The Lord of Vik-Lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) (42 page)

 
To die with a sword in your hand…
That was the Norseman’s greatest hope. Starri Deathless dreamed of nothing else. And for Thorgrim, so beaten down by the considerations of Midgard, the earthly realm, there was little that gave him more hope than the thought of a life in Odin’s hall with Harald at his side. Sure, he had never thought Harald would precede him to that place, but if he did, what did it matter?

  And what if Thorgrim stepped in and Harald was killed anyway? How would the Choosers of the Slain look on such a death?

  “Very well, you cowardly dog,” Grimarr roared, “I’ll kill this boy first and then I will kill you!” He advanced on Harald, made a jab with his sword, not a serious effort, but it forced Harald to block with his shield and step back. Grimarr pressed the attack, driving him back again, and then again. Thorgrim felt his hands clench, his teeth clench. His head whirled.

  Then Harald shouted, a cry of rage and hurt and frustration. He stepped in toward Grimarr with a fury he clearly hoped would surprise the man and throw him off guard, force him to present an opening, however small. Something Harald could exploit. He slashed down with his sword and Grimarr stepped back and turned the blade aside. Harald advanced again and Thorgrim felt a gleam of hope.

 
Kill him, boy, kill him…

  Harald stepped in a third time and this time, rather than slashing, he lunged, putting his considerable strength behind the blade, driving for the center of Grimarr’s chest. Grimarr slammed his own sword down on Harald’s, snapping Harald’s blade in two. Harald stumbled forward and once again Grimarr hit him hard on the side of the head.

  The broken end of Harald’s sword flew from his grip, his shield flew off in the other direction as Harald hit the ground. Grimarr met Thorgrim’s eyes and grinned and stepped up beside Harald who was still sprawled on the ground. And Thorgrim realized in that moment that he wanted his son to live, that it was not yet his time to go to Odin’s hall. He took a step in Grimarr’s direction, but he was too late.

  From his left and somewhere behind, Ornolf the Restless burst from the watching crowd. He roared as he shoved the men to his left and right aside, spilling them to the ground, and charged the ten yards to where Grimarr stood. He had his battered red and yellow shield in his left hand, Oak Cleaver in his right, and despite his years of debauchery there was something powerful, even frightening, in his charge.

  “You cowardly bastard!” Ornolf shouted at Grimarr as he thundered toward him. “Fight a boy, will you? Why don’t you fight a man, you pile of horse shit!”

  Ornolf swung Oak Cleaver in a brutal, back-handed down stroke and Grimarr barely had time to get his shield up to deflect the blow. This had been Grimarr’s act, he had commanded the stage from the beginning, but now for once he looked surprised and uncertain. Ornolf stepped in and shoved with his shield and drove Grimarr back, then once again made a powerful stroke with his sword which Grimarr managed to turn aside.

  Grimarr stepped back and held sword and shield in a more serious and determined way than he had while fighting Harald. Ornolf was old and fat, but he was not weak, and he had learned a few things about single combat after years of battles and raids. Underestimating the man could be a fatal mistake.

  They circled around, Harald all but forgotten. “Ornolf, you silly old man, you’ll have me kill off the whole family?” Grimarr jeered. “You, Thorgrim, Harald? It will be my pleasure. I’ll end your whole filthy line right here.”

  “I have many grandchildren,” Ornolf said. “But you don’t, because two of your sons died at Thorgrim’s hands. Died squealing like pigs and we pissed on their corpses! And the other betrayed you, you pile of shit.”

  Ornolf’s blade had missed but his words struck home. Grimarr shouted something incomprehensible and lunged at Ornolf. Ornolf dodged sideways, quicker than anyone might have imagined he could, and hacked down with Oak Cleaver. The sword bit into the mail on Grimarr’s arm and Grimarr jerked back as if he had been burned, the chain mail rent in the wake of Ornolf’s blade.

  “Bastard!” Grimarr shouted, and went in shield-first, knocking Ornolf aside, swinging for his throat. Oak Cleaver met his blade and the steel rang out in the morning air. Ornolf pushed Grimarr’s sword aside and lunged and Grimarr took the point on his shield.

  The two men drew apart and stared at one another. Both were heaving for breath. Their faces were red and sweat ran down their brows like the blood from Harald’s scalp. They blinked, mouths open, eyes wide.

  “Come on, you whore’s whelp,” Ornolf said, so spent the words were barely audible. He pushed off, hitting Grimarr with his shield, and Grimarr stepped back. Ornolf did not follow, but rather stood his ground, arms spread, chest exposed, daring Grimarr to come in for the attack. And he did.

