“Well?” Kevin said.
“We fought them, lord,” Niall said. “More than once. They’re slippery bastards, slippery as eels. We ambushed them today, fooled them completely. Or almost. We would have had them, but there were more of the heathens than we thought. They had another forty men down by the river, and they came into the fight at the last minute and that was all we could do. We pulled back, and then Cathail showed up and said you ordered us to return here.”
Kevin let this news settle before he asked the next question. “How many men did you lose?”
“Ah, fourteen, lord. And nine horses,” Niall replied.
Kevin shifted his gaze to Lochlánn who stood to Niall’s side and a step behind him. He looked defiant, as if he was expecting a verbal assault and was ready for it. And he was right to expect that.
“You said with thirty of my men you would stamp out this vermin. Those were your very words, damn you, and now instead you’ve led half the men I gave you to their deaths!” Kevin spat, but Lochlánn did not flinch.
“Not all the dead men were yours, some were mine. Most were mine,” Lochlánn said.
“I appreciate you seeing your own men slaughtered as well,” Kevin said. “Thoughtful, indeed.”
The third man, the one by Lochlánn’s side, stepped forward. “For the love of God, both of you,” he said. “Could there be a more pointless waste of time? And even as the heathens get closer by the minute.”
Kevin shifted his eyes from Lochlánn to this other man. Young, early twenties, but he had a confidence about him. He spoke Irish, but his accent was foreign.
“And you are?” Kevin asked.
“Louis. Louis de Roumois. I am the second son of Hincmar, the late count of Roumois. I was…studying in Glendalough.”
“He’s the one who came up with the idea for our ambush,” Niall offered. “Damn clever. Would have worked.”
“I see,” Kevin said. He was not impressed, but he imagined that this fellow would be one more sword to defend Ráth Naoi. He needed all the men he could get, and he feared that they would still not be enough. “And so,” Kevin continued, turning back to Lochlánn, “do you still believe it was Thorgrim Night Wolf and his men whom you fought? With such little success?”
Before Lochlánn could reply, Louis was speaking again. “It was most certainly Thorgrim Night Wolf. But he has only ten of his heathens with him. The rest of his number are Irish bandits, a covey of them under the command of some whore’s son named Cónán, and another gang of thieves, just joined with Thorgrim, led by a man named Blathmac.”
Kevin turned back to Louis. “I see,” Kevin said again. “And you know this…how?”
“I was Thorgrim’s prisoner,” Louis said. “He captured me at Glendalough. I escaped when Lochlánn and Niall attacked Thorgrim’s men.”
“Indeed,” Kevin said. “Cónán I know about. A lowly criminal; he’s been a plague around here for years. Blathmac I’ve never heard of. But see here, you say Thorgrim had but ten of his heathens, yet Niall says there were forty more attacked from the river. Drove you off.”
Niall frowned and looked at Louis, as did Lochlánn. “Thorgrim had ten heathens with him, and the rest Irish. Who those forty were I do not know, but they were not with Thorgrim two days ago.”
“Ah, the damned heathens are dropping from the sky!” Kevin shouted and threw his hands up in frustration. “They spring up like maggots from dead flesh!” He turned around in a full circle as if hoping to find some answer behind him, or to make certain no heathen was stalking him and ready to pounce.
“So now there are forty more with Night Wolf,” Kevin continued once he was again facing the three other men in the hall. “And on top of that, Ottar Bloodax has come out of Vík-ló. I have no doubt he and Thorgrim plan to join up to kill us all. So now we don’t have ten heathens and a bunch of filthy bandits heading toward us, we have two hundred heathen warriors out for our blood! We might as well cut our throats right now.”
“Ottar Bloodax…has come out of Vík-ló?” Niall asked. He alone understood the gravity of this.
“Yes,” Kevin said. “With near all his men. More than one hundred and fifty.”
“Who is Ottar Bloodax?” Lochlánn asked.
