Fin Gall

by James L. Nelson

  “We’ll waste more time raiding for food than it will take to get this cart ashore,” Asbjorn snapped. “Ease away, there!”

  The cart was lowered onto the gangplank where a half-dozen men grabbed onto to keep it from rolling away. The tackle was cast off, the cart eased down the wooden boards, which bowed dangerously under the load.

  “I admire your concern for your men’s bellies, but I suspect...,” Magnus began when the gangplank gave a great cracking sound and then buckled, snapped right in two, dropping the cart and the six men into the mud below.

  “Catch up to us when you get this straightened out,” Magnus said. He turned and walked away before Asbjorn could make any reply. Twenty paces from the river, his men and Asbjorn’s men were saddling their horses.

  “Mount up,” he shouted to the collected men, though he knew only his own men would follow his orders. Kjartan Swiftsword handed him the reins of his horse. He put his foot in the stirrup and swung himself up. He adjusted the shield that was slung on his back and saw that his sword was hanging right and his score of men did the same.

  Asbjorn struggled ashore, climbing along the broken gangplank to avoid waddling though the thick mud. He would not tolerate Magnus riding off on his own.

  “Go!” Magnus shouted. He reined his horse over and gave it a kick in the flanks, trotting off across the rolling countryside, with the pounding of twenty horses behind him.

  They were in open country now, the green fields like long ocean rollers stretching away on either hand, broken here and there with clumps of trees and ragged stone walls that snaked between fields. Off to the east, visible when they crested the low hills, the straight horizon of the sea blinked in the muted sunlight. They rode on.

  The Liffey and the longships were far behind them when Magnus finally twisted in his saddle to see who was following. His men were still riding in a tight group, grim-faced with bright colored shields slung over their backs. Half of Asbjorn’s men were there too, and though their loyalty was given to Asbjorn, Magnus knew them to be good men, hard fighters, reliable warriors. And they would be his men, before too long.

  Behind them all rode Asbjorn, awkward and clearly uncomfortable. His heavy face was red and he was sweating quite a bit, but Magnus’s sympathy was with the horse, bearing its fleshy burden. Asbjorn might hate this hard riding, but he would think it preferable to letting Magnus ride off on his own.

  They came at last to the high cliffs that looked down on the ocean below. Magnus reined his horse to a stop, swung his leg over and dropped to the ground. Behind him, thirty men did the same. He could hear Asbjorn grunting as he dismounted.

  The longship was less than a mile off shore. It was exactly where Magnus had known it would be, crawling north along the coast, no sail set despite the fair wind from the south west. They were too far away to see any detail, but they could make out the steady rise and fall of the oars. Magnus smiled. He could almost hear the grousing of the men at the rowing stations.

  “Well done, Magnus,” Asbjorn came huffing up behind him. “There they are.”

  “There they are,” Magnus repeated. “Leading us at a comfortable pace to the Crown of the Three Kingdoms.”

  “Comfortable, indeed,” Asbjorn grunted. “Plenty of time to off-load my cart. But now I’ve had to leave it behind, with half my men to bring it along. And us with no food.”

  Magnus turned to Asbjorn. It was time to drive a verbal sword into his fat belly. The real one would come later. “My men supply themselves like Vikings, not like women who bring their provender with them.” He turned and looked north, and when he spoke again his voice was louder, his words for everyone to hear. “Five miles north along the coast there’s a monastery at a place called Baldoyle. It has not been put to the sword for years. We’ll sack it, take what we need, take what we want, and follow the longship. What say you, Asbjorn?”

  He turned and looked at Asbjorn again, and the fat man was not happy. Agreeing to the plan would make it look as if Magnus was in command, and he, Asbjorn, just tagging along. On the other hand, his own men would certainly turn on him if he tried to prevent them from sacking a rich monastery.

  “My lord Orm would not be happy with our ignoring his orders and rushing off on our own,” Asbjorn tried, but it was weak.

  “Those of us who have been a-viking know these things can be done fast. If we ride hard, we’ll have everything the monastery has that is worth taking before the longship has even drawn up with us.”

