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

by James L. Nelson

  Thorgrim held Louis’s wrist, held his eyes, and the two men looked at one another. Thorgrim knew little about healing, and he was terribly aware of that truth. He had been helpless when Harald and Starri had been grievously wounded. But did he trust the Frank?

  He let go of Louis’s wrist and gave him a quick nod. Louis continued to pour wine on Failend’s wound, and then he and Thorgrim used strips of cloth to bind it. Then Louis let Failend drink the wine that was left in the bottle.

  Thorgrim stood. He had more things to worry about than just Failend. Many more things. He sent men to search the walls of the church, to find any door or any other way in, and he positioned a dozen men at each entrance. He sent others to gather up all the bread and wine they could find and set it in one place. He pointed to the gold door set in the wall at the back of the raised portion of the church. “Behind that door is a loaf of bread,” he explained. “Leave that one, don’t take it.”

  “Why not?” Vestar asked.

  “I don’t know,” Thorgrim said. “But at Glendalough, Failend said we should leave it. It has some magic or some such.” The others nodded. They did not need to hear any more than that. None of the Northmen were very comfortable in the Christ church, where strange gods and unknown spirits might be lurking.

  Thorgrim watched the others going about their business. Very well, what next? he thought. He called, “Godi, Gudrid, Harald, come here,” and the three men came over to him. Thorgrim looked over at Louis, leaning against a stone pillar that provided support for the roof. Once again he was faced with the question of whether or not to seek the Frank’s council.

  He and Failend are the only ones here who know how these Irish Christ men think. That fact alone made Louis’s input valuable.

  “Louis,” he called and when the Frank looked over, Thorgrim gestured for him to join the council. When he took his place, Thorgrim began.

  “We’re safe for the moment. I have no doubt Bécc’s men are surrounding the church, but I don’t think they’ll care to attack us. They’ll have to come through the doors and we can kill them as they come. Louis here says they won’t burn the church down.”

  Harald translated Thorgrim’s remarks and listened to Louis’s reply. “Louis says he does not think they will burn the church down, unless Bécc is more of a madman than he seems. But Bécc doesn’t command here, the abbot does. He guesses they’ll wait until we’re hungry or thirsty enough that we come out on our own.”

  Thorgrim nodded. That was what he thought as well. It was an idea that had to work eventually, and it meant few men would lose their lives. Few Irishmen, anyway. Thorgrim did not think Bécc had the patience or self-control for such a thing—Bécc was a soldier and his impulse would be to make an attack—but Bécc was not the one making those decisions. A battle inside the church could do great damage. If attacked, the Northmen might set the church on fire themselves, and the abbot would not want that.

  He looked at Louis. “Is there anything in this church so valuable to the abbot that he might be willing to bargain for it?”

  Harald translated and Thorgrim saw Louis give his usual shrug, which pretty much told Thorgrim the answer even before the Frank replied. “Louis says there are”—Harald had trouble finding the word for what he wished to say—“holy things…that the abbot would not care to lose.”

  “What sort of holy things?” Thorgrim asked. There was quite a bit of gold and silver and bejeweled objects in the church, and Thorgrim guessed that was what Louis meant.

  “They are bits of the Christ worshipers’ holy men,” Harald explained. “Like a finger or a leg bone or something like that, from one of their holy men who have died.”

  Thorgrim frowned. He recalled something like that from Glendalough. “Does Louis think the abbot would give us safe passage if we agree to leave those things alone?”

  Harald translated. Louis looked at Thorgrim. “No,” he said.

  They were safe for the moment, with no obvious way out of the trap into which they had fallen, so Thorgrim told the men to rest. Some lay down on the rush-covered floor, some propped themselves up against the doors so that if they fell asleep they would be woken by any attempt to break the doors in. Godi distributed small and even shares of bread and wine around, and the Northmen drank from the beautiful gold and silver chalices they found.

