Raider's Wake: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 6)

by James L. Nelson

  Thorgrim shook his head. “This Brunhard, he’s a Frisian, according to Kalf. I wouldn’t hesitate to plunder a Frisian merchant. I’d do it just for the pleasure of it. But there are some in Dubh-linn…many, in truth…who we should leave alone. It will not go well for us to be lurking like thieves in the mouth of the river.”

  The other two, Godi and Thorodd Bollason, nodded in agreement with Thorgrim’s words. They had been with Thorgrim a long time, and through many fights, and were more willing than Fostolf to follow Thorgrim’s plans without question. And they knew, and Fostolf did not, that Thorgrim had a great aversion to Dubh-linn and would avoid it at all costs. They knew he would never have sailed north from Vík-ló if the winds had not dictated it.

  They also knew that while Thorgrim was always careful to ask the opinions of his chief men, it was less certain that their council had any effect on the decisions he made.

  And so with the winds calm and the seas no more than a gentle swell and the ships bound together, they lowered an anchor on all the rope they could tie together, hoping that would at least slow their drift. They posted watches through the night and they slept.

  Failend came aft and sat on the edge of the afterdeck where Thorgrim had laid out some furs for a bed. She was moving easier now, and her color was back to that of a living human. She had eaten two meals that day, and really eaten, not just picked, and Thorgrim was glad of it. What Failend did not realize, or so Thorgrim guessed, and he could not bring himself to tell her, was that she would likely have to run this gauntlet at the start of every voyage.

  “Has someone cast a spell on the men?” she asked.

  “Why do you think that?” Thorgrim asked.

  “No one is drinking ale. No one is gorging himself. No one singing or telling filthy jokes. I might think I was back in the monastery at Glendalough.”

  Thorgrim smiled. “It’s the ocean. And the night. The men don’t like being on the ocean at night.”

  “Why not?”

  “There are strange creatures in the water,” Thorgrim said, as if explaining a common fact to a child. “And spirits as well. Some are good spirits, but some are very bad. You never know. And of course, we’re strangers here, and the spirits of Irish waters would have no love for us.”

  Now Failend smiled. “You heathens, you truly are an ignorant and barbaric lot,” she said. But then she crossed herself and snatched up the silver crucifix she wore around her neck and kissed it, which Thorgrim knew were the ways the Christians warded off spirits. Then she lay down beside Thorgrim and closed her eyes.

  Soon after, Thorgrim could hear her gentle and rhythmic breathing as sleep took her away. He lay back, eyes open, and felt the motion of the ship under him, heard the slapping of water on the hull and the creaking of the mast and rigging, and watched the great sweep of stars moving back and forth overhead.

  The night was long but it was gentle. They heard the sound of whales, and once something splashed nearby the ship and startled Harald so much he jumped and those who saw him do it laughed. But there was a forced quality to their laughter. They were no more sanguine about the dark and the deep water than was Harald.

  Dawn came and the men were grateful for the gathering light in the east. They unlashed the ships, spread out over a wider patch of sea, ate their morning meal. They saw several vessels leaving Dubh-linn that day, some heading north, some south, one to the east. But none were the three fine vessels of which Kalf had spoken. It was not until after midday that those ships made their appearance.

  They came slowly around the headland, moving under the power of their oars, and they seemed to be making a clumsy job of it. Starri called down from aloft as he saw them to the north. Thorgrim’s ships were closer to land now, tucked in where they would be more difficult to spot against the hills to the west.

  It was not until sometime after Starri’s report that Thorgrim saw them as well, their hulls low in the water, their sails still furled and lowered, and their masts, bare like winter trees, difficult to see against the sky. But he did see them, at last. Three ships, just as Kalf had said. If they were fine ships, if they were crammed with goods worth having, that was yet to be seen.

  He heard some bustle of activity across the water, the squeal of a rope through a block. He turned and looked over the larboard side. Fostolf’s Dragon was hoisting its sail, the men heaving on the halyard as the yard came up off the gallows.