“He’s one of the bastards who attacked Glendalough,” Kevin said. “Leader of one of the heathen armies. Thorgrim led the other. They’re the ones we fought off when they came to sack the monastery. Ottar has since taken the longphort of Vík-ló. He’s lord there now. And now it seems he and Thorgrim have made another alliance to come and take Ráth Naoi from me.” He tried and failed to keep the despair from his voice.
The four of them were quiet for a moment, considering this. Then it was Louis who spoke, to everyone’s surprise.
“No,” he said. “No, that’s not right. Thorgrim was coming here…is coming here…that’s true. I was with them for weeks; I know what they’re about. He wants to have his revenge on you. But when he’s done he means to take revenge on this Ottar as well. Talked about it all the time. It seems Ottar betrayed him.”
Louis looked up, met Kevin’s eyes. “And you as well,” he said. “He thinks you betrayed him. How did you betray him?”
Kevin cleared his throat. This would take some clever words to talk away, but Kevin could use words the way men like Niall or Thorgrim could use swords. “I won’t lie to you,” he said. “Trading with the heathens is a profitable business. Thorgrim was lord at Vík-ló before Ottar. They needed food, ale, and such. They had silver. We traded with them. I think Thorgrim came to believe that meant I would fight with him as well, even against my own people.
“But when I took my men to Glendalough, we went there to fight against him, him and that Ottar. To defend the monastery. You might recall we arrived just in time to turn things around in the battle, just when they were looking darkest. So that’s why he thinks I betrayed him. Because I would not side with heathens against Irishmen.”
The others were nodding. Niall knew with certainty that this was a lie, but he could be counted on to keep his mouth shut, if for no other reason than his own complicity in the scheme to sack Glendalough. The other two seemed to accept this explanation.
“This is all well and good,” Kevin said, steering the talk away from his dubious alliances with the Northmen and back to their immediate concerns. “But the fact is both Thorgrim and Ottar are descending on this ringfort and we don’t have the men to defend it.”
And then Louis de Roumois laughed. It was practically the last sound anyone expected to hear in the midst of this grim conversation, but there it was: he laughed, a short, mirthful burst of sound.
“Yes?” Kevin asked.
“Don’t you see?” Louis said. “This is perfect. Ottar and Thorgrim want to kill one another. We know that Ottar is there, but Thorgrim doesn’t. We don’t have to fight Thorgrim, we only have to drive him back until he runs into Ottar’s men. They’ll kill each other and then we only need to stamp out what remains. Thorgrim might have fifty of his heathen warriors, but the rest are a rabble of undisciplined thieves, and you still have more than a hundred trained, mounted men-at-arms. We can certainly push Thorgrim’s miserable host back into Ottar’s arms.”
Kevin frowned, but he liked the sound of this. His greatest fear was a heathen army surrounding his ringfort. The earthen walls and palisades were more to demonstrate the status of the man who occupied the place than to present any serious defense. But now this Louis was proposing they push the heathens as far from Ráth Naoi as they could, and let Ottar Bloodax, the bloodthirsty lunatic, take care of the lot of them.
“Good, good,” Kevin said. “I like this plan. I approve of it. Let Thorgrim come. We’ll drive him and the swine who follow him right off to be butchered. As swine should be.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
He hath need of fire, who now is come,
numbed with cold to the knee
Hávamál
It was indeed Aghen Ormsson, the shipwright, but Th
orgrim was not sure at first. The Northmen he led, who had appeared seemingly from nowhere, were numerous, about the size of a ship’s crew, and Thorgrim approached them with caution. They had done him and Cónán a great service driving the Irish men-at-arms from the field, but that did not mean they were any friends of his.
He walked his horse across the open ground, Harald at his side, the cows now scattered enough that they were of no concern. “Father,” Harald said, “I would swear by the gods that’s Aghen, from Vík-ló.”
“I thought the same,” Thorgrim said. “I would have been sure of it if I could think of any possible reason Aghen should be here.”
They were still fifty feet away when the man who appeared to be Aghen raised his arm and called out, “Thorgrim Ulfsson! Lord of Vík-ló!” and the voice was unmistakably that of the curmudgeonly old craftsman.
