Fin Gall (The Norsemen)

by James L. Nelson

  “Hold up!” Thorgrim shouted to his men and they stopped.

  “Thorgrim, these are my friends,” Morrigan said, and her voice conveyed the desperation of their circumstance. “They are here to help!”

  Thorgrim looked with suspicion on the sheep herds. They did not look like fighting men. The two younger ones, in fact, looked terrified.

  “Your ship’s ready, they’ve seen to that. We must go! Quickly, they will be on us!” Morrigan said and Thorgrim nodded.

  Then Ornolf was there. “Thorgrim! We need weapons! Pointless to escape without weapons, they’ll hunt us down like dogs!”

  Ornolf was right. Morrigan was right. The battle fever was up in Thorgrim and he did not want to think, he just wanted to fight. His eyes fell on the mead hall. The windows glowed with the weak light of dying fires. Thorgrim could picture the heaps of drunken men passed out on the floor like the dead after a grand battle.

  “There!” he pointed with his sword “There are weapons to be had there! We’ll sack the mead hall and be gone!”

  “Thorgrim, let me take the wounded to the ship!” Morrigan said. “They will only hold you up!”

  “Yes, yes, take them to the ship,” Thorgrim said. Whatever she suggested, he would agree to. She seemed to affect his thoughts in some strange way, and he wondered if she was working some sort of magic on him.

  This was not the time to think on that. “You men bearing the wounded, follow Morrigan! The rest, with me and Ornolf! Go!”

  Morrigan waved on the men who carried the wounded in their blankets and they followed, hurrying down the plank road. Thorgrim and Ornolf led the armed men forward toward the mead hall that loomed like a cliff in the dark night.

  Thorgrim held the men up outside the door. There was no sound from within, which had to mean most of the men there were passed out drunk. Even the rain would not have muffled the sound of Vikings in full revelry.

  “You men,” Thorgrim pointed to a cluster of twenty, “go around the back, come in the back door, catch anyone trying to flee. The rest come with Ornolf and me.”

  “Should we kill them?” Snorri asked.

  Thorgrim frowned. It made sense to kill as many of the enemy as possible, in any circumstance. But even when the fighting madness was on him, Thorgrim did not care to butcher unconscious men. He did not think the gods looked favorably on such things.

  “Only if they fight,” Thorgrim said. “Lets go.”

  The others raced off for the back door as Ornolf pushed in the front. The fire in the big fireplace was dying, the few torches on the wall sputtering their last. There were forty men at least in the hall, slumped over the tables, sprawled on the floor, mouths open as they snored. They were all well armed.

  Ornolf’s men spread out. They pulled swords from the scabbards of sleeping men and eased shields out from under prone bodies. They slipped daggers out of scabbards and used them to liberate purses hanging from belts. Snorri Half-troll tried to peel the mail shirt off a man roughly his size, but Thorgrim told him to stop.

  Thorgrim turned to Hall Gudmundarson and Egil Lamb. “Find some sacks, collect up all the food you can find. Skeggi, watch at the door. Keep out of sight.”

  It seemed to Thorgrim a long time that the silent looting went on, with no sound beyond snoring and the drumming of rain on the roof. Once he heard behind him a mutter of protest as one of the sleeping men stirred, but a swift blow to the head with the flat of his sword ended that.

  “Thorgrim!” Skeggi, crouched by the door, called in a harsh whisper and Thorgrim moved fast across the hall, crouched beside him.

  The door was opened just the slightest crack and through it they could just see the plank road. The rain came cascading from the roof and splashed up in their faces. The Danes were on the move.

  There were a hundred men at least. They were in a swine array, moving cautiously down the road. Thorgrim could make out shields and swords, spears, helmets. They were well armed.

  Slave-sons...

  Thorgrim watched them as they passed the mead hall and moved further down the road.

  They don’t know we’re here...

  But why would they? They would assume the Norwegians had made for their longship as quickly as they could.

  “Wait here,” Thorgrim whispered. “Tell Ornolf I am gone, and to stay put. I’ll be back.”

