Fin Gall (21 page)

             
Máel Sechnaill turned to Olvir Yellowbeard, who watched with wide eyes the results of being uncooperative. It was his turn now, and if Olvir Yellowbeard knew nothing, then it would be the turn of the one they called Harald. The fact that Harald might be the son the jarl, and thus a hostage worth bargaining for, would only keep him alive for so long.

             
“Where is the crown you took from the curragh?” Máel Sechnaill asked Olvir Yellowbeard. Flann translated.

Chapter Twenty-Two

You can’t feel a battle

in
your bones

or
foresee a fight

                     
Hávamál

              T

horgrim Night
Wolf was caught in a river, deep and cold and fast moving. He swam hard but it did him no good. The water had him in its grip and swirled him away, and as much as he fought he could do nothing to save himself.

             
He felt his body hit against rocks and drag along the bottom but there seemed to be nothing he could do free himself from the nightmare because the water was in charge and he was not. He felt his fury mounting at his own helplessness.

             
And then he realized he was not helpless, that he did not have to be swept down the river. He felt the spreading fire of strength inside him, and he found he was not in the river anymore, but on the bank now, powerful and ready.

             
He slipped out from under the blanket of furs, moved soft and silent among the men sleeping around the deck. There was a lookout in the bow, but he did not hear Thorgrim and he did not turn.

             
Thorgrim slipped over the side of the longship and dropped to the shingle beach on which the
Red Dragon
was hauled up for the night. They were still a day or two’s rowing from the cove where he and Ornolf had buried the Crown of the Three Kingdoms. The last embers of the fire they had built on the shore glowed like dragon eyes in the dark.

             
Thorgrim moved along the surf line, low and swift, alert, and disappeared into the brush that ran down to the beach. There were enemies out there, he could feel them in his bones. Dangerous men. A lot of them. He moved through the low brush, instinct guiding him, his footfalls lost in the sounds of lapping waves and the cry of nightjars.

             
His eyes felt like they were glowing as they pierced the dark. His mouth was partway open. His breath came in soft pants as he moved. There was someone nearby, Thorgrim could smell him, and though he could see only dark shapes under the sprinkling of stars, his nose told him infallibly where the man crouched.

             
Thorgrim circled around wide, stepped from the brush into an open place and moved at a silent loping trot over the wet grass. The smell of the man came powerfully to his nose - dry sweat and wood-smoke and mead and the sharp smell of iron. And then he saw him, crouched down against the dark brush, looking toward the beach where the longship was grounded out. Watching. He did not see Thorgrim Night Wolf coming up behind.

             
Thorgrim was twenty feet back when he stopped. It was entirely his decision whether the watcher lived or died, and the watcher did not even know it. But this was not the watcher’s night to die, at least not by Thorgrim’s hand. The gods or the spirits of the land or the trolls in the woods might have different plans, but Thorgrim did not care about the watcher, only about who had sent the watcher there. He turned, loped off up the hill, inland, away from the sea.

             
The camp was a mile or so from the beach, well inland, where it would not be detected easily. Thorgrim moved at an easy pace, and once he had gained the high ground of the hill that sloped up from the water his nose told him exactly where it was. He passed three more watchers spread out along the way, placed so they would see any man who tried to slip by.

             
The camp was well guarded, too, huddled in a clearing surrounded by a stand of oaks, with men posted on all quarters. If it had been on open ground, Thorgrim would not have dared approach. But the men who had picked the spot had looked to the stand of trees to shield them, which it did, and it shielded Thorgrim as well.

             
He moved through the trunks, his feet falling on a carpet of leaves and sharp acorns. The smells were everywhere now, overwhelming his senses - smoldering coals and cooked food and unwashed men. Horses. Many horses. He could hear them shifting nervously and making little snorting sounds.

             
He came to the edge of the trees and peered out through the bracken. There was a guard there, tense and alert, looking out into the night. At one point he looked directly at Thorgrim, as if he was looking him in the eyes, but he did not see the Night Wolf.

             
Thorgrim circled the camp. There had to be nearly two hundred men there. Most were huddled on the ground, but there were also tents, two of them, big, circular tents, like a nobleman might carry on campaign. They glowed from the inside, lanterns still burning, even at that hour.

             
Around the back side of the camp he came on an odd sight, a fat man, stripped nearly naked and covered in filth, with a chain around his neck, staked down to the ground. A guard sat on a rock nearby, bored, while the fat man quietly sobbed. There was something familiar about the fat man, like he was part of some dream Thorgrim had had, but Thorgrim could not place him.

