Glendalough Fair (24 page)

“Steady, wait for them,” Harald said. It took extraordinary courage and considerable experience in battle to stand firm in the face of such a charge. These men had both those things and they would hold their ground and brace for the horsemen to ride down on them. But Harald would not.

With a shout he pushed forward, past the line of his men, came to a stop ten yards ahead of them. He was still shouting, Oak Cleaver dancing in front of him, the blade threatening his attackers and challenging them. He could see looks of surprise on the rider’s faces one hundred feet away. He saw one horseman swerve and nearly collide with the man beside him.

But they recovered fast because clearly they, too, were trained and experienced men. The rider in the center of the charging rank was fifty feet away as he lined himself up with Harald, spear held low, the wicked iron tip steady and pointing right at Harald’s guts. The man would expect Harald to jump to his left, to try and get out of the path of horse and weapon. Harald knew it. It was the natural thing to do.

Forty feet. The horse’s teeth were bared, its feet throwing up big clods of dirt behind. The pounding of the hooves was the only thing Harald could hear. He took a tentative step to his left like a man ready to break in fear. He took another.

Twenty feet and the spear point was coming at him like an arrow shot from a bow. The warrior on the horse was shouting. Harald crouched slightly than pushed off hard, not moving to his left but leaping to his right, leaping right across the path of the charging beast.

The horse lashed out at Harald with snapping teeth, missing by a foot, no more, as Harald crossed the animal’s path. He could see the shock on the rider’s face as he whipped his head around to see where Harald had gone. The Irishman pulled the reins over hard and tried to swing his spear across the horse’s neck as Harald drove Oak Cleaver right up into the rider’s side, felt the point pierce mail, pierce flesh, hit bone and drive in further.

The rider’s shout turned to a scream and the horse rushed past and Oak Cleaver was pulled free from the man’s side, but the blade had done all the damage it needed to do. Harald raced back to the line his men had made, but there was no line now. The Irish had hit his band with all the power their horses and weapons could deliver. Two of his men were down, but three of the horses were rider-less and one was wounded, bucking and rearing as its rider tried to remain in the saddle.

“At them! At them!” Harald shouted but his men had already recovered from the shock of the Irish assault and were fighting back. Olaf Thordarson grabbed hold of a rider’s spear as the man rode past and used it to pull the rider down from his horse. The Irishman still had his feet in the stirrups, struggling for control of his weapon, when Olaf finished him with his battle ax.

To Harald’s right a man whirled his horse around, turning the animal in a full circle, assessing the fight. Harald leapt at him, leading with Oak Cleaver, but the rider saw him coming and batted the blade away, coming back with a counterstroke that forced Harald to leap aside.

“Back!” the mounted man shouted, “Back, back!” There were only five men still mounted but they reacted without hesitation, driving spurs into their horses’ flanks, jerking reins sideways as their mounts once again gathered speed, charging back toward the tree line, back the way they had come.

“Stop them! Stop them!” Harald shouted, but it was a pointless gesture. In three paces the horses were beyond the reach of Harald’s men. Harald chased after the riders and several of his men did likewise, but they covered no more than twenty feet before they pulled to a stop.

Harald leaned forward and gasped, sucking in lung-fulls of air. He could feel the sweat standing out on his brow and running down his sides under his tunic and mail. Then he straightened and turned back toward his men and the bloody results of that short, hard fight.

“Are any alive?” Harald asked. “Any of the Irish still alive?” His men glanced down at the Irish warriors strewn on the ground, the one still hanging from his stirrups. Olaf turned one of them over with his foot. Heads were shaking.

“No,” one of Harald’s men answered at last. “None still alive.”

Idiot, idiot,
Harald chastised himself. He turned and looked toward the river. The last of the riders was just disappearing around the edge of the woods that ran along the bank. They would report on Harald’s presence to whoever had sent them. And there was not even a prisoner left alive to tell Harald who that was, or how many men he commanded, or where the rest of his army was.

He turned back to his men. He had to make a decision, and fast, because he knew that there was nothing more fatal to command than indecisiveness. Once the Irish scouts returned to their camp a larger force would no doubt be sent out to hunt them down. The only reasonable thing to do was to go back the way they had come and meet up with his father’s fleet. Explain what had happened, admit the mistakes he had made.

And even as Harald thought those things he knew he would do nothing of the kind. He would find another way. He would return to
Sea Hammer
either successful or dead. And then his eyes moved beyond his men to the three wagons sitting just fifty yards away.

[O]ft doth a man ill counsel get

when ‘tis born in another’s breast
.

Hávamál

They spent one more day working the longships up the River Avonmore toward Glendalough. One more day during which Thorgrim Night Wolf and Ottar Bloodax pointedly ignored one another. But neither of those things could last.

They were running out of water, or at least water deep enough to float their vessels. The shorelines to larboard and starboard continued to close in on them, the river only three or four rods wide, and the current ran stronger with each labored mile they made upstream. It was two days after the ambush, and they had kept to the oars for most of that morning, pulling hard and making little headway against the rushing water.

