Dubh-Linn: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 2) (14 page)

  But the scarred man was having none of it. He had been looking for a fight, and instead, by his lights, had received nothing but mockery. Thorgrim could see that if he had been feigning anger and insult before, he wasn’t feigning it now.

  “Drink with whore’s bastards like you two? I think not.”

  The black mood, which had been lurking at the edge of Thorgrim’s consciousness all night, now swept in like a fast moving fog.
This idiot could not have picked a worse man to fool with
, he thought. He took another step forward and stopped. Everything seemed held in place by opposing forces; his anger, the scarred man’s anger. And then the forces let go, so fast that Thorgrim did not even see what happened, which would worry him later, as he reflected on the night. He was slowing down.

  The man with the scarred face swung his fist with the speed and power of a catapult’s arm, and Harald – wide-eyed, shocked, and inebriated – just stood there, motionless. It was Starri who moved first, a blur of speed, and then the scarred man was on his knees, shrieking a weird, high-pitched scream while his forearm hung at an odd angle a few inches below his elbow.

  Once again the mead hall seemed to stop, the men frozen in their tapestry tableau, the space filled with the scarred man’s screams of agony which were like a physical thing. And then the man’s fellows launched themselves like bulls crashing a fence, fists and mugs raised, mouths open in shouts of outrage. They charged for the boisterous crowd who had been with Hoskuld Iron-skull at Cloyne, resentment boiling over, and nearest of those men were Harald, Thorgrim and Starri.

  Thorgrim grabbed Harald by the collar and jerked him back just as a huge fist swung at the boy’s head. The fist found only air and the man swinging it, having readied himself for the impact, stumbled when he found none. Thorgrim stepped up and the man looked at him with an expression like resignation as Thorgrim slammed a rock-hard fist of his own into his hairy temple and dropped him to the floor.

  Even as the man was going down, Thorgrim felt hands grabbing his hair and the cloth of his tunic. He twisted back the other way, breaking the grip, striking with an ineffectual left. Someone’s fist made solid contact with his stomach and he doubled over and turned sideways, letting his shoulder take the blow from the knee that he knew would be aimed at his face. Still in too much pain to straighten, he drove himself forward and into the man in front of him. He felt himself stumbling as the two of them headed for the floor.

  A hand on his collar pulled him back and up straight, away from the man with whom he was clenched, and from behind him Harald appeared, recovered from his shock, stone sober and ready to brawl. Thorgrim’s antagonist was just regaining his feet when Harald leapt clean off the floor and drove his heels right into the man’s sternum, sending him flying as Harald came down with arms cocked, fists clenched for the next behind.

  Thorgrim had only a fraction of a second to marvel at the loveliness of the boy’s move when he sensed a motion to his larboard side, turned, deflected a fist with his left forearm and struck with his right, connecting solidly, and felt the man stagger under the blow.

  He twisted the other way. A fist grazed his face. He swung with his right and felt the laceration he had received at Cloyne, which had nearly healed, open up again. He felt a warm cat’s paw of blood spreading under his tunic. He grabbed the arm that had lashed at him, twisted it hard, felt the arm’s owner jerk it free a fraction of a second before the bone gave way and shattered.

  Starri Deathless was engaged with two of the men who had advanced on them, ducking, jabbing fast with his fist, twisting here and there. Thorgrim caught a glimpse of his face. He was smiling, nearly laughing. Thorgrim had never minded a good brawl, had even enjoyed them on occasion, but for Starri this was clearly amusement at its finest. Indeed, he seemed not to be trying to beat anyone, just sustain the combat for as long as he could.

  Thorgrim turned to the sound of shouting to his right, turned in time to see a bench come sweeping at him as someone whirled it through the air like a broadsword. He pulled Harald aside and ducked as the heavy oak seat passed overhead and slammed into the men beyond, men Thorgrim was sure were on the side of the bench swinger. The fight was devolving into a free for all, with no one even recalling whom they were supposed to be fighting. But no weapons, at least no edged weapons. No one there, angry as they were, was looking for a murderous bloodbath. Tonight’s violence was pure recreation.

