Kevin approached the wreckage with caution, though he could not have said why. There was something mysterious and other-worldly about this great section of ship flung up on dry land. His eyes traced the curve of the stem and the almost delicate carved post that arched up above his head. He stepped around to where he could see the deck which had been hidden from view on his approach. He sucked in his breath, and once again made the sign of the cross.
There was a figure lying on the deck, back turned to Kevin, more a great heap of cloth and hair than a man. But even with the face hidden, the clothes soaked through, the body lying motionless, Kevin had no doubt of who it was.
He heard his men walking softly behind him, heard the notes of surprise as they, too, looked aboard the wreck. “Oh, by God, is that Lorcan?” he heard one man whisper, but no one answered him.
Kevin mac Lugaed stepped closer. It was not my fault the ship wrecked…had I been watching or no, it had nothing to do with me…he thought. He realized that he was rehearsing his excuses because he felt, somehow, he was going to get the blame for this disaster. Then a sense of relief washed over him as he realized there was no one to whom he had to make excuses. This, he was sure, was Lorcan mac Fáeláin, and Lorcan mac Fáeláin, he was sure, was dead.
He stepped closer, put one hand on the rail of the ship. Lorcan lay sprawled out on the deck, five feet away. Kevin put a knee over the rail and hoisted himself up and onto the wreck. He stepped closer to his late lord’s massive, inert form. He wondered if Lorcan had been in the habit of carrying a purse on his belt. Lorcan was not a poor man.
Kevin put his hand on Lorcan’s shoulder and rolled him on his back. The big man’s eyes were closed, his face was white, stark white, and his hair, thoroughly wet, looked black, like wrack cast up on the tide line. Kevin reached out a tentative hand and began to ease Lorcan’s cloak aside and Lorcan gasped, sputtered, gagged and choked. His eyes flew open and Kevin leapt back, pulling his hand away as if he had touched a red-hot ember.
Behind him, still on the beach, the men gasped and one gave a short, shrill scream which he cut off with an embarrassed cough. Lorcan rolled on his side and vomited, spewing mostly sea water on the planks of the ship. He propped himself up on his elbow and glared up at Kevin, a trail of spittle hanging from his mouth. For a long moment the two men just looked at one another. Lorcan was breathing hard. Kevin could feel his heart beating like a frantic drum in his chest.
“My Lord Lorcan!” Kevin said at last. “Praise be to God, you are alive!”
“Praise be to God,” Lorcan muttered. He groaned as he pushed himself up off the deck and stood on unsteady legs while Kevin debated whether or not to offer assistance. Lorcan straightened and Kevin was reminded again of how massive the man was.
“My Lord, we’ve been following your ship from the land, ready to assist you if you came ashore. We saw you wreck. Our hearts were broken, Lord, to think you had all perished.”
“Yes, I can just imagine,” Lorcan said. He looked at Kevin again, as if seeing him for the first time. “And who in hell are you?”
“Kevin mac Lugaed, Lord. I was second to Senchan mac Ronan, but he was killed on the beach, Lord. I found I was the highest ranking of the men who survived, so now I am in command.”
“No,” Lorcan corrected, “I am in command.”
“Of course, Lord Lorcan, forgive me. I meant only…” Kevin paused, then headed off on a different, and he hoped safer, path. “Having no orders, I sent some of the men off to Ráth Naoi, and some to follow the dubh gall, and I took it on myself to stand ready to help you. Should you need it.”
Lorcan grunted, apparently unable to find anything objectionable in those words, and Kevin took some comfort in that. Lorcan looked past Kevin’s shoulder to the men gawking at him from the beach. He turned and looked at the others who were rifling the bodies of the dead.
“You there, you sons of a bitches!” Kevin shouted. “Get your hands off those men, or by God I’ll cut them off!” The looters, surprised by the angry words, stepped quickly away. “Damned animals,” Kevin muttered just loud enough for Lorcan to hear.
“How many men do you have with you?” Lorcan demanded.
“About forty, Lord, and we have horses. Up on the cliff above.”
“And how many more men-at-arms still live?”
