Glendalough Fair (23 page)

“No, ma’am,” Aileran said, his voice like a grunt.

“It was Aileran suggested it,” Louis said.

Failend nodded again. She was awake now, her senses sharp like a rabbit on the verge of bolting. There was something wrong here. She was certain of it, Louis’s blindness aside. Aileran might tolerate her presence, but he would not encourage it.

She knew she should decline the offer. It was the smart thing to do. But she could not leave Louis to whatever waited down the road. And, in truth, she was curious, and curiosity seemed to outweigh fear these days.

“Very well,” Failend said. “I thank you, Captain Aileran. I’m delighted to come.” There was nothing else she could say. She pulled her mail shirt over her head, strapped her belt around her waist and made certain sword and dagger were hanging properly, then headed off at Louis’s side into the predawn dark.

Their horses were gathered just beyond the camp and the patrol mounted in silence. The road was barely visible in the feeble light, but they found it and headed east, down river, over ground that would have been quite familiar to Failend if she could have seen it. They did not speak. Only the soft thump of the horses’ hooves and the jingle of mail disturbed the quiet, and even that made so little noise that the insects in the grass and the frogs off toward the water did not pause in their songs as they passed.

Failend was soon lost in the steady, wordless ride through the night world and she had no sense of the passage of time. An hour, she thought. They had been riding about an hour and the dawn still showed no sign of arriving when Aileran said, softly, barely a whisper, “Here. Hold up here.”

The sound of riding men stopped and the night became more quiet still, weirdly quiet. “Just over that rise,” Aileran said. He pointed to a small hill just south of the road, barely visible against the sky.

Failend frowned.
How could he know that’s the right hill
? she wondered.
I can hardly see the damned thing
… But not for the first time she assumed Aileran, as an experienced man-at-arms, had ways of knowing things that she did not understand.

“Let us go have a look,” Louis said in the same breathy whisper. “Failend, with us.”

They dismounted and Aileran turned to the men-at-arms behind, who were also sliding off their horses. “You come with us to the base of the hill, then wait there,” he said. “Do not move. We’ll shout for you if we need you. If we do, there’ll be no more need for quiet.”

The men made soft murmurs of understanding. Aileran turned and headed toward the rise, more a grassy mound than a hill, Failend and Louis at his heels, the rest following behind. At the bottom of the rise the men-at-arms stopped and the three continued moving up on their own. They crouched as they climbed and kept low as they reached the top.

There was nothing to see beyond the crest, no smoldering campfires, no sleeping men sprawled about, no guards half awake. Nothing but field, stretching away, and beyond it the dark shapes of trees by the river.

“Got the wrong hill, maybe?” Aileran said, his voice even softer than the rustle of the swaying tree branches. He looked back at Louis and Failend, then waved his hand and led them down the far side of the slope, putting the high ground between them and the dozen men-at-arms.

The land began to level out as they reached the bottom of the hill and once again Aileran signaled for them to stop. They paused and listened, but could hear only the night sounds. Failend felt jumpy, like little bolts of lightning were shooting through her. She was perfectly silent, but in her mind bells tolled a danger warning.

“There,” Aileran said. He pointed out into the dark but Failend could see nothing, and Louis apparently could see nothing, either. He took a step past Aileran and then another step as he peered out across the open ground.

Then Aileran shouldered Failend aside. She saw his arm move. The blade of his knife reflected the dull light of the sky and the sight of it made her furious, instantly and completely furious. Furious at Aileran’s treachery, at Louis’s stupidity, and furious mostly because Aileran considered her so little a threat, such an afterthought, that he just pushed her out of the way so he could get on with the important business of killing Louis.

Aileran cocked his arm for a powerful straight thrust that would plunge the knife right into Louis’s back. The blade was darting forward when Failend stepped up and brought her arm down hard on his wrist, striking with her mail-clad forearm, knocking Aileran’s hand and knife aside.

Louis turned and said something in a harsh whisper but Aileran’s attention was on Failend now. She could not make out his face but she could see his arm coming up, knife still held in his grip, as he turned toward her. Her left hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. She knew she did not have anything like the strength to hold him, but she needed only to slow him down for a second, no more.

Aileran made a grunting noise and shook off Failend’s grip but by then her dagger was out of its sheath and swinging around at Aileran’s chest. She had time enough to wonder if the needle-sharp point would punch through his mail, and then the blade hit and did not pause as it parted the tiny metal rings and plunged into his chest.