             
He circled the camp twice, took in all he could. These men were his enemies. In younger days he might have begun to kill them right then, one at a time, killing silently and methodically. But he was older now, and he knew that thinking had to come first, planning, and then the killing if the killing was the thing to do. He slipped off into the dark.

             
Thorgrim awoke in the pre-dawn. He was tired, as if he had been running all night. The strength was gone from his arms and legs. He was not sure he could move. He could feel dirt on his hands.

             
Morrigan was sleeping beside him, her back pressed against his chest and his arm was around her but he did not recall how they had come to be that way.

             
With a groan he pushed himself up on his elbow and looked around. There was no hint of the morning sun. Overhead the stars had wheeled around in the sky, the only sign that time had passed at all. The
Red Dragon
was moving gently in the lapping waves, creaking and grinding on the shingle.

             
The night began to resolve in his mind, like a fog clearing away to reveal an unfamiliar landfall behind. He remembered the watchers. He remembered the camp.

             
Thorgrim sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. Morrigan stirred, rolled on her back, propped herself up on her elbows.

             
“What is it?” she asked in a whisper.

             
Thorgrim shook his head. He was not sure yet. It was all coming into focus. Morrigan waited, silent. She was a patient woman, Thorgrim had noticed it before. He liked that.

             
“There are men out there,” he said at last. “More than a hundred. They’re watching us.”

             
Morrigan looked with wide eyes toward the beach as if she might see this army gathered in the dark. “Who are they?”

             
“I don’t know.”

             
For a long moment they were silent. Morrigan pressed closer to Thorgrim, pressed herself against him, which surprised Thorgrim but did not displease him.

             
“Magnus,” Morrigan said at last. “Magnus or Asbjorn.”

             
“Who?”

             
“They were the foremost of Orm’s men, the dubh gall who lorded over Dubh-linn,” Morrigan said. “Before I killed him. Now his men will be looking for us.”

             
“Yes.” Thorgrim remembered now. It seemed a long, long time ago. Of course it would be Orm’s men. It had not made sense to Thorgrim that no longships had come in pursuit. In that wind it would have been easy enough to catch the
Red Dragon
, easy enough to overwhelm her poorly armed crew. But with the
Red Dragon
stripped of her sail, men on horseback could easily keep up with her, and never be seen.

             
They heard a grumbling, shuffling, banging forward and they tensed. Thorgrim’s hand fell on the hilt of his sword. In the starlight they saw Ornolf, like an old bear stumbling off to hibernate, clambering up over the side of the longship. He held his trousers up with his right hand and only after he had gained the deck did he pause the tie them.

             
“Ornolf!” Thorgrim called in a harsh whisper and the jarl made his way over. What little mead they had pillaged on their way out of Dubh-linn had been divided up among the men, and Ornolf’s share amounted to far less than he would generally have consumed, so Thorgrim had reason to think the jarl would be somewhat clear-headed.

             
Ornolf knelt on the deck. He looked at Thorgrim and Morrigan and gave them a lascivious grin which Thorgrim ignored.

             
“There are men out there,” Thorgrim nodded toward the beach. “One hundred and more. Maybe two hundred. They’re camped a mile inland but they have watchers in the brush.”

             
Ornolf turned and looked toward the beach, just as Morrigan had, and like Morrigan he could see nothing.

             
“How do you know?” Ornolf asked.

             
“I saw them,” Thorgrim said.

             
Ornolf studied Thorgrim’s face. “Was it a wolf-dream?”

             
Thorgrim hesitated. “Yes,” he said at last. He really was not sure.

             
Ornolf nodded. Thorgrim knew that for his father-in-law, a wolf-dream was the strongest possible proof of a thing. And indeed they were rarely wrong.

             
“They are Orm’s men. They must be,” Morrigan said. “They must have guessed we would retrieve the crown. They’ll attack once we have it.”

             
“Damn the crown, then!” Ornolf said, loud enough that several men shifted and made grunting noises.

             
“Without the crown, my lord Máel Sechnaill will never release Harald,” Morrigan said. “I wish it was not so, but it is.” There was a note of sincerity in her voice, and it surprised Thorgrim.

             
The three of them were silent, the night filled with the lap of water, the rustle of leaves in the morning breeze, somewhere on shore.

             
“Very well,” Ornolf finally said. “We’ll get the crown, we’ll bring it to this whore’s son, Máel Sechnaill.”

             
Yes
, Thorgrim thought. But it is different now.

             
Before, they were the hunted. They were the dumb goose that does not see the stalker creeping up behind. But now they were the wolf, who allows pursuit until the time is right for him to turn and attack.

             
“Let us mount the dragon’s head on the prow again,” Thorgrim said. “If there are any spirits in this land, let them know that in us they have something to fear.”