Fin Gall (14 page)

             
Thorgrim stepped back into the dining hall. “Go, you men! With the others!”

             
The wounded men were lifted in blankets and carried out the door, Harald last of all. Thorgrim heard Harald give a low moan, saw a glimpse of his yellow hair and white skin through the folds of the blanket as he passed. This would not be easy on the boy. Thorgrim wondered if, in saving his own life, he was sacrificing his son’s.

             
The fighting and the screaming and the rain were starting to work on his head. He felt the rage coming on, and the night seemed to swim in front of his eyes and he heard the sound of his own breath as he panted.

             
A figure was moving through the rain, coming toward him, running right across the open ground. Thorgrim stepped forward, his sword held ready. With his left hand he wiped the water and hair from his eyes. He growled. Whoever this was, if they were not one of his men, they were dead.

             
“Thorgrim!”

             
The voice seemed to come out of the rain, a feminine voice. Thorgrim looked around.

             
“Thorgrim!” It was the figure running toward him. He lowered his sword.

             
“Morrigan?” The young healer ran up to him, and when she was only a few feet away he could see it was her, her long hair plastered back on her head, her rough wool cloak soaked through and clinging to her. He felt the blinding rage lift like smoke swirling away.

             
“Where are your men?” Morrigan asked.

             
“They are circling to the gate. What is that screaming?” Even as he said it he realized the sound was dying away.

             
“Orm. I put a knife in his back. We have to go, the guards will come for us.”

             
“We?”

             
“I’m coming, too. They’ll kill me now, after what I did.”

             
Thorgrim nodded. He could not see Ornolf and the others, lost in the rain, but suddenly his appetite for sneaking around was gone.

             
“Come.” He walked off, stepped off fast for the front gate. His tunic was heavy with the rain and he wiped his eyes as he moved. Morrigan followed behind. He could hear shouting now, coming from Orm’s house. Not much longer.

             
“Who’s there?” The challenge came from someone Thorgrim could not see, someone huddled near the gate.

             
“Thorgrim Night Wolf of Vik!” he shouted and he did not break his stride. The guard stepped out of the shadows, sword drawn, shield on his arm. He was a much bigger man than Thorgrim. He wore a mail shirt.

             
This one will be hard to kill, Thorgrim thought. He could sense the man’s confusion. The guard did not know what was happening, who was who. The screaming must have unnerved him.

             
“Who are you?” the man demanded and Thorgrim swung his sword at the man’s neck; the move so fast and unexpected that the Dane just had time to raise his shield and stagger back under the blow.

             
Thorgrim had expected to hit the shield. He let his sword bounce off, spun around, wielding his weapon like a scythe, slashing at the man’s waist. But the man had a fast arm and his sword was ready to take the blow. Iron hit iron and the blades rang out with their familiar music. Thorgrim whipped his sword over his head, brought it down hard on the man’s arm. The man grunted, the blade slid off chain mail, and Thorgrim leapt clear of a counter-attack.

             
Thorgrim circled around and the man circled as well, face to face, both ready, both looking for the opening. But the guard had the luxury of time and Thorgrim did not. Thorgrim lunged, made the man move. The man beat Thorgrim’s sword away with his shield and lunged with his own.

             
Thorgrim swung his foot up, kicked the sword to one side, thrust his blade into the opening, the point right at the man’s face. The man flinched and Thorgrim’s sword caught his beard and Thorgrim could feel the blade drag over skin.

             
The big man roared and swung his blade up, knocking Thorgrim’s away before any real damage could be done. But Thorgrim had first blood, and he knew how that would work on a man’s mind.

             
He was right. The big man was angry now. He slashed wildly but Thorgrim dodged, wolf-quick, took another stab at the vulnerable exposed neck. Thorgrim’s world was closed down to that fight. There was nothing else. So when he heard Morrigan screaming his name it seemed to drift in from someplace he did not know.

             
“Thorgrim! Behind you!”

             
The big man hit Thorgrim hard with his shield, made him stagger under the blow and suddenly Morrigan’s words and the sense of movement behind came together in a warning too fast to find voice in his head. He leapt to his right, hit the mud with his shoulder and rolled, sprang to his feet as the man behind him was swinging his sword at air.

             
He did not get a chance at a second stroke. Thorgrim leapt off the balls of his feet, sword out, drove the point right through the man’s tunic, right under his arm.

             
Thorgrim swung the shrieking man around and used his body as a shield against the first man’s sword, but now there was the problem of pulling his own sword free before the other man cut him down.

             
He swung the dying man in front of himself again, was thinking on the problem when Skeggi Kalfsson and Snorri Half-troll came charging out of the night, swords in hand. The Dane was still turning to meet the new threat when Snorri drove the point of his sword through the man’s neck.

