Fin Gall

by James L. Nelson

  Orm knocked the sword away. He swung his own sword up and around and down at Thorgrim with great power. Thorgrim met the sword with his shield and the shield shattered under the blow, ripped apart, so that Thorgrim was left holding no more than the boss and a few bits of wood clinging to it.

  Damn Irish shields... Thorgrim thought as he lunged again, hit again, but could do Orm no injury through his mail.

  “Come along, Thorgrim!” Ornolf shouted from the boat, as if Thorgrim was wasting time, amusing himself. Orm attacked in a flurry of sword and shield and there was nothing that Thorgrim could do but back away under the onslaught, back away from the place where the boat was tied to the longship’s side.

  This is not good... Thorgrim thought. Iron-tooth against Orm’s sword, shield and mail. Maybe if Orm was not skilled at combat Thorgrim could prevail, but Orm was a good fighter, a very good fighter.

  Odin All-father was like a great cat, and he, Thorgrim, a mouse to be toyed with endlessly before death.

  The longship gave a lurch underfoot and Thorgrim and Orm stumbled. The planks had burned through to the waterline, the sea was rushing in. Over the shouting and cracking of flames they could hear the hiss of seawater meeting burning wood. Thorgrim could hear his fellows shouting for him.

  “You’ve killed me, Thorgrim Night Wolf,” Orm said, pointing with his sword at Thorgrim’s chest. “But I will kill you. We go out together.”

  Thorgrim took a step back, steadying himself as the longship shifted again. He adjusted his grip on Iron-tooth.

  “Together,” he said. With a practiced motion he slid Iron-tooth back into the scabbard. He stood before Orm, weapon sheathed, hands spread in welcome.

  Orm smiled. He took a step forward. He raised his sword high and brought it whipping down at Thorgrim’s head. Thorgrim leapt aside and the sword came slashing down and met only air. Thorgrim had a fleeting look at Orm’s startled face as he leapt at Orm, grabbed him around the waist, and shoved him back, back over the gunnel, over the Red Dragon’s side.

  Thorgrim had a fraction of a second of falling, just long enough to be aware of it, his arms and Orm’s arms tangled, and then they hit the water together, the cold sea wrapping around him, the salt water filling his mouth, stinging his eyes.

  Orm had a death grip around Thorgrim’s neck. Thorgrim kicked hard but he could not get to the surface. He felt Orm’s legs kicking as well. He could see the bright surface moving away overhead.

  He grabbed at Orm’s arms and pulled and felt Orm holding tighter still. He kicked and jerked and tried to break Orm’s hold as they sunk down, deeper and deeper. His lungs burned and he fought to not open his mouth and gasp for air.

  It was getting dark. Thorgrim grabbed Orm’s face and pushed, managed to get some space between himself and Orm. He brought his knee up. Orm tried to push it way and in doing so broke his hold of Thorgrim’s neck. Thorgrim pushed with his knee, pushed with his arms, felt Orm’s grip slipping, slipping. In the dark water he could just see Orm’s white face, his mouth open in a silent shout.

  He kicked Orm free and thrashed for the surface. Below him the figure of Orm Ulfsson grew dim as it sank away.

  Thorgrim broke the surface and gasped and gasped, sucking air into his aching lungs, air and smoke from the burning ships, the Danes’ funeral pyre. The black hull of the Red Dragon loomed over him, and above it, bright flames reached up for the sky.

  He swiveled around. Harald’s Irish leather boat was pulling for him, and a second later it stopped alongside and strong arms reached out and pulled him from the sea.

  For the first time since being stripped of his weapons at Dubh-linn, probably for the first time ever, Thorgrim was profoundly glad that his enemy was wearing mail, and he was not.

  Epilogue

  ...[He] foretold to Ireland that three times

  fleets of black Danes should visit her.

  Bec mac Dé

  T

  here were twenty-seven of the Red Dragons crowded into the leather boat. That was all who had lived through the trials of the gods since they first raised the green shores of Ireland. And it was just as well, since even one more man would surely have put the boat’s gunnels underwater.