  Before Skeggi could reply, Thorgrim slipped through the door on silent goatskin shoes, moving low into the shadows of the mead hall. The rain fell blinding in his face but he did not notice. His body felt taut and ready, his senses wolf-sharp. He could smell the Danes even through the rain, could hear the tiny clink of mail shirts, the shuffle of shoes on the plank road.

  He moved along the edge of the building, half-crouched, sword held low and ahead of him. He felt the earth through his shoes, felt the night on his skin. He moved through the dark, a part of the darkness, silent as a spirit.

  Thorgrim Night Wolf slipped over a low fence at the edge of the mead hall, moved down the edge of the plank road, working his way in and out of the shadows of the buildings that lined the walk. He could hear snatches of talk from the swine array. Grousing. Concern. It was a frightening night and it might have frightened Thorgrim as well if he was not a part of it.

  They were getting close to the river now and suddenly Thorgrim thought of Harald, carried off to the longship, lying helpless and burning with fever on the deck. The Danes would not hesitate to kill him. He moved faster, slipped around behind an ironworker’s shop, leapt over a fence, skirted down along the road. Someone peered out of a window, looked right at Thorgrim but did not see him as he slipped past.

  Thorgrim arrived at the river’s edge fifty feet ahead of the cautious swine array. There were men hiding there, he could sense them as much as see them, crouching in the brush by the water. Thorgrim circled wide, moved up behind the one furthest from the water. He slipped his sword in his belt and pulled the more nimble dagger.

  He was ten feet behind the man, stalking him, the taste of blood in his mouth, when he realized it was Olaf Yellowbeard, sword drawn, watching the road.

  “Olaf...” Thorgrim whispered and he shuffled close.

  Olaf turned. Thorgrim could see his eyes open wide. Olaf did not expect to hear his name whispered from behind.

  “Thorgrim! By Thor’s hammer I thought you were some night spirit.”

  “I am. Where is Harald? And the other wounded men?”

  “That Irish healer-woman has taken them off, where it’s safe, she said. I had men posted on the road, they warned us the Danes were coming. We spread out. Hid.”

  Thorgrim nodded. “Good.”

  They fell silent as the Danes closed the distance down the plank road to the longship. They were moving faster now, realizing that they were alone. They reached the dock and their formation fell apart as the clambered on board the Red Dragon, looking for the escaped prisoners, looking for some sign of where they might be.

  “Damn!” Thorgrim heard a voice shout out and he was certain it was Orm’s. “Where in all hell have they gone?”

  No one answered. No one knew.

  “They must be in the longphort still.” That voice was Magnus.

  “Find them, damn you! Leave twenty men here, the rest, search the town!”

  Thorgrim leaned close to Olaf Yellowbeard. “Stay here. Remain hidden. Pass the word to the others. I’ll lead the rest back here.”

  Olaf nodded and then Thorgrim was gone, whipping back into the dark night. He kept away from the plank road, moved past the clustered houses, racing through kitchen gardens, hopping over low wattle fences. He crouched low, panting with the effort, but he moved fast and silent as if padding down a forest trail.

  He came at last to the mead hall, approached from the back and slipped in the back door which, he was not pleased to see, was unguarded.

  “Ornolf!” The jarl had found a barrel of mead and was making up for a week of deprivation in the Danish prison. “Ornolf, the Danes are down by th
e ship. They’ve left a small guard but the rest are searching the town. Here’s our chance.”

  “Ah, damn the Danes!” Ornolf roared, causing the half-dozen unconscious men around him to stir. “Let the Danes come, I’ll bugger them all! Good strong drink has gotten me randy again!”

  Good strong drink had also taken the hard edge off Ornolf’s leadership, Thorgrim was sorry to see. “You men,” he pointed to three men who were rifling through one of the drunk men’s clothes, “take up this barrel of mead and carry it down to the ship.” He knew there was no chance of Ornolf following if the mead did not come as well. “The rest of you, gather around.”

  Ornolf was not the only one who had gotten into the mead, but that was all right, since any Viking worthy of the name would fight better with a belly full of drink.

