Raider's Wake: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 6) Read online

  Raider’s Wake

  A Novel of Viking Age Ireland

  Book Six of The Norsemen Saga

  James L. Nelson

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Fore Topsail Press

  64 Ash Point Road

  Harpswell, Maine, 04079

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by U.S. Copyright Law.

  Copyright © 2017 James L. Nelson

  All rights reserved

  ISBN- 13: 978-0692880265

  ISBN-10: 0692880267

  To Lisa, my first mate, my only mate.

  Back to the sea, where we met, where we belong.

  We sailed our ships to any shore that offered the best hope for booty;

  We feared no fellow on earth, we were fit,

  We fought in the battle-fleet.

  Saga of Arrow-Odd

  For terminology, see Glossary, end of Book.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Prologue

  The Saga of Thorgrim Ulfsson

  There was a man named Thorgrim Ulfsson who was known as Kveldulf, which means Night Wolf. He was called that because he would often become extremely bad-tempered in the evening, despite being generally known for his even-handedness, and some people thought he was a shape-shifter and could take on the form of a wolf.

  Thorgrim was a farmer in a place called Vik, in Norway, and like many such young men he spent summers raiding across the western ocean. He sailed with a jarl named Ornolf Hrafnsson, who was known as Ornolf the Restless for his love of raiding, as well as feasting and drinking. Thorgrim served Ornolf as a warrior, and as the years passed he became second to Ornolf and took responsibility for the ships and men, which was very pleasing to Ornolf as it gave him more time for feasting, and drinking ale and mead.

  The two men became very close and after some time Ornolf agreed to a marriage between his daughter, Hallbera, and Thorgrim. They made a good marriage, and Hallbera bore Thorgrim two sons, Odd and Harald, and a daughter named Hild. With the help of his sons and his servants and slaves, Thorgrim became a prosperous farmer and also a man very much respected in the place where he lived. Thorgrim did not go raiding again after his marriage to Hallbera.

  When Odd came of age and married, Thorgrim gave him a farm, which Odd worked as diligently as he had on his father’s land. Harald, too, was a hard worker, but his fancy turned more toward raiding and battle, and he trained from a young age for the time he might go raiding as his father had. Then when Hallbera died giving birth to a second daughter, Thorgrim, in his grief, agreed to accompany Ornolf on another raiding voyage to the land called Ireland. On this voyage he brought Harald, who was fifteen years of age.

  It was Ornolf’s intention that he and his men should sail his longship Red Dragon to Ireland and there raid during the spring and summer, returning to Vik as the season grew cold and stormy. But that was not the intention of the gods. After many adventures with the Irish king who ruled in a place called Tara, and the Danes who commanded the longphort of Dubh-linn, Ornolf, Thorgrim and those who still lived returned to Dubh-linn. It was again their wish to return to Vik, but still the gods would not allow it, and Thorgrim and the others found themselves in the longphort of Vík-ló, south of Dubh-linn, and there, after many struggles in which Ornolf was killed in a fight with a man named Grimarr, Thorgrim became the lord of Vík-ló.

  The following summer Thorgrim and the other warriors at Vík-ló joined with an Irish lord and another band of men who had gone a’viking to raid the monastery at a place called Glendalough. Harald was sixteen years old at that time, and had grown big and strong as a man. Indeed, his strength was greater than that of many other men and he soon earned the name of Harald Broadarm. Harald took his place in the raiding and in the shield wall and he proved himself a brave and valuable warrior.

  Thorgrim’s raid on Glendalough seemed at first to be marked for great success, but it was not to be. Both the Irish lord who had first suggested the raid and the other Norsemen, who were led by a man named Ottar, betrayed them, and Thorgrim and Harald and no more than ten of their men were able to escape with their lives.

  Thorgrim Night Wolf was not the sort who would let such a wrong go unavenged, and so he gathered the few men he had to him and he told them they would seek vengeance on those who had betrayed them. It so happened there were a number of Irish bandits who, seeing the chance for plunder, joined with Thorgrim and the others. They were led by a man named Cónán, who was well known among the thieves and bandits of that region.

  Soon, through means of cunning and skill with sword and shield, Thorgrim had his revenge, killing the Irish lord and those others who had betrayed him. Then he reclaimed the longphort of Vík-ló and the plunder he had gathered there for himself and his men. Thorgrim killed Ottar in a hólmganga, which is a duel between two men, but in doing so Thorgrim was gravely wounded in his legs and was not even able to walk. But a horse was found for him and he was brought back to Vík-ló and there his wounds were tended. Soon he was all but healed and as the days of spring yielded to the full blossoming of summer Thorgrim took his place again as the Lord of Vík-ló.

