Dubh-Linn: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 2) (33 page)

  Two of the torches had dropped to the ground, but they continued to gutter and burn and in their light Harald could see that the uneven fight was not going their way. The Norsemen may have had surprise, and it bought them some advantage, but the Irish had numbers, and mail, and shields, and they were not weakened by exhaustion and poison.

  Nordwall was down, and if he was not dead he soon would be. Osvif had managed to extract himself, but he was bloodied and limping and facing two men. Another man was down as well, but Harald could not see who it was. Starri was fighting like the madman he was, but not with his accustomed exuberance. It was as if he was moving underwater – the same frenetic, wild, heedless fighting, but slowed down. Slowed down enough that an enemy who was fast might get a blade on him.

  Harald stumbled forward where Osvif was confronting the two mail-clad men-at-arms. He raised his sword, but even that took surprising effort. He was breathing hard and his head was spinning. A spear was thrust at him and he twisted to the side, but slowly, and he felt the iron tip rip the flesh of his upper arm and he gasped in pain.

  Osvif was staggering back, making a weak defense with his sword against the sword and shield of the man he faced.
Not good, not good…
Harald thought. His mind flailed around for an order to give, a course of action to try beyond remaining in this confined place and watching as they were all systematically hacked to the ground.

  Then, from beyond the ring of trees in which they were fighting, came a scream like none that had been heard that night, and rarely on any other night, a scream of such piercing terror that all of them, every man locked in the battle, Norse and Irish, stopped, frozen where they stood.

  The scream came again, and with it a terrible snarling sound, a snapping like dried branches breaking, and then silence. And then another voice, shouting this time. Words, Irish words that Harald could not understand. They heard a man or an animal crashing through the bracken, and then another scream, as shrill and awful as the first, and then silence again.

  And the fight was over. The Irish to a man flung their weapons away, torches away, and raced for the narrow path they had followed into the trees. The last of them, his mail shirt whipping around his thighs, disappeared from the circle of light cast off by the torches and was gone. Harald and the others listened but all they could hear was the sound of the panicked men crashing through the woods. Another shriek cut through the dark but that did not seem to slow the running feet, the terror-stricken Irish fleeing through the undergrowth.

  Harald stood looking out into the black forest, his sword held before him, ready for what might come through the trees, but the light of the torches had ruined his night vision. He thought about ordering them extinguished but he was not comfortable with the notion of being plunged into the dark. Around him, some of the others stood in a similar posture, weapons at the ready, and some slumped to the ground, wounded and spent.

  The sound of the running men faded off into the distance and soon it was swallowed up by the quiet of the forest night. Harald had no idea how long he remained standing, sword held before him, but the ache in his arms and legs told him it had been some time. He moved back slowly, sank to his knees and then sat and rested his back against a tree, sword across his lap. Some of the others men were already asleep. He could hear them snoring.

 
I will keep watch
, he thought.
Let the others sleep
. It is what Thorgrim would have done, and with Thorgrim still gone, Harald took it upon himself. He let his body relax as he settled in for the long night vigil, let the quiet of the forest surround him. He would keep awake and alert for danger while the others rested and regained their strength. He felt himself relax and drift away on that comforting thought.

  The sun was an hour up when Harald woke again from a heavy sleep, back against the tree, sword across his knees. He looked quickly around. The others remained where they had fallen, sleeping or dead. Nothing had come in the night.

  He stood slowly, carefully, in case his head began to spin again. He felt a little dizzy, but his equilibrium was much improved from the night before. From his new vantage point he looked around again. Though it felt as if they had been hiding in that stand of trees for months, he had never seen it in the daylight. He looked behind him. Starri Deathless was not there.

  Harald moved toward the beaten trail out of the trees. He moved slowly, not sure what might be out there, beyond their dubious shelter. He pushed the branches aside and saw, twenty feet away, Starri and his father squatting on their heels, talking in low tones. Starri was doing that thing he did, grabbing the split arrowhead that hung from his neck and rubbing it.

  The two men looked up and smiled at him and he smiled as well, and a great sense of relief came over him. He walked toward them and they stood and met him halfway. Thorgrim extended a hand, shook Harald’s and gripped Harald’s arm with his other hand. “Starri was telling me of how you led the men last night, son,” he said. “I’m proud. Very proud.”

  “Thank you,” Harald said. He felt the blush spread over his face. He opened his mouth to ask Thorgrim where he had been, then stopped. There was mud on his father’s shoes, and spatters of blood on his clothes.
Wolf dream
, Harald thought. He did not want to know any more.

