They found Starri Deathless in the aftermath of the fight. He was sprawled motionless on the plank road and covered with blood which might have come from any of a number of vicious wounds that were visible. Thorgrim’s first thought was that Starri had at last achieved his wish, that he and Ornolf were at that moment feasting side by side. But then they rolled Starri over and his eyes fluttered and then opened. He sat up and looked around, then looked up at Thorgrim.
“Night Wolf…” he said, croaking the words. “Are we…?”
“We are in Vík-ló, Starri,” Thorgrim said, as gently as he could. “You are still alive.”
He left Starri to weep over this news. He did not tell him about Ornolf’s death, not because the news would sadden him but because it would only make him more miserable about his own survival. Starri would not weep for Ornolf, he would be glad for him, and perhaps a bit envious.
It took the remainder of that day to set things to rights, as much as they could be set to rights in the wake of such a battle. The wounded were moved into Fasti Magnisson’s hall where women and thralls were sent to care for them. A feast was laid out in Grimarr’s hall, but it was the most subdued feast that Thorgrim could remember. There were few who had not lost fellows for whom they cared, and all had lost leaders they admired, Grimarr and Ornolf the Restless.
If there was any lingering animosity between Danes and Norwegians, Thorgrim did not see it. Grimarr’s hatred had been his own personal torment, not shared by his fellow Danes. The bright fire of battle had cauterized any wounds still open, the deaths of Grimarr and Ornolf were enough to satisfy any man’s need for vengeance. So Danes and Norwegians ate and drank together, they recounted tales of the battle and their own great heroics together, they stumbled off into the dark and slept where they fell.
Two more days were consumed in making preparations to send the dead off in the manner they deserved. Bersi Jorundarson told Thorgrim how they had already considered the most reasonable options when they had sent Fasti off, and decided he and his men should be cremated aboard Fasti’s ship. Bersi, who seemed to regard Thorgrim as the de facto leader of all the men at Vík-ló, suggested that the best plan was to do the same again. Thorgrim agreed.
Despite Grimarr’s having killed Ornolf and having nearly killed Harald, Thorgrim bore him no ill-will. Thorgrim could understand other men’s feelings, and on occasion even sympathize with them, an unusual ability among that host. He understood what drove Grimarr and he did not doubt that, had he been in Grimarr’s situation, he would have behaved much the same. It would never do to deny Grimarr a proper funeral. His men would not stand for it, and the thought of doing so never even crossed Thorgrim’s mind.
Cruel as Grimarr had on occasion been, driven by hatred - hatred for Lorcan, hatred for Thorgrim - there were men enough in Vík-ló who looked on him as a great man and their fallen leader. He had been their lord for some years and had led them well and put considerable plunder in their path. He would leave the earthly realm with the dignity that such a man had earned. But Thorgrim could not forget the image of Grimarr’s two empty hands held up to fend off Harald’s sword, and he had to wonder which of the worlds beyond Midgard had claimed him.
Grimarr and the Danes who had died in the fight were laid out aboard Far Voyager. It seemed right to Thorgrim to send Grimarr off in his son’s ship, nor would he consider sending Ornolf to Odin’s hall in that unlucky vessel.
Ornolf and the dead among the Far Voyagers were set aboard Eagle’s Wing, which Thorgrim claimed for Harald as a victor’s spoils, a claim no one cared to dispute. Ornolf was laid out on a great pyre built amidships, the others on smaller pyres arranged around him. Grimarr’s thrall had been sacrificed in the proper way to accompany him to the other world where she might continue to serve him. Another was found to go with Ornolf, and she lay by his side, her white face looking up toward the sky.
They saw to it that Ornolf was equipped for this voyage from Midgard to Valhalla. He wore his helmet and mail, a spear and an ax at his side. In his scabbard he carried the finest sword they were able to find in Vík-ló. He did not carry Oak Cleaver. Oak Cleaver now hung from Harald’s belt.
