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

by James L. Nelson

  Morrigan turned to Flann and spoke softly. Flann replied and Morrigan turned back to Arinbjorn. “My master, Flann, says that he wishes to welcome you. You are more powerful than us, by far, and he does not wish to do battle with you.”

  Harald leaned close to Thorgrim and whispered in his ear. “I don’t think that’s what Flann said.”

  Thorgrim nodded slightly. It would not surprise him at all if Morrigan was making the decisions here, and the man she said was her brother was as purely ornamental as the soldiers behind them. He turned his attention back to Arinbjorn, who seemed just as flummoxed by Morrigan’s answer as he had been before she tried to enlighten him.

  “We have not come to feast with you,” he said. “We…we will not just turn and go simply because you have laid out food for us.”

  Morrigan pretended to confer with Flann on this. When they were done she spoke again, and her voice carried authority enough for both her and Flann. “My brother wishes for us to speak honestly. We are not children. We know why you’re here. You have come to plunder Tara. Well, the truth is, we probably can’t stop you. But if we can come to an agreement, we won’t try.”

  “Agreement?” Arinbjorn said. The confusion that Morrigan was sewing stripped the note of authority from his voice.

  “We’ll turn over the wealth of this place if you will take it and leave, without hurting our people, or taking any as slaves. If that’s acceptable to you, please join us in the feast we’ve set out. If not, we’ll fight to the last man. We’ll lose, I shouldn’t wonder, but you and your men will pay a high price for what might have been yours for free.”

  Arinbjorn had no answer for that. He turned to the others. “What say you?” he asked in a voice too low to be heard by Morrigan and the others.

  “It’s a damned trick,” Hrolleif growled. “I say we kill them all, now, and take what we damned well please.”

  Arinbjorn nodded, a gesture Thorgrim had come to recognize. “I don’t think we need be so hasty,” he said. “What she says has the sound of truth. They know they can’t hold us off, so it stands to reason they would want to spare their people. And by Odin, if I can achieve my ends without losing any of my men, I’ll be the happier for it.”

  Thorgrim said nothing. He scanned the faces of the others. Hrolleif looked angry, Ingolf looked skeptical. There seemed to be something vaguely dishonorable about accepting surrender in such a way, but no one could see clearly where the dishonor lay, and until they could, Morrigan’s offer made sense. No one spoke.

  Arinbjorn turned back to Morrigan. “How do we know this is no trick?”

  “My Lord,” she said, no longer pretending she was just translating Flann’s words, “you fin gall are a part of Ireland now. The days are gone when there can only be fighting between Irish and Northmen. We’ve laid this out,” she gestured toward the tables behind, “in that spirit. My people are gathering up the treasure you’ve come for. We can eat, and you can take what you claim. We can get more riches, but I will not see my people butchered.”

  Ingolf spoke up. “You still have not told us why we should trust you.”

  “My brother and I will join you at the feast. So will my men, unarmed. Consider us hostages, if you must. If you think you are betrayed, you may cut our throats.”

  She was winning them over. Thorgrim could see that. Her poise, the strength she projected, the unshakable logic of her argument, those things were working on the others. Nor could Thorgrim see the trap he was certain was there. But he knew Morrigan, and they did not. It was time to throw her off her stride and see what happened.

  Morrigan spoke again. “I have no doubt that your men…” she began and Thorgrim reached up and pulled the helmet off his head, and Harald, picking up the cue, did likewise. The movement caught Morrigan’s attention. Her eyes flicked over at them. Thorgrim saw her reaction in all its parts flash across her face, fast as a bolt of lightning; confusion, recognition, shock, fear, equilibrium.

  “Thorgrim,” she said. “Thorgrim Night Wolf. And Harald.” Her composure had returned so fast that most would have missed her initial shock. But Thorgrim had not, and he could hear that the note in her voice was a little changed now.

  “Morrigan,” Thorgrim said, nodding. “You have done well for yourself.”

  “I was a thrall to the dubh gall when we met,” she said, making it clear it was the Danes, not the Norwegians, whom she had reason to despise. “But my brother has always been heir to the throne of Tara.”