“This won’t do,” Agnarr said to Thorgrim. They were on the afterdeck, Agnarr at the tiller, Thorgrim scanning the banks. Their thoughts were on the men forward, leaning into the oars, sweat running down red faces as they pulled.

Thorgrim had been looking out for Harald and his men, trying to catch some glimpse of them on the river bank. He did not expect he would. In truth he would have been angry if he had, because that would mean Harald was not concealing himself well and was not far enough up river to properly scout out an ambush.

But there was no sign of Harald and his scouting party and Thorgrim hoped they were doing a proper job. The rest of the men were paying a price for having them probing ahead, fighting the current with twenty less men to row than
Sea Hammer
would normally have carried.

“You’re right. This won’t do,” Thorgrim said. “We’ll run her up on the bank, there.” He pointed to a stretch of low, gravely riverbank off the starboard bow. “This is as far as we get.”

“Are we near to Glendalough?” Starri Deathless asked. He was sitting up now, though still in his nest of furs, still barely able to stand. There was more power in his voice, however, more strength in his movements, limited though they still were. His flesh was not as pallid as it had been just the day before.

“I don’t know,” Thorgrim admitted. “None of us has been this far up river. It was Kevin who was supposed to lead us to Glendalough.”

Starri nodded. “Kevin,” he said. “What will you do with Kevin?”

“I’ll kill him,” Thorgrim said. He did not need to think about it because he already had, in some detail. “If I can catch him I will kill him. I will do it slowly if I’m able. I’ll see that his death is without honor, so that I never have to meet him again in the corpse hall.”

Starri gave a weak smile. “Kevin follows the Christ god. They don’t expect to go to the corpse hall,” he said. “I don’t think they want to.”

Thorgrim nodded. He had forgotten that. “Where do these people think they will go when the gods take them?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Starri said.

Before Thorgrim could reply,
Sea Hammer
’s bow ran onto the sand and gravel shore and he had to put theological concerns aside. The Avonmore ran through mostly open country there, which Thorgrim reckoned unfortunate. He would have preferred trees to hide the longships’ presence. Trees were few, however, though there were some at the top of the river bank to which they made their bowlines fast.

He looked down river toward the rest of his fleet, and Ottar’s ships beyond. Bersi’s men were rowing hard, pulling
Blood Hawk
stroke by painful stroke upriver as Thorgrim’s crew had done
Sea Hammer.
Now they pulled her toward the river bank and beached her beside Thorgrim’s ship. As they tied her off Bersi Jorundarson made his way forward and dropped into the river by her bow.

Thorgrim walked forward and jumped down from
Sea Hammer
’s bow into ankle deep water. Further downstream
Dragon
and
Fox
, still under oars, drove their bows into the shallow river’s edge and their men went over the sides with ropes in hand to make them fast ashore.

Ottar’s ships were following a dozen rods behind his.

What will you do, Ottar, you bastard
? Thorgrim wondered.
Pass me once again
?

Five minutes later he had an answer, as Ottar’s ship turned to starboard and ran its bow into the river bank some ways down river from
Fox
, and his other ships did the same. This was as far up the Avonmore as any of them were going to go by water.

Bersi came dripping out of the river and joined Thorgrim, and Kjartan and Skidi Oddson came walking up from where their ships were tied, and the four men stood in a circle. “We’ll get the ships no closer than this,” Thorgrim said. “We’ll cover the rest of the way to Glendalough on foot. I don’t know how far that is.”

The others nodded and looked around, as if there was something that might indicate how far off the monastery lay. Thorgrim looked up at the sun.

“Too late to continue today, and the men are done in from rowing and towing the ships,” Thorgrim said. “And it’s not as if we have a hope of surprising the Irish. We’ll make a fire on the shore here, give the men a decent supper.”

Heads nodded again.

“We’ll send men out to find a prisoner, someone who can tell us how far we are from the monastery,” Thorgrim continued. “Also….” He paused, not wishing to say what he had to say, “we’ll have to speak with Ottar and his men. Kevin was our go-between, but he seems to have run off so now we have no choice. We’ll need the crews of all the ships if we have any hope of raiding Glendalough. Even then it’s in doubt. These Irish aren’t fools and they aren’t cowards, and there are a lot of them.”
              Heads nodded. There was quite a bit going unsaid because there was no need to say it. No one trusted Ottar and no one wished to fight by his side, but the only other choice was to abandon the enterprise, and having come so far that was not really a choice at all.

“We need to meet with Ottar and his lead men,” Thorgrim said. “We’ll meet on the shore, half way between his ships and ours. Kjartan, will you go to him and tell him?”

Kjartan gave a half smile. “I will, but you’ll get no answer back,” he said. “He’ll kill me on sight. And if he fails, his men will.”

Thorgrim frowned and he could see the uncertain looks on the others’ faces. “He’ll kill you?” Thorgrim asked. “You said he’s your brother.”

“He is,” Kjartan said. “But that makes no difference to him. I swore an oath to serve him. Back at the village, at the mouth of the river. And then I saw what he had done there. I always knew he was a madman but I…I don’t know what I thought.”

There was a note in Kjartan’s voice that Thorgrim had never heard before. Regret. Fear. Kjartan continued.

