Night Wolf: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 5)

by James L. Nelson

  The raid on Glendalough had been an undeniable failure, but still Ottar had managed to take some pleasure in the outcome. They had sailed off with all but one of Thorgrim’s fleet of ships. They had left Thorgrim and his men to be killed by the Irish. And best of all, they had taken Vík-ló for themselves. Vík-ló and the considerable hoard of plunder that Thorgrim and his men had accumulated.

  The timing was fortunate, to say the least. Ottar had suffered one failure after another, sacking monasteries that turned out to have nothing worth taking, having his ship all but sink under him. His frustration had become so great, and his leadership so precarious, that he had been driven mad by the worthlessness of the village they had taken at the river mouth. In his madness he had killed every Irishman, woman, or child there on whom he could get his hands or blade.

  He knew that others wanted to challenge his position as leader of the men, and it was only a matter of time before someone found the courage to actually do it. And then the day would come that Ottar met a man who could defeat him. It might be years, and many men might die at his hands until then, but the day would come.

  Or maybe that day had come already; maybe he had already met that man. Thorgrim Night Wolf was not in the least intimidated by him, and that made Ottar furious, and just a bit unsettled. But the gods had favored Ottar, as they always did. In one stroke he had gone from the edge of the abyss to being Lord of Vík-ló, with the longphort and all its wealth now his and his men’s to share out.

  “Son…of…a…whore…” Ottar stammered. He was trying to summon the resolve to rise and find his slave and beat him to death for his negligence when the frightened man came dashing out from behind the wall with another full cup of mead. Ottar snatched it and took an awkward swipe at the servant, but the man ducked and was gone in an instant and Ottar did not have the energy to pursue him.

  Night Wolf…

  It was the only flaw in all his good luck, the only imperfection in his success. But it was a huge imperfection, like a gaping hole in the bottom of an otherwise perfect longship. He had not seen Thorgrim die. He had left Thorgrim in such a way that it seemed impossible that he could live. But he had not actually seen the man die, and so he could not be certain that he was, at that moment, half frozen in the bitter realm of Hel.

  It had not seemed like so great a problem at first. Any worries had been tamped down by the wealth found at Vík-ló, the respect he had gained among his men, both those who had been with him some time and those more newly joined.

  But then came the business with the shipwright seeing the wolf. And then the dead men.

  Ottar threw the cup away and struggled to his feet. He had not wandered more than twenty paces from the door of his hall since the first man had been found with his throat ripped out. He knew that his men were starting to talk about it. Soon they would do more than talk.

  There was a knock on the door and Ottar gasped in surprise and jerked his head in that direction, then cursed himself for a weak fool. “Come!” he shouted and the door opened, Ketil Hrafnsson standing at the threshold, framed by a grey, midday sky. He stepped in quick, closed the door behind him. Ketil knew, as did all Ottar’s men, that the door was not to remain open long.

  “What?” Ottar demanded. His eyes were tearing up and he was having trouble focusing. He looked around for his slave and another cup of mead.

  “I was down by the shipyard, down where the shipwright, Aghen, works,” Ketil began.

  “Aghen?” Ottar said. “Is he back? What news?” He felt a sudden flash of hope. Was the wolf dead and hanging from a pole just outside his door?

  “No, lord, Aghen has not come back,” Ketil said, with just the hint of a patronizing tone in his voice. Ottar was about to slap him down, verbally, at least, but the man spoke again before he could summon a response.

  “I was down at the shipyard, like I said,” Ketil continued. “Looking for some planks. For a new table. We talked about that.”

  “Yes, yes,” Ottar said.

  “As I was going through the stacks of wood there I saw where something had been buried. I dug it up and found this.” Ketil lifted his arm and Ottar noticed for the first time that he held something at his side, a tool of some sort, it seemed, but nothing Ottar recognized. Ketil held it out and Ottar took it in both hands, squinting at it in the dull light, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

  There were two handles, joined at a pivot, like the tongs a blacksmith might use, but they were made of wood. The ends opposite the handles were shaped into two triangular sections of wood with rows of short arrowheads or knife points or some such all fixed along the edges.

