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

by James L. Nelson

  “A fair job,” she said, frowning at the tunic’s fit.

  “A perfect job. Fits like a man’s sword fits in his hand.”

  “Or thrust in his scabbard,” she suggested.

  Thorgrim smiled. Almaith wrapped his belt around his waist and fastened it loosely, with Iron-tooth hanging at his left side. The Northmen, she knew, did not go abroad unarmed. She draped his cloak over his shoulders and fastened the corners with a bronze brooch, the stylized faces of three warriors worked into the design.

  “So what is this business of yours, that’s so important you must go out with clothes half made?”

  “I must see Arinbjorn.”

  “Arinbjorn, who will take you away from us?”

  “Or so he says. I’m hoping to find the truth of it.” The words seemed to catch as they made their way from his throat. He was counting quite a bit on Arinbjorn, more than he ever cared to count on any man beside himself. And he knew with near certainty that Arinbjorn was not a man to be counted on.

  The sun was well up and Dubh-linn in full bustle when Thorgrim left Jokul’s house and headed up the plank road. Despite what he had said to Almaith, he had only a vague notion of where he was going or what he would do, beyond escaping the confines of Jokul’s house.

  He wandered through the market. Rickety stalls of saplings and canvas lashed together housed sellers of meat, vegetables, herbs, fish, small silver pendants, cloth, nearly everything one might look for in one of the big market towns of Scandinavia. People shouted in the Norse language and in Irish, with a few others mixed in. Dubh-linn, begun as a longphort, basically a fortification to protect the ships that overwintered there, was quickly becoming a significant market town, a center of commerce, import and export. Dubh-linn was no longer just a thorn in the side of the Irish kings, it was becoming a significant factor in the on-going struggle for power waged between those who would unite Ireland under their rule.

  Thorgrim marveled at the crush of people - men, women, children. He was no stranger to crowded streets and market towns, but he had not expected to find such as this in Ireland. But here were merchants and craftsmen and farmers, brewers, even priests of the Irish faith, the Christ men, all crowded into the open market and narrow lanes of the Norwegian longphort, so many hundreds of sea-miles from Norway.

  He continued up the road, knowing where he had to go. Frustration and annoyance were on the horizon, he could see that, and he did not care to head in that direction. But it had to be done.

  Arinbjorn White-tooth, along with the other wealthy jarls and ship-owners, occupied rooms in the compound of Olaf the White, king of Dubh-linn. The compound was walled off from the rest of the city by a ten- foot high palisade fence, its single gate guarded by two of Olaf’s men. Generally one needed a reason and an invitation to get beyond the gate, but Thorgrim was recognized on approach and allowed through without question. He found Arinbjorn in his rooms, small heaps of gold and silver piled like little burial mounds on his table. Arinbjorn was seated at the table, counting.

  “Ah, Thorgrim! Welcome, welcome!” he said, standing. “You there!” he called to some unseen thrall in the adjoining room, “mead for Thorgrim! Fetch along a cup, quickly now!”

  Thorgrim grasped Arinbjorn’s hand. The warmth of the greeting might have pleased him, encouraged him, if it were not for the fact that Arinbjorn greeted nearly everyone, on nearly every occasion, with the same enthusiasm. He gestured toward a chair. Thorgrim sat. “Slave market was held this morning. We did well, Thorgrim, quite well. Just figuring out every man’s share now, but yours will be respectable. And I have not forgotten my promise,” he added, his voice dropping. “Three shares to you and Harald, two for those who went with you through the gates.”

  Thorgrim waved his hand, a gesture of dismissal. If Arinbjorn had said he was holding back their entire share to pay for passage home, Thorgrim would not have objected, on the condition they were leaving on the morrow. “I thank you, Arinbjorn, but I say again it is not necessary. I have come to inquire about your plans. Your plans for sailing.”

  “I’m making those right now. You there, where is that damned mead!” The last he shouted toward the door, and the words produced a frightened thrall with a cup in her hand. Mead sloshed on the floor as she hurried it over to Thorgrim.

