Fin Gall (13 page)

             
Morrigan studied his face. Ornolf had expressed no concern over any of the others. Why is the jarl Ornolf concerned about young Harald?

             
“Morrigan has brought us these,” Thorgrim said, nodding toward the basket. Ornolf leaned over and looked down and his face brightened like the sun breaking through clouds.

             
“Sweet Odin!” he said, though he had sense enough to speak no louder than a whisper. “We’ll butcher them all!”

             
“I would know why she brings us this gift,” Thorgrim said. Morrigan could see his mood darkening.

             
“Why?” Ornolf said, louder than Morrigan thought was prudent. “Who gives a damn why?”

             
“Because it might be a trap.”

             
“Trap? Ha!” Ornolf said. “That bastard Orm is going to string us up and pull our guts out with a hook! Who cares if it’s a trap?”

             
Thorgrim scowled. Morrigan said nothing. But they both knew that Ornolf had hit on the truth of the thing. The Norwegians were dead men, and they faced the worst kind or death, bound up like swine and horribly butchered for the amusement of the Danes. She offered them a chance to escape, or barring that, the chance to die with weapons in their hands. There was no need for debate.

             
“You must go tonight,” Morrigan said.

             
“We go tonight,” Ornolf assured her.

Chapter Fifteen

One may know your secret

never a second.

If three, a thousand will know.

                              Hávamál

              T

horgrim Night Wolf pressed one hand against the thatch of the ceiling to steady himself and worked the blade of the dagger into the dried reeds. He was standing on the back of Skeggi Kalfsson, who was on hands and knees on the table.  Skeggi’s back was so broad and solid that Thorgrim might as well have been standing on the table itself.

              Thorgrim slashed sideways. The thatch gave way before the razor edge of the knife, falling like soft rain on the table and Skeggi below.

             
“Another,” Thorgrim said softly and Snorri Half-troll handed him a new knife as the edge on the old one grew dull. Thorgrim worked at the thatch as quiet as he could, though even he could barely hear the sound of the blade over the beating of the rain that had begun to fall.

             
More thatch fell and Thorgrim could feel rainwater seeping thought the remaining layers. “Put the lamp out,” he whispered and someone snuffed out the flame. Thorgrim sliced away at the remaining reeds and they fell away and he smelled the fresh night air and felt the cool rain on his face.

             
He tapped on Skeggi’s back with his toe. Slowly Skeggi raised himself to his knees as Thorgrim stepped onto his shoulders, then Skeggi pushed himself to his feet, easing Thorgrim up and out the hole he had just cut in the roof.

             
It was raining hard and the thatch was slick. Thorgrim thrust his knife in among the reeds and used it as a hand-hold to keep from sliding off, and when he knew he was secure he looked around.

             
There were always half a dozen guards encircling the dining hall, but he could seen none of them now. They were huddled under the eaves of the roof, he guessed, seeking what shelter they could find. The fortress gate was barely visible through the night and the rain. There were guards there as well, Thorgrim was certain of it, but he could not see them either.

             
He rolled on his stomach, his hand still gripping his knife, the rain beating hard on his tunic and head, running in rivulets through his beard. He put his head down into the hole he had cut. “Come on,” whispered.

             
Snorri Half-troll’s head appeared through the hole and he was lifted up on Skeggi’s strong back. He climbed swiftly onto the roof, scampering away, driving his knife into the thatch as he moved, as if trying to murder the prison itself. One after another the men came through the hole until there were six in all, half a dozen gleaming daggers, the other six held in ready in the room below.

             
The men spread themselves along the roof and then the little burst of movement was over and it was still again, the rain driving down hard on the longphort of Dubh-Linn, as if holding the town under its palm.

             
Thorgrim looked around. He clenched the hilt of the dagger in his hand, felt every muscle taut and ready. The lingering pain from his beating was gone, those places on his body that had been tender and sore were burning hot and pulsing with energy. He was the predator now, and his pack was on the hunt.

             
He looked left and right. The men were watching him, waiting. He nodded his head and pulled the dagger from the thatch, felt himself begin to slide down the pitched roof. Left and right his men did the same, pushing themselves ever so slightly as they slid down the slick thatch.

             
The edge of the roof was a black line with even deeper blackness beyond, the edge of the void, and on the other side was a fight to the death. Thorgrim could feel the wildness building. His feet came off the thatch and he pushed off and jumped for the ground he could not see, hit it and went down into a crouch, felt the mud and water splash up against his face.

             
He whirled around, still crouched low, the dagger in front of him, heard five more splashes as his men dropped to the ground. He had come down just to the right of the door where he knew a guard would be posted.

             
“Here!” a voice called out. Not a challenge, more an expression of fear and surprise. Thorgrim could hear the edge of terror in the man’s voice, to see dark creatures dropping from the sky on such a night.

             
Thorgrim took two steps forward. In the dark and rain, against the wall of the prison he could see the shape of a man drawing a sword but it was too late for him. Thorgrim was on him, his left hand reached up and grabbed a fist-full of wet hair and jerked it back. The man made a strangling sound and a whimpering cry and Thorgrim slashed his throat. The man’s blood, warmer than the rain, splattered against Thorgrim’s face as he let him drop.