“Hah!” Thorgrim shouted and he slipped down off his horse and covered the last of the distance on foot. He grabbed Aghen by the shoulders and hugged him and felt Aghen’s strong arms hugging him back. Finally he pushed away and looked into the man’s smiling face.
“I knew you still lived, Night Wolf,” Aghen said. “I knew it.” He turned to the young man beside him. “You see, Oddi, I knew it would take more than a dung pile like Ottar to kill this man!”
Thorgrim shook his head. “Kind words, Aghen. But if you and your men hadn’t shown up when you did, the Irish might well have done what Ottar did not. I can’t imagine how you happen to be here, unless the gods themselves lifted you in the air and set you here.”
“Nothing like that, but still a tale you’ll enjoy,” Aghen said. “But first you must know that Ottar’s left Vík-ló. He meant to hunt me down, and when he had me he was going to plunder the hall of that Irishman Kevin who rules hereabouts. Ottar can’t be more than a day away. Closer, I would think.” Aghen turned and looked to the east, as if they might see Ottar and his warriors coming over the nearest rise.
Thorgrim was eager to hear Aghen’s story, but he was more eager still to get his men and Cónán’s men together, because he could not be certain that the Irish men-at-arms had given up the fight. He and Cónán and the others gathered the men who could still walk and located the wounded who could not and hoisted them up onto the captured horses. They made their way back to the place where the women had been left in camp, over the ground they had covered that morning in their push to Ráth Naoi.
“Guess you were right about the horsemen,” Cónán said when he and Thorgrim met up on the trampled grass of the battlefield. His voice still carried a note of defiance, though it was much diminished.
“Guess I was,” Thorgrim replied. It was all that was said about the morning’s event. It was all that needed saying.
The day was well on by the time they reached camp. The women had food cooking in the iron pots and bandages and poultices at the ready, and they set about ministering to the weary men.
Blathmac was nowhere to be seen. “Cara tells me he ran off,” Cónán said, sitting down beside Thorgrim, a bowl of steaming potage in his hand. “She says you pulled his beard and kicked his ass and that was the end of him.”
Thorgrim nodded, swallowed the mouthful he was chewing. “He might have reckoned it would be hard to keep command of his men after that,” he said.
“Looks like he didn’t care to stay around and find out.” Cónán turned his attention to his food, and then a few bites later said, “That’s the second time you’ve saved me the trouble of killing someone who was standing in my way. If I keep near to you I’ll be high king of Ireland one of these days.”
“Could be,” Thorgrim agreed. “You’ll take command of Blathmac’s men?”
“Already have,” Cónán said.
It was nearly full dark by the time a messenger came in, sent by the scouts in the field. They reported that the horsemen had returned to Ráth Naoi. The scouts had followed them nearly to the ringfort itself. And this time Thorgrim knew it was true. He could feel it. The way was clear.
They slept that night with men still out in the dark, watching, but no enemy came. Two of the wounded died before sunrise and in the morning they were buried by the riverbank. The men ate their breakfasts and sharpened their weapons and made temporary repairs to their mail. The women broke camp and lashed tents and cookware to the newly acquired horses, grateful to not have to carry those things. It was late morning when they left the site by the river and headed out overland to the ringfort at Ráth Naoi.
It was not flat country they crossed, but a landscape of steep, rounded hills that rolled along like ocean swells. From the crest of the hills the land could be seen for miles around, and in the narrow valleys between there were only the green fields rising up on either hand, the stands of trees here and there, the occasional pond or brook. It would be easy to forget just how limited one’s view was, but Thorgrim and Cónán did not forget, and they made certain that a screen of riders was spread out in every direction, ready to sound the alarm if danger appeared. There would be no surprises.
The column was as slow-moving and frustrating as ever, and even the horses did not add much to their speed. Thorgrim insisted they keep together, and that only made the whole thing more plodding, the speed of the advance reduced to the pace of the slowest in that odd mix of folk.
