Dubh-Linn: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 2) (35 page)

  He stood. Starri Deathless was standing there. Thorgrim had not heard him approach. He looked agitated. The thick weather and the proximity of an enemy, an enemy he did not know when or if he would fight, were working on his nerves.

  “Thorgrim?” he asked. He was rubbing the split arrowhead just as Thorgrim had been rubbing the cross. “Do you think Ornolf will move today? This is not good, this is not good, this waiting.”

  “No, it is not good,” Thorgrim agreed, though his reasoning, he suspected, was not the same as Starri’s. Starri wanted only to fight. Thorgrim wanted to win. And every minute they allowed their enemy to send to the other kings for help, to grow stronger in their defense, to do what only the all-father knew to their captives, put the chances of victory further from hand. “I will talk to Ornolf,” Thorgrim assured Starri. “This morning.”

  But in the end he did not have to use his influence to get Ornolf moving. The big man’s sense for timing bordered on the theatrical, and he had judged, correctly, that he had played his game for as long as he could. It was not Brigit’s patience that worried him, of that Thorgrim was certain. But Ornolf was not blind to the growing frustration among the men, the frequency with which they drew their weapons, sharpened them, put them back in leather sheathes, their muttering and quiet conversations. Even Norsemen could only eat and drink for so long before they required more diverting action.

  It was just after dawn when Ornolf burst from his tent, his massive body swathed in the yards of fabric that made up his tunic, and fastened around his neck a great bear skin that he wore whenever a fight was in the offing. He had killed the bear himself, in his youth, or so he claimed. At first he had killed it with just a knife, but as the years passed and the story became more elaborate the knife became teeth and then the teeth became his bare hands.

  “Very well, you pathetic pack of housewives and whores!” he roared to the assembled company. “Make ready to leave in an hour’s time! We march to Tara, to show these damned Irish what real men are! Harald, come and buckle your grandfather’s sword belt on, there’s a good boy!”

  A palpable sense of relief swept through the camp as men ate and drank in preparation for the march, and gathered up weapons against the possibility of a fight. No guard was left behind. Every man would be needed. And there would be no need to watch over Brigit, because there would be no possibility of leaving her behind this time.

  When everything was in readiness, the men and Brigit gathered in a loose formation and headed off along the road, a road that was now quite familiar to Thorgrim. Some of the swifter men were sent ahead as a guard against ambush, and the rest trudged down the rutted, soft way that ran through open ground and wood.

  They had been walking for twenty minutes when the heavens opened up on them, rain like water dumped from buckets. One second the ground was dry, as dry as Irish ground ever got, and the next it was standing water and rain dancing on the dirt road as it fell. The mud grabbed at leather shoes and water ran down the backs of tunics and soaked through hoods and furs and anything else held over head in a useless attempt to keep the rain off.

  They continued on through that netherworld of falling rain and sucking mud, and finally the scouts who had been sent ahead met them on the road and told them the woods opened up just ahead and they could see across the fields to the ringfort.

  “Do you see anyone? Anyone about?” Thorgrim asked, the rain running into his mouth as he spoke.

  “Yes, a great many,” the scout said.

  “What?”

  “Yes, there are many. There is an army at Tara, isn’t that what you said? Men-at-arms?”

  Thorgrim did not answer. Yes, he had said there were men-at-arms, but he would not have expected that the scout should see them. He would have reckoned they would all be snug and dry within the walls and buildings.

  “Show us,” Thorgrim said and he and the scout and Ornolf hurried on, and the rest of the men followed behind.

  They came soon to where the road ran clear of the woods and yielded to the open ground rolling away up the long, high hill to the walls of Tara. It was only a few days since Thorgrim had seen this same view for the first time, standing at Arinbjorn’s side. It looked much different under the dark sky, seen through the driving rain. He wiped water from his eyes.

  “There!” the scout said, talking loud over the downpour. He pointed not at the ringfort but in nearly the opposite direction, on the other side of the open ground. And there they were, just as the man had said. Tents of all sizes. Banners snapping in the wind. Thorgrim could see horses and men moving about.

  “Are those Morrigan’s men?” Ornolf asked.

  “No,” Thorgrim said. Morrigan’s men would not be in the field when they had a perfectly sound fort.

  “So who are they?” Ornolf asked.

  “I have no idea,” Thorgrim said, and he didn’t. In truth, looking at that camp, which he could see sheltered a considerable force of men, he realized that he knew only one thing. He and Ornolf were too damned late.

Devastation of all the islands of Britain by heathens
.

                                                           The Annals of Ulster, 794 AD.

Brigit nic Máel Sechnaill could not believe how stupid these people were. She had known Norsemen, Harald most intimately, and so her expectations were not high. She had not expected to find philosophers and sages among the great filthy beasts who had turned the little town of Dubh-linn into a reeking, depraved longphort. But she had expected better than this.

