A Vengeful Wind: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 8)

by Nelson, James L.

  A dozen men moved to follow Thorgrim’s orders, and soon a fire ring was built and a fire kindled in the middle. Once the flames were high enough a tripod was set up with an iron kettle suspended above and tied to prevent it swinging too much. Warm food, Thorgrim knew, would do much to improve the men’s strength and attitude. And the black smoke rolling up from the fire would serve as a signal. Thorgrim hoped it would be seen by any of his fleet that still lived and allow them to gather on that patch of sea and once again sail in company.

  To where, he had no idea.

  Food was served out and the fire seemed to be safe enough so Thorgrim had the men keep it going. They collected up broken bits of barrels that were well soaked with salt water and added those to the flames, and soon the black smoke was roiling up in a column that would be seen for miles around. Then Thorgrim set the men to putting the ship to rights, throwing all the shattered detritus overboard, stowing and lashing the things that had come adrift.

  The sun rose and the day grew warmer and the seas smaller and soon the men were smiling and commenting openly on how they could hardly believe they had lived through that storm.

  Thorgrim could hardly believe it either. But he kept that thought to himself.

  “Night Wolf!” Starri called down from the masthead. He had clambered up there a moment before Thorgrim was going to order him up. “I see Blood Hawk and Oak Heart , and Fox, I think. Another, far off, that I think is the one they call Black Wing . And another, but it’s so far I’m not sure it’s a ship at all!”

  Thorgrim nodded. Four others, maybe five. If, after such a storm, they had lost only one ship, then it would surely mean the gods were looking out for them. Which might lead one to wonder why the gods had sent the storm in the first place. To test the worthiness of Thorgrim and his men? Probably. It was hard to imagine any other reason. But Thorgrim did not waste much time thinking about that.

  “How about land?” Thorgrim called. “Is there any land to be seen?”

  “Not a bit!” Starri called down. “Just water. The land might well have been swallowed up in the storm!”

  Yes, it might, Thorgrim thought. He ran his eyes over the men, buoyant and smiling in the warmth of their narrow escape. He wondered if it had occurred to any of them that if they did not find land within a few days, a week at most, when the food and water were long gone, they would be longing for a lung-full of salt water and a quick death.

  The sun had not yet reached its highest point for the day by the time the other ships converged with Sea Hammer on that spot of ocean. Blood Hawk had been commanded, and ably so, by Olaf Thordarson, the oldest man aboard. Oak Heart , with the stoic Asmund, came up under sail, as did Dragon, and Fox , commanded by Hardbein, and lastly Halldor’s Black Wing . Falcon , smallest of the fleet, was the only ship unaccounted for.

  The seas were still too big for the ships to tie up to one another, so after they had exchanged brief accounts of their survival at shouting distance, they moved off to keep enough room between them so that they were in no danger of colliding.

  The sun passed its high point and the men’s jubilant mood seemed to taper off a bit and Thorgrim guessed that they were starting to understand how dire their situation still was. And that meant he had to do something. They could not wait any longer for Falcon to appear, which she was unlikely to do anyway. They had to get underway.

  “Godi! Get some men and get the sea anchor in. Harald! We’re going to set sail, cast off the lashings and get the halyard ready for hoisting.” That got the men moving. And if it did not visibly improve their outlook, it at least took their minds from their troubles, because they knew that doing anything less than what Thorgrim expected would make their lives much worse than hunger or thirst ever could.

  Thorgrim shouted over to Oak Heart , the nearest of the other ships, and told Asmund they would be getting underway and that he should pass the word along. Soon the men of Sea Hammer had the sea anchor in, the gallows put back up, the oars stacked and the yard ready for hoisting.

  Thorgrim stood up on the sheer strake, one hand on the after shroud, and looked out over the water. So… he thought. Where will we sail?

