Dubh-Linn: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 2) (24 page)

  Starri came down on both feet, and the man with the shield staggered back but did not fall. He was able to meet Starri’s ax blow with the shield and even took a slashing counterstroke with his sword, which Starri dodged. All this Harald saw as he closed the last few feet. He wanted nothing more than to take Brigit up in his arms, to wrap his strong arms around her and protect her and shield her, but he knew he could not do that until the threat of the armed men had been removed. And now the odds looked good.

  Harald was still careening down hill, his stride less of a run than a controlled and prolonged fall. It was clear enough to him that he would not be able to stop in any meaningful way, so he did not. He set his eyes on the man to the right of where Starri and the other were fighting. He was waiting, sword and shield at the ready, and Harald charged straight at him. He came in swinging as Starri had done, knocked the man’s sword aside, twisted, and hit his shield full force with his right shoulder, slamming into him with all the power behind fourteen stone of bone and muscle running full tilt downhill.

  The impact effectively stopped Harald, who stumbled a few steps more but remained upright. The man with the shield flew back, his feet coming higher than his head as he lifted clean off the ground and came down again five feet from where he stood. He was still rolling when Harald recovered his step, raced over, put a foot on his shield and finished him, though from the angle of his head Harald wondered if the fall had not done him first.

  Thorgrim and Starri were still fighting, but their adversaries were backing away. In a moment they would be running – Harald had seen that often enough to know the signs. He turned and looked back up the road. Brigit was there, the sword still in her hands, but drooping, as if it was suddenly too heavy for her to lift. She looked frightened and relieved and grateful all at once, and Harald felt the overwhelming urge to go to her and hold her. And then he heard the sound of the men coming up from the river.

  He turned back. He saw torches and the fire glinting off helmets and swords and spear tips. They were moving fast. Ten or fifteen men. The rest of the company from the ship to which they were taking Brigit. Harald felt his heart sink, his stomach turn. So close. They had fought against such odds, had chased the sons of whores down to the water, had taken Brigit back in the final moment.

  And now these bastards would take her in the end, and he and Thorgrim and Starri would die.

  He turned his back on the advancing company and raced back to Brigit’s side. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her, and despite her shock and pain she kissed him back. Then he grabbed her shoulders and spun her around.

  “Run!” he said in a harsh whisper, in the Irish he had learned from Almaith. “Run! There!” He pointed to a dark place, a narrow space between two houses. He and Thorgrim and Starri might be able to hold the rest off long enough for her to lose herself in the narrow streets and alleys of the longphort.

  “No…” she said, but she did not sound very sure.

  “Run!” he said again and gave her a little push, then turned to face the new threat. They were maybe thirty feet away, weapons drawn, spreading out in a semicircle as they advanced. The one Thorgrim had been fighting was sprawled out on the ground, and Thorgrim had found a shield somewhere and was making his stand against the advancing hoard.

 
I should have thought to grab that fellow’s shield
, Harald thought, recalling the man he had bowled over.
Too late…
Thorgrim was looking wary, his eyes everywhere, taking little steps back as the rest came on.

  Starri Deathless, on the other hand, was grinning, grinning wide, and spinning his ax in his hand. His eyes were sweeping over the advancing warriors like a hungry man presented with an expansive feast and not sure where to start. He was nodding slightly to himself, and dancing from one foot to the other.

  An odd quiet fell over the scene as the armed men closed with each other. The men from the ship may have felt the odds were much in their favor, but Harald imagined the limp bodies strewn around the plank road gave them pause. They would take their time, advance with caution.

  Then from the dark behind them, the quiet was split by a howl, an animal howl, like a wolf, but worse than that, a high-pitched, yelping, corkscrewing sound that made Harald jump and sent a chill through him. The howl was joined by another, and then another. Harald shifted his gaze fast, back and forth, not sure where the greater threat lay.

  He glanced over at Starri. The berserker also wore a confused look, and then Harald saw realization cross his face. His grin disappeared and he shouted, “No! No, no, no, no, no!”

  Harald turned to face this new threat. Anything that struck fear in Starri Deathless was not something he wanted at his back. Into the light from the torches, running, leaping, screaming, came a shirtless Nordwall the Short at the head of ten fellow berserkers, most similarly dressed, some more casual. Their weapons flashed in the light. They came down the plank road like a flash flood, parted around Harald, around Thorgrim, around Starri and crashed over the Danes arrayed for a fight, and the Danes went down

before them like dried reeds.

