Dubh-Linn: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 2) (41 page)

 
Maybe they won’t be such fools,
Thorgrim thought.
Maybe they’ll stop before they are cut down
. He knew, however, that it was too much to hope that Starri would do the reasonable thing, and he could only hope that Harald would. And so he ran, shield thumping against his side, his soft leather shoes parting the wet grass, ran to get into the fight before any hurt came to his son, his boy, his boy whose feelings he had so callously, thoughtlessly brushed aside.

There was nothing, Harald realized, that cleared the mind and honed it razor sharp quite as effectively as a mile run through driving rain at an enemy that outnumbered you two hundred to one.

  His breath was starting to come hard as he and Starri closed the last ten rods. Running across the field, he had watched the enemy forming from a loose line into a real shieldwall, and he was pleased that they considered Starri and him as threat enough that they needed to take such measures. But as the physical exertion drained the fury away, and Harald considered the solid shieldwall before him, he began to see that they were not quite the threat he hoped, and that they would be lucky to take even a few of them out before they were cut down.

  “Starri! Starri, hold up!” Harald shouted, and Starri came to a stop a few feet ahead of Harald. He turned, and his eyes had that weird look that Harald had seen before, and he knew he could not hold Starri back for long.

  “Let us at least catch our breath,” Harald gasped. The odds were enough against them without their going into the fight gasping for air, though he noticed that Starri was not breathing nearly as hard as he was. Seventy feet from the enemy and Starri began to make low animal noises and spin slowly around like a leaf in a whirlpool.

  “Just a moment, Starri, just a moment,” Harald said, sucking in air as hard as he could and spitting out rainwater. He straightened and some sound from behind caught his attention. He turned. Two hundred feet behind, his father and the huge fellow, Godi, were charging at them in a swine array.

 
So that’s why they formed a shieldwall
, Harald thought, embarrassed by his mistake and glad that he had not mentioned to Starri that he thought the preparations were for them.

  Starri Deathless saw them as well, and the expression on his face took on a veneer of panic at the thought of missing his chance to attack the shieldwall single-handed. “Come along, Harald, come along, they will be up with us!” he shouted, and then, unable to wait a second longer, turned and raced on toward the line of soldiers ahead.

  Harald also took a step forward, and then another, building his pace back to a run. He had made the decision to charge the line, even if it had not been made with the clearest mind, and he could not now stop and wait for the others. That would be as much as admitting that his actions had been a mistake, and he would not admit that. Even if they were.

  Starri was now thirty feet ahead, closing fast with the line of soldiers. Harald lifted Vengeance Seeker above his head and reflexively twisted his forearm to re-adjust the grip on his shield when he had an unsettling realization.
I have no shield…

  This would take some change of tactics, and he looked up to see how Starri dealt with the problem, since Starri did not have a shield either and never did. The berserker was charging hard at a point in the shieldwall, and Harald could see the men there ready for him, no doubt baffled by this madman charging straight at them, and all alone. Spears emerged from behind the line of shields, wicked iron points reaching out ahead of the men, ready to impale Starri as he flung himself at the line.

  Starri was ten feet from the shieldwall when he went down. Harald pulled to a stop and gasped, certain, in that second, that Starri had tripped and fallen and would now be run through by half a dozen spears. But Starri had not tripped. He went down head first and hit the ground with his shoulder, rolled once, completely over, and sprung back onto his feet, inches from the shieldwall, well past the line of spear tips that were now too far extended to reach him.

  He let his momentum carry him into the line of men, hitting the round wooden shields with his shoulder. The men who held them were trained to stand fast and hold back the press of an attacking shieldwall but Starri’s onslaught took them completely by surprise. Harald could see the looks of shock on their faces as Starri was suddenly on them, smashing a hole in the line, flailing with ax and sword with such maniacal fury that the soldiers within the arc of his weapons could do nothing but hold their shields up and cower.

