Grimarr nodded, his face full of reason and understanding. He turned to Ornolf. “What say you, Ornolf? You have years and wisdom on your side. This will not be a long voyage. Down the coast, we snatch up the treasure and we are back. I imagine your men would not want to miss such an opportunity.”
“They’re Thorgrim’s men not mine,” Ornolf said. “And you are right, many of them would not wish to pass up this chance. But they swore an oath to Thorgrim for this voyage, and so they will do as Thorgrim wishes. And Thorgrim wishes to make the voyage home.”
“Before you sail,” Thorgrim said, “Harald can give Conandil any instructions she must have. She can guide you without Harald there to translate every word.”
Grimarr was silent for a long moment, considering this. “I understand,” he said at last, and put his hands down flat on the table. “I honor your decision. I would ask only that you bring this to your men, give them the chance to win riches with me. Even if you must sail, perhaps some of your men – not so many as to prevent you from going to sea, but some of your men – would wish to stay and fight with me.”
“Very well,” Thorgrim said. He stood and Harald and Ornolf stood as well. “I will tell my men of your offer. And I thank you for it, and for your help.”
Grimarr waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, and Thorgrim nodded and he and Harald and Ornolf headed for the door and continued on down the sloping plank road to the riverfront.
“I fear some of your men will be much tempted to go with Grimarr,” Ornolf said as they walked. A light mist was falling, and the far side of the river was lost in fog. “Will you tell them of his offer?”
“Grimarr will kiss my ass before I tell my men about this,” Thorgrim said. He was in a vile mood now, having this thrown at his feet just a day or so before he was ready to put to sea once more, his ship well-found and ready to cross the deep water. They walked on a few more paces before Thorgrim spoke again. “I know what you’re thinking, that I gave Grimarr my word that I would tell the men about his offer.”
“Me?” Ornolf protested. “Think? When do I ever do such a thing?”
“Yes, I’ll tell them,” Thorgrim continued. “And I’ll tell them the truth, which is that it’s a fool’s mission, with almost no chance of success. Some Irish girl, who likely has not been more than half a league from whatever hovel she grew up in, will never be able to find a specific spot on this coastline. Every damned bit of it looks the same, even to me!”
They continued on down the hill and soon Far Voyager was in sight, which would normally have made Thorgrim happy, but now he could see a crowd of men, his men, he believed, gathered around the ship, and he heard a warning sounding in his head. What they might be doing he could not tell. Whatever it was, it was nothing he had ordered them to do. It was something out of the ordinary, and that, in his extensive experience, usually meant trouble.
They drew closer and Thorgrim could see the men were listening to someone who stood at the center of the ring, and as they got closer still he could see that someone was Bersi. Thorgrim felt a sick twist in his stomach.
Bersi noticed Thorgrim at nearly the same instant Thorgrim noticed him. He held up his arm and called, “Thorgrim! There you are!” He was smiling, and that only made Thorgrim angrier. The crowd of men stepped aside to let him and Harald and Ornolf pass. Thorgrim could see sheepish expressions on his men’s faces, and defiant expressions and expressions of greed like lust.
Thorgrim stopped where Bersi stood and Bersi continued on, his voice raised loud enough that every man there could hear. “Thorgrim! I have just been telling your men here about this bold oppurtunity Grimarr has offered! A full share of the plunder from Fearna and we have only to sail down the coast and pick it up!”
Bersi was smiling. Thorgrim heard a ripple of assent, an undercurrent of enthusiasm running through the assembled men, and he thought, Oh, Grimarr, you clever son of a bitch, you have got yourself well to windward of me now!
Chapter Fifteen
Fearna and Corcach were burned by the heathens.
The Annals of Ulster, 839
Lorcan mac Fáeláin stood on the wall of his ringfort at Ráth Naoi looking out through the light rain. He pulled the fur cloak he wore further up his shoulders and shrugged deeper into it. Two riders were coming. They were too far off for him to be certain of who they were, but he was fairly certain he could name one of them at least.