  He looked around. The expressions on the men’s faces, the eager wolf-looks, the smiles, told him all he needed to know. They were with him, now. Leading men, raiding, fighting, this was his territory, not Asbjorn’s, and Asbjorn had made a fatal mistake following him there.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ...[T]he pagans desecrated the sanctuaries of God,

  and poured out the blood of the saints about the altar...”

  Alcuin

  from his letter to the

  community of Lindisfarne

  T

  he steady rhythm of rowing, and the effort it took, soon quieted the Red Dragons’ grumbling. Also, the wind was fair for their heading, and while that only helped a bit with the ship under bare poles, at least they did not have to row against it, and that was good.

  Thorgrim held the tiller, steering the longship due east before angling off north around the big headland that sat like an island at the north end of the bay of Dubh-linn. He looked aloft. Egil Lamb was sitting on the hoisted yard, an arm flung around the mast like it was a serving girl in a mead hall. He was keeping a bright look-out. Thorgrim had charged him with looking astern for any ship following, ahead for any danger there, and to seaward for any ship from which they might acquire a sail. For all that long morning the seas had remained empty.

  Morrigan was sitting on a sea chest pushed up against the larboard side of the afterdeck, eating a hunk of bread and pork, part of the stores they had plundered from the mead hall. It was not much, perhaps two day’s food for the fifty or more men aboard the ship. They would need more.

  Morrigan was staring off toward the horizon and she did not see Thorgrim looking down at her. She had shed her cloak and wore just her thin dress and apron. Her head was uncovered and her hair had dried out to its true light brown color. Whatever she was thinking, it did not show on her face.

  “So where is Harald?” Thorgrim asked. His anger had faded some with the coming of day and he was able to speak to her in a controlled manner.

  “He’s safe, if the dubh gall...if your people, did not kill him.”

  “Orm and his fellows are Danes, they’re not my people.”

  Morrigan shrugged, as if to say Norsemen were all one to her. “Harald and your other men are at the great house at Tara.”

  “Tara?”

  “The seat of the Irish kings of Brega. When we have the crown, I’ll lead you there.”

  Thorgrim ran his eyes around the horizon, as was his habit. Morrigan was growing freer in her speech, but it was of no use to him. He had no notion of where this Tara was, or Brega either. So far, the best option seemed to be doing as Morrigan instructed.

  “What is this ‘Crown of the Three Kingdoms?’” he asked.

  Morrigan looked up at him and their eyes met and Thorgrim felt something jump between them. Morrigan was silent as she decided what to say.

  “That is not your concern,” she said.

  “It is my concern. It could not be any more my concern than it is.”

  Morrigan nodded, understanding the truth of that statement. She was about to speak when Egil Lamb called out from aloft. “Smoke, smoke there! Ashore, off the larboard bow!”

  Every head aboard turned in that direction, though the rhythm of the oars did not alter in the slightest. A column of dark smoke was rising up from some place just over the headland, it’s top torn apart in the breeze. More smoke than would be produced by any purposeful activity, cooking or smithing or the like. Something had either caught fire by acc
ident, or had been put to the torch.

  Morrigan was on her feet, staring at the smoke. Her face was set in a frown, her hand clenching the top of the bulwark.

  “On the oars, double time, now!” Thorgrim shouted and the men picked up the pace, pulling with a will as Thorgrim swung the bow around to close with the shore. Where Morrigan saw something troubling, Thorgrim saw opportunity.

  Ornolf came aft. “What, ho, Thorgrim what have we here?” he roared.

  “I don’t know. Ask the healer-woman. She seems to have some idea.”

  Ornolf looked at Morrigan. “Well?”

  “I do not know.”

  They closed fast with the beach, the shallow draft longship skimming the gentle rollers under the thrust of her oars. They were abeam of the smoke and half a mile off when Thorgrim called for the men to ship oars. All of the longship’s noise, the creak and thump of oars in the oar-ports, the shuffle of men pulling the oars, it all fell away and the only sound left was the gentle slap of water on the hull.