  Here is what happened.

  Chapter One

  Not on necks of oxen or cows is my champion's sword blunted,

  'tis on kings that the sword in Diarmait's hand today makes a whistling noise.

  The Battle of Carnn Chonaill

  When the sun came up that morning, illuminating the thick blanket of gray, white and black cloud, making visible the deluge of rain that was falling and had been falling for more than a week, Bressal mac Muirchertach was still the king of a small túaithe to the south of Dubh-linn. And now, just past midday, he was dead.

  He died in Conandil’s arms, the rain pelting his pale and frightened face, the sand under his body dark and wet. The bleeding had been considerable, and from several wounds. She had done what she could to stop it. If they had been in Bressal’s hall, where she might have stripped his clothing and got to the wounds in a proper way, wh
ere there would have been warmth from a great hearth fire, then she might have saved him. But that was not how it was.

  They had been driven to this place by the sea, Bressal borne along by two of his men after being struck down in the first few minutes of the battle. It had been a panicked flight, and the manner in which the two bearers carried Bressal had not been gentle. That rough treatment and the cold and the wet and Conandil’s inability to properly treat the wounds had all led to the old man’s death on that bitter, surf-scarred stretch of shingle beach.

  The attack had come just after first light and it had come from the west. The first indication that any of them inside Bressal’s ringfort had of trouble in the offing was the sound of shouts and screaming, muted and far-off, and the trample of horses. It was the music of some great catastrophe and it seemed to come out of the rain itself. The distant noise had brought men to the top of the walls, straining to hear or see, but the rain blotted out most sound and the country in the distance seemed to fade into a gray nothing.

  “Raiders?” Broccáin mac Bressal asked, standing next to his father on the earthen wall of the ringfort. Conandil stood beside him. She was Broccáin’s wife of five months. They had both leapt from their bed to scale the walls as the sentries shouted their alarm. They had found Bressal already there.

  “Raiders for certain,” Bressal said. “But who?”

  “Fin gall?” Conandil asked. “The heathens?” It terrified her just to say the words. She had been taken by the heathens the past summer, bound away for the slave markets of Frisia, when God had sent her the means of salvation. She knew it had to be God, because her escape was so like a miracle. Even if she did bring it about by fornicating with one of the heathens and fleeing as he slept. But that was past, confessed and forgiven.

  “Could be the heathens,” Bressal said. “But I would not expect them to come from the west. If they were going to raid they would come from the sea, I would think.” The túaithe that Bressal ruled was on the coast, and the ringfort not far from the beach from which the local fishermen put out to sea in leather-covered boats to cast their nets.

  “That whore’s son Eochu, then?” Broccáin suggested. Eochu was the rí túaithe of the lands that neighbored Bressal’s, and like all good neighbors in Ireland they were forever raiding one another. But they were cattle raids, mainly, quick forays over the border to scoop up the other’s cows, the chief measure of wealth in Ireland. But what they were hearing was no cattle raid.

  Through all this discussion, Conandil was desperate to point out what to her was obvious: it did not matter much who was attacking, only that the people out there needed help. But as a woman, and a woman new to the family and the rath, it was hardly her place to point that out.

  Happily, Broccáin realized as much before Conandil could stand it no more. “Whoever this bastard is, we have to meet them,” he said and those words seemed to spur everyone to move. Bressal and then Broccáin and then the sentries flew down the ladder to the grounds below, the rí túaithe and his son bellowing for sword and shield, for the house guard to turn out, for horses to be brought.

  The sound of distant shouting was louder, closer, by the time the gates to the rath were thrown open and the two dozen armed men sallied forth. Bressal and Broccáin were mounted, as were a few of their chief men, but most were on foot. Some were armed with swords and shields, some with axes, but most carried shields and spears, the easiest weapon to make, the easiest to wield, and one of the most effective.

  They were still coming out of the gate when the first people came running out of the fog and the mist, maybe a quarter mile away. It was hard to see what was happening. Conandil, who was trailing behind, had to wipe rain from her eyes as she blinked into the distance. She could see people running: women, men, children. She could see them stumbling, crawling, getting to their feet again. Behind them, men with spears and swords, their round, bright painted shields looking dull in that light.

  This is bad, she thought. This is very bad. Real defense of the túaithe required the men of those lands to arm and to gather and to put themselves under the leadership of Bressal. A minor king like him, a man of no great wealth, could not afford to keep men-at-arms. He had a small house guard, but for real numbers he had to rely on those who owed him military service, the poor farmers, the bóaire and fuidir. They were no great fighting men, but they could use a spear and that was often all that it took.

