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

by Nelson, James L.

  This was the one thing he had not expected. Northmen, arriving on those shores as if conjured up by the sea. It was a surprise, to be sure. And it changed everything.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Together we twain on the tides abode, five nights full till the flood divided us,

  churning waves and chillest weather, darkling night, and the northern wind

  ruthless rushed on us: rough was the surge.

  Beowulf

  Thorgrim had to admit, to himself, anyway, that he felt profound relief when the rising sun revealed a long, low coastline to the north and east.

  They had been at sea, beyond the sight of any land, for two and a half days by Thorgrim’s reckoning, though he was not entirely sure. It should have been a simple thing to know: the sun rose, the sun set, and you count the number of times that happens and that is how many days you are at sea.

  But in practice it was not so clear. The skies had been near black with clouds even during the hours that they guessed were daylight. There seemed to be no time at all, just wind and massive seas and misery, the near presence of death, the unending struggle to live.

  Which coast it was he did not know. He did not even know which country it was: Ireland, Engla-land . Even Frankia or Iberia were possibilities. He knew only that it was land, and land meant a beach on which they could pull their ships ashore. It might take some looking, but there was always a harbor somewhere.

  He looked up at the sky, the blue sky overhead, so clear it seemed he could see right into Asgard. As if that would help divine the gods’ intentions in this. It was not at all clear to him if the gods had come to his aid, or tried to kill him, or were testing him once again. Some of each, it seemed.

  Once Thorgrim had realized, back at Loch Garman, there was no reaching the north shore of the bay, he was faced with a simple choice. He could head out to sea, with the great likelihood of their being swamped and drowned, or remain in the harbor, with the absolute certainty of being smashed on the sandbars and drowned. He had swung his ship around on an easterly heading, nearly running before the wind, the only course he could hope to hold, and made for the open ocean.

  Thorgrim did not ponder the situation. In truth, he made his decision without even thinking much about it as he turned Sea Hammer ’s bow toward the mile-wide gap that made up the entrance to the harbor. With the wind over the larboard quarter, Sea Hammer had been building speed as the shores of Loch Garman moved past and the massive seas became visible, rolling off to the horizon.

  Might be able to turn south… Thorgrim thought. Maybe beach the ships on the south shore… With the wind blowing off the land, there was reason to hope that the waves breaking on the beach would not be so big as to put the ships in danger. But it would also mean rowing against the wind to reach the shore, and Thorgrim was pretty certain that was not going to happen.

  So they would go to sea and discover what Njord had in mind for them.

  He looked over his shoulder, left and right. The other ships had turned as well, following astern of him. He wondered if the other captains were just following his lead, or if they had realized, as he did, that going to sea was the only choice they had. Either way, they were all entering into this together, and they could only wait to see who if any would come out the other side.

  The headlands swept past and Sea Hammer was scooped up by the open sea, her stern lifting and twisting as Thorgrim pulled the tiller, pain radiating from his wound with the effort.

  “Harald!” Thorgrim shouted, and though his son was only a dozen feet away he had to call twice to get the boy’s attention. Harald leapt to his feet and staggered as quickly as he could to Thorgrim’s side.

  “Harald, lend a hand with the tiller!” Thorgrim shouted, nodding toward the wooden bar in his hands. Harald nodded, and as he grabbed on, Thorgrim could see the concern in his face. He, Thorgrim, had never asked for help steering the ship before.

  “My wound!” Thorgrim shouted by way of explanation, but he did not know if that would cause Harald to worry more or less.

  The two men held the tiller fast as Sea Hammer ’s bow drove down into the trough of the waves. The stem hit with an impact that sent a great spray of water up on either side and made the vessel shudder. Thorgrim could see men looking around, some pulling capes over their heads in a near pointless effort to ward off the spray and the driving rain.

  He pulled his eyes from the seas ahead, looking for Harald and Godi, but instead he saw Failend, heading aft. Not walking, but crawling on hands and knees, her long, soaked hair hanging down like vines and dragging along the deck behind her. She pulled herself weakly up onto the afterdeck and sat there, leaning against the side of the ship, her head lolling back. Her eyes were closed and her skin was a color not generally seen on living humans. Had she not been moving on her own only moments before, Thorgrim would not have thought she was still alive.

