Dubh-linn: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 2)

by James L. Nelson

  Thorgrim nodded. It had to be true that the gods brought word ahead and whispered it in the ears of those ashore. He had seen before how tales of great deeds had spread faster than was humanly possible.

  “Now who is this fellow?” Ornolf asked and the three turned to see Starri standing, silent and unmoving, a few feet away.

  “This is Starri,” Thorgrim said. “He played a great part in the fighting, saved my life and Harald’s more than once, I should think. Starri, this is my father-in-law, Ornolf of Vik.”

  Starri and Ornolf clasped hands and Ornolf said, “You have a look about you. One might take you for one of those berserkers, and if so, it is no matter to me. There are some won’t be civil to berserkers, until they need them to take all the risk in battle, but I’m not one of those.”

  To that Starri just nodded and held Ornolf’s hand. Then Ornolf said, “Come, let us get us to the mead hall! They will be drinking the health of you fellows soon, and if Ornolf is too old and tired to garner any glory for himself, at least I can gather some of the reflected glory of my grandson! And my son-in-law, of course.”

  And so the four of them trudged off, up the plank road, past the tight packed houses and workshops, though the low hanging smoke and the ring of hammers, the soft growl of saws, up toward the mead hall, which had been partially burned by Thorgrim and his men when Dubh-linn had been in Danish hands, but now was fully repaired by the Norwegians who held the longphort.

  Thorgrim did not feel much like celebrating. He was tired, he felt the black mood setting in, and he wished only to be left alone to brood and to think of home. But in this circumstance, and with Ornolf in the lead, he had little chance for escape. Nor did he care to leave Harald unattended under the tutelage of his grandfather.

  The mead hall was built in the Scandinavian style and loomed above them like a cliff as they approached, giving it an oddly menacing look in the dying light of the late afternoon. The big doors hung open, a rectangle of glowing light, as if the interior itself was on fire, and noise and smoke rolled out. Ornolf all but pushed Thorgrim and Harald in ahead of him.

  For Thorgrim Night Wolf there was no sensation, save perhaps that of stepping into his own home, more familiar than that of stepping into a mead hall. The smell of roasting meat, spilled drink, of many men packed together, the roar of their shouted and drunken conversation, the occasional scream of a thrall, the banging of wooden plates and mugs, the whole scene lit by a massive fire burning in a hearth, a fire that sometimes flared and filled the hall with light and sometimes died away and threw the place into shadow, it was at once familiar and soothing and stimulating. He stepped further into the big room. The noise, loud even before their entrance, seemed to grow, to swirl upward like a flock of birds rising together.

  Ornolf grabbed Thorgrim and Harald’s hands, raised them up, said, “Ha! They’ve been waiting on you!” And as he said it the rising sound burst into cheers, shouts, plates, fists and knife hilts banged on wooden tables. Up by the fire, Hoskuld Iron-skull stood with the other jarls and they raised their cups and joined in the shouting. Harald was grinning wide. There was a time, Thorgrim knew, when he too would have devoured such recognition like the most savory of meals, but now it only embarrassed him.

  Starri leaned forward and spoke in Thorgrim’s ear. “Thorgrim, did you storm the very gates of Asgard, and loot the treasure of the gods? I must have missed that, but sure such enthusiasm could be for nothing less.” Thorgrim could hear the smile in Starri’s voice, and he smiled himself, a grim smile. In his present mood, any other man who said such a thing to him would have paid a dear price for it.

  The afternoon turned to evening and then nighttime with the familiar debauchery; drinking, feasting, the old songs sung with more emphasis on volume than melody or tune. The sound of rutting in the shadows. Tales were told, insults traded, toasts drunk with enthusiasm. Ornolf had not budged from Dubh-linn since returning there with Olaf the White, and he seemed to Thorgrim to have ensconced himself in the mead hall like some benevolent jarl, ordering the thralls about, summoning up more food and drink, insisting this man sit in one place, this one in another.

  And to Thorgrim’s surprise, the men and the thralls in the hall seemed to listen to him, and do as directed, but he suspected that this was due more to their finding the old man amusing than recognizing any authority he might have.

