Fin Gall

by James L. Nelson

  For some time they lay on the straw pallet, caressing one another, until finally she could stand it no more and it was clear that Harald felt the same. She rolled back and pulled him toward her and he pressed himself down on top of her. She gave a gasp at the little jab of pain she felt as he entered her - it had been some time since her husband’s death - but soon it felt simply wonderful and they moved together, the straw crunching underneath them.

  As Brigit imagined, it was over soon, and it was not as entirely satisfying as it had been with Donnchad, but still it was wonderful, the sensation of being with a man, even a young man, such as Harald. They lay together, her cheek against his smooth chest. There was no awkwardness. They could not speak even if they had wanted to.

  Not very much time passed before Harald was ready to go again, which surprised Brigit, as it took Donnchad much longer than that to regain his strength. But that was fine with Brigit, and the second time was better than the first. Harald was a quick learner, and she was happy to instruct.

  After that they fell asleep, warm, spent, dry and content, and Brigit thought that the whole amalgam of sensations was as wonderful as a thing could be.

  They slept for hours, undisturbed. When Brigit finally came awake, it was slowly. She felt Harald beside her and reached out her arm. He was sitting up. She propped herself up on her arm and looked at him. He was staring off into the dark room, his face lit by the last embers of the fire. He was listening, focused on the sounds from beyond the stone walls.

  Then suddenly, to Brigit’s utter surprise, he leapt out of bed and snatched up the trousers he had left crumpled on the floor. He pointed at his ear, and at the wall.

  Brigit listened. That was when she heard, far off, the frantic barking of the dogs.

  Chapter Thirty

  It is better to live

  than lie dead.

  A dead man gathers no goods.

  Hávamál

  I

  t was a long and ugly morning, but by the time the sun was heading for the western horizon, Cormac Ua Ruairc was starting to feel better about his circumstance.

  Magnus had escaped, rode clean away to the north. He had run off while Cormac was trying to get his horse under control. Niall Cuarán, rather than pursue Magnus, had leapt off his own horse and grabbed up the reins of Cormac’s, steadied the animal, and helped Cormac dismount. Niall showed admirable concern for his Lord’s wellbeing. And Cormac, though he would have rather Niall Cuarán had gone after Magnus, was touched by the sentiment and said nothing.

  By the time they had straightened themselves out, there was no hope of catching Magnus. They did not even try. Instead, they rounded up their Irish warriors and fell on the dubh gall, cutting them down like deer driven into a pen. No more than half a dozen escaped, fleeing off south, no doubt making for Dubh Linn.

  Cormac let them go. They would be put to the sword eventually, after he had the Crown of the Three Kingdoms, after he had avenged his brother by ripping Máel Sechnaill’s heart out, after he had taken Tara for himself and led the combined armies to clear all the filthy Norsemen out of Ireland.

  And then around noon they experienced some luck, or what one might think was luck, if one did not recognize the hand of God. First, the rain slacked off to a light drizzle and the fog cleared away, leaving several miles or more of visibility. Enough, anyway, that they could keep the fin gall ship in sight as they hurried along the hilly shore.

  Their second bit of good fortune came when the fin gall, for some reason, took down their sail.

  Magnus had mentioned a few reasons why the sail might not work, though Cormac could not recall what they were. He was too furious at the double insult of losing his tent on a rainy day, and having that same tent used by his enemy to escape, to listen to what that incompetent had to say. But Magnus must have been right, because for some reason the sail came down and the oars came out and the longship slowed to a crawl. Soon Cormac’s small army was even with the ship, easily matching its pace across the water.

  And that put them in just the right place when the longship swung its bow around to the west and started closing with the shore.

  Cormac stood, with Niall Cuarán at his side, at the edge of a cliff. His horse was a few paces away, nibbling at the grass. Cormac never liked sitting on top of his horse near a cliff. He always had this vague worry that the animal would decide to fling itself over the edge.

