Glendalough Fair: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga) (Volume 4)

by James L. Nelson

  Two men of Colman’s guard had died. Their bodies were wrapped in blankets and strapped to their horses to be given a Christian burial at the next village church the riders reached. The bodies of the brigands were left to the ravens and crows, which were already taking tentative stabs at the still-warm flesh as Colman, Failend and the guard rode away.

  It was no epic battle, just a sharp fight between a gang of robbers on the road and men-at-arms protecting their rich employer. The sort of encounter that happened a dozen times a week in Ireland. But in the year since it had taken place, not a day had gone by that Failend had not seen it all again in her mind. She knew that the memory should have filled her with horror and revulsion, but it did not. She knew she should tell her confessor about the perverse pleasure she took in recalling the event, but when the time came to do so it always slipped her mind.

  Colman took a step in her direction. “Get up,” he said. Failend pulled the fur further over her and glared up at him. “I said get up,” Colman repeated, the menace thick in his voice.

  It was pointless to resist him. Failend knew that. She was five feet two inches tall and weighed not much more than seven stone. Colman might have been old and fat, but he was not weak.

  She threw the fur aside, got to her feet and stood facing him, not trying in any way to hide her nakedness. She could not stop him from doing what he would. The best she could do was to make her contempt and defiance clear, to show no fear. So she stood and held his eyes and did not move at all as his fist swung around in a wide arc and slammed into the side of her head.

  Failend fell sideways, sprawled out on the rush-covered floor, landing just inches from the fire in the hearth. But she would not know that until she regained consciousness forty minutes later.

  Chapter Five

  Greetings, my host! A guest has come.

  Where shall he be seated?

  He must be sharp, seated by the fire,

  And demonstrate his wit.

  Hávamál

  The riders were still half a mile away, dark moving shapes against the dull green of the spring grass. A dozen perhaps, no more. From that distance, through the pouring rain, it would have been difficult to say they were riders at all if Thorgrim was not so accustomed to the sight of men on horseback seen from some ways off.

  “They have not changed the direction they were riding?” Thorgrim asked Sutare Thorvaldsson who had command of the guard on top of the wall.

  “No, lord,” Sutare said. “Not since we saw them. They were making right for the longphort and have not changed course at all.”

  Thorgrim grunted in acknowledgement. They had to be Irish. Northmen, if they rode across country at all, would not do so in so small a number. In fact, Thorgrim was fairly certain he knew who this was, but he kept his own council because he might also be wrong, and it never did a leader’s reputation any good to be wrong, even in small matters.

  He turned to Sutare. “I’m getting out of this cursed rain. When they reach the gate send word to me. If they choose to attack I’ll trust you can hold them off.”

  Sutare grinned. “I’ll call for help, lord, if there’s a danger of them overrunning us.”

  Thorgrim climbed down from the wall and crossed the plank road to his hall. He could feel the effects of the fight in his arms, in various bruises, in the laceration in his side which had not been attended to. No one seemed to think the brawl had been more than an outbreak of the spontaneous violence to which bored, half drunk, frustrated men, men who lived lives of violence, were prone. But Thorgrim could not shake the image of Kjartan making his bold attack, sword and ax in hand, mail gleaming dull in the rain, his chief men surrounding him.

  The fire inside the hall was roaring and the relief was immediate as he pushed through the heavy oak door. He reached up to undo the cloak which he had somewhat pointlessly donned, but his slave, a young Irishman named Segan, was there in an instant. Segan had been wounded and left behind in the Irish attack on Vík-ló the previous year. He was not the smartest lad, which was why he had not yet contrived to escape, a thing that should have been fairly easy to do, but he served Thorgrim tolerably well.

  Segan took Thorgrim’s cloak and set it aside, then took the sword and belt that Thorgrim handed him. Thorgrim did not bother to tell Segan to dry and oil Iron-tooth because Segan knew to do so without being told. Segan had gained considerable experience in dealing with rain-soaked gear. He met Thorgrim’s eyes and gestured to a dry tunic and leggings that were laid out on a bench near the fire.