  From under a pile of thrashing arms, Nordwall the Short kicked his way to the surface. Thorgrim could see a few of Hoskuld’s men coming into it, and more of Arinbjorn’s with whom he had fought before. He could hear a thrall screaming in terror, someone laughing loud, the crash of tables overturned, pottery smashed. From some unseen quarter a fist made solid contact with his head, twisting him around. The open wound in his side hurt as if he was being stabbed with a knife.

  He gasped and another fist caught him from the other direction and he staggered back. A blurred image of Starri Deathless’ dark blue tunic swam in front of his eyes. He shook his head, willed his sight to return. He could taste blood in his mouth. Someone was taking a clumsy swing at him and he caught the fist like catching a ball, twisted the hand, and with his right leg swept the man’s feet away, a move that was so ingrained in him that his muscles did it with no conscious command from his brain.

  The brawl, Thorgrim could see, was winding down. Here and there men were collapsing to the ground, some beat to unconsciousness, some finding goblets and cups of mead. The thralls, who were no strangers to this sort of thing, were already darting here and there with cups brimming with the potent brew.

  Thorgrim let his fists drop to his side. There were still pockets of struggling men, but now more of the combatants were getting the tables and benches back upright or swilling mead. He staggered off and all but fell on a bench. A patch of spreading blood stained his tunic, darker even than the dark green cloth of the garment. His head was swimming. Someone handed his a cup and he drank, gratefully.

  Harald sat beside him. His lip was bleeding and his hair was a wild tangle but his eyes were bright and his expression eager and enthusiastic.

  “Father!” he said. “Father, are you alright?”

  Thorgrim looked at the boy. It was hard to even call him a boy any more. “Yes, I’m alright,” he said. “Alright. Just too damned old.”

Men in ships, warriors with spears, without any faith,

great will be the plague,

they will inhabit half the surface of the island…

                                                       The Voyage of Snédgus and Mac Riagla

The sun rose higher and filled the grove in which Brigit and Father Finnian sat, and the bugs stirred and began their day’s activities and Father Finnian made no reply to Brigit’s rather remarkable statement concerning her intended destination. After some minutes he lifted himself onto his knees and examined her feet, which were bare, filthy, bruised and lacerated.

  “Ah, that won’t do, won’t do at all,” he said, and Brigit was not sure if he was referring to the state of her feet or her suggestion that they walk to the Viking longphort. The comment hung in the air until she realized that it was in fact directed at her feet. Indeed, Brigit had been dreading the thought of putting weight on them again. “We’ll find some help along the road, I shouldn’t wonder,” Finnian said, “but let’s see what we can do now.”

  Finnian grabbed the hem of the oversized robe she wore and gave it a tug, pulling the folds of fabric free from the belt where he had tucked them. He tore the bottom edge of the fabric off the robe, then tore that cloth into wide and narrow strips. The wide strips he wrapped expertly around Brigit’s feet, tight enough to be a comfort, not too tight as to cause pain. With the narrow strips he bound the makeshift sandals in place.

  “There, that will make the walking a bit better,” he said when he was done. He stood and offered Brigit a hand. She took it, and he gently pulled her to her feet. She could feel the power in his arm, the strength held in reserve, as if he was taking care to exert only as much force as was needed, and not the considerably greater force of which he was capable.

  Brigit gasped as she stood, despite the wrappings. Pain shot through her feet and radiated up her legs. She had seen peasant women going barefoot all the year round, and they never seemed to have any more discomfort than if they had been wearing thick and supple deer hide shoes. But as princess of Tara, that was not a hardship she had ever endured, and her feet were in no way acclimated to the abuse to which they were now subject.

  She took a tentative step forward, then another, her hand keeping a firm grasp on Finnian’s arm. She was ashamed of having shown weakness, and now she kept her face expressionless, her teeth clenched, as she forced herself into an ever more determined walk.

  “Here, take this, it will help a bit,” Finnian said and handed her a walking stick, an oak sapling an inch thick. He had one for himself as well, though when he had cut them and from where she had no idea. She took it gratefully and thanked him.

