Fin Gall (The Norsemen)

by James L. Nelson

  He whirled around, still crouched low, the dagger in front of him, heard five more splashes as his men dropped to the ground. He had come down just to the right of the door where he knew a guard would be posted.

  “Here!” a voice called out. Not a challenge, more an expression of fear and surprise. Thorgrim could hear the edge of terror in the man’s voice, to see dark creatures dropping from the sky on such a night.

  Thorgrim took two steps forward. In the dark and rain, against the wall of the prison he could see the shape of a man drawing a sword but it was too late for him. Thorgrim was on him, his left hand reached up and grabbed a fist-full of wet hair and jerked it back. The man made a strangling sound and a whimpering cry and Thorgrim slashed his throat. The man’s blood, warmer than the rain, splattered against Thorgrim’s face as he let him drop.

  Snorri was beside him, lifting the bar from the door, pushing the door in. Thorgrim bent over and pulled the sword from the dead man’s scabbard. It felt good to have a weapon in his hand. He felt whole again, and he knew he would not put it down until he was safely away from Dubh-Linn, or he was dead.

  The men inside slipped out through the open door, led by Ornolf, whose girth did not allow him to get through the hole Thorgrim had cut in the roof. Thorgrim gestured for them to spread out, to lose themselves in the dark by the house. He and Ornolf walked down the length of their former prison as fifty men splashed out into night and moved into the darker places along the walls. Six guards lay dead and stripped of weapons.

  “Svein!” Thorgrim said in a whisper. “Give that sword to Ornolf.”

  Svein the Short, who had come down the roof with Thorgrim, stepped up and reluctantly handed his new-won sword to the jarl.

  “Keep your dagger,” Thorgrim said, but Svein did not seem happy with the trade.

  “We’ll work around the edge of the palisade,” Ornolf said, “keep in the shadows, fall on the guards when we get to the gate.”

  Thorgrim nodded. Sobriety was good for Ornolf’s leadership, if not his mood. “I’ll get the men with weapons in the fore.”

  No alarm had been raised, but that good fortune would not last long. The hard fighting, Thorgrim knew, was yet to start. Still, they were out. The pack was loose.

  Morrigan crouched by the window and peeked through shutters that were open no more than a crack. Directly across the fortress yard was the dining hall in which the Norwegians were held. She had prayed for rain to hide the escape and her prayers were answered and she thanked God for it. But now the rain came in sheets and kept her from seeing or hearing what was taking place.

  She squinted and leaned forward, certain she saw some movement in the dark. Her ears picked out a muffled thud from the steady noise of falling water. Midnight was an hour or two past. It was time for Thorgrim to act.

  There was more sound now, splashing, feet running on wet ground, so soft you would never hear it if you were not listening for it. But Morrigan heard it, she was certain. Thorgrim was on the move. Her turn now.

  She shifted the knife to her left hand and wiped her sweating palm on her dress, then resettled her grip. She was done with Dubh-linn and the torture of slavery. One way or the other.

  She stood and listened. Orm was snoring in the sleeping chamber. Lying by the hearth, pretending to sleep, back to the door, she had heard him return from the mead hall, had listened to the noise of him rustling and groaning his way to sleep as the rain drummed on the thatch above. Then, no sound but the loud, steady breath. It had been that way for an hour or more.

  The room was lit only by the orange glow of banked coals in the fireplace, a feeble light, but Morrigan knew every inch of the house and she crossed the floor, quick and silent. The door to the sleeping chamber was half open and she slipped in and stood there, silent. The room was windowless and all but black, the tiny light from the hearth barely creeping in through the door. She could see nothing, so she stood still, waiting for some sound that might indicate Orm was awake. But there was only snoring.

  She pulled the knife from under her cloak and stepped across the room to Orm’s low bed. The blankets were over him and all she could see was a dark hump in the dark room, but it was enough.

  She wanted to stop, to listen, to be certain, but in her mind the voice shouted No, no! Do it! For all the time she had fantasied about this moment, the actual doing of the thing was harder than she thought. She had never killed a human being, and though she did not think it a sin to kill a pagan and a pig like Orm Ulfsson, still she flinched at the thought of actually driving a knife into a man’s back.

