Fin Gall (33 page)

             
They both cried out, despite themselves, and then it was quiet as they lay wrapped in one another’s arms. As their breathing subsided, Morrigan could hear the snoring of the men, the grinding of the bow on the shingle, the night birds in the brush. She pulled the crown under the bearskin and soon she and Thorgrim were asleep.

             
For all the long night they slept, and in that time there was no threat to the men or the crown.

             
It was still dark when Thorgrim shuffled out from under the bearskin. Morrigan, half awake, was aware of the movement, wondered why Thorgrim had to leave their warm place.

             
And then the thought came to her that perhaps he had shifted, perhaps he was off to prowl the night in his wolf form. She felt a sudden panic, and a horror at the thought. Her eyes shot open and she rolled over.

             
Thorgrim was standing beside the bearskin, pulling on his trousers, very much a man. He looked down at her in surprise. “I didn’t wish to wake you,” he whispered.

             
Morrigan just looked at him. He was not a pretty man, but good looking in a different way. In a way that made a woman feel safe and that was the best way.             

             
“Where are you going?”

             
“I have to check on the watchers,” he said. He knelt down, kissed her, grabbed up his tunic and sword and was gone.

             
At daybreak the longship put out to sea, the big men hauling at the oars and then spreading the sail to the early morning breeze. They tacked north, making several long boards, until the gaping green jaws of the River Boyne opened up for them, a watery version of the great Roman roads, leading them into the heart of Ireland.

             
Morrigan stood at her familiar place by the rail, watching the shoreline close around the ship, glad to be on a river and not the wide ocean. The ocean frightened her with its vastness, and the constant worry that the Vikings would just sail off with her on board. For years now her life had been carried along by the whims of various men. She had killed Orm, escaped thralldom, and would not easily yield her freedom again.

             
They worked their way up the river with the sail still drawing in the southeasterly wind. The ocean swells gave way to the smooth water of the River Boyne, and soon the ocean was lost from view altogether, and Morrigan was happy for that.

             
They carried the sail for another hour before the wind failed them entirely. Then the yard was lowered and the long oars broken out and the Norsemen set into their slow, rhythmic stroke, a stroke Morrigan knew they could keep up for hours. It was no mystery to her now how these men became so strong of arm.

             
By midday they were well up the Boyne, and there was little to see from the
Red Dragon
’s deck, save for the odd sheep herd who fled with his flock at the first sight of the longship, and the occasional ringfort along the shore. And though there was low talk among the men about stopping and raiding one or the other, nothing was done, and the steady stroke continued uninterrupted.

             
They came around a wide, sweeping bend in the river, where it ran though open country with occasional stands of trees here and there. Tied to the south bank was a boat, a small leather boat of around twenty feet in length. It looked abandoned.

             
“Look there,” Thorgrim said to Ornolf, nodding toward the boat.

             
“Humph,” Ornolf said. He sounded unimpressed.

             
“What do you think, Morrigan?” Thorgrim asked.

             
“A fishing boat. I have seen a hundred of its like.”

             
“Such a boat could be of use to us,” Thorgrim said.

             
“Damn the thing,” Ornolf announced. “Stupid Irish, building boats from cowhides!”

             
Morrigan said nothing. She knew how to keep her tongue still. Being a thrall taught a person that, if nothing else.

             
“Still, I would like to have a look,” Thorgrim said, and there was a tone in his voice that did not admit of questions. Ornolf made his grunting sound again. Thorgrim turned the steering board to starboard.

             
They crossed the river to the far bank and Thorgrim called for the men to toss oars. The long sweeps came up together, a great bird folding its wings, and the
Red Dragon
glided silent over the distance between her and the leather boat. Men along the larboard side leaned over the rail and grabbed onto the boat, checking the longship’s way.

             
Thorgrim stepped off forward. He did not invite Morrigan to follow, or Ornolf either, but Morrigan’s curiosity was up now, wondering what it was about that humble boat that attracted Thorgrim’s interest, and she followed behind.

             
Thorgrim stopped in the longship’s waist and looked down at the leather boat. Nets, buckets, fishing gear were strewn around the bottom. A dark robe was lashed from gunnel to gunnel over the forward thwart, making a rude shelter underneath. Thorgrim stepped over the side of the longship and onto the fishing boat. For a moment he did not move, just cast his eyes around. Then with a quick movement, he snatched up the long oar that lay across the thwarts. He stared at the blade of the oar, squinting and frowning.

             
He climbed back aboard the longship, bringing the oar with him. “Ornolf!” he called and Ornolf stepped forward. Thorgrim held out the blade of the oar, and now Morrigan could see that it was covered with a series of cuts and slashes. She looked closer. She recognized the runes of the Norsemen.

             
“See here,” Thorgrim said as he held out the blade and Ornolf in turn squinted at it. His lips moved before he spoke.