  Really? Brigit might think differently, Thorgrim thought.

  “You know this Irish bitch?” Hrolleif asked, pointing with his hedge-like beard at Morrigan. Morrigan’s expression did not change.

  “She helped us escape the Danes in Dubh-linn, when first we arrived there,” Thorgrim explained.

  “And I healed your jarl, Ornolf,” Morrigan added quickly. “And Harald, who nearly died of the fever.”

  “And you arranged for Harald to be taken hostage.”

  “I did what needed to be done, as any of you would have. And Harald, I see, is fine.”

  “He is. Not so Giant-Bjorn and Olvir Yellowbeard who were also taken hostage. They were beaten to death.”

  “That,” Morrigan said, “was the work of Máel Sechnaill mac Ruanaid, the last king of Tara. Not my brother Flann. Máel Sechnaill was an enemy of the fin gall. We are not.”

  Thorgrim smiled. You are a smooth one, with your answers to everything, he thought.

  “Very well,” Arinbjorn said in a loud voice, reasserting his authority. Most of the men there belonged to the Black Raven, and Hrolleif and Ingolf, in exchange for some largess, had sworn loyalty to Arinbjorn, so in the end, it was his decision alone. He turned back to the Thorgrim and the rest. “We cannot show indecision here,” he said in his emphatic whisper. “We must decide.”

  “I know this woman, Morrigan,” Thorgrim said. “She speaks well, as you can see, but she’s clever. Very clever. I don’t think she’s to be trusted.”

  The others made sounds of agreement, but even as the words left Thorgrim’s mouth he realized his mistake. Proof of that mistake came with the next words Arinbjorn spoke.

  “I hear truth in her words, and reckon myself to be a decent judge of such things. We’ll accept their offer, and if there are any tricks, then, Hrolleif, we will indeed kill them all.”

  “But what of Brigit?” Harald protested, though in that company he had no right to speak at all. “We came here to restore her to the throne, that was why she sought you out.”

  But Arinbjorn turned even before Harald had finished, and if he had heard Harald’s protests, he did not indicate as much. “Very well, Morrigan,” he said. “You make your case…your brother’s case…very well. If you and your men will set their arms aside and join us, then we will feast with you. On the morrow we will accept your…gifts, and if there are any tricks, or if you try to cheat us, it will go hard on you. Very hard on all of Tara.”

  Morrigan, recalling her role, translated this to Flann and Flann made reply, then Morrigan nodded and said, “You have made a wise choice.” Thorgrim watched her close for any sign of triumph or relief or amusement, but there was nothing. Her face was a river stone, featureless and unmoving.

  “Father,” Harald said in a tone that was more pleading than he had heard from the boy in some time. “What of Brigit, and the throne?”

  “Arinbjorn has made his decision,” Thorgrim said, his voice soft, his tone final. “All we can do is see how the gods will toy with us next.” Then, in a slightly more encouraging tone added, “But we will keep our eyes open, and keep a sharp lookout for chance.”

  “And what do we do until then? What do we do now?” Harald asked.

  “We do the very thing that comes most naturally to you, son,” Thorgrim

  said. “We eat.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “[F]ain would I see that feast;

  brawls and bickering I bring the gods,

  their ale I shall mix with evil.
”

  The Flyting of Loki

  It was one of the oddest feasts that Thorgrim had ever attended, perhaps the oddest ever. Everything was laid out for a grand banquet; suckling pig and lamb, bread and heaping bowls of butter, spring vegetables, dried fruits, porridge and honey. The mead was flowing, as was the beer and the wine. There were the hosts and the guests, and between them, mutual loathing and distrust.

  For all Morrigan’s high talk about Irishmen and Norsemen occupying that island in peace, it was pretty clear that the Irish regarded their guests with undisguised hatred. The Norse, in turn, looked on their hosts as pathetic and weak. For a successful party, the circumstances were not ideal.

  It played out as Morrigan had promised it would, no tricks, no betrayal. But Thorgrim had some experience with the depth of Morrigan’s cunning, and he kept his eyes open, his guard up. The Irishmen who joined them at the feast were the ones whom they would have met in combat if things had gone differently. By their expressions, the way they held themselves, Thorgrim guessed that they would have preferred combat, even a greatly uneven fight, to the humiliation they were suffering, feeding their enemies while others gathered up tribute to pay them to leave.