  They manned the oars and rowed as hard as they could away from the burning ships. They feared the leather boat might catch fire, or desperate swimmers could reach it and upset it as they tried to climb aboard. But mostly they could not stand to hear the shrieks of men dying in flames. Veterans of many battles, men inured to the cries of the wounded, they could not listen to that horrible sound.

  Not that all of the Danes died in the fire. Far from. Some managed to cling to bits of wreckage and kick their way for shore. Others chose to follow Orm down into the kingdom of Ægir and Ran, leaping into the sea, no doubt clutching gold coins to pay Ran for the trip to Valhalla.

  This the men of the Red Dragon watched as they pulled away from the burning ships. They watched as the two proud longships sank deeper and deeper into the water, until at last only their twin dragonheads and the flaming remnants of their masts showed above the surface and then in an instant they were gone too, and nothing remained of the ship in the surface world save for the oars and casks and sundry charred debris still floating. These things would wash ashore and spend the rest of their days as part of some fisherman’s lean-to, or augment the home of a sheep herder’s wife.

  Once the longships were gone, the men at the oars continued their easy stroke, pulling south along the coast, the boat plowing silent through the sea. No one spoke. No one seemed to have a notion of where they were bound. They just rowed.

  The sun was well on its way to the western horizon before someone broke the silence. It was Svein the Short, who had been pulling an oar for hours, and he said, “So tell me, Ornolf, are we just going to row to the place where the sea pours off the edge of the earth, or do you have some other destination in mind?”

  Thorgrim answered for Ornolf. “There is a settlement of Norsemen at a place called Wexford, south of Dubh-linn. We’ll make for there.”

  “We’ll not get far without food or water. A sail would be of use,” Egil Lamb said.

  “There is a monastery, at a place called Baldoyle. Not far from here. Tomorrow we will reach it and see if we can get what we need there.”

  “Baldoyle? Isn’t that the one we saw sacked, coming north?” Ornolf asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Now what is the point of sacking a monastery that was just sacked?”

  “They will not be able to put up much of a fight, which is good, because neither can we,” Thorgrim said. “Besides, we are not looking for riches, just food and water.”

  “Humph,” Ornolf said and then fell silent.

  They decided to remain at sea for the night, because they did not know if the Irish army that had been following them on shore was still there. Happily, the clear, moonless sky gave them a view of the stars by which they could keep on course as they continued to row south, the open boat rising and falling in the long ocean rollers.

  It was in the early morning hours, with dawn still some time off, when they first began to suspect they were not alone. Thorgrim heard it first, a sound that did not come from the leather boat, but not an ocean sound either. A thumping sound, like wood on wood.

  He sat more upright and turned his ear to the dark. There was a splash. “Did you hear that?” he whispered to the others.

  “What?” Ornolf asked, but no one answered. Every ear was turned outboard.

  “Listen,” Thorgrim hissed a moment later. It sounded like voices, murmuring, too low to make out the words. There was a creaking sound.

  “It is Ægir. Or his daughters, deciding our fate!” Svein said, with a less than successful attempt to hide his panic.

  “Perhaps,” Thorgrim said. “Or perhaps not. Let us muffle our oars.”

  Eager hands pulled off tunics and wrapped them around the looms of the oars so they would not creak in the tholes. Slowly the men bent to the oars an
d began the slow pull to the south.

  Thorgrim peered into the dark but he could see nothing. The forward motion of the leather boat was imperceptible. It seemed they were going up and down, up and down, and no more than that.

  And then Thorgrim could see, or thought he could see, a dark shape just ahead, a darker place in the night.

  “Hold your oars,” he whispered and the men stopped pulling and waited. Thorgrim could feel the tension in the boat.

  He stared forward. “Egil, you are sharp-eyed. What do you see ahead?”

  Egil Lamb turned and looked forward. After a moment he said, “It’s a ship.”

  It was a ship. Thorgrim was certain. The more he looked, the more the long, low shape resolved out of the night. A ship lying a-hull, not moving.

  “We must go the other way,” Thorgrim whispered, “because we have to assume this is no friend. Starboard, pull, larboard, backwater.”

