It took them a little more than an hour to reach Vík-ló following the beaten road that ran right up to the tall oak gates. They expected to be challenged as they approached the ten foot berms topped by a palisade wall that made up the defenses of the longphort, but no one seemed to be paying the least bit of attention.
Thorgrim pushed on the oak gate but it did not budge so Starri scrambled up and over and opened the door from the inside. Vík-ló had never seemed crowded, not by the standards of Dubh-linn, but now it appeared all but abandoned. Far off down the plank road a cart rolled along slowly, pulled by a tired horse and led by someone Thorgrim did not recognize. The blacksmith was at work at the forge by his house a couple hundred feet away, but beyond that Thorgrim could see no one else abroad.
He stepped through the gate and Starri closed it and barred it once again. Off to their left stood Grimarr’s hall and Thorgrim moved toward it, drawn by some force he did not understand. He moved with caution, unsure of what was waiting there. He stopped at the door and listened. He heard nothing. He pushed and the door swung open and he stepped into the twilight of the shuttered room.
Everything was as it had been, though Grimarr’s sword and shield were gone and the hearth, which always had a fire stoked in it, was now dark and cold. He looked around as his eyes adjusted to the half-light and he had an odd feeling in his gut and a strange jumble of thoughts. Not memories so much as sensations, ghosts of sensations. Pain and fury and fear. The fear was not for himself, he understood, but fear for someone else. For Harald.
What happened here? Thorgrim wondered. He felt the slash wounds across his chest throb and his head throbbed as well. He reached up and felt near his temple and realized there was a knot there that he had not noticed before.
Wolf dream… he thought. This is what happened. He dreamed and he did not remember, and often he had the sense that in those lost hours he had done more than dream. Clearly that was the case here.
“Harald is in danger,” Thorgrim said out loud. “They are all in danger.”
He turned to Starri and Starri nodded. “Do you know anything of that?” Thorgrim asked.
“No,” Starri said. “Grimarr took Harald aboard Eagle’s Wing. To talk to the Irish girl. He made no threats, and the rest of your men went in our ship, with Ornolf in command. But if you say they are in danger, then I believe they are.”
“We must get to Harald. To the others,” Thorgrim said.
“We have no time to lose,” Starri agreed. “But first you must look to yourself.” He made a gesture to indicate Thorgrim’s shredded tunic, his blood-caked skin, and Thorgrim knew he was right.
He stripped off the ruined garment, carefully tugging the blood-encrusted cloth from his skin, and removed his shoes and leggings as well. There was a cistern of water in the far corner of the hall and he found a portion of his tunic that was not soaked with blood and tore it off and used it to wash himself. He dabbed water on the dried blood that caked the vicious wounds across his chest, wincing when the pain stabbed at him. He feared he would open the wounds again, but he did not, and he concluded that, ugly and long as they were, they were not deep.
He cleaned the slash marks and examined them as best he could. They looked frightening but they were healing and he knew there was nothing he could do to make them heal quicker. Nothing save rest, which he did not intend to do.
His clothes were well beyond saving. Any of Grimarr’s clothing would have been ridiculously large on Thorgrim so Starri crossed the road to Fasti’s abandoned hall where he managed to find a tunic and leggings that were closer to Thorgrim’s size, and a sword, shield, mail and helmet as well.
Once he had washed, Thorgrim combed out his hair, tearing at any tangle he encountered as his sense of urgency mounted. Finally, though the bathing had not consumed more than thirty minutes, he felt he could spend no more time on it. “Come,” he said to Starri, “we must be on our way.”
He belted Fasti’s sword around his waist. He and Starri stepped from Grimarr’s hall and headed down the plank road toward the river, and still no one challenged them or even acknowledged their presence. Thorgrim had no idea how they would go about following the longships, he knew only that they had no choice but to do so. As was always the case there were only two options available to them, land or sea. But land was slow, even with horses, and the danger was great. Going by sea was the only realistic choice, but they had no ship and they had no crew.
