The Lord of Vik-Lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) (38 page)

  Then the light seemed to blink, as if shuttered, and then it was back again. Thorgrim frowned and held his hand up to shield the sun and looked toward the east as best he could. Tears ran down his cheeks from the onslaught of light. But then he saw it again, the thing that had got between them and the sun. Two things. They were dark and featureless with the light behind them, but there was no doubting what they were. Sails. The sails of two longships. Heading for Vík-ló. Heading for them. 

We’ll return to where

our countrymen await us,

head our sand-heaven’s horse

to scout the ship’s wide plains.

                                                              Eirik the Red’s Saga

Thorgrim, Agnarr, Harald and Ornolf stood crowded on the after deck, blinking and turning their faces half away from the sun, holding their hands up to block out the blinding rays. They were all trying to see beyond
Far Voyager
’s bow, but they could not. In any other circumstance it might have been comical, but no one found the least humor in it now.

  “I can’t tell,” Agnarr said at last, dropping his hand and turning his face away from the sun.

  “Ships, to be sure,” Harald said. “Two of them. I could see that.”

  “A mile off?” Ornolf offered. “Less?”

  Thorgrim nodded. This was what he had seen as well, to the extent he had seen anything at all.

  “You think it is Grimarr?” Harald asked.

  “It might not be,” Thorgrim said. “But the chances are that it is.” The chances, in fact, were very good it was Grimarr; in Thorgrim’s estimate nearly certain. Who else could it be? “Hold your oars!” he called forward. The rowers, as one, stopped, and
Far Voyager
’s forward motion slowed away to nothing.

  Thorgrim turned his face from the sun and wiped the tears from his cheeks. “We are blinded, but they can see us perfectly well,” he said to the others, his war council. “They are too close for us to evade them now. So if they want a fight we’ll have to fight. Where would that best be done?”

  “They are more than twice our numbers,” Agnarr said, “and in two ships. If we fight at sea, they can come at us larboard and starboard and board over both rails. We’ll be caught between them.” The others nodded.

  “That was my thought as well,” Thorgrim said. “We’ll have a better chance fighting on land.” He did not say how much better a chance, because everyone knew it was not much better at all.

  They turned
Far Voyager
around, spinning her with the oars until her bow was headed back toward the mouth of the Leitrim and Vík-ló beyond, and then they pulled hard for the river. The ship skimmed over the surface, and soon she was once again run up on the familiar shore, but not as far up this time as the tide was going out and she was more heavily laden than the last. The men clambered over the side and splashed up to the open place they had left an hour earlier. Stout lines were made fast to mooring posts ashore.

  “Now what?” Ornolf asked. All the Far Voyagers turned and looked out to sea. The two ships were less than half a mile away. They were taking in their sails and running oars out through the oar ports. It would take them fifteen minutes to ground out next to
Far Voyager
, no more. Five minutes later the fighting would start.

  “We know for certain these bastards mean us harm?” Ornolf asked. “Save for Grimarr’s wanting to kill Thorgrim and Harald for whatever reason the others did not seem so eager to fight with us. They had chance enough to do that before we sailed.”

  The others were silent for a moment. It was a good question. Conandil had told Harald that Grimarr blamed him and Thorgrim for the death of his sons, though why Thorgrim could not imagine.

  “When they come ashore,” Harald said, “I will challenge Grimarr to a fight. One on one. Let that settle the matter. There’s no reason for anyone else to die for whatever wrong Grimarr thinks we’ve done him.”

  Thorgrim nearly smiled at that. He had never been more proud of his son, but he said only, “No, Harald. It’s a bold thing to say, a brave offer, but if there is any fighting one on one, it will be me and Grimarr.” Harald was a good fighter, but he was not experienced enough to take on the likes of Grimarr Giant. Thorgrim felt by no means certain that he himself could beat the man. Harald made a noise that Thorgrim knew was the beginnings of a protest. He looked sharp at the boy and Harald shut his mouth.

  “Let’s make ready to welcome them home,” Thorgrim said. He gathered his men up and formed them into a shield wall. One flank was anchored against the riverbank, right in line with
Far Voyager
’s bow, but the other was mostly exposed and there was not much they could do about it, save to bend the shield wall back as Grimarr’s men tried to flank them, until all the Far Voyagers had their backs to the water.

  Thorgrim considered taking his men into the town. It did not seem there would be any resistance from that quarter. There were only a handful of people left at Vík-ló after the fleet had sailed, and they were watching now from a short ways off. Older men, mostly; the blacksmith, a fellow Thorgrim recognized as a butcher. He thought he saw Aghen, the master shipwright, whom he liked. There were a few women as well, and some slaves. All of Vík-ló had turned out to see what was acting, but it was not a population that posed any threat to him and his men.

 
Where do we make our stand?

 
He considered taking a position in one of the buildings, maybe Grimarr’s hall, but he rejected the idea. If Grimarr was willing to stop at nothing to kill him and Harald, then he would not hesitate to burn the building down, leaving the men inside the choice of dying in the flames or coming out the door single file and being cut down as they did.

 
Far Voyager
was their only way out; out of Vík-ló, out of Ireland. Even if they stood little chance of getting aboard and getting underway, Thorgrim did not want to lose that chance entirely. Better to stay in the open, where there was fighting room and the sea at their feet.