  “Damned idiot! It’s a wonder these Irish fetch what they do at the slave markets, damned idiots. The whole nation. Where was I?”

  “Making plans for sailing.”

  “Yes, right, right. Plans for sailing. The shipwrights are going over Black Raven now. We hauled her out on rollers. Might be a strake’s a bit punky, they’ll have a go at that. Get her ready for the sea. A week or so, I should think. And then we’re underway. I don’t imagine any opportunity will come along that will induce us to stay longer.”

  Thorgrim tried to hold his face still, but Arinbjorn was too astute an observer, and watching too closely, to miss the flash of a grimace.

  “What? What is it troubles you?”

  Thorgrim took a long drink, as much to compose his thoughts as to slake his thirst. “Shipwrights,” he said at last. “I am well familiar with that breed. Once they find a little bit of rot they will find more and more. Soon they’d be tearing the entire vessel apart and you will have to sell your lands to pay their bill. Rotten wood is gold to them, and they will dig for every ounce they can find.”

  Arinbjorn nodded. “Oh, I know. Finding an honest shipwright is like finding a sober man in a mead hall. But without the work I fear Black Raven will fall apart half way to home, and I know I’m not up to swimming the remainder of the way. In any event, I have one of my best men overseeing the work.”

  Thorgrim nodded and took a long drink. He would not embarrass Arinbjorn by asking about the man overseeing the work because he was quite certain there was in truth no one overseeing the work. An awkward silence followed, and then Arinbjorn asked him how he and Harald were faring. They spoke for a few moments more about meaningless things, and then Thorgrim excused himself.

  He stepped out of Arinbjorn’s rooms and into the courtyard. The breeze from the ocean and the smells of the day’s business wrapped around him, but the sense of despair that came from the interview just concluded was wrapped closer still. Two things that Arinbjorn had said. Two things that stuck like thorns.

  The shipwrights were the first problem. Rarely did their labors not drag out for weeks, and it would be worse if some of that work were actually necessary. Arinbjorn, or his man, would need to be vigilant and demanding to avoid having Black Raven on the hard for weeks, if not months, but Thorgrim doubted that Arinbjorn would be vigilant or that he actually had an overseer.

  He considered offering to oversee the work himself, but he knew Arinbjorn well enough by now to know that such an offer would be greeted with the sincerest sounding gratitude and then ignored. Arinbjorn already felt Thorgrim had something to hold over his head, and he would not go further into Thorgrim’s debt.

  The other thorn was Arinbjorn’s remark about thinking no opportunity would come that would induce them to stay. Not the words of a man eager to sail for home. Not at all. The words, in fact, of a man looking for a reason to not do so.

  Thorgrim walked back through the market, through the section of town where the woodworkers had their shops, then that of the comb makers and the jewelers, down toward the river front. Black Raven was hauled out not far from where they had beached her. She sat with her keel on the rollers, blocked up, so she was sitting perfectly upright. Some of the floorboards had been pulled up and stacked on shore to give the shipwrights access to her strakes from the inside. Soon they would begin their task of poking at the oak planks, tearing out the rotten ones like decaying teeth. Once they started, who knew where they would stop?

  But there was no activity aboard her now, no one at work, which begged the question of when they would even begin their lengthy task.

  He turned with something like a sigh and made his way back up the plank road, back t
oward Jokul’s house. He thought about the mead hall, thought about drinking himself into oblivion, getting in another brawl, perhaps, but he found that none of the diversions of his younger days held much interest to him now. Maybe he would spend his hours sharpening blades with Starri Deathless.

  Smoke was rolling up from Jokul’s forge as Thorgrim approached the house, but there was no one in the yard, no one milling about outside. The grindstone was motionless, a sword set neatly on the seat where Starri had been. Odd. Thorgrim stepped through the break in the low wattle fence and down the split log path. He could hear voices from inside, low, excited.

  He came in through the door and could see the others in the big room by the hearth, Almaith, Jokul, the rest. He stepped in and Starri was the first to see him.

