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

by James L. Nelson

  All but Bécc. Once he was alone in the gully he continued on, moving slowly, scanning the brush now, rather than hacking at it. And once he did that he could see it, as clear as if it were painted on the ground: the flattened vegetation, the broken branches, the churned mud where nearly a hundred heathens had moved through the undergrowth.

  He followed it along, moving faster as the trail became more obvious to him. The gully seemed longer than he had thought and the branches whipped his face and stung in those places where he still had feeling, where it was not just hard scar tissue.

  At last he came to the end of the gully and the place where the heathens had rested and waited their chance to flee. He could see where men had reclined against the banks and laid the growth there flat.

  “Ah, you clever bastard,” he said out loud, since there was no one around. The fact that they had a moment to rest here meant that they had reached the end of the gully long before Tipraite had launched his attack. And that meant that Thorgrim knew going in that he was being placed in a trap.

  A few steps further on he could see where they had made their exit from that concealed place, up the north bank. Bécc climbed up the same way, coming out onto the open ground, his view greatly limited by the hills that surrounded the place. He could still see the path through the grass where the heathens had headed off to the northeast.

  “Damn your heathen soul,” Bécc muttered. He had no idea how long ago they had made their escape. He moved quickly to the crest of the nearest hill, the countryside spread out before him. No heathens.

  Bécc made his way around the end of the gully and trudged the half mile back to where the men-at-arms, his and Airtre’s, now under the command of Tipraite, were waiting.

  “The heathens made their escape out the far end of the gully,” he said to Tipraite and his captain, Trian. “They headed off to the northeast. God alone knows how they guessed at our plan, but they did.”

  “They can’t be too far,” Trian said. “How long ago did they flee?”

  “Don’t know,” Bécc said. “But if I had to guess I would say they were coming out of the gully as we were going in. They knew what was acting.”

  “Damned Godless cowards, running off like that,” Tipraite said. Trian nodded, but Bécc could not share that sentiment. They had been lured into a trap, they had seen it coming, and they had slipped away. It was clever. He had to admit it. As much as he hated the bastards, it was clever.

  “Get scouts out, quick,” Bécc said. “Pairs of riders. Send them off in every direction, have them scout six or seven miles afield. The heathens could not be any farther than that. Have them bring word back and then we’ll decide what next we’ll do.”

  The two men nodded, turned, and hurried off to get the scouting parties organized. Bécc found a fallen log and sat and brooded and considered his situation.

  The abbot does not need to know about the trap, he thought. If I tell him the heathens ran off, he’ll believe that. Tell him I appealed to Tipraite to join us, and he did. Tell him it was the heathens who betrayed us.

  A sick feeling swept over him, a sense of utter failure, disgust at his loathsomeness. He pulled his dagger from its sheath, glanced around. No one was looking his way so he stabbed the point of the dagger down through his sleeve, just past the cuff of his mail shirt, and into his arm, the pain sharp, terrible, cleansing. A just punishment for his sins.

  You are not that man anymore, he chastised himself as he pulled the knife free and felt the warm blood running down his arm. Bécc the soldier would have had no qualms about telling any lie to keep his reputation clean. And he had. But he was not that man. Despite the mail and the weapons at his side, he was Brother Bécc now. He was a man of God. He would tell the abbot the truth and he would take whatever punishment was given him and he would offer it up to the Lord.

  They waited through the morning, and one after another of the pairs of riders returned and none had seen any sign of the heathens, nor met any travelers who had news of them. It was as if they had been swallowed up by the earth. If they had, if Satan had come and taken them all, it would not have been so great a surprise to Bécc, but he did not think things would end so easily as that.

  “These are the last of them,” Tipraite said now, as if he was trying to get Bécc to show some enthusiasm for the task at hand. But Bécc’s mood had grown more despondent and gloomy as the day wore on, and he was having a hard time even showing interest. So he grunted again and pushed himself to his feet.

  Tipraite’s eyes moved down to Bécc’s left hand. “You’re hurt, Brother?” he asked, nodding.

  Bécc looked down. The back of his hand was covered in half-dried blood from his self-inflicted wound, his penance for his treacherous thoughts. “It’s nothing,” Bécc said and Tipraite knew enough to leave it at that.

  A moment later Bécc could hear the pounding hooves of the returning scouts. They were riding hard, and that made Bécc think that perhaps they had news of the heathens, and that in turn gave him just a spark of hope. He saw them at last, turning onto the road and closing the last half mile before reining to a stop and swinging out of their saddles. They were red-faced and sweating as they approached.

  “Brother Bécc?” one of the riders said, as if asking permission to speak.

  “Yes,” Bécc said. “Did you find the heathens?”

  “We didn’t see them, Brother. But we found a man who did. At a rath, some miles from here. We asked if they had passed that way and he said he saw a column of men moving to the east. Toward the coast, he thought. We reckoned it must have been the heathen army.”

  The rider stopped and looked as if he was waiting for praise for a job well done, but praise was not what was going through Bécc’s mind. “But you did not ride off to the east, to see for yourself?” Bécc said.

  The rider’s expression shifted. “Ah…no, Brother Bécc. We thought we had best come right back. Tell you what we had heard.”