  “We must bury the dead and be off,” Thorgrim said. Harald nodded. And so for the next hour they struggled to dig graves of adequate depth to give their dead a proper burial. Two men had been killed in the brawl, Nordwall and the man from Ingolf’s hird whose name they never did know. Once they were interred, with weapons at their sides, for surely after their long and valiant struggle they would have need of weapons in Valhalla, the remaining men limped off toward the River Boyne.

  With the sun rising but still low in the east, it was not hard to navigate through the woods. After twenty minutes they stumbled onto the road that had taken them to Tara the day before. They paused in the cover of the trees and listened for some sound of pursuit, but they heard nothing, so they left the trees and continued on along the dirt road, shuffling, limping and staggering toward the water and the ships.

  The landing was close, but not yet in sight, when they heard the sound of men through the trees. They had left a small guard behind, to watch over the ships and Brigit, but what they were hearing sounded like a larger crowd than that. Harald felt a flush of panic. Had Morrigan sent men from Tara to capture the ships? It would make sense. Was Brigit a prisoner now?

  “Father,” he said in a harsh whisper but Thorgrim put up a hand to silence them. He turned to the others.

  “Hide yourselves in the trees,” he said, whispering as Harald had. “Starri and Harald and I will get to a place where we can see what’s acting. The Irish may have captured the ships.”

  That news prompted worried glances from the others, but they moved off the road and into the cover of the woods. Thorgrim led Harald and Starri forward. The three men kept to the edge of the trees, ready to disappear into the brush at the first sign of a patrol. They moved quietly, but with the degree of noise coming from the landing, Harald did not think such a precaution was entirely necessary.

  Ten rods down the road and they could make out words, and the words were not Irish. They were Norse. They moved on, still not willing to be seen until they knew what was going on. The road began to widen out into the landing at the river’s edge and the three men moved into the trees, working their way to a place where they could see and not be seen. They dropped to hands and knees and crawled the last ten feet, until they could peer out from the bracken at the forest’s edge.

  There were seventy or so men on the river bank. Norsemen. They were armed, but they were not organized in any fashion, not readying themselves to move. They were talking, drinking, some running sharpening stones over the long blades of their swords. Plumes of gray smoke rolled up from several fire pits where pigs were roasting on spits above them, the sight of which made Harald hungry and sick at the same time.

  Then he heard a voice, a voice he knew well, but one which, in that context, he could not identify. He looked past the crowd of men to his right. There, louder than the rest, bigger, the center of all the activity, a cup held high, his long red and gray hair bound behind, his great beard jutting from his chin, enveloping his face, a leather belt containing his ample girth,

stood Harald’s grandfather, Ornolf the Restless.

The first prey was taken by the heathens from southern Brega…

and they carried off many prisoners,

and killed many and led away very many captives.

                                                                     The Annals of Ulster

When the high, brown walls of the ringfort at last came into view, Father Finnian felt a great sense of relief, in his soul and in his aching feet. He had assured the wealthy landowner from whom he had borrowed the horse he rode to Glendalough that he would return the animal if he could. But in the end he had taken a different route back, so instead he gave the horse to a poor farmer with whom he had stayed the night, a man who could not have been more shocked and grateful for the gift than if a wee little
luchrupán
had presented him with a pot of gold.

 
And so is born another legend of the return of St. Patrick,
Finnian thought as he headed down the road on foot, leaving the farmer’s little hut behind. He smiled to himself.
It will do the faithful no harm…

  Finnian had covered the past fifteen miles on foot, and they were starting to tell.
I am growing soft and fat in that fine monastery at Tara
, he thought, but he made no resolution to change things. In his experience, God was good to intervene when he found his circumstances becoming too comfortable.

  He was only half a mile from the gate when he met a woman and her child coming down the road in the opposite direction. They were both barefoot, their clothes worn and well-patched. He stopped them. “My dear,” he asked the woman, “do you know if the master is within?” He nodded toward the ringfort.

  “Yes, Father, I hear he is,” she said. “But I did not see him. They say he is in mourning still.”

  Finnian nodded. “Very well, my child. And one other thing. Would you do me the great favor of taking this from me? Keep it for yourself?” He removed the sack that was draped over his shoulders and handed it to her. She looked inside. There was a quantity of bread and smoked meat and cheese and, unseen in the bottom, a couple of silver coins, all of which he had picked up along the way of his travels.

  The woman’s eyes went wide. “Take this…?”

  “Please. You would be relieving me of this burden, which has grown so heavy.”

