Dubh-Linn: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 2) (5 page)

  “Thank you, Father Finnian, for that fine blessing,” Brigit said, as much to break the silence as anything.

  “You are welcome, child.” They walked a few more paces, the muddy ground pulling at their shoes. Then Finnian added, “Tara could use a few blessings these days. I ask them of the Lord, and hope it is His will to provide.”

  “We could use blessings,” Brigit echoed. She liked Finnian. There was a strength about him, and a calm that she did not often see in the monks who made the monastery at Tara their home. He had only been there a year or so, but he had a presence that made it seem as if he had always been a part of the royal household. And he was attractive as well. Brigit could think of nothing nobler than a man following a call to the priesthood, but she could not help but regret that a man such as Finnian had removed himself from the pool of potential husbands.

 
What a waste…
she concluded.

  “It was a fine ceremony, dear, did you not think so?” Finnian said. His voice was soft like the night.

  “Yes. Thank you again for the sacrament.”

Finnian made a gesture of dismissal. “My poor part was the least of it. I was pleased to see the effort Morrigan put into the celebrations. Nearly all of the local
rí túaithe
were here to celebrate.”

  “Nearly,” Brigit said, though Finnian seemed to take that as a better thing than she did. He was a hard one to read. He often acted as if there was not a problem or conflict in the world, though Brigit was quite certain he was not as naive as that. “I was sorry to miss Ruarc mac Brain,” she added. “The Uí Dúnchada had no representative here.”

  “I had word that Ruarc’s wife is very ill. He would not wish to leave her side. Did Morrigan not tell you? I feel sure I told her. He’s a good man, Ruarc.”

  “He would be a good ally. He commands many men-at-arms and foot soldiers as well. With the Uí Dúnchada of Leinster and the house of Máel Sechnaill together we might stand a chance against these fin gall. Drive them into the sea, perhaps.”

 
And Morrigan would certainly prefer I think he was ignoring me
, she thought.

  Finnian gave her a curious look. “What?” she said. “Have I said something wrong?”

  “Not at all, not at all,” Finnian said and smiled. “I am just marveling at how you speak more like a ruler on her throne than a bride on her wedding night.”

  “I have been a bride before, Father,” she said. “I have never before been a ruler.”

  They walked on in silence to the door to the main house. Brigit wondered what Finnian might say, if there was some motive to his walking her across the compound, beyond seeing to her protection. But he only bowed and said, “I wish you good night, Queen Brigit.”

  “Thank you, Father Finnian. And a good night to you.” Finnian straightened, nodded, and walked off.

 
Queen Brigit…
No one had ever called her that before, nor was it clear that she would hold that title.
What did he mean by that? Did he mean to signal his support of me?
She frowned and pushed her way through the heavy oak door of the royal house and into the smoky, dim interior.

  The passageway between the various walled off rooms was lit with a few candles, the light of which was further obscured by the lanterns that held them, but Brigit needed no light at all to find her way. She pushed open the door of her bed chamber and almost sighed out loud, relieved to have reached that sanctuary, that haven of peace. All day she had been dreading the night, the marital bed, and what she imagined would be the rough and clumsy attention of her husband. But now she was quite certain she had gained a reprieve, and that Conlaed would be spending the night on the floor of the great hall, wherever he happened to collapse.

  A fire was burning low in the hearth, and the room had a warm glow, the far reaches all but lost in shadow. Brigit didn’t see the figure sitting in the chair beyond the bed, did not recognize it as a person, but when that person stood she jumped and gasped. She took a step back. Her hand reached out, instinctively looking for a weapon.

  “Brigit…” The figure came closer, and Brigit recognized the form, the voice, but recognition did not bring much relief.

  “Morrigan…”

  Morrigan stepped into the light of the low fire, which gave a reddish hue to her pale skin, her light brown hair. She was a small woman, and pretty, despite all that she had suffered. In the fire’s light Brigit noticed the tiny lines around Morrigan’s mouth and at the corner of her eyes. There was a hardness in her eyes, no expression on her face. She might have been carved out of ivory. “Congratulations on your nuptials,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  They stood silent for a moment, like swordsmen, each waiting for the other to make the first move.

  “I have the means, you know, to help you out of your troubles,” Morrigan said at last.

  “What troubles?” Brigit asked, and heard the false note in her voice.