  “Ah, Thorgrim!” Ornolf said, settling himself with care on the bench on which Thorgrim and Harald sat. To Thorgrim’s annoyance he handed a fresh cup of mead to the already red-faced and unsteady boy. “This Dubh-linn is all a man could want! Women everywhere, Irish women, good and subservient! Fresh food! Every day, I tell you, the gates open and the farmers and the sheep herders and the fish mongers and what not bring their goods into town. These Irish may hate us, but damn me if they don’t like selling to us for silver and gold!”

  “This is not our home,” Thorgrim said, taking the cup from Harald’s hand and drinking deep from it.

  “Exactly!” Ornolf roared. “From Vik we must cross the seas to plunder. Here, we sail down the coast, take what we wish, and use the silver to buy food and drink from the very people we took the silver from in the first place! What could be more convenient than that?”

  “Ornolf has a point,” Starri said, one of the few things he had said all evening, then poured mead down his throat as if the words had parched him.

  “He has a point,” Thorgrim agreed, “but how long it will remain true, I can’t say. For all the high talk here tonight there was not much plunder to be had at Cloyne. Worse, these Irish might start helping each other. If they unite as one, we cannot defeat them.”

  “Ha! We won’t live to see that!” Ornolf declared. “They’ll keep on fighting each other like the wild dogs they are!”

  Wild dogs… Thorgrim turned aside, weary of the conversation, and looked into the fire. For all the time he had been damned by the gods to spend in Ireland, he had really known only one native of that country. Morrigan, the thrall. She was beautiful, a healer, a woman who had suffered much. And she was dangerous, complicated, like one of the floating ice mountains of the northern seas, the lovely and quiet part above the surface, so much more unseen below. And that was the part that would wreck you.

  Morrigan was all Thorgrim knew of Ireland, her and Almaith, the blacksmith Jokul’s wife, from whom they rented a place to sleep. For Harald it was different. Harald had been to Tara, which was apparently the seat of the high king of those parts, whisked away by Morrigan and used as a pawn, though treated well enough. He told a story of a royal household as fine as any to be found in Norway, a ringfort with a church and many houses. A place worth plundering, Thorgrim imagined, though it would be no easy business, not like Cloyne.

  There was a woman, too. Brageet, or some such. Thorgrim had trouble with the strange Irish names. Brigit. That was it. Harald had been circumspect in his talking about her, but Thorgrim could see there was much to the story that Harald was not saying. The boy had the subtlety of a battle-spear up the backside.

  A scuffling brought his attention back, a catch in the ambient noise, a shift of tone. He looked up. There was a certain tension in the hall. Thorgrim had been aware of it, but had given it no thought. But now, looking around at the fire-lit faces, flushed and sweating, he could sense a breaking point. Those men who had not been with them at Cloyne were growing weary of the celebrations, the self-congratulatory attitude of the victors. Because they had not been part of the raiding party, they were looking to punish someone who was. And that person was Harald.

  Thorgrim had not seen this play out, but still he was not surprised. Harald had managed to consume about a third of the various drinks that Ornolf had handed him, despite Thorgrim’s best efforts to take the cups from his hand. The boy, unused to drinking so hard and fast, had staggered across the room, no doubt looking for a place to relieve himself, and had staggered into a big, foul-looking beast of a man with one eye sealed shut by a vicious scar that ran lik
e a narrow valley across his face.

  The hall was too loud, Harald and his antagonists too far across the room for Thorgrim to hear their words, but he did not have to. He had heard them all before, the same stupid fight played out in the same mead halls up and down the coast of Norway and in Hedeby as well.

  What do you mean by running into me, huh, boy?

  Nothing. I mean nothing by it. Accident.

  Accident? I’ll teach you a lesson about disrespecting me…

  Or some variation on that tired theme. Thorgrim was on his feet as the scarred man grabbed a handful of Harald’s tunic and cocked his fist. If Harald had been sober, then Thorgrim would have given even odds that the scarred son of a whore would get the worst of it, but Harald was far from sober.

  “You hit the boy, you’ll answer to me!” Thorgrim shouted but no one heard his words or indeed paid him any attention.