  He took his eyes from her, looked forward and shouted, “Godi! Gudrid! Armod!” Shouting was pointless, but the three men were at that moment looking back in his direction, waiting for orders no doubt, so he waved them aft. They moved carefully, grabbing handholds where they could find them, stopping to maintain their footing as the ship pitched and rolled.

  It took an absurdly long time for them to walk the forty feet aft to the stern, but they made it at last, holding on to the sheer strake and crouching a bit as they looked up at Thorgrim. Thorgrim opened his mouth to shout out his orders when the stern lifted again, higher than before, and Sea Hammer twisted below them.

  The bow hit the seas ahead with just the right amount of force, at just the right angle, to scoop up a great mass of cold salt water. Thorgrim saw the seas break over the bow and come rushing aft. The mass of water struck men and sea chests and the mast and gallows and burst upward in welters of spray, looking exactly like storm-driven waves breaking on a rocky shore.

  “Hold fast!” Thorgrim shouted and the men grabbed the sheer strake with both hands and braced their feet and then the water struck. It hit with malevolent force, slamming into their legs, trying to knock them off their feet, making a seemingly conscious effort to sweep them away.

  Thorgrim and Harald grabbed the tiller with both hands, planted their left feet back, right feet forward and braced as the wave rolled over them. Thorgrim felt the water tear at his leggings and tunic, felt his grip on the deck slipping as the seas drove past him.

  The ship’s bow rose as the seas passed under her. She rolled to the side and a great torrent of water poured back over the sheer strake and into the sea. Thorgrim looked down and to his left. Failend was gone.

  “No!” Thorgrim shouted. “No!” He twisted around to see if he could see her in the ship’s wake, aware as he did that there would be no retrieving her even if she managed to keep herself afloat.

  She was there. Not in the water, but jammed up against the sternpost in the very aft end of the ship, left like wrack where the boarding sea had deposited her. Thorgrim felt relief sweep over him, more than he might have hoped. He had tried to keep from feeling too much about the odd Irish girl, and he knew he was failing.

  “Harald!” he shouted. “Lash her to something!”

  Harald nodded. He let go of the tiller, fished out a length of line and climbed up onto the afterdeck and staggered aft, past where Thorgrim stood.

  Thorgrim shifted his eyes between the ship’s bow and the seas building up aft and Harald’s progress. His reaction to Failend’s disappearance, momentary though it was, surprised and unsettled him. He liked Failend and respected her. He enjoyed her company and enjoyed her sleeping with him. But he had no deep feelings for her, because he did not allow himself to have deep feelings for anyone, save Harald. Or so he thought.

  Harald bent over, with one hand still gripping the sheer strake, wrapped an arm around Failend and lifted her with as much effort as one might use to pick up a cat. He shifted her forward and leaned her against a wooden cleat mounted to the side, normally used to make the ship fast to a d
ock. He crossed the rope back and forth between the horns of the cleat and across Failend’s chest and belly, tight enough to hold her in place, not so tight as to limit her breathing.

  Failend made no protest. She did not even open her eyes. But her head moved by what was apparently her own volition, and she opened and closed her mouth to breath and moan, and Thorgrim was relieved to see that.

  Well, she’s alive, anyway , he thought. If she dies now, it’ll probably be because the whole ship has sunk from under us.

  “Good job, Harald!” Thorgrim shouted, and Harald nodded and took his place at the tiller once again. Thorgrim gestured for Armod and Godi and Gudrid to come closer. They huddled on the after deck and Thorgrim shouted, “She’s too tender! Too much weight up high!” The others nodded their understanding.

  “Knock the gallows down and lower the yard to near the deck!” he continued. “About five feet above the deck! Lash it there!” The others nodded again.

