Loch Garman: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 7)

by James L. Nelson

  I’ll ask Failend, he thought. She would know. Or Louis. But he knew better than to ask these men if he wanted them to still believe that he was Cónán, escaped Irish thrall.

  When Cathal was done they filled in the hole and then trudged into the nearest of the two houses. They sat down around a big, rough wood table and one of the men found some bread and meat and ale and they ate, silent and ravenous.

  Once they had eaten nearly their fill, Harald said, “Down at the river, I saw there was a boat. Thought you said the river’s too shallow up here for a boat.”

  Cathal grunted. “Not exactly. Boat with a couple of men in it, it’ll float. But that don’t do us much good. It’s ore we got to get down to Ferns. Load the boat with ore and it sinks too deep for the river up here.”

  “Oh,” Harald said. He ate some more, washed it down with the sour ale. “Iron ore?” he said after a while. “You’re hauling iron ore to Ferns?”

  The question brought a reaction that Harald did not expect, and he didn’t know what to make of it. A sort of confused silence, glances around the table. No one responded at first.

  “Yes, iron ore,” Cathal said after chewing and swallowing. “Those fellows, the ones that was killed, they were supposed to be mining ore. Maybe they were. Anyway, looks like we’re done mining here. For a while, anyway.”

  “Seems like a lot of work, moving the ore to Ferns,” Harald said. “I don’t know much about those things, but wouldn’t it make more sense to smelt it here? Just bring the iron to Ferns, and not the rocks and such?”

  More silence, more glances around the table. Then Cathal gave a short snort of a laugh. “Damned lot of things would make more sense, my friend. But it ain’t up to us to make sense of things. We do what they tell us to do, and if it’s stupid, it ain’t our business to say so!”

  That was greeted with smiles around the table. Heads nodding. It was an answer that made sense. Made sense to everyone, even Harald. Or mostly so.

  Their meal done, the Irishmen went poking around the two houses to see if anything had been disturbed, but all seemed in order. The bandits likely had just finished the work of killing and had not started in on plundering when Harald and the others arrived.

  “Well, I guess we’ll collect up whatever the dead men had and bring it back to Ferns on the morrow,” Cathal said at last. “Not much else we can do here. Abbot’ll have to send more men if he wants more iron taken out of this place.”

  The others agreed with that and seemed happy enough to have nothing more to do. Harald wandered up to the river where the boat was pulled up on the bank. He stripped and stepped into the cold water, which rose as high as his knees. He lay down, gasping as he did, and let the river wash over him, stripping away the grime and the stale sweat and the aches in his muscles.

  The Irish were not fond of washing, he knew, not like the Northmen. But Harald had spent his life plunging into water much colder than this, and he and most of his countrymen enjoyed bathing. As often as once a week, if that was possible. And just then he could think of nothing so wonderful as the caress of the stream over his sore flesh. Even the caress of a woman did not seem so tempting as the river was just then.

  He remained in the river as long as he could stand it, then pulled himself out and stood and let the water run off him. The clouds were breaking up and a bit of sunlight was peeking through and Harald let that dry him off. Some ways off to the north he could see crows circling in the sky and he knew that the bodies of the bandits had been discovered and now were getting the attention and respect that they deserved.

  Finally Harald dressed and made his way back to the place where the two houses stood. Not long after that, as the sun began to drop in the west, Cathal and his men built a fire and roasted what little fresh meat was left and ate that and drank the rest of the bad ale for their evening meal.

  Evening came on, and with it a great weariness after a day that had seen considerable trouble and many miles traveled. The Irishmen retired to one of the houses that was apparently their regular place of residence there, and they offered Harald a pallet to sleep on, one of the six now unoccupied. With a profound sense of relief he unbelted his sword and laid it down, then lay down beside it on the blanket-covered straw. He stretched out and let the tension come off his muscles. He sighed, deeply. And soon he was asleep.

