Fin Gall (6 page)

             
With a growl Thorgrim stood and walked forward. His men stood aside as he approached, and watched with nervous expressions, which only irritated him further.

             
“What’s this?” Thorgrim demanded.

             
Sigurd Sow coughed nervously. “This fellow, he said he had to come aboard.”

             
Thorgrim looked down at the man in the hold. He was dressed like a Norseman. A wealthy Norseman. His fine-made clothes covered a corpulent frame.

             
“I am Asbjorn,” the man said, wiping his hands together. With some effort he struggled out of the hold and on to the deck. “I am the port reeve.” His tone was curt and officious. The Vikings shuffled nervously. Some cleared their throats. Thorgrim felt his anger rise.

             
“Yes?”

             
“I’ve come to inspect your cargo. A certain percentage will be claimed by King Orm.”

             
Thorgrim just stared at the man. In younger days, in the wolf-spirit, he might have killed the reeve by now, but age had taught him how to hold the anger at bay. For a while.

             
Sigurd stepped closer. “Let me talk to this one, Thorgrim, no need to concern yourself.”

             
“No,” Thorgrim said and pushed Sigurd aside, not hard, but with feeling. To Asbjorn he said, “Make your inspection and get out. We’ll do a reckoning in the morning.”

             
Asbjorn grunted but he clearly saw where discretion was warranted. He struggled down into the hold, continued to poke through the goods there as the
Red Dragon
’s men lifted up the deck planks and Thorgrim, with forced control, watched in silence.

             
“These are Danish goods,” Asbjorn observed, and there was a hint of accusation in his tone.

             
“Yes,” Thorgrim said.

             
“But you are Norwegian?”

             
“Yes. Aren’t you? Isn’t this a Norwegian longphort?”

             
“No, it is not.” Asbjorn struggled out of the hold again, and again made a wiping motion with his hands, as if to rid himself of the
Red Dragon
’s filth, and the motion irritated Thorgrim to the extreme.

             
“Dubh-Linn is a Danish longphort, and has been for this past year or more. And you,” Asbjorn poked an accusing finger into Thorgrim’s chest, “have some explaining to do.”

             
Thorgrim looked at the finger like he could not believe what he was seeing. He heard someone gasp. His hand shot out like a snake, grabbed the fat digit before Asbjorn could withdraw it. He twisted, felt the bones on the edge of snapping. Sigurd Sow grabbed his arm, Snorri Half-troll grabbed his shoulders and the others pulled him back as Asbjorn screamed like a pig. Thorgrim felt Asbjorn’s finger slip from his grasp.

             
The
Red Dragon
crew pulled Thorgrim back five feet, a safe distance, and held him tight. “You better get out of here, now,” Sigurd Sow said to the port reeve. Asbjorn stared hatred at Thorgrim, and Thorgrim stared it back, but both men were sensible enough to keep their mouths shut.

             
“I’ll be back in the morning,” Asbjorn said as he backed off the ship, his tone a threat. Thorgrim struggled against the men who held him but they knew better than to let go, even if it meant a thrashing after the port reeve was gone.

             
Asbjorn hurried off and when he was lost in the dark Thorgrim shook off the men and stamped aft.
Stupid, stupid...
he thought. The black mood didn’t strip him of his senses, at least not after the blind fury had passed. He knew that he had made a grave error, but he had been unable to fight the spirits that possessed him. He could still see that offensive fat finger wagging at him.

             
He leaned against the sweeping sternpost and looked up the rise at the longphort of Dubh-linn. There were lights burning here and there, and the windows of the mead hall glowed from the fire and lanterns inside. He could hear the sound of the revelry, like a soft land breeze blowing down to the river.

             
Danish? Dubh-Linn is Danish now? How could that have happened?

             
Quite easily, Thorgrim realized. Danes and Norwegians often fought side by side, but just as often they fought one another, in the same way that the English and the Irish were generally so busy fighting amongst themselves that they had nothing left to fight off the Norsemen.

             
He thought of the crown. The dream had told him not to bring it to Dubh-linn and now he saw why. But even without it, they were in a precarious situation.

             
“Sigurd Sow,” Thorgrim called as he walked forward again. Sigurd stood. He looked nervous. “Come with me. And you five.” With a sweep of his arm he indicated half the men left on board. “The rest of you keep a bright watch while we’re gone.”

             
“Where are we going, Thorgrim?” Sigurd Sow ventured.

             
“To find Ornolf. We have trouble, and now I’ve made it worse. It can’t wait.”

