Winter Serpent (14 page)

Olav Forkbeard and Eiric claimed their woman without difficulty. She was somewhat older, tall and boldly good-looking. She did not weep, but jerked about between them, snarling and spitting. They tussled with her in view of the others and were watched with great amusement. Olav began to sweat.

“Do not drag at her arms so,” he cautioned Eiric in an undertone, “or you will break them.”

Eiric stared at him, dodging the woman’s head.

“Break her arm!” he exclaimed. “By One-eyed Odin, I shall have to break her arms and legs before I can hold her. Watch out, she is trying to scratch your eyes.”

Despite his wound, Raki was overcome by their struggles, and lay back on the sand howling with laughter.

Eiric tripped the woman and she fell heavily. Olav promptly fell on her and, as he was a big man, he succeeded in pinning her down. He shouted encouragement to Eiric.

Thorsten, who was bathing his feet in the water nearby, looked puzzled. “Two vig-men for one woman?” he asked, stepping around them.

“It may be that I will yet have to hit her,” Eiric panted, seeking to pin her wrists to the ground. “Yet I did not want to damage her too much. It will be a long winter.”

He said this so earnestly that Raki fell backward, cackling, holding his belly. His head hit the shoulder of a sleeping Viking. The warrior sprang up, suspecting theft, and lunged at Raki with his spear. The nimble Raki leaped aside, shouting denials, but his chin was grazed by the spear thrust and he was forced to retreat from the beach to nurse his additional injury.

Doireann fled from them to the hall.

She could not escape from them for long, for the Jarl came to her indicating that she was to help with the wounded. She had always had a distaste for the sight of blood, and the shattered bone and gristle which they presented to her did not alter it. However, she did the best she could. She could see that they had become convinced that she was a healer, and they watched her with careful attention as she poured hot water into the cuts and bound them up. It
was impossible to match their iron acceptance of their gaping wounds. As some new one was uncovered for her she felt a desperate dizziness, a dulling rush of blood to her face.

Cold perspiration covered her brow. She wiped it away wearily. She was deadly pale as she tended the last few injuries, and got to her feet heavily, feeling the weight of the child within her as an intolerable burden. She was too tired to be startled that the Jarl was at her shoulder, that he took her arm and led her to a bench by the fire.

She muttered something to him about preparing food for those who were wounded, but he would not allow her to rise. Instead he fetched up two men from among the sleepers on the beach and sent the tall Irish woman to help them. The latter did not speak but sullenly went about her tasks. There was a bruise on her mouth, and one eye was swelling shut, but her air was that of the unconquered.

Doireann had eaten and was taking some water to a man with a severed ear when Gunnar Olavson came into the hall. He wrapped himself in a sheep-skin and rolled into a corner to sleep. The sea watch followed shortly, carrying the bundled figure of the Irish girl in his arms. He dropped her roughly next to the snoring Gunnar and stretched out beside them, closing his eyes. The girl appeared wrapped in Gunnar’s cloak. She twined her arms around her knees, shivering and moaning. From time to time, she made a retching noise, as though about to vomit. Doireann turned to go to her, but the Jarl seized her arm and drew her down on the bench.

“This is none of your affair,” he said flatly. “Nor may you command her save when the others have no need of her.”

Exhausted and overcome, she did not argue.

The next day the quarrels over the women began anew. It was decided that the crews were to share equally but they could not reach an agreement as to how this was to be done.

Sweyn came to Thorsten and argued with him.

“I would not interfere in the matter of women,” Thorsten told him flatly. “Yet you will lose good men if this fighting continues,” Sweyn warned.

“And your cousin Gunnar Olavson is the most hot-tempered. It sits poorly upon him that he was left to guard the camp while the others went a-viking.” “This was agreed, that women should be brought for those who stayed
behind,” Thorsten pointed out.

Sweyn looked at the woman beside him.

“They have been quiet in your affairs when you have had what they did not. But waiting has made them unruly.”

The Jarl put his cup down on the board sharply. He took his sword in his hand and went outside where the angry voices could be heard.

Doireann could hear the silence which followed the Jarl’s appearance, and the sound of his voice coming faintly. There were a few protests, but they died quickly. When he returned he was leading the younger Irish girl by the hand. She dragged her feet listlessly and would not raise her head.

“She is to sleep this day and lie about where you can watch her,” he told Doireann, pulling the girl forward. “Then she is to go to them in groups of two at a time, every other night. They are casting lots to decide how the turns shall be taken, and Hallfreor is watching to see that there is no fighting, now or in the future. You are to see that she works in the daytime, but other than this, do not interfere.”

“What of the other woman?” He looked at her oddly.

“She has had a husband, and other men, undoubtedly. She knows what to expect.”

Doireann looked with dread at the bedraggled Irish girl before her, and knew that her pitiful presence would be a future burden to her, but she could not find strength to protest.

After the Northmen had rested, the stories began to be told. The men had ridden the easterly wind as far as it would carry them into the Great Sea, and then they had beaten for two days against a southwesterly storm which threw them back time and again from the Irish coast. With arduous rowing they had rounded Mallinmore and had come abreast of the bay of Donegal in the land of the Ui Neill. There they fell upon the monastery at Inishmurray Island, but many of the monks there were lay brothers of the warrior class who went about their devotions armed, and they resisted the raiders bravely. After much heavy fighting in which two of the Northmen were wounded, they succeeded in razing the huts and the stone church and slaughtering those of the Irishmen who did not make their escape. There was a good amount of gold and silver in the church, but the monastery was an ascetic one and they found little in the way of needed food stores.