They came at last to the open ground that led down to the river’s edge, a plot of land with which Thorgrim had become deeply familiar though it looked very different with the ships gone. He was accustomed to seeing Far Voyager hauled out on her rollers, Eagle’s Wing and the others tied to the bank, or lying tilted in the mud. Now there was only the partially burned longship that was too wounded to go to sea.
The two men stopped and stared down at the empty shore of the river. “Well, we’ve made it this far,” Starri said, “but I’m not sure how we go any further.”
“I don’t know either,” Thorgrim said. He ran his eyes along the water’s edge. There was still a large pile of Far Voyager’s stores, waiting for the ship’s return and the resumption of their voyage home. There was a stack of wood left from the repair work done to his ship and the others. There was a pile of debris consisting mostly of charred wood pried from the damaged vessels.
And there was the curach, left behind by the Irish raiders in their panicked flight.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Give as if every pasture in the mountains of Ireland belonged to you.
Saint Aidan
Sandarr and Lorcan rode back from the cliff edge until the beach and the in-shore ocean were lost to sight. They had watched the longships take in their sails and run out their oars and turn toward the land like geese flying in formation. It was time now to prepare to meet them.
There was no doubt in Sandarr’s mind that they had been seen, silhouetted against the gray sky. He knew the ways of the Danes and he knew that no one, least of all his father, would approach land without keeping a bright lookout for danger lying in wait for them. But still, from the ship’s deck they were only two horsemen, two horsemen who had run at the sight of the coming force. They did not wish to appear too bold or too confident. They wanted to keep Grimarr guessing.
The two men rode back a hundred paces or so from the cliff, then stopped and dismounted while the waiting servants took the horses’ reins. Ronnat was waiting with them. Another hundred paces back, the once-mounted warriors who had rode hard to that place were gathered, sorting themselves out, getting weapons ready for the coming fight. And a quarter mile beyond them, the horses that had been pressed into service were staked out to long lines, nearly seventy of them, grazing on the meadow grass.
Faelan and Senchan mac Ronan were nearby and they approached as Sandarr and Lorcan dismounted. Then the four men and Ronnat turned and walked back toward the cliff. They crouched low as they saw the tops of the longships’ masts come into sight, walking in that awkward manner until they reached the edge of the forty foot drop to the beach. They pushed the tall grass aside to clear their view and lay down on their stomachs, Lorcan grunting as he did.
“Is that all of them?” Lorcan asked. Ronnat translated.
“That’s all of them,” Sandarr said. “Eagle’s Wing, my father’s ship, leads them in. Wind Dragon is not there, but she was the most damaged in the raid. The Norwegians are with them. That is their ship to the north.” He was going to add, The ship with the red and white striped sail, but the sail was stowed now and Sandarr doubted that Lorcan had paid enough attention earlier to notice the pattern of each ships’ sails. A mariner, he realized, would have noted it without even thinking about it and would have remembered it. But Lorcan was no mariner.
Lorcan spoke, an expletive. Ronnat did not bother translating, but Sandarr had been around the Irish long enough to know the words meant roughly, “Bastards… damned whores’ sons bastards.”
Sand
arr was not sure to whom Lorcan was referring. It might have been the men he had sent in the curachs who had failed to burn these ships, thus allowing the Norsemen to descend on the coast in force. He might have been referring to the Norsemen themselves who presented yet another obstacle between him and the rule of Leinster. He may have been speaking of mankind in general, his curse taking in every living man on earth besides himself. Knowing Lorcan’s view of the world as he did, Sandarr thought this last the most likely.
The longships were now half a mile away, still well beyond the gravelly beach and the stretch of blue water through which they approached, a beautiful sight, the four ships moving with the perfect rhythm of their oars, keeping an equal distance from one another. A beautiful sight that could make one forget they brought violence and bloody death.
They watched for a minute more as the ships closed quickly with the beach, the long, lean hulls driving fast under the power of the oars. At last, when it seemed absolutely certain they would come ashore at that place, below that cliff, Lorcan twisted around and issued orders to Faelan and Senchan mac Ronan with short bursts of words.
