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

by Nelson, James L.

  As they closed with the beach Thorgrim ordered those men not rowing to don whatever armor they had and to take up their shields if they had not been washed away in the two days of beating the ships had endured. Failend appeared with Iron-tooth in hand. She had bundled the weapon in tarred cloth and it had made it through the storm without seeing a drop of seawater. Now she carefully unwrapped it and handed it to Thorgrim. Thorgrim thanked her, buckled the belt around his waist.

  The Englishman was talking again, and Thorgrim turned to Gudrid.

  “He says he doesn’t think there’ll be anyone left in the village,” Gudrid said. “He says they would have seen our ships a long way off and fled. He says he’s sorry but they probably took anything of value with them.”

  Thorgrim could not help but smile. What could they possibly have of value ? he wondered. But that did not matter. They were not there for plunder. No one went to a pathetic fishing village for plunder. They needed food, water, ale, a place to rest and set their battered ships to rights. That much he reckoned he would find.

  They closed the last fifty feet and Thorgrim ordered oars in, and Sea Hammer ground up on the sand. Thorgrim made his way amidships and jumped over the side, his feet landing in knee-high water. He walked up the sloping beach and heard the sound of others jumping down behind him. Finally, well clear of the surf, he stopped, took a deep breath, and nearly fell on his face.

  The ground under him was swooping and rolling and he had to actually take a wider stance to remain upright. He had experienced this before, this sensation that the solid earth was rolling like a ship at sea. But he had never experienced it to that degree, because he had never been in such violent seas for so long as they had been since leaving Ireland astern.

  Behind him he heard cries of surprise and laughter as the rest of the men experienced that odd sensation. Failend came up beside him and clung to his arm.

  “Thorgrim, what’s happening?” she asked with a touch of panic in her voice. “Why is the ground moving like the ship?”

  Thorgrim smiled. “It’s not. It just feels it. This will happen, after you’ve sailed for some time in big seas.”

  “Great,” Failend said. “I just got done puking on the ship, and now I’m going to puke on dry land.”

  Thorgrim was about to assure her she would be fine when he heard Starri Deathless whooping as he stepped up beside them. “Night Wolf! We had better go back to sea! The ship moves less than the ground does!”

  Thorgrim smiled and nodded, but as his equilibrium returned, his mind turned toward the nearby village. He could see no movement there, no sign of life. He guessed Sweartling had been right about the people fleeing, and that was no great surprise.

  More and more of his men were swarming up onto the beach, and Thorgrim heard another ship grinding into the sand. He turned and looked behind him. Blood Hawk had come ashore, her men leaping over the side into the surf, and the rest were closing in fast.

  The men gathered around him were holding shields and spears and swords, wearing mail and helmets, but not one of them looked to be in fighting spirit. To a man they were grinning and looking around with the wonder of men who not long before thought they would never set foot on land again.

  “Welcome to Engla-land!” Thorgrim shouted and that was met with cheers and swords and spears banging on shields. They were happy to be there. They would have been happy to be anywhere that had dry earth and food and water.

  “Come along, follow me,” Thorgrim said next and he and his men swept forward, off toward the small village. They approached with caution, but not an excess of caution. There still seemed to be no one there, and he doubted that in the few hours since their sails had appeared over the horizon any local lord could have summoned a force sufficient to match his warriors.

  Starri was walking beside him, smiling and looking around as if he was witnessing something astounding. Even he did not seem to be anticipating a fight, which was good. Thorgrim doubted there would be any fighting.

  “Starri,” he said. “This village will be too dull for you, by half. Why don’t you take a run up to the top of that hill and see what’s there?” He nodded toward the sloping, grassy hill that looked down on the village of Swanage.

  “I’ll do that!” Starri said, eager for something with more promise than a deserted village.

  “Better if no one sees you. No Englishmen, I mean. And keep hidden. No fighting, no matter who you see.”