  Not from Harald, of course. She understood Harald, could play him better than she could play the lyre, and she played the lyre most excellently. Harald did not act, he reacted. Eating, fornicating, fighting, those were the things that set him in motion. That and his wildly unshakable love for her. If she whistled, Harald came bounding, tongue lolling from his mouth. She had never owned a dog that was better trained than Harald.

  The others were the same as far as what stimulated them to action, but unlike Harald she could not control them. Perhaps if they spoke her language, as Harald did, to a surprising degree, then she could have played on them as well. But they did not, and so Brigit could only hope the Northmen did nothing irreversibly stupid, and then suffer disappointment when they did.

  She looked out over the rain soaked field at the distant camp, the cluster of tents at which Thorgrim and Ornolf and the rest were pointing and jabbering away in their barbaric language.
They are accustomed to matching swords with other heathens
, she thought,
not matching wits with the Irish
. As much as she loathed Morrigan, she recognized that the bitch possessed considerable skill in the art of trickery, manipulation and the use of herbs.

 
Or magic. Black magic.
It would come as no shock to Brigit to discover Morrigan had summoned up the forces of the devil, and that she had unleashed them on the idiot Arinbjorn and defeated his entire army. With a pig, apparently.

 
Except Thorgrim
, she reminded herself.
She did not beat Thorgrim
. And Brigit was sorry for that. There was something frightening about Thorgrim, something she did not understand. She had no influence on him. He seemed hardly to notice her. Whatever she had to do to regain her throne, she knew it would be harder if Thorgrim was there.

  The water was running in streams down her hair and face as she looked out over the dull green fields, up the long sloping hill at the curved walls of Tara. It was not so far away, but it seemed to Brigit just then that it might as well have been on the moon, and the sight of it created all at once a desperate longing in her, a sense of despair, and a spark of renewed determination that even the rain could not quench.

 
Tara
…. It was hers, by right. It would be hers again.

  The heathens were still jabbering, pointing in one direction and another, from the ringfort to the cluster of tents and flags. Brigit could see horses, and men walking about, but she did not know what it meant.
Why would Morrigan have men in the field,
she thought,
when they might be perfectly safe within the walls?

  After some time of listening to the Northmen’s talk, which sounded to her like just so much porcine grunting, Brigit turned to Harald. “What is going on?” she demanded. “What are they…you…discussing?”

  Harald pointed across the field. “That…Tara,” he said in his broken Irish.

 
I know it’s bloody Tara!
Brigit thought, and clenched her teeth to cut off the biting retort forming in her gut. She forced herself to remain silent. Harald’s arm swung around until he was pointing at the cluster of tents. “And there…men-at-arms in camp.” He paused as he figured how to express the next bit in the Irish tongue. “We…don’t know… how many. Big army, maybe. Many.”

  “Are they not Morrigan’s men?” Brigit asked. “The men-at-arms from Tara?”

  Harald shook his head. “Morrigan, her men…in Tara.”

  Brigit nodded. There was her answer as to why Morrigan would send her men beyond the walls of the ringfort. She hadn’t. These were someone else’s men.

 
But whose?
Brigit’s mind started sorting through the possibilities. They were Irish, of that she was certain. She had seen enough Irish camps, and enough Norse, to recognize the difference. If they were not inside the walls of Tara, then they were not Morrigan’s friends. And if they were Morrigan’s enemies, then perhaps they were friends of hers, or at least potential allies.

  She wiped the rain from her eyes and peered across the open ground. It was three quarters of a mile at least, maybe more, and she could not make out any details of the camp. There were banners flogging around in the wind-driven rain, and she felt certain that if she could get a good look at them then she would know whose camp that was. There was no
rí túaithe
or any other minor king within marching distance whose colors she would not recognize.

  “We must get closer,” she said to Harald.

  “What?”

  “Closer. We must get closer. You and me. We must see who this is. How many. What they want.”

  Harald looked a bit bewildered at the thought, but he turned to Thorgrim and Ornolf and spoke fast. The two older men looked out over the field at the distant camp, and then back at Brigit. Ornolf spoke. Harald translated.

  “Ornolf…says he will send his man. See. What army?”

  Brigit shook her head.
Idiots
, she thought. “You will not know who it is. Friend or enemy. I will. We’ll go, you and me. Come back and tell Ornolf.”

  Harald nodded as she spoke, confirming that he understood. He turned and related the words to Thorgrim and Ornolf, which led in turn to more gibberish from them. Harald turned back to Brigit.

  “Ornolf says good, we go. You and me.”

