The Lord of Vik-Lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) (32 page)

Thus many winters are left

unlived for him who bears

the shield in battle’s storm.

Better things soon await you.

                                                           Gisli Sursson’s Saga

Thorgrim had been awake for some time before Harald, bleary and sheepish-looking, came stumbling back to the fire ring under
Far Voyager
’s bow. A fog hung over the coast, as it so often did in the early morning hours in that country, but visibility was not as bad as it might have been. The cliffs that rose up from the beach, two hundred yards away at least, were still visible for most of their height before disappearing into a gray nothing.

  Harald approached slowly, a bear skin and a wool blanket over his shoulder, and his eyes were everywhere, as if seeking out one among the many on the beach. There were men cooking, washing, combing hair, changing dressings on wounds, but none seemed to be the one Harald was looking for.

 
This should make for some interesting telling
, Thorgrim thought as Harald finally gave over his search and approached, dropping the bedding on the gravel.

  “Harald, good morning,” Thorgrim said. “Did you sleep well?” He was seated on a log that was weathered to near white by the sea and sun, and made smooth by repeated tumblings over the rocks of the beach until it looked like the thigh bone of some great monster. Starri sat beside him, stirring a big iron pot of porridge that hung over the fire. A dozen feet away, Ornolf the Restless was still sleeping under a great mound of furs, his snoring as rhythmic and wet as surf pounding a rocky shore.

  “Good morning, father,” Harald said. “Yes, I slept well, thank you. And you? Are your wounds hurting much?”

  “Not too much.” He flexed his shoulders and stretched his arms to test the truth of that. He could feel the pull of the mending flesh, and a sharp jab of pain as he stretched a bit too far, but generally his assessment was accurate – it did not hurt too much.

  “The gods heal him fast,” Starri said without looking up from his pot. He smiled. “They wish to see him on his feet so they can knock him down again. Like a child playing with a toy.”

  “Thank you, Starri, I get comfort from that,” Thorgrim said. “I thought you said I was favored by the gods.”

  “You are one of their favorites,” Starri said, but he did not elaborate.

  “Father…” Harald began again. “Have…you seen Conandil? This morning?”

  Thorgrim sat more upright. As he suspected, this talk was already getting more interesting. “No,” he said. “But I’m surprised you haven’t. She seemed to have lashed herself to you, like a….” He struggled for the right turn of phrase.

  “Like a sail to a yard?” Starri suggested.

  “Yes, like a sail to a yard, that’s near what I was thinking.”

  “Or maybe like two longships grappled together,” Starri said, “one preparing to board the other?”

  “That might be more like it,” Thorgrim agreed.

  “How about like a sword and a scabbard?” Starri continued.

  “Let’s let the boy tell his story, Starri,” Thorgrim said.

  “Well…” Harald stammered on, unappreciative of their literary efforts. “Well… forgive me, father, but she’s gone. I was watching over her, and now she’s gone.”

 
Watching over her…I can just imagine…
Thorgrim thought. “What happened?” he asked.

  “She came to me last night…she said she was afraid of sleeping with all these men around. I told her there was nothing to fear but she wouldn’t believe it. So we went away from the others. To sleep. I was dead tired, like everyone. Sometime in the night…she must have run off. If someone had taken her, I would have woken up, I’m sure.”

 
Clever girl…
Thorgrim thought.
How better to get past the ring of sentries than in Harald Thorgrimson’s company?
But he did not say as much because he did not want Harald to be humiliated. Later, in private, he would tell Harald how he had been fooled, and Harald would learn from it.

  Instead, Thorgrim said, “Yes, well, she is Irish, and of course she would look for the main chance to get back to her people.”

  “But…” Harald protested, as if unwilling to let himself off so easy, “she was the only one who knew where the Fearna hoard was buried. We’ll never find it now.”

  Thorgrim dismissed that with a wave. “I’m not sure she really knew, or if she did, if she was willing to show the hiding place to a…what do they call us?”

  “
Fin gall
,” Harald said. “Other things, too, but mostly
fin gall
.”

  “A
fin gall
. I don’t think she wanted the treasure to get into our hands. Or Grimarr’s. She probably didn’t see much difference between us, one
fin gall
or another.”

  “Actually, the Danes they call
dubh gall
,” Harald said.

  “In any event,” Thorgrim said, “we have treasure enough. We just have to get back to Vík-ló and get it.”

  “We have to get back to Vík-ló quickly,” Agnarr said. He had arrived at the fire, bowl in hand, mid-way through the conversation. “I don’t know why Grimarr did not follow us yesterday, but he might have sailed north through the night. For that matter, Lorcan might be bound for Vík-ló. If we have any hope of retrieving our treasure, and our supplies, then we need to get there first.”

  Thorgrim stood. “You’re right, Agnarr,” he said. “Can you get us to sea through this fog?” Like the cliffs inland, the sea was visible for two hundred yards or so before the gray water melded into the gray sky.

  “Yes, that will not be a problem,” Agnarr said. “The rocks and the breakers don’t worry me. I am more worried about what else might be lurking out there in the fog.”