Chapter Eight

A clear head

is good company

Drink is a dangerous friend.

                          Hávamál

              A

sbjorn the Fat ran up the plank road until his heaving breath would not allow him to run a foot more. He stopped, gasped,
cradled his aching finger in his left hand.

             
Asbjorn envisioned problems as if they were one of those intricate carvings beloved of Norse artists - long, snake-like creatures all tangled around one another. His thoughts followed along each of the paths until he could see where it led; to danger, to opportunity, to nowhere.

             
He thought of those Norwegians, stupid sons of bitches, sailing right into a Danish longphort with a hold full of plundered Danish goods. Could he derive some benefit from keeping them a secret? His mind followed along that path. He started up the hill again.

             
No. Orm would find out about them one way or another, and if it was from someone other than Asbjorn, then Orm would think his port reeve either conniving or incompetent. And Asbjorn was not incompetent.

             
He hurried up to the fortress, passed by the guards at the gate without even acknowledging them, hurried across the inner yard. He paused, let his breath come back, then crossed to Orm’s door and knocked. He was about to knock again when Orm called for him to enter.

             
The main room of Orm’s house was lit with a single candle and the glow of embers in the fireplace. Orm was adjusting his tunic as he crossed the room, his bare legs and feet white in the dim light. Asbjorn wondered if he had been rutting with his slave girl. If so, he would not be happy for the interruption. He would not be happy in any event.

             
“What is it?”

             
“That longship, it came in at sundown? They are Norwegians.”

             
“Norwegians?” Orm frowned, wrinkled his brow. Asbjorn knew that this news would strike home. Rumors had been floating in for some time of a fleet assembling under Olaf the White. There was not a day since Orm had taken Dubh-linn from the Norwegians that he did not expect them to arrive in force and take it back.

             
“What do they want?” Orm asked.

             
“To trade, it would seem. I don’t think they realized things have changed here.”

             
“Hmmm. I wonder...”

             
“I managed to inspect their cargo, before I was attacked. Filled with trade good. Danish trade goods, and no explanation of where they came from.”

             
“You were attacked?”

             
“Brutally attacked, by half the crew. I just managed to escape.”

             
Orm ran his eyes up and down Asbjorn’s person. He did not look like he had just survived a brutal attack, so Asbjorn hurried the conversation along.

             
“They arrive here with stolen goods, attack the port reeve, act as if they do not know Dubh-linn is a Danish longphort... They are either very dumb, or are playing at some game.”

             
Orm nodded. He turned away, stared into the fire, as he often did when deep in thought. “Where are they now?”

             
“At the hall.”

             
“Send Magnus. Tell him to keep his mouth shut and listen. Find out what he can.”

             
“Yes, my lord,” Asbjorn said.

             
Of course Magnus would be dragged into this thing. Asbjorn’s mind began to follow the trail of the winding beast. He was looking for the path that would end in the defeat of the Norwegians as well as the final humiliation of Magnus Magnusson. Or better still, Magnus’s death.

             
Thorgrim led his small but well-armed band up the plank road toward the mead hall. The night was quiet and the noise from inside grew louder as they approached. It was the raucous noise of half-wild men far from home and beyond even the limited constraints their domestic life imposed upon them. Thorgrim could hear snatches of song, bits of poetry, laughter, shouts and screams, both male and female. He frowned and pressed on.

             
The door to the hall gaped open and Thorgrim stepped inside, stepped from the dark, still night to the fire-lit, roaring world of the hall. The building was fifty feet long and thirty high, just one big room with an oak table running nearly the full length. A massive fire burned in a fireplace at the far end, and oil lanterns hung from the ceiling at regular intervals, casting an orange light and leaving deep shadows all around.

             
It was crowded with men. Big men, well armed men. Drunk men. They hoisted cups to their mouths, let mead run down their chins and filter through dense beards as they drank. The plates that littered the table were mostly empty now. The scattering of bones and crumbs and chunks of half-gnawed foodstuff were all that was left of the on-going feast.

             
Women were few but there were enough of them. They moved through the throng, keeping cups full, bringing more food to the table, enduring the Vikings’ indelicate words and hands. Slave girls, some Norse, some Irish, Thorgrim was not so consumed by the black mood that he did not notice how pretty most of them were.

             
He walked farther into the hall. His arrival, with a gang of armed men at his back, caused not the slightest reaction from the crowd. He could see his own men scattered among the hall, sitting in small knots by themselves or engaging in the general revelry. If they had figured out yet that they were a few Norwegians among Danes, they did not show it, nor did it seem to matter. They were all Vikings, doing what those people did best.