Niall mac Faelan stood beside him leaning on a crutch but not so heavily as he had been just days before. Niall had been wounded in the fight aboard the longship, and Lorcan had thought he would most certainly die, but he did not. Now he seemed to be out of danger and growing stronger by the day. On hearing that, Lorcan had done no more than grunt and make some remark about sparing them the effort of digging a grave, but in truth he was pleased. He welcomed Niall’s council, and he would have need of it.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked now as they watched the mounted pair approach. The riders were still the better part of a mile away, little more than moving shapes on the dull green landscape.
“One of them is Senchan mac Ronan, I’ll warrant,” Niall said. “I know the way he sits a horse. The other…I don’t know.”
“The girl?”
Niall was silent for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said again. “But I don’t think so. It looks like a man to me.”
Lorcan nodded and balled his fists. He did not want to curse or roar in frustration, because that might be construed as weakness or as an admission that Grimarr had won this skirmish, so he issued instructions instead. “You keep an eye out and once you know with any certainty who this is, come and let me know. I will be in my hall. With our guest.”
He climbed down the rough ladder to the soft brown trampled earth encircled by the ringfort’s walls, a substantial space nearly two hundred feet across. He hurried over the open ground to his hall, the forty foot peak of the roof looming over the other buildings, higher even than the church’s steeple and cross, which was no accident. An inviting plume of smoke rolled out of the open part of the far gable, but Lorcan was too irritated to find any comfort in the thought of warmth and shelter.
Two armed guards flanked the door, and they did no more than nod slightly as Lorcan stepped between them and into the hall. The fire was stoked up in the hearth, the substantial flame throwing its orange light around the room, reaching up to the rafters above and casting deep shadows. Sandarr was standing by the table, a few of Lorcan’s lead men around him. A map was spread out in front of them. The Irish cumal, what the Northmen called a thrall, the one called Ronnat with the thick hedge of red hair, was standing discreetly off to one side.
“Senchan is returning from Cill Mhantáin…Vík-ló,” Lorcan announced, using the Northmen’s name. The girl would know that Cill Mhantáin was the Irish name - the proper name - for Vík-ló, but Sandarr might not. “He does not come alone.”
The girl translated, the ugly Norse tongue sounding even odder to Lorcan than it usually did when spoken in her soft, Irish tone. Sandarr nodded and replied, a short burst of words.
“Is it the girl with him?” Ronnat translated. She had come with Sandarr from Vík-ló. There was no choice.
“I don’t know,” Lorcan said. “Niall will tell us. I do not think so.”
One of Lorcan’s household slaves relieved him of his cloak and another of his sword and belt. The first returned with a bowl of ale and Lorcan had just drained it when Niall opened the door. The wave of cold air made the flames dance.
“The riders are near,” Niall announced to the room. “One is certainly Senchan. I do not know who the other is. It is not the girl.” This was not good news. It meant that plans were not playing out as Lorcan had intended. But Lorcan was a man who saw reality for what it was. He would not have achieved all he had if he was not. He had never really believed this would go off as flawlessly as he had imagined.
Ronnat quietly translated and before Lorcan could demand that she ask Sandar
r if he knew who the second man was, Sandarr spoke.
“My Lord Sandarr says this other man will be one of his father’s trusted warriors,” Ronnat said. “He says Grimarr will not give up the girl unless he knows for certain his son still lives.”
She paused while Sandarr added more to this. “My Lord says he does not think Grimarr will give up the girl even then. He will not trade the Fearna treasure even for the life of his son.” Sandarr added more still, and this time Ronnat paused, as if unwilling to translate. When she did it was with clear reluctance. “My Lord says he told you this before, told you that this would be the case.”
Lorcan said nothing to that. He looked at the faces of the others but they were too afraid to offer any opinion on this subject. Cowards, Lorcan thought, fools and cowards.