  The yard, with the sail lashed to it, had been lowered down onto the gallows where it was normally stowed. But that left it ten feet above the deck, and all that weight and windage were making Sea Hammer tender, making her roll too much in the seas. They had to get the weight down, but not too far down, or then she would not roll enough, but rather snap upright and possibly tear the mast right out of her.

  Armod, Godi and Gudrid headed forward again, once more making their slow, labored way along the deck. Thorgrim waited until Sea Hammer was rising on a following sea, and then he leaned over the side to look aft, first to larboard, then starboard.

  He could afford no more than a quick glance, but in that time he was able to see five of the seven other ships, spread out over half a mile of ocean astern. Some were cresting the seas and he could see them entirely from the waterline up. Others were mostly hidden by the big seas, and Thorgrim could see just the masts rising above the waves, and a bit of the lowered yards and sails. He did not know where the other two were. Still in Loch Garman, or out of sight astern of Sea Hammer , or settling on the bottom of the ocean, Thorgrim had no idea.

  What he did not see was the coast of Ireland. When Sea Hammer had first led the fleet from the sheltered bay, Thorgrim harbored a dim hope that they would be able to land on one of the beaches to the south and ride out the storm there. But he abandoned that hope the moment he felt the seas under the keel, and the power of the wind whipping the spray over the deck.

  The moment they had broken out into the open ocean they were completely at the mercy of wind and wave and whatever gods were stirring them up. The ships were runaway horses now, and all that their crews could do was hold on and hope the gods tired of all this before the fleet was destroyed. Where they were bound Thorgrim had no idea, and there was nothing he could do about it even if he did.

  He gripped the tiller and pulled it back to straighten the ship’s bow to the seas and Harald followed his lead, lending his strength. Even with no sail set, the wind against the mast and shrouds was driving the ship fast enough through the water to give her steerage, the one thing that might possibly save them. Sea Hammer felt right on the edge of destruction, and Thorgrim wondered if the other ships were fairing any better. He wondered who was in command of them. He had seen Asmund aboard Oak Heart and Hardbein driving Fox , but in the chaos of the rout on the beach he had no idea who else was aboard what ships, if every vessel even had a competent master at the helm.

  Then Thorgrim forced his mind to work on another problem. He twisted the steer board to keep Sea Hammer stern to the waves and tried to picture what few drawings he had seen of the oceans in that part of the world. He had a sense that the great island of Engla-land lay to the east of Ireland, at least twice Ireland’s size, and if they were blown anywhere from south-east to north-east they would pile up on those shores.

  So what direction are the gods driving us? he wondered. The wind had been from the northwest as it swept them away from the Irish shore, but he had no way of knowing if it had shifted. The sky was gray and black, as dark as he had ever seen it during the daylight. If it was still daylight.

  Must be… Thorgrim thought. Dark as it was, there was still light enough to see the ship and the seas around. But there was no chance of seeing the sun, not through the great and impenetrable blanket of clouds overhead, the driving rain that blinded him and choked him whenever he looked up. And without seeing the sun he had no way of knowing in what direction they were being set.

  The likelihood of their wrecking on the distant shore would depend on how long the storm blew, and how far Engla-land was from the east coast of Ireland. The first of those Thorgrim could not know. The second was nearly as much of a mystery. He seemed to recall mariners telling him that Engla-land was a few days’ sail in a fair wind, at most.

  It doesn’t much matter, really , he concluded. They had no control at all over their course and speed. Either they would be wrecked on the coast of Engla-land or they would not, and all they could do now was try to keep on the right side of the ocean’s surface.

  He looked forward. Godi and the others had lowered the yard to about five feet above the deck and lashed it there to keep it motionless. They had taken down the gallows and laid them flat and secured all the oars on the deck. Thorgrim could already feel the change in the ship’s motion, the more sea-kindly roll of the hull in the steep seas. Nearly every man who was not helping with the yard was using a bucket or a helmet or a vessel of some sort to scoop water from the ship and throw it over the side.