  Morrigan smiled. “Please. Even so great a fool as Conlaed uí Chennselaigh can count to nine. When the baby comes, it will take no great figuring for him and everyone else at Tara to know it is not his.”

  A dozen responses swirled through Brigit’s head. Argument, denial, feigned bewilderment, but she could see that each was pointless. Morrigan knew. Somehow, Morrigan knew, and what Brigit had thought a profound secret, Morrigan could now use as a bludgeon.

  The birth of her child seven months or so from her wedding date was a problem she had long see coming, even with her hurried courtship and marriage. She had already considered various solutions – claim the baby had come early, or that she had lain with Conlaed before their marriage. But each of these depended on Conlaed’s cooperation, which was not at all certain.

  “I have certain herbs, you know,” Morrigan continued in a low and conspiratorial voice, “that will make you lose the baby. It will be as if this never happened.”

  Brigit studied Morrigan’s face. Morrigan was a skilled in those arts. She knew the use of herbs, roots, berries and other medicines. She could heal and she could kill. Indeed, this very solution had crossed Brigit’s mind. Doing so, however, would have meant admitting her condition to Morrigan, and that she would not do. But Morrigan already knew, and was offering a way out….

  “Brigit,” Morrigan said, “I don’t want to see you disgraced. Let me help.” And with those words, all the uncertainty, all the doubt in Brigit’s mind shed away like a thin layer of ice, and under it, something steely and hard. Morrigan had no desire to help. At least not to help Brigit.

  “Get out of my chambers,” Brigit said, and she was surprised to hear the voice of Máel Sechnaill coming from her throat.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Morrigan said. “You’ll be shunned, you’ll be called a whore.”

  “Out.”

  “Do you think the bastard son of some
fin gall
swine will ever be considered the
tánaise ríg
? Do you think his whore of a mother will ever be called ‘queen’?”

  To that Brigit did not respond. She and Morrigan held one another’s eyes, and their fury burned like the bonfires of the ancient druids. Then with a swirl of her cloak, Morrigan left the chambers.

  For a long time, Brigit stared after her, looked unseeing in the direction Morrigan had gone, while her mind went over and over what had just played out. She was happy. She was happy she had not stumbled into any trap that Morrigan was laying, happy that the life would continue to grow in her.

  But that decision, like any she made, carried its own dangers with it. She was happy. And she was alone, and she was very afraid.

I have wielded a blood-stained sword

and howling spear; the bird

of carrion followed me

when the Vikings pressed forth…

                                     Egil’s Saga

The Norsemen drew up on the ridge and considered the Irish shieldwall before them, the horsemen on the flanks. Even the berserkers had stopped short at the sight of so extensive and organized a defense. And now the two sides stood, looking at one another. The Irish archers in the distance tried their best to inflict some injury, their arrows flying overhead or thudding into the dirt at the
fin gall
’s feet. On occasion a spent arrow would impale itself unenthusiastically on someone’s shield, but the Northmen paid scant attention.

  They were gathered in loose groups around their standard bearers, each to the ship in which they sailed, the master whom they served. Some were standing, some sitting. Wineskins were passed from hand to hand. In the field between the armies a nightingale sang, and another responded, an odd, incongruous sound.

  Once again, the leaders of the various bands gathered together to determine the best course.

  “I do not care for the mounted warriors,” Arinbjorn said. “We could break the shieldwall and send them running, but those on horseback can move too fast for us to stop.”

  The others nodded, faces grim. The horses gave the Irish a mobility the Vikings did not have. And that was not all.
If they have horses, then they are not just a bunch of hapless farmers,
Thorgrim thought.
If they have horses, then they are trained and well-equipped fighting men
. He was not sure if that had occurred to the others, but he was not one to offer advice that had not been requested.

  “Sure all these damned men did not come from Cloyne,” Hoskuld Iron-skull spat, echoing the frustration of the others.

  “There is the tower,” Arinbjorn offered. “Thorgrim, what think you?”

  “This is not because of the tower,” Thorgrim said. “They could have had a few hour’s warning from the tower, no more. These men gathered long before that.” That observation was met with more nodding among the assembled leaders.

  “Hear him,” said Starri Deathless, who for some reason was hanging on the fringes of the council, though he had no business there. No one was going to ask the advice of a berserker; even their presence was barely tolerated when they were not required for the hard fighting. The blood on Starri’s chest and arms and in his hair was drying into a dark brown crust and making him appear even more mad than usual.