  They stared at the smoke and they listened. And soon they heard, barely audible over the distance, the crackle of flames, the screams of victims, the clash of iron on iron. The sounds of a raid, as familiar to the Vikings as a lover’s voice.

  “It is the monastery at Baldoyle,” Morrigan said, softly.

  “Egil Lamb!” Thorgrim called aloft. “Are there longships on the beach, there?”

  Egil did not answer at first. Finally he called down. “None that I can see.”

  “Hah!” Ornolf cried. “Not the work of Norsemen, here?”

  Morrigan was scowling even deeper now. “It seems not,” she said, biting off the words.

  “You Irish are as hard on each other as we Northmen are on you,” Thorgrim said. If this was not a Viking raid, then it had to be Irish sacking Irish, a thing Thorgrim knew happened often enough.

  For some time they were silent, watching the rising smoke and listening to the dim sounds of the fight, as the Red Dragon rose and fell on the long ocean swells.

  “This is what the crown is about,” Morrigan said at last, and Thorgrim at first did not know if she was talking to him or to herself.

  “What?”

  “The Crown of the Three Kingdoms. This is what it is about. To stop this shameful...this plundering, one Irish kingdom against another.”

  Thorgrim and Ornolf were listening now, their full attention on the Irish woman.

  “The crown is an ancient thing,” Morrigan continued. “It was forged even before the true faith came to Ireland by some long forgotten druids. It has always been held in the kingdom of Leinster, to the south of Brega.”

  “Where is Brega?” Thorgrim asked.

  “This is Brega.” Morrigan nodded toward the shore. “All this land, north of the Liffey.”

  Thorgrim nodded. This knowledge brought him closer to knowing where Harald was held. Closer, but not by much.

  “The Irish kings have always fought one another. We have many kings, the rí túaithe, who rule the small kingdoms, the ruiri, who rule over them, and the kings of overkings, the rí ruirech. They are constantly at war.

  “Even after Ireland came out of the darkness and embraced the true faith, it did not change. Only the crown can stop it, and only for a while. Whenever the rí ruirech of one of the kingdoms is given the Crown of the Three Kingdoms, he is for that time the undisputed king of Brega, of Leinster, and of Mide to the west. He can summon armies from the three kingdoms, and their allegiance must be to him.”

  Ornolf made a grunting sound. Thorgrim pictured the crown as he had first seen it, peeking out of its canvas wrapping on the deck of the vanquished curragh.

  “Sounds like a lot of nonsense to me,” Ornolf declared. “If three kingdoms want to form an alliance, they can form an alliance. Why do you need some gaudy crown?”

  Morrigan shook her head. “The kings of Ireland are too independent - too stubborn - to form any alliance. Even if the rí ruirech formed an alliance, the rí túaithe would not be much moved to serve under another king. But the crown is a powerful thing. It carries the magic of the druids, and even though we no longer believe in the old ways, still, it is a powerful thing.

  “The crown is rarely given out, and when it is, it is not given for life, but only for the time it is needed, and then it is given back. The people will obey the king who wears the Crown of the Three Kingdoms, obey without question.”

  “A lot of horse shit,” Ornolf announced. “You mean to say some local king is granted that much power and then gives it up voluntarily?”

  “I mean that exactly. The crown’s power is too great to trifle with. No king would dare hold it against the will of those who control it.”

  “I understand,” Thorgrim said, and he did. He understood the power of this crown now. With the kings of Ireland all at one another’s throats, anyone who could command the loyalty of three kingdoms could rule the entire country. He understood that, but much of it was still a mystery.

  “Who holds the crown? Who decides who should wear it?”

  “The druids in Leinster, in the old days, created the crown and the legend of the crown and made it the powerful thing it is. They decided when the threat to Ireland was so great that a worthy rí ruirech should be given the crown, and when he should abdicate it. After the true faith came to Ireland, the crown came to be held by the abbot of Glendalough, in the monastery there. The abbot, in his wisdom, now decides who should wear the crown. It is not a decision made lightly. The crown has never been given out in my lifetime, nor my parents’.”

