For long seconds they remained motionless, staring into the dark, their ears straining to hear any sign that they had been discovered, that the clattering noise had given them away. But there was nothing, no sound at all. Thorgrim could hear the scurrying of a mouse somewhere off in a corner. He realized he had been holding his breath. He let it out, slowly. He bent down to pick up the door and the others returned to their tasks, moving quicker now than they had been.
Failend was collecting up candlesticks and adding them gently to the pile. She saves the bread but helps us take the silver and gold? Thorgrim thought. He wondered if perhaps Failend was mad. But he realized that the other Christ men must also believe the bread had some sort of magical charms, or they would not have stored it in that honored place behind the silver door.
Harald searched the rest of the raised area on which the altar stood and came up with a small, ornate silver box tucked into an alcove. He snatched it up and carried it over to the growing pile of plunder on the floor. Before he could set it down, however, Failend stopped him with a hand on his elbow. She said something, soft, and reached for the box. Harald frowned, held it tighter, glanced over at Thorgrim.
Thorgrim nodded. Harald offered up the box and Failend carried it over to the altar and set it down. She flipped the lid open and reached into the box and extracted a white silk cloth on which rested some object Thorgrim could not identify. She spoke to Harald in a whisper.
“She says this is a thing they call a ‘relic,’ and it’s of no value to us, but much value to the Christians,” Harald said. “She says we can take the box, but there’s no reason to take the relic.”
Thorgrim stepped over to the altar. He pulled the silk aside. Resting on the cloth was what looked to him to be a few bones from a human hand, but very old, dried and brown. He looked over at Failend, saw the pleading in her big, brown eyes. He flipped the silk back over the bones and nodded.
Harald put the small silver chest with the other things. That was all there was to find in that part of the church, and the pile was already big enough that Harald had some difficulty wrapping it up in the linen robe, lashing it closed, and hauling the makeshift sack down to the center of the church.
The others were there with their own sacks, some nearly as full as Harald’s, some less so, but all bulging with riches.
“Well done,” Thorgrim said.
“Like stealing from a sleeping man,” Thorodd Bollason said. “We’ll be gone before they even know we were here.”
Oh, don’t say that, Thorgrim thought. Don’t taunt the gods that way.
And then, like a messenger sent by Odin himself, Vali came through the side door, moving as fast as the need for quiet would allow.
“Thorgrim,” he hissed. “There are men coming. Many men. They’re armed. And they’re coming this way.”
Chapter Ten
A large band of wicked men…had been plundering the territories
in the manner of the heathens.
Annals of Ulster
There was no need for Thorgrim to tell the others what to do. They already knew.
The plunder had been wrapped and tied into five white bundles and set on the floor. Now these were hefted up over shoulders and the Norsemen followed Vali out the door and into the night.
“Where?” Thorgrim whispered.
“There,” Vali said, pointing toward the front of the church.
“Stay here,” Thorgrim said to the others. He and Vali moved fast toward the front end of the great stone building, keeping to the shadows near the wall. They found Armod at the corner, down on one knee, peering at the grounds beyond. He stood and stepped back as Thorgrim approached.
“There, Thorgrim,” he whispered. Thorgrim leaned an inch beyond the building’s edge. There were men moving across the open ground, more than a dozen for certain. Thorgrim thought at first these might be Cónán’s men, who were apparently not too keen on plundering a Christian holy place, but happy enough to stand guard.
But these were not Cónán’s men, Thorgrim could see that. They carried shields, which Cónán’s men and his own did not. Thorgrim could not tell in the dark if they wore mail, but they seemed to have helmets on their heads, another thing the fast-moving raiders had opted to leave behind.
What was it that alerted them? Thorgrim wondered. Was it my dropping that cursed door? If so, they had reacted swiftly. He doubted five minutes had passed since the door had hit the stone floor. He wondered if maybe there were armed men kept at the ready, men Louis did not know about. Or men that Louis did know about, but had failed to mention.
Whoever these men were, they were advancing quickly but cautiously, strung out in a line with a few feet between each of them and making for the front of the church. They knew that the Norse raiders were here, somewhere, and they had come to stop them.
“We don’t want this fight,” Thorgrim whispered. “Let’s go.” He led the way back to where the others waited by the door. “Armed men,” he told them. “About twenty, coming toward the church.”
“Where’s that Irishman, Cónán, and his lot?” Armod whispered. “Thought they were supposed to be looking out.”
“I don’t know,” Thorgrim said, though he had been wondering the same thing, and wondering if he and his men had been betrayed. Again. “And I don’t care right now. We need to be gone.”
He looked around. They could not go back the way they had come, they would run right into the blades of the advancing men-at-arms. So they would have to move off in the other direction, keeping the church between them and the soldiers for as long as they could.
“This way, let’s go,” Thorgrim said. He headed off at a jog toward the far end of the church, which screened them as they moved away from the advancing men. Behind him, he heard the other men and Failend hurrying along. Five robes full of plunder hung over the men’s shoulders and they made a soft jingling sound as they ran, a sound that seemed as loud as a bell announcing their presence.
