Norseman Raider (The Norseman Chronicles Book 4) (34 page)

The chief of the monks was thrust to the ground.  One of his knees struck a pebble.  He winced, then closed his eyes and mumbled Latin.  When his eyes reopened, the abbot was again at peace.  He appeared in better mental condition than I felt.

“Why the soldiers?” snapped Godfrey.  “They sounded Irish or Welsh to me.”

The abbot met the king’s gaze and slowly pointed with his nose at the king’s chest.  “Underneath that mail, my son, what do you wear?  Against the skin of your chest, what rests there and feels the beat of your heart?”

“I’m asking the questions,” said the king.  Gudruna sat next to Godfrey.  The pair certainly hadn’t made up.  They had more immediate matters to tackle.

“And I will answer them all, lord king.”  The abbot didn’t mock Godfrey.  His sincerity was disarming.  “Help me understand a few things.”
  The man paused as he lifted his knee off the pebble and adjusted himself into a more comfortable position.  “Help me and I’ll answer all your questions with the veracity of Christ.”

Godfrey examined his prisoner and gave a long sigh.  He reached into his collar and fished out a gold chain.  From it dangled a simple golden cross
.  “Is this what you wanted to see?”

“That will do, yes.  I met your father once.”

“Many men crossed the path of my father.  Many of them didn’t survive the encounter,” quipped Godfrey.

“Harald of Bayeux was a fighter, but was no brute.  He came to the faith with earnestness.  I met him around that time.  You know that was part of the reason he abandoned Normandy.  He didn’t like the heathens in Rouen
, their slave markets.”

“And another part of his reason was that the Normans were getting better at corner
ing the markets for goods beyond thralls.  He wanted something left for his son to inherit.  Harald wanted his son to become a king,” said Godfrey.

The abbot sniffed.  “You,” he said to me.  “Will you scratch my forehead?”

I looked at Godfrey, who nodded.  In turn, I told Aoife to scratch the man’s head.  She got up from where she sat next to the king and complied.

“Thank you,
lass.  You’ve fallen in with a rough bunch.”

“Not rough enough,” she said.

The abbot faced Godfrey.  “Harald was a man of action.  He was a Norseman, but not of old.  He, as I say, was no monster.  His raids were quick and if they could be painless, were.  He avoided many of the Christian lands, for he wanted alliances with them.  In a practical sense, Harald wanted trade.”

Godfrey scoffed, “You’re testing my patience.  Haraldsson will get trade.  He will get alliances.  He’ll get it all his way.”

“I fear Harald’s son will get it all and more.”

King Godfrey raised himself to his feet.  He walked to the crouching abbot.  Godfrey rested his hands on his hips.  “I have in my belt a great sword.  It is the sword of a king, a conqueror.  I am done reminiscing with you.  Answer my questions.”

The abbot frowned.  He appeared genuinely disappointed.  “Very well.  The soldiers came just weeks ago.  They began to build a fort across the island, on the northeast end.  The fort is hardly begun so the soldiers all lived in what was that village.”  With his bruised head, he pointed to the cracking and smoking silhouette.  It was the second village I’d destroyed that year.

“Were they Irish?”

The abbot slowly shook his head.  “No.  Most were of the native Dal Riatan.  Others, though, said they came from Wales.  They served a king down there called Maredubb.”

Godfrey and Randulfr exchanged glances.  “Why would they be here if they serve Maredubb?” asked Randulfr.

The abbot attempted to shrug, but the rope and stick behind his back pinched.  “You’re reaching the extent of my knowledge, I’m afraid.”

Leif threw a log
he’d been whittling into the fire.  A small burst of sparks scattered into the sky.  “I know why they were here.”

“Let’s stop with the mysteries,” commanded Godfrey.

“Of course.” Leif scratched his arm.  “You’ve let the whole world know you meant to come to Dal Riata.  You want it firmly and forever in your Kingdom of the Isles.”

“So?  That is a king’s right.”

“All men of power want more.  That’s how they protect what they’ve already got.  You expand into the frontiers so that your enemies are fighting and dying there, rather than attacking and stealing from your capital.  That’s what my father’s done in Greenland.  The skraelings are forever on the run.  My father’s just a jarl, but a king does much the same on a grander scale.”

“And your point?”

“A crafty man doesn’t tell his enemies where he will attack next.”

“But a strong king can afford to do so,” answered Godfrey.  He held his arms out and showed us all the campfires that dotted the landscape.  “When a king is mighty, with a string of
fortune, and a growing army, he can get away with telling the enemy exactly what he will do.  The idea is that the enemy, weaker, can do nothing about it.”

“Not unlike the Greek’s Cassandra, huh?” asked Killian, shuffling into our midst.  I smiled when I saw that he had not hurled himself onto his sword or the rocks. 
Gudruna was right.  I believe that he was working at being true to the One God.  But when Killian was knitted together in his mother’s womb, a thread was woven in that craved adventure.  It’s a thread that never would have seen use had Godfrey not thrust himself onto Man.