Vikings will come across the sea,

they will mingle among the men of Ireland

there will be an abbot from among them

over every church

                                                                 Berchán, Irish Prophet

Father Finnian was four days riding from Dubh-linn to Glendalough, more than thirty miles of muddy tracks called roads, rolling hills, thick woods through which he had to all but cut a path. He heard wolves often enough, but they kept their distance. Sometimes he could see the ocean from the high headlands, and he liked that.

  There was a town on the coast, which the Irish called Cill Mhantáin. It was prosperous and growing, for the same reason that any other Irish town was prosperous and growing, and that was because the Northmen had taken it and turned it into a genuine trading port. The Northmen called it Wykynlo
.
But Finnian’s brief stay in Dubh-linn had given him his fill of the Northmen and he had no wish to go there, and soon his path took him inland, onto higher ground, skirting the mountains to the west.

  The horse he rode had been borrowed from a wealthy farmer whose land he had crossed a few miles south of Dubh-linn. The farmer’s compound consisted of two goodly ringforts, one to enclose his home and sundry outbuildings, the other to house his animals. The man had two dozen cows and three horses, an abundance worthy of one of the more prosperous of the
rí túaithe
. Finnian suggested that the farmer might show his gratitude for the blessings the Lord had rained down on him by lending one of the horses to aid him, Finnian, in doing the Lord’s work. Explained that way, the farmer seemed willing enough to comply.

  When Finnian thought back on it, however, he had to admit that
willing
was not exactly the right word.
Grudging
might be closer to it. And despite Finnian’s celebrating mass in his home, the man was equally grudging when it came to giving up the prodigious amount of meat, cheese, soft white bread, cakes, fresh vegetables, fruit and wine that he, Finnian, told the farmer he would need for the trip. But give he did.

  Finnian assured the farmer that he would return the horse on the way back, if he could. And with that he was off, meeting with driving rain that same day. His horse, the sorriest of the three in the farmer’s stable, plodded unhappily through the mud, the burden it carried on its back growing ever heavier as Finnian’s robes were soaked through and through.

  It was sometime after dark when the two of them, Finnian and the horse, came upon a decrepit little hovel set back from the road, a man and his wife living there with three young children of indeterminate gender. Finnian knocked and was allowed in. He bowed and introduced himself. The five in the house looked at him wide-eyed, fearful and suspicious. They seemed to take it for a near certainty he would kill them all.

  Introductions over, Finnian pulled out the sack containing the food the farmer had given him and served the family what was beyond question the finest meal they had ever eaten in their hardscrabble lives. Soon after, they all went to sleep, though Finnian was quite certain one or another of them remained awake all night, keeping an eye on him.

  The next morning he celebrated mass as the sun was coming up, consecrating some of the farmer’s fine white bread as the host. He doubted that these people had received the Lord more than half a dozen times in their lives, and never with bread like that. The family was grateful, he could see that, and more comfortable with his presence, but still they never stopped looking at him as if he was a druid of old who might transubstantiate all of them into newts or some such creature.

  And so it went for the next few nights, with families who rarely saw a stranger trying to make sense of this odd priest who rode up to their door, offering blessings, holy mass and food that seemed too good to be of this world. In the end he wondered how many tales he had spawned, to be passed down through the generations, intimate family legends of how St. Patrick himself had once appeared at the family’s door.

  It was late on the fourth day, well after dark, when he urged his weary horse through the gate in the stone wall surrounding the monastery at Glendalough. He found the stable boy, asleep in the straw, woke him and gave him half a loaf of bread and a large, shapeless lump of cheese. The boy’s eyes went wide and his tongue all but fell out of his mouth. It was probably more food than he had ever had for himself in his life, and it bought a considerable level of care for Finnian’s plodding but faithful horse.

  That done, Finnian made his way into the monastery, and before removing his wet robes spent half an hour in the chapel, giving thanks for his safe delivery there. He asked the Lord for guidance, because the Lord knew that he would need guidance, and lots of it, to negotiate the epic debacle that was taking place at Tara. He had come to Glendalough to see the abbot. He did not think much guidance would be coming from that quarter.