  “Stand ready,” Thorgrim said loudly so all his men could hear. “I will speak with Grimarr first.” He stepped away, fifteen feet in front of the shield wall, and Ornolf and Harald and Starri came with him. They stopped and looked out at the approaching ships which were into the Leitrim now, their oars moving in their steady sweep,
Eagle’s Wing
in the lead,
Fox
astern.

  “A few weeks ago Grimarr had five ships in his fleet,” Ornolf said. “Now he has only two. No wonder he’s such a miserable son of a bitch.”

  They could see Grimarr standing in
Eagle Wing’s
stern. He was wearing a mail shirt, and his shield was propped up against his leg, and even from that distance he did not look like a man who wanted to talk. The other men on the ships, those not on the rowing benches, were similarly clad.

  “We should hit them now, attack as they are getting off the ship, don’t let them get in a shield wall,” Starri said. His words were clipped and his voice sounded jerky. Thorgrim glanced over at him. He was making the strange, sharp motions he made when a fight was imminent, and he had that feral look in his eyes.

  “Easy, Starri, we’ll fight when the moment is right,” Thorgrim said. He did not want to tell Starri that he hoped to get out of this without fighting at all, or at least limiting the fight to him and Grimarr alone. Such a plan would not go over well with Starri Deathless. Thorgrim leaned close to Harald and spoke just above a whisper, “Stand ready to grab Starri and hold him down if he makes a move at Grimarr before I say.”

  Harald nodded slightly, just enough to indicate he had heard.

 
Eagle’s Wing
came to a halt in the soft mud. There were men ready to swing themselves over the side, but they were pulled back from the rail by Grimarr Giant’s massive hand. He stepped past them and leapt himself, the first man ashore, coming down in a great splash of river water. He adjusted his shield on his arm and drew his sword and stepped through the shallows and onto the bank, his eyes on the handful of men waiting for his approach, Thorgrim and the others.

  The rest of his men and the men aboard
Fox
dropped into the water and followed behind. There were a lot of them. More men than Thorgrim commanded. Quite a bit more. Indeed, Thorgrim was surprised to see just how many men Grimarr had crowded aboard his ship. So many he had to guess it would have made working the vessel difficult, so many bodies aboard.

  And then he remembered. Lorcan had stolen the ship called
Water Stallion
. The men of that ship must have been divided between
Eagle’s Wing
and
Fox
. Two ships, but warriors enough to man three.

  Thorgrim stood and waited and watched Grimarr come on like a fast-moving storm. It seemed as if the big man would not stop until he and Thorgrim were face to face, within sword-strike distance. But then Grimarr did stop, thirty feet away, stopped so abruptly that he looked as if he had slammed into a wall that no one else could see. His mouth fell open and his face took on a look of pure, dumb incomprehension. It seemed as if he might speak, but he did not.

 
That’s right, you son of a whore, I’m still alive,
Thorgrim thought.

  Grimarr remained where he was, motionless and silent as his men swarmed up the bank and formed in a line behind him. There was an ugly wound on Grimarr’s cheek, maybe a week old but still raw and blood caked. Thorgrim had some vague memory of having inflicted it himself. With his teeth? Could that be? It was like a dream, half remembered. There was a bandage around Grimarr’s hand as well, and Thorgrim recalled Harald’s tale of stabbing a dagger clean through it.

 
Your association with my family has not been lucky for you, has it?
Thorgrim thought.

  The morning was filled with the rustle of mail, the clang of weapons on shields, the shuffle of a hundred or more men getting into battle array. Thorgrim scanned the faces, ten feet or so behind Grimarr Giant, and he could see the shock and fear register as they realized that it was Thorgrim standing in front of them. Thorgrim Night Wolf, killed by the Irish and come to life again.

 
Some of you bastards know who really tried to kill me, don’t you?
Thorgrim thought. There would be some who knew the truth, that it had been Grimarr who had waylaid him, slashed him with his sword, ordered his men to murder him in the hills. For them, his being there would be even more frightening still. It would explain why Hilder and the other men sent to kill him had never returned.

 
Understand, I am not an easy man to kill…

  And then Grimarr’s men were in place and everything fell silent again.

  For a long moment it remained silent, save for the tumbling river and the occasional sound made by men waiting for combat, and Starri making low whimpering noises. Thorgrim did not speak. Grimarr did not speak. Because this was also part of the combat.

  And this part Grimarr lost. “Thorgrim Ulfsson!” he bellowed, unable to contain himself any longer, and having recovered from the shock of seeing Thorgrim alive and before him. “You have done me the greatest wrong, and now you and your men will all die for it!”

  Thorgrim took a few steps forward, putting half a dozen feet between himself and Ornolf and the others, advancing without hesitation in Grimarr’s direction. The men arrayed behind Grimarr looked ready to fight, but they did not look eager to fight. They had none of that dog-straining-at-the-leash quality that men under arms had when they were desperate to end the quiet torture of waiting, and plunge into battle.

  Thorgrim guessed they would fight for Grimarr because they were sworn to Grimarr, but they were not eager to do so. They did not seem enthusiastic to suffer wounds and death for something that mattered so much to Grimarr and not so much to them. This was a fight that would do little to enrich them and it was a fight against fellow Northmen, Norwegians though they might be. Friendships had been made in the weeks they had been in Vík-ló, before all of this came down.