“Very well,” Lorcan said. “Tell your ‘Lord’ Sandarr I had thought maybe even dubh-gall…Danes…would have more honor than that. And tell him to sit, that he might at least play the part of a prisoner.” They could hear the soft footfalls of the horses and the men, riders and guards, outside the door. Sandarr sat, loosely ringed by Lorcan’s armed men. There was a knock on the door and Lorcan called, “Come!”
One of the guards from the ringfort’s gate pushed the door open and Senchan entered. Hours of riding through the mist and light rain had soaked him to the skin. He bowed at the waist, said, “My Lord Lorcan,” then straightened and shed his cloak. There was another man behind him, a Northman, a warrior, flanked by two more of Lorcan’s guards.
“My Lord,” Senchan continued, and there was a hesitancy in his voice that bordered on fear. “Grimarr would not send the girl. He would not send her unless he had proof that his son was our prisoner and that he still lived. He sent his man….” Senchan nodded over his shoulder to the Northman behind.
The Northman was in the lions’ den but he showed no fear. He stepped up, past Senchan, looked straight at Sandarr and spoke.
“Silence!” Lorcan roared as he jerked his long knife from its sheath and held it inches from the Northman’s throat. The Northmen fell silent, but betrayed nothing beyond that.
“What did he say?” Lorcan demanded of Ronnat.
“He asked my Lord Sandarr if he was unhurt,” Ronnat said.
“Tell Sandarr to answer. And tell this Danish bastard I’ll ask the questions, not him.”
The words were exchanged, then Lorcan turned to Grimarr’s man. “I sent word to Grimarr that I would exchange his son for the girl, and he sends you instead? What word does he send with you?”
Through Ronnat the man made reply. “Grimarr has sent me to be sure his son is unhurt. He will not trade the girl for a dead man. I can see Sandarr is alive and he has not been harmed. I will tell Grimarr this, and then he will decide what next to do.”
“He will…” Lorcan stammered, too outraged by this affront to get the words clear of his mouth. “He will…. You tell that whore’s whelp this… you tell him his time is out! I will send two of my men back with you and they’ll see you are not killed on the road and they will come back with the girl. Do you understand? They will come back with the girl and they will be back by nightfall tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” the Northman replied once the words had been translated. “Grimarr will not be able to organize things by tomorrow. The day after. Nightfall the day after.”
Lorcan could feel the tension in the room flair. Every man there was waiting for him to react as a bear might when a spear is thrust into its side, rearing up, raging and slashing and bellowing. For a moment he hung between fury and calm, not sure which way to go. And then he opted for calm, because that was not at all what the men expected, and Lorcan did not want them to think they could always gauge how he might react.
“Nightfall the day after,” Lorcan agreed. “The girl comes back with my men. If my men come back without her, or if my men do not come back at all, then Sandarr’s head will be sent to Vík-ló and the rest of him left for the ravens and the wild pigs. Is that clear?”
It was clear. Grimarr’s man nodded and he was gone. Lorcan chose two of his men to go with him, not his best men, wondering vaguely as they headed for the door if Grimarr would kill them. If the Dane did not intend to send the girl back it would make sense for him to do so. He might even try to play for more time, claim that Lorcan’s men must have run off with the girl, looking for the hoard themselves.
Grimarr, you bastard… Lorcan thought. He clearly did not give a damn about his son’s life, and his son cared even less for his. But that did not matter. This business of trying to exchange Sandarr for the girl was never something either he or Sandarr thought would work. Grimarr was too greedy for that, too heartless by far. What had happened to make him that way, Lorcan did not know or care. To him it meant only that Grimarr must go, preferably the way Fasti did.
The door closed and Lorcan turned to Sandarr. “So Grimarr lives,” he said.
Sandarr nodded slowly. “Grimarr lives,” he agreed. “I have never struck anything so hard as I struck the side of his head with that spit, and yet he lives. If this fellow is to be believed.”
“Do you think he is to be believed?” Lorcan asked. Ronnat translated the answer.
“Yes.”