  He woke to the sound of motion, someone or something moving nearby. He opened his eyes, stared up into the blackness. Whatever was moving was moving carefully, deliberately, clearly trying not to be heard.

  Harald reached out and laid his hand on Oak Cleaver’s hilt but did not move beyond that. He waited a moment then rolled his head to the side. The sky had been clearing all day, and now in the light of the moon creeping in around the cloth that hung over the door he could see a figure moving about. It was Cathal, he was pretty sure. He could not see what the man was doing, but whatever it was, it did not seem threatening in any way. Nor did it seem to have anything to do with him.

  He remained motionless, watching. A moment later he saw Cathal draw back the cloth door and stand there, framed by the filtered moonlight. And then he stepped out and the curtain swung back and all was dark again.

  Harald did not move. He listened to the sounds in the dark. He could still hear the rhythmic breathing of the others, sleeping nearby. Cathal’s movements seemed to have not disturbed them in the least.

  Harald swung his feet around, pushed himself to his feet. The straw made a soft crunching sound under his hands, and he stood, silent and motionless, and listened, but still everyone seemed to remain dead asleep. He reached down, gently picked up Oak Cleaver, and stepped cautiously across the dirt floor. He pulled the cloth aside and stepped noiselessly out the door.

  The night air was cool and smelled fresh and clean after the stuffy interior of the house, with its overlaid odors of food and ale and traces of smoke and unwashed bodies. He stepped to the side, into a darker place, though the moon was not so bright as to cast shadows across the ground. He searched the space around him as best he could. He could see no sign of Cathal, could hear nothing of the man.

  He stepped away from the side of the house and continued on, skirting the road, moving beyond the dwellings and the trampled ground, moving up hill. He did not know what was up that way—he and the others had not traveled beyond the two buildings—but he had an idea, and he guessed that that was the direction in which Cathal was heading.

  As he walked, quickly but carefully, he unwrapped his belt and strapped it around him, letting Oak Cleaver hang at his side. He could make out only vague shapes in the dark, and could see just enough to allow him to walk with some degree of surety. He continued on like that, moving up the sloping ground, the dark patch of road off to his right, the stars and moon visible through a thin haze overhead.

  It was just occurring to Harald that he might have guessed wrong, that Cathal might not have come in this direction, when he heard a sound, not too far off. He stopped and stood absolutely still and listened. It was a clicking sound, sharp and quick, again and again. Then something flashed up ahead, and then flashed again.

  Fire striker, Harald thought. Of course. Cathal was striking a steel striker on flint.

  Harald looked left and right but could see nothing behind which he could hide, so he knelt down, low as he could get and still see. A shower of sparks fell from Cathal’s steel and he heard the soft sound of the man blowing on the tinder. He could see now that Cathal was a good two hundred feet away. He would not see Harald there unless he came looking.

  Finally a fire flared and in the light Harald could see Cathal’s face, the cowl of his tunic bunched up behind his head. Then the fire flared brighter still and Harald saw that Cathal had stuck the end of a torch into the flames. He held the torch up over his head, the light making a circle around him, and Harald knew that there was no possibility of his being seen now. Cathal would not be able to see anything beyond the cast of the torchlight.

  That fact aside, Cathal
looked around him in each direction, then continued on. Harald could see the torchlight glinting off the river nearby, which surprised him. He had not realized the river and the road had once again merged there. He could see the land rose sharply, a big, rugged outcropping that loomed up beyond the reach of Cathal’s torch. And in the face of the outcropping an odd, square-shaped patch of darkness.

  The mine…Harald thought. That was where he had guessed Cathal was heading, but he was not sure until that moment. Of course the Irishman would want to check that all was well there: the mine seemed to be of great concern to him, despite his pretending it wasn’t.

  He watched Cathal approach the entrance, and the light of the torch revealed the mouth of the shaft in the side of the hill. And then Cathal stepped through and disappeared and the torchlight made the mine seem to glow from within. Then that too began to fade until the shaft opening was only just visible, a vaguely lighter point in an otherwise dark night.