  “Oh, Night Wolf,” Starri said. “You know how sensible I am. How can you doubt me?”

  Thorgrim smiled. He did know how sensible Starri was. That was why he warned him not to do anything foolish. But he said, “I would never doubt you.”

  And in truth, manic as Starri might be, he rarely made a hash of such scouting missions, and Thorgrim knew of no man who was better at that work.

  Starri ran off to the west and Thorgrim and the others continued their slow advance. They were a dozen paces from the edge of the village when Thorgrim called for a halt. He could see the potential for trouble here, and not from the English. The English were the least of his worries now.

  He turned and addressed the men behind. “We’re all hungry and all thirsty. Whatever you find in the houses here, you collect it up and bring it down to the ships. We’ll see everything is handed out fair.”

  There were grunts of acknowledgement and the men surged forward, swarming through the narrow, muddy streets between the homes. There they found nets strung up to dry and racks of split fish, some of admirable size. There were sundry barrels and heaps of kitchen scraps and a few sorry-looking gardens.

  Thorgrim and Harald pushed into the nearest of the houses. It was small, maybe fifteen feet on each wall, built of weathered boards and thatch for a roof. The floor was dirt with a fire pit in the middle and the remains of a fire still smoldering there. An iron pot hung on a tripod over the fire.

  Harald stepped quickly across the room and looked down into the pot. He snatched up the ladle that was sitting on the hearthstones and plunged it in.

  “Ah,” Thorgrim said, before Harald could eat. “All that goes down to the ship.”

  Harald put the ladle down and even in the dim light Thorgrim could see he was flushing red. “I…” he began. “I was just…”

  “Of course you were,” Thorgrim said. Harald ate more than any two men Thorgrim knew. He was sure the boy felt that he was going to die of hunger at any moment.

  Thorgrim moved off to the side of the small house. There was a pallet of straw and a few blankets tossed on top. He nudged them with his toe, lifted the blankets, but there was nothing of interest there, or anywhere else in the house that he could see.

  He stepped out into the sunlight, blinking after the gloom of the little hovel. Men were moving in and out of the houses, examining whatever detritus they could find in the streets. Some were pulling thatch from the roofs to see if anything of value had been hidden there, but they soon gave it up.

  “Very well,” Thorgrim said to the rest. “Let’s collect up all the food and drink we can find and get back to the ships. I doubt there’s anything else here worth having.”

  The next few hours were taken up with carrying or dragging anything that could be eaten or drunk back to the place where the seven ships were drawn up on the beach. It was an impressive haul, but of course it was midsummer and the crops and the fishing would be at their most fruitful. The food, not surprisingly, was mostly fish, with some bread and carrots and such. There was ale as well, and it was not as awful as Thorgrim would have guessed. He ordered generous shares of food and drink for all the men, and they dug in eagerly.

  Sweartling and his sons were standing off by Sea Hammer ’s bow, looking unsure of what they should do. Thorgrim called Failend to him.

  “Please, would you go in my chest and fetch four pieces of silver. Good pieces, but not too big. One bigger than the rest.”

  Failend nodded and hurried off. Soon she was back with the silver and she placed it in Thorgrim
’s palm. Thorgrim looked at it: four irregular chunks of precious metal, part of some ornamentation from some church in Ireland that had been plundered and unceremoniously hacked apart.

  “Good,” Thorgrim said. “Thank you.”

  He crossed over to the four men, calling for Gudrid as he did. He looked Sweartling in the eyes and the man held his gaze, satisfied, apparently, that Thorgrim would not capriciously end his life. Far from it, Thorgrim handed him the largest of the four bits of silver, and handed the smaller ones to the others.

  Sweartling’s eyes went wide, and Thorgrim guessed he had either forgotten the promise made or never believed Thorgrim would make good on it. “Tell him he did as I asked. He has his silver. He can go now, him and the others.”

  Gudrid translated. Sweartling nodded and spoke, the words sounding so familiar that Thorgrim thought he should have been able to understand, but he could not.