  And then Orm moved, shuffled a bit, made a low noise and Morrigan flushed with panic. The hesitancy fled, the fear fled, all conscious thought gone as she stepped up, lifted the knife high and plunged it down into the blankets and the man underneath.

  The knife went in smooth then hit something - bone, Morrigan supposed but she did not think about it, just pulled it free and plunged it in again and again, and at last she sunk the blade in to the hilt.

  Orm was thrashing, screaming, loud and high, screaming like a woman, but Morrigan barely registered the sound. She backed away from the thrashing hump of blanket, the great furor of sound that filled the room. She backed away until she found the sleeping chamber door and ran through it, ran across the room and out the front door. She gasped as the driving rain hit her in the face. But it was good, clean and purging, like the murder she had just committed. Orm’s blood meant no more to her than the rainwater that ran down her skin.

  Orm was still screaming that weird, high-pitched shriek. Through the rain she thought she saw some movement by the gate. She raced for the dining hall, for Thorgrim and her passage out of Dubh-linn.

  Thorgrim was back inside the prison, seeing to the wounded men, when he heard the horrible sound.

  “Use the blankets, use the blankets, a man on each corner!” he said to the men he had brought with him to carry their comrades, when suddenly a scream cut through the night, a terrible, high-pitched scream.

  “Almighty Thor!” Olaf Yellowbeard gasped. “A ghost? Or a troll, do you think?”

  “Shut your mouth, Olaf, and lift your brother,” Thorgrim snapped, but he was not certain that Olaf was wrong. It was a black night of rain and death, the kind of night a man might expect evil spirits about.

  Whatever was making that sound, it was going to attract the guard’s notice. Thorgrim looked out the door. Men were running through the rain, running for the small house up against the palisade wall.

  “Ornolf! Let’s go!” Thorgrim shouted. Here was opportunity. The screams were a distraction.

  Ornolf held his sword aloft, gestured forward, led the men along the wall where their movements would be more hidden.

  Thorgrim stepped back into the dining hall. “Go, you men! With the others!”

  The wounded men were lifted in blankets and carried out the door, Harald last of all. Thorgrim heard Harald give a low moan, saw a glimpse of his yellow hair and white skin through the folds of the blanket as he passed. This would not be easy on the boy. Thorgrim wondered if, in saving his own life, he was sacrificing his son’s.

  The fighting and the screaming and the rain were starting to work on his head. He felt the rage coming on, and the night seemed to swim in front of his eyes and he heard the sound of his own breath as he panted.

  A figure was moving through the rain, coming toward him, running right across the open ground. Thorgrim stepped forward, his sword held ready. With his left hand he wiped the water and hair from his eyes. He growled. Whoever this was, if they were not one of his men, they were dead.

  “Thorgrim!”

  The voice seemed to come out of the rain, a feminine voice. Thorgrim looked around.

  “Thorgrim!” It was the figure running toward him. He lowered his sword.

  “Morrigan?” The young healer ran up to him, and when she was only a few feet away he could see it was her, her long hair plastered back on her head, her rough wool cloak soaked through
and clinging to her. He felt the blinding rage lift like smoke swirling away.

  “Where are your men?” Morrigan asked.

  “They are circling to the gate. What is that screaming?” Even as he said it he realized the sound was dying away.

  “Orm. I put a knife in his back. We have to go, the guards will come for us.”

  “We?”

  “I’m coming, too. They’ll kill me now, after what I did.”

  Thorgrim nodded. He could not see Ornolf and the others, lost in the rain, but suddenly his appetite for sneaking around was gone.

  “Come.” He walked off, stepped off fast for the front gate. His tunic was heavy with the rain and he wiped his eyes as he moved. Morrigan followed behind. He could hear shouting now, coming from Orm’s house. Not much longer.

  “Who’s there?” The challenge came from someone Thorgrim could not see, someone huddled near the gate.