  At the bottom of the steep, rocky drop was a small, shingle beach, nearly lost in the gloom of the gathering dark. Two miles or so out to sea, the longship was pointing like a weathervane at that beach.

  “Here is where the crown is buried,” Cormac said with finality.

  “No doubt, my lord,” Niall said, then, after a respectful pause, added, “Or it may be where the fin gall intend to spend the night.”

  “No. The crown is here,” Cormac said. “In any event, we won’t let them escape again.” If the crown was not there, then Cormac would most certainly make the fin gall tell him where it was. The coward Magnus might not have the stomach to do what needed to be done to make these men talk, but he, Cormac Ua Ruairc, deposed ruiri of Gailenga, certainly did.

  A rider approached, swinging off his horse as he reined to a stop. “Lord Cormac, there’s a path to the south that will lead down to the beach. Treacherous, to be sure, but not impossible.”

  “Very good,” Cormac said, his eyes still on the longship. “Let’s get the men down now, get them in place.”

  It took the better part of an hour for the hundred men in Cormac’s army to file down the narrow trail to the beach. Cormac went fifth, behind the color bearers and a couple of pages. In that way he was ostensibly leading, while the four in front of him would find any weak places in the trail before he got there.

  The shingle beach was a hundred perches wide and half as deep, with rocky ledges and sparse brush pushed up against the cliff side, just enough to hide his men. They kept to the cliff wall as they spread out, though Cormac did not think that in the evening dark, and with the longship still a mile off, they were any in danger of being seen.

  They were soon positioned, couched down in the various hiding places the beach offered, waiting. The men had their instructions. Anyone who moved before Cormac, who gave away their position or spooked the Norsemen in any way would be impaled, then and there.

  The longship seemed to melt into the dark sea as it approached with the setting sun, until finally Cormac could not see it at all, and a spark of fear began to glow inside. Did they see us, from out there? Is it not too dark for them to beach their damned ship?

  And then from over the water, and close by, he heard a voice call out, the guttural tongue of the fin gall, announcing the depth of the water, and Cormac felt a surge of relief.

  Soon the Crown of the Three Kingdoms would be his.

  After all this time, after all the careful planning. All the work convincing his brother Donnchad to spit on his marriage alliance, so that Máel Sechnaill would kill him and clear the way for Cormac’s succession. After the humiliating truce with the dubh gall Magnus, soon it would be his. The only road by which the brother of a ruiri of a minor kingdom might become the rí ruirech of three kingdoms, and by extension the most powerful man in Ireland.

  Just a matter of minutes.

  Cormac startled at the loud grinding sound of the longship running up on the shingle, breathed deep and shallow as his heart settled down again. There were voices now coming out of the dark, the fin gall calling back and forth. They were making no attempt to be silent. They did not know the enemy was in hiding, and ready to fall on them.

  A dim light came from the dark place by the water where the longship was grounded. It grew brighter, revealing the outline of the ship, the mast, the horrible dragon’s head on the bow. Someone stood on the ship’s deck, a torch flaming in his hand. He touched the fire to another torch, and another, and soon the longship and the Norsemen were clearly visible in the light of the flames.

  Fools, Corm
ac thought. They gave their own position away and blinded themselves to any threat from the dark. They were making his task all the easier.

  The torch bearers led the way down the gangplank and onto the beach and two dozen men followed, armed with swords and shields, and behind them, to Cormac’s giddy delight, three men bearing shovels. There was only one reason he could think of to carry shovels onto that beach at night.

  Every bit of him wanted to shout and to lead the attack now, but he forced himself to wait. Let the fin gall do your work for you, let them show you where the crown is...

  The party of Vikings marched up the beach, moving slow, spreading out, the lead torchbearer searching the ground as he moved. Someone in the band of men behind shouted, “Thorgrim! It is more to the north!” The lead man with the torch shouted back, “No, it is this way! You men, spread out, keep your eyes open!”

  Cormac shook his head at their stupidity. “Keep your eyes open!” And yet he blinds his own men with torches!