A gurgling noise came from Aileran’s throat, and he staggered and Failend could see his hands flailing at the knife jutting from him. She let go of the grip and let Aileran stumble back, one step, two steps, and then he dropped to the ground, still kicking feebly as the life drained quickly and silently away.

“Failend! By God…” Louis gasped, still with sense enough to speak soft.

“He was trying to kill you. And then me,” she said, fairly certain that the second part was correct. She pointed to Aileran’s knife on the ground.

“Kill…why?”

“Why do you think, you dumb ass?” she hissed. She looked up at the hill, half expecting to see the silhouette of the dozen men-at-arms who had accompanied them coming over the rise, but she saw nothing. She forced herself to breathe normally and listened. Nothing.

“Those men,” she said, nodding toward the hill, “are with Aileran. Even if they’re not part of this, they’ll take us back to Colman and it will be no better than if Aileran killed us here. Worse.”

Louis seemed to be nodding. “So…?”

“So we have to run. There.” She pointed to the trees at the far end of the field. “Get clear of these men, hide, and then figure what to do.”

Louis was nodding again. Failend stepped over toward Aileran, who was now motionless on the ground. She could just make out the handle of her dagger sticking up from his chest. She took a grip and pulled, and with some effort drew the weapon free. She was wiping it clean on the tail of Aileran’s tunic when she noticed the purse hanging from his belt. With no thought as to why, she cut the purse strings with the dagger, sheathed the weapon and tucked the soft leather bag into her belt.

“Let’s be off,” she whispered. She turned her back on Aileran, on the hill that concealed them from the view of the men-at-arms. She and Louis de Roumois moved quickly through the tall grass to the dark trees by the water’s edge.

At every door-way,

ere one enters,

one should spy round
.

Hávamál

They had no small boats, so Thorgrim ordered
Sea Hammer
rowed up to the north bank of the river, her bow driven into the mud and Harald and his twenty man scouting party set ashore. They were wearing mail and helmets and carried swords or axes or spears. Their shields hung from straps on their backs. The weapons were for defense, if needed. Their job was not to fight, as Thorgrim had told Harald, and then told him again and then one more time to be certain he understood.

“Stay out of sight as best you can,” Thorgrim said. He was standing at
Sea Hammer
’s bow. Harald and his men were already ashore. “A scout is most effective if he is not seen. Stay close to the river, close enough to give us warning if need be, but you don’t need to stay in sight of it. Wherever you can best see what’s happening.”

“Yes, father,” Harald said. Thorgrim had told him this already and Harald struggled to keep the impatience from his voice. “I’ll meet up with you when you have anchored for the night,” he continued, repeating his father’s instructions before his father had the chance.

“Very good. Good luck,” Thorgrim said. He said it in an off-hand way, without any note of sentimentality, which Harald appreciated. Then Thorgrim turned and walked back to
Sea Hammer
’s afterdeck, giving orders to the rowers to back water as he passed.

Harald watched the ship pull away from the bank, then he turned his back on the river. “Let’s go,” he said and he pushed past his small army and took the lead, working his way up the steep bank, digging his toes into the ground to keep from slipping.

He reached the top of the river bank and stepped into the trees. From downstream where the shallows began, forest and brush crowded the shoreline and followed the river bank as far as he could see. For all he knew the dense woods ran clear up to Glendalough, but he doubted it. He paused for a moment and assumed the posture of someone waiting for others to catch up, but he took that moment to stop and think.

We can’t stay in the woods
, he realized.
We can hardly move through here.
In order to prevent another ambush he had to stay ahead of his father’s ships, and they would certainly move faster over the water than he and his men could move through the overgrown forest.

Have to move away from the river,
he thought next. With any luck the woods did not extend very far inland from the shore. If that was the case, they could move quickly over the ground and still keep an eye on the river bank. If that was not the case he did not know what he would do.

“Very well, follow me,” he said, once the last of his men were up the bank. He spoke softly which seemed only proper. He pushed on through the trees, through the undergrowth that whipped at him and grabbed at his mail and leggings. He heard the others following behind.