  Grimarr hefted his shield, adjusted his grip on his sword, closed the distance to Ornolf with one step and lunged. Ornolf, his arms still spread wide, let him come. Grimarr’s blade shot like an arrow at Ornolf’s chest. It was just inches away from piercing the mail when Ornolf knocked it aside with Oak Cleaver. Grimarr’s arm went wide and Ornolf stepped in and drove his foot into Grimarr’s stomach.

  With a gasp Grimarr doubled over and the shield fell from his hand. Ornolf stepped in, Oak Cleaver held high and ready to come down like an ax on Grimarr’s head, when his foot caught on Grimarr’s lost shield. He gave a strangled cry and stumbled forward and fell, landing on hands and knees. He pushed himself off and came up on his knees. The look on his face was one that Thorgrim had never seen. Not anger, not fear, not outrage. He looked like a man who knew it was over and knew that that was all right.

  Ornolf was still bringing his sword and shield up when Grimarr thrust, a thrust that was straight and true, full of power and finality, right at Ornolf’s chest. The point took him just below the breastbone and went right on through, tearing out from Ornolf’s lower back, until Grimarr could drive it no further.

  The morning was silent, like all of Vík-ló was holding its breath. The two men did not move, Grimarr with sword arm extended, Ornolf motionless, pinned on Grimarr’s blade, sword and shield still in hand. Grimarr stepped up and cocked his arm to draw the blade free, and as he did Ornolf dropped his sword and his shield and wrapped his two powerful hands around the hilt of Grimarr’s sword and the hand with which he held the weapon.

  Grimarr jerked back but Ornolf did not let go. Ornolf opened his mouth and blood spilled out and in a strangled voice he called “Harald…” Grimarr pulled harder and the blood ran down Ornolf’s long beard but he did not loosen his grip on the sword’s hilt.

  Harald scrambled to his feet. Everything that Ornolf wanted to say to his grandson seemed to have been carried in that one choked word, and Harald seemed to understand every syllable of it. He snatched up Oak Cleaver from the ground, and as he did, Grimarr realized his danger.

  With a frantic jerk Grimarr broke Ornolf’s grip on his hand and Ornolf tumbled over on his side, sword jutting from his chest. Grimarr took a step back and began to raise his mail-clad arms, his only defense, but he could not raise them fast enough to block the big, powerful sideways blow that Harald delivered.

  Oak Cleaver’s edge sang as it parted the air, caught Grimarr in the neck and did not slow in its flight. The blade of the Frankish sword, honed by Starri Deathless to a razor edge, cut clean through Grimarr’s spine. Blood sprayed like surf pounding a rocky cliff. The big man’s body fell to one side, his head to the other, and the only sound in all the longphort seemed to be the two parts of the now-dead Lord of Vík-ló hitting the ground at almost the same instance.

  Harald did not pause in his turn. He let the momentum carry him around, full circle, and he dropped to his knees at his grandfather’s side. With a deft motion he flipped Oak Cleaver around and pressed the grip into Ornolf’s hand. From ten feet away, Thorgrim saw Ornolf the Restless’s fingers wrap around the leather-bound grip and tighten, just for a second. Then Ornolf let out a loud and prolonged sigh and his whole body seemed to relax, but the sword did not drop from his hand.

Goddess of golden rain,

who gives me great joy,

may boldly hear report

of her friend’s brave stand.

                                                           Gisli Sursson’s Saga

The next week was given over to feasting and funerals.

  The Irish dead were piled on carts and driven out into the hills and left there on the muddy road. The survivors of Lorcan’s army, once they were certain it was not a trap, came and took them away. They were buried by whatever rights the Christians observed. Or so Thorgrim guessed. He had no way of knowing and he did not care.

  His thoughts and his hours were consumed by considerations of his own dead. They would be sent off in the proper way, Ornolf Hrafnsson, known as Ornolf the Restless, foremost among them. Ornolf had helped them win a great victory, but because part of the price of that victory had been Ornolf’s death, they could find no joy in it.

  Thorgrim and Harald, keeling on the plank road beside Ornolf’s lifeless form, had wept bitterly and openly. They did not care at all that such weeping might be looked on as weakness. They wept to know that such a man as Ornolf would no longer walk the earth. They wept for themselves, knowing they now had to go on in a world that did not contain Ornolf the Restless.

  Harald took Ornolf’s death on his own shoulders, and it pressed him down with a weight he could hardly bear. But Thorgrim made it clear, emphatically clear, that such was not the case. All men die, Thorgrim reminded his son, and for Ornolf there was no better death than in defense of the one person he loved above all on earth. Harald’s final act on his grandfather’s behalf, pressing the sword into the palm of his hand, was the greatest act of love Thorgrim had ever witnessed. He told Harald as much, and he meant it, because it was.