  Harald saw a shield splinter under a blow from Starri’s battle ax, saw the short sword drive through the opening that was created, and then a spray of blood and the man fell away as Starri wrenched the ax free and swung on the next man. And Harald realized, to his disgust, that he had stopped running and was gaping like a little boy witnessing his first fight. He raised Vengeance Seeker over his head, let a shout build as he regained the momentum he had lost, charged the last few rods toward the enemy, eager to get in the fight ahead of his father, eager that everyone should know the truth, that he was no more hesitant than Starri Deathless to plunge into so mad a battle.

  He was fifteen feet away, heading for the edge of the hole Starri had driven in the shieldwall, when the men there saw him coming. A second before, all eyes had been on Starri, but in that last instant they saw Harald coming and the spears came out, the black dagger points. Harald thought of Starri’s rolling attack but he doubted he could pull that off, and he did not care to die sprawled at the feet of these men, stabbed like a wild boar.

  Harald could not roll, but from a dead run he could make himself stop in his tracks. It was a trick he had practiced often and found quite handy indeed; the heels dig in, the body leans back to check the momentum and he would render himself motionless when the instant before he had been at a full run. He was now just feet away from the nearest spear point and he could see the look on the faces of the men bearing the spears, the certainty that he would run right on to them. But then he slammed to a stop, so close the nearest spear tip was touching his chainmail, and just as the surprised soldier tried to thrust further, Harald swung Vengeance Seeker
around in a great arc, knocking the spears aside, then leaped forward, past the spear points, right at the men in the line.

  The men in the shieldwall had been shocked once by Starri’s attack and now Harald’s threw them off balance again. Harald reached out with his left hand, grabbed the upper edge of the shield nearest to him and jerked it close, pulling the man who held it along too. To his right someone tried to drive a sword into his gut, but Harald twisted the shield in the way of the thrust. He swept Vengeance Seeker down between the two shields, felt the blade hit steel as he indiscriminately knocked weapons aside.

  The one whose shield Harald held was tugging it back, trying to break it free from Harald’s iron grip. He drew his sword back as if to cleave Harald’s head in two, but before he could bring it down, Harald lashed out with his fist, his sword still clamped in his hand, and punched the man full in the face. His nose crumpled under the blow and his helmet went askew and he staggered away. Harald deftly twisted the shield out of his grip as he fell, then held it up, wrong side to, as a spear struck out though the press of men, aimed square at his heart.

  The shield took the thrust and Harald twisted it free, flipped it over, thrust his arm though the leather strap and took hold of the iron grip behind the boss, even as he raised Vengeance Seeker
and warded off another blow.

 
Very well, I have a shield…
he thought. Now he was ready to join the battle in a serious way. To his right Starri was unleashing his berserker rage on the Irish. Harald could not actually see the man, just flailing weapons, and bleeding men-at-arms crawling across the grass or lying still. The screaming was constant, some Starri’s, some the soldiers, and under it, the snapping of weapons, the renting of wood, and a crunching sound that Harald did not like to think on.

  Harald Broadarm slammed against the shieldwall again, but this time it did not move, and he reached out with Vengeance Seeker for a target, thrust and parried. He was in a bad place. It took a shieldwall to fight a shieldwall, not one man, no matter how good he was. Even Starri would soon be overwhelmed, and these men, these men-at-arms, knew their business. Harald could see them starting to step out to his right and left, extending that portion of the shieldwall around, and soon he would be fighting men on three sides, and he could not do that for long.

 
Go back, go back!
The thought rang in his head, but it was a hateful thought. Retreat, disgrace, it was not what he had been trained to do, it was not their way, the Northmen, so he parried another blow and thrust again. He caught a movement to his left, someone advancing from the shieldwall, and he swung his shield around to deflect the thrust of his sword. But now he was exposed on the front. A spear tip like a snake strike whipped out and he just managed to knock it aside with his sword.