  With the sun now visible he could finally tell one direction from another, which was a relief. The wind was out of the northwest, which he guessed it had been for the past three days. So they had been driven southeast. They could run with the wind astern. That would be the easiest point of sail. But his gut told him there was only ocean to be found in that direction. Ireland and Engla-land would most likely be to the north somewhere. Of course, they couldn’t sail north, or northeast or northwest, because they could not sail that directly into the wind. So it had to be roughly east or west.

  Which one?

  Thorgrim hopped down from the sheer strake and stepped aft, mounted the afterdeck and unlashed the tiller. “Harald! Hoist the yard! Set the sail for a larboard tack! Close hauled as she’ll go!” A larboard tack meant east, and Thorgrim shouted the order as if he knew exactly what he intended to do, but in truth it was no more than an even chance. At least east took them closer to Norway and home.

  They hoisted the yard, nearly all hands laying into the halyard to heave the massive spar aloft. The starboard sheet was brought aft and made fast, the larboard tack drawn down to the beitass run out over the larboard side. The new-built sail, spread to the wind for the first time, flogged a few times and then filled. Sea Hammer heeled a bit to starboard and began to gather way.

  Thorgrim could see smiles fore and aft. The ship was alive once more, driving under her own power. Not moving grudgingly under the thrust of the oars, or being blown mindlessly where the wind was pushing her, but going where they wanted her to go, under the power of her own sail, her clean, sharp bottom cutting through the seas.

  One by one the other ships of the fleet hoisted their own sails, set them for a larboard tack, and fell in in Sea Hammer ’s wake, a line of deadly longships, a sight to put terror in the hearts of any town or monastery that might see them appearing over the horizon.

  For all that day they stood on, the wind holding steady, their course straight and true. As night came on Thorgrim had a lantern lit and hoisted up aloft and the other captains did as well, so that the fleet could stay together during the dark hours. In other circumstances they might have lowered their sails and lay a’hull for the night, but Thorgrim did not think they had that luxury, nor did he think anyone was interested in floating motionless above countless fathoms of water, populated by unseen horrors below.

  For all the dangers of the sea, the night passed uneventfully, and the dawn found all the ships still within sight of one another. Breakfast was served out, as parsimonious as the day before, and the men settled in where they could. The sail was drawing well, Sea Hammer cleaving along, the seas tumbling down her sides, and even Thorgrim could not think of any task to set the men to, so he let them rest.

  Starri was aloft. He would have been in any case, but at first light Thorgrim instructed him to keep a bright lookout, that they did not have much time—a day or two—to find land before things would start falling apart fast. In his years of seafaring, Thorgrim had seen what serous thirst could drive a man to do, and it was not good.

  All through the morning they plowed on in silence, right up until the moment that Starri began to yell and whoop from his perch high above the deck.

  “What is it?” Thorgrim shouted. “What do you see?”

  “There, Night Wolf, there!” Starri shouted. But he was not pointing at the horizon. Rather, he was pointing straight up toward the sky as if Odin were coming down from the clouds.

  Thorgrim scowled. He wondered what new madness had overtaken the man. But he could see other men looking up as well, and smiling and nodding their heads. He turned to Failend, who stood beside him.

  “What is it?” he asked in a low voice.

  Failend was also smiling. “Birds,” she said. “A flock of birds, land birds, and they’re flying in the same direction we sail.” />
  Land birds … That was enough to make Thorgrim smile, too.

  They stood on, with a new sense of optimism, and it was not long after that Starri reported he could see land ahead now: low, dark, and indistinguishable, just as most land looks from the sea. And soon they could see the rough dark line from the deck as well. Thorgrim saw men looking aft at him, nodding their heads, speaking low among themselves.

  They think I knew all along , Thorgrim thought. They think I have some knowledge that no one else has . And that was fine. He would not disabuse them of that.

  This is how reputations are made , he thought. Through bluster and wrong assumptions.