They kept to the shadows as much as they could until they reached the far end of the church, the edge of their shelter. Beyond that, between them and the wall, was a hundred feet of open, moonlit ground. Thorgrim looked back in the direction they had come. He could see no one, none of the men-at-arms who were hunting for them, which meant they were still on the other side of the church. He wondered if they would play it safe and stay together, or be smart and spread out so they could cover all the grounds.
He pointed toward the wall east of them. “We’ll get there as fast as we can, get up and over,” he whispered. If the hunters kept to the front of the church, then he and his men would be hidden from view as they crossed the open ground.
He took a step toward the distant wall and felt a hand grab his shoulder. He turned and Failend was there, looking up at him. She spoke in a whisper, the words quick and urgent.
“She asks if you mean to go over the wall there,” Harald said.
Thorgrim nodded and Failend spoke again.
“She says that wall runs along a gully, it drops twenty feet straight down on the other side.”
In his mind Thorgrim shouted in frustration, but he kept his lips pressed together and considered what next to do. But Failend was speaking again and pointing to her right.
“She says there’s a door in the wall, there, and it leads to a garden. There’s a wall around the garden, but we can get over that,” Harald said.
Thorgrim nodded. They would be in the open as they raced for the door, the church no longer hiding them. But if they ran in any other direction they would just be going further into the monastic grounds, moving directly away from their line of escape.
“Very well,” Thorgrim said to the others. “We go for the door to the garden.” In the patchy moonlight and the deep shadows Thorgrim could not actually see a door, so Failend would have to lead the way, and Thorgrim could only hope that she was not wrong and not betraying them. He turned to her and nodded his head in the direction she had indicated. She nodded her
understanding, glanced back toward the front of the church, then took off running.
Failend was fast, like a rabbit, Thorgrim thought as he followed behind. It took only a dozen paces for him to realize she could easily leave him in her wake if she so chose. Behind him he heard the others also running flat out, the mail and the plunder and the weapons making a soft sound as they moved.
It took seconds to cross the open ground, no more. As they came up with the wall Thorgrim could see the door at last, a small wooden affair, the height of a man, set into the stone and surrounded by vines and leaves that made it seem like part of the shadows in the night.
Failend came to a stop, glanced back over her shoulder, and then lifted the latch. The door was partway open by the time Thorgrim and the others reached her. They slowed their pace, keeping as quiet as they could, quiet enough that they could not be heard from the far side of the church, or so Thorgrim hoped. But he was wrong.
The shout came just as Failend was pushing the door open and stepping through, a loud cry that carried with it notes of warning and surprise. There was a pause, another cry, and then the night was filled with noise as someone called out orders in the Irish language. From the grounds at the front and side of the church men came running with no effort made at caution. There was no longer any need for caution.
“Go! Go!” Thorgrim shouted. He stepped aside, pointed toward the open door, drew Iron-tooth as he turned to watch the men-at-arms advance. They were coming at a run, their approach a disorganized rush, which might have been fatal to them if Thorgrim’s men had been in a position to put up much of a fight. But the Northmen were outnumbered, loaded down with plunder, and they had no helmets or shields.
The nearest of the men-at-arms was no more than fifty feet away when the last of Thorgrim’s men dashed through the door and Thorgrim turned and followed him through. He pushed the door closed behind him and saw there was no latch on the inside. He cursed. A latch might have bought them the few seconds they would need to get over the garden wall and away.
Thorgrim turned and raced into the garden. It was about one hundred feet on either side, enclosed by a stone wall like the rest of the monastery. Paths cut through the grounds at right angles and were intersected by others that formed concentric circles, with a great granite cross at the center. Between the paths were stands of vegetation, no more than dark shapes in the night, and a few statues that stood like guards scattered throughout the place, robed figures of men and women staring serenely toward their unwelcome visitors.
Failend was shouting something and pointing to a place on the wall at the far side of the garden. Thorgrim nodded and Failend took off at a run once more and the others behind her, and then Thorgrim heard the door behind him swing open.
No easy escape for us, he thought. He spun around in time to meet a sword coming down at his head. He raised Iron-tooth, knocked the sword aside, kicked the assailant hard in the stomach, driving him back into the man behind him. They stumbled, both of them, and Thorgrim turned and dashed after the others.
Failend had reached the wall, with Godi right behind her. Godi threw his bundle over, grabbed up the next and threw that as well. But Thorgrim knew they would not be able to get over the wall, not all of them, before the Irish were on them. And that would not do. Either they all got over the wall, or none of them did.
“Too late!” Thorgrim shouted. He could hear the Irishmen at his heels, no more than fifteen feet behind him. “Turn and fight! Turn and fight!”
As he shouted those words he did exactly that, digging his foot into the ground to stop his forward momentum, spinning around, sword up. He could see the look of surprise on the face of the man behind him, but the soldier still had the presence of mind to raise his shield and deflect the blow from Iron-tooth that was aimed at his neck.
Thorgrim leaned to the side, stuck out his leg as the Irishman kept coming. The man’s ankle caught Thorgrim’s and he went down, face first, landing with an audible thud. Thorgrim could hear the breath knocked from his chest, but he did not wait to see what he or the man behind him would do. He turned and continued on at a run, charging for the wall, even as his men abandoned their attempt to get over and turned with weapons drawn.
