two lines of men and up the beach. The others fell in behind him, and he could hear the stamping and knocking and jostling of the rest of his men making their way to shore.

  But Thorgrim saw none of that. He was looking straight ahead, his eyes on the men waiting for them up the beach. He was looking for some sign of what would greet them, some indication of whether these men were looking for a fight, or an alliance, or just to be left alone.

  He could see grim faces, determined-looking faces. Like the ships, the men seemed to have been hard used. He could see grimy bandages, encrusted with dried blood and wrapped around arms and legs. He could see shields with paint flaking and great gouges in the wood. He could see stained, torn clothing. Few of the men were wearing mail.

  “Night Wolf! Night Wolf!” Starri had run up from behind and was whispering in Thorgrim’s ear, pretty much destroying Thorgrim’s dramatic approach.

  “What is it, Starri?”

  “I know who these men are! These men and their ships!” That caught Thorgrim’s attention and he nodded for Starri to continue. Starri had about twenty paces in which to tell his tale, and Thorgrim hoped he could do it in that time.

  “You remember Ottar, that great beast of a fellow? You fought the hólmganga against him. He nearly killed you.”

  “Yes, I recall,” Thorgrim said. The hólmganga was a duel, a formal fight to the death, and Thorgrim had indeed come close to being cut down fighting the massive and powerful Ottar Bloodax. In the end, it was Ottar’s corpse that had been carried off.

  “Well, after that, you let Ottar’s people leave, because you are a soft-hearted fool. And these are those men. Some of them at least. And their ships.”

  “There were only two of Ottar’s ships that sailed from Vík-ló,” Thorgrim said.

  “And those two are here. Where the others came from, I don’t know.”

  They were fifteen feet from the line of waiting men, and that meant no more time for discussion. Starri stepped back and a man stepped forward from the crowd facing them. A little taller than Thorgrim, with long black hair done up in two braids that hung down on either side of his mail shirt. His beard was long and unkempt and it half hid an unrepaired rent in the mail, just at his shoulder. He had a shield over his back, and his sword was still in its scabbard, but for all that he did not look at all welcoming or even curious as to why Thorgrim had come.

  “Here, Thorgrim,” Starri whispered. “This is one of them, one of Ottar’s men.”

  The man did look familiar. Thorgrim could see it now. He would not have recalled where he had seen him, but now that Starri pointed it out he knew he had indeed seen him before.

  Thorgrim stopped walking and considered the man for a moment before he spoke. “My name is Thorgrim Ulfsson, of Vik—” He got no further.

  “I know who you are,” the other man said, then spat on the beach, an ambiguous gesture, which Thorgrim decided not to view as an insult. He would not, however, tolerate a second such display.

  “Thorgrim Night Wolf, Jarl of Vík-ló…former Jarl of Vík-ló,” the man said. “I’m Ketil Hrolfsson. I was second to Ottar Bloodax. Until you killed him.”

  Thorgrim looked to his left and right, up and down the line of men. More than a hundred. A hundred and twenty, perhaps? Still fewer than he would have expected to crew four ships.

  He looked back at Ketil who was fidgeting a bit as he waited for a reply. Jarl… Thorgrim thought. He had never really thought of himself as a jarl, the jarl of Vík-ló. Generally the title of jarl was bestowed by a king, but there was no king here, and he was, or had been, the unequivocal ruler of the longphort.

  He forced those thoughts aside.

  “You were second to Ottar,” Thorgrim said to Ketil. “And now you are first. I did you a great favor, it seems.”

  Ketil frowned and his eyebrows came together and he clearly did not know how to respond to this.

  “See here,” Thorgrim said, saving Ketil from his struggle for words. “I’ve come here in peace. I have no fight with you, and whatever you’re about is not my concern. We have a longphort on the west side of the bay. It’s no great defense, since we don’t mean to be long there, but it’s something. You’re welcome to bring your ships there, if you come in peace as well.”

  Ketil’s frown did not dissipate. If anything it grew deeper. This, clearly, was not what he had expected. Thorgrim doubted it was what his own men had expected. But then, there was quite a bit that even his own men did not understand.

  Thorgrim had seen the look on B é cc’s ruined face when he had accompanied the wagons into the longphort. He had seen the man looking around, silently counting up the number of Northmen behind the walls, judging the strength of the defenses, and no doubt realizing they were no great obstacle. B é cc and the abbot at Ferns had promised there would be no attack on Loch Garman, but Thorgrim knew what such promises were worth. The addition of a hundred or more Northmen to the company at Waesfiord would go far to make the Irish reconsider an attack.

  Ketil looked as if he meant to spit again and then seemed to reconsider that gesture. In the end he kept his mucous to himself and instead spit the words, “We did not come looking for friends or for charity, Thorgrim Night Wolf.”