  “He thanks you,” Gudrid said, “and he asks could they spend the night here?”

  Thorgrim frowned. He did not expect that. But then, Sweartling had helped them, and been paid, and that might not be looked upon favorably by his neighbors. Better to appear as if he was being held prisoner.

  “Certainly,” Thorgrim said. “And he can have food and drink, him and his men.” The fisherman might still prove useful.

  Darkness was setting in and a massive fire was lit on the beach by the time Starri returned.

  “Well, we might have had some fun, but these English are worse than the Irish when it comes to running from a fight,” he said to Thorgrim as he took up a cup of ale and a chunk of dried fish.

  “How’s that?” Thorgrim asked. He was tempted to point out that the Irish had fought them and won at Loch Garman, but he held his tongue. He knew that Starri would have some explanation as to why that was not really the case.

  “No one there when I got to the top of the hill. But I could see where all the people had gone, who fled from the village. And I could see there had been horses there, many horses. More than twenty, judging from the hoof prints and the shit. So there were armed men there, but they decided not to fight, cowardly dogs.”

  Thorgrim nodded. Twenty, thirty, one hundred armed men, they still would have been greatly outnumbered by the crews of seven longships, even depleted as those crews were. It was hardly a surprise they had declined combat.

  “But there was no one who you could see?” Thorgrim asked.

  “No one,” Starri said.

  “Well, that won’t be the case forever,” Thorgrim said.

  They slept the night on the beach, with sentries posted all around, but no one came to disturb their rest. They were up at dawn the following day, fires lit, pots with fish stew hanging from tripods. Dry land and a hot breakfast seemed like an extraordinary luxury.

  That done, the men were sent off to attend to various tasks, foremost of which was getting the ships back into sailing condition. They had faired remarkably well riding to their sea anchors, but of course there was damage. Part of Long Serpent ’s sail had blown out of its lashings and now needed to be mended. Fox ’s larboard sheer strake had been smashed in and Black Wing ’s steering board had suffered damage. And all of the ships were leaking, thanks to the violent twisting to which the seas had subjected them.

  As the men went off to their work, Thorgrim called Gudrid to him and told him to fetch the Englishman, Sweartling. He called Harald and Godi to him, and Louis the Frank as well, though he was not sure why. Louis seemed to know things. He was from Frankia and might have a better sense of the lands around here.

  When they had gathered, Thorgrim said to Gudrid, “Ask this fellow if he knows where in Engla-land we are.”

  Gudrid translated. “He says Swanage.”

  Thorgrim tried to hide his annoyance. “He’s told us that. But where is Swanage? North? South?” Gudrid translated.

  “He says it’s in…Dorsetshire…I think was what he said.”

  Thorgrim sighed. He did not know how to get Sweartling to understand the question, though in truth he was reasonably certain that the man would not have an answer anyway. He looked over at Louis. “Do you have any ideas?” he asked.

  Louis shrugged, as Thorgrim knew he would. “You Northmen are the ones who come across the seas to plunder innocent people. How did you do that? How did you come?”

  “We follow the coast of Norway south, and when it starts to tend north again we cross the seas to Engla-land, or the land of the Picts, wherever we land. To get to Ireland we sail north around the land of the Picts and then west.”

  “I see,” Louis said, and Thorgrim was sure that even to one who was no sailor the problem would be obvious. They had come ashore somewhere in Engla-land, but until they knew where, they would not know in which direction to sail.

  “I’ve seen a few maps,” Louis said next. “My father had some, and I looked at them as a boy. I recall Engla-land was shaped sort of like a triangle.” He squatted down and drew a narrow triangle in the wet sand. Thorgrim and the others leaned forward to look, as if they could divine some truth from the marks. Louis drew another line to the right of his triangle. “Frankia is here,” he said.

  “And Ireland is here?” Thorgrim asked, pointing at a spot to the left of Louis’s triangle.