  “Thorgrim! Here, here, here!” The berserker seemed to dance from one foot to another and his hands were doing a weird little fluttering thing. “We’ve been waiting on you!”

  Thorgrim stepped further in. Harald was seated by the hearth. He was smiling, but he looked confused as well, a bit shocked, like he had taken a hard blow to the head. Beside him sat a person who looked like one of the Christ men, one of these Christian priests. But the person looked up and Thorgrim could see it was not a Christ man, no man at all. A young woman, with a thick, luxurious sweep of brown hair, brown eyes that flashed like sunlight on steel. Her smile was demure, showing a hint of white teeth. She was beautiful. Thorgrim felt his heart sink, his stomach convulse. He had no idea who she was, or what she was about, but he felt a moral certainty that his neat escape from Ireland had just become much more complicated.

  Chapter Twenty

  Noble woman of low means,

  lit by the blue wave’s lands:

  I fear nothing for myself.

  Gisli Sursson’s Saga

  It was two days after her arrival in Dubh-linn, two days after her reuniting with Harald, after the jumbled, confusing introductions to the fin gall with whom he lived, fin gall and, to Brigit’s surprise, Almaith, an Irishwoman, that she was able at last to move her plans forward. It was a trifling move, like pushing a pawn ahead a space, and it brought her little comfort, but it was a move.

  She was seated in a big room, a fine room in the finest building she had seen in Dubh-linn, as fine as any at Tara, but built in the Norse manner out of sawn boards, not as the Irish would do it. Brigit kept her eyes on Harald as he spoke to the older man. She had asked Harald to bring her to see someone who had influence and authority with the fin gall. Harald had done as she asked, and this man did indeed seem to be the sort to whom she wished to speak. But Brigit did not know who he was.

  The words flowed back and forth in the Northmen’s coarse language and Brigit could follow none of it, but the way Harald moved his body in response to what the man said, those times when he met the man’s eyes, or looked at the floor, or twisted his hands, told her a great deal. Almaith was there, serving as translator, but Brigit was not sure she was doing so with any great exactness.

  She felt out of control, as if events were a heavy loaded wagon that had gathered too much speed going downhill. In the short time she had been in Dubh-linn, and with the great barrier of language, she did not know who had real power among the fin gall, and who simply thought they did. She had to rely on Harald. And Almaith. And that was not comforting.

  In that fine room, a fire burning in an open hearth against the damp air, she explained to the man to whom Harald had brought her who she was, and listened as Almaith rendered the words into the Norse tongue and watched Harald bob his head like a dog looking to be scratched. And the man was listening, listening closely, which was good. But she still did not know who he was.

  Is this Thorgrim Night Wolf? she wondered. Almaith had told her the man’s name, but in the context of telling her many things, and she had not really understood and did not want to appear dim by asking for clarification. She thought that she had met Thorgrim earlier, but she could not be sure, and she could not always tell these fin gall apart.

  She hoped this was Thorgrim to whom she was speaking. She had heard Thorgrim’s name spoken on many occasions, and he seemed to command a great deal of respect.

  This is maddening! she thought, and nearly cried out in frustration. This was her life, her fate, under discussion and her with no comprehension at all of what was being said.

  Two days she had been in Dubh-linn, two days since she and Finnian had pushed their way through the crowds streaming in from the countryside. That part, the getting there, had been easier than she dared hope.

  From Tara, she and Father Finnian were four days on the road. The three bandits they had encountered, the ones Finnian had somehow managed to drive off, were the worst of the lot. That night, and the following nights, they had found farmers willing to put them up in their hovels: filthy, crowded, smelling of sweat and porridge and livestock, but nonetheless warm and dry and welcome. Farmers eager for the blessings that might come from aiding two priests in their travels. The farmers had offered food, Father Finnian had offered mass, and the farmers felt they had the best of the deal.

