Louis, too, slowed to a stop, and when he was certain the chase was done, slid down from his horse, flexed his tired muscles and let the animal rest. The day was getting late and so Louis walked the horse to a nearby patch of woods in which he hid himself and the animal, and soon both were in deep sleep.
The sun was just coming up the next morning when Louis stirred himself. He was ravenously hungry and had nothing to eat. He needed to get to Dubh-linn, he knew, because that was the only place he had any hope of finding a ship to bring him back to his native Frankia and the revenge he hoped to visit on his treacherous brother. But he had only a vague idea of where Dubh-linn was, and now there was a river blocking that path.
Louis saddled his horse, climbed wearily into the saddle, rode off with the river on his right hand. His circumstances were not good, but they were not desperate, either. He had a horse. He had a sword, shield and knife. He had considerable skills when it came to combat of all kinds, honed by years of fighting off the heathen threat to his native country. He had a small casket of silver, more than enough to buy him what he needed: food, shelter, passage to Frankia.
Those things were much to his advantage, but they would not get him to Dubh-linn, and it seemed nothing else would either. He followed the river for the rest of that day and much of the next and found no way to cross. He came across the occasional small, miserable farm, its buildings enclosed by circular earthen walls, and he was able to buy food and drink from the wary farmer. He found a man who could tell him where he might ford the river, but had not the slightest idea of where Dubh-linn would be found. The days turned to a week, and then another.
Louis found a small monastery and was able to parlay his connection to Glendalough and a quantity of silver into shelter and food and a monk’s robe, which he thought might do him some good. Exhausted, half-starved, Louis spent several weeks at the monastery, recovering. When he was finally ready to leave, the brothers gave him directions to Dubh-linn, but they did not sound overly confident and in the end they proved to be entirely wrong.
On the road Louis wore his monk’s robe, incongruous as it was to see a monk mounted on a warrior’s horse. He met bandits and he ran from some and killed others. He met traveling merchants who were better able to give directions. He met bands of men-at-arms moving across the country, and he avoided them when he could, and when he couldn’t he gave them a false name and a story he had concocted during his long hours on the road, but no one seemed to much care.
Finally, after weeks of miserable travel, he was fairly confident that he was on the road for Dubh-linn and that he was not too terribly far. And then these three piles of horse dung had sprung on him, intent on taking everything and leaving his bloodied corpse in the woods. It was their bad luck that all the misery and uncertainty and frustration of the past month had stripped him of any sense of mercy he might have once possessed.
He stood there and let his breathing come back to normal. He looked up and down the road. No one coming. He considered just leaving the dead men there. It would be obvious to anyone passing by what had happened. The dead men’s clothes and their crude weapons marked them as bandits, and their condition marked them as idiots who had attacked the wrong man.
But Louis knew that leaving them was not a good idea. If they were local men they might have relatives who could decide that, vermin though they might be, their deaths had to be avenged. He sighed, wiped the blade of his sword on the nearest man’s tunic, then slid the blade back into the sheath strapped to his back under his monk’s robe.
Louis ran his eyes over the last man he had killed, poked at him with his toe, but he did not seem to have anything on him worth the taking, so Louis grabbed his foot and dragged him through the mud and far enough into the woods that he would not be easily found. He was glad at least that he had not entirely severed the man’s head, which spared him the effort of making two trips or having to touch the dead man’s hair.
He did the same with the second corpse. The first man he had killed, the leader, apparently, had a filthy leather purse tied to his belt. Louis cut it free, looking inside. A few silver coins and a few copper, a tiny hunk of gold, less than the size of a pea. But it was something. And Louis liked the idea of being set on by bandits and coming away with a profit.
He dragged this last dead man off the road and dumped him next to the others. He mounted his horse and continued on as before, but now in a world that had three less murdering bastards in it, and he was glad of that. The rain had stopped and he was reasonably certain that Dubh-linn lay ahead of him, and in Dubh-linn a ship to Frankia.