  The wind was not what it had been, but it was still strong enough to move the fleet. The seas had continued to settle down, and with each mile covered, the distant land rose up higher. It was not long before they could make out some of the finer details: brown and green fields, hills, columns of smoke rising from unseen fires.

  “Night Wolf!” Starri shouted again. “There’s a boat of some sort, a fishing boat or something, a couple of miles ahead. Oh, they’re running like scared dogs!”

  But there was no chance of the boat outrunning the longships in a good breeze on their favorite point of sail, and soon they were swooping up alongside the unhappy boat and hauling the sail up to the yard to stop dead in the water just to windward of it. The rest of the fleet did the same, seven longships coming to rest in a great circle around the unhappy boat.

  It was indeed a fishing boat, Thorgrim could see that. It was a quarter of Sea Hammer ’s size, with a pile of nets amidships, an open hold filled with still flapping fish, and four very frightened men on the deck.

  “Drop your sail!” Thorgrim shouted and pointed and waved toward the sail and yard and the men nodded and did as he asked, though Thorgrim did not know if it was the words or the gestures they understood. Once the sail was lying in a heap on the fishing boat’s deck, the four men once again looked pleadingly toward Thorgrim.

  “What land is that?” Thorgrim asked, pointing toward the distant shore. The oldest of the fishermen, whose leathery face was partially obscured by a thick, white beard, replied, waving his hands in an animated way. The words sounded not unlike his native Norse—he though he caught the words “net” and “headland”—but he could not understand what the man was saying.

  Am I deaf, or is he speaking some odd tongue? Thorgrim wondered. He turned to Failend, who was nearby.

  “Failend, what’s this old fool saying?”

  Failend shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not Irish, whatever he’s speaking. Not Norse, though it sounds like it.”

  “Louis!” Thorgrim called to Louis the Frank, who was leaning on the sheer strake and watching the exchange, as indeed were all the men aboard the ship. Louis looked up at the sound of his name.

  “What is this dumb bastard saying?” Thorgrim called.

  “I don’t know,” Louis called back. “Not Irish, not Frankish. Not Norse, but you probably guessed that.”

  “It’s the language of Engla-land,” Gudrid said, pushing off the sheer strake and stepping closer to Thorgrim. “I know this language. My father had slaves from here. Their words are not too different from ours.”

  Thorgrim nodded. “Well, then, I guess we know where we are,” he said. He looked down at the fishing boat, the frightened, pleading look on the fishermen’s faces. Such a boat had to come from some town or village, one that had a safe place for ships to land. Nor were they likely to have sailed very far from that village. He doubted that the fishermen had intended to remain at sea overnight.

  “Tell them to come aboard. We’ll take their boat in tow. They’ll guide us to the harbor at their village. If they do their job well they’ll have a piece of silver. If they try to trick us, I will personally rip their hearts from their chests.”

  Gudrid leaned over the rail and spoke, and the expression on the men’s faces suggested that Thorgrim’s mix of promise and threat had sparked the desired motivation in them. Harald threw a rope down and one of the younger men tied it to a post in the bow, and then the four of them climbed aboard.

  It was only a few moments later that Sea Hammer and the rest of the fleet were once more underway, with Thorgrim at the helm and Gudrid and the old fisherman beside him. Sea Hammer was slower now, towing the fat fishing boat astern, but now at least they knew where they were heading.

  Thorgrim looked forward, past the stem. The figurehead, Thor with teeth bared and hair flying, had been set back in its place, and it looked as if the son of Odin himself was leading the charge toward this new land.

  Engla-land…

  Thorgrim shook his head and his lips turned up in a bit of a smile.

  The gods will have their fun…

  Chapter Thirty

  Then dared I not against the Lord’s word

  bend or break, when I saw earth’s

  fields shake. All fiends

  I could have felled, but I stood fast.

  The Dream of the Rood

  A high ridge of land lay to the west of Swanage. From there one had a view of the small fishing village below and the long sandy half-moon beach that curved off in a gentle arc to the northeast before terminating in the high cliffs at the far end. And it was there, at the point where the grassy meadows began their slow rolling tumble toward the sea, that Nothwulf and Leofric sat on their horses and watched.

