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

by James L. Nelson

  That night Thorgrim dreamt of wolves. He was part of a pack, and they were set upon from all sides. They were in thick woods. They could not see, but their noses alerted them to enemies in every quarter. They ran, but they did not know to where they were running. They waited to be attacked but they did not know from where it would come. They were wolves but they did not have the power and strength of their kind.

  He woke in a sweat. There was a hint of dawn to the east, a barely perceptible lighting along the horizon. He stood and stretched his muscles then prowled up the deck, checking that all was well, trying to shake off the disturbing vestiges of his dream. He woke a couple of the men and told them they were on duty to cook breakfast. They made to protest, but one look at Thorgrim’s face in the dim light of the predawn convinced them to shut their mouths and get to work.

  Two hours later the men had eaten, the ships were ready to get underway, and Brigit had emerged from her tent looking considerably better than she had the day before. The food, the steady deck underfoot, the proximity to Tara, and the possibility that these men under Arinbjorn’s command would take it back for her, had all worked their magic. Arinbjorn hovered and Harald shot dirty looks aft from his rowing station, but once they were underway, Brigit chose to lean against the side of the ship just a few feet forward of where Thorgrim held the tiller. She smiled at him and nodded and Thorgrim nodded back. He was the only one there who had shown not the slightest interest in her, and he guessed that she felt safe in his company for just that reason.

  Women… he thought.

  It was fifteen miles up the river, a slow crawl with the current working against them. With more men than rowing stations, the hands at the oars could be relieved on a regular basis. Thorgrim was happy for that. He did not want the men’s strength drained getting up the river, because battle waited for them at the other end, or so he hoped. It would be a grave mistake to not attack that very day, to give the enemy another night to fortify and gather men. He hoped Arinbjorn would come to the same conclusion, so he was careful not to suggest it.

  The river was familiar. Thorgrim and Ornolf and Harald and the others who had come with them from Vik had come up that way half a year before. Their ambitions had not been so great then. They hoped only to rescue Harald and their other shipmates who had been taken hostage. They had nearly all died in the trying.

  But Thorgrim had a good memory for waterways and he recognized the various twists in the river, recalled where he had found sandbars and snags and back eddies, and so with Black Raven in the lead, the three ships made good way. On the shore he caught glimpses of horsemen trying to remain unseen in the stands of trees. He thought back to Cloyne, the horsemen on the ridge. Tara would be fully alerted to their coming, but there was nothing for it. Surprise was an impossibility when you had five leagues of river and another of land to traverse before arriving at the point of attack.

  It was midafternoon when they reached the spot where Thorgrim recalled having tied up before. Brigit, realizing where they were, became more animated, pointing up the river and saying something in her undecipherable Irish tongue. Thorgrim called Harald aft because he knew Arinbjorn never would.

  “What does Brigit say?”

  Harald said a few words to her, and she replied, speaking slower this time. “She says there is a good place to anchor half a mile up the river, and a road from the landing that leads straight to Tara.”

  They continued on, and just as Brigit had said, the river widened out as it bent around, with the current carving a deep place along the western shore. There were pilings driven into the water and posts on the banks and Thorgrim guessed that the Irish made considerable use of the river. They had seen no vessels that day, but that was no surprise. On the appearance of the Norsemen, any Irish boats would have scattered like sheep before wolves.

  They tied the longships to the pilings and posts, rigged gangplanks to the shore. Arinbjorn stepped off first, followed by Hrolleif the Stout and Ingolf who commanded Dragon Slayer, and behind them their men, carrying the shields they had unshipped from the sides of the vessels, and swords and axes and spears. They assembled on shore and the men pulled on mail shirts or padded tunics, iron helmets, strapped sword belts around their waists.

  The leaders walked a dozen yards down the road, which was relatively wide and blessedly mud free, and conferred. Brigit joined them, and Harald as translator. Thorgrim was there as well, though he had no intention of adding anything beyond a nodded agreement to whatever the others came up with. Arinbjorn asked Bolli to join them, which he did, as grudgingly as he did everything else.