  “Here!” the one called Thorgrim shouted. A few others gathered around to look. They stared down at the beach where the first man pointed. “There is the mark I left. The crown is here.”

  The torchbearers stepped aside and the men with the shovels stepped up and Cormac felt a surge of panic as the first shovel ground into the rocky sand. If the Norsemen grabbed the crown right then, they could get back to the longship and get away before he could stop them.

  Cormac leapt to his feet, driven by the cold terror that he had waited too long in hiding. “At them! At them!” he shouted as he drew his sword.

  With wild yells and the sound of running feet and metal drawn against metal the Irish warriors burst from the brush and from behind the rocks that hid them and raced for the fin gall, ten perches away. Cormac ran as well, once the first wave was sufficiently advanced, shouting his war cry and brandishing his sword.

  The surprise was complete. Over the war cries of the Irish, Cormac heard the panicked shouts of the fin gall. The torchbearers flung their torches at the charging enemy, turned and fled down the beach. Only the lead man stood his ground, torch in one hand, sword in the other, shouting, “Come back! Stand and fight, you worthless cowards!”

  But it was no use. He was alone, and he could not fight off Cormac’s army by himself. A spear flew through the air and into the circle of light surrounding his torch, missing him by inches, and that was the end of his defiance. He, too, flung his torch, turned and ran for the shore.

  “After them! After them!” Cormac shouted as his men continued down the beach, toward the edge of the water and the fleeing fin gall.

  Cormac himself had no intention of following the Norsemen. He ran up to the place where the shovel still stood upright in the gravely beach, where the fin gall had begun to dig, and there he stood. He would not lose that place, after all he had done to get there.

  In the light of the guttering torches Cormac looked down at the beach, trying to find the mark that the fin gall leader had mentioned, but one rock looked like another to him. No matter. This is where they were digging. This was where he would find the crown.

  There was shouting and splashing and the sounds of a fight down by the water. Cormac strained to see what was happening, but now it was he who was blinded by the torches and he could see nothing. Soon after he heard the crunch of men walking on the shingle and then Niall Cuarán stepped into the light.

  “We could not stop the fin gall,” he said. “They got aboard and shoved off before we could stop them.”

  “No matter,” Cormac said. They had not come for the fin gall, he did not care about the fin gall. He was, at that moment, physically closer to the Crown of the Three Kingdoms than all but a few had ever been in the history of Ireland. He was desperate to have the thing in his hands, on his head.

  “Pick up those torches, don’t let them go out,” Cormac snapped. He wanted to pick up a shovel and go after the crown himself, but such eagerness was unbecoming for the soon-to-be rí ruirech of the Three Kingdoms.

  “You there,” he pointed to one of his men, “take up that shovel. Dig, right there.”

  The man nodded and grabbed the shovel, jamming the blade into the gravel.

  “Careful, you idiot!” Cormac shouted. The crown was probably not buried deep. He did not care to have that ancient symbol of Celtic power sliced in two by some fool with a shovel.

  The soldier curbed his enthusiasm, digging carefully, scraping layer after layer of pebbles and sand away. The men holding the torches crowded close, to let the light fall on the hole, and the rest crowded up to them, eager to catch the first glimpse of the near-mythical Crown of the Three Kingdoms.

  As the hole grew wider and deeper, Cormac grew more annoyed. “You men with the torches, step back. The rest of you fools, stand away. Niall, set a guard around the beach. We are just asking to be attacked here, with every eye staring into a hole in the ground!”

  Niall Cuarán shuffled the men away, gave out orders for watchers to be stationed at all the approaches to the beach. Cormac stared with irritation at the growing hole in the beach, shuffled with irritation as Niall Cuarán, rather than remaining with the men, came back to watch the digging.

  “This is absurd,” Cormac said after twenty minutes of careful excavation. He pointed to the other discarded shovels. “Get some more men digging here.”

  Minutes later there were five men with shovels, tearing at the beach, and Cormac’s mood was not improved by realizing that the shovels the fin gall had left were his, taken from his baggage wagon that morning.