  Harald stood. He guessed that Cathal would be coming back that way soon and he might bring the torch with him, which meant he would see Harald if Harald was within the light of the flames. He stepped carefully away, toward where he had seen the river, and now he could hear the water tumbling over the stones. There was a bush growing near the bank and he worked his way around behind that to a place where he could peer out through the branches, but where he was quite certain he would not be seen. And then he waited.

  But he did not wait long. Soon he saw the light in the entrance to the mine grow brighter and then he saw the flame and Cathal beneath it reappear. There was nothing hurried or panicked in the way Cathal moved, and that made Harald think that he had found nothing amiss.

  The Irishman walked a few paces, then stopped, looked around once more, then lowered the torch and beat the end on the ground until the flame was extinguished. Harald blinked. The flame from the torch had dulled his vision and now he could no longer see Cathal. He listened, and thought he could hear the soft padding of his shoes as he walked back down the road, the way he had come.

  Harald waited for what seemed to be a long time, and he heard nothing more of Cathal or anything else save for the soft sound of the rushing water and the occasional buzz of insects. When he was finally certain that he was alone, he stepped out from behind the bush and made his way over to where Cathal had found the torch, the steel and the tinder.

  After having waited so long in the dark Harald found his night vision was much restored, and he was easily able to locate the wooden crate that held the tinder and flint and steel. It seemed odd to him at first that they would have such things sitting there, and then he understood. It was a mine. They would need torches whenever they worked in the dark shaft, and they would need to have the means to light them right at hand.

  What was Cathal looking for? Harald wondered. And why did he hold this place as such a great secret? It made no sense to him, none of it did, but he wanted his gnawing curiosity sated, like scratching an itch.

  He reached down and felt around in the box until he found the steel striker, forged into an oval shape so that it would slip over one’s fingers. He found a chunk of flint and some soft linen tinder and laid that down in a bunch and struck the flint with the steel. Soon the sparks were flying, and soon after that he had a genuine fire, and with that he lit the torch as Cathal had done.

  Torch in hand, he moved carefully toward the opening of the mine shaft, not entirely sure why he was using such caution. He stopped just outside the mine and peered in. The shaft was narrow, maybe three feet across and five feet high. It seemed like a natural rent in the rock face, not something hewn by men. He would have to bend over and move sideways to squeeze in.

  “Hmm…” he said, softly. Tight, confined spaces such as this were not at all to his liking.

  It’s an iron mine, he thought. I know that, why do I have to go and look? And then he frowned and silently cursed himself for a coward, and thus fortified he stepped in, twisted sideways, and moved deeper into the hole.

  He held the torch out ahead of him as he walked, and the rough-hewn rock walls seemed to close in. Ten feet, twenty feet, and then the entrance to the mine was lost from view. He felt a touch of panic welling up and he fought it down.

  Another ten feet and then the walls seemed to move away, the shaft opening up wider, and high enough that he could stand upright. He had come to a room of sorts—he did not know what other word to use—a wider part of the mine shaft, the place where the actual mining seemed to be taking place. He could see picks and shovels leaning against the side of the shaft, and his feet were crunching over small bits of rock strewn on the shaft floor. He could see that here the walls of the shaft had been purposely hacked away.

  He ran his eyes over the rough surface, the variegated shades of gray and black and white rock. And something else. Not gray, not any color he would associate with stone. More of a yellowish color, like a narrow yellow band cutting a jagged and irregular line across the wall of the mine shaft.

  Harald raised the torch and took a step closer, so that his face was no more than a foot away from the wall of the mine. He could see that the rock was chipped away in that spot, that the men working there had been making an effort to expose that vein.

  Because it was gold.