It hung there over Harald’s objection, at least initially. He had insisted it was not right that Ornolf go to Odin’s hall without his own his sword, his beautiful sword. Thorgrim in turn had insisted, with a force born of true belief, that the only thing Ornolf would have wanted more than to have Oak Cleaver by his side until the coming of Ragnarok was for his grandson to carry that fine blade as he made his way through the world. Harald had accepted it at last. And once again he wept.
The sky was gray and thick with clouds, and the mist, the omnipresent mist, drifted down as they towed Far Voyager and Eagle’s Wing out past the mouth of the Leitrim and into open water. Eighty or so of the survivors of Vík-ló, all who could fit on board, lined the rails of Fox, the longphort’s last remaining ship. The rest of the men watched from atop Vík-ló’s walls, high enough to allow them to see beyond the low banks of the river.
A handful of men served as the living crew aboard the ships of the dead. As the towline from Fox was cast loose they set the anchors, and once the anchors were holding and the signal given, they touched off the tar-soaked brush that formed the base of the pyres. They remained aboard until they were certain the fires had taken hold and would not die before the ocean water closed over them, and then they hustled into the boats alongside.
Thorgrim, Harald, Agnarr and Starri stood shoulder to shoulder amidships and watched the pyre take first their shipmates and then Ornolf the Restless. Thorgrim’s thoughts drifted off like the smoke from the fires, thinking of how Ornolf had made him the man he was, good and bad, and Harald as well. Ornolf’s bloodline lived on through Harald and his brother and sisters, and the children of Ornolf’s other children, and their children as well. The blood of Ornolf the Restless would flow down through the years, through the generations, to people and places unimaginable. The flames rose up around Ornolf’s great body and his spirit joined the river of the ages.
It was nearly a week after they had sent Ornolf off to Valhalla that Thorgrim had the strength, physically and otherwise, to put to sea again. It would be a short voyage, four days duration at the very most. It was certainly all that Thorgrim could contemplate.
They put to sea in Fox, manned by Far Voyagers, whose numbers were so diminished that the small ship actually seemed about right for the size for her crew. The wind was brisk and cold, a harbinger of the coming winter, but it drove them down the coast with never a need to break out the oars once the mouth of the river had been cleared and they had put some water between themselves and the lee shore.
Agnarr, sporting bandage-covered sword wounds on his arm and leg, gave directions to the helmsmen, but by then the coast was familiar enough to Thorgrim that he could have navigated the ship himself. In his mind he ticked off the familiar headlands, bays and beaches as they made their way south.
They spent the night on a beach that Agnarr picked out, the same beach, he told Thorgrim, on which the fleet had stopped on their voyage south under Grimarr’s command. The next morning, as the coming light turned the overcast sky from black to a soft gray, they were underway again.
They arrived at their destination five hours later, with the sun just past its zenith, though still low in the southern sky. They stowed the sail and approached under oar, moving cautiously. The seas were bigger than the last time they had come that way, and the rollers broke white over the once-hidden reef, giving warning of its presence. But even if they had not known it was there, the sight of Water Stallion, or half of her at least, thrown up on the beach a quarter mile away, would have heralded the danger in those waters.
Thorgrim stood in the bow. “Easy, now, easy,” he called to the rowers, “Very well, hold your oars!”
Starboard and larboard the oars came to a stop, dragging in the water, slowing the rate at which the ship was driven toward the rocks beyond. The rowers had their
backs to the shore and so could not see the dangers there, and Thorgrim had to imagine it was driving them to distraction, but there was nothing for it.
The swells lifted Fox stern-first, and then set her stern down and lifted her bow in that familiar see-saw way of ships. Thorgrim could see it now, the odd bit of carved wood, the figurehead or something like it, still holding its place to seaward of the reef. In ten minutes he would look like a man of great wisdom or a complete fool, and he was not sure which it would be.
“Starboard, give way, larboard back water!” Thorgrim called. The banks of oars pulled in opposite directions and Fox spun on her keel. As the ship turned Thorgrim made his way aft, past Agnarr at the helm, and stopped where the two sheer strakes came together in a narrow V.