  They crossed over the grassy field they had crossed the night before and once again took to the road, once again heading south. “We’d best disguise ourselves,” Finnian said and pulled the cowl of his robe up over his head. Brigit did the same. She knew the priest would not normally walk around like that, but to keep her identity hidden she would have to, and it would seem odd if only one of them had their head covered.

  They walked on in silence, leaving the stand of oaks behind them. Brigit focused on her feet, tried to walk as if each step was not a knife-edge of agony, and soon the pain dulled and her feigned strength became real strength. And then she realized that Finnian still had made no comment about her desire to go to Dubh-linn.

  As that realization came to her, so too did panic at what Finnian might be thinking.
Will he refuse to go?
she wondered. That would seem a perfectly reasonable response, maybe the most reasonable. She doubted that he would be afraid of the Vikings’ lair, but certainly it was no place for a man of God, among those heathens, heathens who came across the water to murder the Irish people and loot the churches.

  Or maybe Finnian would decide that it was no place for her. And again, he would not be wrong.

 
What if he does refuse to go? Could I go without him?
Bold as she was, the thought of walking the roads of Ireland, alone in the lawless countryside, of sleeping out at night by herself, filled her with terror.

  They continued on, the birds growing louder, a slight breeze beginning to move the branches of the trees that stood like little islands in the seas of emerald grass, and Brigit thought she might scream if Finnian did not say something soon. She was working up the courage to ask him directly when he spoke at last.

  “Dubh-linn is it? And why Dubh-linn?”

  For one who had been waiting for the question for the better part of an hour, Brigit was oddly unprepared to answer. “I don’t know where else to go, Father,” she said, the words not carrying the tone she had intended to convey. “I have nowhere else, nowhere that Morrigan could not get at me….”

  They walked on a few more paces, Brigit hoping that this was explanation enough, knowing it was not. “I have friends there, in Dubh-linn,” she continued. “I know that sounds odd. Morrigan…she had some of the fin gall taken hostage. To get at the Crown of the Three Kingdoms. You know of the Crown?”

  “I know of it.”

  “The fin gall stole it. Morrigan took some of the fin gall hostage, as I said. Some of the hostages were killed….” She nearly added
by my father
, which was the case, but she stopped herself. “One of them, a young man named Harald…I helped him. He was hurt, I healed him. Made sure no harm came to him. He was grateful, and his father, and grandfather, I think they are important men among the fin gall. They will help me.”

  They walked on, Brigit hoping this would suffice. There was much, so very much, that she was leaving out of that story, the foremost being the fact that Harald’s child was at that moment growing inside her.

  It was a few moments later that Finnian spoke again. “Help you do what, girl?” he asked.

  “I don’t know…. Keep me safe, I suppose. Help me.” She was trying to sound vague, as if she had given it no thought.

  “I see. But I’ll tell you true, when I think of ‘safe,’ I do not think of Dubh-linn.”

  “The fin gall are brutes and heathens, I know. But the Irish are not so much better. More Irish are robbed and killed at the hands of their own countrymen than by the fin gall, I suspect.”

  Father Finnian gave a grunt that might have been in part a laugh. “The fin gall are not the only vicious beasts on two legs, I’ll grant you that,” he said.

  They trudged on, and Finnian said nothing else and Brigit found her fear turning to annoyance.
For the love of our Dear Lord,
she thought,
do you need to think every word through for half the day?

  “Well, Father,” she said at last, no longer willing to wait for Finnian to speak, “will you help me? Will you take me to Dubh-linn?”

  “I’ll walk with you, but it’s the Lord God will see you there. Or not. It’s His will.”

  “But you will…take me there? To Dubh-linn?”

  At that Father Finnian stopped, the first pause in their progress that morning, and turned to her. “Brigit, I don’t know what plan you have, and I strongly suspect I don’t want to know. But yes, I will take you to Dubh-linn, if it is God’s will that you go.”

  “And how are we to know if it is God’s will?” she asked. She could hear the thin edge of anger in her voice, and hoped that Finnian could not.

  “He’ll tell us. In his way. These fellows coming here, they may well be His instruments in this.”