Godfrey and Gudruna
smiled at seeing the priest’s return.  Killian rested a hand on the abbot’s shoulder.  The abbot refused to meet eyes with our priest.  The prisoner looked away.  Killian’s melancholy returned.

“Cassandra or the norns, whatever,” Godfrey
huffed.  “They know the future.  My enemies know the future.  In it they die.”

Young Leif kicked at the earth, making a furrow with his foot.  “You’re right,
lord king,” said Leif, in a way that clearly said that he thought the king was wrong.  “What I mean is that since the Dal Riatans knew you were coming in force, they had to ally themselves with another.  And who else has reason enough to want to fight you other than Maredubb?  It makes sense.  It was his treasury you used to build this army.  The people here would want to ally with a man who doesn’t raid their churches, someone who is a true Christian.”  Both the abbot and Killian grunted their agreement.  “Horse Ketil probably helped with the introductions.”

Godfrey smiled.  “Aethelred too.  I’ve given him cause.
  Why not just say that everyone is against me?”

The king was not taking the news with the proper gravity.  We all shook our heads. 
The queen said, “Yes, and given time, Aethelred may send a force against you.  But Aethelred is safely in London.  Maredubb, whom you’ve seen with your own eyes, is just a few days sailing from here.  His army is either already in Dal Riata or preparing to invade Man while we are busy fumbling up here for your silly revenge.”

Godfrey at last paused to think rather than banter.  He turned to the abbot.  “So is this true.  Does Maredubb have an entire army in Dal Riata?  Or, was it just these few men?”

The abbot peered up at the king’s face which was illuminated with the flashing campfire.  “At last you cut to the heart.  Your questions come full circle, king.”  The abbot said the last word with not a little derision.  “I’ve been instructed to give you a challenge.  King Maredubb awaits you.  He doesn’t hide behind the walls of his Aberffraw.  He will not attack your stronghold on Man.”

“A great sea battle!” exclaimed Godfrey.
  My sea-king was excited at the prospect.

“No, none of you raiders will have the benefit of your longships if you accept the contest.”  The abbot straightened himself as best he could.  “How fitting that you and your
priest
, falling back to your old gods as you do, will meet your true Maker in the place where the ancient kings used to be crowned.  Maredubb is calling you there.  The pagans that haunt it will kill you.”

“Dunadd,” breathed Killian.

CH
APTER 12

Godfrey left fifty men on Lismore.  It was not enough to truly hold the island if someone meant to invade it, but he’d never left any presence in the wake of his previous raids.  Those fifty men were to travel across the narrow middle of the island and finish the fort begun by the island’s would-be defenders.  The rest of us sailed for Dunadd.  Gudruna, her secret clearly out, rode aboard the king’s flagship.

Charging Boar
was designated a thrall ship.  Four other ships in our small fleet carried slaves as well.  We carried eight women and three boys who stood at the precipice of manhood.  These Dal Riatan prisoners, taken from the woods outside the village, were bound tightly to the ship’s ribs.  They were in the way of our work.  It would be worth it though, for once we finished our task in Dunadd, Godfrey had said, the slaves would bring about a great profit at the thrall auction in Dyflin.  The Islamic Empire often sent merchants this far north.  The rich Moors or Berbers or Arabs never seemed to tire of receiving expendable labor.  The men, it was told, would be neutered and turned into house servants.  The female thralls, like women slaves everywhere, would be put to multiple uses.

W
ith the extra bodies onboard we bumped into each other more than ever.  Tempers flared despite having won the King of the Isles a new island, regardless of the fact that Godfrey and those serving him had a new source of wealth from which to draw.  I was still a little surly.

Magnus cut across the wake left behind by
Raven’s Cross
in order to find less choppy seas.  Our ship was temporarily buffeted so that I brushed up against Leif.  He was forced to push down onto the thin wooden bars of a cage in which we’d placed chickens we pilfered.  The cages had been roughly handled during loading, turned upside down and right side up again and again.  Leif withdrew his hand and looked at the palm.  It was smeared with the white and brown of manure.

“Watch where you lumber,” said Leif, uncharacteristically short-tempered.

“At least Brandr watches the hogs on another ship,” I said.  “Otherwise, all of us would smell as bad as you will.”

“Oaf,” said Leif, reaching over the gunwale and dragging his hands upward against the wet strakes.

“Do we have a problem?” I asked, feeling ready to fight.  I had hoped we did.

“Huh!  We have an enormous problem.  If you can’t see it, you’re blind.”

“Goat’s ass,” I said to Leif.  It wasn’t anything like a common curse.  I believe I made it up on the spot.  It fit the moment.  I gave him a shove.