  “Good,” Brigit said, though in truth she was annoyed by their apparent lack of concern for her safety. She was sure that the drunken old buggerer Ornolf did not care if she lived or died, but Thorgrim might have expressed a stronger objection to her putting herself in danger, or at least insisted that she take a bigger guard than just Harald. But instead they seemed ready to let her expose herself to unknown risks, with no effort made to stop her. Indeed, they were no longer even paying her any attention.

 
Fine
, she thought,
you will most assuredly be sorry
.

  Harald led the way, taking Brigit a few rods back down the road they had come, then plunging into the tree line and circling around the open ground under the cover of the woods. The branches sprayed them with water as they brushed past, but the canopy above offered some relief from the relentless drumming of the driving rain, which made the going slightly more pleasant. Harald moved like a fox or a wolf through the woods. His feet seemed to find the clearest path and his passing seemed not to disturb a thing, no branches broken, no leaves kicked over. Brigit, in contrast, felt as if she was crashing along like a wounded bear, despite the solicitous help that Harald insisted on offering.

  It took them twenty minutes to work their way around the open ground. Occasionally their path would bring them close enough to the fields that they could see Tara and the camp and the few of Ornolf’s men who had revealed themselves. But mostly they were in the thick woods, lost in a maze of trees and bracken. And when they were, Brigit would become convinced that Harald was lost, only to have the tree line thin out and reveal that he was still following the edge of the fields as if the way was marked with signs and arrows.

  It was tiring, dodging branches and catching herself as she stumbled, dragging the extra weight of her soaked clothing, and Brigit was about to suggest a rest when Harald stopped short and made a shushing sound, finger held to his lips. He gestured for her to follow, then turned and crept forward, parting the undergrowth with care, bending low as he advanced.

  Brigit did the same, moving to a place by Harald’s side, carefully pushing aside the thin branches of the saplings at the edge of the wood. And then they were there, at the tree line, the open ground stretching away at their feet. The closest parts of the Irish camp, the tents and the banners and the men-at-arms, were no more than fifty feet away. Brigit felt suddenly exposed, but she realized that they were still well hidden by the foliage, and even if anyone was looking, his sight would be much impeded by the merciless downpour.

 
Besides, these are my people
.
These are Irishmen. They won’t kill me or sell me as a slave
, she reminded herself, knowing even as the thought came to her that it was not true. The Irish were at least as brutal to one another as the Vikings were to them.

  They stood in silence, looking out from their cover. Brigit’s eyes went to the banners, wet and heavy and hanging from poles driven into the ground near the largest of the tents. The most prominent of them looked brownish gray, but she knew that could not be right. No one chose that sort of color for his banner.

  A gust of wind rolled across the field, shaking the trees, dumping water on Brigit’s head, and lifting the banner and holding it straight out. Brigit gasped from the deluge of water and the sight of the banner all at once. It was not gray, it was gold, the color dulled by the soaking rain. Splayed across the gold field was a red eagle, its wings outstretched. She knew that flag, though she had not seen it in a long time and she could not immediately place it.

  “You…know?” Harald asked in a soft voice, nodding toward the distant camp.

  “I think…” Brigit said. She pictured the banner, tried to imagine it dry and waving in the sunlight. And then she remembered.

 
Ruarc mac Brain of Líamhain!
His wife had been ill, he had not come to her wedding. Her second wedding. She remembered him from her first. He was ten or fifteen years her senior, well-made, with a commanding presence but not one that was overbearing. She remembered the flush of guilt she had felt when she caught herself admiring him on the very day of her wedding to another.

 
He’s of the family Uí Dúnchada of Leinster
… she thought.
What does Leinster want of Brega?
But that was a foolish question and she knew it. The Crown of the Three Kingdoms was at Tara, the royal seat of Brega, and Ruarc mac Brain would want it as much as any of the nobles in Brega, Leinster or Mide.

  Taking the crown by force of arms, however, would not bestow on Ruarc the authority over the kingdoms. Only the Abbot of Glendalough could do that. But even if Ruarc could not wear the crown, he likely had his eye on the throne of Tara, for he would never be averse to holding power over Brega as well as Leinster.

 
Or perhaps he is looking for an alliance with the true heir to the Throne of Tara and the Crown of the Three Kingdoms.…
Brigit knew that her father had never considered Ruarc
mac Brain one of those men intoxicated with power, eager to fight anyone if doing so might expand their kingdom. So why was he here? If Ruarc had been willing to recognize Flan and Morrigan’s authority, then he and his men would have likely been within the walls of Tara now, and not hunkered down in an armed camp outside.

  “You know…flag?” Harald prompted and Brigit realized that she had been lost in her thoughts, caught in the labyrinth of this Irish struggle for power.

  “Oh…yes. Yes, I believe I do,” she said and in that instant she came to a decision. She straightened, took a step toward the open ground. She heard Harald draw a sharp breath. “Let us go and speak to them,” she said over her shoulder, with no attempt to keep her voice low.