  Before Thorgrim could reply, Starri chimed in. “Well, if you came to raid the monastery yonder you’ve done a piss-poor job of it. They’ll have carried off anything worth taking by now.”

  Ketil’s eyes shifted to Starri and he stared at him for a moment and Thorgrim could all but hear the thoughts churning around in the man’s head. It was clear that raiding was not why he had come, that he had no idea there was a monastery nearby. They had probably come ashore to make repairs, regain much depleted strength, and reckon on what they might do next. They did not look like men who were purpose-driven.

  Ketil turned back to
Thorgrim. “Why are you here? Why are you not in V ík-ló?”

  Thorgrim nodded. “I said before that whatever you’re doing here, it’s not my concern. Well, the opposite holds true as well.”

  Ketil did not reply, but his eyes left Thorgrim’s and he gazed briefly out into the distance. Again Thorgrim could all but hear the thoughts in Ketil’s mind. If Thorgrim and his men were not at Vík-ló, then it was likely Vík-ló was undefended. It did not seem as if luck had been with Ketil and the men under his command. Taking Vík-ló, making himself lord there, that might change Ketil’s fortunes very much.

  By all the gods, you will not have Vík-ló , Thorgrim thought, and the thought surprised him. He had been ready to make another attempt to sail clear of Ireland. Or at least he thought he was ready. But now the idea of Ketil taking command of Vík-ló, the longphort Thorgrim and his men had worked so hard to put to rights, infuriated him.

  “Very well,” Thorgrim said at last. “I’ve said what I had to say. Now you may do as you wish. It makes no difference to me.”

  He paused before turning, looked up and down the line once again. He saw weary and discouraged men looking back at him. He saw men who were beaten down, men who had the fight driven from them. Men who were leaderless, for all practical purposes.

  “Oh, you can be sure I’ll do what…” Ketil began, but Thorgrim turned his back and began walking away, the move perfectly timed for maximum humiliation. He heard the tone in Ketil’s voice change as he presented his back to the man and began walking away as if his words were of no consequence. Which they were not.

  We have a great deal to do, and not so much time to do it, Thorgrim thought.

  Chapter Four

  I saw that doom-beacon turn trappings and hews:

  sometimes with water wet,

  drenched with blood’s going; sometimes with jewels decked.

  The Dream of the Rood

  Nothwulf had been raised in the grand home of the ealdorman of Sherborne, the home of his father, Osric, and his brother—his late brother—Merewald. He did not live there now. He had not lived there for some time, not since he had come of age and come to realize that it would be a helpful thing all around to have some space between him and Merewald.

  His home was still within the walls of Sherborne, of course, about a mile away through narrow, mud-and-filth-choked streets, a town crammed with all the shops and workshops and markets that one would expect to find in the second most populous town on the kingdom of Wessex. It was a grand home, befitting a man of Nothwulf’s status. There was a long hall, and connected to it a building with his bedchambers on the upper floors and those of his men below. There was a kitchen and stable, all of them built of timber frames and whitewashed daub, encircling a courtyard and surrounded by a formidable palisade wall, the tall oak gates of which, when closed, could quite cut off the mayhem beyond.

  The horses were gathered there now, and Nothwulf’s hearth-guard, the warriors who served him and his household, were waiting, milling about in small groups, talking in low voices, because there was much to talk about. They were a dozen men, well-trained and well-equipped, with mail shirts and steel helmets and swords hanging from their waists. All of that Nothwulf had given them, and they in turn gave Nothwulf their considerable strength of arms and their unquestioning loyalty.

  The captain of the hearth-guard was a man named Bryning, and he stood off to one side. He did not join in the talk with the others. Bryning knew more than the others did, because Nothwulf told him more, and Bryning in turn would tell no one else. It was one of the reasons that he held his high rank.

  Nothwulf stepped through the heavy door from the dim-lit chambers out into the courtyard filled with the dull light of an overcast day. He adjusted his sword belt as he walked and tugged his mail shirt down. Bryning stepped over quickly, intercepting him before he had gone three steps from the door. The two men stopped, standing close, and in a low voice, Nothwulf said, “Well?”

  Bryning shook his head. “Not much, lord,” he said. “We spoke with Werheard’s wife, and those in his household. He had a handful of hearth-guard. We talked with them. Not a one of them had a notion why the man did what he did, killing your brother like that.”

  Nothwulf frowned. “You questioned them…vigorously?”

  “Very vigorously, lord. Very vigorously, indeed.”