He smiled. And he realized it had been a long time since he had smiled, or since he had felt the inclination to do so.
Chapter Four
Most blest is he who lives free and bold and nurses never a grief,
for the fearful man is dismayed by aught, and the mean one mourns over giving.
Hávamál
Two mornings after the pig trial, Thorgrim woke to find the sun was still down but his mood still high in the sky. He felt hope, enthusiasm, feelings that had become strangers to him. But, as with any stranger, he looked on them with caution.
Over the course of a long and often brutal life he had suffered many disappointments and hardships. Since coming to this accursed Ireland, a country from which he seemed unable to escape, those misfortunes had increased threefold. For that reason, when he felt any sort of hope kindle in his breast, he treated it like a spark that might ignite into a great fire and consume him.
Still in his bed, he moved his head slightly so his ear was directed at the thatch roof above. He lay perfectly still. He listened. His bedchamber was divided off from the larger room by a wattle wall, one of the luxuries afforded the lord of Vík-ló, and he could hear snoring from the other side. He could hear mice moving around in the bundles of dry reeds. He could hear nothing else.
And that was the important thing. He could not hear the drum of rain on the thatch, that constant undercurrent of sound, the liquid noise of water running off the edge of the roof and splashing in the great puddles that stood like moats around the hall. Nothing. It was not raining. Two days since the rain had stopped and it had not set in again. Thorgrim felt the tight grip he kept on his optimism loosen just a little.
He flexed his right leg. He had broken that leg many years before, just below the knee, and now when it was raining, or when it soon would be raining, it ached. That meant for the past few years, since his arrival in Ireland, his leg had been in near constant pain. But now it was as if the break had never happened.
Next to him, under the covers, Failend stirred a bit, made a sleepy sound and pressed herself closer to him. Neither of them was wearing anything save for the heavy fur that covered them, and he reveled in the feel of Failend’s small, warm body. He rolled half on his side and wrapped an arm around her slim waist and pulled her closer and she made another sound, more awake this time, like a conscious approval of his touch.
Failend… Thorgrim mused. He was still not entirely sure what to make of her. He and his men, the few left after the raid on Glendalough, had captured her and the Frank, Louis, as they were all trying to make their escape. Failend and Louis had both been armed, both dressed in mail, a rarity for a woman, in Thorgrim’s experience. He had seen a few Norse women go that way. He had never seen an Irishwoman so arrayed.
Thorgrim had assumed Louis was her lover. They seemed to be running from some situation, making their escape together when they had blundered into the Northmen’s arms.
Once they were with Thorgrim’s band, Louis had behaved the way one would expect a captive to behave; just cooperative enough to avoid having his throat cut, always on the lookout for a means to escape.
And escape he had. Just as Thorgrim and a few others were leading their enemies into a carefully set trap, Louis had leapt to his feet and run toward the Irish horsemen, warning them, escaping with them. In the end the fighting had gone Thorgrim’s way, as the gods wished it, b
ut Louis’s actions might well have killed them all.
For that, Thorgrim would kill Louis if ever he saw him again. But he doubted he ever would.
Failend was something different.
Failend the shrew…
That was how he thought of her. Not shrew in the sense of a nagging and unbearable woman, which she most certainly was not. But shrew in the sense of something tiny, seemingly harmless, cute even, but with more strength and fight in her than a creature many times bigger.
The longer she stayed in the presence of the Northmen, the more she seemed to prefer their lives to the one she had escaped. She had shown an interest in learning the use of a sword, and because she showed nothing but cooperation with her captors, Thorgrim allowed her to have one. He even found her a smaller seax, a weapon more her size, and had shown her some techniques of blade-work.
After that she had taken every opportunity to practice, and to spar with any who would spar with her. She had learned fast, grown in skill, and even taken her place in a few scrapes they had had with the Irish who were trying to run them to ground.