  Ottar frowned. He wanted to ask Ketil what it was, but he did not want to appear ignorant. He held the handles and pulled them apart and the triangles at the other end gaped open. He pushed the handles together and the triangles closed, the arrowheads coming together. Like jaws.

  Like a wolf’s jaws.

  Ottar froze. He felt his breath grow shallow. He stared at the thing in his hand. Aghen… he thought. At the shipyard… Aghen who had seen the wolf, who knew all about Thorgrim and his shape-shifting.

  With a curse Ottar pushed past Ketil, threw the door open, and stepped out into the muted light of the late afternoon where he could get a better look at this thing in his hands. He held it up and worked the jaws. Open, closed, open. The long handles would allow a man to clamp the jaws down with considerable force. The wicked teeth would be more than sharp enough to rip the throat out of a man’s neck. The business end was shaped in such a way as to perfectly mimic the bite of a wolf.

  He held the jaws up closer to his face. They had been washed, but imperfectly. He could see streaks of blood clearly enough, even bits of dried flesh clinging to the teeth.

  “Son of a bitch!” Ottar roared with the sort of power and authority that had once been his norm, but which had been missing the past week and more. He flung the wooden wolf jaws aside.

  He had been played for a fool, and he felt the fury and humiliation that came with that realization. And he felt relief as well, like the sun breaking through the clouds. Because there was no wolf, and Thorgrim Night Wolf was a man, no more, and if he was not dead already he soon would be.

  But he would not be the first to die. That honor was reserved for the shipwright, Aghen. And his death would not be as merciful as that of the cheater, Valgerd.

  “Ketil!” Ottar roared, and Ketil, who had been standing just outside the door to the hall, came over in three quick steps. “Send riders out to find that bastard dead man Aghen and…” Then he stopped.

  No, he thought. The gods are speaking to me here. It could not be mere chance that he had smashed the table in a blind, drunk rage and then sent Ketil to find planks to replace it. And that instead Ketil had found Aghen’s instrument of lies. The gods did not want Ottar to avenge himself on Aghen alone; they wanted vengeance against them all. That was why they had freed him from his self-imposed prison.

  “Riders, lord?” Ketil prompted.

  “No riders,” Ottar said. “Men. I want men, under arms. We are going to go out and find that bastard Aghen and show him and everyone what happens when men play tricks. And then we will go to where that Kevin mac Lugaed lives and we’ll teach him the same. And if Thorgrim Night Pup still lives, then I know the gods will send him to me so that I can kill him, too. Like I should have done.”

  “Yes, lord,” Ketil said, then turned and hurried off. Ketil was not the smartest or the most loyal; those men had died—at Aghen’s hand, apparently—but Ketil knew better than to do anything but obey, and obey immediately.

  “We’ll hunt them down and we’ll kill them all,” Ottar said out loud, but to no one in particular. If felt good to say it. It felt good to be back in command.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I am an outlaw to most men;

  only arrow-storms await me.

  Gisli Sursson’s Saga

  At first there was nothing that Louis de Roumois could do, n
othing he could think about, save for not falling off the horse. Lochlánn was riding hard, a full gallop, the animal bouncing and jolting over the uneven ground as they raced away from the ambush.

  Louis was seated behind the saddle, straddling the horse’s haunches with no stirrups for his feet, gripping Lochlánn’s belt with one hand and the sack that held the small silver casket with the other. He knew that if he fell he would probably die. Not from the fall itself—he had tumbled off horses more times than he could remember—but at the hands of the heathens and Irish who were no doubt chasing them. The ones he had betrayed just moments before.

  He craned his head around as far as he was able, but he could see nothing of the pursuers. The horse took an odd step and Louis felt himself slip and he used his thighs and his grip on Lochlánn’s belt to reposition himself. A lesser rider, someone not as athletic as Louis, would have been in the grass long before that. But Louis, strong, well accustomed to horses and with a keen sense of self-preservation, managed to hang on.