“Hold!” he called out and the rowers stopped. They were stern-to the reef now, the white water breaking over the rocks seeming perilously close.
“Ready…” Thorgrim called. The swell had set them down toward the baulk of floating wood and he guessed the next one would bring them right to it. That meant that if they did not take care the one after that would send them onto the reef and an ugly death in the bitter cold water. The bow rose again, and then the stern, and Thorgrim heard a thump as Fox bumped into the floating jetsam.
“Give way all! Easy!” Thorgrim called, raising his voice just enough to let the men on the rowing benches know that this was not a moment for mistakes or inattention. But now the rowers were looking toward the shore and the water breaking over the reef and the remains of Water Stallion, so they likely had figured that out already. The oars swept aft, giving Fox just a bit of forward momentum while the seas pushed her astern and the opposing forces held her more or less in place.
“Good, keep that up!” Thorgrim called. He leaned over the side. The figurehead was there, still thumping against Fox’s strakes. He reached out with the long gaff he held like a spear in his right hand and snagged the rope, one end of which was tied around the figurehead, the other disappearing into the dark water. Hand over hand he pulled the gaff back aboard until he could put his hand on the slick, wet cordage.
A dozen men were standing behind him, eager to get their hands on the rope and help pull. Godi, an obvious asset in any heavy work, was foremost among them. He reached out and grabbed part of the line and handed it aft and more and more of the men took it up.
Hand over hand they heaved away, the rope running over the ship’s rail, scraping sea weed and sundry creatures off as it come aboard. It was easy at first as they hauled in the slack. Then suddenly the weight was on it as they lifted whatever it was that anchored the figurehead in place, and they grunted with the strain, and the real work began.
Whatever was at the far end, lost in the deep, seemed to grow heavier with each foot they hauled. Thorgrim felt the lacerations in his chest pulling and threatening to burst, which worried him, but at the same time he thought their present difficulties a good sign. They were pulling up something substantial, in any event. He hoped it was more than a rock
“Anyone not on an oar, come pull this bastard rope!” Thorgrim called, trying and failing to keep the strain from his voice. Men charged aft and took up the line and Thorgrim felt the burden lifted as more arms and shoulders tailed into the work.
Thorgrim let go of the rope, now well manned, and stepped up to the ship’s rail. The line was coming up from the deep, like a cable from another world, and there was something unsettling about it. And then suddenly there was something else, a shape materializing out of the dark, and Thorgrim gave an involuntary start.
It rose higher and Thorgrim could see it was something box-like, another good sign. “Here it comes!” he called. He heard a buzz run through the ship. And then it broke the surface, gushing water, and the men hauled it up level with the rail. A box of some sort, three feet long, two wide, a foot deep, wrapped in tar-covered cloth.
“Hold!” Thorgrim called and the men stopped pulling and those closest to Thorgrim stepped up and helped him heave it up over the rail. There were grins fore and aft. No one knew what was in the box, but they had a pretty good idea, and it made them happy. Better yet, the rope did not end there, but continued back over the side and down into the water, and there was still considerable weight on it. This was apparently not the only box.
Men pushed aft and grabbed up the rope again and continued to pull, and soon another box, identical to the first, broke the surface, but still the rope was not at its bitter end. They hauled more, and another box and another was pulled from the water. In the end, five tar-cloth wrapped boxes were heaved up over the side and set streaming on the deck before they found the frayed end of the rope.
“On the oars, pull, pull!” Thorgrim called. Their first concern was to get clear of that treacherous shore. The rowers knew it, and they pulled with a will. Fox gathered momentum and soon she was well away from the reef and the rocks that lay strewn just off shore.
Thorgrim pulled a knife from his belt, aware that every eye that could see him was watching with an anticipation that bordered on lust. He cut the rope away, cut the tarred cloth and peeled it back. Underneath was a perfectly unremarkable wooden chest. He undid the hasp and carefully swung the lid open. The dull light of the overcast sky gleamed on silver; silver candle sticks, silver chalices, silver coins, silver plates, silver crosses, and interspersed among that, bits of gold, jewelry, chains, censers and the like. The Fearna treasure.
