Dubh-Linn: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 2) (30 page)

Let us make our drawn swords glitter,

you who stain wolf’s teeth with blood.

                                                                      Egil’s Saga

They moved across the open country, Thorgrim and the small band with him. The road would have been better. It would have led them directly to where Thorgrim wanted to go. But they could not take the road. That much was clear. In open country they stood a chance of escape. If the Irish did not have dogs.

  Harald’s right arm was draped over Thorgrim’s left shoulder, and a man named Osvif, who was of Arinbjorn’s hird and took the oar opposite Harald aboard
Black Raven
, had his arm over Thorgrim’s right. Twenty paces behind, Starri Deathless staggered along, as did four others, the sum total of those whom Thorgrim could get moving.

  He had ordered them all, all the men in the camp, to rise, to take up arms. He had yelled at them, kicked them, cajoled them, pleaded, but those seven were all that he could get to respond.

  Harald was so accustomed to following Thorgrim’s orders that he turned to with never a complaint, even though he could hardly walk. Starri, too, had moved at Thorgrim’s command, rising to his knees, which he insisted was as far as he could go. Thorgrim squatted beside him and talked to him softly. He planted an image in Starri’s mind of the death he now faced, kneeling before his enemy, a pool of vomit on the grass, too weak to even hold a sword, let alone fight.

  “This is how the Valkyries will find you, Starri. Starri Poordeath they will call you. They’ll leave you to be eaten by pigs.” It was cruel, but it was effective, and it was sincere. Thorgrim did not like the thought of Starri killed, but he could not tolerate the thought of him butchered with never a weapon in his hand. A man who had so courted a noble death, a man who so deserved his time in Valhalla. His friend.

  And those words were enough to convince Starri to stand, with Thorgrim’s help, and stagger off.

  The others, Osvif and a man named Halldor, another of Arinbjorn’s hird, a man from Ingolf’s hird whose name Thorgrim did not know, and Nordwall the Short, were all the men Thorgrim could manage to rally. There seemed to be no reason for it; what they ate, perhaps, or a natural resistance or pure determination; but whatever it was, these few were the only ones of the men who had sailed from Dubh-linn who could still stand and stagger forward.

  Thorgrim’s first impulse was to fight, but when he saw the well-armed column marching from Tara, eighty men at least, with spears and swords and shields and perfect health, and then looked at his own men, who could barely walk, let alone wield a sword, he decided that a hasty departure was the strategy of the day.

  “Come along,” he said and headed off across the open ground, toward where he remembered the edge of the wood began. His men shuffled after him, and he quickly realized that they would never be able to move fast enough to put sufficient distance between themselves and the Irish soldiers. So he took Starri’s arm and Nordwall’s over each shoulder and half supported them, half dragged them a hundred yards toward the wood. There he left them to stagger on and went back for Halldor and Ingolf’s man, and then for Harald and Osvif. And then he took Starri and Nordwall’s arms and began the whole process again. In that way he managed to get his band to a place where they were swallowed up by the dark before Morrigan’s men even reached the camp they had left behind.

  As he moved back and forth, ferrying his men to safety, Thorgrim kept careful eye on the camp, trying to divine what was happening. The torches swirled like flying embers in the dark, and Thorgrim expected to see them sweep across the field as the Irish slaughtered the Norse who lay curled on the ground. The men from Tara would move fast, not because the Northern host represented any threat, but because the work was distasteful, shameful to real soldiers, and they would want to be done with it. But that was not what Thorgrim was seeing.

  Instead, he saw the torches move back and forth, out into the camp and then back to where they had started. And finally in the flickering light he saw wagons.

 
Wagons?
That could only mean one of two things. Either the Irish had brought wagons to haul the bodies away, or they had brought wagons to haul their prisoners into Tara. And if the latter was the case, then that meant the poison they had been given was not fatal. Morrigan, he knew, was skilled at the use of plants and herbs and he imagined she could get whatever result she wished, be it sickness or death.

  By the time they reached the woods, the wagons were starting to move. Thorgrim hustled his men in through the bracken and into the trees. The cover gave him comfort, though in truth the night had hidden their escape entirely.

  “We’ll pause here a moment,” Thorgrim said. His words earned no response, just the sound of crunching brush as one by one the men crumpled to the ground. Thorgrim peered out through the trees. The wagons were ringed by the torch bearers and rolling away from the camp. Thorgrim watched them swing away from the line of tents. He saw the light from the torches illuminate the gates of Tara and the high earthen walls, saw the gates swing open and the wagons move on through.

 
By all the gods, what is this?
Thorgrim thought. Morrigan had taken them prisoner, all of them. It was the only explanation. The Irish would never have taken the bodies of the slain, or men who were dying of poison, into Tara. So that meant they were being kept alive. He did not think that Morrigan had any pleasant fate in mind for them, but as long as they lived there was hope.

  And that meant his men would live, too. The poison was not fatal. Harald and Starri would live.

  But only if he could keep them safe. Morrigan would soon realize that he and Harald were not among the prisoners. Would she care? How much of a threat did she think they were? Enough to hunt them down? He had to assume she would send men after him.

  “I have good news,” Thorgrim said in a loud whisper. No response. “The poison, it has made you sick, but I am fairly certain it will not kill you.” He waited. No response. “Is that not good news?” Harald managed a groan. From the others there was nothing.