  Harald’s actions made it certain that the Chooser of the Slain would lift Ornolf from that bloody field and whisk him away to Valhalla. Ornolf would feast in Odin’s hall, and never was a man and a place more suited to one another. It made Thorgrim wonder why he wept. Ornolf, his beloved Ornolf, was now more content than ever he had been. He was eating and drinking in the company of men such as himself, and the chaffing and burden of the earthly realm no longer rubbed him raw.

 
It’s not Ornolf I’m weeping for
, Thorgrim concluded.

  They found Starri Deathless in the aftermath of the fight. He was sprawled motionless on the plank road and covered with blood which might have come from any of a number of vicious wounds that were visible. Thorgrim’s first thought was that Starri had at last achieved his wish, that he and Ornolf were at that moment feasting side by side. But then they rolled Starri over and his eyes fluttered and then opened. He sat up and looked around, then looked up at Thorgrim.

  “Night Wolf…” he said, croaking the words. “Are we…?”

  “We are in Vík-ló, Starri,” Thorgrim said, as gently as he could. “You are still alive.”

  He left Starri to weep over this news. He did not tell him about Ornolf’s death, not because the news would sadden him but because it would only make him more miserable about his own survival. Starri would not weep for Ornolf, he would be glad for him, and perhaps a bit envious.

  It took the remainder of that day to set things to rights, as much as they could be set to rights in the wake of such a battle. The wounded were moved into
Fasti Magnisson
’s hall where women and thralls were sent to care for them. A feast was laid out in Grimarr’s hall, but it was the most subdued feast that Thorgrim could remember. There were few who had not lost fellows for whom they cared, and all had lost leaders they admired, Grimarr and Ornolf the Restless.

  If there was any lingering animosity between Danes and Norwegians, Thorgrim did not see it. Grimarr’s hatred had been his own personal torment, not shared by his fellow Danes. The bright fire of battle had cauterized any wounds still open, the deaths of Grimarr and Ornolf were enough to satisfy any man’s need for vengeance. So Danes and Norwegians ate and drank together, they recounted tales of the battle and their own great heroics together, they stumbled off into the dark and slept where they fell.

  Two more days were consumed in making preparations to send the dead off in the manner they deserved. Bersi Jorundarson told Thorgrim how they had already considered the most reasonable options when they had sent Fasti off, and decided he and his men should be cremated aboard Fasti’s ship. Bersi, who seemed to regard Thorgrim as the
de facto
leader of all the men at Vík-ló, suggested that the best plan was to do the same again. Thorgrim agreed.

  Despite Grimarr’s having killed Ornolf and having nearly killed Harald, Thorgrim bore him no ill-will. Thorgrim could understand other men’s feelings, and on occasion even sympathize with them, an unusual ability among that host. He understood what drove Grimarr and he did not doubt that, had he been in Grimarr’s situation, he would have behaved much the same. It would never do to deny Grimarr a proper funeral. His men would not stand for it, and the thought of doing so never even crossed Thorgrim’s mind.

  Cruel as Grimarr had on occasion been, driven by hatred - hatred for Lorcan, hatred for Thorgrim - there were men enough in Vík-ló who looked on him as a great man and their fallen leader. He had been their lord for some years and had led them well and put considerable plunder in their path. He would leave the earthly realm with the dignity that such a man had earned. But Thorgrim could not forget the image of Grimarr’s two empty hands held up to fend off Harald’s sword, and he had to wonder which of the worlds beyond Midgard had claimed him.

  Grimarr and the Danes who had died in the fight were laid out aboard
Far Voyager
. It seemed right to Thorgrim to send Grimarr off in his son’s ship, nor would he consider sending Ornolf to Odin’s hall in that unlucky vessel.

  Ornolf and the dead among the Far Voyagers were set aboard
Eagle’s Wing
, which Thorgrim claimed for Harald as a victor’s spoils, a claim no one cared to dispute. Ornolf was laid out on a great pyre built amidships, the others on smaller pyres arranged around him. Grimarr’s thrall had been sacrificed in the proper way to accompany him to the other world where she might continue to serve him. Another was found to go with Ornolf, and she lay by his side, her white face looking up toward the sky.

  They saw to it that Ornolf was equipped for this voyage from Midgard to Valhalla. He wore his helmet and mail, a spear and an ax at his side. In his scabbard he carried the finest sword they were able to find in Vík-ló. He did not carry Oak Cleaver. Oak Cleaver now hung from Harald’s belt.