  Thorgrim watched the Irish as they talked among themselves, even as he feigned a lack of interest. He was looking for some sign of treachery, but saw instead impotent anger. He could not understand the words that they muttered to one another, but he did not need to understand them to know their nature.

  Even the one who Morrigan introduced as her brother, the one called Flann, did not look happy about this arrangement. At first Thorgrim had dismissed him as some effete pretender to the throne, but a closer look told him that was wrong. Flann had the look of strength about him, strength of arm, strength of leadership. Not the strength of ultimate command, like one who wears a crown easily, but the strength of one used to leading men, and that included leading them in battle. Thorgrim recalled seeing this Flann on the field when they had last fought the warriors of Tara. Such a man would not be happy about the capitulation Morrigan had arranged, and indeed Flann did not look happy.

  The rest of the Northmen seemed oblivious to the angry looks and muttering directed at them. The food was good and plentiful and they tore into it with gusto. The berserkers in particular, denied the climax of battle, vented their frustration on the food, as if they could sate their blood lust with gluttony and intoxication. Which, Thorgrim realized, they just might be able to do.

  He moved among the men, skirted the tables, whispered in their ears. “Don’t drink yourself to insensibility,” he warned. “Keep your wits about you.” It occurred to him that Morrigan might intend to let the Norsemen drink themselves into oblivion and then fall on them. It was the only treachery he could envision.

  But if that was her plan, it was not a very good one. It was damned hard to get a Viking so drunk he could not fight, and if he were only partially insensible with drink, then he would fight harder still. Morrigan had been many years among them, she had to have known as much.

  So the men of Arinbjorn’s hird, and Hrolleif’s and Ingolf’s, drank deep but they did not drink until they fell to the ground, and they ate well of all that was put in front of them, and they largely ignored their Irish hosts whom they had already dismissed as weaklings. Thorgrim ate little. Between his suspicion-driven vigilance, his worries over Harald, his concern that his men not drink themselves to unconsciousness, he all but forgot about eating, save for a half a loaf of bread which he snatched up and gnawed at as he patrolled.

  Night fell and the feast wound down and the Irish retreated back into the walls of Tara, leaving only a dozen slaves behind to clean up the mess and pack away that which had not been consumed. Morrigan called to the men in command, waved her arm toward the tents. There were a dozen or so, and blankets and furs, though the night was not cold.

  “These tents are for your use,” she said to Arinbjorn and the others. “I fear we do not have enough for all your men, but we have blankets and such for them to make their beds where they will.”

  “Arinbjorn,” Hrolleif said, louder than necessary. “My men will take the first watch. I have posted a dozen near to the gate of this place, and have more watching the north side, and still others encircling the camp.”

  Good man, Thorgrim thought. Hrolleif did not want to inform Arinbjorn of what he had done so much as he wanted Morrigan and Flann to know that they would not be taken by surprise.

  “A wise move, Hrolleif,” Morrigan said. “But not necessary. You shall see. Flann and I bid you good night. We will talk more in the morning.” With that, she and Flann made shallow bows, and with their small, lightly armed bodyguard, they turned and strolled back to the gate of Tara.

  It was later that evening, after the rest had gone off to sleep, after he had fended off Harald’s questions about what would become of Brigit, that Thorgrim replayed the night in his mind. So very odd… The Irish on one side of the tables, the Norsemen on the other. Eating together, with all that hatred hanging like smoke between them. Each to his own preferences. The Irish drank mostly beer, the Northmen mead. Even the meat; the lamb was on the Irish side, the suckling pigs, so loved by the Norse, on their side, and the Irish showed no interest in it at all.

  Thorgrim opened his eyes in the dark. He pictured the feast in his mind. The Irish did not touch the suckling pig. He could recall a few instances when one of his men had reached over the table and cut off a chunk of lamb, as much to provoke the Irish as from a love of that meat, but the Irish did not touch the pigs.