  “Yes, somewhere here, I think,” Louis said and he drew a circle where Thorgrim had pointed.

  “Hmm…” Thorgrim said, looking at the crude drawing. “Dubh-linn should be about here,” he said, poking a hole on the Irish coast. “And Loch Garman here.”

  Louis nodded. “The monks at Glendalough, they had maps of Ireland. Good maps. I studied them. And you’re right, that is where Dubh-linn and Loch Garman are found.”

  “So the wind was from the north, mostly, and it must have blown us this way…” Thorgrim drew a line from Loch Garmin south through the gap between Engla-land and Ireland.

  “And then we sailed mostly east, once the storm had passed,” Harald said. “So, did we get blown south of the corner of Engla-land, and wind up on the southern coast, or are we on the west coast?”

  “The coast here runs north to south,” Gudrid offered, “but that might not mean anything.”

  They discussed the matter a bit more. If Louis was right about the shape of Engla-land, then Harald was right that they had to be on either the west coast or the southern coast. Anything beyond that was guessing. As it was they were guessing quite a bit.

  “Once the ships are ready for sea, we’ll sail east,” Thorgrim concluded. “Keep to the coast. Eventually we have to find someone who knows where we are.”

  “And sack some poor monastery, no doubt,” Louis said.

  “No,” Thorgrim said. “We’ll sack some rich monastery. It’s what we heathens do.”

  The rest of the day was spent doing some of the other things that heathens did: repairing their ships, maintaining their weapons, stowing gear on board, eating and drinking ale. The sun went down on their second day at Swanage and they still had not seen anyone native to that land. All of Engla-land might have been wiped out by a plague for all they could tell.

  The light from the fire fell over the sand and the faces of the men sitting staring into the flames and touched on the bows of the longships pulled up onto the beach. The talk and the singing and the laughter had begun to die off when Starri Deathless appeared in the light. He sat down next to Thorgrim and Thorgrim handed him a cup of ale, which he eagerly drank.

  “Well?” Thorgrim said.

  “We will not be lonely much longer,” Starri said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. Thorgrim did not press him. He knew Starri would get on with the tale in his own time.

  “I went…oh…two, three miles from here?” Starri continued. “And I nearly ran headlong into the men-at-arms, the mounted ones. The same as had been here before, I would think. It was getting dark and they were settling in for the night, but at least a hundred men and horses.”

  Thorgrim frowned. Why would they leave and then return, unless they were returnin
g with considerably more men? They had only to look down from any of the high points encircling the beach to see that there were seven ships there, and they would have to know that seven ships meant a lot more than one hundred men.

  “They’re expecting more,” Thorgrim said at last. “These one hundred, they’ve come to keep an eye on us while more soldiers are on the way. They’ll probably summon a bunch of farmers and give them shields and spears and call it an army, like the Irish do.”

  Starri nodded. “No doubt. But the men I saw, they were not farmers. They had mail and swords and good-looking mounts.”

  “How close did you get?” Thorgrim asked.

  Starri shrugged. “I could have cut some throats, if I wanted to. But I was doing as you told me, Night Wolf. Like I always do.”

  Of course , Thorgrim thought.

  Harald and Godi were sitting nearby and listening to Starri’s words. “Do you think they’ll attack in the dark?” Harald asked.

  “No,” Thorgrim said. “Not many would dare try such a thing. Bécc did, and it did not work out well for him.”

  “So at first light?” Godi asked.

  “First light,” Thorgrim said. “If they’re waiting for more men, and those men arrive before dawn. If not, I suppose the warriors Starri saw will keep an eye on us until more men show up.”

  The others nodded and considered those words. “And what do we do?” Harald asked.

  “We’ll arrange for some surprise for them, our hosts,” Thorgrim said. “We’re guests in their country, after all.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  He knows this who is forced to forgo his lord’s

  his friend’s councils, to lack them for long: