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

by James L. Nelson

  And then he heard it—a growl, low, ugly, menacing and close. Ottar gasped, sat up, his hand falling on the hilt of his sword.

  The wolf was no more than five feet away, right at the entrance to the tent, crouching low, ready to leap. It was black and its eyes shone in the light of the oil lamp and its teeth were white and bared and it was looking directly at him.

  “Ahh!” Ottar shouted. “Ahh!” He leapt up, drawing his sword as he did. He took a wild swing at the beast, but the animal tilted its head, just the tiniest of moves, and the tip of the sword sailed past, finding only air.

  “Ahh! Bastard! Son of a whore!” Ottar shrieked. He felt his bladder give out, the warm urine soaking his leggings. He slashed again with his sword and again the wolf dodged the blow easily, growling, keeping low.

  “Come and get me, you bastard! Kveldulf!” He held the sword in front of him, two-handed, tip pointing directly at the spot between the wolf’s eyes. He could hear men running and someone shouting his name, but his eyes were locked on the wolf’s eyes and he did not reply or move even an inch.

  Then the wolf took a step toward him, a slow, careful step, still in its crouch, still ready to spring. Ottar saw the tip of the sword wavering as his hands and arms shook. He heard his own breath, shallow and rasping.

  “Ottar! What is it?” Ketil’s voice. He was approaching Ottar’s tent, more men with him. But Ottar did not dare call out, and he was not even certain he could. He did not trust his voice. He heard little whimpering sounds, barely audible over the wolf’s growling, and realized they were coming from him.

  “Lord Ottar?”

  And then the wolf leapt. It came right off the ground, jaws open, eyes wide, leaping as high as Ottar’s throat. Ottar screamed, a shrill, high-pitched cry of pure terror and he threw up his hands and dropped his sword. Then the wolf was past him, leaping by so close it brushed Ottar’s arm and he could smell the fetid canine scent, a scent like death. The animal came down at the far end of the tent and did not stop. It pushed through the flap and disappeared just as Ketil pulled back the flap at the front.

  Ottar whirled around and looked at Ketil, and Ketil and the men behind him looked back at Ottar. Ottar could see on their faces that they did not know what to make of all this. They looked bewildered, maybe a little frightened, their expressions mirroring his own reaction.

  He wanted to ask if they had seen it, had seen the beast that had come to his tent, but he did not, because he knew they hadn’t. The wolf had come for him and him alone, just like it always did.

  But now it had to end. He could endure it no longer. There was a limit to how long a man could live with terror such as this, and Ottar had reached it.

  “Tomorrow,” Ottar said, and he hoped his words would carry some authority, but when he spoke his voice cracked and the one word came out weak and pitiful.

  “Tomorrow, lord?” Ketil asked.

  “Tomorrow it ends.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  A great dissension among the foreigners…

  and they became dispersed

  The Annals of Ulster

  Thorgrim woke, groggy and sore in the middle of a field. The sun had not quite come up above the hills to the east, and the field and the country around were swathed in early-morning gray. The sky above might have been an unbroken dome of clouds or it might have been perfectly clear; it was hard to tell in that light.

  Only part of the sky was visible to him. Most of Thorgrim’s field of vision was taken up by Starri Deathless, who was shaking his arm and saying his name, over and over.

  “All right, Starri, I hear you,” Thorgrim said irritably as he pushed himself to a sitting position. The black mood had been on him the night before. He remembered that, and he was sure the others had sent Starri to wake him in case the mood was on him still.

  “Listen,” Starri said, cocking his head to one side and remaining silent for a few seconds. “Do you hear him?”

  Thorgrim listened. He could hear something, or thought he could, but he was not entirely certain. “Someone yelling something,” he ventured.

  “Ha!” Starri said. “Yes. But not ‘someone.’ That great dung pile Ottar Bloodax! And he’s calling for you. And you were not so easy to find, let me tell you. In the future I’d be grateful if you would pass out closer to the camp.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Thorgrim said and he stood, pressing his lips together to avoid groaning from the stiffness in his limbs. He straightened and looked around. He was in the middle of a great stretch of grassy country, with a smattering of woodlands to the east. A thin plume of smoke was rising straight up in the still air a couple hundred yards away near the trees.

  He could better hear now that he was standing and facing the source of the noise. He could hear the clear cadence of a voice calling the same thing, over and over, though he still could not make out the words.

  “Come, come,” Starri said, and he indicated with a nod of his head that Thorgrim should follow him. The two of them set off through the knee-high grass toward the smoke and the sound of one man shouting.

  A few minutes later they arrived in the camp, with its fire rings and iron pots hanging over the flames and the women bustling around and the men staggering here and there. It was as familiar now as a home in which one had lived for some time, and only the ground on which it was laid out seemed to change.

  As Starri and Thorgrim came into the camp, the other men turned and a few nodded their greetings. There had been some talk among them of his wolf dreams and what they meant, Thorgrim could tell. He recognized the look.

  I woke up on the same stinking patch of Irish sod I fell asleep on the night before, he thought to himself. I went nowhere, nothing changed. But he had long ago given up trying to explain that to anyone. Men would believe what they chose to believe.

  Harald came hurrying over and he nodded toward the field beyond the camp. “Do you hear him, Father? He’s been at it since before dawn.”

  Thorgrim frowned and turned his head toward the sound and wondered if his ears were going as quickly as the rest of him seemed to be. But no, he could hear it, and he could make out the words now. Two words. Night Wolf. Over and over. The voice of Ottar Bloodax, but there was an odd sound to it.

  “Come,” Thorgrim said. “Harald, Starri, Godi.” He looked around. Cónán stood ten feet off, arms folded in a casual way. “Cónán, care to come with us?”

  “Always up for a bit of fun,” Cónán said, trying to sound as if he did not really care one way or another.

  The five of them headed out in the direction of Ottar’s voice. Harald walked at Thorgrim’s side. “When we heard him, Father, we sent some men out to see what was going on. See if this was some sort of trap. They said Ottar was just up here, just around that stand of trees, alone in the middle of a field. None of his men with him. No weapons.”

  They rounded the patch of wood that Harald had indicated, pausing before they came out in the open. From where they stood they could see Ottar a couple hundred paces away. As Harald had said, he was standing alone in the middle of the open ground. The countryside stretched away for hundreds of yards in any direction before rising up to a series of hills beyond. There was no one else to be seen, just Ottar by himself.

  “Night Wolf! Night Wolf!” he cried and his voice sounded as if it was near giving out.

  Cónán stood at Thorgrim’s side. “My men have been all around the country here,” he offered. “Ottar’s camp is a few miles off to the east. This is not a trap. There’s no one but Ottar here; they’re sure of it.”

  Thorgrim nodded. “And what of Kevin’s horsemen?”

  “Rode off yesterday,” Cónán said. “After Ottar’s men bloodied them up some, they headed for home. Once they find that Kevin’s dead I don’t reckon they’ll have much fight left in them.”

  Thorgrim looked back at Ottar, standing alone in the field, calling for him. It was pathetic, really. There had to be some trick here, something he did not see. But he
could not imagine what it was, and he could think of only one way to find out.

  “Let’s go talk to the man,” he said. He headed off across the field and the others fell in behind him. They had not gone more than ten feet before Ottar saw them coming. He stopped yelling and stood perfectly still, watching their approach.

  Thorgrim kept his eyes on the big man, waiting for him to make some move, pull a weapon, do something to suggest what he was about. But he did nothing. He just stood there and let them come closer.

  Ten paces from Ottar, Thorgrim stopped. For a long moment they just looked at one another.

  He looks bad, Thorgrim thought. It was the only word he could think of to describe Ottar’s appearance. His hair was a tangled mess and there were bits of something—food, straw, leaves—in his long beard. The wicked scar on his face seemed to throb; it looked red and swollen in a way Thorgrim had not seen before.

  But Ottar’s expression was the worst of it. He looked broken. Frightened. Like a man who had given up, just given up.

  “Yes, Ottar?” Thorgrim said at last.

  Ottar did not reply, not right off. He squinted at Thorgrim and cocked his head, as if studying some curious thing. “You were abroad last night, but you were not…you,” he said at last.

  “I was asleep last night,” Thorgrim said. “In my camp. Surrounded by these men.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. That was not entirely accurate, of course. He had been off on his own, not surrounded by the others. But it was close enough to the truth for the likes of Ottar, accurate enough to serve as an answer to so strange a question.

  “No matter,” Ottar said, waving the question away like he was waving away a bee. “It’s time for us to end this, Thorgrim Night Wolf. You and me. Time to end it.”

  Thorgrim nodded, though he had no idea what Ottar meant. Thorgrim had every intention of ending Ottar’s rule of Vík-ló, and his life as well. That had been his plan since Glendalough. But Ottar seemed to be referring to something else. What, Thorgrim did not know.

  “Yes, Ottar. That’s why I came here,” Thorgrim said.

  At that Ottar seemed to brighten a bit, as if Thorgrim was granting him some favor. “A hólmganga then,” Ottar said. “Tomorrow, when the sun is over the hill there. You and me.”

  Hólmganga. A duel, single combat, an organized fight to settle a difference, to end a feud. Two men would fight to first blood, and then if both parties agreed, the wounded man could pay off the other with three marks of silver and the affair was finished.

  But that was not how it would end with Thorgrim and Ottar, that much was clear. Their hólmganga would not be over until one man’s body lay bleeding and lifeless in the grass.

  Thorgrim shook his head. “I didn’t come here just to kill you,” he said. “I came here to kill you and kill your men and drive whoever is left into the sea. To take back Vík-ló.” And to his surprise, Ottar seemed to panic as he said those words.

  “Vík-ló, then,” Ottar said. “The man left alive will be Lord of Vík-ló.”

  “I will be left alive,” Thorgrim said, “and you’ll be dead. And then I’ll still have to fight your men to take my longphort back.”

  Once again Ottar gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Most of these swine have no loyalty to me. They’ll join you, if you can kill me. Those few who are loyal, I’d ask you to let them sail off, if they choose. The other whores’ sons can do as they wish.”

  Thorgrim considered this. If Ottar’s words were true, they offered the simplest means of taking Vík-ló back. A battle would mean more of his own men dead. Nor was he at all certain the Irish bandits could stand up to Ottar’s Norse warriors. But if the whole question came down to a fight between him and Ottar, then he did not have to worry about any of that.

  “You say these things, Ottar,” Thorgrim replied, “but how do I know that you speak for your men, and not just yourself?”

  “I will send a delegation to you,” Ottar said, a bit too quickly. “The captains of my ships, the lead men. Those men that the bastard Aghen didn’t murder. They’ll tell you.”

  “Very well. Send them today. And if I agree, I’ll send word back with them.”

  An hour later they saw the delegation approaching over the grassy field, a dozen men walking straight for the camp.

  “Ottar wastes no time, does he?” Starri said.

  “No,” Thorgrim said. The two of them, and nearly everyone else in the camp, were standing and watching their approach. “He’s very eager for this, and I don’t know why.” He turned to Aghen, who was standing a few feet away. “Aghen, come with me,” he said and the two of them walked out to meet Ottar’s men.

  The one heading the delegation was a man named Ketil and he threw a look of pure loathing at Aghen but addressed himself to Thorgrim alone. He more or less reiterated what Ottar had said. Some of Ottar’s men would sail away. Some would likely join with Thorgrim. But they would not contest the rule of Vík-ló. That would be decided by the hólmganga, and nothing else.

  “Give us a moment,” Thorgrim said. He led Aghen back to the camp where the two of them and the other leaders gathered and talked.

  “Do you believe him?” Thorgrim asked Aghen.

  “Yes, I do,” Aghen said. “Ottar has done nothing to make the men love him. If you kill him in the hólmganga then Ketil, I guess, will be their leader, and no one has respect for him, and they don’t fear him like they do Ottar. They’ll have no one to lead them in a fight to defend Vík-ló.”

  This made sense. The others agreed. Thorgrim returned to Ketil and the men of Ottar’s delegation. “Tell Ottar he’ll have his duel,” he said. “Tomorrow, where we met before. Once the sun has cleared the hills.”

  Thorgrim had fought duels before, three of them, and two of them he had won. They had been fought to the point where first blood had dripped on the ground, as the law stated, and then the duel ransom had been paid. The reasons for those disputes had not been so great that they were worth killing for, or being killed. Thorgrim could not even recall why he had fought the first one.

  But this fight would not end with a duel ransom. This was for the rule of Vík-ló, and the lives of the combatants.

  A hólmganga was as far from a wild brawl as a fight could be. The rules were laid down by the law, and they would be obeyed, or the man who broke them would forfeit honor and likely his life.

  There would be no mail, no helmets. Just a sword for each man and three shields apiece. Each man would have a second who would hold the shield for him and deflect the other combatant’s blows. When the shields were battered to splinters there would be no more.

  The question for Thorgrim, then, was who would serve as his second, who would hold his shield. There were several men, good men, from whom he might choose. Godi, big and strong as an oak tree was a logical choice, as was Starri Deathless, so quick and completely without fear. But really there was no choice at all. There was only one man there whom Thorgrim wanted at his side at that moment, only one in whom he believed entirely, and that was Harald Thorgrimson. Harald Broadarm. His boy.

  The sun went down and Thorgrim ate and he went off on his own and lit a small fire in front of the little statue of Thor he carried with him. He prayed to the gods that he might be victorious, and prayed that if he was not, he would die well and the gods would continue to bless Harald and keep watch over all his people. Then he returned to camp and lay down and once again Failend came and lay down beside him. He slept deeply and he did not dream.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “Here will you lie down

  And breathe your last with me,’

  Said the Hild of the rings.

  Gisli Sursson’s Saga

  It was well before dawn when Thorgrim woke, and for some moments he lay there, motionless, feeling Failend’s warm body pressed close to him and trying to recall what important thing was happening that day. And then he remembered, and he stood and worked the kinks out of his muscles.

  No matter how early
Thorgrim rose, it seemed the Irish women were always up before him, and now one of them approached with a bowl of water. Thorgrim nodded his thanks and rinsed his face and ran his fingers through his hair. He stepped over to the fire that was just gaining strength and savored the warmth of the flames, though the morning was not particularly cold.

  Soon the others were stirring, and the smell of breakfast bubbling in the iron pots stole over the camp. They ate in silence, and then they donned mail and helmets and strapped on swords and hefted shields. They would go to the hólmganga ready for battle, if need be. All save for Thorgrim, who, if things went as planned, would be the only one among them who would actually fight.

  The first gray light of dawn was showing itself in the east as they headed out of camp, Thorgrim’s men and Cónán’s men and Aghen and the men who had come with him, and the women as well. They made a long line as they snaked over the fields, Thorgrim in the lead, Harald, Godi, Starri, Aghen and Cónán all walking by his side like a house guard around their jarl.

  Ottar’s people were already at the dueling ground when they arrived, nearly two hundred men clustered around the two sides of the space marked out for the fight. They were not arrayed for battle but rather for the best view of the coming action. Their own fate, and not just that of Thorgrim and Ottar, would be determined that morning. And beyond that, a hólmganga was always grand entertainment.

  Thorgrim approached from the corner opposite Ottar’s men. He looked over the fighting space. A wool cloak about eight feet square had been pegged to the ground. Around the perimeter of the cloak was a space three feet wide that was marked off at its outer edge by strings, known as hazel poles. The hazel poles were the limits of how far the combatant could go. Put one foot over the hazel pole and you were thought to be retreating. Two feet and you were running away.