  Shield back in front, but now there was someone to his right and before he could react something unyielding as stone struck him on the side of the head. He stumbled, saw the ground whirl past, the men in front of him strangely indistinct. He tried to make the images clear in his eyes but he could not. And suddenly, through the blur of rain and muted colors, he thought he saw his father, and the big man, the one called Godi, charging

past on either side.

I raise the ring, the clasp that is worn

on the shield-splitting arm,

on to my rod of the battle-storm

in praise of the feeder of ravens.

                                                                        Egil’s Saga

That brief moment when Thorgrim had stopped and set the men in the swine array made the difference. It allowed him to catch his breath, allowed him to go on again, but the revivification did not last long. Running in mail was never an easy task, and the mail shirt he had borrowed from one of Ornolf’s men was not particularly light, and so he soon found himself once again gasping for breath. To make matters worse, he had to keep pace with Godi who, with each step, covered half again as much distance as Thorgrim did.

  In his favor was the fact that a swine array did not want to go into battle at a full out run. Better to hit the shieldwall at a fast but controlled pace. Thus, it was not entirely for his own benefit that he called for Godi and the men in the front ranks to slow to a jog.

  Thirty feet from the line, and he could see Harald fighting for his life, and doing a very credible job of it. But there was only so much one man could do against a shieldwall, only so long he could hold out.

 
A minute more, Harald, stand fast a minute more…

  To the right of where Harald was making his stand there was a great whirl of activity, a chaotic, wild fighting like two packs of wolves tearing into one another. Thorgrim guessed that in the middle of all that he would find Starri Deathless. He changed the angle of his advance a bit so that he and Godi would hit the shieldwall just to Harald’s left side. Fifteen feet now, the faces of the men-at-arms behind the shields clear and sharp, the grunt and clang and rent of battle loud in his ears. It all worked on Thorgrim’s spirit and he felt a new energy surge through him and he felt the battle cry build and then burst out as if it was not something that came from him at all, but some other living thing desperate for escape.

  He saw the concentration on the faces of his enemy, he saw the fear, and then he and Godi slammed into the shieldwall like a breaking wave, and behind them he sensed, more than saw, the rest of the Northmen hitting the wall, spreading down its length as surge after surge slammed into the enemy’s defense.

  The men-at-arms staggered and stepped back under the power of the impact. Viking weapons rose and fell, reaching beyond the edge of the shields, or thrusting in those gaps that could be found between the overlapping disks. To Thorgrim’s right, one of the Northmen tried too late to deflect a spear thrust. The weapon caught him under the chin and the combined force of the thrust and his forward momentum drove the point home until it erupted from the back of his skull in a welter of blood and bone. The man flailed but he did not scream because he was dead before the reflex to scream even hit him, and he went down, the spear still through his skull, an Irishman disarmed.

  Iron-tooth was a thing of beautiful balance; a long, straight, double- edged blade with a leather and wire bound grip and a heavy pommel to counterbalance the weight of the steel. Thorgrim used that to good advantage, not hacking as if his weapon was a battle ax but thrusting over and between the shields, looking for his targets and lashing out with a skill honed by long practice on straw men.

  The shieldwall wavered. The men took half a step back, Thorgrim could feel them giving. Somewhere to his left he heard one of the Irishmen scream, a scream of terror, like a woman. He saw the man turn and run, deserting his comrades, flinging his weapons away. He made it ten feet before one of the Irish officers put a sword through his gut. The wall where he had left a hole closed up again, the disciplined move of well-trained men.

  “Push them back! Push them back!” Thorgrim shouted. Godi at his side was fighting like a fury, his shield like a battering ram, his massive body exerting tremendous force against the line as his sword slashed at anything within his substantial reach. Thorgrim caught a glimpse of Harald. The boy was bleeding from a laceration to his face, but it did not look too bad, and with the effort he was putting into the fight, Thorgrim guessed he did not even know the cut was there.