He and Thorgrim had picked the men, mostly older hands, men who had been with them since Dubh-linn, and in a few cases since they had first come over to Ireland with Ornolf aboard his ship
Red Dragon
. Harald had expected his father to insist that one of the more prominent men among the crew, Agnarr or Godi or even Bersi, perhaps, also join the patrol. Someone to keep an eye on Harald as Harald ostensibly lead the twenty. But Thorgrim had done no such thing. That surprised Harald. And it made him happy. And nervous.

He could see now that the woods were thinning, a hopeful sign, and after another thirty feet of fighting through the bracken the forest tapered off to saplings and then to a field of waist-high grass. Harald held up his hand and the men behind him stopped. He crouched low and moved out ahead, parting the grass as he went, eyes moving left and right, ears sharp for any sound. A partridge burst into flight five feet in front of him, a chaos of beating wings and squawking bird. Harald jumped, gasped, and his hand was on the hilt of his sword before his mind had even registered what had startled him.

The noise of the wingbeats faded and Harald remained motionless, listening. He heard nothing, no sound of men alerted to their presence by the startled bird, nothing but the breeze and the river some ways behind them. He waited a minute more, then waved for the others to follow.

They found a road another two rods away, beaten and well-traveled, a road that was now a wide band of dark brown mud after the days of rain. The tracks were still visible: wagon ruts and the footprints of many men who had passed that way. The footprints of the small army that had ambushed them by the river, Harald guessed. One of his men found a broken and discarded spear shaft, the iron point bent at the tip.

“This is good,” Harald said, meaning the road. “Ulf, Vemund,” he called to two of his men and they stepped forward. Ulf and Vemund were young men, only a few years older than Harald, if that. They were tall and fair; Vemund’s long hair blonde to the point of being nearly white. And they were also swift of foot and athletic, one of the reasons Harald had chosen them.

“You’ll go ahead of us,” Harald said. “Stick to the tree line. Be cautious, keep hidden as you move. If you see anyone, anything, one of you come back and report. The other keep watch.”

Ulf and Vemund nodded. They knew what was expected. They were to make certain that the patrol didn’t blunder into some enemy coming down the road, or anyone else who might betray their presence. They turned and hurried up the road at a jog.

Harald beckoned to two others. “You two, you take up the rear. Follow a couple hundred paces behind us, make sure no one is coming from that way. The rest of you, with me.”

They moved out, Harald leading them off the road and back toward the trees where they could find cover quickly if they had need of it. The tall grass parted in front of them as they walked, a short column of armed men moving through the wet morning, woods to the left, open country to the right. Somewhere up ahead Ulf and Vemund were outpacing them, moving swiftly along the path of the river, alert like deer in an open meadow. Or so Harald hoped.

The going was easier than Harald had thought it would be, the ground open and forgiving, and soon they were several miles from the point where Thorgrim had set them ashore.

Can’t lose the river
, Harald thought, one of a dozen worries and considerations that crowded his mind and made him forget how pleased he was to be in sole command of this patrol. He had to move fast, but he also had to stay close to the water, because that was where an enemy might be lying in ambush. It would also prevent him from getting lost and wandering hopelessly around the countryside. But the woods to the left obscured his view of the water, and he could only hope that the road they were following was not trending away from the river banks.

They walked on, and to Harald’s relief the tree line soon yielded to open ground, and the river came into view once again. It was not more than a dozen rods to the south, a gray, rippling water course running through a dark green, rolling countryside.

There were no ships to be seen, but Harald had not thought there would be. When they first set out Harald had caught the occasional glimpse of the longships as they made their way up river, but soon he and his men had outpaced the fleet. They were still well ahead of them, apparently, which was good. That was where they were supposed to be.

Olaf Thordarson, one the few left who had sailed with them from Vik, knelt beside him and they looked out over the low, rolling hills. “Do you see anything of Vemund or Ulf?” Olaf asked.

“No,” Harald said. “But I wouldn’t expect to, if they’re doing what they should.”

Olaf grunted. “Look beyond that hill,” he said and pointed to a place half a mile away, a hill that rose up from the river’s edge and obscured the ground beyond it. The road tended away from the river there, going north around the hill rather than cresting it.

“Looks like smoke to me,” Olaf said once Harald was looking in the right direction. Harald nodded. It did look like smoke, a thin trail of smoke rising up over the edge of the hill, dissipating into the low-hanging mist.