  Bécc said nothing, just held the man in the gaze of his one good eye, let him squirm as he considered what the scout had said. “Did you actually go into the rath to see that the heathens were not, in fact, hiding there?” he asked, finally.

  He could see the indecision move across the scout’s face, the question of whether or not he should try to lie his way out of it. “Ah…no, Brother, we didn’t. The man spoke to us from the wall and we had no reason to not believe him. We didn’t want to waste any more time.”

  And you didn’t want to be butchered if the heathens were lying in wait inside, Bécc thought.

  “Very well, thank you,” Bécc said at last, and added, grudgingly, “Well done.” The scouts smiled and turned away with evident relief. Bécc turned to Tipraite and Trian.

  “Do you think the heathens are heading east, as the man at the rath said?” Trian asked.

  “They are not heading east,” Bécc said. “There’s no reason they would head east; east is the opposite direction of any place they wish to go. They were in the rath, and they made whoever the scouts talked to say they were heading east.”

  “So…?” Tipraite asked.

  “So we go to the rath, trap them there like the vermin they are. Get the men ready to move.”

  Tipraite and Trian, relieved to have a job to do, turned away and began to shout orders, getting the men standing and forming them into some sort of column, getting the mounted men-at-arms mounted again.

  Bécc watched the preparations, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He was thinking about the heathens, nearly a hundred of them, hidden behind the walls of the rath. He looked to the west. The bulk of the day was already gone. By the time they reached the rath it might be coming on dark, and he did not think the pathetic farmers under his command, playing at being men-at-arms, were up for fighting in the dark.

  No matter. He could surround the rath, and in the morning he could rout the heathens out. Of that he was certain. A rath was more of a defense in concept than it was in practice, the low earthen walls easily
crested, any palisade on top not too difficult to knock away.

  That said, he would lose a lot of men in the process. While they were struggling to get over the walls, the heathens would be cutting them down with spears and axes and swords. It was one thing when a rath was defended by a dozen frightened Irishmen. It was another when it was defended by five score Northmen with nothing but their lives to lose.

  “Well, it must be done,” Bécc said to himself. There was no choice but to fight the heathens where he found them. And he could still wring some advantage from this. If he sent Airtre’s men in first, let them sustain the bulk of the carnage, then he could wipe out the heathens and ruin Airtre’s ability to further threaten Ferns. Two birds with one stone. Surely such a victory would temper Abbot Columb’s wrath at Bécc’s having decided to turn on the heathens.

  Did you decide…or did Airtre trick you into it? Bécc thought, and that new line of inquiry brought with it a new source of worry.

  “Brother Bécc?” Tipraite was approaching, leading his and Bécc’s horses. “The men are ready.”

  Bécc looked past his captain. His men and Airtre’s men were in as decent a column as they were going to make, spears resting on shoulders, shields slung on backs. The handful of horses were shifting nervously under their riders.

  We’ll have to move fast, Bécc thought. There was no telling how long the Northmen would remain in the rath. With the grace of God they might find the heathens in the open, but they could not let them disappear into the countryside. They could not waste their time chasing Thorgrim and his lot all over Laigin.

  Bécc took his horse from Tipraite, put his foot in the stirrup, and swung himself up into the saddle. He wheeled the horse around so he was facing his men. He opened his mouth to admonish them to move fast, to tell them that he would set the pace and that they would keep up with him or they would wish they had not been born.

  And then he stopped.

  You idiot…he thought. You absolute fool.

  Thorgrim might have been at the rath when the scouts arrived, but he would not be there now. Bécc had learned early in his fighting career to never underestimate an adversary, and he had already seen ample proof that this Thorgrim was a clever one. It was no doubt Thorgrim who had told the lord of the rath to say he had seen the heathens going east.

  There was nothing that Thorgrim would want more than to have Bécc and the soldiers under his command blundering around the countryside searching for an enemy that was not there. Wandering like the Israelites in the desert while the heathens did as they wished.

  “You men!” Bécc shouted and all heads turned toward him. “Turn about, turn about!” This was met with some confusion, some hesitation, but quick enough the column of men, who had been facing east, turned so they were facing west. “We’ll be moving fast, so by God you had better keep pace!”

  “Brother Bécc?” Tipraite said, soft, so none of the men could hear.

  “We’re going to Ferns,” Bécc said. “Because the heathens are going to Ferns. And we will trap them there and there we will kill them all.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Of the Warrior,

  Son of the glowing War-Blade,

  I make a song of praise.

  The Prose Edda

  There was some debate among Cathal and the others as to how to get Harald to the boat. They discussed the issues out of Harald’s earshot, or at least what they thought was out of Harald’s earshot, but as each man made his point more emphatically, the volume rose and Harald, still sitting at the table in the hut, could hear bits and pieces.

  The sticking point was whether or not to untie his legs and let him walk, and if so, whether they should tie his hands first. Harald heard Cathal, speaking above the others, say, “Remember what he did to them bandits.” He caught someone else saying something about carrying him to the boat, something he imagined they would not relish doing.