“We were about one hundred and thirty left after the fighting on the beach. I split the men into four divisions, Lord, as I said, and I…”
“Yes, yes,” Lorcan said testily. “Damned stupid thing to do. We need to get the army assembled again. My best men were with me on the ship and they’re gone now.”
“Yes, Lord. I could send out riders to bring word for the other men to gather.”
“Do it. Immediately.”
“Yes, Lord. Should they gather here?”
“Here?” Lorcan asked, as if he had just heard the stupidest question in the western world. “What in all damnation is here? Are the Godforsaken dubh gall here? We go where the dubh gall are. I am sick of those bastards here in my land, I am sick of tolerating their presence.”
“You want to drive them all out of Cill Mhantáin, Lord?” Kevin asked.
“No, I want them all dead,” Lorcan growled, and Kevin could see he was working himself up into a full blown rage. “I want every man-at-arms to meet me on the road and I want to ride to Cill Mhantáin and I want to wade through the dubh gall’s guts until we have sent them all to Hell. Is that clear, Kevin mac Lugaed?”
“Yes, Lord,” Kevin said. “That’s clear.” And it was.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I have lands beyond the sea-shore.
So now I sit, pale, in heaps of sea-weed.
The Tale of Sarcastic Halli
The men of Far Voyager, exhausted, now half-drunk, fell asleep where they sat in the soft, welcoming sand, and soon the beach and the ship were alive with the bestial sounds of the Northmen’s snoring. Thorgrim, too, slept, but he came awake, fully awake, sometime in the dark hours. It was his habit to do so once or twice a night, every night. It was a habit that had saved his life on more than one occasion.
This time he woke to the surprising sight of stars aching overhead. The fog was gone, and in its place was a clear sky with a quarter moon rising in the east. He watched it for some time as it climbed aloft, casting a long, yellow, rippling band of light over the water. Then he stood, feeling the protest in his joints and muscles, the dull ache of his wounds. He found Agnarr, who was sleeping on a heap of furs, a blanket pulled over him.
“Agnarr,” he whispered, shaking the man lightly on the shoulder. Agnarr opened his eyes. He was not the sort to come immediately awake as Thorgrim did, that was clear.
“Yes?” Agnarr asked after a minute.
“The sky has cleared and the moon is rising. Is that light enough to get us into Vík-ló?”
Agnarr sat up and looked around as if he had woken in some strange new world he had never seen. He looked out to sea. Finally he said, “Yes, that should do. It will be higher by the time we approach the river mouth, and that will help.”
“Good,” Thorgrim said. “I don’t know how far off dawn is, but if we could get to Vík-ló before that, and if they are not keeping a lookout toward the water, then we might be able to snatch our possessions and go before they even know we are there. Even if Grimarr has returned before us.”
Agnarr was awake enough now, and the moonlight was just bright enough that Thorgrim could see the skepticism on his face, but he said no more than, “Yes, we might be able to do that.”
“Good,” Thorgrim said again. “I’ll rouse everyone. We’ll get underway.” He stood and moved quietly, man to man, shaking them awake. There was no great need for stealth, but Thorgrim knew he was pushing the men to their limits now, and he did not feel the need to compound that by calling them from sleep with loud and insistent orders.
Twenty minutes of grumbling, staggering, urinating and cursing later, Far Voyager was once again under way, her o
ars moving in a moderate and regular cadence as her crew swept her away from the shore in the still of the early morning. The wind and seas had settled down to a near dead calm, which made the rowing easier, but it was rowing nonetheless, and the men longed for a breeze to spring up and relieve them of the tedious work.
They pulled on through the dark hours. The moon rose higher and illuminated the headland south of Vík-ló, enough that Agnarr began to feel more comfortable in his navigation. Rather than bring the ship far out to sea, well clear of the shore as he had originally intended, he steered to round the headland rather close, shaving miles off the last part of their journey and making Thorgrim, if not frightened, then at least more alert.