  But whoever had launched this attack had come in the night, waited until it was light enough to see, and fell on the people before the men could be called to arms. And now the farmers were running, fleeing in terror, and there was little chance their leaders, Bressal and Broccáin, could organize them to fight back.

  But Conandil knew they would die trying, and she cursed her bitter luck and this horrible fate. She had just escaped the hell of the fin gall, had found a husband, heir to this land, a fine home, and now these bastards had come in the night to take it all. But she would not be taken, not again. Like her husband, she would die making a stand.

  “Onward! Onward!” Bressal shouted, sword over his head, pointing toward the people rushing for the illusionary safety of the ringfort. It had been years since the old man had been in battle, but he had lost none of the courage that made him so loved by the people he ruled.

  Together, Bressal and Broccáin spurred their horses, leading the way forward, but keeping the animals to a slow trot so the others might keep up. They had swords held high, shields on their arms. They, alone among all the men there, wore mail shirts that gleamed dully and made a jingling sound as they rode.

  Conandil walked behind the column of men and off to the side so her view of the action ahead was not blocked by the soldiers. She had no idea what she might do in the middle of a fight, had given no thought to why she was advancing more or less at her husband’s side. She just knew she could not stay behind in the ringfort, could not spend this time praying and worrying and wondering what was going on.

  The shouting and screaming was louder now. Conandil looked off beyond the mounted figures of Bressal and Broccáin. The people were a couple hundred yards away, still running, stumbling, the women screaming in terror. Now and then one of the men would turn and raise whatever pathetic weapon he held—an ax or a pitchfork or a scythe—in an attempt to fight back. They might as well have been holding feathers for all the good it did them, the men-at-arms at their heels cutting them down with hardly a pause.

  It’s like driving deer…Conandil thought. The people were like deer being driven by the men behind, the heathens or Eochu’s men or whoever it was. These men must have swept through the countryside and herded the people together and pushed them forward, the way servants will round up deer and drive them to be killed for the amusement of some great king.

  And then the fleeing people of the túaithe ran headlong into the armed men who had gone out to defend them, and it was chaos. Bressal had come down from his horse and was trying to get his men to form a shield wall of some sort when the terrified people collided with his line, clawing and scrambling and fighting to get past, to put the armed men from the ringfort between themselves and their attackers.

  Bressal’s line collapsed under that assault, what little order he had created torn apart, and he was just trying to get the men back under command when the attackers fell on them. They came with spears mostly, and swords and their round shields. Like Bressal’s men, they were not well organized, having been driving the people ahead of them, but they were not hampered by the panicked women and children, and they hit Bressal’s line like a massive, breaking wave.

  Conandil saw Bressal go down in that first assault and she screamed in horror and panic. She loved the old man, her father-in-law, nearly as much as she loved her husband, but now as she watched, he disappeared under the swell of fighting men, spears and swords thrusting back and forth.

  Broccáin roared, a great bear’s roar, a sound Conandil had never heard from him, and he charged forward, shield up, swor
d slashing back and forth, hacking and thrusting and clearing a swath of men away from his fallen father. His courage drove the men under his command and they, too, pushed forward, meeting the raiders shield for shield, spear for spear.

  Not heathens, Conandil thought. These men, these raiders, they were not fin gall. They did not wear mail or leather armor, they did not have the pointed iron helmets and shields with their wicked pagan images painted on their faces. These were Irishmen.

  “Why are you doing this?” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “You bastards, forsaken by God!” It was not as if she expected an answer, it was just that the whole nightmare was so unreal that she could not contain herself.

  She reached down and picked up an ax that one of the fleeing men had dropped. Not a battle ax, but the sort used to chop kindling for the hearth or the heads off chickens. Still, it had an edge, it could kill, and that was all she wanted. She raced forward, ready to do anything, perfectly ready to die in defense of this life she had built, this fine life that she enjoyed for the first time in the twenty or so years she had been on this earth.

  The nearest of the attackers was maybe ten yards away and Conandil charged for him, ax raised over her shoulder. She realized she was shrieking, but she could not really tell what shrieking was hers and what was coming from the others locked in the fight. Rain ran down her face and hair and her clothing was soaked through and heavy.

  The man she was set on wore a dark green brat and carried a shield painted red. He held a spear over his head as if he was going to throw it, but instead he was darting it back and forth, stabbing when he saw his chance. The tip of the spear was shining bright red, and then the rain washed it clean.