  “Thorgrim Night Wolf of Vik!” he shouted and he did not break his stride. The guard stepped out of the shadows, sword drawn, shield on his arm. He was a much bigger man than Thorgrim. He wore a mail shirt.

  This one will be hard to kill, Thorgrim thought. He could sense the man’s confusion. The guard did not know what was happening, who was who. The screaming must have unnerved him.

  “Who are you?” the man demanded and Thorgrim swung his sword at the man’s neck; the move so fast and unexpected that the Dane just had time to raise his shield and stagger back under the blow.

  Thorgrim had expected to hit the shield. He let his sword bounce off, spun around, wielding his weapon like a scythe, slashing at the man’s waist. But the man had a fast arm and his sword was ready to take the blow. Iron hit iron and the blades rang out with their familiar music. Thorgrim whipped his sword over his head, brought it down hard on the man’s arm. The man grunted, the blade slid off chain mail, and Thorgrim leapt clear of a counter-attack.

  Thorgrim circled around and the man circled as well, face to face, both ready, both looking for the opening. But the guard had the luxury of time and Thorgrim did not. Thorgrim lunged, made the man move. The man beat Thorgrim’s sword away with his shield and lunged with his own.

  Thorgrim swung his foot up, kicked the sword to one side, thrust his blade into the opening, the point right at the man’s face. The man flinched and Thorgrim’s sword caught his beard and Thorgrim could feel the blade drag over skin.

  The big man roared and swung his blade up, knocking Thorgrim’s away before any real damage could be done. But Thorgrim had first blood, and he knew how that would work on a man’s mind.

  He was right. The big man was angry now. He slashed wildly but Thorgrim dodged, wolf-quick, took another stab at the vulnerable exposed neck. Thorgrim’s world was closed down to that fight. There was nothing else. So when he heard Morrigan screaming his name it seemed to drift in from someplace he did not know.

  “Thorgrim! Behind you!”

  The big man hit Thorgrim hard with his shield, made him stagger under the blow and suddenly Morrigan’s words and the sense of movement behind came together in a warning too fast to find voice in his head. He leapt to his right, hit the mud with his shoulder and rolled, sprang to his feet as the man behind him was swinging his sword at air.

  He did not get a chance at a second stroke. Thorgrim leapt off the balls of his feet, sword out, drove the point right through the man’s tunic, right under his arm.

  Thorgrim swung the shrieking man around and used his body as a shield against the first man’s sword, but now there was the problem of pulling his own sword free before the other man cut him down.

  He swung the dying man in front of himself again, was thinking on the problem when Skeggi Kalfsson and Snorri Half-troll came charging out of the night, swords in hand. The Dane was still turning to meet the new threat when Snorri drove the point of his sword through the man’s neck.

  Beyond Snorri’s panting form, Thorgrim could see the big stockade door swinging open, the Red Dragons clustered by the walls.

  He could hear shouts across the compound. The alarm sounding. There were many more men than had been on guard duty, and now they were turning out.

  “Come along, Thorgrim!” Snorri shouted. “We’ve no time for you to play your games!”

  They turned and jogged for the open door. Thorgrim remembered to turn around and look for Morrigan. She was ten yards back. Her hood was off and the rain was running down her face and her long hair. He waved her on, and turned and ran as well.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It is uncertain

  where enemies lurk

  or crouch in a dark corner.

  Hávamál

  T

  he thrall stopped screaming at last and Orm imagined she was dead. He gave her body a push and she rolled over on her back, her arm flung out to the side. He had taken her home from the mead hall, tired of humping his scrawny Irish housekeeper. He had expected a number of things from her. Taking the point of an assassin’s knife had not been one of them.

  He did not know how many of the murdering swine there were, or if they were still in the house. He had waited and tried to listen as the thrall screamed her life away, but when she finally stopped, and the night was quiet, Orm still did not know how things lay.

  He kicked off the blanket and climbed slowly out of the bed. His bare feet hit the dirt floor, his hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword and he pulled the weapon from the sheath. He cursed the drumming rain that muffled all other sound.