  It was midafternoon, and the men could feel the effects of twenty miles of hard riding from Wimborne. Fortunately, they had been ready to ride at the very moment that the messenger had arrived, ready to ride inland for Sherborne. Instead, they rode off in the opposite direction, southwest toward the sea, the men-at-arms trailing behind.

  Evidence of the apocalyptic storm greeted them all along the way: downed trees and roofless cottages and low places flooded until they looked like lakes. Just from the road they counted a half dozen folks dead, some crushed under debris, some just crumpled in the grass, killed by the cold or the battering of the wind or some such thing. They did not stop to discover more.

  The riders skirted the long, shallow bay south of Poole and rode through the town of Wareham, which had fared even worse than Wimborne in the storm. The air took on the pungent smell of the sea as they turned east and rode the last few miles to the high ground outside Swanage.

  The riders in their glittering mail were not the only ones on the road. Dozens passed them as they made their way from Wareham to Swanage, mostly poor fishermen and their wives and children, hunched under the loads they carried, all that they could save from the heathens who had come to their shores.

  As if the Northmen had come to steal what these poor sods have , Nothwulf thought as his horse parted the stream of people, who stepped off the road to let them pass and made a gesture of respect to their betters.

  At first Leofric stopped the people who were fleeing to ask them what they had witnessed. They all said pretty much the same thing. Early that morning they had gathered to take their fishing boats to sea, those few boats that had not been blown away or battered to jetsam on the beach. Then, one of the sharp-eyed young men had seen the sails on the horizon to the southwest. They feared those strange vessels, but they were also desperate to cast their nets after so many days of being pinned in their houses, and so the fleet put to sea.

  But not for long. Half a mile from shore and it was clear the ships, seven at least, were making for Swanage, or somewhere near enough. That did not necessarily mean they were Northmen—they might have been king’s ships, or even merchantmen. Just a few days before the storm other ships had been spotted off to sea, but they had sailed past and made no trouble for the village.

  Still, it was most likely that they were raiders, and no one much cared to wait around to see. They had returned to shore, and once they could make out the rows of shields and the terrifying figureheads of the Norse longships, they had gathered what they could carry and fled, as directly away from the sea as they could go.

  No
thwulf and Leofric listened to half a dozen variations of this story until it was clear that they would get nothing of any use from any of these people so they stopped asking. After that they just greeted the humble bows with unenthusiastic waves as they passed by. It was not until they reached the hilltop, with the town and the beach spread out before them, that they stopped and assessed the situation for themselves.

  “Seven of the bastards,” Leofric observed. “Four at least are tolerably big.”

  Nothwulf grunted. The ships were pulled up on the beach, a mile or so from where the two men watched from the saddle. The rest of the men-at-arms had been made to keep back, out of sight from the town. No need to announce their arrival until they knew what they were up against.

  “Seven. That’s what I count, too,” Nothwulf said. The longships were not the only vessels on the beach. There was a smattering of fishing boats, the largest less than half the length of the smallest of the Northmen’s ships. There were also fishing boats half-sunk in the shallow water, and others that seemed no more than piles of sea wrack heaved up on the sand by the massive seas that had recently pounded the shore.

  “Seven ships…that could well mean three or four hundred warriors,” Leofric said next. Nothwulf grunted again.

  They could not tell from that distance how many of the whores’ sons were there. They could see a few men milling around the ships or building fires on the beach, but most of them were lost from sight, no doubt ransacking the town below. Every now and then a few shield-bearing men could be seen moving among the thatched houses.

  “I’m not sure what they’ll find to plunder in Swanage,” Nothwulf said. “Dried fish, I suppose. Spoiled ale. I would have thought the Abbotsbury Abbey or the priory at Christchurch would have been of more interest to them.”