  “Why now?”

  Morrigan hesitated before she spoke. Her eyes were still on the distant smoke. “Ireland is in grave danger. We are invaded.”

  “Invaded?” Ornolf said. “By who?”

  Thorgrim smiled. He knew what Morrigan meant.

  Morrigan turned to them and looked Ornolf in the eye and Thorgrim saw that look he had seen before, a look of defiance, as if there was nothing that anyone could do to her to keep her from speaking the truth.

  “We are invaded by the dubh-gall and the fin-gall. The Northmen.”

  “Invaded?” Ornolf roared. “One longphort, some raiding on the coast? That is an invasion?”

  “That’s a start. And it must be ended as soon as it starts.” Morrigan’s face was set hard as she spoke, the words coming sharp and fast. “The abbot of Glendalough understands that. That is why he decreed the crown should go to my lord Máel Sechnaill mac Ruanaid, who of all the kings can best drive this plague from our home. And I understand it.”

  “And Orm knows of the crown as well,” Thorgrim said. The Danes were safe in Dubh-linn as long as the Irish were fighting one another, but an alliance of the three kingdoms could easily drive the Norsemen into the sea.

  “So,” Thorgrim said, “you have kidnaped my son in order that me and Ornolf should help you rid Ireland of our own people?”

  “Your people? They are Danes, I thought they were not your people.”

  Thorgrim smiled. She is quick, he thought.

  “What think you, Thorgrim?” Ornolf asked, pointing toward the column of smoke to the west. “Should we land, see what there is for the taking?”

  Thorgrim saw the anger flash in Morrigan’s eyes. “Pray do not lose sight of the mission we are on,” she said.

  “She’s right,” Thorgrim said. “Our only concern now is to help the Irish drive us from their land. Besides,” he added, looking at thick smoke, like a black finger of God pointing toward the desecration of His temple, “I reckon there isn’t much left there worth taking.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Vikings will come across the Sea,

  They will mingle among the men of Ireland.

  Berchán, Irish Prophet

  T

  he monastery at Baldoyle was well sacked and Magnus’s men were happy. He counted among them the men who had come with Asbjorn the Fat as well. After this raid, he did not think they would put much stock in what Asbjorn had to say.
/>   The Vikings had come up over a low rise a half a mile from the dirt and wattle wall that circled Baldoyle - not the largest monastery in Ireland, but respectable. Like all Irish monasteries, Baldoyle was in essence a self-sufficient little village. Unlike most villages, however, it could be counted on to have silver, gold, jewels.

  At the foot of the wall was a ditch, and thorn bushes grew along the top, and it represented not the least impediment to the Norsemen.

  Magnus stood in the saddle. “Danes, follow me!” he shouted, sword held over his head. He pounded off toward the monastery, riding over the tilled fields that surrounded the enclosure. Behind him came thirty-five Vikings, the full host, less those left to deal with Asbjorn’s cart.

  Asbjorn himself was at his side, riding hard, trying for all he was worth to keep up. But he was no horseman, and his horse was carrying far more weight than the other animals, and soon Asbjorn fell behind and Magnus alone led the men to the gates.

  The monastery was in panic. They could see it from a few hundred yards away. Farmers, the bóaire, cowmen, as the Irish called them, rushed for the shelter of the walls, families in tow. Brown-robed monks urged them on as they shoved the wooden gates closed.

  Idiots, Magnus thought. Everything the raiders wanted was within the walls of the monastery - the bóaire were in more danger inside than out. But that was not his concern, not at all.

  The tilled ground gave way to a plank road and the horses sounded louder still as they raced for the palisade gate. There were men on the walls now, archers, perhaps half a dozen of them, but Magnus was caught up in the frenzy of the charge and they did not worry him. Twenty feet from the wall and he felt an arrow pass close by his head. Another glanced off his mail shirt at the shoulder, ripping his tunic and hanging up in the cloth, beating against his legs as he rode.