  The leather boat spun around on her keel and began to slowly, silently, crawl in the other direction. Soon the dark shape was lost to Thorgrim’s eyes.

  “Thorgrim!” Egil whispered. “There is another!”

  Ahead, another dark shape, much like the first, as if that ship had by magic shifted its place to remain in front of the leather boat.

  Thorgrim turned the leather boat east and the men pulled away from the shore, but it was not long before they found another dark ship under their bow. They turned south again, hoping to skirt astern of the first, but again the ship was there.

  “This smells of Loki’s trickery,” Thorgerd Brak whispered. The panic was settling in.

  “Unship oars,” Thorgrim ordered. There was no point in rowing all over the ocean when it seemed there was always a longship in front of them. Better to wait for dawn and see what was up. “Get some sleep,” Thorgrim ordered, and to lead the way he settled himself down as best he could, closed his eyes, and remained in that position, wide awake, for the next two hours.

  It seemed he had finally managed to doze when someone shook him from his slumber. He opened his eyes and sat up. The sky to the east was growing light, just a hint of gray. He rubbed his eyes. The day would come quick.

  “Is everyone awake?” he asked and he heard murmured replies fore and aft.

  “See to your weapons,” he said. He had no idea what the light would reveal, whether something of this world or another.

  And then not twenty feet ahead of the boat they heard a voice call out, calling for men to wake up. Thorgrim jumped in surprise and he heard others gasp and curse. From across the water came the sound of men rustling out of beds, groans and words flying around. And then the dawn light revealed the ship, as if it was materializing out of the ocean mists. A longship, a dragon ship, a hundred and fifty feet long. Its wicked serpent head at the bow towered high over the sea, its yard, almost as long as the Red Dragon’s hull, was swung fore and aft with sail stowed.

  “By the gods...” Sigurd Sow whispered.

  “Look there!” Egil Lamb said. The men looked astern. They looked to larboard and starboard. The ocean was filled with ships, longships in every direction. They had rowed themselves right into the middle of a fleet.

  It was then that someone aboard the dragon ship noticed the overloaded boat two perches away.

  “You there!” the man shouted. “Get over here!”

  The men looked aft to Thorgrim. Thorgrim looked at Ornolf. Ornolf shrugged. “Don’t see as we have much choice,” he said.

  The men shipped their oars and with just a few strokes came up alongside the massive vessel. A big man with a fur cloak and a shining helmet leaned on the rail and looked down at them. “Who are you?” the man demanded.

  Ornolf answered with a tone every bit as haughty. “I am Ornolf Hrafnsson, jarl of East Agder in Vik!” he shouted. “And who are you to presume to order me about?”

  It was absurd, Ornolf in his little boat acting so grand to the man on the rail of a dragon ship, but before the man could reply, another voice came ringing down the deck.

  “Ornolf? Ornolf the Restless, you great buggerer!” An older man appeared over the rail, long white hair bound in a queue, his beard white as well.

  “Olaf?” Ornolf shouted. “Olaf the White? Is that you, you great whore’s son?” Ornolf laughed out loud and Olaf the White did as well.

  “What are you doing here, Olaf, with your great fleet?” Ornolf asked.

  “Why, we have heard in Norway that those whore’s sons Danes have taken Dubh-linn, and we have come to take it back.”

  “That’s well done, Olaf,” Ornolf agreed.

  “Will you and your men join us, or are you having such fun rowing about that you don’t wish to stop?”

  “What say you, men?” Ornolf asked. “Shall we go to Dubh-linn again? I reckon the welcome will be a better one this time. Do you agree?”

  They did agree. And after a short fight against the surprised, leaderless, and greatly outnumbered Danes, Ornolf and his men found the longphort decidedly more hospitable than they had the first time around.

  The funereal feast for Máel Sechnaill mac Ruanaid took place three days after the battle in which the fallen hero’s army defeated that of Cormac Ua Ruairc.

  Brigit, as princess, took her place at the head table, next to Flann mac Conaing, who had somehow, and by mutual consent of the rí túaithe, assumed the protectorate of the kingdom, Máel Sechnaill having no male heirs.