“Godfrey is our problem.”
  Leif didn’t shove back.  I was disappointed.

“How so?” asked a cooler Magnus from the rudder.

“If Maredubb and his Dal Riatans knew we were coming to Lismore as everyone along the coastline of the Irish Sea did, why did they not lie in wait there?  Why not let us land, fight a small force at the edge of town, and then swoop from the woods while we sleep like babies curled up to our treasure.”

“And
curled up to females,” offered Tyrkr.

“Goat’s ass,” I said to Tyrkr.  He shut his mouth and went back to sharpening Leif’s sword.  It had received several nicks
during our skirmish on Lismore.

Leif continued, “And why tell all your plans to the abbot so that he could pass a challenge onto Godfrey?”

“You seem to know.  You always know so tell us, soothsayer.”  I was exasperated.  I wondered how I was to survive thirteen years of exile with such a man.  He was normally moderate and fair, but oftentimes maddeningly condescending.

“Because they know Godfrey and his hubris.
”  Leif sniffed his chicken shit hand.  He scraped it on the salt-water-washed strakes a second time.  “Our opponents have come to appreciate that Godfrey, once his interest is piqued, will not stop.  He is a bear come from the cave in late winter, so hungry that the mere scent of blood inflames his mind.  They tell the abbot to pass on the challenge after a small bloodletting on Lismore so that our king may be pulled into the boat.  The hook has been set.  Horse Ketil probably pulls us to land!  We will be on a dinner plate, feeding Maredubb and the Dal Riatans.”

“Why say nothing to Godfrey, then?” I asked.

“Would it have made a difference?”

Magnus and I looked at each other.  “No,” we agreed.

“Gudruna.  You could say something to her,” I said.

Leif frowned.  “The queen likes me for a romp, nothing more.  You see her look at the king.  You see her drive him.  She’s used me to drive him.  It’s easy to see her as the wise one, the brains.  The facts are murkier.  He often looks the fool, because it is Godfrey who has to work at the edge of the sword.  Gudruna stays behind and pushes her man for more and more.”

“Not today,” I said.

“No, not today,” agreed Leif.  “The queen rides with th
e king.  They make up over there under covers.  When they emerge, they’ll be of one body and mind.  They will drive us like oxen.  Gudruna and Godfrey, both, want all of Dal Riata.”

“So we are stuck,” said Magnus.

Leif threw his hands up.  “We are oath bound to an animal and his bride who are not crafty enough to avoid the trap set in plain sight.  We will die in Dunadd.”

And where is Dunadd, you might ask. 
Dunadd sat in the middle of a narrow, jagged finger of land that jutted southwest into the northern tip of Irish Sea from Scotland.  It was the ancient capital of Dal Riata, which itself was built by an Irishman hundreds of years earlier.  Now Godfrey, the Scots, and the Irish all laid claim to various sections of the old kingdom.

I had never been there, but many of the men in our widely travelled crew had.  They said that despite the fact that it was situated on a formidable hilltop,
the capital was not insurmountable; a distantly comforting thought since there had to be a reason Maredubb and the Dal Riatans chose it as the place to meet.  The reason was, of course, that the site gave our enemies some advantage.  What those benefits were, I knew not at the time.  I would soon enough.

Our discussion had gone on and on as we drew closer. 
“Then you’ll have to find a way out.  You did it on Anglesey.  You had us build ladders at Watchet.  You’ll do it again,” I said, though not entirely convinced by my own words.

Leif reluctantly nodded and flopped
back onto the baggage heap.  His head bumped a tough leather sack and he angrily pulled it out and peered in.  The bag contained the five short iron rods that Leif had stolen from the mint at Watchet.  The sight of them calmed Leif.  He smiled, cinched the bag neatly, and set it back under his head.  This time he lowered himself slowly and used the rigid sack and its hard contents like a pillow.  Leif stared up at the small pennant that snapped smartly in the wind.  He was preparing to retreat into his mind.  Leif could be a-Viking in his head for a long while.

I plopped down on another man’s war chest with the intent to polish my saex.  It was important that I try to push the fear of the coming engagement from my head, lest it take root in my heart and the souls of the entire army. 
Like the insane, I forced myself to laugh as I drew out my short blade.  I chuckled at the thought of silly Aoife and how she had tried to throw a whetstone.  I peeked over at her small head on the king’s ship.  At least she refrained from trying to kill us today.

“You
two are unbelievable.”  It was faithful Tyrkr.

“You are a race of men descended from Sigurd the dragon slayer.  How can you fret about a yapping Welsh king?”  Tyrkr flapped Leif’s sword accusingly.  “While I may be a thrall here and now, I am from the line that gave the world Arminius
of the wald.”  I didn’t know who that was at the time.  Since then, and with my reading of the Latin and talking with learned men, I understand that Arminius had led a set of disorganized tribes to an improbably fantastic victory over the world’s greatest army, wiping every one of his enemies from the battlefield – every one.