  Soon the five Irishmen were back in the hut. “You got to hop out to the cart,” Cathal announced, “and we’ll help you up. You get to ride like a prince to the boat there in the river.”

  Harald nodded. He stood without help, being more accustomed now to moving with his feet bound. He took up his walking stick and hopped out the door to the cart, which Corcc was bringing around. Two of the others grabbed him under the arms and hefted him up and he took the seat at the front of the cart.

  Once he was set, the bundles of the dead men’s possessions were tossed on the bed of the cart, along with the dunnage of the living and some food, water and weapons. That done, and with one of the Irishmen leading the horse, they made their way over the rutted and grass-filled road to the place where the boat was pulled up on the shore. Harald was helped down, the bundles in the back were hoisted out, and the horse and cart brought back to the hut. The others piled the cargo into the boat, helped Harald climb in and sit, then pushed the boat out into the water.

  Harald watched the activity, but his thoughts were elsewhere, looking for an opportunity for escape. He could see nothing just then, but that was all right. If he could not find a way out of his trouble he was at least putting himself in a good position to find one later.

  Getting his legs untied would help considerably, but that meant finding a reason that Cathal should do so. He considered arguing that with his legs tied he would be in great danger of drowning if the boat were to overturn. But the boat was fifteen feet long and fairly wide and did not look as if it was likely to tip.

  What’s more, the River Bann was no more than twenty feet wide at that point and did not appear to be more than a foot or two deep. He wondered that the boat could even float in such shallow water. And if it did manage to turn over, all Harald had to do to keep from drowning was to sit upright, so that did not seem to be a persuasive argument.

  No matter, he thought, I’ll come up with something.

  It was not long after that that Harald saw the next opportunity in his evolving if nebulous plan. There were three thwarts on the boat, two on which the rowers could sit and one in the stern. He and Cathal sat on the thwart aft, and the other four Irishmen took their places on the other thwarts, each fumbling with an oar and dropping it awkwardly between the thole pins that held it in place where it rested on the boat’s side. Harald held his face still, making an effort not to smile.

  “All right, row, you dumb bastards!” Cathal called and the four men began thrashing at the water. But the bow of the boat still rested on the muddy bank, and with the weight of the six men and gear now aboard it was not coming loose by rowing.

  “Boat’s stuck,” Corcc muttered, just loud enough to be heard. Cathal replied with a sound of disgust.

  “I can see the boat’s stuck,” he said. “Why don’t you push it off?”

  “’Cause we’re all rowing,” Corcc said.

  “Untie my feet, I’ll push it off,” Harald said, but Cathal seemed to think the suggestion was not even worthy of a reply. Instead he climbed out of the boat and splashed through the knee-high water to the bow. With a grunt he shoved it off, then climbed awkwardly back aboard, stumbling aft to his place by Harald.

  The current caught the boat and swirled it around and the four oars came down with four thumps on the sides. “Pull the oars, you lot, come on!” Cathal shouted. “We’re getting turned about! You two on the left, you row now!”

  “What left?” one of the men called back. “Your left?”

  “How many lefts are there?” Cathal shouted and now Harald could not help but smile. He could see why they did not generally take the boat, why it had not occurred to them until he suggested it. Walking might be harder than all this, but it was less trouble.

  The boat was straightened out and they moved a good hundred yards down the river before the forward rower on the starboard side fouled the oar of the man aft. The two oars locked just as the men on the larboard side pulled and the boat spun around sideways. For a brief moment it was actually going backwards down the river before the stern jammed up on the bank
.

  “You best push us off again, Cathal!” Corcc called.

  “It was your miserable job at the oar done this,” Cathal began in reply, when Harald could stand it no more.

  “Oh, by the gods!” he said. “Just let me row!”

  “You want me to untie your feet so you can jump overboard,” Cathal said.

  “How about this? You tie a rope to my ankle and to one of the thwarts. I can’t jump overboard that way, and you can stick a spear in me if I try to untie it. But at least we won’t be all week getting to Ferns.”

  The Irishmen glanced at one another. “You can’t row the boat just by yourself,” one of them said, his tone just a bit accusatory.

  “Of course I can,” Harald said. He wanted to point out that rowing was not even necessary, one simply had to keep the boat straight and let the current take it, but he held his tongue, not wanting to confuse things.

  “All right,” Cathal said at last. He nodded to the men forward and two of them hefted their spears and held them a foot from Harald’s chest as Cathal untied the lashing around his legs. It was sweet relief to get the bindings off, but before Harald could take much pleasure, Cathal tied the rope tight around his right ankle, then tossed the other end forward to the men sitting there.

  “Very well, that’s good,” Harald said. “Let me have the seat up forward.” He stood and stepped awkwardly toward the bow, the man holding the rope taking up the slack as he did. He sat on the forward thwart, facing aft, and watched as the rope was made fast to the thwart beside him. It would not take him long to untie that, he thought, but long enough for one of the Irishmen to stick a spear in him.

  “You need one of them to push the boat off?” Cathal asked.

  “No,” Harald said. “Here, you two, just pull your oars in and lay them down.” The after two oars were still resting in the tholes, held tight by the current, and the men on the thwart wrestled them free and set them down on the bottom of the boat.