  Now he could hear shouting, off in the night. He cocked his head and tried to get a sense for what was happening. The Norwegian fleet? Magus leading a mutiny? He had no idea.

  He was naked and he suddenly felt very vulnerable so he set his sword down on the body of the dead thrall and grabbed up his tunic from the floor. He was just pulling it over his head when he heard the outer door to his house burst open.

  “Bastards!” Orm shouted, jerked the tunic down and snatched up his sword. If they were coming for him in force then he would go out like a man and commend his spirit to the Valkyries.

  He flung the bedchamber door open and burst into the main room, his sword ready. There were four or five of them, dark shapes in the muted glow of the hearth. He went for the closest.

  “Murder me will you, you whore’s son!” he roared as he swept the room with his sword. The man in front of him had time to do no more than grunt and fend off the blow with his sword, and Orm lunged again.

  One of the others, by the hearth, thrust the oil soaked end of a torch in the embers. The torch sputtered and caught and the light spilled across the room. Orm saw that he was facing the half-dressed Magnus Magnusson and four of his most trusted men.

  “You son of a bitch,” Orm growled, but the brunt of the anger was directed at himself. Why didn’t I kill this bastard when I had the chance? Now he has killed me.

  Orm lunged again and Magnus parried the blow and his expression was more shock and confusion than anything else.

  “My lord, no!” Magnus shouted as he jumped back, clear of another attack. “We heard screaming...we came...”

  Orm paused and in the light of the torch he looked at the men’s faces and he had to admit they did not have the grim look of men set on doing murder. He lowered his sword.

  “Are you all right?” Magnus asked. “What was that screaming?”

  “Someone tried to murder me but they killed a thrall by mistake.”

  “A thrall? Morrigan?”

  “No.” Orm glanced at the pallet by the hearth. “Where is that little bitch?”

  “She wasn’t here when we came in, my lord,” said Kjartan Swiftsword, Magnus’s chief man, standing just behind Magnus. Orm scowled. Realization spread like the light from the torch.

  “That treacherous little Irish whore...” Orm muttered and he pushed past Magnus and out the door, into the rain and the chaos.

  He could see men running in the dark, fighting by the gate. He could hear the clang of iron on iron, and he saw the
front door of the palisade swing open. He gasped, looked to his right. There were no guards at the dining hall. A dark place in the wall showed where the door was gaping open.

  “That bitch!” Orm screamed into the night. “The damned Norwegians are out! Magnus, rouse the men, to arms, we have to stop them before they get to their ship!”

  “Yes, Lord.” Magnus turned to go.

  “See the men are organized. Don’t let them run out in a mob. If the Norwegians are laying a trap, our men will be butchered.

  Magnus stopped. “The Norwegians have no weapons, Lord.”

  “No, but they’re clever, and that’s more dangerous. Be careful.”

  Magnus raced out the door and Orm followed, charging out into the night with only his tunic and sword. The mud sucked at his bare feet as he ran. Never again, he vowed, never again will I let any such traitorous bastards live...

  Ornolf led the men out the palisade gate. Thorgrim stood with the rear guard, a half dozen men, among the few with weapons, as they backed through the gate, watching for attack. None came, but it would not be long.

  “They know we’re out!” Snorri Half-troll shouted to Thorgrim. “Look at them run!”

  There were indeed men running, men tumbling out of the small buildings that lined the wall, men waving arms. The Danes knew what was acting, and they knew better than to attack in ones and twos. They were gathering, and when they did, they would form a swine array and fall on the Red Dragons in force.

  “We have to get to the ship,” Thorgrim said. He stepped back faster and the others followed and then they were through the main entrance and onto the plank road.

  “Shut the doors! Shut the doors!” Thorgrim shouted and Snorri and Sigurd Sow heaved on the heavy timber doors and swung them closed. They would not slow the Danes up long, the doors could not be barred from the outside, but at least it would make the Danes hesitate and gather to face a threat that might be waiting. It was something.

  Thorgrim turned and hurried down the plank road and here was Morrigan, waving to him, and beside her three sheep herds, one armed with a sword, two with spears, as if the night was not weird enough.