  Then, with a shriek that turned every head in the hall, Starri Deathless launched himself off the bench, took three steps along the table and launched himself off that, coming down on the hard-packed dirt floor inches from the scarred man, inches from Harald. The mead hall fell silent. Motionless. Like a tapestry, a still rendering of Starri standing where he had landed, the man gripping Harald’s tunic in one hand, his other hand a cocked fist, Harald’s eyes wide and glistening. Then Starri twirled around and bowed deep at the waist, bowed to all who watched his performance, spread his hands as if calling for applause.

  Silence. And then the hall seemed to erupt with laughter, shouts, applause. Starri bowed again.

  Thorgrim pushed his way through the crowd, closed with the scarred man who still had Harald by the tunic. “Come friend,” he called. “Let the boy go, let us all drink together.” If Starri could so cleverly throw water on this fire, Thorgrim would not ignite it again.

  But the scarred man was having none of it. He had been looking for a fight, and instead, by his lights, had received nothing but mockery. Thorgrim could see that if he had been feigning anger and insult before, he wasn’t feigning it now.

  “Drink with whore’s bastards like you two? I think not.”

  The black mood, which had been lurking at the edge of Thorgrim’s consciousness all night, now swept in like a fast moving fog. This idiot could not have picked a worse man to fool with, he thought. He took another step forward and stopped. Everything seemed held in place by opposing forces; his anger, the scarred man’s anger. And then the forces let go, so fast that Thorgrim did not even see what happened, which would worry him later, as he reflected on the night. He was slowing down.

  The man with the scarred face swung his fist with the speed and power of a catapult’s arm, and Harald – wide-eyed, shocked, and inebriated – just stood there, motionless. It was Starri who moved first, a blur of speed, and then the scarred man was on his knees, shrieking a weird, high-pitched scream while his forearm hung at an odd angle a few inches below his elbow.

  Once again the mead hall seemed to stop, the men frozen in their tapestry tableau, the space filled with the scarred man’s screams of agony which were like a physical thing. And then the man’s fellows launched themselves like bulls crashing a fence, fists and mugs raised, mouths open in shouts of outrage. They charged for the boisterous crowd who had been with Hoskuld Iron-skull at Cloyne, resentment boiling over, and nearest of those men were Harald, Thorgrim and Starri.

  Thorgrim grabbed Harald by the collar and jerked him back just as a huge fist swung at the boy’s head. The fist found only air and the man swinging it, having readied himself for the impact, stumbled when he found none. Thorgrim stepped up and the man looked at him with an expression like resignation as Thorgrim slammed a rock-hard fist of his own into his hairy temple and dropped him to the floor.

  Even as the man was going down, Thorgrim felt hands grabbing his hair and the cloth of his tunic. He twisted back the other way, breaking the grip, striking with an ineffectual left. Someone’s fist made solid contact with his stomach and he doubled over and turned sideways, letting his shoulder take the blow from the knee that he knew would be aimed at his face. Still in too much pain to straighten, he drove himself forward and into the man in front of him. He felt himself stumbling as the two of them headed for the floor.

  A hand on his collar pulled him back and up straight, away from the man with whom he was clenched, and from behind him Harald appeared, recovered from his shock, stone sober and ready to brawl. Thorgrim’s antagonist was just regaining his feet when Harald leapt clean off the floor and drove his heels right into the man’s sternum, sending him flying as Harald came down with arms cocked, fists clenched for the next behind.

  Thorgrim had only a fraction of a second to marvel at the loveliness of the boy’s move when he sensed a motion to his larboard side, turned, deflected a fist with his left forearm and struck with his right, connecting solidly, and felt the man stagger under the blow.

  He twisted the other way. A fist grazed his face. He swung with his right and felt the laceration he had received at Cloyne, which had nearly healed, open up again. He felt a warm cat’s paw of blood spreading under his tunic. He grabbed the arm that had lashed at him, twisted it hard, felt the arm’s owner jerk it free a fraction of a second before the bone gave way and shattered.

  Starri Deathless was engaged with two of the men who had advanced on them, ducking, jabbing fast with his fist, twisting here and there. Thorgrim caught a glimpse of his face. He was smiling, nearly laughing. Thorgrim had never minded a good brawl, had even enjoyed them on occasion, but for Starri this was clearly amusement at its finest. Indeed, he seemed not to be trying to beat anyone, just sustain the combat for as long as he could.

  Thorgrim turned to the sound of shouting to his right, turned in time to see a bench come sweeping at him as someone whirled it through the air like a broadsword. He pulled Harald aside and ducked as the heavy oak seat passed overhead and slammed into the men beyond, men Thorgrim was sure were on the side of the bench swinger. The fight was devolving into a free for all, with no one even recalling whom they were supposed to be fighting. But no weapons, at least no edged weapons. No one there, angry as they were, was looking for a murderous bloodbath. Tonight’s violence was pure recreation.

  From under a pile of thrashing arms, Nordwall the Short kicked his way to the surface. Thorgrim could see a few of Hoskuld’s men coming into it, and more of Arinbjorn’s with whom he had fought before. He could hear a thrall screaming in terror, someone laughing loud, the crash of tables overturned, pottery smashed. From some unseen quarter a fist made solid contact with his head, twisting him around. The open wound in his side hurt as if he was being stabbed with a knife.

  He gasped and another fist caught him from the other direction and he staggered back. A blurred image of Starri Deathless’ dark blue tunic swam in front of his eyes. He shook his head, willed his sight to return. He could taste blood in his mouth. Someone was taking a clumsy swing at him and he caught the fist like catching a ball, twisted the hand, and with his right leg swept the man’s feet away, a move that was so ingrained in him that his muscles did it with no conscious command from his brain.

  The brawl, Thorgrim could see, was winding down. Here and there men were collapsing to the ground, some beat to unconsciousness, some finding goblets and cups of mead. The thralls, who were no strangers to this sort of thing, were already darting here and there with cups brimming with the potent brew.

  Thorgrim let his fists drop to his side. There were still pockets of struggling men, but now more of the combatants were getting the tables and benches back upright or swilling mead. He staggered off and all but fell on a bench. A patch of spreading blood stained his tunic, darker even than the dark green cloth of the garment. His head was swimming. Someone handed his a cup and he drank, gratefully.

  Harald sat beside him. His lip was bleeding and his hair was a wild tangle but his eyes were bright and his expression eager and enthusiastic.

  “Father!” he said. “Father, are you alright?�
��

  Thorgrim looked at the boy. It was hard to even call him a boy any more. “Yes, I’m alright,” he said. “Alright. Just too damned old.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Men in ships, warriors with spears, without any faith,

  great will be the plague,

  they will inhabit half the surface of the island…

  The Voyage of Snédgus and Mac Riagla

  The sun rose higher and filled the grove in which Brigit and Father Finnian sat, and the bugs stirred and began their day’s activities and Father Finnian made no reply to Brigit’s rather remarkable statement concerning her intended destination. After some minutes he lifted himself onto his knees and examined her feet, which were bare, filthy, bruised and lacerated.

  “Ah, that won’t do, won’t do at all,” he said, and Brigit was not sure if he was referring to the state of her feet or her suggestion that they walk to the Viking longphort. The comment hung in the air until she realized that it was in fact directed at her feet. Indeed, Brigit had been dreading the thought of putting weight on them again. “We’ll find some help along the road, I shouldn’t wonder,” Finnian said, “but let’s see what we can do now.”

  Finnian grabbed the hem of the oversized robe she wore and gave it a tug, pulling the folds of fabric free from the belt where he had tucked them. He tore the bottom edge of the fabric off the robe, then tore that cloth into wide and narrow strips. The wide strips he wrapped expertly around Brigit’s feet, tight enough to be a comfort, not too tight as to cause pain. With the narrow strips he bound the makeshift sandals in place.

  “There, that will make the walking a bit better,” he said when he was done. He stood and offered Brigit a hand. She took it, and he gently pulled her to her feet. She could feel the power in his arm, the strength held in reserve, as if he was taking care to exert only as much force as was needed, and not the considerably greater force of which he was capable.