  They had no language in common, which made things awkward at first. When necessary Harald, who had all but mastered the Irish tongue, translated Thorgrim’s commands. But now that was rarely needed. Segan had learned to anticipate Thorgrim’s orders, had come to understand his habits. Thorgrim in turn treated Segan decently, did not beat him or starve him as some did their slaves, and allowed him to sleep on straw in a corner of the hall.

  With Segan’s help Thorgrim stripped off his wet clothing, as wet as if he had leapt into the sea. Segan sucked in his breath as he saw the bloody wound on Thorgrim’s side, the sound a bit more dramatic than was called for, Thorgrim felt.

  “Agnarr,” Thorgrim called, “would you please bind this up,” he said, pointing to his side. “I would wish to have it secured before our Irish friends arrive.”

  Agnarr stood, took a cursory look at the wound, and then found some bandages and bound them around Thorgrim’s side. He did the work quickly and skillfully and Thorgrim was grateful for that. If the newcomers were the men he thought they were, he did not wish them to know the Norsemen had come close to the point of killing one another.

  Wound bandaged, Thorgrim dried himself and pulled the new clothes on, which were blessedly warm. It was a luxury to have a shift of clothes, a luxury that Thorgrim had not known since leaving his farm in East Agder. The new garments had belonged to Fasti Magnisson, one of the former leaders of Vík-ló who had been killed by the Irish before Thorgrim arrived at the longphort. It was Fasti’s hall which Bersi now occupied, but Thorgrim had laid claim to the clothes, which fit him admirably.

  Most of the house guard were back and seated in the same places they had been before they turned out for the disturbance by the river. The windows were shuttered against the storm and the only light in the hall came from the great fire in the hearth, which made for brilliant illumination within a dozen feet of the blaze and increasing dark and shadow in the farther reaches of the big room. Gusts of wind and rain hammered the building and blew smoke back through the smoke holes in the roof until it swirled around above the men’s heads.

  As Thorgrim shifted clothing Harald stood a few feet away, looking for an opportunity to be helpful. “Did you see the riders, father?” he asked, taking the wet clothes from Segan. “Are they many?”

  “A dozen perhaps. If I don’t miss my guess, it’s Kevin…mic…”

  “Kevin mac Lugaed,” Harald offered. Thorgrim struggled with the odd Irish names but Harald seemed able pronounce them like a native, if Thorgrim was any judge. Which of course he was not.

  “Yes, Kevin mac Lugaed,” Thorgrim repeated, mangling the pronunciation once again. “Him and his guard.”

  Thorgrim was not worried about the possibility of being wrong in front of Harald. They were father and son, and after more than two years of raiding and voyaging in each other’s company there was nothing Harald did not know about him, the good and the bad, the strength and the weakness. And still Harald seemed to view him at times as some character from the old stories of the gods, some denizen of the Asgardian realm. Thorgrim was content to leave that impression intact, and he knew that the occasional mistake on his part would not shake it. If it did, then it would have been shaken long before.

  Starri looked up from where he was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall and nearly lost in shadow. “That Irishman, you say?” Starri asked. “The one who came before?” Starri did not even try to pronounce his name.

  “Yes,
I think it is,” Thorgrim said. “He rides with that banner, the green one with the raven. It seemed to me I could see one of them carrying a banner aloft, though it was too far to see what emblem it bore.”

  “I wonder what he wants now,” Starri said.

  “Not sure,” Thorgrim said. “Whatever it is, I’ll wager it’s interesting.”

  “Huh,” Starri said. “We sit on our asses for four months, and then everything of interest takes place on a single day.”

  Everything of interest, Thorgrim thought. He wondered if the three men Starri had knocked to insensibility felt the day had been interesting. At least Harald had managed to stop Starri from killing anyone in his berserker frenzy.