  “Dragons?” Starri asked. “Water spirits?”

  “Danes,” Agnarr said. “Irishmen. In great numbers.”

  “Listen here, you men,” Thorgrim shouted to those collected on the beach, loud enough to be heard within a stone’s throw of the fire and no more. “We must be underway quickly. Eat, and what you don’t eat put aboard the ship for later, and let us be off.”

  Thorgrim’s words stirred the Norsemen to action. Meals were hastily cooked and eaten, bedding tossed aboard, sea chests made fast again. It took little time to get the ship ready for sea since they had made little effort at setting up camp ashore.

  During the night, two of the wounded had died, and their bodies were wrapped tight and stowed forward of the mast until such time as they could get a proper send-off. Thorgrim did not want to bury them on some desolate, wind-swept, miserable stretch of the Irish coast. He did not think such a funeral would do much for the others’ spirits.

  Soon the beach was clear of everyone save those who would push
Far Voyager
back into the water. She had not been run up far up the shore to begin with; her bow was just kissing the gravel so that she could be quickly floated again if need be. With nothing on the featureless beach that they could tie the ship to, an anchor had been set out and driven into the sand, and a long line run from the anchor back to a cleat at
Far Voyager
’s bow. Now the anchor was hefted back aboard and the rope coiled and stowed away.

  Thorgrim stood aft with Agnarr and Ornolf, who was quaffing his morning ale. Godi held the tiller.

  “Shove off!” Thorgrim called and the half dozen men on the beach put their shoulders against the ship’s side and heaved and
Far Voyager
scraped over the gravel. Thorgrim felt the bow bob down, then up again as the shore disappeared from under her stem and she became fully water-borne. The men on the beach flung themselves up over the sides and the men sitting on the sea chests, who already had their oars run half-way out, ran them out the rest of the way. On Thorgrim’s orders they backed the ship off from the land, then deftly spun her around and pulling together drove her forward out toward the deep water.

  “Agnarr,” Thorgrim said, “we are well, on this course?”

  “Yes,” Agnarr said. “Let’s pull straight out for another half mile or so before turning north. There are some ugly reefs just beyond the larboard side, but we should be clear of them soon.”

  Thorgrim nodded. “I see nothing on the water to show the reefs are there,” he observed.

  “There’s not much swell today. If the seas were higher you would see the water breaking over them.”

  Thorgrim nodded again. “Say, tell me, Agnarr, do the Irish people ever use markers or the like to show where the reefs are?”

  Agnarr considered the question. “I have seen markers sometimes at the mouths of rivers, and places where the ships go most often. Particularly where the bigger ships go, the Frankish traders and such. But not often. The Irish do not look to the sea as we do.”

  Thorgrim nodded, then all eyes turned forward, out into the fog, because Agnarr was not the only one who was concerned about what might be lurking there. The men at the oars fell into an easy rhythm, the ship surging ahead with each powerful stroke, the pulling coming easier as her momentum built. Somewhere out beyond the gray, featureless haze the sun was climbing in the sky. The fog was growing lighter and seemed to be thinning, though it was hard to tell if that was really the case, with the land dropping astern and leaving them no reference but the ever-moving sea.

  “Hey, on deck, there!” Starri called. He had climbed squirrel-like up the mast and was perched near the top with his leg twisted up in the halyard for support. “I thought I saw something….”

  “Where away?” Thorgrim called.

  “A bit on the larboard bow. Just a glimpse. I might have been seeing things.” Fog could play tricks, they all knew it.

  Heads turned to stare at a point just off the starboard bow as men willed their sight to pierce the undulating fog. Visibility was better than it had been just a short time earlier, Thorgrim was certain of that. Or at least he thought he was certain of that.

  “There, I saw something as well!” Agnarr said, pointing, but he finished the words with less certainty than he started them, the sound dying away as if he began to doubt his eyes even before the words were out.

  But Thorgrim had seen it, too. Just a glimpse, just a dark shape in a gray world, a hint of something in the fog. “Rest on your oars!” he called and the rowers stopped in mid-stroke, blades in the water.
Far Voyager
slowed quickly and the feel of her motion underfoot changed as the momentum died away.

  “Did you see it?” Agnarr asked, speaking softly, the uncertainty still in his voice.

  “Yes, I think so,” Thorgrim said. They continued peering out into the grayness. And then it was there, parting the fog, resolving itself like some ghost taking earthly form. It was a mile away at least but it was unmistakable. A longship.

  “
Water Stallion
,” Agnarr said. There was no uncertainty in his voice now.

Lorcan could see that the fog was thinning out, the circle of ocean that surrounded his ship rapidly expanding. It bolstered his confidence, a confidence that had been growing with each hour he spent at sea. Twenty or so thus far. Soon it would be more than a full day.

  The
dubh gall
Sandarr, the one who supposedly knew about such things, had urged him to beach for the night, or, if he would not, to continue on to Vík-ló. Sandarr had said that the ship they were chasing had probably done one of those things, said that if Lorcan continued north he would surely catch it, but if he lurked around that part of the coast, then the other would slip past them.