             
Beyond Snorri’s panting form, Thorgrim could see the big stockade door swinging open, the Red Dragons clustered by the walls.

             
He could hear shouts across the compound. The alarm sounding. There were many more men than had been on guard duty, and now they were turning out.

             
“Come along, Thorgrim!” Snorri shouted. “We’ve no time for you to play your games!”

             
They turned and jogged for the open door. Thorgrim remembered to turn around and look for Morrigan. She was ten yards back. Her hood was off and the rain was running down her face and her long hair. He waved her on, and turned and ran as well.

Chapter Sixteen

It is uncertain

where enemies lurk

or
crouch in a dark corner.

                            
Hávamál

              T

he thrall stopped screaming at last and Orm imagined she was dead. He gave her body a push and she rolled over on he
r back, her arm flung out to the side. He had taken her home from the mead hall, tired of humping his scrawny Irish housekeeper. He had expected a number of things from her. Taking the point of an assassin’s knife had not been one of them.

             
He did not know how many of the murdering swine there were, or if they were still in the house. He had waited and tried to listen as the thrall screamed her life away, but when she finally stopped, and the night was quiet, Orm still did not know how things lay.

             
He kicked off the blanket and climbed slowly out of the bed.              His bare feet hit the dirt floor, his hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword and he pulled the weapon from the sheath. He cursed the drumming rain that muffled all other sound.

             
Now he could hear shouting, off in the night. He cocked his head and tried to get a sense for what was happening. The Norwegian fleet? Magus leading a mutiny? He had no idea.

             
He was naked and he suddenly felt very vulnerable so he set his sword down on the body of the dead thrall and grabbed up his tunic from the floor. He was just pulling it over his head when he heard the outer door to his house burst open.

             
“Bastards!” Orm shouted, jerked the tunic down and snatched up his sword. If they were coming for him in force then he would go out like a man and commend his spirit to the Valkyries.

             
He flung the bedchamber door open and burst into the main room, his sword ready. There were four or five of them, dark shapes in the muted glow of the hearth. He went for the closest.

             
“Murder me will you, you whore’s son!” he roared as he swept the room with his sword. The man in front of him had time to do no more than grunt and fend off the blow with his sword, and Orm lunged again.

             
One of the others, by the hearth, thrust the oil soaked end of a torch in the embers. The torch sputtered and caught and the light spilled across the room. Orm saw that he was facing the half-dressed Magnus Magnusson and four of his most trusted men.

             
“You son of a bitch,” Orm growled, but the brunt of the anger was directed at himself.
Why didn’t I kill this bastard when I had the chance? Now he has killed me.

             
Orm lunged again and Magnus parried the blow and his expression was more shock and confusion than anything else.

             
“My lord, no!” Magnus shouted as he jumped back, clear of another attack. “We heard screaming...we came...”

             
Orm paused and in the light of the torch he looked at the men’s faces and he had to admit they did not have the grim look of men set on doing murder. He lowered his sword.

             
“Are you all right?” Magnus asked. “What was that screaming?”

             
“Someone tried to murder me but they killed a thrall by mistake.”

             
“A thrall? Morrigan?”

             
“No.” Orm glanced at the pallet by the hearth. “Where is that little bitch?”

             
“She wasn’t here when we came in, my lord,” said Kjartan Swiftsword, Magnus’s chief man, standing just behind Magnus. Orm scowled. Realization spread like the light from the torch.

             
“That treacherous little Irish whore...” Orm muttered and he pushed past Magnus and out the door, into the rain and the chaos.

             
He could see men running in the dark, fighting by the gate. He could hear the clang of iron on iron, and he saw the front door of the palisade swing open. He gasped, looked to his right. There were no guards at the dining hall. A dark place in the wall showed where the door was gaping open.

             
“That bitch!” Orm screamed into the night. “The damned Norwegians are out! Magnus, rouse the men, to arms, we have to stop them before they get to their ship!”

             
“Yes, Lord.” Magnus turned to go.

             
“See the men are organized. Don’t let them run out in a mob. If the Norwegians are laying a trap, our men will be butchered.

             
Magnus stopped. “The Norwegians have no weapons, Lord.”

             
“No, but they’re clever, and that’s more dangerous. Be careful.”

             
Magnus raced out the door and Orm followed, charging out into the night with only his tunic and sword. The mud sucked at his bare feet as he ran. Never again, he vowed, never again will I let any such traitorous bastards live...

              Ornolf led the men out the palisade gate. Thorgrim stood with the rear guard, a half dozen men, among the few with weapons, as they backed through the gate, watching for attack. None came, but it would not be long.