“He tells Faelan and Senchan to get their men ready,” Ronnat told Sandarr, “that Faelan’s men are to go down the southern trail, and Senchan to the north. They are to wait on Lorcan’s word.”
Sandarr nodded. In some ways the cliffs that overlooked the beach were ideal for the sort of attack they planned on launching on Grimarr and his men. With the countryside hidden from the beach by the high, ragged cliffs, all the armies of Ireland could have been staged there and remained invisible to those below.
Grimarr had seen two horsemen; he could only guess as to what more waited for him. Sandarr did not suppose he would reckon on seventy men who had moved in quickly on horseback, with another hundred foot soldier on the march and less than twenty minutes away. Grimarr would not realize how powerful a force he opposed until they fell on him like a great pack of wolves.
Perhaps cleverness does count for something, father, Sandarr thought.
On the other hand, the only way for the Irish to launch an attack was down the narrow paths that led from the cliff top to the beach. That was the weakness in their position. They would not be able to attack in a line abreast, would not be able to form a shield wall. They would have to get down the path and form up and hope they could do it before the Northmen slaughtered them all.
There were two paths down from the cliff. The one that led to the northern end of the beach was the most obvious by far, and they expected Grimarr would arrange his men to oppose an assault from that direction. For that reason, most of the Irish warriors would be sent down the path that led to the southern end of the beach, a track that was almost invisible in the scraggly undergrowth.
Faelan and Senchan made some acknowledgement of Lorcan’s orders and backed away from the cliff edge. Lorcan and Sandarr turned their attention back to the beach. Three more long pulls and the oars went up and Eagle’s Wing’s bow ran onto the beach with a crunching sound that the two men could hear from where they lay concealed. Behind her came Water Stallion and Fox and the Norwegians’ ship, the name of which Sandarr did not know.
Men leapt out over the longships’ bows and caught ropes tossed to them by those aboard, while others, shields and swords ready, fanned out over the shore, eyes scanning the edge of the cliffs above. There would be no surprise here. Grimarr was not fool enough to think that their progress down the coast had not been watched, and that their landing would not be resisted.
But he would not expect the Irish army that met him on the beach to be as great as it was. Grimarr would assume he could outpace men on shore, that they could land and dig up the Fearna hoard and be gone before any decent sized force could be organized against them. He would not guess that the Irish had an army of mounted soldiers, men who could move almost as fast as a longship if the wind was not too great.
Lorcan nudged Sandarr’s arm, pointing, and Sandarr looked in the direction he indicated. Grimarr had come over the side of Eagle’s Wing. He was a good quarter mile away but still there was no mistaking his size. He turned and lifted someone off the ship – it looked as if he was taking a child ashore – but Sandarr realized it was the girl, Conandil. He set her down on the water’s edge, and another came over the rail after them. Sandarr was fairly certain it was the young Norwegian, Harald.
More and more of the Northmen were leaping over the low sides of the ships and spreading out along the beach in a defensive cordon, but Grimarr seemed to pay them no mind. He, the girl, and Harald walked slowly up the beach, closer to the cliff, and reflexively Sandarr and Lorcan shuffled back a few inches, though the chance of their being seen through the tall grass was slight. They watched as the girl stopped and slowly turned her head side to side and Sandarr guessed she was trying to recall where the hoard had been buried on that night weeks ago, when Fasti had landed at this desolate place.
Behind him he could hear the sound of the Irish warriors getting ready, but he could just barely hear it, as they were taking pains to remain quiet. He was sure the men on the beach would hear nothing over the sound of the small surf breaking on the shingle and the wind rolling in over the water.
The timing of the thing was crucial, a point he had made again and again to Lorcan until he was sure the man understood. Sandarr had no great faith in Lorcan’s intellect, but he was fairly certain he had managed to get though. They had to wait until the hoard was unearthed. If they attacked too soon, Grimarr and the others would take to their ships and be gone. Lorcan could spend a lifetime digging up the beach and never find the silver if he did not know where to look.