  “Fostolf!” Thorgrim called. Dragon was a couple hundred feet to leeward in the gentle breeze from the north. “What are you doing?”

  He saw Fostolf standing on Dragon’s afterdeck, his eyes moving from Thorgrim to his men at the halyard and back again. Finally he called, “We are setting our sail! Do you not see the merchant ships we’ve been waiting on?”

  “Too soon!” Thorgrim called. “We’ll let them get farther out to sea, farther from Dubh-linn!” He would have thought that was obvious. You didn’t leap at the hare when he still had the chance to scurry back into his burrow.

  “We’ll lose them!” Fostolf called back. “Night will be on us!”

  Thorgrim’s eyebrows came together and he frowned. It had been a long time since anyone had questioned his decisions. Had he and Fostolf been face to face he would have set the man right, and quickly, but he did not want to start shouting out a chastisement over that stretch of water. But in the end he did not have to, because Godi did it for him.

  Blood Hawk was just to leeward of Dragon and about fifty feet from the smaller ship’s stern. Anyone with lesser lungs than Godi might not have been heard, but the big man’s voice could carry the better part of a mile if he wished it to, and in this case he did. “Fostolf!” he called. “Don’t argue! When you have sailed as many miles as Thorgrim Night Wolf, then you can question him. Except by then you’ll be dead!”

  That brought spurts of laughter from the four ships and Thorgrim felt the tension collapse like a sail deprived of wind. But he did not forget Fostolf’s back talk. And he did not think he had heard the last of it.

  Chapter Eleven

  A twelfth I know: if I see in a tree

  a corpse from a halter hanging,

  such spells I write, and paint in runes,

  that the being descends and speaks.

  The Song of Spells

  Brunhard had taken a seat on a small chest on the larboard side of the afterdeck, directly across from the man stationed at the tiller. He had fallen quiet, an uncharacteristic thing as far as Louis could tell. Then he stood quickly, as if suddenly remembering something he had to do. He looked forward to where Áed stood leaning against the mast. He nodded and Áed nodded back and that was apparently all the communication needed.

  Áed pushed himself up and moved slowly down the middle of the ship, running his eyes over the men at the oars. He stepped all the way aft, turned, moved forward at a slow and contemplative pace, as if assessing each man’s efforts. He passed a big man with a torn, rust-red tunic, a man’s whose face was set and expressionless, his eyes looking aft, fixed on nothing. Áed paused for a beat, then moved on. The man on the next bench forward was in bad shape, his nose broken, blood smeared on his face and half wiped away. His eyes flicked up at Áed as he approached, then back down again. But that, apparently, was enough for Áed.

  “What are you looking at? What?” Áed screamed at the man. “I asked what you’re looking at!”

  The man opened his mouth to answer, but before he could speak Áed hit him hard on the side of the head with the rope end. The man’s head snapped around and he half fell on his oar, breaking his stroke and fouling the oar behind him.

  “Why aren’t you rowing, you useless whore’s son?” Áed screamed and hit the man again. The other oars were in confusion now, the rowers darting glances at the fray, then looking quickly away for fear of getting the same attention.

  “Look at what you’ve done!” Áed shouted. The man at the oar made another attempt to speak and Áed hit him again and yelled, “Keep your damned mouth shut!”
He straightened and turned toward the afterdeck and called, “Master Brunhard, this man will not row properly and he shows us all disrespect!”

  Áed spoke in the Irish language, which as far as Louis knew Brunhard did not understand, but it didn’t matter. Like players on a stage, each man had his part and they were well rehearsed. Everything that Áed said was directed at the slaves, even if he pretended to speak to Brunhard.

  “You know what to do with such men,” Brunhard yelled, the words in Frisian but their meaning unmistakable. He pointed to the ship’s yard, swung fore and aft and resting on the gallows as the ship was driven by the men at the oars.

  Louis could see the sailors grinning now. They knew this act as well, and apparently they liked it. Several of them moved to the base of the mast and one lifted a great coil of rope that hung from a cleat and dropped it on the deck. Three more grabbed onto the rope, and with a guttural order from the first, they heaved away and the yard rose off the gallows a foot, then two, then ten. Another order and the rope was tied off to the cleat once again, the yard hauled part way up the mast.