             
“They look like Harald’s runes, to be sure,” Ornolf said. “There are few men educated enough to write who still do it as poorly as my grandson. Can you make the words out?”

             
Thorgrim studied the oar blade. “‘Harald Thorgrimsson... made...these runes... He has gone...in search...of his...’”

             
Thorgrim looked up, made an odd face. “‘In search of his bride,’” he said. He shook his head.

             
“Hah!” Ornolf shouted. “Either Harald mistakes his runes, or he has gone off and married some Irish bitch!”

             
Thorgrim looked ashore, his eyes moving far off across the countryside. “One way or the other, we go after him.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Men in ships, warriors with spears,

without any faith, great will be the plague,

they
will inhabit half the surface of the island...

                                         
The Voyage of Snédgusa ocus Maic Riagla

            
9th Century Irish Poem

              M

agnus knew the girl would be valuable, damned valuable, though he was not sure how.

              She was no dumpy farm girl or fisherman’s wife, that was clear from the first glance. She was too lovely by far, a genuine beauty. Not the rustic prettiness of the peasant girls, her skin was smooth and white. Her clothes, wet and rumpled though they were, were clearly cut of expensive cloth and well made.

             
He listened as she spoke, trying to make out the words. He had picked up some of the barbaric Irish tongue during his time in Dubh-linn, and in his association with Cormac. He had the impression that she was telling him who she was, and how important she was. He heard “Máel Sechnaill mac Ruanaid” and perhaps that she was Brigit mac Ruanaid, and if he heard right, then that was the best fortune he could have hoped for.

             
Magnus Magnusson had been riding west from the coast for two days. Asbjorn was gone, and Magnus had to assume he had returned to Dubh-linn and alerted Orm to his betrayal. Cormac Ua Ruairc, once an ally, was now a sworn enemy. As far as powerful men with whom to align himself, that left only Máel Sechnaill of Tara.

             
Magnus had followed the River Boyne west in the general direction of Tara. He intended to go to Máel Sechnaill and offer his services, and the information he held concerning Cormac Ua Ruairc’s plans and his current incursion into Brega.

             
And now, it seemed, Máel Sechnaill’s daughter was at his feet and begging assistance.

             
“My name is Magnus Magnusson, I am a friend of your father’s,” he said, hoping she understood the Danish tongue. But apparently she did not, because her eyes grew wide at the sound of his words. She took a step back, and then another.

             
“No, wait!” Magnus shouted, but it was pointless as she clearly did not understand. The girl turned and fled, back in the direction she had come from.

             
“Oh, Thor take this bitch!” Magnus shouted in exasperation. He dug his heels into his horse’s side and charged after her. She was running hard, trying to reach the wooded place in which she had been hiding. Magnus got his horse in front of her and she stopped, turned, ran in another direction.

             
Magnus worked the horse to cut off her escape, but he knew he could not catch her that way. He reigned hard to a stop, slipped to the ground as the girl sprinted for the trees. The muscles in his legs protested as he ran after her, the stiffness of mile after mile in the saddle made him hobble like an old man. The girl was nearly at the trees by the time he got a hand on her shoulder and pushed her to the ground, stumbling and falling on top of her as he did.

             
He fell with a grunt, half on the grass and half on the girl, and even as he was sorting himself out she slammed her elbow into the side of his head with such force that it snapped his head around and blurred his vision. He felt her foot drive into his stomach and he gasped in pain.

             
“You bitch!” he shouted. She kicked him again, squirmed out of his grasp. He head was still spinning but he managed to grab her ankle and pull her down just as she was struggling to her feet.

             
She twisted around and raked his face with her fingernails and Magnus felt the five searing lacerations across his cheek. She wound up to slash him again, but this time he caught her wrist and jerked her arm toward him, pulling her over so she was face down on the grass. She was kicking and screaming Gaelic curses, but he had her now. He threw a leg over her back, straddling her as she twisted and tried to get her hands on him.

             
It was like riding a bear - he was safe as long as he did not get off. He remained on top of her for a moment as the pain from his various wounds subsided and his head cleared. Then he took the belt from his waist and lashed her wrists together. It was no easy feat, but Magnus had spent his boyhood fishing off the coast of his native Denmark and was well used to subduing a thrashing and squirming catch.

             
He stood at last and pulled the girl to her feet. “I am trying to help you, you stupid girl,” he said, spitting the words, though he had no hope that she would understand him. From the fury in her eyes and the vicious sound of the words spitting from her mouth it was clear she did not think she was being helped.

             
No matter. If she was the daughter of Máel Sechnaill she was worth everything to Magnus, either as a way of winning Máel’s gratitude by returning her, or by holding her as a hostage for money and safe conduct. He pulled at the bitter end of the belt. The girl struggled mightily - it reminded Magnus of trying to get a goat to go where it does not want to go - but he managed at last to pull her over to his horse.