  Some commotion on his right, and Thorgrim stole a glance, enough to see the great bulk of Ornolf the restless pushing his way through his own men to get at the shieldwall and the Irish beyond. He had reached the line at last, after the great effort of humping it over nearly a mile of open ground, but the fight was in him now, and like Thorgrim he seemed to forget age and exhaustion as he thrust his shield against the Irish wall and wielded his battle ax as Thorgrim had seen him do a hundred times before, in a hundred different fights in a dozen lands in more than twenty years of going a’viking.

  Again the shieldwall shifted, just a bit, the Irishmen taking a half a step back, but that was a start, a weakening, and Thorgrim knew it meant they would break soon. But as he lashed out with Iron-tooth, he saw something he did not expect – more men, fresh men, coming to that weak spot in the shield wall, rushing to shore it up.

 
Reinforcements…the buggers have held men back…
Thorgrim thought and he knew for certain now that they were not fighting a bunch of farmers, but soldiers who knew their business.

 
And why are we fighting?
he thought, and he realized he did not have an answer for that, not really.

  And then a horn sounded, loud, cutting like a sharp sword through the noise of the battle, the drumming of rain. It sounded again and was joined by another and then another, and whatever it meant, the Irish at least understood. The shieldwall stepped back and back again, not a retreat, really, but a disciplined disengagement, a coordinated move. The shields were held chest high and the weapons held back, ready to strike, but they did not strike. Up and down the line the sound of the fighting fell away as the Irish backed off, not yielding, but not fighting either, and the Northmen, not understanding what was going on, stepped back as well, and let weary arms hang at their sides, weapons in hand.

  There was a bustling to Thorgrim’s right and he saw four of the Norsemen haul a frantic, flailing Starri Deathless out of the mass of Irishmen. His eyes were wide and he seemed to be foaming at the mouth and he was as covered in blood as if he had painted himself.

  Thorgrim rushed over to where, with great difficulty, the four were holding Starri down while Starri in turn lashed out and kicked and twisted.

  “Starri, Starri!” Thorgrim knelt beside the berserker and yelled in his face. Starri’s wild eyes rolled over and caught Thorgrim’s and held them. Thorgrim put his hand on Starri’s shoulder and he felt the man relax under his touch. “Let him go,” Thorgrim said to the four and they released him, then leapt to their feet and backed off quick, eager to get out of the way.

  “What is it? What’s happening?” Starri asked.

  “I don’t know,” Thorgrim said. The horns were still sounding but now no one was moving. Up and down the line, Irishmen and Vikings stood, a few yards between them, and they waited for what would come next.

  “Are we dead?” Starri asked.

  “More or less,” Thorgrim said. He stood and Starri sat up and looked around. There was some movement off to the right, the shieldwall swinging back, opening up. Then to Thorgrim’s astonishment a tall white horse appeared through the parted men, and on its back, in a robe edged with gold trim, sat Princess Brigit. She held a sword in her hands, and she held it with surprising authority; not the timid, unfamiliar grip with which he had seen other women - women not from his homeland - hold weapons. Brigit held the sword like a woman accustom to holding swords, and from her high perch she searched the faces of the men who were now silent and looking up at her.

  “Harald!” she shouted, when she finally saw Harald Thorgrimson among the Northmen, “Harald!”

  Harald stepped forward, a curious look on his face – anger, confusion, uncertainty. Brigit called out more words in her Irish tongue. Harald nodded, said a few words back, then in a commanding voice, a voice that carried over the length of the field, he called, “Princess Brigit nic Máel Sechnaill has asked that I translate her words. It is her you see before you.”

  He nodded to Brigit, and Brigit went on again in her odd language, Harald listening close and nodding. “She says that we Northmen came with her to help restore her to the throne of Tara. That we were promised gold and silver for our efforts….” He paused as Brigit added more. “She says that has not changed. That we should not fight her. That we should join with her and these men to defeat the army at Tara, and then the gold and silver will be ours.”