  One of the rí túaithe was standing, silver chalice raised. “Our noble king of Tara, who defeated the dubh-gall host and the traitorous army of Cormac Ua Ruairc one after another on the same field on the same morning! A feat never seen before, never to be equaled!”

  The others cheered. Flann beamed, but solemnly, as the occasion required, and raised his cup. Brigit rolled her eyes. She was not sure if the man was referring to her father or Flann mac Conaing, and she guessed the ambiguity was purposeful. Already the rí túaithe were playing up to Flann the way they had to her father.

  Damned sycophants, she thought. Her food sat untouched before her. Her appetite was gone, had been since she witnessed Flann’s disposal of Cormac ua Ruairc. Máel Sechnaill’s death on the battlefield had not spared Cormac a disemboweling, the last of the Ua Ruairc line going out just as the penultimate had. Brigit had to admit she felt considerably less sympathy for her former brother-in-law, who had tried hard to cuckold his brother, than she had for her former husband, Donnchad.

  Cormac had also shown considerably less bravery in the end than had Donnchad. Unlike Donnchad, who had gone grim-faced and silent to his death, Cormac had wailed and cried and pleaded for life, a pathetic sight that had accomplished nothing beyond wasting his final chance to be remembered as a man of courage.

  The rest of Cormac’s army had been butchered, mostly, and those who were not were now the chattel slaves of Flann and the other rí túaithe, and soon they would wish they had met a quick end on the battlefield.

  Flann was talking now, but Brigit did not listen. She glanced over at Morrigan, sitting at the far end of the table. There was something very odd about it all. Máel Sechnaill had come unscathed through so many battles, only to be cut down in what was really a minor fight. No one had seen him fall, they just found him dead, run though the throat.

  Brigit thought back on the words Morrigan had made her learn. No words in any language she knew, she wondered if perhaps they were some magic incantation, a spell to bring about her father’s death. Certainly Flann and Morrigan had gained the most from the king’s passing.

  What do you know of this, Morrigan? She wondered. She jerked her glance away before Morrigan caught her eye. Brigit had to be careful, and she knew it. Flann had declared himself protector until the succession was worked out, but protectors had a way of turning themselves into kings. Any real threat to his power would come from her, or her children, and Flann and Morrigan would be watching.

  Brigit looked out over the rí túaithe seated at the long tables, moved her eyes from man to man as they ate a
nd drank like swine at the troth. They were mostly drunk already. She sighed.

  She would have to marry one of them. She would have to do it soon. Conlaed uí Chennselaigh was blond-haired and blue-eyed and he was not the worst of them, so he would probably do.

  Brigit was still fresh from the horror of her kidnapping and the sight of her brother-in-law dying his horrible death, and that was excuse enough for the nausea and puking every morning. Her chambermaids seemed to believe her ordeal was the cause of her sickness, but they would not for long, and then the rumors would start.

  Brigit needed a husband. The heir to the throne of Tara needed a legitimate father, one who would look like a legitimate father, with the same blond hair and blue eyes as the baby. Particularly now that Flann was sure to try and keep the throne for himself.

  No one, no one but Brigit nic Máel Sechnaill, would ever know that it was fin-gall blood that ran through that heir’s Irish veins.

  Morrigan thought she saw Brigit looking at her, but the princess turned away before their eyes met.

  What are you thinking, my dear? Morrigan wondered. No doubt she was trying to figure out how Flann had so quickly consolidated power.

  Certainly it would seem quick to her. She did not witness the years during which Flann mac Conaing had won the trust and love of the rí túaithe, the fear and mistrust of Máel he had planted in their hearts and made to grow to fruition with his tender ministrations. A few of the precious jewels plucked from the crown, some gold shaved from its base had won over the rest. Brigit herself had carried Morrigan’s word to Flann that the moment had come for them to act. Let Tara fall and Flann rise in his place. The daughter had given word to Flann that he should strike her father down.

  Máel Sechnaill mac Ruanaid was an evil man. That was all there was to say about him. Rather than make war on the pagan Norseman he would fight his fellow Irish, sack monasteries, Christian churches, just because they were in the kingdom of another king, whom Máel Sechnaill mac Ruanaid deemed enemy.