  “The bad news is that we cannot remain here,” Thorgrim said next. He reached down and grabbed an arm, Halldor’s as it happened, and pulled the man to his feet. Halldor swayed and groaned, but he remained upright. One by one he pulled the others to a stand. “Come on,” he said, and plunged further into the woods. Behind him he heard the shuffling, agonizing, stumbling steps of the small handful he had led to freedom. Freedom that might be temporary indeed.

  The woods were thick in places, the undergrowth dense and the night dark. In any circumstances it would have been tough going, but with men who could barely walk, progress was all but impossible. They staggered along for half an hour or more, and Thorgrim did not like to think of how little a distance they had covered. In truth he had no idea, but he did not think it was much. He did not even know if they were going in the right direction.

  The woods were too dense for him to continue hauling the men forward two at a time, and he could not risk letting them get separated. Once they lost sight of one another there would be no joining up again. So they hobbled on in a single file, moving at the pace of the slowest man, which happened to be Osvif, who swayed and stumbled and heaved for breath.

  It did not take too much of that for Thorgrim to realize it was a waste of time. They might get another half mile if they shuffled on through the night, at which point there would be little they could do beyond lying down and letting death take them. Better to stop now, to rest, and hope they could find strength enough to save themselves.

  “We’ll stop here,” Thorgrim said when he had found a thick clump of trees that would offer some shelter and hiding. “In here, among the trees. We must rest, and see if that will make us well enough to reach the ship in the morning.” That was all Thorgrim could think to do – reach the ship. The ship was sanctuary, the ship was escape, it was a familiar thing in a strange land. Even if that sanctuary was an illusion, it still drew him like a lodestone.

  He heard no protests from the others, no suggestions, no comments at all. Once again freed from the force of Thorgrim’s authority, which alone had been driving them, they collapsed to the ground and did not move again.

  Thorgrim stood absolutely motionless and let the night settle around him. He heard the rustle of little creatures in the underbrush, the swish of the trees’ upper branches as they caught the soft breeze. He could smell the pungent soil and the dried leaves underfoot. He could make out the dark bulk of trees and brush in the tiny light of the stars that crept in through the dense growth overhead. There was nothing out of place there, save for himself and his men, and the forest was already ignoring them.

  He found a thick tree and sat, leaned back against it. He was weary in such a way as he had not been in a long time, a weariness that went well beyond the physical. He told himself to stay awake, keep alert, keep his senses tuned to the forest. He knew he should not sit. He told himself to stand. He assured himself he would, in a minute. Five minutes. Surely he deserved five minutes rest?

  The next thing he knew he was shuttering into wakefulness, and things had changed. How long he had slept he did not know. It was still black night and he was still in the clump of trees, but his senses were sharper now. His men were in the same positions in which they had collapsed, they had not moved. He could see the trees and the brush, dim but visible in a way they had not been before. His nose picked up and pulled apart every scent that drifted toward him from the forest. He thought vaguely that it was the sleep, that the little rest he had enjoyed had sharpened him, but that was not right.

  He leaned forward from where he sat, tense, alert, and in his belly a growing fury, an anger he could feel running though him in the way one feels a hot drink running down one’s throat. He wondered what it was that sparked that anger, though the question came not as words in his head, but rather as feelings, instincts more powerful than words.

  And then he heard it, far off, and the smell came to him on the night air.

 
Dogs!

  They were coming after him, him and his men. They had dogs. He could hear the baying, far off, but even in the seconds it took for him to understand, he heard them getting closer. But they would not reach him there. They would not find his men, they would not lead men-at-arms with swords and spears and leg irons to where his people slept.

  With no thought at all, no plan, Thorgrim was off, running through the woods, running toward the sound of the dogs. The brush whipped past him, the ground seemed to fly by as he ran, the weariness replaced by the drive of his rage. He thought he could taste blood, like a distant memory, in his mouth.

  The hounds were closer now, he could hear them coming, and behind them the clumsy tread of the men who held their leashes. A dozen men at least, and a dozen dogs, crashing along the trail of scent left by him and his men in their stumbling escape. Thorgrim was following the same trail, following it back the way they had come, he and the Irish hounds converging on some unseen point.

  Then he stopped. The trail of scent was broken where it ran over a narrow stream. Thorgrim recalled having passed it before. It formed a natural break in the path that led right to Harald and the others. He could smell the water, and smell the approaching dogs and the men. He could smell the acrid scent of burning wood and cloth. The men had torches. He could see pinpricks of dancing light flickering through the trees, far off.

  Thorgrim crossed the water and found where the trail took up again. He paused there, moved around in the brush, breaking branches, leaving his scent, making his presence there as obvious as it could be. He stopped, listened, his ears picking out the sounds of pursuit, his nose filled with the stink of men and dogs. They were close now. He felt his teeth press together. But this was not the time. Not now. He had to lead them away from this place, away from the real trail.

  He bolted to his left, into the thick brush, felt the saplings and tree branches whip against him as he ran. He followed the bank of the stream for a little way and then plunged into the woods again. He stopped. He could hear the whine of the hounds, a confused baying as they came to the place where the trail seemed to take off in another direction. The smell would be different, because it was just him on the new trail, and he did not know if the hounds would be fooled.