  Thorgrim and Harald sat side by side on the raised portion of the floor near the far end of the church and leaned back against the altar. Thorgrim felt some of the tension ease off with the understanding that there was nothing for him to do just then, nothing that needed his attention. It was like the moment of slack water between tides. They could only wait until the current set in again to see which heading they’d take.

  “You haven’t told me the tale of how you came to be a prisoner,” he said to Harald. It had been near madness from the time they had been reunited at the River Bann to that moment, and he doubted he and Harald had said more than a dozen words to one another. “We heard you had given yourself as hostage to Airtre. What happened then?”

  Harald told him about the fight on the beach and bargaining for the oars, stories Thorgrim had already heard from Harald’s men who had returned to Loch Garman. He told him about being hostage to Airtre, and how Airtre was soon treating him as a prisoner. How he had managed to escape.

  “We came to rescue you, you know,” Thorgrim said. “A few of us, we attacked Airtre’s camp and tried to find you, but you must have already been gone.”

  Harald nodded. He did not ask how Thorgrim knew he was at Airtre’s camp, or where the camp was. As Thorgrim’s son he would have a good idea how Thorgrim had come to learn those things.

  “When we couldn’t find you, we took Airtre hostage. But Bécc insisted on taking him from us, and then they turned on us, the dogs.”

  “Sure,” Harald said. “These Irish, they never hate each other more than they hate us Norsemen.”

  “So, once you got away from Airtre, what became of you?”

  From there Harald began his story of wandering the countryside, trying to find a way back to Ferns, of meeting with the Irishmen on the road, of making up the story of his being a thrall to a Northman named Thorgrim.

  Thorgrim smiled as he heard the story, the first bit of amusement he had encountered in a long while. “They believed that?” he asked.

  “They believed it some,” Harald said. “The one who commanded the others, his name is Cathal. He’s one of the men we took prisoner from the boat. He was no fool. I don’t think he really believed my story. But they did have reason to like me.”

  Harald told the tale of the bandits who had sacked the Irishmen’s houses, of the fight that had ensued. He explained how he had led the Irishmen into the fight, and how together they had defeated the thieves, but Thorgrim could see through those words. He knew that Harald had done most, if not all of the fighting but did not want to seem as if he was bragging. They had been a’viking for more than two years, he and Harald, and in that time Thorgrim had seen his son grow from a boy into a skilled, fearless and formidable warrior.

  He had considered this situation before, and he found it curious. He and Harald, both fearless men: Harald because he was young and thought himself invincible, and he because he was old and didn’t much care about getting any older.

  “But they turned on you?” Thorgrim asked.

  “Yes…sort of. They had to, really. You see, they told me they were mining iron there. It all seemed a little strange. I didn’t really care what they were doing. But I got curious, and I found out the mine they have…they call it the Mine of St. Aiden…is actually a gold mine.”

  “A gold mine? Really?”

  “Yes. They mine the gold, and then bring it to Ferns in wagons of iron ore and rock. It’s a great secret, almost no one knows about it. And they’ll kill to see it remains a secret.”

  “And you think it’s true?”

  “I know it is,” Harald said. “I went and looked myself, saw the gold in the rock. T
hat’s why they made me their prisoner. Because I found out the truth of it. They were taking me back here, to let the abbot decide what to do with me. I nearly escaped, but they hit me with an oar.”

  Thorgrim frowned and looked up into the dark recesses of the church’s roof. Mining gold… he thought. He had heard tales of that, of native gold being mined right there in Ireland, but he had never had proof of it, until now.

  Not that it made any difference to them in their present situation.

  “Well, the gods have brought you back to us, and mostly in one piece,” Thorgrim said. “Now they have only to show us a way out of this bear trap we’ve fallen into.”

  “They will,” Harald said, and he said it with such conviction that Thorgrim looked over at him.

  “You have much faith in the gods,” Thorgrim said. “Despite them toying with us for these two years and more.”