“I knew the gods would not favor a man who butchered for no reason, and I did not want to be cursed by his bad luck. So I abandoned him first chance I had. Joined you. I did not think we would see him again.”

“But we’ve been in his company for a week or more,” Skidi said. “Why has he not killed you yet? Or tried to?”

“He’s not seen me,” Kjartan said. Thorgrim nodded as he thought back to the few times that he and his lead men had met with Ottar. Kjartan had indeed made himself scarce. He had always kept
Dragon
well away from Ottar’s fleet.

“Ottar must not see much,” Thorgrim said.

“Only what he wants to see,” Kjartan said.

In the end Bersi was sent to speak with Ottar. When he came back he reported that Ottar had cursed and spit and raged and then at last agreed to meet once the men had had their supper. That was fine with Thorgrim. The later the better. There was much he still needed to learn, much he needed to do. He called Godi and Agnarr, his most trusted men now that Harald was away.

“I need you two to take a few men, whoever you wish, and go out beyond where our lookouts are posted,” he told them. “Try to grab some traveler, someone on the road. Bring them back here where I can question them. We need to know where Glendalough is, how far.” How he was going to question an Irishman without Harald there he did not know, but he hoped signs and the few words he had picked up of the Irish language would suffice.

Perhaps he would make Segan translate. Thorgrim was fairly certain the Irish thrall knew more of the Norsemen’s tongue than he let on.

Godi and Agnarr chose three others and they clambered over the high bank of the river and were gone. Thorgrim fetched two bowls of the strew that was cooking in a big iron pot over the fire and brought them back to
Sea Hammer
where he gave one to Starri and ate the other himself. The gray afternoon faded into night as Thorgrim waited for his men to return, hoping they would be back before he had to meet with Ottar.

To pass the time he sharpened his dagger, a thing he had not done in some time. Starri was the one who usually sharpened weapons. It calmed him, and his skill at the task was clearly a gift from the gods. It was a skill too great to be otherwise.

When the blade was as sharp as Thorgrim could make it, he slipped it into its sheath and stood. He thought Starri was asleep, so it surprised him when he spoke.

“It will take me hours to undo the damage you have done to that knife’s edge,” Starri said. He spoke softly and did not open his eyes.

“I know,” Thorgrim said. “That’s why I did it. So you would not be bored.”

Starri made a little grunting sound, and Thorgrim was about to say more when his attention was drawn to the river bank. Something was happening. It was nearly full dark by then, the fire bright and casting its illumination around the gravel shore. In the light of the flames he could see the unmistakable bulk of Godi coming down the banking, and with him Agnarr and another man. Their prisoner, he hoped.

Thorgrim moved to the bow and hopped down to the beach, and as he approached the fire he realized the man with Godi was Vemund, one of the men who had gone with Harald. He felt a sudden foreboding, a flash of dread, but he could see Vemund’s face and he did not look like a man who had come to report a tragedy.

“Vemund,” Thorgrim greeted him and took his hand.

“We found him on the road, lord, a mile or so away,” Godi said. “He was looking for us.”

“Harald sent you?” Thorgrim asked, careful to keep any note of concern from his voice.

“He did, Lord Thorgrim,” Vemund said. “He is well and his men are well. Mostly. We were surprised by horsemen, lord, Irish horsemen. Harald led the men in the fight against them. He fought like a bear, lord, killed more than I can count. Harald was at the forefront. He inspired the others.”

“Hmmm,” Thorgrim said. Vemund was pouring on the praise for Harald like a child pouring honey on porridge.
What did you do, that you so want to get in my good graces?
he wondered.
And Harald’s?

“We lost three men, lord, not Harald’s fault at all, but the Irish….”

“Good. It sounds like you behaved well, you all behaved well. Some of the horsemen escaped?” Thorgrim asked, and his clipped tone suggested that simple, unadorned facts would be preferred.

“Yes, lord,” Vemund said.

“And they sent no more men to hunt you down?”

“Not while I was still with them, lord,” Vemund said. “We continued on along the river, lord, for another hour or so and saw no other Irish. Harald sent me back to find you. Tell you what we learned.”

Thorgrim nodded. There was a crowd gathered now. What Vemund knew was what every one of them was wondering at.

“We met travelers, lord, going to the Glendalough Fair,” Vemund continued. “They knew something of the town.”

Thorgrim folded his arms and listened as Vemund relayed the tale. He told what they had learned of the defenses of Glendalough, the house warriors who had gathered there, the crowds assembled for the fair. The monastery was no more than four miles away by land, Vemund said, and the road by the river lead straight to it. A road crowded with travelers and flowing with plunder.

“Good, Vemund, you did well,” Thorgrim said at last and the relief on the man’s face was evident. “Get something to eat, and then you must return to Harald with word from me.”

Vemund nodded and someone handed him a bowl of stew and a wooden spoon. Thorgrim stared into the fire. It was nearly time to meet with Ottar and his men, but that was fine. He knew now what he needed to know. He knew where Glendalough was. He knew how far away it was and how to get there and how big the monastery was and how poorly fortified the town.

And most important of all, he knew more than Ottar did.