             
Magnus gave a hard pull and the girl fell to the ground. He wanted to put her up on the horse, have her ride in front of him, but he could think of no way to get her up there without getting his head kicked in. He could beat her into submission, sure, but that would not earn him Máel Sechnaill’s gratitude.

             
“Ah, damn you!” he said out loud. He pulled a length of walrus skin rope from his saddlebag, tied a loop in the end and looped it around the girl’s neck. He tied the other end around his waist and climbed up in his saddle.

             
“For the sake of your neck, I suggest you follow,” he said, his voice calm as his equilibrium returned. He nudged his horse into a walk. The girl, her face a mask of unadulterated fury, struggled to her feet and followed behind. She had no choice if she did not care to be strangled.

             
They headed off across the field, Magnus chaffing at the slow pace, since he could move no faster than the girl could walk, and she was doing nothing to help quicken the pace. He felt very exposed, out in the open, tied to the girl in that way.

             
Hostage...
he thought. He could not ride up to Máel Sechnaill mac Ruanaid dragging his daughter by the neck. He would not be welcomed as a hero that way.

             
So he would have to find a place to stash her, go and find Máel Sechnaill, hope there was someone at Tara who could speak Danish. He cursed to himself.

             
He had thought, on finding the girl, that his ill fortune was turning around, but now it seemed it was getting worse. He was not sure what to do with her now. And he couldn’t let her go either, let her go to her father and tell tales of what he had done, not if he wanted an alliance with Máel Sechnaill, which he did. Without Máel Sechnaill he would be alone in Ireland and as good as dead.

             
I suppose I could always kill her,
he mused.
Hide her body, she would play no part in this...

             
The more he thought on it, the more it seemed that might be the only way off this bear. He had thought the girl a gift from Odin, but now he wondered if Loki, that cunning trickster, had not arranged this. This was how the gods played with men, handing them a thing that looked like good fortune, then turning it all around.

             
Perhaps kill her, bring her body to Máel Sechnaill, tell him I tried to save her from bandits...

             
He could not decide, and the cuts on his face from the girl’s nails were starting to hurt. He stopped and slid off the horse and tied the rope that was around the girl’s neck to the horse’s reins. He took a skin of wine from where it hung on his saddle and with the corner of his tunic dabbed at the cuts on his face. The girl glared at him.

             
“This is thanks to you,” he said. The girl spit out some words that did not sound like an apology.

             
Magnus drank some of the wine, then fished out some of the dried meat he had taken from a traveler he met on the road. He squatted on his heels and ate. He held up a piece to the girl, an offering, and she spit at him.

             
Magnus stood and stretched and would have loved to lie down but he did not dare as long as he had this Irish wildcat on her long leash.

             
He walked some distance away and sat and pondered his circumstance, how to parlay this girl into the best advantage. After some time he stood again.
Continue to Tara, see how things lay,
he decided. He could come up with no better plan than that.

             
He walked back to where his horse stood nibbling at the green, wet grass and the girl sat slumped on the ground. “Time for us to be on our way, my beauty,” Magnus said and the girl spat out some Irish curse. And then Magnus saw something move, far off, some motion across the field they had just traversed. He stood quite still and looked.

             
It was a man. He was running toward them. He was still some ways off, but Magnus could see he had yellow hair and was carrying a staff, perhaps a spear.

             
The girl turned and looked in the direction that Magnus was looking. If she knew who it was, she made no indication.

             
Now what?
Magnus thought. Whoever it was, he was coming for them.
Is it her lover? One of her father’s men?

             
He could not get away from this fellow at the pace he was moving, all but dragging the girl on the leash.

             
Magnus sighed.
Very well, I’ll kill this fool,
he thought, irritated at yet another delay.

             
He unsheathed his sword and worked the kinks out of his arms. The way the idiot was rushing headlong at him suggested that it would not be a long fight, anyway. He swung his shield off his shoulder and worked his hand through the straps and took hold of the handgrip behind the boss.

             
No more than a boy...
Magnus thought as he watched the attacker come on. He seemed to be dressed in the Norse fashion, which made the whole thing stranger still.

             
The fellow was perhaps three perches away when Magnus braced for the attack. He was young and he did look to be a Viking and Magnus knew what would happen next. The fool, in his enthusiasm, would charge with the spear. Magnus would turn the point aside with his shield and extend his sword and the fool would run right on to it. He had done it a dozen times, fighting these untrained peasants.

             
Ten paces away and the young idiot was still charging. Magnus smiled, just a bit, at the predictability of the whole thing. He held his shield chest high, braced, and the young fool did something that Magnus never saw coming.

             
He stopped, so sudden you would have thought he could never keep his balance, and instead of leading with the spear point he flipped the weapon around like a quarterstaff and brought the butt end up from below, below Magnus’s shield and right between his legs.