Now it was Lorcan who nodded. He had only himself to blame. When Grimarr went down, everything in Lorcan’s mind, conscious and otherwise, had shouted at him to drive a sword through the Dane’s heart. And yet he had not. He had stayed his hand. He was sure the blow to the head had killed Grimarr, or so he told himself, and eager as they were to be gone he did not want to take the time to run him through. But he knew it went deeper than that. Did he feel it was cowardly to kill a man who was laid out? Did he have too much respect for Grimarr to kill him in that way?
Lorcan pushed the thoughts aside because such introspection was pointless and led only to weakness and irresolution. Now he had Sandarr with whom to deal. Sandarr, his ally. Lorcan felt nothing but disgust for a man who would sell out his own father the way Sandarr had, though it was no more than he would expect from heathen pigs like these dubh-gall. Lorcan was not given to reflecting on irony any more than he was to reflecting on anything else.
These plans, his and Sandarr’s, had been ongoing for months. Lorcan needed to concentrate on destroying Ruarc mac Brain, and for that he needed an alliance, or at least a truce, with Vík-ló. If Grimarr would not cooperate then Lorcan intended to see that Sandarr ruled the longphort. Then, once Ruarc mac Brain was out of the way and Lorcan had taken his place, he would turn on the dubh-gall and drive them from Vík-ló and into the sea.
It was all laid out before him like a well-traveled road. But this business with the Fearna plunder, and the girl, had thrown it all into chaos. And Lorcan did not like chaos because it was something he could not control.
He turned and crossed to the table where the map was spread, waving for Sandarr to join him. Sandarr stood and stepped quickly across the room to the table.
“You say Grimarr will go after the treasure?” Lorcan asked and Ronnat translated.
“Yes,” Sandarr said. “He will try to delay you while he sails with the girl to find the treasure. He still has ships. We don’t know how much damage was done in the raid, but it is a fair bet he still has ships that will swim.”
“Let us look, then, at where along the coast the treasure might be hid.”
Lorcan looked down at the map and Sandarr came closer, tracing his finger along the coast. It was a good thing, Lorcan thought, that his words to Sandarr had to be filtered through Ronnat. He had no doubt that the Irish girl softened them and made Lorcan’s disgust less obvious. He might despise the man, but he needed him still. Even if nothing came of the exchange for the girl, Sandarr understood his father and he understood the other dubh-gall. He, better than anyone, could hazard a guess at their next move.
Even more than that, Sandarr was the key to one of Lorcan’s most fevered desires. Sandarr was a Dane. He knew how to sail a longship.
Control of the sea w
as the alpha and omega of power in any place in Ireland that touched the sea, which was nearly every place in Ireland. And Lorcan wanted it, more than he had ever wanted anything.
Chapter Sixteen
O god of the sword-spell,
you’re unwise to withhold your wealth
from me; you’ve deceived
the sword point’s reddener.
The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue
Grimarr was a leader of men. He came by this skill the way other men come by the color of their hair; he was born with it. And being thus born he understood that different men must be led in different ways.
There were some who could be driven, ordered about, kicked, punched, shouted at, and the more they were beaten down the more compliant and useful they became.
But the men he led now were Norsemen, bold, independent warriors, and they would not be treated thus. For Norsemen, a more subtle approach was called for – carrot and stick, strength and flattery. And nowhere was that more true than in dealing with Thorgrim Night Wolf, who was a Norwegian and so lacked even the motivation of Danish kinship and who owned Grimarr no allegiance. Indeed, any debt that Thorgrim might have owed to Grimarr for help with his ship had been paid and paid again with the Norwegians’ fight against the Irish and the return of Conandil to Vík-ló. Grimarr, in truth, was in Thorgrim’s debt.
But now Grimarr needed Thorgrim. He needed Thorgrim far more than Thorgrim needed him, but securing Thorgrim’s allegiance was proving a problem. The chance Grimarr offered for a part of the Fearna plunder was no great enticement. Thorgrim had wealth enough aboard his ship, and more still back in Vik, or so Grimarr understood. Thorgrim wanted for nothing, save his home.
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