Harald frowned. “I wonder where Vemund and Ulf have got off to,” he said. Smoke must mean men, and men would mean something that should have been reported back. He felt a little tremor of fear. Not fear for his physical safety, or that of his men. That would not even occur to him. It was fear of failing in the eyes of his father. That, above all things, frightened him.

“Let’s go,” he said, louder than he had spoken before. He stood and led the way forward, downhill through the tall grass. There was no cover here, no way to hide the column, so they moved at a near jog over the open ground, chainmail making its soft shushing sound. They did not run. Harald knew better than to tire men out needlessly when the possibility of a fight was always present.

They reached the bottom of the sloping ground and began climbing the hill that Ulf had pointed out. The smoke was more clearly visible now, the fire that was its source apparently growing in strength. Harald slowed as they reached the crest of the hill, crouched lower and signaled to the others to do the same. He moved forward slowly, eyes searching the country beyond.

Harald stopped. He turned to the others. “Get down,” he said and the sixteen men at his back went down on one knee. Harald bent lower still and moved slowly toward the top of the hill. He went down on both knees and then hands and knees as he climbed the last few feet to where he could see beyond the hill’s crest. Then he laid on his stomach, hoping he could not be seen against the gray sky, and looked.

The river bent away to the left, and once again there were trees lining the bank, a few hundred yards of thick wood before it gave way again to open land. A tolerable place for another ambush.

To the right the road wound around the hill and tended back in the direction of the water, passing just fifty yards or so in front of where Harald lay.  But it was the source of the smoke that had his attention now. It was a cooking fire, a fairly substantial one with a big iron pot hanging from a tripod above it. There was a big man tending the fire. He and his fire were ringed by three of the oddest wagons Harald had ever seen. They were tall with wide oak wheels and high wooden sides painted yellow and red that managed to look cheerful even on that gloomy day. Flags and bunting were mounted at various places, the wet cloth moving just a bit in the breeze.

Harald remained motionless, watching. The wagons were no more than a hundred yards away. He could see another man rummaging through a trunk beside the middle wagon and someone else – he was fairly certain it was a woman – climbing into the wagon nearest him.

Just as he was considering what his next move might be, Harald saw a door open at the back of the wagon to the left and a man step out from the dark interior. He wore a blue tunic and yellow leggings. There was something gray slung over his shoulder which to Harald’s practiced eye looked like a mail shirt. His nearly white hair stood out sharply in the gray light.

“Vemund, you stupid bastard,” Harald muttered to himself. Now he knew what he would do next. Give Vemund a good thrashing and send him packing back to the fleet, then drag Ulf off whatever whore he was currently riding and do the same to him.

He stood and turned and signaled for the others to follow. He could feel his anger mount and he hurried down the far side of the hill toward the caravan and his wayward scout.

You put the whole rutting thing in danger, you and your limp cock
, he thought as he hurried along. He saw Vemund look up at their approach, saw him drop the sword and belt in his hand and struggle to get the mail shirt over his head, and that made Harald even madder still.

What Harald did not see was the line of Irish horsemen in the trees. He and his men were still fifty yards from the caravan when the riders came bursting out into the open. One moment it was quiet, save for the muted sound of voices from the wagons, and then the air was filled with men shouting, urging their mounts forward, the pounding of hooves in the soft dirt, the shouts of surprise from Harald’s men as they turned to face this new threat.

“Bastards!” Harald shouted, and with that one word he meant to encompass them all: Vemund, Ulf, Ottar, Kevin, the Irish, all of those who were making his life a misery. His father had trusted him with this crucial task and now the whole thing was falling apart like a rotten log. It made Harald furious. He would not allow this to happen.

“You men with spears, up front!” he shouted and the six of his men who carried spears stepped forward to take the brunt of the horsemen’s attack. “Shield wall, make a shield wall!”

There were no more than ten mounted warriors, a scouting party like his own. They had probably spotted Vemund and Ulf as the idiots followed their cocks to the wagons. They would have guessed there would be more Northmen coming behind, so rather than attack the two they had set their trap and waited.

The mounted men were closing fast, coming on at a gallop, swords drawn, spears down. It was a bold move; Harald’s band outnumbered them, but the Irish likely hoped the men on foot would scatter before the thundering horses and be cut down as they ran.

Harald pulled Oak Cleaver from his scabbard, ready for the horsemen, ready to kill any of his own men who ran, but he did not think that would be necessary.