  She and Finnian knew they were nearing Dubh-linn even before they could see the mounded earthen wall that surrounded the longphort, the palisade fence that crowned it. The road grew more and more crowded with carts and small herds as the local farmers drove their produce to the biggest market to be found in that area, or indeed anywhere in Ireland. The small, rutted paths that ran into the main road fed the way like streams emptying into a river. Carts with wheat, carts with rye, carts with squealing pigs, squawking chickens, sheep and cattle on the hoof, all rolled up from the farms within a day or two of the longphort and all headed for the open market.

  They fell in with this stream, often having to wait by the side of the road as various creaking, bleating or mooing traffic moved past. But there was good cheer and companionship among the people, and as often as not they were given a place to ride in a farm cart, a place on the driver’s seat, not back with the animals. The Viking heathens may have had no respect for the robe or the beads, but to the Irish they meant a great deal.

  The earthwork defenses of the longphort had first appeared as a glimpse through a stand of trees, then, as they emerged from the woods, they rose up from the green land surrounding it, a long brown heap of dirt with a tall gate through which flowed the men, women and carts bound for market. Brigit and Finnian were riding on the seat of a cart loaded with wooden cages of chickens. Behind them squawked dull brownish-black hens, and roosters with magnificent tail feathers that strutted the extent of their confinement and pecked at any birds that came near them, never appreciating how soon and how completely their magnificent reigns would be brought to an end.

  The farmer who had yielded his seat to the friendly priest and his silent, hooded companion walked beside the cart, using a goad to keep the oxen moving as he talked. He came to Dubh-linn often, he told them, had found so vibrant a market that he had raised himself up from a man scrambling to feed his family to one who owned such luxury as two oxen and a cart.

  He knew a bit of the Norse language, had made himself learn as much as he could, knowing it would give him an advantage over those who did not. “I may hate those damned heathens,” the farmer railed, “forgive my language, Father, I beg, but it’s what they are. Still, the fact is, they’re here to stay, and we best be used to them and get what we can from them, when they’re not raiding our monasteries and making slaves of us all.”

  Brigit ignored his ranting. She had little interest in his opinions. But she was pleased to hear that the man could speak the language of the Northmen, or some, in any event. She hoped it would be enough to solve the most vexing problem she anticipated.

  It was late morning when they were finally close enough to appreciate the full extent of the wall that protected Dubh-linn from the rest of Ireland. Columns of smoke began to rise from behind the unseen town, first one, then three, then dozens, rising up into the morning sky before dissipating in the l
ight breeze. Brigit was surprised. So many of columns of smoke, more than she would thought there could be hearths collected together in one place. She wanted to ask the farmer about them, but she did not dare speak and risk revealing her sex, so she kept quiet and wondered.

  At last they came to the gateway into the longphort, something of a bottleneck as two guards under some king’s banner made a cursory search of the wagons as they rolled into the town. “Afraid of some surprise attack, they are,” the farmer talked as they waited. “Ha! Us farmers take on that load of murderers and killers? And why would we? Do they not know the tale of the goose that lays the golden eggs?”

  The farmer, who had kept up a steady monologue since first they accepted his offer of a ride, fell silent, and Brigit prayed he was done, but a moment later he started in again. “Things go around in a circle, Father,” he said. “It’s gold and silver these heathens have, and goods from across the sea they trade for the likes of my chickens. They rob the towns to the south and west, they do, and then hand the spoils back to us! So, if we’re being robbed by them fin gall or the fat bastards on the throne of Tara, what’s the difference, I ask?”

  They reached the gate, happily for Brigit, who could feel her anger rising, and the farmer broke off his speech as he conversed with the guard. They rolled on through the gap in the high earthen walls and before them, like a curtain drawn back, Dubh-linn came into view before them.

  And Brigit, despite herself, gasped.

  She had, quite literally, never seen its like before. Tara, with its church and monastery, its dozens of thatched homes, smithy, stables, enclosed by the ringfort, was the largest cluster of people she had ever seen. Indeed, she had not imagined that there was or could have been a town bigger.