  Brigit looked north, along the road they had already traveled. Three men were approaching, a few hundred yards away, but walking fast, faster than Brigit and Finnian, as if purposely trying to catch up with them. They had no cart, no animals, nothing to suggest they were just farmers on their way to market or someplace equally harmless. Even from that distance Brigit could see something vaguely menacing about them. She sucked in her breath.

  “Who are they?” she asked. “What are they about?”

  “Now, that I could not tell you,” Finnian said calmly. “I’m not one of your mystics, one of these druids of the old faith.”

  “What will we do?”

  “We’ll keep walking, just like we were.” Finnian turned and continued on, his pace unchanged from a moment before.

  “Walk?” Brigit ran a few steps to catch up, then fell in with him. “Shouldn’t we run? Hide? Something?”

  “No,” Finnian said. “We’ll just walk in faith, and see what God has in mind for us.”

  They walked on, Brigit matching Finnian’s pace, which had not altered; the same swing and thump of his walking stick, the steady and silent footfalls. It was only with great effort that she did not break into a run, or turn and look at the men behind them. Once she did give in to that impulse, or nearly did, started to turn her head, but Finnian said, “Don’t look back, girl,” before she had moved her neck even a quarter turn.

  The minutes seemed to drag. Brigit had little sense for how long they had walked before she could hear the men coming up behind them, hear their feet shuffling in the drying dirt of the road, hear the soft sounds of the various things hanging from belts or from around their shoulders thumping against them.

  In truth, with the breeze light and out of the north, she smelled them even before she heard them. They smelled of fish and wood smoke and old beer and unwashed skin. She felt her stomach turn and clench with fear at the thought of what they might do. A monk’s robe, she realized, was a thin suit of armor, a walking stick a poor weapon.

  They could not have been more than ten feet behind, Brigit guessed, when one of them finally spoke. “Hold up there, you!” he said, his voice low and ugly. Finnian stopped and Brigit stopped and they turned to face the men.

  Three of them. With a few steps they closed with Finnian and Brigit. One stood square in the road while the other two took positions on either flank.

  Finnian reached up and pulled the hood off his head, but Brigit guessed that he did not mean for her to do so, so she did not. Instead, from within the cowl, she considered the man in front of her. Squat and broad, with a week’s worth of beard and a mop of greasy hair. He wore a filthy and patched tunic and a tattering of cloth over his shoulders that might have once been a blanket or cape or some such. His belt was a rope around his waist but there was a substantial knife hanging from it, a knife he now drew slowly, extracting every bit of menace he could from the action. He stared hard at Finnian. One eye was milky and blind, and it made the man’s look even more terrifying.

  Brigit felt her stomach twist again. She renewed her sweaty grip on her walking stick. This was it. In the next moments they would kill Finnian, and then they would have to kill her too because she would not let them have their way with her, not as long as the blood of Máel Sechnaill mac Ruanaid ran through her.

  Then Finnian spoke. “Good day, friend,” he said. There was no fear in his voice, nor was his tone either threatening or obsequious. He just spoke the words, and his manner was such that a listener might well believe the one-eyed fellow was genuinely an old friend of his.

  The man looked at the priest, cocked his head as if trying to divine some deeper meaning. “Where you going?” he growled.

  For a long moment Finnian did not answer, that same habit that was starting to irritate Brigit. It was apparently starting to irritate the man with the knife as well, but before he could say anything, Finnian said, “We go with God. And you?”

  At that the man on Brigit’s right hand snorted and gave a chuckle. “Go with God? Cronan, do we go with God?”

  “Shut up,” the knife wielder, named Cronan, apparently, spat at his companion. He continued to hold Finnian with the gaze of his one, sighted eye. “I asked you a question.”

  “And I answered it. And if you ask another, I will answer that as well.”

  Brigit felt a sense of ease sweep over her, as if a protective blanket had been laid around them, and she was not sure why. It was a sensation that seemed to radiate from Finnian. She recalled how, in Harald’s company, three men had been confronted by in a situation much like this. Harald had killed them all and seemed not to have much trouble doing it. But she had not felt then the kind of comfort she felt now.