  Oh, by all the gods… Harald thought. This all made sense now. Why Cathal did not want Harald, or anyone, he imagined, to see this place. Why they did not smelt iron here but rather carried the ore to Ferns. It was not iron at all that they were after. If they were carrying iron ore it was only to disguise what they were really pulling out of this hole.

  So…now what? he wondered. How did this affect what he was doing, what he had to do? It didn’t, he realized.

  His only concern was getting back to his father and the rest, and that meant getting to Ferns and from there making his way to Loch Garman. Gold was a fine thing, but he and all of Thorgrim’s band already had considerable wealth, even with the treasure they had lost when the ships had wrecked on the beach. What they needed now was sailcloth, and time to make their ships whole again.

  I can’t let Cathal and the others know I’ve discovered this place, Harald thought. If they knew, they would most certainly not help him, and they would probably try to kill him.

  He was suddenly very anxious to be out of the mine and back in the house with the others, where he could pretend he had never left, had never found the Mine of St. Aiden. He stepped away from the gold vein as if it were some dangerous creature, then turned and made his way back along the mine shaft, gritting his teeth as the walls closed in on him once again.

  The torch began to gutter and Harald moved quicker, suddenly terrified at the thought of being in the mine shaft in the dark. His back scraped along the side of the shaft, he could feel the rough stone through the cloth of his tunic, but that only made him move faster still.

  At last he could see the opening of the shaft ahead, the dark place where the stone walls ended, and he felt a wave of relief. He slowed and the torch flared brighter and he could feel the cool night air coming through the entrance. Half a dozen paces and he was through the opening and out in the night, in the open. He straightened and arched his back and took a deep breath and felt himself relax.

  And then he sensed movement to his right and he half spun around, but he was holding the torch in his right hand and could not draw his sword. Someone came out of the dark, one of Cathal’s men, a spear held at waist height, the tip aimed at Harald’s chest. And then in front and on his other side the rest of them appeared and each was armed the same way. And so was Cathal, who stepped up behind them.

  For a long moment they all stood still, looking at one another, Harald holding the torch, the other five holding spears in a half circle around him. Then Cathal spoke.

  “I’ll say this, Cónán. I wish to God you had never found this place.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  It was by Tighearnmas also that gold was first smelted in Ireland, in Foithre Airthir Liffe. It
was Uchadan, an artificer of the Feara Cualann, that smelted it.

  The Annals of the Four Masters

  Harald Broadarm had several difficult choices to make, and not a lot of time to think about them. Talk his way out of this? Fight his way out of it? Go along and look for a chance later?

  “It’s an iron mine, like you said,” Harald began. He was still examining options. Talking might give him a few seconds more.

  Cathal squinted at him. “We believed you was an Irishman, but now I’m not so sure,” he said slowly. “I look at you now, and you look a damned sight more like a heathen than a Christian.”

  What does a Christian look like? Harald wondered. But he did not ask.

  “I told you, I was raised by the heathens,” he said instead. “I don’t know, maybe I am half heathen, but that doesn’t mean I have any love for the bastards.” He was still holding the torch aloft, and as he spoke he shifted it from his right hand to his left.

  Cathal made a grunting noise, a sound that suggested that he was not sure whether or not he believed what Harald said.

  I really don’t want to kill you, Harald thought. This was another part of the problem: Harald liked these men. They had given him food and ale when he most needed it. They had traveled together and fought together. They weren’t really his enemies, just men doing what they had been told to do.

  On the other hand, he would kill them all if they tried to harm him. Or steal Oak Cleaver.

  “Well, whatever you are, we’ll find out soon,” Cathal said. He turned to the man next to him. “Fedelmid, get his sword,” he said.

  Fedelmid raised his spear and leaned it back against his shoulder and he reached forward, hands going for Harald’s belt buckle. Harald waited until his fingers brushed the metal before delivering a sweeping blow with his right hand, knocking Fedelmid’s arms away and using the momentum from the swing to bring his fist around and slam it into the side of Fedelmid’s head.