             
“They know we’re out!” Snorri Half-troll shouted to Thorgrim. “Look at them run!”

             
There were indeed men running, men tumbling out of the small buildings that lined the wall, men waving arms. The Danes knew what was acting, and they knew better than to attack in ones and twos. They were gathering, and when they did, they would form a swine array and fall on the Red Dragons in force.

             
“We have to get to the ship,” Thorgrim said. He stepped back faster and the others followed and then they were through the main entrance and onto the plank road.

             
“Shut the doors! Shut the doors!” Thorgrim shouted and Snorri and Sigurd Sow heaved on the heavy timber doors and swung them closed. They would not slow the Danes up long, the doors could not be barred from the outside, but at least it would make the Danes hesitate and gather to face a threat that might be waiting. It was something.

             
Thorgrim turned and hurried down the plank road and here was Morrigan, waving to him, and beside her three sheep herds, one armed with a sword, two with spears, as if the night was not weird enough.

             
“Hold up!” Thorgrim shouted to his men and they stopped.

             
“Thorgrim, these are my friends,” Morrigan said, and her voice conveyed the desperation of their circumstance. “They are here to help!”

             
Thorgrim looked with suspicion on the sheep herds. They did not look like fighting men. The two younger ones, in fact, looked terrified.

             
“Your ship’s ready, they’ve seen to that. We must go! Quickly, they will be on us!” Morrigan said and Thorgrim nodded.

             
Then Ornolf was there. “Thorgrim! We need weapons! Pointless to escape without weapons, they’ll hunt us down like dogs!”

             
Ornolf was right. Morrigan was right. The battle fever was up in Thorgrim and he did not want to think, he just wanted to fight. His eyes fell on the mead hall. The windows glowed with the weak light of dying fires. Thorgrim could picture the heaps of drunken men passed out on the floor like the dead after a grand battle.

             
“There!” he pointed with his sword “There are weapons to be had there! We’ll sack the mead hall and be gone!”

             
“Thorgrim, let me take the wounded to the ship!” Morrigan said. “They will only hold you up!”

             
“Yes, yes, take them to the ship,” Thorgrim said. Whatever she suggested, he would agree to. She seemed to affect his thoughts in some strange way, and he wondered if she was working some sort of magic on him.

             
This was not the time to think on that. “You men bearing the wounded, follow Morrigan! The rest, with me and Ornolf! Go!”

             
Morrigan waved on the men who carried the wounded in their blankets and they followed, hurrying down the plank road. Thorgrim and Ornolf led the armed men forward toward the mead hall that loomed like a cliff in the dark night.

             
Thorgrim held the men up outside the door. There was no sound from within, which had to mean most of the men there were passed out drunk. Even the rain would not have muffled the sound of Vikings in full revelry.

             
“You men,” Thorgrim pointed to a cluster of twenty, “go around the back, come in the back door, catch anyone trying to flee. The rest come with Ornolf and me.”

             
“Should we kill them?” Snorri asked.

             
Thorgrim frowned. It made sense to kill as many of the enemy as possible, in any circumstance. But even when the fighting madness was on him, Thorgrim did not care to butcher unconscious men. He did not think the gods looked favorably on such things.

             
“Only if they fight,” Thorgrim said. “Lets go.”

             
The others raced off for the back door as Ornolf pushed in the front. The fire in the big fireplace was dying, the few torches on the wall sputtering their last. There were forty men at least in the hall, slumped over the tables, sprawled on the floor, mouths open as they snored. They were all well armed.

             
Ornolf’s men spread out. They pulled swords from the scabbards of sleeping men and eased shields out from under prone bodies. They slipped daggers out of scabbards and used them to liberate purses hanging from belts. Snorri Half-troll tried to peel the mail shirt off a man roughly his size, but Thorgrim told him to stop.

             
Thorgrim turned to Hall Gudmundarson and Egil Lamb. “Find some sacks, collect up all the food you can find. Skeggi, watch at the door. Keep out of sight.”

             
It seemed to Thorgrim a long time that the silent looting went on, with no sound beyond snoring and the drumming of rain on the roof. Once he heard behind him a mutter of protest as one of the sleeping men stirred, but a swift blow to the head with the flat of his sword ended that.

             
“Thorgrim!” Skeggi, crouched by the door, called in a harsh whisper and Thorgrim moved fast across the hall, crouched beside him.

             
The door was opened just the slightest crack and through it they could just see the plank road. The rain came cascading from the roof and splashed up in their faces. The Danes were on the move.

             
There were a hundred men at least. They were in a swine array, moving cautiously down the road. Thorgrim could make out shields and swords, spears, helmets. They were well armed.

             
Slave-sons...