  “Well, if the Irish won’t do anything, then we must,” said Hoskuld. “We can’t stand here until we all grow roots.” Again there was a grumbled agreement among the other men.

  Thorgrim’s sword was still in his hand and he raised it, intending to point toward what he perceived as a weak point in the enemy’s shieldwall. In that same instance, on the far side of the line of Irishmen, an unseen archer let fly at the massed group of men on the ridge. ‘There…” Thorgrim said when he felt Iron-tooth jerk in his hand, heard a strange clang and screech of metal on metal. He was uncertain at first what had happened. He looked along the blade of his weapon.

  To his surprise he found that the iron arrowhead had hit the sword’s edge and split in the middle, and now held Iron-tooth lodged in its grip. The arrow, still quivering from its abrupt stop, was right even with his neck, and would surely have pierced his throat if it had not split itself on the sword.

  In the many fights, great and small, in which Thorgrim had taken part, he had seen many odd things, many that defied explanation. He had seen dead men without a mark on them, and others who had been left for dead, mangled beyond recognition, who lived for years after. He had seen arrows and spears embed themselves in a thousand odd ways. Once, two arrows had lodged themselves on either side of a leather helmet he was wearing, making the helmet appear to be mounted with horns, as Odin was often depicted in amulets. Another time a spear passed between his legs so high up he could feel the shaft sliding along his crotch, but it did him no harm at all.

  But for all that, Thorgrim had never seen anything quite as unique as that arrowhead split on his blade. The chances of such a thing happening seemed unimaginable to him.

  “Look at this, here,” said Hrolleif the Stout, who had seen what had happened. The others gathered around, looked and nodded their amazement. But they, like Thorgrim, had seen their share of amazing sights, and they were practical men, not much given to flights of imagination. They agreed that it was an extraordinary thing, and then all turned back to the problem at hand.

  All, that is, but Starri Deathless. As the others moved aside, there was Starri, looking with wide eyes, mouth open, at the arrow embedded on Iron-tooth’s blade. He made as if to speak, uttered a few sounds, and pointed at the arrow. Thorgrim, slightly embarrassed by the attention, looked from Starri’s finger to the arrow and back to Starri’s blood-smeared face.

  “Thorgrim,” Starri said at last. “Thorgrim Night Wolf, you are surely blessed by the gods.”

  Thorgrim smiled and looked at the arrow as if noticing it for the first time. “These things happen, Starri. Sure you’ve seen your share of such things.” Then, as if to emphasis the commonplace nature of the thing, Thorgrim pulled the split arrowhead off the blade and tossed it aside.

  “No, I’ve not seen such,” Starri said. “Not like that.”

  If Starri meant to elaborate, he never had the chance. Suddenly, like an unexpected clap of thunder, a cheer went up from the Irish ranks and the shieldwall rolled forward like a solid thing.

  “To arms! To arms!” Hoskuld shouted. The men huddled in conference scattered, each racing back to his own men, each shouting as he did for the Norsemen to take up arms. But the men needed no encouragement. Those who a moment before had been sprawled on the cool grass, half asleep, were now on their feet with shields in their left hands, swords, battle axes or spears in their right. They ran forward and took up their place in the shieldwall the leaders were forming.

  Arinbjorn and Thorgrim ran along the edge of the hill to where the men of the
Black Raven
were getting to their feet. Thorgrim searched the faces for Harald, saw him midway down the hastily organized line. His helmet was gone, which did not please Thorgrim, but Harald took his place with the others like a man accustomed to battle.

  Thorgrim turned and nearly collided with Starri Deathless, who had apparently followed on Thorgrim’s heels, with Nordwall the Short and the other berserkers behind him. “We’re with you,” Starri said. “Any man so blessed by the gods, we’ll stand with him.”

  There was no time for a reply. The Irish shieldwall, like a wave that first starts breaking far from shore, crashed into the half formed Irish defense. Thorgrim felt a shudder along the line, heard the clash of hundreds of shields on shields, the cumulative shout of Irishman and Norseman suddenly tangled in battle. The Vikings were pushed back a step. The first scream of agony rolled down the line and was cut short.

  “Meet them! Hold steady!” Arinbjorn shouted. He had taken a place in the shieldwall, on the far left flank, but there had been no time for Thorgrim to lock shields with the others, and now he stood a few feet back, looking at the fighting men but not engaged himself. Beside him, Starri, Nordwall and the others looked frantically around as it dawned on them that there was a battle taking place and yet their weapons hung limp in their hands. Starri shrieked, raced for the line of struggling men, the vow to stand with Thorgrim becoming more of a metaphorical concept.