  “Oh, yes. Oh, thank you, Father,” she said, and made a bow. He gave them a blessing and sent them on their way and continued on to the main gate, which, in the light of day, was open to allow the traffic to pass. Finnian joined the flow of farmers and apprentices and carters making their way into the ringfort. Inside was a bustle, and Finnian guessed it was some sort of market day.

  He ran his eyes over the various working men and women until he found one whose clothes were not mud-stained, course and patched, a prosperous looking man giving instructions to a servant.

  “Excuse me, good sir,” Finnian interrupted the man’s discourse. The man turned and looked at Finnian, his face a picture of irritation, but as his eyes flickered over the monk’s robes and the tonsure, the look of annoyance faded to one of confusion and a touch of guilt. It was a transformation Finnian had seen many times.

  “Yes, Brother?”

  “Father.”

  “Yes, Father,” the man said and Finnian admonished himself to confess that want of humility.

  “Could you tell me where I might find Ruarc mac Brain?”

  The man half turned and pointed across the wide expanse of ground contained by the walls of the ringfort of Líamhain, a quarter of a mile at least from one side to the other. “My Lord Ruarc resides in the big house there,” he said. “But he’s taking no visitors. He’s in mourning for his wife.”

  “I see. Thank you, my good sir.” Finnian gave him a bow and headed off through the crowds, toward the big timber frame house at the far end of the fort.

  Ruarc mac Brain was indeed not taking visitors, just as Father Finnian had been warned, and so it took more persuading than he was accustomed to, along with the judicious mention of the name of the Abbot of Glendalough, before he was granted an audience.

  It was a big room into which Finnian was ushered, twenty by thirty feet, perhaps, with a high ceiling and a big fireplace, which stood unused in the warmth of the early summer day. Ruarc sat in a tall oak chair at the end of the room, flanked by two men who had the unmistakable air of advisors and lackeys. This gave Finnian pause. A man who surrounded himself with lickspittles was not a man to be trusted.

  “Father…?” Ruarc said.

  “Finnian. Father Finnian.”

  “Yes, of course, Father Finnian. What business brings you here? I am in mourning, you know.”

  “Yes, forgive me,” Finnian said. Ruarc did not, in truth, appear to be in mourning. He was a handsome man, perhaps as old as thirty-five but Finnian doubted any older. His expression was grave, but his clothes had the look of one who had dressed with care, and his manner was of a man who was attending to business.

  Finnian was about to continue but Ruarc cut him off. “You are thinking, ‘Here is a man who does not appear to be in mourning,’ am I right?”

  Finnian was taken aback by the question, but before he could answer, Ruarc spoke again. “I loved my wife very much, Father, and I grieve her loss. But her death was a long time coming, and so shock does not add its burden to my grief. What’s more, the duty I owe my people is not lessened by my own weakness and pain. So I continue on, despite what I might wish.”

  “Of course, my Lord Ruarc,” Finnian said, his opinion of the man much improved by those words. “I am sent here by the Abbot of Glendalough. On a…delicate matter.” This, of course, was not entirely true. The abbot had instructed Finnian to retrieve the Crown of the Three Kingdoms. He had given no instructions as to how it should be done or what should be done with it. Finnian had taken it upon himself to try and bring some relief to beleaguered Tara.

  “So I am given to understand,” Ruarc said.

  “The situation at Tara is not good,” Finnian continued, feeling his way along. “Since the death of Máel Sechnaill mac Ruanaid, the devil has been on the loose.”

  “One moment, please,” Ruarc interrupted. He turned to the two advisors who flanked him and made a gesture of dismissal. They each gave a shallow bow and disappeared quickly from the room.

 
There is another mark in your favor
, Finnian thought. Advisors or no, Ruarc was apparently a man who would keep his own council, and made his own decisions.

  “Please, Father Finnian, continue.”

  “Flann mac Conaing, who is cousin to Máel Sechnaill, has taken the throne at Tara. But I suspect you know this already.”

  Ruarc nodded his head in acknowledgement.

  “Flann is a good man. But Máel Sechnaill’s daughter also makes claim to the throne, and I fear that this will lead to some unfortunate results. Bloodshed. Indeed, it already has.”

  “Flann is a good man,” Ruarc agreed, “but it is his sister, Morrigan, who wields the power there. Since she escaped the fin gall she has done much to strengthen her brother’s position. And hers.”

  “That is certainly true, my lord. And it makes things even more complicated.”