  “Good,” Nothwulf said. He wondered just what that entailed, wondered if any of those questioned could still walk. Or breathe. Not that it much mattered. Werheard had pretty much ended the lives of anyone close to him when he had, for some still unknown reason, plunged a knife into the chest of the ealdorman of Sherborne.

  “Oswin, that son of a whore…” Nothwulf muttered, as much to himself as to Bryning. It seemed that only Werheard knew why he had committed that foul act, and the shire reeve had cut him down before he could be made to speak. Oswin was supposed to be one of Merewald’s most loyal servants, but thanks to his thoughtless brutality the truth of his lord’s murder might never be known.

  “Is there talk abroad…of me?” Nothwulf asked next.

  “Ah, well, lord,” Bryning stammered, which pretty much gave Nothwulf his answer, but he let the man arrange his thoughts. “Sure, it’s no secret there was no great love between you and your brother. That your father would have been pleased to see you as ealdorman, if that could have been. Tongues will wag, sure, but no one...”

  Nothwulf held up a hand, cutting Bryning off, to Bryning’s evident relief. The ealdorman was murdered on the very day of his wedding, killed by a man with no apparent reason for doing so? Of course people were going to look for some explanation. They were going to look to the man who had the most to gain from such an unnatural act.

  “Well, lord,” Bryning said, his tone a bit brighter, “after today I don’t think there’s much anyone will do, save for kiss your arse good and proper.”

  Nothwulf gave a thin smile. “Let us hope,” he said.

  The two men turned and crossed the courtyard to the waiting horses, signal enough for the other hearth-guard to mount up. With a jingling of mail, a clatter of weapons, they swung themselves up into their saddles, wheeled their horses, and fell in behind Nothwulf and Bryning.

  There was no need for an armed and mounted guard, of course, to escort Nothwulf the short distance through the peaceful streets of Sherborne, but that did not matter. It was display that was called for, awesome and intimidating. And even that, Nothwulf felt, was not entirely necessary. He was going to claim what God and his father knew should be his—the seat of ealdorman of Dorsetshire—and there was no one who was in any position to stop him.

  The stable boys tugged the heavy gates open and Nothwulf led his well-appointed band out of the courtyard and into the narrow, churned streets of the cathedral city. The way was crowded with folk as it generally was at that time of day, but everyone moved briskly out of the way as Nothwulf approached. They made signs of respect to the man on the tall stallion, but their uncertainty was clear in their hesitant gestures. Nothwulf was obviously to be the next ealdorman of Dorsetshire, but he was not ealdorman yet, and the people were not sure what homage to make.

  Nothwulf smiled to himself. It was amusing, really. We’ll get this straightened out forthwith, don’t you fear , he thought.

  They moved through the streets like a ship through the sea, the people like water parting before them, and soon they were approaching the walls that surrounded the ealdorman’s home, Nothwulf’s childhood home, a place he knew better than the home he occupied now.

  There were guards on the walls and Nothwulf saw one call down to the courtyard below. The big gate swung open and he and his hearth-guard rode through without even having to slow their pace.

  A flock of stable boys approached to take their mounts, and at the far end of the courtyard stood Oswin, the shire reeve, with arms folded, and the town reeve standing at his side. Oswin did not look happy, and Nothwulf knew there was little reason that he should. He owed his position
to Merewald, and he had cut down Merewald’s killer before any tales of a deeper plot could be pulled from him. His new lord, Nothwulf, who had never much liked him, had been beyond furious at the act.

  There in the cathedral, standing over the bleeding corpses of his brother and his brother’s killer, Nothwulf had upbraided the man. The first thought, the very first thought that came to Nothwulf’s mind as he saw the knife plunging into his brother’s chest, saw the spout of blood erupting around Werheard’s hand was, They’ll blame me for this… There was no one who needed Werheard’s confession more than Nothwulf did.

  But soon it would not matter whether he had it or not. He was going to his late brother’s house for a coronation, to make official his office of ealdorman. The timing might appear unseemly—Merewald’s corpse was not even in the ground yet—but Nothwulf knew that the longer he waited the more mischief might be made. After the shock of the murder, the people needed to know there was a man of proved ability in charge. And once Nothwulf had secured that position there would be no one short of King Æ thelwulf himself who might bring about his downfall.

  Nothwulf swung his leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground and a stable boy led his horse away. Oswin remained where he was, he did not approach, thus forcing Nothwulf to cross the courtyard to him, a small thing, but one that displeased Nothwulf very much.

  Enjoy your office while you can , Nothwulf thought, though that will not be very much longer. Not much longer at all .

  Oswin spoke first, while Nothwulf was still a dozen paces away. “A sorrowful day, lord,” he said. “I share your grief, as does all of Dorset.”

  “Thank you, Reeve Oswin,” Nothwulf said, thinking it better to keep up the pretense.