  What happened next, Thorgrim could never quite explain. Starri came up behind the nearest of the Black Ravens and seemed to vault clear over the man. Perhaps he put a foot in the small of his back, Thorgrim never saw, but from Thorgrim’s point of view Starri seemed to leap or even fly over the line of men, coming down feet first, battle ax swinging, on the far side of the shieldwall.

  He disappeared from Thorgrim’s view, and Thorgrim figured that was the last he would ever see of Starri Deathless, that in the wake of the battle they would find the hacked up remains of what had once been that half wild man. Maybe. More likely the pieces would not be big enough to name. Thorgrim pushed thoughts of Starri aside.

  The Irish were driving the Vikings back, one grudging step at a time. Thorgrim could see the men’s soft leather shoes digging into the Irish sod as the Norsemen tried to hold the line in check, could see the axes and spears and swords rising up above the helmeted heads, flashing dull in the muted daylight. This was a view he had never had before. Always, he had stood his place in the shieldwall, or led from the front of a swine array charging an enemy. This place – behind the line, able to see nearly all the line of men with a turn of the head – this was something new.

  And from that vantage he could see dangers that would not be clear to someone standing in the shieldwall, someone thinking only of the five square feet of ground on which he stood, and the men with whom he was fighting for command of that small plot. Thorgrim could see the riders on the flanks, see their stubby horses prancing and stamping. Those well-armed men, stationed behind the shieldwall, had used the mobility their horses could provide to race around the ends of the line. Thorgrim could see them sliding down from their mounts, readying themselves to come at the rear of the line, to sweep around from either side and catch the Vikings from behind. And that would be an end to it.

  “Back!” Thorgrim shouted. He raced down the line, shouting as he did. “Back! Take a step back! Easy now, step back!”

  He had no authority to give orders even to the men of the
Black Raven
, never mind the entire Viking army, but he could see disaster looming and knew there was no time for a proper chain of command.

  “Back now, back, back!” And the Northmen listened, they took a step back, and then another. Disciplined steps, not a panic-edged retreat, not the kind of retreat that would devolve into a route, they continued to move back over the wet grass, reacting to the steady authority of Thorgrim’s voice.

  A cheer went up along the Irish lines as the defenders sensed their enemies giving way. But it was premature, Thorgrim could see that, because now, as he had intended, the left and right flanks of the Viking shieldwall were backed up to the steep ridge that dropped away to the beach below, and the experienced troops to the left and right, greatest threat to the Norsemen, could no longer get behind them. Their flanks were anchored to the cliffs, and there they stood.

  What had started as a clever ploy and well executed attack by the Irish line had devolved now to no more than brutal, one-on-one butchery as the men in the shieldwall hacked and slashed at the men facing them. They screamed, cursed, bled, died on that stretch of grass. Thorgrim could see one of the Black Ravens, dead, his head nearly severed, yet still standing in the shieldwall, his body jammed tight by the men to his left and right.

  Thorgrim adjusted his grip on Iron-tooth, looked for a spot where he could get into the fighting. He had no notion of how this would end. Perhaps they would stand there, Norsemen and Irish, face to face, until there was but one man left alive and his side would be called the winner of the day.

  The sound of the battle was a roar, like surf, punctuated here and there by shrieks, shouts, curses, horrific sounds. And then, suddenly, a new sound, a commotion, a swirling of noise from the shieldwall at Thorgrim’s left. Screams, shouts, a note that Thorgrim recognized. It was panic.

 
Who?
Thorgrim thought and at that moment a great rent appeared in the Irish line, men knocked aside, the unbroken row of shields broken now, and in the gap stood a horrid and unworldly creature, skin blood red, white teeth flashing, hair standing at wild angles. It was screaming and wielding an ax, swinging it in great arcs. Thorgrim gasped and felt a stab of panic like a dagger point. There was nothing left in the world that could frighten him, but this thing was not of the world, that much he could see.

  Then the thing looked at him, their eyes met, and the thing screamed “Night Wolf!” and Thorgrim realized he was wrong, the thing was indeed of this world, it was Starri Deathless who had hacked his way through the line from behind. And had given the Vikings a way to victory. Because a shieldwall was a hard thing to break, but once broken was nearly impossible to put to right.