  “I have heard,” Ruarc continued, “that Brigit has gone to the fin gall. That she seeks their aide against Flann, that she has allied with the Northmen in some sort of devil’s bargain to regain the throne of Tara.”

  “That is also true, my lord Ruarc,” Finnian acknowledged. “It was not a wise decision, but the young woman is desperate, and quite lacking in support.”

  For some time Ruarc said nothing, just regarded Finnian. Another man might have begun to fidget under that relentless gaze, but Finnian did not. He just waited.

  “Very well,” Ruarc said at last. “I think I can see what road we are on here. But please tell me what this has to do with me. Or you.”

  “My part is simple. The Abbot of Glendalough, as you are aware, has charge of the Crown of the Three Kingdoms. That crown he gave to Máel Sechnaill mac Ruanaid for the purpose of uniting the three kingdoms and driving the heathen invaders into the sea. But Máel Sechnaill died before he could wear the crown. Now my lord abbot charges me with overseeing the crown’s administration.”

 
Is that true?
Finnian wondered. Probably not. He had hoped the abbot might give him some sort of proof that he had been ordered to retrieve the crown, written instructions or at least some mark of authority over the matter. But he realized, as he rode empty handed from Glendalough, that the abbot was not fool enough to do any such thing. If Finnian made a mess of it, which he might well do, there would be no official link to Glendalough.

  In any event, Finnian could see that mention of the crown had gained Ruarc’s attention, though, careful negotiator that he was, he was trying hard to hide it. “The crown is of no matter to me,” he said. “I may be of the Uí Dúnchada, but I am not high king of Leinster. I cannot wear the crown.”

  “The crown may be no matter to you, but the fin gall are. They grow stronger every year, their hold on Ireland more powerful. Dubh-linn stands in direct threat to Líamhain.” Finnian sat more upright and locked eyes with Ruarc. “We are in a battle for all the souls of this country. When Irish fight Irish, we do the fin gall’s work - the devil’s work – for them.”

  “You wish me to march my army to Tara and save it from the heathen host that Brigit has so improvidently raised? She and Morrigan scratch at each other’s eyes and so my men must die to stop them?”

  Now it was Finnian’s turn to remain silent and hold Ruarc in his gaze, but Ruarc did not flinch any more than Finnian had. He waited, patiently, for the priest to reply.

  “There needs a strong ruler at Tara, because the one who rules Tara may wear the Crown of the Three Kingdoms. The abbot will not give the crown to the high kings of Leinster or Mide. Forgive me, but he does not trust them. Brigit nic Máel Sechnaill is the rightful heir to the throne, but the
rí túaithe
are not yet willing to support her.”

  “The
rí túaithe
are whores who will sell themselves to whoever wields the most power,” Ruarc observed, “and they will not do a thing, and certainly will not risk their precious necks, until they can see clearly who that is.”

   “I would agree with that assessment,” Finnian said. Most men were more circumspect in their speech when talking to a priest, but Finnian could see that Ruarc was not most men. “Brigit needs an ally,” Finnian continued. “She is young. She is, to be frank, very beautiful, as you well know. She is a widow. You are a widower….”

  At that, Ruarc sat bolt upright. “Dear God, sir, what are you suggesting? My wife is not a month in her grave.”

  Finnian nodded.
Good, good
…. Ruarc’s thoughts went first to his late wife, and not to the extraordinary power that he, Finnian, was dangling before his imagination. He felt more confident still that he had guessed right about the man.

  “Never would I suggest any disrespect to your late wife’s memory, God rest her soul,” Finnian said. He crossed himself and Ruarc did likewise. “Nor am I suggesting any immediate plans be made. But if Flann mac Conaing solidifies his control of Tara, or, worse yet, the fin gall take it from him, then any possibilities for the future are lost. As you yourself so correctly said, you owe a duty to your people that is greater than yourself. And your people are not just the Uí Dúnchada, or the people of Líamhain. The Irish, they are your people.”

  For some time the two men sat in silence, and Finnian had no doubt that Ruarc was carefully considering every possible nuance, every stroke and counter stroke. Then, without warning, Ruarc clapped his hands loud, which made Finnian start. Seconds later the two advisors, earlier dismissed, returned at a near run.

  “I want word sent to all the
rí túaithe
within two hours ride that they are to turn out with their men-at-arms and any foot soldiers they can muster,” Ruarc said, giving the orders as if he had been considering them for days. “We march tomorrow for Tara. Any of my people who still owe their military service for the year, they are to turn out as well. Set the bakers to work, as much as they can bake in a night, that will have to do. And tell my servants to get my horse and armor in readiness.”