The men of the longships held a conclave and the Jarl proposed that they not head back to the land of the Scots, but try along the coasts for a village since this was the harvest time and the plunder should be rich. There were some among Sweyn’s crew who protested this, doubtful of their knowledge of the coasts and fearful to run on a shoal and lose what they had. But the rest of the Northmen were firm in their belief of the Jarl’s luck, and cast their votes for an attack on the villages of the mainland. And so the matter was decided.

Thorsten Jarl led the ships up the mouth of a coastal river, and they soon found a populous clachan of the Neills. But the sack of Inishmurray had already alarmed the Irish, and the villagers were well-prepared. A force of the tall guards from the king’s fort at Claiggion were hidden in the settlement,
waiting for just such a Norse raid, and they fell upon the Jarl’s raiders from the rear, closing the trap.

Knut Broken Tooth had been left at the river to guard the longships and the path of retreat; after some time had passed he sensed that all was not going well. He rushed to the aid of the Viking band, scattering the Irish warriors from Claiggion. The men of the Neills and the king’s warriors fought well, but they could not match the battle ferocity of the Northmen, even outnumbered as the raiders were, three to one.

In their rage at being so nearly thwarted, after the Neills had been routed and had taken to the swamps, the Northmen burned all the buildings of the village and carried off all that could be moved. They took so much that most of it had to be abandoned for lack of room in the longships, but the Northmen would leave nothing for the Neills to recover. They threw what they could into the sea and slaughtered the livestock.

The women and children were herded together on the beach near the ships, and the crews took their pick of the women who pleased them. There was a great deal of haggling before the terrified captives as to the value of a woman during the long winter when weighed against the sacks of grain and fresh meat which were greatly needed. It was finally decided by Sweyn Barrelchest that no women would be carried back except the two best-looking. The Northmen fell like wolves on those remaining. In the midst of the debauch the children and older women were put to the sword, the Northmen noting with satisfaction that their screams would carry to the places where their kinsmen were hiding, to impress them with the justice of the Northmen, who wreaked vengeance for the ambush.

It was agreed later that the fairest woman of the village was the one who had been captured by Horsa during the thickest of the fighting. It had appeared that she was the wife of the chieftain of the Ui Neills, for a very strong, heavy-set man in fine clothing had followed after Horsa, who carried the woman on his shoulder, and had attacked him desperately. Horsa had thought this an annoyance. He dumped the woman on the ground in order to give himself free swing with his battle-ax, but she crawled about, grasping at his legs, seeking to trip him, and he was hard-pressed to fend off the chieftain’s blows and elude the woman at the same time. After a brisk exchange of blows Horsa had chopped the man’s arm off at the shoulder, sending a bright stream of blood over them both. But with his good hand the Irishman had deprived Horsa of his prize, for he ran the woman through with his sword as she lay on the ground, and they died together. Horsa could not contain his dismay at this, for he had thought the woman exceedingly beautiful and he had not got his share of gold at the church, so intent had he been upon her capture.

Knut Broken Tooth, who had come to their relief so ably, did not return on the longships. As he led the ship’s guard to the church, a villager had come at Sweyn from behind, swinging a broadsword. The blow had not cleft Sweyn’s skull as was intended, but instead had fallen straight across Knut’s hands as he thrust forward his shield to protect Sweyn from the attack. The hands were lopped off, still attached to the leather brace at the back of the shield. Sweyn had not seen this; he only noticed that Knut fell.

After the fighting was over, the older Viking found his crewman sitting with his back against the stone wall of the church, the stumps of his arms held out before him, gushing blood. Both men could see that there was no hope. Knut’s face was already ashen with the drain of his life’s blood, and he could barely manage a whisper for his chieftain. He would never return, he said, even if he were granted life, for he would not willingly choose to be a cripple.

They left him in the church, and Sweyn took the shield with the hands thrown inside and bore it back to the ship, where he lashed them again in lifelike grasp on the crosspiece. Later he bore this gruesome relic into the log hall in silence and hoisted the shield with the hands on a rope to the beams where it hung forever after to remind them of the indomitable Knut and his act of loyalty.

Doireann would not look at it. She was sick of the stories which they relished and which continued for some weeks without diminishing. After the outline of the raids had been told, each man came forth to add his personal narrative, and so long did this go on, and the boasting with it, that Doireann was exhausted by the subject and thought of the long winter evenings which would stretch onward with the same recountings of their exploits.

There was little consolation in the stories for her, for the Northmen made it clear in their repetitions that it was the Jarl, the much feared berserkr, whose luck and valor had brought them such rewards. His luck had changed, they reiterated, and would bring them great fame and riches in what was to come.

Thus did she learn that they gave Thorsten Jarl full credit for their luck and their success. It was he who had directed the attack upon the monks at Inishmurray, and his fierce battle-cries which had urged the Northmen forward against the resistance they had found there. It was the Jarl who had insisted they turn from the coast to go inland along the river where the spoils lay, and the Jarl who held firm against all odds until Knut had arrived to aid them. Credit was given to the others—to Sweyn who had taken the steering oar of the lead ship and had guided them safe through the reefs of Mallinmore, to Bengt who had struck sail and ordered oars out speedily for the returning sackers so that they should not be caught in the flood tide—but it was acknowledged over all that it was the Jarl who held and led them. All
other deeds were bold and well-conceived, but were not allowed to over-shadow the mighty presence of the leader. Only Ulf glowered, for he was not yet healed of his galled pride, but Thorsten overlooked his sulking, as he ignored Gunnar’s dissatisfaction with the sharing of the Irish girl.

The crews taunted Horsa loudly about his dead Irishwoman, drowning out his complaints that his share was now the shortest of the lot. Each time his story was told to the accompaniment of Horsa’s dismayed expression, the hall shook with the Northmen’s familiar senseless howls of laughter. “Where is your treasure, Horsa?” they called to him. Raki stood on the table holding his nose to show that Horsa’s share was now too rotted to bring into the house.