  Ahead of Lochlánn and on either side of him the other men-at-arms reined their mounts over and raced back in the direction they had come, back toward where they had been before Thorgrim Night Wolf and the Irishman, Cónán, had so cleverly led them into that trap.

  Louis had a grudging appreciation for what they had done. When the five had headed off toward where Lochlánn’s mounted warriors were making ready to attack, and the other Norse and Irishmen under Godi’s command had found their place in the tall grass, Louis imagined that this would be an end to his problems. He did not see how Thorgrim, Cónán, and the others would not all be ridden down and killed. He certainly had not imagined they would come riding back, unscathed, on stolen horses, leading Lochlánn and his men into an ambush.

  He felt Lochlánn lean back a bit as he brought his horse from a gallop to a jog. Louis twisted around and looked back over his shoulder. The heathens and the Irish were three hundred yards behind and seemed to show no interest in pursuing the mounted men-at-arms.

  Pushed your luck far enough, Thorgrim Night Wolf? Louis thought with some small satisfaction, but it did not change the fact that Thorgrim and Cónán had played Lochlánn and his men for fools.

  Louis had counted on Lochlánn’s defeating Thorgrim. When he failed to do so, it meant Louis had to make a number of hard decisions fast, make them right there while he crouched in the tall grass with the others, pretending that he, too, was taking part in the ambush. And the first of those was deciding which side he was on.

  He did not particularly like the Irish, did not feel he had been treated all that well by them. It was possible they were still looking to put him on trial for the killing of Colman’s man Aileran, and maybe even for killing Colman as well.

  The Northmen, however, he loathed bitterly. Nearly half his life had been spent fighting the heathens in his native Roumois as they tried to plunder that county in the same way they plundered Ireland. Of the two, he would choose the Christian Irish over the heathens. If it came to it, he would choose Satan and his minions over the heathens.

  What’s more, he liked Lochlánn very much. He had taught Lochlánn nearly all he knew about warfare, had fought side by side with him. He felt like an older brother to the young Irishman.

  But warning Lochlánn of the trap and running off to join the mounted Irish men-at-arms meant abandoning Failend to the Northmen. A week before, that would have been unthinkable. He would have died protecting Failend from Thorgrim and his band. But quite a bit had changed since then.

  Failend, it seemed, no longer needed protecting from the heathens. None of the Northmen had shown any inclination toward molesting her, which Louis found surprising. But more to the point, Failend had apparently decided to join with them. Despite all her protests about going to Glendalough to keep any Irish from being killed, Louis could see the truth. Failend was going heathen herself.

  So that left only the question of whether he should take the casket of silver which he had been carrying for safekeeping. Failend had killed her husband to obtain it, Louis was quite sure, and that made her claim to the hoard a bit more tenuous in his mind. That silver was his only chance of getting back to Frankia, but if Failend kept it, and she stayed with the heathens, then it would no doubt end up in the Northmen’s hands.

  That, for Louis, was the final argument, and if it was all a load of self-serving manure, he didn’t care and he did not examine it further. He leapt to his feet and ran waving and yelling toward Lochlánn as Lochlánn led his men into the trap. He saved them all, saved them from humiliation and death. And, he had to admit, he felt pretty good about it.

  Lochlánn slowed the horse to a walk and the other riders, about thirty in all, closed in around them and matched Lochlánn’s pace. They rode on toward the stand of trees to which Thorgrim and Cónán had lured them earlier, and more riders came from around the far end and joined the retreating band. Louis waited for Lochlánn to say something, a thank you, a greeting, anything. But they rode in silence.

  He’s got a lot to think about, Louis thought as he readjusted his seat on the horse’s back.

  They came at last to the crest of a low hill and stopped. “Dismount,” Lochlánn called, and the weary men around them slipped off their mounts. Louis swung his leg over the horse’s rump and dropped easily to the ground, and then Lochlánn followed him. He tossed his horse’s reins over the saddle and turned to look at Louis for the first time.