  If Brigit had expected shouts of agreement, a rousing cheer of excitement at this alliance, then Thorgrim figured she must have been disappointed. The Norsemen made no sound, just stood their ground and stared at her. Silence hung over the field, making the rain sound louder still.

  “Night Wolf,” Starri said, standing. “I don’t think this is Valhalla.” The rain was washing the blood away, not evenly, but in patches, and it made Starri look even more nightmarish then before. “By the gods,” he said, looking around, “Valhalla had damned well be better than this.”

  Brigit spoke again, her voice loud, a tone of command. Harald translated. “What say you?”

  A voice came rolling down from the far end of the line, and Thorgrim recognized it as belonging to Hrolleif the Stout. “I say, we’ve had enough of these lying Irishmen,” he shouted. Men stepped aside and Hrolleif came stamping down toward the break in the line, pointing at Brigit. “And worse, these lying Irish wenches!” That elicited a murmur from the men. Thorgrim looked at Harald and he could see the boy was struggling with how, or if, to translate those words.

  But then another voice came through the rain, a voice that made Thorgrim flush with anger at the mere sound of it, a voice that brought equal measures loathing and revulsion. Arinbjorn White-tooth pushed his way to the center of the line in Hrolleif’s wake, hurrying as if to catch up, a “me, too” quality to his actions.

  “You do not speak for the men, Hrolleif,” he shouted. Thorgrim shook his head. This was pathetic. If Arinbjorn had ever held any position of command, it was clearly gone now. He sounded more like a nagging housewife than a jarl commanding hirdmen.

  “Nor do you, Arinbjorn!” Hrolleif bellowed back. “I would not follow you to the privy if I had to puke!”

  Ingolf stepped up. “We will meet on this in council. All the lead men must discuss this!” he shouted and that met with a murmur of approval because it was the first sensible thing anyone had said. Harald’s eyes met Thorgrim’s and Thorgrim could see in them a plea for guidance. Thorgrim nodded and Harald translated Ingolf’s words to Brigit. Brigit answered, and Harald called out, “The Princess sees the wisdom of this, but she begs you hurry as we must attack soon. Every minute we delay, the defenses of Tara will grow stronger.”

  The lead men broke from the line of Norsemen and retreated to a spot a dozen yards away; Arinbjorn and Bolli Thorvaldsson, Hrolleif, Ingolf, Ornolf. Thorgrim slid Iron-tooth into his scabbard and headed toward the group, then stopped and turned. “Harald!” he called. “Join us!”

  Harald hurried over, looking surprised and uneasy. “Why, father? I’m no jarl, or even hirdman.”

  “No,” Thorgrim agreed. “But you are the only one who has any idea of what is going on here.”

Ruarc mac Brain sat his chestnut mare and watched as Brigit expertly swung her horse around and walked it back to where he and Breandan mac Aidan and the others waited. This had been her idea, and he had been more than a little skeptical at first, but now he was starting to think she was right. The sharp note of the horns sounding
disengage
, the men-at-arms stepping the shieldwall back, had been enough to stop the Northmen from fighting. Now, they might be swayed to change allegiances. Or change them back. Or some accursed thing. He could hardly keep it straight.

  “They are talking, Lord Ruarc,” Brigit said. From his horse, Ruarc could see that a horde of them had gone off for a private conference. These he took to be their leaders, though with that heathen swine one could not tell leaders from stable hands.

  “Very well. Let us hope they come to the right decision.”

  Ruarc mac Brain did not mind fighting, in fact he rather liked a good battle. But he could not tolerate pointless violence, could not stand to see men’s lives thrown away for nothing, and that was exactly what had been happening just minutes before. Why these men, who had come with Brigit from Dubh-linn and had been tricked and nearly killed by Flann mac Conaing, had then turned on
him
, whom they did not know, he could not imagine.