There was still no hint of dawn and the shoreline was still lost in deep shadow when Far Voyager rounded the headland and turned northwest. Though he could not see it, Agnarr assured Thorgrim that the mouth of the River Leitrim lay under their bow and about three miles off. A breeze began to rise from the south east, favorable, but not enough to drive the ship faster than the oars would do, so Thorgrim kept the men at it.
They approached the river mouth with caution. The moon was high overhead and it made the shore stand out against the water and even gave a broad hint at the location of the Leitrim’s north and south banks. Agnarr, Thorgrim and Harald stood shoulder to shoulder on the afterdeck. Starri was at the masthead. Every eye aboard, save for the rowers, who were forced to look aft, was straining toward the shore, trying to see a sign, any sign of what might be taking place there.
There was nothing to be seen. The moon shone on some roughly square shapes which might have been the roofs of some of the buildings in the longphort, or might not have been. There was no light coming from Vík-ló, no watch fires burning, no torches, no hearth fires that they could see. It was dark, a sleeping town, a deserted town, perhaps. It was what they hoped to see.
“Luck is with us, I think,” Agnarr said. He was at the helm, as he had been for the past three hours.
“You think Grimarr is not yet returned?” Harald asked. It was what Thorgrim had been thinking for some time, but did not care to say out loud.
“Well, perhaps…” Agnarr said. “But what I meant was that the tide seems to be on the rise, so we will not have to fight the current going into the river. And hopefully it will be high enough that we will not take the ground far out on a mud flat.”
“Oh,” Harald said. “Yes, of course. That’s good luck.”
They left the sea and, as the motion of the ship changed they felt the embrace of the river’s banks. The headlands and shoreline were familiar, even in the moonlight, and Thorgrim could not help but think on all that had happened at that place, even in the short time they had been there. And this, he hoped, was their final act. Snatch up their goods and head off to sea again.
Far Voyager was well into the river and still no one ashore seemed to notice their arrival. No challenge came from the dark town. The ship twisted a bit in the current and Agnarr corrected the course. They were a couple hundred yards from the landing place, no more, and Thorgrim peered into the night. As Far Voyager closed swiftly with the riverbank, aided by the lifting current, he nodded slowly, a private gesture, and allowed himself the luxury of relief. There were no other ships pulled up on the shore, save for the one longship half burnt by the Irish. Grimarr and his men were not likely to be in Vík-ló if their ships were not.
Far Voyager nudged to a stop in the soft mud with no more than five feet of water between her stem and the grassy bank. Forward, Thorgrim heard men going over the side and splashing down in the shallows. Moments later they were alongside, laying planks over the mud from the bow to the shore. They did not have to search out the planks; the Far Voyagers knew their way around Vík-ló.
Thorgrim, Agnarr and Harald went forward, and Starri came hand over hand down the larboard shroud and joined them. They went over the bow and down to the plank that was laid alongside and up to the grassy stretch where their ship had earlier been hauled out. They joined the men already ashore and for a long moment they all stood in silence, eyes scanning the dark longphort, ears alert to any sound. They heard water lapping on the shore, insects here and there, though the season was late, cattle lowing far off, the call of night jars. And nothing else.
“Seems no one has seen us land,” Thorgrim said in a low voice. “Or at least no one cared. But I am not convinced. Starri, you are like a cat in the night. Sneak into the town and see what there is to see. Agnarr, Harald, we’ll get the rest of the men ashore. Most we’ll keep under arms, formed up where the plank road leads off to the town. A dozen or so can start moving supplies and our plunder down to the ship. Once we are certain we are in no danger of attack, we’ll put all hands to loading the ship and get back to sea as soon as ever we can.”
The men nodded. Starri hurried off toward the town and soon he was swallowed up by the dark. Agnarr and Harald turned back toward Far Voyager to start sending men off to the various tasks. Thorgrim walked noiselessly across the grassy bank to the great pile of stores, gear and plunder that was Far Voyager’s cargo. As far as he could tell it had not been disturbed since he and Starri had rifled it to fit out the curach for their open boat voyage. The spare sail cloth that partially covered the stack was still in place; the knot in the short line that held one corner down appeared to be the same one he had tied days earlier.