“The legends say that Arminius never lost hope.  He pushed his way through every trial.  Is Maredubb the greatest king the world has ever seen?”

I thought the question rhetorical, though he waited for an answer.  “No,” Leif said at last.

“He is not!” agreed Tyrkr. 
The thrall was as clear on this topic as any he’d ever bothered to speak on.  “And the Dal Riatans are they on the rise or on the fall?”

“Fall,” I said quickly.  I nodded a
nd smiled, for real this time.  I did not laugh like a crazy person.

The lowly thrall, simple, but utterly dedicated beyond reproach
to Erik and his sons, made a speech in his accented Norse.  Where he fell short of words as he translated his native German into our tongue, nothing of his vigor and heart was reduced.  His passion and ferocity shined through his oration.  I straightened my back as I listened.

“The thralls talk around the dung heap.  We carry our master’s shit to the mound and congregate there.  The talk all last night was about Dunadd.  What this man said about the citadel.  What that man said about a time he visited the
hill fort.”  Tyrkr pointed again, this time with a balled fist.  “Know this.  Godfrey is a king who fights.  I’d rather follow a master who fights than one who lounges in the longhouse rubbing his hands in worry.  The same goes for you.  You’d rather charge after a king who reaches for more.  You say he doesn’t think about his actions beforehand.  So what!  He’s led us this far.  The other thralls say that Dunadd had once been among the great northern strongholds.  Kingships were bestowed atop its rocky banks.  Yet, King Godfrey was right to leave straight away.  Dal Riata and its crumbling capital are mere vestiges of their former glory.  They were grapes, fat and ripe for the harvest by our sea king and you, his Ring-Danes and Ring-Norse, are his reapers.”

Those in earshot sat in stunned silence.  Or, maybe it was more like shamed silence.
  We had doubted our victorious king and his eager queen.  It took a slave to set us on the true path.

Leif slowly climbed back to his feet.  He took the whetstone from Tyrkr
and his sword.  Leif began sharpening it himself.  “And don’t forget his Ring-German,” said Leif with a smile.

Our concerns were gone.  We were young and we would win.  There was no doubt in our minds.

We were also foolish.

. . .

The tide and the winds were in our favor.  The breeze smelled of victory as we slipped into the small mouth of the River Add.  The lands to the right side, or southwest, of the river were higher, populated with a forest of oak.  The shores and terrain to our left, northeast, were lower and consisted mostly of swamps and bogs.

“Terrific,” mumbled Magnus.

“What?” I asked.

“Where there are swamps, there are mosquitoes.”

There were.  After moving upriver just several fadmr, we swept through thick swarms of the pests.  Magnus slapped at his neck and flapped at his ears in order to drive the bugs away.  He’d remove a hand from the rudder, swat, and replace it.  Maddeningly, he repeated the feat time and again.  I let the critters feast.  At any one time I had three mosquitoes nursing from my bloodstream.  Sure, it was more than bothersome.  Yet, I was confident that in just a few more weeks as the days shortened further and the nights grew colder, I would survive and the pests would die.

I had to survive the coming encounter first, however.

Raven’s Cross
quickly ran aground in the very center of the Add.  Magnus reacted properly and slid us to shore before
Charging Boar
saw a similar fate.  The boats behind us did likewise, making an open lane down the middle of the river.  Our crews all began hopping out, shields ready for war.

“Thor’s beard!” Godfrey swore. 
He and Gudruna walked next to one another.  As Leif had predicted, their determined faces showed unity.  They would both lead us in the coming fight.  “Dunadd is inland a few of the English miles.  Stop acting like nervous old women.  We’re not under attack.”

“Who puts a capital city inland
away from the sea?” I asked.  “It can’t be more than a dung pile.”

The king splashed down into the river himself.  “And if it’s not, we’ll make
it into one before we leave.  We’ll also make it a pyre.”  His men followed, gathering their rucksacks for the trek over land.  “Halldorr, name fifteen men to stay behind and guard the ships.”  The king and queen were already marching to the northeast, into the bog.

“Wouldn’t it be best to stay on the higher ground and move on the other side of the river?” asked Leif.

“It’s deceiving to look at from here,” answered Killian for the king, since Godfrey was already out of earshot.  “The River Add quickly curves and moves away from the heights.  Once it turns, both sides will be thick swamps.  The Dal Riatans call it the Moine Mhor, the Great Moss.”

“Swamps and mosquitoes,” mumbled Magnus.

“I’m afraid so, lad,” said Killian.

I called out the names of fifteen men
just as I was ordered.  I left a healthy split of Norsemen, Danes, Manx, a Greenlander, Welsh, and Irish so that no one band could overpower the other.  The newcomers, I believed, still needed plenty of supervision.