  Brigit spoke first. Harald translated. “Tara is about five miles down this road, the Princess says.”

  The others turned and looked down the road, as if they might see it from there. “What does she think we’ll meet for opposition?” Hrolleif asked. Harald translated, listened to Brigit’s reply, asked for clarification, apparently, received it, nodded and translated back.

  “She says…I didn’t follow all of it…but she says she does not believe any of the…I think she means the minor jarls who have land nearby, she does not think any of them will come to the aide of Tara. She doubts there are more than one hundred men-at-arms. The walls are tall and the gates strong, but they will not be able to stand long against us.”

  The others nodded at this. “I say we move out now, fast as we can,” said Ingolf. “Time is our enemy, not theirs.”

  The others nodded again, as did Thorgrim, who was coming to like Ingolf. They agreed to that plan, turned and headed back to where the rest of the men waited, now in fighting array. Arinbjorn explained the plan, if such it could be called, which was simply to march on Tara and take it by whatever means presented itself. And that was fine for the Northmen, who asked for nothing more complicated than a straight out fight.

  And that was doubly true for Starri Deathless and his band of berserkers, Nordwall the short and the others. While most of the men had donned more gear in preparation for the fight, the berserkers had stripped down, removing tunics, belts, in general everything but leggings. Some wore fur capes, some wore helmets. They were well armed, the long-handled battle ax being the most common weapon of choice. They huddled to one side and made peculiar noises as if they were taking part in the worship of some long-forgotten god.

  “Starri!” Thorgrim called out. “Starri!” At length Starri looked up from his huddle and Thorgrim waved him over. He jogged up, ax and short sword in hand. He was stripped to the waist and the arrowhead that had split itself on Thorgrim’s sword at Cloyne was hanging around his neck on a leather thong.

  “Yes, Night Wolf?” he said. There was a weird look in his eyes, a strange light Thorgrim had not seen before, and his gaze seemed to pass right through Thorgrim’s head. Starri was there on the Banks of the Boyne, and he was off at some other place that only the berserkers knew.

  “We move out. Some of Hrolleif’s men are scouting ahead. Arinbjorn’s men will take the lead on the march, and your berserkers follow. Stay behind them.”

  “Behind? Behind… Should we not lead?”

  “No. We march to Tara, and when we see what we’re up against we’ll know how best to array ourselves. Now, pray, keep you men in order and in line.”

  Starri nodded. Thorgrim hoped that he really did understand, and was not just making some involuntary head movement. It was never easy to tell with Starri, and even more difficult in these circumstances. The truth was, Arinbjorn wished to control the berserkers for as long as he could, to deploy them thoughtfully and not in a manic rush, and for once Thorgrim agreed.

  Half an hour after coming ashore they were moving again, tramping off down the brown earth road, moving as fast as they could without sapping their strength on the march. Their feet, either bare or shod in soft leather shoes, made a muted shuffling sound as they walked. Mail shirts jangled and weapons thumped against thighs. Sometimes men talked softly in the ranks, but mostly they were quiet. The berserkers did not speak, but
occasionally one or another would make some kind of weird sound, a whimper or a growl, or he would bark like a dog.

  Brigit was not allowed to join them. She had protested, her voice rising at one point and Harald struggling to translate the angry words, but none of the men thought her presence at the battle was a good idea, and in the end they won. She was left aboard Black Raven with a guard of twenty men and the ship was warped out into the river. That was ostensibly for her own protection, but also to see that she did not slip away. Thorgrim watched Harald as he fought with indecision: should he remain with her or join his shipmates in the fighting? In the end, the lure of battle outweighed even the charms that Brigit had to offer.

  They walked for an hour. Thorgrim stayed mostly at the head of the column with Arinbjorn, though they had little enough to say to one another. Occasionally he would stop and let the men walk past in review, and his sharp eyes would search for any weakness, any man who looked afraid, any weapons not in fighting order, but he found nothing he could fault in that company. The country was mostly open, long green fields and stands of wood here and there. They could see smoke rising in the distance, and they guessed it came from Tara. Cooking fires, forges turning out spear and arrow heads.