  He met with the abbot after morning prayers, in the room that he used in the front of the church, to the west of the altar. The church was small, but stone built with a small, round tower jutting from the roof. The abbot was seated behind a heavy oak table; the same place Finnian had last seen him, which was a little more than a year before. Indeed, it looked as if the abbot had not moved from his place in all that time.

  “Father Finnian,” he said. He was writing, the tip of his white quill making circles in the air, the black ink forming into tight little letters on the vellum parchment. He did not look up. He was very thin, very pale. He looked weary. Just as he had the year before.

  At length he put down the pen and swung his face up to Finnian. He waved with his fingers toward a chair and Finnian sat. “You are well, I trust, my Lord Abbot?”

  The abbot grunted. “You trust I’m well? It’s four hundred years since dear Patrick and Palladius brought the Irish out of the darkness and I’m not certain the half of them know the difference between a priest and a druid. But yes, I am as well as might be expected. Though I imagine it is not good news that brings you here.”

  “No. Máel Sechnaill mac Ruanaid was killed before he could solidify his control over the Three Kingdoms. I wrote you about that.”

  The abbot nodded, which seemed to take great effort. Finnian waited for him to say something, but he did not, so Finnian continued. “Flann mac Conaing has taken the throne, but he is not secure enough yet to invoke the authority of the crown.”

  The abbot nodded again. Finnian waited again. Finally the abbot spoke. “Flann mac Conaing? Has he a claim to the throne?”

  “He could make one. He is kin to Máel Sechnaill. But Brigit nic Máel Sechnaill still lives, and she has better claim.”

  “Then why is she not ruling there?”

  “Flann has secured the support of the
rí túaithe
. He means to hold the throne. Or more to the point, his sister, Morrigan, means to see him hold the throne.”

  “And Brigit? What of her? Will they murder her?”

  “They might well try. She was married…” Finnian thought back.
Three weeks ago? Four? Was that possible?
It seemed months, many months before. But no. “She was married last month. She…it seems she killed her husband. As he was trying to kill her. She has left Tara now.”

  “And gone where?”

  “She has gone to Dubh-linn.”

  The abbot stared at Finnian with his red, watery eyes, a gaze that seemed to be boring into Finnian’s brain and searching for his complicity in all this.

  “How do you know she had gone to Dubh-linn?” he asked.

  “Because I took her there.”

  The abbot nodded, as if Finnian had simply confirmed a thing he already knew. “And why, pray, did you do that?”

  “Because she would have gone anyway. And she probably would have been killed en route.”

  “And why…” the abbot said next, drawing the words out, “would she go to Dubh-linn?”

  “I do not know for certainty,” Finnian said, which was the truth, though he only said it in hope of softening the news that would follow. “But I suspect she is planning to raise an army of the fin gall to help her get the throne of Tara back.”

  “Why do you not know for certainty? Were you not there?”

  “I saw her safely there and then left. Dubh-linn is not a place for a man of God.”

  The abbot remained silent and motionless, and after half a minute he slowly closed his eyes. Finnian wondered if he might be praying. It would be a reasonable response. As the minutes passed, Finnian began to wonder if the abbot had actually died right there, but at length he opened his eyes again.

  “The Crown of the Three Kingdoms was not made by Christian hands, you know,” he began at last. “It was fashioned by the pagans and it carries the curse of Satan on it. Its temptation is too great for mortal men.”

  Finnian nodded.

  “You have done a good job, Father Finnian, for the most part. You have kept an eye on things as I instructed, did what you could, though the Dear Lord knows there is little a poor man of God can do to influence these…people. Now you must return to Tara, get the Crown back. With Máel Sechnaill dead there is no one we can trust with it.”

  “And how many men shall I have with me? How many men-at-arms?”

  “‘Men-at-arms’? Oh, you choose to make merry with me, I see. You shall have none, Father Finnian. Just yourself and your God-given wits. I trust that will be sufficient.”

  “With God’s grace it will be.”

  “Bring the crown back here. Throw it in the sea. Feed it to wolves, I don’t care, I should be pleased to be rid of the damned thing.”

  “Wolves. Yes, my Lord Abbot.”

  “Just see that these madmen stop fighting over it, trying to use it to their own ends. May the Lord’s blessings go with you, Finnian.” As he spoke those last words, the abbot picked up his pen and continued his writing, the interview over. Finnian stood, nodded and left. He had considered telling the abbot that he was all but certain Brigit was with child, though whose child, he did not know, but he figured the old cleric had had enough for

one day.