  It hung there over Harald’s objection, at least initially. He had insisted it was not right that Ornolf go to Odin’s hall without his own his sword, his beautiful sword. Thorgrim in turn had insisted, with a force born of true belief, that the only thing Ornolf would have wanted more than to have Oak Cleaver by his side until the coming of Ragnarok was for his grandson to carry that fine blade as he made his way through the world. Harald had accepted it at last. And once again he wept.

  The sky was gray and thick with clouds, and the mist, the omnipresent mist, drifted down as they towed
Far Voyager
and
Eagle’s Wing
out past the mouth of the Leitrim and into open water. Eighty or so of the survivors of Vík-ló, all who could fit on board, lined the rails of
Fox
, the longphort’s last remaining ship. The rest of the men watched from atop Vík-ló’s walls, high enough to allow them to see beyond the low banks of the river.

  A handful of men served as the living crew aboard the ships of the dead. As the towline from
Fox
was cast loose they set the anchors, and once the anchors were holding and the signal given, they touched off the tar-soaked brush that formed the base of the pyres. They remained aboard until they were certain the fires had taken hold and would not die before the ocean water closed over them, and then they hustled into the boats alongside.

  Thorgrim, Harald, Agnarr and Starri stood shoulder to shoulder amidships and watched the pyre take first their shipmates and then Ornolf the Restless. Thorgrim’s thoughts drifted off like the smoke from the fires, thinking of how Ornolf had made him the man he was, good and bad, and Harald as well. Ornolf’s bloodline lived on through Harald and his brother and sisters, and the children of Ornolf’s other children, and their children as well. The blood of Ornolf the Restless would flow down through the years, through the generations, to people and places unimaginable. The flames rose up around Ornolf’s great body and his spirit joined the river of the ages.

It was nearly a week after they had sent Ornolf off to Valhalla that Thorgrim had the strength, physically and otherwise, to put to sea again. It would be a short voyage, four days duration at the very most. It was certainly all that Thorgrim could contemplate.

  They put to sea in
Fox
, manned by Far Voyagers, whose numbers were so diminished that the small ship actually seemed about right for the size for her crew. The wind was brisk and cold, a harbinger of the coming winter, but it drove them down the coast with never a need to break out the oars once the mouth of the river had been cleared and they had put some water between themselves and the lee shore.

  Agnarr, sporting bandage-covered sword wounds on his arm and leg, gave directions to the helmsmen, but by then the coast was familiar enough to Thorgrim that he could have navigated the ship himself. In his mind he ticked off the familiar headlands, bays and beaches as they made their way south.

  They spent the night on a beach that Agnarr picked out, the same beach, he told Thorgrim, on which the fleet had stopped on their voyage south under Grimarr’s command. The next morning, as the coming light turned the overcast sky from black to a soft gray, they were underway again.

  They arrived at their destination five hours later, with the sun just past its zenith, though still low in the southern sky. They stowed the sail and approached under oar, moving cautiously. The seas were bigger than the last time they had come that way, and the rollers broke white over the once-hidden reef, giving warning of its presence. But even if they had not known it was there, the sight of
Water Stallion
, or half of her at least, thrown up on the beach a quarter mile away, would have heralded the danger in those waters.

  Thorgrim stood in the bow. “Easy, now, easy,” he called to the rowers, “Very well, hold your oars!”

  Starboard and larboard the oars came to a stop, dragging in the water, slowing the rate at which the ship was driven toward the rocks beyond. The rowers had their backs to the shore and so could not see the dangers there, and Thorgrim had to imagine it was driving them to distraction, but there was nothing for it.

  The swells lifted
Fox
stern-first, and then set her stern down and lifted her bow in that familiar see-saw way of ships. Thorgrim could see it now, the odd bit of carved wood, the figurehead or something like it, still holding its place to seaward of the reef. In ten minutes he would look like a man of great wisdom or a complete fool, and he was not sure which it would be.

  “Starboard, give way, larboard back water!” Thorgrim called. The banks of oars pulled in opposite directions and
Fox
spun on her keel. As the ship turned Thorgrim made his way aft, past Agnarr at the helm, and stopped where the two sheer strakes came together in a narrow V.

  “Hold!” he called out and the rowers stopped. They were stern-to the reef now, the white water breaking over the rocks seeming perilously close.

  “Ready…” Thorgrim called. The swell had set them down toward the baulk of floating wood and he guessed the next one would bring them right to it. That meant that if they did not take care the one after that would send them onto the reef and an ugly death in the bitter cold water. The bow rose again, and then the stern, and Thorgrim heard a thump as
Fox
bumped into the floating jetsam.