  The hole grew deeper and deeper, and when finally they dug so deep that the bottom of the hole was continually filling with seawater, they began to dig outward, expanding the area of the search.

  As the men with the shovels began to flag, more men were brought in to replace them, and eventually men to replace those. All though the dark hours they dug. When the torches began to sputter out, men were sent to collect brush and wood and a fire was built at the edge of the hole so that the diggers could see, so the firelight would illuminate that first glimpse of gold, glinting out from the mud. All night long men fed the fire, while others flung dirt from the hole.

  Dawn came grudgingly through the thick overcast. Cormac stirred, realized that he had fallen asleep, though he could not even recall sitting. He stood quickly.

  The men were still digging, but with little enthusiasm. The hole was twenty feet wide in any direction, and six feet deep, down to where the seawater flooded in. The horizon was empty, the fin gall were long gone. There was no crown.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The warrior’s revenge

  is repaid to the king,

  wolf and eagle stalk

  over the king’s sons.

  Egil’s Saga

  F

  lann mac Conaing made his weary way from the guards’ barracks to the main house. His wet cloak weighed him down, but not half as much as the anticipation of the coming interview.

  Máel Sechnaill was at breakfast in the outer room of his sleeping chamber. The guard outside the door announced Flann, and Máel beckoned him in.

  “It’s the fin gall, Lord Máel, the young one,” Flann made his halting start.

  “Humph,” Máel Sechnaill said, stuffing a hunk of coarse bread into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed. Flann waited. Máel Sechnaill would surely choke to death if he was given the news with his mouth full.

  “What of him?” Máel asked. “Did he die from the questioning?”

  “No, Lord. Not that one. The young one, the one called Harald.” Flann did not remind Máel Sechnaill that Harald was the important one, the grandson of Ornolf who had the crown. He thought it best if Máel did not remember this.

  “Yes, yes,” Máel said with a wave of his hand. “My daughter’s little pet. What of him?”

  “Ah...well...it seems he has escaped...”

  Máel looked up sharp at that. “Escaped? How?”

  “We’re trying to learn that, my Lord.”<
br />
  “No matter. We’ll hunt him down.” Máel Sechnaill stood, and now he had an eager look on his face. “Have some sport out of him.”

  “There is one other thing, my Lord...” Flann felt his guts turning into some viscous substance. “It seems he stole your daughter, Lord. He stole Brigit.”

  Máel Sechnaill froze. He stood absolutely still. His eyes burned into Flann’s. Even after decades of combat, including three near fatal wounds, it was the longest, most frightening thirty seconds of Flann’s life.

  “He...stole her?”

  “Yes, Lord.” It was a lie, of course, a calculated lie. The guard was clear on the point - the fin gall was not stealing Brigit, Brigit was helping him escape. But Flann could not tell Máel Sechnaill that. It was too much. “Sir, he...”, Flann continued and he was cut short.

  “Why are you standing here, you God forsaken idiot? Why are you not hunting him down?”

  “My Lord, I have turned out the guards, with dogs. They are on the trail now, and I...”

  “Damn the guards! Damn them, you pathetic fool! Rouse the rí túaithe, have them get their men to arms! Immediately! I want every man-of-war riding out of Tara in twenty minutes. We will come down on this fin gall son of a bitch like the wrath of God!”

  “Yes, Lord!” Flann said, turned to rush off and get the army camped at Tara started. Máel stopped him.

  “Flann mac Conaing,” he said, and Flann stopped and turned back. He did not like the tone in his king’s voice.

  “Yes, Lord?”

  “You brought this wolf into my house. You and your sister, and your damned clever notions. I have not forgotten.”

  Flann waited for Máel Sechnaill to say more, but he did not. He did not have to.

  “Yes, my Lord.” Flann hurried out the door, past the other sleeping chambers to the great hall where the rí túaithe who were not too drunk or too hung over would be having their breakfast. He burst through the door, knocking a slave girl and her tankards of ale to the floor.