  “I do,” Harald said. “Because I must kill Airtre, and the gods would not deny me the chance. I’ll kill him with my own skill and cunning, of course, but the gods will look with favor on that.”

  Thorgrim nodded. “I hope you’re right,” he said. Two thoughts came to mind as Harald spoke. One was that he, Thorgrim, intended to kill Airtre. The second was that Harald had far too much faith in the gods doing as he hoped they would do. This despite his seeing firsthand how they had toyed with his father for all these years. But he kept his mouth shut.

  You’re old and tired, Thorgrim Night Wolf, he thought. Let the boy have his hopes. He’ll learn some day, as he has learned to be a warrior.

  Then another thought came to him. Maybe it’s Harald who’s right, and you who are the fool. Maybe you should try to learn from him.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The Bragning bade the weapons

  Be dyed in blood of vile folk;

  The people endured his anger:

  Houses bowed before red embers.

  The Prose Edda

  The day wore on and the Northmen took their ease and talked softly among themselves, because the church of the Christ worshipers seemed to call for hushed voices. They tended to the wounded and poked through the various rooms and wooden chests and anything else they could find. No one from the monastery, no one on the other side of the guarded doors made any attempt to breach them or even to make contact with the men inside.

  They’re trying to unnerve us, Harald thought. Hope we’ll get so frightened and unsure we’ll do something stupid.

  But that was not going to happen. The men might get bored, maybe, but they would not get frightened. As to doing something stupid, they had thankfully found little wine in the church, certainly not enough for the men to get stupid drunk.

  They might, however, get hungry. In fact, they already were. Thirst was not so great a problem; there were several great stone basins filled with water; but hunger was starting to nip at them a bit.

  None of that concerned Harald. He was not even thinking about it. Such matters rested on his father’s shoulders, not his. If his father managed to find a way out of this—and Harald could not see how he might—then that would be a great thing. If not, he knew they would all die with bloody weapons in their hands, and that would be a great thing as well. Either way.

  Harald had only one real concern, and that was killing Airtre. He didn’t mind dying a good death trying to hack his way out of Ferns, but he had no intention of doing so before Airtre had died by his hand. The insult he had suffered while hostage to the Irishman could not go unanswered.

  For the bulk of the day Harald wandered around inside the church, and slept, and ate his small allowance of bread, just like the others. But his wandering was not as aimless as most. He was looking for a way out, some means of slipping unseen from the church. He had no doubt the Irish had more men outside each door than Thorgrim had inside; there would be no getting out that way. And that meant he had to find some other means of exit.

  He didn’t find one. The day grew longer and the sun set and the dark interior of the church grew darker still. Thorgrim ordered all but a few candles extinguished, leaving little pools of light in the darkness. Harald was sitting against the altar, just beyond the edge of one of those pools, looking up at the roof, looking for some imperfection he could exploit, when Louis sat down beside him.

  “You are thinking of becoming a Christian, maybe?” Louis asked. He spoke in Irish, their mutual tongue.

  Harald frowned and looked at him. “Why would you think that?”

  Louis shrugged. “You have been searching around the church all day. Looking in every corner. Are you looking for the true faith?”

  Harald could not tell if the Frank was joking or not. “Just looking,” he said. “Just looking to see if there’s anything that could help us.”

  Louis nodded. “Did you find anything?”

  “No,” Harald said. “I was looking for a way out, a way that isn’t one of the doors, but I found nothing.”

  “Sometimes there are secret ways out,” Louis said. “I have known many churches, and most have a secret way out. Sometimes there’s a need for one.”

  Harald felt a little flicker of hope at this. “You think there’s such a thing here?”

  “Probably.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything about this?”

  Louis shrugged. “Thorgrim, I think he doesn’t much like to hear from me. Besides that, if there is some hidden way out, the Irish know about it. It’s their church. And they’ll be watching it, just as they watch the doors.”