  From up ahead they heard the sound of running. Arinbjorn held up a hand and the column stopped and Thorgrim drew his sword. Ottar Long-legs, who had been sent ahead with the scouts, appeared around the bend in the road and pulled huffing to a stop.

  “Tara lies but a mile ahead,” he reported while sucking air into his lungs. “Once past this stand of trees you can see it, on a high hill across open ground.”

  Arinbjorn and Thorgrim waited for him to catch his breath, and Hrolleif the Stout and Ingolf joined them. “What can you see of the defenses?” Arinbjorn asked. “Are there men on the walls?”

  Ottar shook his head. “None that I could see. It is a long way from the wood line to the ringfort. But it looks as if there are men on the open ground. Tents, it looked like.”

  Thorgrim and Arinbjorn exchanged glances, and Thorgrim wondered if Brigit had been wrong in her assumptions, or had been misleading them all along.

  “Tents?” Hrolleif asked. “Men-at-arms?”

  “No. They don’t look to be men-at-arms.”

  “What then?” Arinbjorn asked. “Who are they?”

  Ottar looked from Arinbjorn to the other leaders and he seemed unsure how to answer. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “It looked to me as if there were men, tents, banners…but no one seems to be in any formation for battle. It just…it does not look like an armed camp. And if it was, I don’t know why it would be there, when they could be within the walls of Tara, fifty rods away.”

  At that the others nodded and took on various expressions of confusion, until Ingolf said the only sensible thing, which was, “Why don’t we advance and see for ourselves?”

  They moved forward again, and as Ottar had told them, once around the stand of trees they found themselves looking out over a long stretch of open ground, a field of Ireland’s emerald grass broken here and there by a short hedge. The ground rose in a great, gently sloping hill and in the distance, perhaps a mile away, the great earthen ringfort of Tara, rising brown above the green. Between them and the walls of the fort, also as Ottar had described, tents, banners, men moving about. It looked more like a festival than preparations for battle.

  Arinbjorn stepped to the front, turned and addressed the men. “I don’t know what these Irish have in mind, but we have come to fight and we will go in fighting. We’ll cross the field, and when I give the word we form a shield wall and advance that way. Thorgrim and I will be in the center, Hrolleif with your men to the west, Ingolf to the east. The berserkers in the middle with my men. Form a line!”

  The men moved quickly, not a chaotic jumble but more like an elaborate dance, forming the line by their divisions, their leaders with them. It took less than two minutes, and then they were ready to go. Arinbjorn drew his sword, held it aloft and stepped off, and the Norsemen, eager for blood, ready to fight, rolled forward in his wake.

  Iron-tooth was in Thorgrim’s hand but he did not recall unsheathing it. He glanced to his side. Harald was there in mail shirt and helmet, his face set, determined but not frightened, and Thorgrim felt a wash of pride come over him. Harald seemed to sense that Thorgrim was looking at him and he looked back. Thorgrim smiled and to his pleasure Harald returned the smile. This was the beauty and simplicity of action. Whatever had happened before seemed meaningless when held up against the comradeship that came with facing danger together.

  They marched over the soft grass, closing with Tara and with whatever awaited them outside the walls. Thorgrim squinted, trying to get a better idea of what it might be, but he could not, or more to the point, he did not believe his eyes, because what his eyes told him made no sense.

  Fifty rods away, and still there was no sign of resistance or any indication that the enemy intended to fight. Thorgrim guessed there were forty or fifty men in the Irish camp, but none of them seemed even to have noticed that the Norsemen were coming. Thorgrim could hear muttering along the line and he called for quiet.

  They continued on, Thorgrim expecting Arinbjorn to form up the shieldwall, but he did not. Twenty rods and Thorgrim could see what appeared to be tables.