             
Harald was sitting somewhere near the middle of the hall, looking young in that company with his ruddy, clean-shaved face. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes slightly glassy. He might be able to row like a man, but he still could not drink like one, certainly not one like his grandfather.

             
As to fornicating, Ornolf had apparently not got to that part of the instruction. There was a girl on Harald’s lap, a pretty young thing with dirty blond hair and a slight figure. Harald was laughing like he was enjoying every minute of it, but Thorgrim knew his boy and he could hear the false note, the look of profound embarrassment under the mask of pleasure.

             
“Harald!” Thorgrim barked.

             
Harald looked up. His face grew redder still. He said something to the girl, pushed her off his lap so she landed on her rear end on the floor, and hurried over to Thorgrim.

             
“Father! Is there trouble?” Harald’s hand went unbidden to the hilt of his sword.

             
“Could be.” Thorgrim had to talk loud, louder than he wished to, just to be heard. “Where is Ornolf?”

             
Harald’s face flushed again. “Uh...over by the fire, I last saw him...”

             
Thorgrim nodded. Whatever Ornolf the Restless was up to, Thorgrim did not care. Nor would it embarrass him. He was a long way from fifteen years old.

             
He headed off toward the back of the hall, threading his way through the crowd, stepping over those sprawled on the floor, the ones who had gone man to man with their cups and lost. How many times, he wondered, had he been in the middle of this exact same scene? It was like Valhalla, the same wild feast repeated night after night. He wondered how, in the afterlife, it did not lose its charm. In his present mood, the atmosphere was not doing much for him.

             
Ten feet from the fire and he could feel the heat on his face. He wandered off to his right, toward the shadows in the corner. He found Ornolf the Restless there, amid a pile of furs and blankets. His leggings were down around his ankles. He was on top of a slave girl, furiously humping away. The girl’s whole body jarred with each powerful thrust. Her eyes were wide and she was gasping for breath, but if that was due to passion or that fact that she could not breath with Ornolf on top of her, Thorgrim could not tell.

             
“Ornolf!” Thorgrim shouted.

             
Ornolf looked over at him, annoyed, but his face brightened when he saw who it was. “Thorgrim! Glad to see you’ve stopped your moping around and come join us!”

             
“We need to talk,” Thorgrim said.

             
“So, talk...” said Ornolf, never losing a beat. Thorgrim knew Ornolf was perfectly capable of copulating like a bull caribou in rut and holding a conversation at the same time, but with the black mood on him Thorgrim could not do it.

             
“Talk to me when you’re done,” he said and walked off. He paused near the fireplace, at the edge of the chaos, like standing at the edge of a thundering surf. The men he brought with him had melted away, joined with their comrades in the bacchanal, but that was fine. Thorgrim had wanted a show of force coming up the road, but he did not need it here. If the Danes turned against them, there was not much his six men were going to do.

             
“Here, have a drink with me!” a voice roared out, near by, close enough that the man did not need to shout as loud as he did. Thorgrim felt the blast of fetid breath. He turned. The man was huge, six inches taller than Thorgrim and fifty pounds heavier. He held out a cup. Mead sloshed over the sides.

             
Thorgrim took it and drank, nodded his thanks.

             
“A polite man would offer a toast,” the big man said and there was an edge of anger to his words. Thorgrim felt the rage mounting, despite all his efforts. He raised the cup in a half-hearted gesture.

             
“Are you too good to toast with me?” the man said, stepping closer. Looking for a fight. Thorgrim had seen this bastard’s type often enough. This night he chose the wrong man in the wrong mood.

             
“Well?”

             
Thorgrim took another sip then tossed the remainder of the mead in the man’s face. The man spluttered, wiped his eyes. Thorgrim wound up and hit him in the side of his head with a force that sent shockwaves of pain through his hand and arm, and the big man went straight down, like the bones in his legs had vanished.

             
Thorgrim considered the unconscious giant as he flexed his fingers. His hand hurt but his mood was much improved.

             
“Thorgrim!”

             
Thorgrim staggered, as if Ornolf’s voice had physically struck him, then realized that Ornolf had slapped his back. The jarl was holding his trousers up with one hand, and he tied them as he spoke.

             
“I do dearly love to go a-viking,” Ornolf said. “But these long ocean voyages...no women...it’s hard on a man.” Copulating always put Ornolf in a thoughtful mood. “There are plenty of women here, get yourself one,” he suggested.