  Thorgrim pulled one of the smoldering torches down from the wall, crossed to the fireplace and used it to stir up the coals. Soon the torch was blazing again.

  “Egil Lamb,” Thorgrim called.

  Egil, lithe and sinewy, unlike most of his brethren, with a long thin neck and a sparse and sorry bit of hair on his cheeks that he called a beard, hurried over.

  “Take this torch,” Thorgrim instructed, “and climb up there, set the roof on fire.”

  Egil Lamb looked up at the roof, high overhead, ran his eyes over the various handholds and footholds on the wall. He nodded, took the torch, began to climb.

  Thorgrim led the rest out the back door, out into the night. The rain had eased off some, still steady but not coming in torrents. The men huddled in the dark by a clump of brush. They could hear tiny thunderclaps of shouting in the longphort as the Danes spread out in search of them. They kept their eyes on the mead hall.

  The flame was like a candle at first, no bigger than that. It peeked out through the thatch of the mead hall roof, dancing and wavering in the rain. And just as it looked as if it would go out, another appeared, and another, and then the entire roof burst into flame as the fire ate away at the still-dry thatch underneath. The timbers supporting the roof were dry and tarred and the beams were still covered with bark. The hall would burn well.

  The back door opened. Egil Lamb stood framed against the now bright light of the interior.

  “Let us go,” Thorgrim said.

  They worked their way down to the water, following the route Thorgrim had found earlier. They were slowed by the bundles of food and the barrel of mead, but it did not matter because the Danes had other things to worry about now.

  They were still two hundred yard from the river when Orm’s men discovered the fire. The occasional shouts that they had heard before multiplied and multiplied again as the Danes became aware of the magnitude of the disaster. The mead hall was burning.

  Men pounded up the plank road. Men tumbled out of houses and shops, pulling tunics over their heads as they ran. They shouted for water, for axes, for more men to join them.

  The mead hall was burning.

  Thorgrim Night Wolf led his men down the hill, past the shops, across the tangled ground to where Olaf Yellowbeard still crouched and watched. “Not a man who was guarding the longship has gone off,” Olaf said.

  Thorgrim nodded. These were disciplined men who would not be distracted from their duty. They would be skilled warriors as well.

  The more rational part of Thorgrim’s mind told him it was a time for tactics - circle around, attack from two places, work men in from behind. But he was in no mood for that nonsense.

  “You men carrying loads, get aboard the Red Dragon as soon as you can, get all the lines cast off, save one. The rest of you, come with me. Kill as many as you can. Remember, we don’t have to win, we just have to escape.”

  He turned and leapt through the brush. He did not wait to see if anyone was following.

  The men on the dock were alert and they would not be taken by surprise. Thorgrim saw heads turn, weapons come up ready as he leapt over the small briars and through the tall rushes, down the slope of the hill toward the river.

  “Who’s there?” someone demanded. Thorgrim felt a howl build in his throat and he let it go as he rushed in with sword over his head. He howled and shrieked and bared his teeth and came in with sword swinging.

  The first of the Danes to step up never had a chance. There was no checking the momentum Thorgrim had built up in his rush into battle. Thorgrim swept the man’s sword aside and literally ran over him, leaping in the air, stepping onto the man’s shield, bowling him over. They came down together, the man on his back, Thorgrim still on his feet, standing on top of the man. He drove his sword straight down into the man’s chest even as he flung himself shoulder first into the next man behind.

  The Red Dragons broke like a wave on the Danes, howling out of the night, but the Danes met them, howl for howl, blade for blade. The conquerors of Dubh-linn were too skilled and too experienced to be thrown off by a surprise attack. Shield hit shield, swords clashed in the rain, spears sought out their targets.

  Thorgrim was snarling as he wielded his sword, slashing and probing, but the man he fought now was good, very good, and he countered Thorgrim’s blade and sought advantage for his own. And he had a shield, and mail as well.

  Thorgrim lunged. The Dane knocked the sword away with his shield, lunged himself, and Thorgrim twisted out of the way of the blade. Ten feet away, fighting Olaf Yellowbeard and Svein the Short at the same time, was Magnus Magnusson.