  Now a handful of people were advancing toward them. Not an armed band, no more than five or six, and they were not coming on as if they meant to fight. Thorgrim looked hard. His eyes were not what they once were, but he was all but certain that the one leading the group was a woman.

  Ten rods and Arinbjorn held up his hand and the line came to a stop and they waited as the small group approached. Now Thorgrim could see that it was a woman who was leading the group toward them. He looked past her, toward the camp. But it was not a camp. It was not a shieldwall of men-at-arms, or some kind of defense of the ringfort, or a funeral party. It was a banquet.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I hoodwinked those heroes,

  hurling dust in their eyes.

  The Saga of the Confederates

  Thorgrim Night Wolf watched the small group advance toward them. He leaned toward Harald, just slightly, and said, sotto voce, “If they don’t speak our language, you’ll have to translate. If they do, then keep it a secret that you can speak theirs.”

  Harald nodded. Thorgrim kept his eyes on the woman. There was something familiar about her, but she was too far away yet to recognize. Arinbjorn took a step forward, and though he did not invite them to do so, Hrolleif and Ingolf left their men and joined him. Thorgrim turned to Harald and jerked his head in their direction, and he and Harald stepped up to join the other leaders. Thorgrim knew they might need Harald. More to the point, he wanted to know what was going on. He wanted to be an irritant to Arinbjorn.

  Now Thorgrim could better make out the people walking toward them. A man and a woman, dressed well. Not dressed like royalty, but close. There would be no mistaking them for the scullery help. Behind them marched four soldiers, but they were lightly armed with shields and spears, as if they were more for decoration than combat.

  They were just twenty feet away when the realization struck Thorgrim, struck him hard, like a slap to the face.

  Morrigan!

  He looked again. It was she, for certain. When last he had seen her, she had been an escaped thrall from Dubh-linn, filthy and beaten down. She had made his own escape possible, and that of Ornolf, Harald and the rest. The Crown. Harald held hostage, that had been her doing. So much of Thorgrim’s brief time in Ireland was wrapped up in his memory of Morrigan.

  She stopped, five feet from Arinbjorn, and the man beside her stopped as did the soldiers. Thorgrim recognized the man as well, from the fighting they had done at Tara. A good man in a battle, he recalled, though he could not remember his name.

  Morrigan ran her eyes over the assembled men she was facing. There was no hint of recognition in her face, but Thorgrim and Harald were both wearing helmets, hi
s with a nose guard and Harald’s with iron rims around the eyes, so it was no surprise she did not notice them.

  “Welcome,” she said. Her command of Norse was so complete that Thorgrim would on occasion forget that she was Irish. “Welcome to Tara.”

  It may have been the voice, it may have been the warm greeting - the last thing any of them had expected - but Thorgrim felt like he was reeling, he felt like he was intoxicated, like he was watching performers acting out some bizarre play.

  That voice! Soft, yet commanding, a lilting Irish tone to the Norse words, steel wrapped in velvet. Thorgrim was back in the room in Dubh-linn that had served as their prison. Harald near death from a fever that come on the heels of a battle wound, Morrigan there with her basket of herbs and medicines, the secret compartment at the bottom where she hid the daggers.

  He closed his eyes, opened them, forced himself to return to the present, unworldly as it might seem.

  Morrigan was gesturing to the man who stood beside her. Tall, well made, he had the air of a man in command. Or, perhaps, the air of a man trying to appear more in command than he was.

  “This is Flann mac Conaing, who rules Tara. I am his sister, Morrigan nic Conaing. My brother does not speak your language, and as you can see I do, so I will serve to translate, by your leave.”

  Arinbjorn looked at her, glanced side to side as if searching for an answer to this odd puzzle. Finally he waved his sword in the direction of the tents and the tables and the men loading them with food. “What’s the meaning of all this?” he demanded.

  Thorgrim smiled. It was quite involuntary, but he had to admire how Morrigan had created this absurd situation. He wondered if Arinbjorn was now going to start whining like a petulant child. We came here to sack this place, and now you’re trying to feed us? It’s not fair!