  Along the benches men were glancing up at the yard, glancing sideways, then quickly down again to avoid attracting attention. Áed hit the man with the broken nose once again, and another sailor unhooked the chain that ran through the rowers’ iron collars and removed the ring from the man’s neck.

  “Master Brunhard, maybe all should see what happens to these worthless swine when they do not obey!” Áed called.

  Brunhard nodded. He stepped over to the side of the ship, cupped his hands around his mouth and called out across the water, “Come and see the show!” But Louis noticed the other two ships were already pulling for Wind Dancer’s side.

  There seemed to Louis to be a great tangle of ropes hanging from the yard, but the sailors apparently could tell them apart. The man who had untied the first line now cast off another and eased it away. The rope ran through a block that hung from a shorter, stouter rope attached to the end of the yard nearest the bow, and Louis had a pretty good idea of how this would play out.

  Áed and another of the sailors jerked their victim to his feet and pulled him toward the bow. The man stumbled and was half-dragged forward and Louis heard him shout, “Áed! You whore’s son bastard, I’ll…”

  He got no further in his threat. Áed hit him hard in the face, then hit him again. The man’s head slumped over and then lolled back. There was fresh blood on his face. He was still conscious, but barely.

  Brunhard’s other ships drew up on either side of Wind Dancer, their oars held motionless in the water, the three ships riding easily over the long low swells, sitting on their spot of ocean.

  “Look here, all of you!” Áed bellowed, his voice carrying over Wind Dancer’s deck and the other two ships as well. “All of you sorry bastards, look here, now!” The men at Wind Dancer’s oars, and the one woman who was huddled forward, turned and looked at Áed, the sailor, and the bleeding man. None of them, none of the watching captives had any expression on their faces—not horror nor revulsion nor anger. They just watched.

  One of the sailors grabbed up the end of the rope that hung from the end of the yard. There was a loop tied in it and he slipped the loop over the bleeding man’s head, tightened it around his neck. “Your lives are not yours,” Áed called, his volume undiminished. “Understand that. Your lives belong to Master Brunhard alone, and if you dare to disobey, even in the least, as this man did, see what will happen to you!”

  He stepped back and as the man, now unsupported, began to slump to the deck a gang of sailors hauled away on the rope. The man was pulled straight, but before his feet came off the deck the sailors stopped, leaving him twisting, his toes just touching the planks below.

  The man made a strangling noise and struggled to lift himself with his toes and clawed at the rope around his neck. His eyes went wide as his fingers tried to get under the noose. Then the sailors eased the rope and the man came down on his feet. Louis could hear him suck in a breath as his fingers went back to the rope to loosen it now that he could.

  And the second his fingers touched the rope the sailors hauled again, laughing this time, pulling him clean off the deck so he swung forward in a great arc and then back again, legs kicking, arms flailing. The yard was hauled around so the end from which the man hung was now over the water. He twisted and swung back and forth and kicked and then as his movements began to slow the sailors let go of the rope and the man plunged down into the sea.

  For a moment there was only a foaming circle of water where the man had disappeared, and then the sailors hauled again and the man came up from below and once again hung kicking from the rope at the end of the yard. Three times the sailors did this, letting the man float so that he might regain his breath, only so they could choke it out of him again. Louis felt furious, he felt sick, he felt helpless watching this grotesque spectacle.

  The third time the man was hauled from the water he was not let down again, but left to kick at the rope’s end. “Watch this!” Brunhard said to Louis. Louis pulled his eyes from the dying man, looked at the stout shipmaster. There was a bright look in his eye, a bit of a smile on his lips, and it was genuine. Brunhard was enjoying himself.

  “Sometimes there are sharks,” Brunhard said, “but I guess we will not be so lucky today.”