  “Harald?” Thorgrim said. He waited. Silence. “Harald?”

  At last he heard a grunt in reply.

  “Harald, do the Irish not eat pig?” he asked. Harald was as close to an authority on the ways of the Irish as he was going to find in Arinbjorn’s hird.

  There was another pause, long enough that Thorgrim thought Harald had fallen back asleep, but at length he answered. “They eat it like anyone does, I think.” The tone of his voice was not right, and it was not sleep affecting it.

  “What’s wrong?” Thorgrim asked. He sat up.

  “I don’t know… It’s my stomach.”

  “Did you eat too much?” Thorgrim asked, and then thought, stupid question…there is not enough food in Ireland for Harald to eat too much.

  “No…” Harald replied, sounding more miserable than Thorgrim had heard him sound since he was a child. “But what I did eat, I think I’m about to lose….”

  And as he said that, another sound reached Thorgrim’s ears, from beyond the tent, from out in the dark. Retching. Groaning. Those sounds were not foreign to a Viking encampment, but not like this. Not so many.

  Thorgrim was out of his bed, Iron-tooth in hand, and out through the flaps of the tent. The night was cool and there was a dampness in the air, and the thick smell of earth and grass such as he had come to associate with Ireland. The sky was unusually clear, the pinpoint fire of stars casting a soft light over the camp.

  It was light enough to see by, and Thorgrim did not like what he saw. Men were staggering out of their tents, crawling from under piles of furs. Men were doubled over and vomiting up the prodigious meal they had eaten. Men were laying curled on the ground, hands clamped on their stomachs, groaning in agony.

  Starri Deathless had dragged a heap of furs over by Thorgrim’s tent and Thorgrim could just make out his head jutting out from under the pile. He knelt down beside him. “Starri? Starri, how goes it with you?”

  Starri looked up at him, his eyes half closed, his mouth hanging open. “I am run through the gut, Night Wolf,” he whispered. “Run through from within…”

  Thorgrim stood. “Oh, you damnable bitch!” he cried out into the night, but his real fury was directed not at Morrigan but himself. “Idiot, idiot!” he shouted next. If Starri Deathless met his end in this manner, lying helpless as a baby, and not with a sword in his hand, Thorgrim swore he would have her head on a pike. But how he would ever live with himself, for the
part he played in this, he did not know.

  He headed off though the line of tents, calling out as he did, “Turn out! Turn out! To arms!” He was met with a chorus of groans. No one moved, save for those staggering aimlessly, bent nearly double.

  There was a candle burning in Arinbjorn’s tent, as Thorgrim had come to expect, and a guard outside, as was also Arinbjorn’s custom. The guard, however, was down on one knee, swaying and trying to stay upright as Thorgrim approached, sword in hand. Such a thing would surely have warranted a challenge, but now the guard did no more than raise one hand, make a sound that might have been a word, and fall sideways onto the ground. Thorgrim pushed the tent flap aside and stepped inside.

  Arinbjorn had his camp bed with him and he was sitting on the edge, bent over, his weight supported by one arm. He looked up as Thorgrim burst in. His eyes were wide, his face white and waxy in the light of the single candle. Thorgrim could see beads of sweat on his forehead, a sheen on his cheeks.

  “You…” was all that Arinbjorn managed to say. Only his eyes moved, shifting from Thorgrim’s face to his sword and back.

  “We are betrayed,” Thorgrim said. “Morrigan. I told you she was not to be trusted.”

  But Arinbjorn just stared at him, as if he had not heard. At last he spoke, and his voice was weak. “What have you done? Are you here to kill me now?”

  “What?” Thorgrim said. “Kill you?” He followed Arinbjorn’s eyes down to Iron-tooth. “No! Not me. Morrigan. You are poisoned. If that doesn’t kill you, her men will.”

  “How are you…how are you not sick?” Arinbjorn asked. Fear and suspicion seemed to be giving him strength.

  “The food was poisoned, but I didn’t eat. See here, we must rally those who can still fight. Maybe we can get back to the ships…”

  Arinbjorn forced himself up until he was no longer leaning on his arm. “Who told you not to eat? How did you know?”