His inspection was interrupted by the arrival of the men from Far Voyager who stepped up to the stack of gear, cast off the lashings, drew back the cloth and began handing the materials below back to the ship. They worked efficiently, wordlessly, having gone through this drill before. They formed up in a line and began passing whatever they could – coils of rope, buckets, spare oars, bundles of goods brought for trade – down from the pile to the edge of the shore by the ship’s bow, from where it would be loaded aboard and lashed down for the voyage into open water.
Thorgrim stood to one side, his eyes everywhere. He saw Harald and Ornolf with the armed men near the end of the plank road, about forty men with shields and spears and swords and helmets. They formed a loose shield wall, one that could be tightened in seconds at the first sign of attack. If Grimarr was back in force, the shield wall could do nothing but slow him and his men down, and it would not even do that for long. Thorgrim’s only realistic hope would be to get most of his men back aboard and off to sea before they were cut down where they stood.
He heard the faintest steps behind him and turned to see who was there. He found Starri approaching from the south, having apparently moved unseen past the men Thorgrim had set as sentries. “Hmm…” Thorgrim said. “It’s a good thing I have my men keeping a bright lookout.”
“Them?” Starri asked, gesturing toward the backs of the men under arms, who in turn were staring out into the dark. “They are half blind. I could have marched a hundred naked slave girls in front of them, they would not have noticed.”
“What of the town?”
“I could see no one abroad, no one moving at all. No sign of there being any more people than there were when we left in the Irish boat. Grimarr’s hall is empty, your bloody clothes are still on the floor. I do not think anyone knows we are here.”
Thorgrim nodded. This was good news, the best possible news, and so it made him profoundly uneasy. He looked to the east. The first hints of light were showing on the horizon, the coming of dawn at last, and there would be no fog to hide them that morning.
“Very well,” he said and turned back to Starri. “I’ll have all these men who are under arms help with loading the ship. We’ll get it done fast that way. You go up the plank road a short distance and keep watch. That way you won’t have to work, which I know is the one thing you fear.”
“I like work, Night Wolf,” Starri said, “but only the work I like.” With that he was gone, a ghost in the dark. Keeping an eye out for their enemies, that was the work he liked. If they were attacked by overwhelming numbers Starri would be completely satisfied.
&nbs
p; Thorgrim crossed the open ground to where the men stood in their shield wall and ordered them to go and help with the loading of the ship. Soon they were swarming like ants over the pile of gear. Far Voyager’s cargo flowed back to the ship, and there more men hefted it aboard. Once on deck, even more men, under Agnarr’s direction, secured it in various places, each piece stored relative to how quickly it might be needed in the course of sailing the ship on blue water. Spare rope, cloth and oars, the spare tiller and rudder were within easy grasp, as were weapons. Shields were mounted on the racks larboard and starboard. Barrels of food and water were kept more out of the way. Deepest of all was the cumulative loot of two years of raiding the Irish coast and sacking the church at Tara.
The sun was free of the horizon and climbing when they finished, so brilliant they could hardly look to the east. The tide had reached its high point sometime during their loading, and for the past hour or so it had been falling away, but they had been careful to keep pushing Far Voyager out into the stream so she did not become immovably stuck in the mud. Now they climbed aboard and pushed the ship off. The oars came out, the bow swung downstream and they pulled for open water.
To north and south, the banks of the Leitrim spread wide toward the sea as the ship left the embrace of the land. The morning sun threw its light at a low angle across the surface of the water, dancing and glinting, and then farther off the gold faded into the sea’s deep blue. They would be sailing a bit north of east, right into the sun, which would make steering difficult until it rose high enough that they did not have to stare directly into its rays.
Then the light seemed to blink, as if shuttered, and then it was back again. Thorgrim frowned and held his hand up to shield the sun and looked toward the east as best he could. Tears ran down his cheeks from the onslaught of light. But then he saw it again, the thing that had got between them and the sun. Two things. They were dark and featureless with the light behind them, but there was no doubting what they were. Sails. The sails of two longships. Heading for Vík-ló. Heading for them.
The Lord of Vik-lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) Page 33