A statue stood just to Thorgrim’s left, the size of a real man and standing atop a four-foot pedestal, an imposing figure in granite. Thorgrim took three steps and grabbed the statue with his left hand, using it to check his flight and to swing himself around so he was facing his pursuer, the statue between them.
The Irishman paused, sword and shield ready. He was a young man but had the look of a warrior. It was dark, but from what Thorgrim could see there was no fear on his face, no uncertainty. He leaned left, right, then lunged as Thorgrim appeared around the statue’s stone-carved robes.
Thorgrim ducked back, lunged from the other side of the statue, but the soldier was fast and he caught the sword with his shield. The Irishman leapt forward, hoping to reach Thorgrim with the point of his weapon, but Thorgrim continued to sidestep around the statue, moving right as the man-at-arms moved left in their weird circling dance.
The Irishman lunged again and Thorgrim twisted out of the way. He twisted back and took a big, ugly swipe at the man, one meant to make him leap in the opposite direction, which obligingly he did. Thorgrim spun around and lunged, backhand, from the other side of the statue, catching the Irishman in the shoulder just as he thought he was ducking clear. Thorgrim felt the tip of Iron-tooth pierce mail and he heard the Irishman shout, more in surprise than pain, and leap back. He was wounded, but not terribly. There was fight in him still.
As the man stumbled away from Thorgrim’s blade, Thorgrim half turned and looked around the garden. There were ten individual fights spread out over the enclosed area, his own men each taking on two or more of the enemy, using the statues and the garden beds as cover. He could see blades blinking in the moonlight, could hear the grunt of men putting all their bodily strength into sword strikes and wielding their shields in defense.
Failend had joined in the fray. She was at Godi’s side and the two of them were fending off the attack of two of the men-at-arms. It was almost comical, the massive Godi and the diminutive Failend, but she was quick and able to keep out of the way of the Irish swords, able to distract the men-at-arms. She did not have proficiency enough to be an immediate threat to her attackers, but neither could they ignore her. She certainly was capable of driving her seax into an undefended neck or thigh.
This would not last long, and Thorgrim knew it. There was no way for him or his men to get over the wall without being hacked down in the process, and no way they could fight for long against these odds. Already the man Thorgrim had been fighting was coming back at him, his wound not severe enough to put him down. Another was coming to his aid.
Then the night was split by a wild scream, a banshee shriek. Terrible. Thorgrim felt the hair stand up on his neck. The wail came from the monastery grounds, not the garden. It seemed to freeze everyone where they stood, and Thorgrim thought, This is either Cónán come to help us or the Valkyrie come to take us away.
In either case, he knew the fighting would be over soon.
Chapter Eleven
He hath need of his wits who wanders wide,
aught simple will serve at home
Hávamál
Cónán was around nine years old when his parents died. They died writhing on their pallets, clutching their stomachs and moaning. Three of his seven siblings went that way as well, all within a week. No one knew what exactly had killed them and few really cared.
Cónán cared. He feared there was some evil spirit that had come for the family. But he also had greater, more immediate concerns. Such as how he might survive.
That worry gained greater urgency a week later when the local rí túaithe sent his men to drive Cónán and his remaining brother and two sisters from their home. It was just a miserable wattle and thatch hut on the three acres of swampy, rush-covered land the family farmed. B
ut with the parents dead there would be no more farming, and thus no more paying rent, and so the remnants of the family had to go.
The children stuck together for a while, but one incident after another split them off until Cónán was alone. It was then that he fell in with a clutch of outlaws, men and women who forged their living in any way they could. The life was hard, ugly, generally short. But it was not a solitary life. Being part of the outlaw band meant being part of something. Not a family, but close.
And, hard as it was, it was not the miserable existence that his parents and grandparents and ancestors on back beyond memory had lived, toiling without respite, laboring to enrich the rí túaithe in exchange for no more than the opportunity to survive, if only for a while.
Cónán was powerless, a boy among men, and treated with the casual brutality that was the lot of any child in such circumstance. But he was suited for the outlaw life, the way a shark is suited to the sea. He grew strong and agile and he could endure extraordinary punishment. That, of course, was true of anyone who survived as a bandit for more than a few months. But he was also smart, which was a trait much less common.
He moved easily between various outlaw bands, even joined with a crew of Norsemen for a while and learned their ways. He came to know nearly all the itinerant criminals in that part of Ireland, and came to know the countryside well, which was as important to survival as cunning and skill with weapons.
And the local rí túaithe and their house guards knew him—and wanted him dead. But he always remained just beyond their reach.
The outlaw bands organized themselves like wolf packs. Outsiders were treated with suspicion. Proving one’s self was a long and generally bloody affair. Chiefs led their men through strength first, and cleverness second, and if they showed weakness they were torn apart. All this Cónán came to understand. He learned how to position himself in the pack. As a result, he was in just the right place to goad his former chief into a stupid fight with the Northman, and then step in and take command even as the dumb ox’s blood was still running out on the sand.
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