  But still Thorgrim was intrigued at the possibility of Kevin mac Lugaed’s arrival, of what he might bring. Perhaps he would bring the very distraction that the men of Vík-ló so desperately needed.

  The door opened and Sutare Thorvaldsson stepped in, and with some effort he shut the door behind him. Water was running off his tunic and dripping from the end of his scabbard. “Lord, the Irishmen are at the gate. It’s that fellow, been here before. Kevin….”

  “Yes, let them in. Bring him and half his men here. Send the other half to Bersi’s hall, let them drink his ale.”

  “Yes, lord,” Sutare said. He opened the door and a gust of wind carried the rain in with such force that Thorgrim felt it on his face where he stood by the fire. Sutare ducked out and again closed the door behind him.

  “Godi,” Thorgrim turned to the big man who was standing by the hearth, hands held out as if trying to fend off the flames. “Go and tell Bersi that the Irishman is here. Ask him to come join me so we may talk with him. Find Skidi Oddson and tell him the same.”

  “Yes, lord,” Godi said. He grabbed up his cloak and swung it around his shoulders, giving Thorgrim a few seconds more to make a decision. By all rights Kjartan should be included in this council. He was one of the lead men of Vík-ló and had taken part in every other. But then he had just staged a bloody fight for the express purpose of luring Thorgrim in and killing him.

  Or had he? Thorgrim had not yet had time to discover the cause of the fight, and the more he considered his suspicions, the more lunatic they seemed. He did not want the men of Vík-ló rent by further division, and he did not want Kevin mac Lugaed to see any weakness there.

  “Godi,” Thorgrim said as the big man reached for the door. “Get Kjartan as well.”

  “Yes, lord,” Godi said, and good man that he was he did not question that decision.

  Let Kjartan come, Thorgrim thought. We’ll discover the truth of his loyalty soon enough.

  Godi opened the door and once again the rain blew in, and Thorgrim felt a twinge of regret at sending the man, who had nearly dried himself. out into the deluge once again.

  Ah, you grow old and soft, Night Wolf… he thought to himself. In his younger days the comfort of his men would not even have crossed his mind. He was not certain which was the better man, Thorgrim then or now.

  Chapter Six

  Gauls, Aquitanians, Burgundians and Spaniards,

  Alemanians and Bavarians thought themselves distinguished

  if they deserved to go by the name of servants to the Franks.

  Notker

  In truth, Louis de Roumois knew exactly how he had come to be standing in the mud, naked and shivering in an alley in some monastery town at the very ragged edge of civilization. It was an unhappy story, if not a particularly unusual one. If he could take comfort in only one thing, it was the fact that this fate was not his fault. At least, not entirely.

  Louis was from the region of Roumois in Frankia, from the city of Rouen on the banks of the Seine, forty miles from where that wide, twisting river emptied into the sea. It was a beautiful county of low, rolling hills and fertile fields, where the weather was mostly good and it did not constantly rain as if God was trying to put an end to His creation.

  The rich soil and the tolerable climate made for a general prosperity among the people of Roumois, or so it always seemed to Louis, who did not in truth have much interaction with the class of men who worked the land. He tended to see them only on those times when he and his warriors rode up to the beaten yard of some pathetic hut and demanded that the terrified farmer or his wife or children find water for their horses. He knew better than to ask for food or ale. Even if the people had it, it would not be anything Louis de Roumois would consider putting in his mouth.

  If the farmer and his family did as they were told, and did it promptly, Louis might reward them with a silver coin and then order his men to remount. They would ride off and leave the people in peace, which was the reward they wanted most of all, though Louis never understood that.

  Louis’ father was Hincmar, the count of Roumois, son of Eberhard, count of Roumois. After the death of Louis the Pious, Hincmar had stood by Charles the Bald, fourth son of the late king, in the subsequent civil war that broke out between him and his two brothers. He stood by Charles during the worst of the fighting, during his struggles with Aquitaine, remained loyal and kept up the fight even when Charles’s army could boast of nothing beside their tattered clothes, weapons and horses.