             
Snorri was beside him, lifting the bar from the door, pushing the door in. Thorgrim bent over and pulled the sword from the dead man’s scabbard. It felt good to have a weapon in his hand. He felt whole again, and he knew he would not put it down until he was safely away from Dubh-Linn, or he was dead.

             
The men inside slipped out through the open door, led by Ornolf, whose girth did not allow him to get through the hole Thorgrim had cut in the roof. Thorgrim gestured for them to spread out, to lose themselves in the dark by the house. He and Ornolf walked down the length of their former prison as fifty men splashed out into night and moved into the darker places along the walls. Six guards lay dead and stripped of weapons.

             
“Svein!” Thorgrim said in a whisper. “Give that sword to Ornolf.”

             
Svein the Short, who had come down the roof with Thorgrim, stepped up and reluctantly handed his new-won sword to the jarl.

             
“Keep your dagger,” Thorgrim said, but Svein did not seem happy with the trade.

             
“We’ll work around the edge of the palisade,” Ornolf said, “keep in the shadows, fall on the guards when we get to the gate.”

             
Thorgrim nodded. Sobriety was good for Ornolf’s leadership, if not his mood. “I’ll get the men with weapons in the fore.”

             
No alarm had been raised, but that good fortune would not last long. The hard fighting, Thorgrim knew, was yet to start. Still, they were out. The pack was loose. 

             
Morrigan crouched by the window and peeked through shutters that were open no more than a crack. Directly across the fortress yard was the dining hall in which the Norwegians were held. She had prayed for rain to hide the escape and her prayers were answered and she thanked God for it. But now the rain came in sheets and kept her from seeing or hearing what was taking place.

             
She squinted and leaned forward, certain she saw some movement in the dark. Her ears picked out a muffled thud from the steady noise of falling water. Midnight was an hour or two past. It was time for Thorgrim to act.

             
There was more sound now, splashing, feet running on wet ground, so soft you would never hear it if you were not listening for it. But Morrigan heard it, she was certain. Thorgrim was on the move. Her turn now.

             
She shifted the knife to her left hand and wiped her sweating palm on her dress, then resettled her grip. She was done with Dubh-linn and the torture of slavery. One way or the other.

             
She stood and listened. Orm was snoring in the sleeping chamber. Lying by the hearth, pretending to sleep, back to the door, she had heard him return from the mead hall, had listened to the noise of him rustling and groaning his way to sleep as the rain drummed on the thatch above. Then, no sound but the loud, steady breath. It had been that way for an hour or more.

             
The room was lit only by the orange glow of banked coals in the fireplace, a feeble light, but Morrigan knew every inch of the house and she crossed the floor, quick and silent. The door to the sleeping chamber was half open and she slipped in and stood there, silent. The room was windowless and all but black, the tiny light from the hearth barely creeping in through the door. She could see nothing, so she stood still, waiting for some sound that might indicate Orm was awake. But there was only snoring.

             
She pulled the knife from under her cloak and stepped across the room to Orm’s low bed. The blankets were over him and all she could see was a dark hump in the dark room, but it was enough.

             
She wanted to stop, to listen, to be certain, but in her mind the voice shouted
No, no! Do it!
For all the time she had fantasied about this moment, the actual doing of the thing was harder than she thought. She had never killed a human being, and though she did not think it a sin to kill a pagan and a pig like Orm Ulfsson, still she flinched at the thought of actually driving a knife into a man’s back.

             
And then Orm moved, shuffled a bit, made a low noise and Morrigan flushed with panic. The hesitancy fled, the fear fled, all conscious thought gone as she stepped up, lifted the knife high and plunged it down into the blankets and the man underneath.

             
The knife went in smooth then hit something - bone, Morrigan supposed but she did not think about it, just pulled it free and plunged it in again and again, and at last she sunk the blade in to the hilt.

             
Orm was thrashing, screaming, loud and high, screaming like a woman, but Morrigan barely registered the sound. She backed away from the thrashing hump of blanket, the great furor of sound that filled the room. She backed away until she found the sleeping chamber door and ran through it, ran across the room and out the front door. She gasped as the driving rain hit her in the face. But it was good, clean and purging, like the murder she had just committed. Orm’s blood meant no more to her than the rainwater that ran down her skin.

             
Orm was still screaming that weird, high-pitched shriek. Through the rain she thought she saw some movement by the gate. She raced for the dining hall, for Thorgrim and her passage out of Dubh-linn.

              Thorgrim was back inside the prison, seeing to the wounded men, when he heard the horrible sound.

             
“Use the blankets, use the blankets, a man on each corner!” he said to the men he had brought with him to carry their comrades, when suddenly a scream cut through the night, a terrible, high-pitched scream.

             
“Almighty Thor!” Olaf Yellowbeard gasped. “A ghost? Or a troll, do you think?”

             
“Shut your mouth, Olaf, and lift your brother,” Thorgrim snapped, but he was not certain that Olaf was wrong. It was a black night of rain and death, the kind of night a man might expect evil spirits about.

             
Whatever was making that sound, it was going to attract the guard’s notice. Thorgrim looked out the door. Men were running through the rain, running for the small house up against the palisade wall.

             
“Ornolf! Let’s go!” Thorgrim shouted. Here was opportunity. The screams were a distraction.

             
Ornolf held his sword aloft, gestured forward, led the men along the wall where their movements would be more hidden.