If they waited too long, however, there was a chance the Norsemen would get the silver on board and carry it off before they could be stopped, and this would all be for naught. And if that happened, then the second part of Lorcan’s plans, the part that Sandarr understood was at least as important to him as taking the Fearna hoard, would be gone like smoke in the wind.
He and Lorcan had discussed this over and over, and now, at last, their schemes were playing out as they had envisioned; the Norsemen spread out on the beach, the girl locating where the hoard was buried, the Irish, unseen and in great numbers waiting for the word to attack.
The girl was moving again, stepping a bit to her right and running her eyes over the ground, searching out the spot. There were others who had joined up with her and Grimarr and Harald, men with picks and shovels, and around them a ring of armed warriors. The girl moved slowly north, searching, and the rest moved with her.
From his vantage above the beach, Sandarr could see no indication of where the hoard might be buried, no place where the gravel had clearly been disturbed, no rock out of place marking the spot.
How by the gods did Fasti find this place? Sandarr wondered. After Fasti and Grimarr had sailed from Fearna, Lorcan’s men watched them from the shore every mile they made north, just as they had now been tracking Grimarr’s progress. That had been no great difficulty. The Norsemen did not sail out of sight of land if they could avoid it.
Sandarr looked up at the water beyond the beach. There was an odd- shaped rock that jutted straight up, the surf breaking around it, and a smattering of half-submerged ledges just off shore.
Nasty place, Sandarr thought. I would not care to bring a ship through there at night. Sandarr was mariner enough to recognize the great danger such a coastline presented, particularly to one who was unfamiliar with it, and sailing in the dark.
And yet Fasti did it, and he did it unseen…
He looked down at the beach again. The girl was pointing to a spot on the ground. She stepped back and men with shovels stepped up and jammed them into the place where she had pointed.
Something is not right here…Sandarr thought as he watched the men with the shovels widen the hole in the gravel. And then the first of the Irish war shrieks tore through the quiet of the afternoon.
When Conandil pointed toward the ground and the first shovel rasped in
to the shingle, Harald Thorgrimson – Harald Broadarm – was surprised. There was nothing he could see that indicated there was something buried there, no rock marking the place or feature of the landscape that Conandil seemed to use as a reference. The gravel on that spot of beach appeared indistinguishable from any other spot around. He could see no sign that it had been dug up weeks ago; it seemed as if it had lay there undisturbed for years.
Those thoughts were in Harald’s mind but not in the forefront. They were, rather, vague and barely formed ideas somewhere in the wilderness of his brain. More central, swirling like a mad and chaotic battle, were the things that Conandil had told him. Her words had created a great tempest that encompassed his fury over the murder of his father, the vague worry that Conandil might not have had that right, or was lying to him, the predicament of what he would do to gain his revenge with two dozen of Grimarr’s warriors all around him.
Pull your sword, he thought, pull your sword and run the bastard through…
But he doubted he could do it. Not from any squeamishness or lack or resolve. He was confident enough that Conandil spoke the truth, and the dramatic shift in Grimarr’s demeanor aboard the ship all but confirmed it. He could kill Grimarr with never a question in his mind. But he did not think he could get to Grimarr before Grimarr’s men got to him. Even if he managed to sidle up next to the Lord of Vík-ló, he would still have to draw Vengeance Seeker from its scabbard, while Grimarr’s men already had their weapons drawn. It would not take a particularly quick man to kill him as he was pulling his blade free. For that matter, Grimarr might do it with his bare hands.
Patience, patience… Harald thought. Wait for the main chance. A valiant effort was not good enough, he needed success. It was another lesson he had learned from his father.
My late father, he thought, giving the emotional knife a twist.
He turned his eyes from the digging. Bersi was getting the defense organized, spreading the men out in an arc along the open ground. There was one path that they could see, and it led from the cliffs above to the northern end of the beach. Harald frowned as he studied the manner in which the men had been deployed. It looked very much to him as if his father’s men – Ornolf’s men – were being placed where they might receive the brunt of the attack. Harald would never shy away from the worst of the fighting, and he knew his shipmates would not either, but still he did not care to see them set up as sacrificial offerings.
The Lord of Vik-lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) Page 22