  Following the Treaty of Verdun, Charles the Bald gained the kingship of West Frankia, which he had in effect been ruling for the five years previous to that. Hincmar’s loyalty, steadfast through the worst of times, was not forgotten by the new king. Hincmar found himself in a very good position indeed: his land, tenants and titles much increased, his position and influence in the court of Charles the Bald unassailable.

  All of this the young Louis de Roumois knew in a general way. For a good part of his childhood his father had been absent, either fighting or intriguing at court. Louis spent his days pursuing those things that interested him. He became skilled at horseback riding and hunting, falconing, wrestling, fencing, archery, swimming and avoiding his tutors.

  Though he had been too young to participate in the war, Louis was drawn to the notion of fighting. Unlike his father, however, he had no interest in nor aptitude for politics, intrigue or statecraft. But Louis did not have to worry about affairs of state because he was not the eldest son.

  His brother, named Eberhard after their paternal grandfather, would inherit the title of count. The governing of the Roumois was his problem. Louis had only to enjoy the great bounty of the region, and the benefits of being born into the regnum, the ruling class, while remaining free of the responsibility of actually ruling.

  Like any young man of his standing, Louis had trained with weapons from a young age, and unlike many he had a natural gift for the use of them, and loved all things military. At fifteen he begged his father to give him some role in the defense of Roumois. His father considered his son too frivolous and immature to take on such a responsibility, and he made no secret of the fact. But Louis persisted, and managed to make such a nuisance of himself that his father relented, as much to shut the young man up as anything.

  Domestic tranquility was not Hincmar’s only motive, however. Charles the Bald had secured peace with his brothers, but now there was a new threat to Roumois, carried on the very river that ran like life’s blood through the region. Norsemen. Danes, mostly. The brutal raiders from the north were coming upriver in their swift longships and plundering the countryside. Their appearance was a profound terror but it was no surprise. The riches to be found in Frankia, the churches bursting with silver, the wealthy estates at the water’s edge, could not go unnoticed forever.

  Roumois had warriors enough to counter the threat but Hincmar needed the right man to lead them, someone he could trust completely, someone who would maintain the prestige of his family and not see this as a chance to gain power for himself. Louis was impetuous and sometimes foolish, but he had proven his courage and his skill, and Hincmar did not doubt his loyalty. He appointed Louis to lead a division of two hundred horsemen and set him the task of defending Roumois against the Northmen when next they appeared.

&nbs
p; To act as counterweight to Louis’ rash tendencies, Hincmar also appointed as second in command a man named Ranulf, an old campaigner with whom he had fought during the war for West Frankia. Hincmar made his wishes perfectly clear; Louis was in command, but when it came to fighting Ranulf would make the decisions. Someday, Hincmar told his son, with enough years and experience behind him, and if he learned what Ranulf had to teach, he might lead the men in something other than name only. But not yet.

  Louis understood what his father told him. Then, a month later, when word came that the Northmen were on the Seine, he promptly ignored it all.

  The mounted men-at-arms had been training under Louis’s ostensible leadership when the first of a stream of messengers arrived, this one from Fontenelle, twenty miles downstream from Roumois. The Danes had come.

  Not a moment was wasted. The men-at-arms slipped on mail, belted on swords, strapped helmets in place and rode off west. Plumes of smoke rising up over the rolling green hills marked those places where the Danes had come ashore and done their work, moving faster than even mounted troops could travel, and Louis led the men in that direction.

  “Lord,” Ranulf said, his horse keeping pace with Louis’s as they rode. “Where the smoke is, the heathens have already been. If we want to catch them, which we do, we should send scouts down to the river, east of where that village is burning.”

  Louis understood the point that Ranulf was making and he ignored it the same way he was ignoring his father’s instructions. He did not care to be told what to do. As the son of the count he was not accustomed to it.

  “I want to see what’s become of this village,” he said, hoping to justify the mistake he had already made. “I want to see if there’s any help we can bring.”