  All except Starri Deathless. At first Thorgrim could not see him, though he ran his eyes over the full length of the deck. He was growing concerned when he finally looked up, and there was Starri, in his familiar perch at the top of the mast. As the ship rolled and pitched, Starri was whipped through a great arc, at least ninety degrees side to side, the motion so extreme that Starri was actually using arms and legs to hold on, a thing Thorgrim had never seen.

  Thorgrim shook his head. He was certain that Starri, if asked, would claim to be serving as a lookout, though there was no chance of his calling anything down to deck. Thorgrim had to shout to make himself heard from five feet away. Starri had gone aloft because he could not resist the urge.

  He wondered if Starri had decided a death at sea, in such conditions, would earn him a place in the corpse hall. Probably. That was pretty much the only reason that Starri Deathless did anything.

  Time crept by, moment by agonizing moment, inching along like Failend crawling aft. With the yard down and the ship as free of water as she was going to get and her motion as easy as it could be made—violent as it was—there was nothing for any of them to do now save for hunkering down and trying not to reflect on the misery and terror of such a storm.

  This will ease off , Thorgrim thought. As the sun goes down, the wind will calm some. It usually does. And that was true, in Thorgrim’s experience. The setting sun often brought with it an easing of the wind. Still, Thorgrim cursed himself for thinking such a thing, because it was also his experience that the gods were likely to punish a man for foolishly guessing at their plans and believing that the wind would ease.

  And now it seemed the gods were doing it again. Thorgrim had no way of knowing, of course, if the gods were punishing him or not. He only knew that as the day grew perceptibly darker, the wind, far from easing, rose to a new level of force, well beyond anything Thorgrim had ever experienced at sea.

  This will not do , he thought as he and Harald fought the tiller with aching arms.

  Night was definitely approaching now. He could see the deep blackness on the horizon to the east. Once the sun was down and the night had completely closed in he would no longer be able to see the waves coming up astern. He would not be able to steer one direction or another as the stern slewed off to larboard or starboard. And if, in his blindness, he drove Sea Hammer the wrong way, then the seas would grab the ship and spin her broadside to the waves and roll her over before any one of them had time to call for Odin’s succor.

  No, t
hey could not ride out the night that way. And Thorgrim knew that he could not keep at the tiller much longer in any event. Even with Harald’s help, he felt himself weakening. He was beyond exhaustion, with a deep wound in his side. He had lost a lot of blood and he knew he was going to pass out soon.

  They would have to do something else. He looked forward, hoping to catch someone’s eye, to wave them aft, but each man was furiously bailing, or collapsed in exhaustion, or huddled under their cloaks, and no one was looking his way. He thought about sending Harald, but he did not trust himself to hold the tiller alone, not even for a few moments.

  He looked down at his feet. The tail end of the rope binding Failend to the cleat, about twenty feet of it, was washing around the deck. He reached down quick and snatched it up, made a coil as best as he could with one hand and flung it at Vestar, who was sitting aft, closest to the stern.

  The rope hit Vestar on the side of the head, which was good because Thorgrim did not think anything less would have garnered his attention. Vestar’s eyes jerked open and he looked aft and Thorgrim waved him over.

  “Go get Gudrid and Godi and send them to me!” Thorgrim shouted when Vestar had made his way back to the tiller. Vestar nodded and began working his way along the pitching deck, and soon Gudrid and Godi were coming aft, staggering up to the break of the afterdeck.

  “We can’t keep running before the storm!” Thorgrim shouted. “Once it’s dark, we’ll broach and roll over, for sure!”

  Gudrid and Godi nodded. Their faces looked grim.

  “We need a sea anchor!” Thorgrim shouted next. “Get two of the stoutest ropes we have, walrus hide, and bind up a half dozen oars! Toss them over the stern and we’ll pay it out and then make fast! Carefully, so we don’t rip the whole stern out of her!”

  The two men nodded and Thorgrim was certain they understood, understood all the nuance of what he was asking, all the things that had to be done to make this work. They would intuit the things Thorgrim could not convey over the howling wind, the seas crashing on either side of the ship, the rain slapping down. They were smart men, and more to the point, they were mariners. They understood these things in their guts.