Slowly Failend’s Irish clothing was exchanged for clothes in the Norse fashion—leggings and tunic—men’s clothing, not women’s. When the need arose, she wore the mail she had been wearing when she was taken. She picked up a few words of the Norse tongue, and then more and more until she could speak the language, after a fashion. Right there, like a caterpillar to a butterfly in Thorgrim’s way of thinking, Failend was turning from an Irishwoman of means into one of the hated fin gall.
It was after Louis had made his escape that Failend began sleeping by his side. That was the extent of it. They had done no more than sleep. Thorgrim was not sure why she chose to do that. Protection, perhaps. She knew by then that Thorgrim would not harm her, but she might not have been as certain about the other half-wild men in the Norsemen’s company. Whatever the reason, Thorgrim had welcomed her, enjoyed the feel of her next to him. He had not asked her about it. Language was still a barrier, and anyway, Thorgrim was not the sort who was much given to talk.
Now Failend rolled over and cocked her leg over Thorgrim’s thighs and reached up and ran a small, delicate hand through the thick, dark hair on his chest. She made another soft sound and pushed herself up so her face was closer to his, her cheek resting on his upper arm. Thorgrim ran his fingers along her spine, up and down, and over her bottom and the soft sounds she was making grew a bit louder, a bit more empathic.
This new twist to their relationship had occurred after their return to Vík-ló. Thorgrim had been wounded in the legs in his final, bloody duel with Ottar, and Failend had helped nurse him. She knew little about healing, that was clear, despite her having first claimed otherwise. But she learned from the Irishwoman Cara, who remained in Vík-ló to tend to Thorgrim, and soon she was able to make up and apply a poultice with as much skill as the older woman.
Failend continued to share Thorgrim’s bed. Then one night, in the dim light of the moon creeping in around the wooden shutters, Thorgrim watched her pull her tunic up over her head and stand there, naked, her body thin and pale and strong. She slipped under the fur and eased herself up to his side. Thorgrim wore no clothes; they irritated his wounds; and Failend’s warm body felt good pressed against his. She made him feel whole again. She made him feel young.
“Lie still, lie still,” she whispered, her command of his language much improved, even though her accent sounded odd and foreign to him. Thorgrim lay on his back and Failend ran her hands and her lips over him, over his face and his neck and the rest of him. Thorgrim closed his eyes and allowed himself to get swept up in the pleasure of it all.
Then Failend eased herself carefully on top of him, eased him carefully inside her, and with her strong legs moved against him. Her hands were on his chest, her thick black hair hanging down so it nearly brushed against him until she swung it back over her shoulder, her head rocked back, her lips opened as the sensations overwhelmed her.
And so once again things between them shifted, and after that, when she came to his bed, sometimes they slept and sometimes they took pleasure in one another and then slept. And sometimes they slept and then took pleasure in one another. And that morning, when Thorgrim woke to the absence of rain and the feeling of renewal in his heart, was apparently going to be one of those times.
Failend pushed herself up so she was half lying on top of Thorgrim and began to explore him with her hands and her lips. But Thorgrim was no longer suffering from his wounds, and no longer weak from the battering he had taken during their foray to Glendalough. He rolled farther toward her, pushed her down onto her back, saw the flash of her smile in the dim light of the predawn. He leaned down and kissed her and felt her arms wrap around his neck and pull him tighter toward her as she kissed him back, her lips and tongue eager.
He did not stop pressing his lips to hers as he eased himself on top of her, taking his weight on his elbows. Failend felt small and delicate beneath him, though he knew by now she was not nearly as delicate as she might appear. He felt her legs wrap around him, her heels press into his back. He leaned down and buried his face in her hair and ran his lips along her neck and the two of them lost themselves in one another.
The morning sun was creeping in around the edge of the shutters by the time they were done and their breathing had returned to normal. Thorgrim was on his back, Failend splayed across his chest. He was running his hands through her hair. His eyes were open and looking up at the thatch overhead, slowly revealing itself in the morning light.