  Harald heard that, but his mind was exploring this new thought. “They may guard it, but not with so many men,” he said. “Because they wouldn’t expect anyone to come out that way.”

  “Enough men to sound the alarm, summon the others. The way out will be narrow. We’ll have the same problem getting out that the Irish would have getting in through the doors. They would kill us one by one as we came.”

  Harald nodded. “But maybe one man could get out?”

  Louis looked at him, and in the dim light Harald could see the curiosity in the man’s face. “Maybe one,” he said. “Come out quick and run like a rabbit. But why are you thinking of that?”

  Harald looked back up into the blackness of the high roof. He had not intended to tell anyone about his quest; he would just do it and if he managed to not be killed or captured he would come back to the church, back to die with the others. But Louis knew things that Harald did not, helpful things, such as the possibility of a hidden way out. And there was the added advantage that Louis could not give away a secret because he could not speak to any of the others, save for Failend, and Failend was in a deep sleep.

  “I am going to kill Airtre,” Harald said, turning his eyes back to Louis. “I will not suffer the insult he gave me. So I’m going to sneak out, alone, and kill him. And then I’ll return, if I can.”

  Louis gave a half smile, shook his head. Harald felt himself flush with anger. “You think that’s a foolish thing?” he asked.

  “No, I suppose not,” Louis said. “I understand vengeance. I have fought at the side of heathens, killed Christians, threw in with you bastards, just for the chance to get revenge on my brother. So no, I guess you’re no greater fool than me.”

  Harald nodded, satisfied. “So, you’ll help me find this secret way out?”

  “If there is one,” Louis said. “And I’ll do better than that. I’ll go with you.”

  Harald shook his head. “This isn’t your fight.”

  Louis sighed. “I know. But I swear by all that’s holy, I am like a moth to the flame. I can’t resist this.”

  “I’m doing this alone,” Harald said.

  “You can’t do it alone,” Louis said. “You don’t know anything about a Christian monastery, where to look for Airtre, nothing. You can’t fight your way out of here.”

  “Then how do I get out?”

  “We. We must talk our way out. You can’t pass for a priest, but I can. I can speak as a Christian. I am a Christian. If God will eve
r forgive my sins, which I am not so sure. There are many of the priests’ robes here. If we find a way out, we put them on and go out that way, tell the guards we were trapped in the church when the heathens came in, and we hid and are now escaping.”

  Harald considered that. It made sense. “Do we wait until much later? When the guards are tired?”

  “No,” Louis said. “We go soon. Soon you’ll hear bells ringing. That will mean it’s time for compline, the evening prayers. Bécc will go to compline and no one will dare disturb him, even if they are suspicious of us. He’ll probably make Airtre go, whether the cur wants to or not.”

  “Good, good,” Harald said. He wasn’t sure what Louis meant by all that, but it seemed to make sense to him, so it was probably a good idea.

  “First, we must see if there really is a way out,” Louis said. He found a candle and lit it and led Harald back behind the altar to a small room set into the back of the church. Harald paused before following Louis in, looked back toward the dark space and the few pools of light. No one seemed to be paying them any attention. No one would see them go.

  He ducked into the room where Louis had gone. Louis still held the candle, sweeping the light of the flame over the walls and the floor.

  “Here,” Louis said, handing the candle to Harald and grabbing hold of the handle of a large wooden chest. With a grunt he swung it away from the wall. “Ah!”

  Harald looked down at the space behind the chest, but he could see nothing, just an unbroken wall right down to the floor. “What?” he said.

  “Feel,” Louis said. Harald reached down and ran his hand along the rough surface of the wall. And then it was not rough, but smooth, and not so cool as the stone. And he realized the bottom three feet were not stone at all, but wood painted to look like stone.

  Harald nodded. He was impressed.

  “There’ll be someone watching on the other side,” Louis said. “We won’t be able to fight our way through, and it would do us no good to try.”