There was quiet at first, a preternatural hush. And then someone laughed, and then the rest began cheering and howling and laughing, slapping backs, men hugging. Starri Deathless looked down at the treasure and shook his head.
“Very well, Night Wolf,” he asked. “How did you know?”
Thorgrim drew a long breath. He did not know, of course, he had guessed, and for once the gods had decided to play along.
“When I thought on it, I couldn’t see where Fasti would have had time to bury it,” he said. “He would not have risked going ashore in the dark, not in these waters, and the Irish were watching by day. The only reason we thought he buried it was because the thrall, Conandil, said so. But she had no reason to tell any of us the truth.”
“You’re right,” Starri said. “Fools that we were, we took her on her word, even knowing how these Irish will lie.”
“Then you and I saw that figurehead,” Thorgrim continued, “anchored as it was, and that made little sense. It was a while later that it occurred to me why it was there.” There was more, of course. In conversation with Bersi, Thorgrim had asked, casually, what the figurehead on Fasti’s ship had looked like. Bersi had described quite accurately the bit of carved wood he and Starri had seen. And then Bersi added that, oddly enough, the figurehead had been missing when they had set the ship on fire.
Thorgrim did not mention that discussion. It did not hurt his position to look far more prescient than ordinary men.
Starri continued to shake his head. He grabbed the split arrowhead that hung from his neck and rubbed it. “Thorgrim Night Wolf, you are favored by the gods,” he said.
“Ha!” Thorgrim said. “I would hate to see how they treat those they don’t favor.”
Behind him, Agnarr pushed the tiller a bit and Fox turned more northerly. The wind was against them now, and the men at the oars were in for long hours of pulling before they beached again for the night. But the sight of the treasure of Fearna had given them renewed vigor and they pulled with a will.
The spoils would not be theirs alone, of course. They would share it with Grimarr’s men, the men who had liberated it from Fearna in the first place. It was only just that they do so, and trying to refuse would lead to more ugliness, and no doubt bloodshed as well. But there was treasure enough that they would all be wealthy, Thorgrim’s men and Grimarr’s, too.
They were bound back up the coast, bound back to Vík-ló. The season was late now, too late to put to sea even if they had a ship, which they did not. Thorgrim would talk with Aghen, the master shipwright. They would talk about
what qualities make for a good ship, and over the winter months they would build it, and it would be new, built by him and his men from the keel up. It would be untainted by the past and it would not carry the bad luck of the ship they took from Grimarr’s sons.
Thorgrim would get what he needed from the Danes of the longphort; wood, rope, tar, ironwork, tools. Because he was not a guest there anymore, not a visitor or a stranger.
When the dead had been sent off with proper ceremony and the wounds of the battle had started to heal, Bersi Jorundarson came to Thorgrim. He came on his own behalf, and at the behest of some of the other leading men of the town. With Grimarr Knutson and Fasti Magnisson gone, there was no one who commanded the longphort, no one to hold the disparate parts together and keep them from spinning off on their own. No one to lead. And after the bold stance against the Irish, and the part Thorgrim had played in it, the men of Vík-ló knew who they wished to see in that place. They would swear an oath to Thorgrim if Thorgrim would accept it.
He did not want to. He did not want to stay in that squalid longphort in Ireland. He wanted to sail to his home and settle on his farm and never go a-viking again. But he could not sail for home because he had no ship, and even if the gods dropped one from the sky he did not know if he would have men enough to make up its crew.
So he agreed. He would build a ship and he would take the oaths of the men there and he would be the chief of them. Whenever he had tried to leave the shores of Ireland, the gods had flung him back, again and again. Perhaps if he agreed to stay, then the gods, mercurial and capricious, would let him go. So he agreed. He would stay. He would be lord of Vík-ló.
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The Lord of Vik-lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) Page 38