  “Swine!” Thorgrim shouted. He swung his sword in a great sideways arc, slamming into his adversary’s shield, making him stagger and then Thorgrim was done with him. As if he had forgotten the men completely he shoved his way through the mob, pushed Svein aside, leapt into the fight.

  His eyes met Magnus’s even as Magnus was fending off a blow from Olaf Yellowbeard and the mutual hatred came though as clear as if they had shouted it. Thorgrim lunged, straight arm, right at Magnus’s throat and Magnus knocked the sword away, an inch before it killed him.

  Thorgrim’s eyes followed the sword in Magnus’s hand. Iron-tooth! Magnus was carrying the sword he had stolen from Thorgrim. Iron-tooth in the hands of his enemy!

  Thorgrim screamed. He lashed out at Magnus, missed, lashed again in the kind of wild attack that generally left two dead on the field. The night was turning red in his eyes and he felt himself slipping away, as if the human part of his soul was fleeing, to be replaced by something more primal.

  “Thorgrim!”

  His blade met Magnus’s sword - his sword - and swept it aside and he lunged but Magnus was quick and side-stepped the blade.

  “Thorgrim!”

  Someone was calling him. It came though like a light in the fog, someone was shouting his name.

  “Thorgrim! To the ship!”

  Hands were pulling him now, and others were jabbing at Magnus with spears, holding him off and Thorgrim was dragged back, still howling, still flailing with his sword.

  Then suddenly his legs banged against something and he stumbled back and he landed hard on a rough, wet surface. He was looking up at the black sky and the rain was lashing him in the face and his whole world was moving, the earth no longer stable under him, and he had no idea what was happening.

  The ship! We’re on board the ship! Thorgrim realized now. They had pulled him on board, cast off. The ship was rocking in the stream. He had told the men they only had to escape, not win, and then he had ignored his own orders.

  The fighting madness dissolved away and Thorgrim pulled himself to his feet. They were twenty feet from the dock already. A spear came whistling through the rain and passed a foot from Thorgrim’s face, another thumped into the planking by his feet. Some of the Danes had bows, and now arrows were whipping through the air. One found a mark in the arm of Thorgerd Brak and he shouted and tumbled to the bottom of the ship.

  The Danes on shore were raging but there was nothing they could do beyond flinging spears and shooting arrows. There were too few of them to come after the Red Dragon in another longship. They would have to
wait for the others, but the others were fighting the fire at the mead hall.

  Ornolf was on the bow, shouting insults at the Danes. A spear embedded itself in the neck of the prow inches from his belly but Ornolf seemed not to notice. Most of the men, more pragmatic than their leader, were swinging the long oars into place.

  Thorgrim stepped aft to the steerboard. Morrigan was there, and Thorgrim was surprised to see her.

  “How did you get here?”

  “I snuck aboard during the fighting.”

  “Good.” Thorgrim took up the steer board’s tiller and pushed it away, turning the longship away from the dock. The first few oars were in place and the men pulling them. The Red Dragon built speed through the water.

  And then Thorgrim remembered. He looked frantically around the longship. Nothing. He turned to Morrigan. “Where is Harald?” he asked.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cold are women’s councils...

  Norse Proverb

  O

  rm Ulfsson wanted to kill someone. More than anything else he wanted to drive his sword into someone’s guts, and if he could have found one person alive whom he felt reasonably certain was to blame he would have killed them.

  He would have killed the men guarding the prisoners but Thorgrim and his men had done the job for him. He would have killed that traitorous Morrigan but she was gone, off with the Norwegians, he guessed.

  Orm wanted to kill Magnus Magnusson, because he suspected somehow Magnus had something to do with this. But there was no proof. Magnus had always sworn undying loyalty to Orm. Magnus had come to his home to protect him when he thought Orm was being murdered. And besides, Magnus was not without his followers, men loyal to him and not necessarily to Orm. Killing Magnus might cause more problems than it would solve.

  He wanted to kill Asbjorn the Fat for no reason at all. Just because he wanted to kill him.