  Forward, one of Brunhard’s men had pulled a bow and a quiver of arrows out from some safe place. He nocked an arrow and aimed it at the hanging man as he drew back the string. He paused, just a beat, then let the arrow fly. It flashed across the short distance and embedded itself in the man’s shoulder and the man let out a scream, as much as he could scream, and kicked harder still.

  “My man did not miss, in case you wondered,” Brunhard said. “He was aiming for the shoulder and he hit what he aimed at. Excellent archer, he always does.”

  And as if to demonstrate that fact, the archer loosed another arrow which hit the Irish slave in the opposite shoulder. The man kicked some more, but the strength was going out of him now.

  The archer nocked another arrow. He looked aft at Brunhard and Brunhard nodded to him. He drew back the bow and fired and the arrow came in under the hanging man’s chin and the tip erupted in a jet of blood from the back of his skull. He twitched a few times and then hung limp.

  For a long time there was silence aboard the three ships as all eyes were on the horror at the end of the rope. Then Brunhard nodded at Áed. The Irishman gave a brusque order and the dead man was lowered down and swung inboard, the noose taken off his neck and his body tossed into the sea.

  “Any one of you bastards say one word, do one thing that does not please your master,” Áed shouted in his big voice, “and that will be your fate!”

  No one spoke, which did not surprise Louis in the least. The yard was lowered back to the gallows, the oars manned, the three ships began to gather way once again.

  “You see,” Brunhard said to Louis, the familiar jovial tone in his voice. “I give these sorry bastards some entertainment, they are good and docile the rest of the voyage!”

  “I see,” Louis said. And he did, more than he wished to see. He saw what he wished he had seen before taking passage with this Frisian madman.

  Then one of the sailors, who had climbed up on top of the yard resting on the gallows, called out. “Master Brunhard, there are three…no, four ships to the west of us!”

  Brunhard looked up sharp at the man. “Are they making for us?”

  “No, Master Brunhard. They’re just lying there. No sail set. Hard to see against the land. Oh, one of them is setting sail!”

  “Ha! More of these Norse dogs, I’ll warrant!” Brunhard said. “You see, Louis the Frank! More fun for us!” But this time Louis could hear a different tone in the man’s voice, and the amusement did not sound quite so genuine.

  Chapter Twelve

  Hew wood in wind, sail the seas in a breeze,

  woo a maid in the dark, for day's eyes are many…

  M
axims for all Men

  The hunters lay in wait for some time longer, watching the merchant ships crawl south. Like the gray wolf that is hard to spot in the shadows of the forest, Thorgrim’s ships were not easily seen against the land, and as the sun moved to the west, seeing them became harder still. Nothing about the way the merchantmen moved suggested alarm.

  “Hold a minute!” Starri called down from the masthead. “They’ve stopped now… They’ve gathered together…like women at the fence exchanging gossip!”

  Thorgrim waited for more, but Starri said nothing else. The three ships had all met up, not sailing, not rowing, just drifting in a little clump. Thorgrim could see that much from the deck. They were two miles away, perhaps a bit more, from where Thorgrim’s fleet lay inshore of them.

  He waited for what he thought was a reasonable time, and then called up, “What now, Starri?”

  “They’re still…” Starri began, and then stopped. “No, they’re underway again, and…” He paused, apparently trying to figure what the merchant ships were up to, then called out again, his voice bright with excitement.

  “They’re rowing now!” he shouted. “Oh, they’ve seen us, and they’re rowing like the great serpent Jörmungandr is biting their asses! Ha, ha!” Starri laughed in that particular way he did, just on the edge of hysteria. “No, wait…ah, now they’re setting sail, the cowardly dogs!”

  Starri, Thorgrim knew, was hoping for some bloody fight across the decks of the ships, but once again he was pretty sure the man would be disappointed. Merchants tended to run until they could run no more, and then give up and wish for the best.

  “They can run as fast as they like,” Thorgrim called, “but they cannot run fast enough.” Then, in a louder voice, one calculated to be heard aboard Sea Hammer as well as the other three ships lying near, he said, “Make sail! All hands make sail! Let us run these frightened rabbits down!”