  “Lochlánn,” Louis said. “Not the best circumstances but I’m glad—”

  The blow was so unexpected that Louis barely had time to realize it was coming before Lochlánn’s gloved hand connected with the side of his head. He felt the unwelcome but all too familiar sensation of impact. His head snapped around and he was falling before he was quite aware of what was happening, and by the time he knew for certain, he was in the grass.

  He landed facedown, and by instinct and training rolled over fast, face-up, to see if another blow was coming. Lochlánn was standing over him, red-faced, a deep scowl on his lips, hands bunched into fists. Louis felt the pain in the side of his head in the wake of the blow, the surprise, the swimming sensation, the humiliation of having been struck. But all of it was overshadowed by the brilliant rage that swept over him.

  He rolled to his right, rolled away from Lochlánn and up onto his feet in one deft move, drawing his sword as he rose, coming to rest in an en guarde stance. But Lochlánn was not taken by surprise, and by the time Louis was on his feet, his blade was out as well. Louis took a step toward him but was drawn up short by the sound of a dozen other swords clearing their scabbards.

  “You bastard!” Louis said, his voice low as he struggled for control. “I saved your sorry hide, you and the rest of these miserable creatures! All your heads would be on the heathens’ pikes if not for me!”

  “Yes, you’re a great friend to us,” Lochlánn said. “Like you were at Glendalough, and back at the river.”

  “I warned you at Glendalough,” Louis said. “I sent the boy to warn you that the heathens were there. At the river I was a prisoner on board the ship. I had no choice but to be there, but I did not fight against you.” That was partially true, anyway. He may not have been a prisoner, but he had not lifted a weapon against Lochlánn and his men, and that was the point that mattered.

  Lochlánn lowered his sword, just a few inches, but it was enough to tell Louis that the young man was no longer so certain of Louis’s guilt. “You killed Aileran. You told me you did. You must answer for that.”

  I didn’t kill Aileran, Louis thought. Failend killed him, despite what I told you before. He almost said it out loud. It was the truth. But he realized how craven and mendacious it would sound, so instead he said, “All those things I’ll answer for later. Right now we have greater concerns.”

  “Such as?” Lochlánn asked, and Louis almost laughed out loud.

  “Such as the heathens who are coming this way. The heathens who just killed so many of your men. Whom I just saved y
ou from.”

  “I don’t need your help to fight the heathens,” Lochlánn said, but there was such a lack of conviction in his voice that Louis did not even bother to argue the point.

  “They’ll be advancing soon,” Louis said. “They move slow. They have women, and a lot of supplies. Not the heathens, but the Irish bandits who are with them. If we get up the river we can stage an ambush like they tried to do to you. Something they’ll never see coming.”

  Lochlánn nodded slowly as he considered this. And then another thought occurred to him, Louis could see it on his face. “Where’s Failend?” he asked, and the suspicion was back in his voice.

  “She’s with the heathens,” Louis said. “I didn’t abandon her, if that’s what you’re thinking. She’s joined with them. I don’t know what demon has got hold of her, but she’s thrown in with them. She killed her husband, I’m all but sure. So she probably is not too keen to go back to Glendalough.”

  Louis’s words had the ring of truth because they were the truth and he could see Lochlánn believed him. Then Senach stepped forward. Senach, who had been one of Aileran’s men before joining with Lochlánn.

  “This one’s a serpent,” he said, nodding toward Louis. “Talks as sweet as the serpent in the garden. There’s a fine big oak yonder, and I have a length of rope in my bag, and I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t do what’s right this very moment.”

  “No,” Lochlánn said, with a note of command that made Louis both proud and relieved. “We won’t do that. That’s what the law is for.”

  “The law?” Senach said. “Damn the law, he killed Aileran. He said so.” Louis heard the others muttering their agreement. He wondered if Lochlánn had authority enough over these men to keep them from hanging him in the next few minutes.

  Then another of the men-at-arms stepped up, an older man whom Louis did not recognize, and he realized for the first time that Lochlánn had far more men with him than he had thought he did.