“You want to get out of bed and leave me,” Failend said, softly. A statement, not a question.
Thorgrim smiled. “I want to get out of bed,” he replied truthfully. It was the first morning in a long stretch of mornings he could recall being eager to start his day. “But I don’t want to leave you.”
“Hmm,” Failend said. “Very well, I’ll let you rise in a minute, but first you must answer a question.”
“A fair price,” Thorgrim said.
“You’re going to sea,” she said. “You won’t say where you’re going.”
“Yes,” Thorgrim said. That was true. He wouldn’t say because he didn’t know.
He was not sure where this was leading, but he had some ideas. Going to sea meant raiding, and that meant attacking Failend’s countrymen. He could see how that notion might not sit well with her, all the violence that the Irish visited on their fellow Irish notwithstanding. “Were bound off as soon as we can. We’re not farmers, you know. At least here, in Ireland, we are not farmers.”
“I know,” Failend said. “I know what you are. You’re men and you’re not so much different from Irish men. Or most other men, I expect.”
“I expect you’re right,” Thorgrim said. He had seen a lot in his restless life, and one of the things he had learned was that men were indeed men the world over. And that could be a good thing and it could be bad.
“What I want to know is this,” Failed said. She pushed herself up onto her elbows so she could look him in the eyes. “Will you leave me behind, or will you take me with you?”
Thorgrim pressed his lips together. He’d not considered this question before. In the sudden springtime of happiness he had experienced with the decision to sail, he had not thought about whether or not Failend would have a place aboard his longship. And when he considered it now he realized that the question had not arisen because there had never been a question in his mind.
“Of course I won’t leave you,” he said, reaching out and brushing the hair away from her face. “You’re with me now. With us. Of course you’ll sail on my ship. If you want to.”
Failend smiled, leaned down and kissed his chest, then looked up again. “Good,” she said.
“You want to sail with us?” Thorgrim asked. He was starting to sense that she was the most unusual woman he had ever known, and he was curious about what might be going on in her head.
“Yes,” she said. “You…and your people…are
all I have left.”
Thorgrim nodded, stroked her hair. “They’re your people now. You’ve proved yourself in a hundred ways and you’re always welcome with us,” he said.
Failend smiled again. “Good,” she said. She threw the bear skin off of the two of them and the rush of cool morning air nearly made Thorgrim gasp. Failend leapt to her feet, her long hair spilling around her. “I have arrows to make,” she said.
The sun was well above the horizon by the time Thorgrim had washed, dressed, and had his breakfast of cold beef and porridge. He and Harald stepped out of the hall and into the welcome, welcome sunshine of the summer morning.
The longphort of Vík-ló lay before them, the activity familiar and welcome. The small houses and workshops that made up most of the structures in Vík-ló were crowded all along the plank road, and from each of those places people were carrying blankets and furs and cloaks and whatever they had that had grown heavy and moist in the incessant damp. They were spreading them out on low wattle fences and on the roofs of sheds, wherever they could hope to find sunshine that would dry them out. Doors were flung open, shutters on windows swung wide to let the warm, dry air move as unimpeded as possible through the dank interiors.
Thorgrim breathed deep. He turned and looked at Harald and their eyes met and they both smiled, father and son. A good day. They were both ready to go.
Together they made their way down the plank road toward the river and the makeshift boatyard that had sprung up there. A thick plume of smoke was roiling up from the shop of Mar, the blacksmith, which was yet another good sign. The warriors of Vík-ló, eager as Thorgrim and Harald to get to sea, had wasted no time in ordering up spearheads and arrowheads and axes and even swords. Mar would be pounding out the half-round bosses that made the center part of wooden shields and the iron bands that ran around the edges. He would be making rivets for the longships and manacles for captives. To Thorgrim and the rest of the Northmen, the clanging of the blacksmith’s hammer was like a call to war.
Raider's Wake: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 6) Page 4