But for all that, they were now a respectable force. Between Blathmac’s men and Cónán’s original band there were near fifty of the bandits left. Blathmac’s men seemed not at all distressed by their leader’s running off, nor did they seem to resent Cónán’s taking charge of them. Indeed, their spirits seemed somewhat lifted by that change of circumstance, and by the considerable plunder that Cónán kept telling them would be theirs at Ráth Naoi.
Aghen had forty men with him, experienced warriors, many of whom had raided in the lands to the east, the land of the Angles and the Picts and in Frankia, before joining up with Ottar. Aghen told Thorgrim the story of Ottar’s taking Vík-ló, of the grumbling discontent that had arisen among the men who were not as loyal to Ottar as those who had been with him longer, of the chaos he himself had sown by creating terror in the longphort.
“These men,” Aghen had said, gesturing toward the forty who had come with him. “They’re good men. They’re looking for a lord to serve. They know your reputation. They’ll swear loyalty to you, if you’ll have them.”
Thorgrim was indeed willing to have their service, more than willing. And so, with Ottar’s former warriors and his own men, he now led around fifty experienced Northmen, and the army that he and Cónán led numbered around one hundred men, no insignificant force.
The afternoon was getting on by the time one of the scouts returned from the direction of the ringfort. He was on horseback and seemed grateful for it, and Thorgrim could imagine that is was a great relief to not have to run over miles of hilly ground for once. He remembered how much the Irish had enjoyed their time on Sea Hammer.
“Nothing much to see,” the scout reported, Cónán translating his words for Thorgrim. “Some mounted patrols around the ringfort, but they’re staying close by. Mostly clear from here to there.”
The day was too far advanced and the men too worn out from the march to consider action that day, so they made camp and Thorgrim and Cónán and Harald and Aghen headed out with the scout to guide them to a place where they could see Kevin’s stronghold for themselves.
It took them less than half an hour to reach the crest of a hill, beyond which sat Ráth Naoi, about a mile distant. Thorgrim lay on his belly in the cool grass and looked out over the fields toward the rounded earthworks covered in grass so they appeared to be just some odd deformity in the otherwise relatively flat ground that stretched from the hill to the gate. Crowning the earthworks was a palisade, which looked to be seven feet high or so.
“There’ll be no sneaking up on that,” Thorgrim observed. It was the reason the ringfort was surrounded by open ground, some of it meadow, some pasture, some cultivated fields, for a mile in any direction.
“No,” Cónán said. “And they’ll light fires around the perimeter as soon as it’s dark. They don’t want surprises any more than we do.”
For a long time the four men were silent, looking out at the ringfort, the mounted patrols moving lazily around the walls, the smoke crawling out of the gable end of the big hall that rose up from the center of the place. Overhead the sun went down behind a solid mass of cloud and the ringfort and the country around it grew less distinct in the gathering dark.
“You know, Cónán,” Thorgrim said at last. “The way you led the horsemen on that chase, led them right into a trap, that was clever. Very clever.”
“Yes, it was,” Cónán agreed.
“And it makes me wonder,” Thorgrim continued, “if we couldn’t play that trick once again. And bigger still.”
Well before the next morning’s dawn, hours before the sun showed any sign of rising, the ringfort at Ráth Naoi was a bustle of activity and Lochlánn mac Ainmire wondered if it would even be necessary. They were making ready to meet the enemy: Thorgrim Night Wolf and his Northmen and the bandit, Cónán. But they did not really know where those men were.
Lochlánn had wanted to send scouts out the night before. There had to be some men at Ráth Naoi who would be able to slip out in the dark and see what the enemy was doing without being seen themselves. His man Fintain, who had accompanied him on his first visit to Kevin’s hall, would be capable of such a mission. He was smart and quick and knew the country well. But Kevin would not have it.
“I’ll not weaken the defenses by even one man,” Kevin had protested. He and Lochlánn, Niall and Louis had been seated at the table in the big hall, glasses of wine in front of them, a fire in the hearth. “If the heathens capture your spy they’ll drag information out of him. What we’re planning, how many we are. I won’t risk that.”
Night Wolf: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 5) Page 33