Night Wolf: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 5) Read online

  Night Wolf

  A Novel of Viking Age Ireland

  Book Five 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 © 2016 James L. Nelson

  All rights reserved

  ISBN-13: 978-1534879683

  ISBN-10: 1534879684

  To Steve Cromwell for all your fine work in creating the look for this series, and for all your kindnesses over the years.

  Shape-shifter: Closely associated with the berserks, those who were hamrammir [shape-shifters] were believed to change their shape at night or in times of stress, or leave their bodies (which appeared asleep) and take the physical form of animals such as bears or wolves.

  From Glossary – The Icelandic Sagas

  He always went to sleep early in the evening and woke up early in the morning. People claimed he was a shape-shifter and they called him Kveldulf (Night Wolf).

  Egil’s Saga

  For other terms, see Glossary at the end of the 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

  Twenty-One

  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

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  The Saga of Thorgrim Ulfsson

  There was a man named Thorgrim Ulfsson who was the son of Ulf Ospaksson, who was known as Ulf Quick-wit. Thorgrim was also clever and he was a skilled warrior as well, and so he was looked upon as a leader of men. If he had one fault, it was that he would sometimes grow foul-tempered as the sun went down. During those times his anger was such that people would not dare be near him. Some people thought that he was a shape-shifter, and that earned him the name of Thorgrim Kveldulf, which means Night Wolf. In his younger days the wolf spirit frequently came over him, but as he grew older he found it happened less often, and he was generally glad of that.

  As a young man Thorgrim had gone a’viking with a local jarl named Ornolf the Restless. For many summers they raided around England and sometimes as far off as Frankia. The raiding was good in those days and Ornolf, who was already wealthy, grew wealthier still, and the men who sailed with him likewise gained much plunder. But of all those men, Thorgrim was Ornolf’s favorite, and so he offered his daughter, Hallbera, to Thorgrim as his bride. This was a match that Thorgrim was happy to make. Thorgrim gave Ornolf fifty silver coins as a bride-price and Ornolf gave Thorgrim a bountiful farm as a dowry.

  Thorgrim and Hallbera made a good marriage and they were happy. Thorgrim gave up raiding to tend to the farm and to his family, which soon consisted of two sons, Odd and Harald, and a daughter named Hild. Odd, the oldest, was a serious boy who worked hard and diligently. Harald, too, was a hard worker, but he dreamed of going a’viking as his father and grandfather had. Harald took care to learn from Thorgrim all he could about the use of weapons, and he sought out any others who could also teach him. When his chores were done, Harald would often sneak off to a secret place in the woods where he would practice with sword, ax, spear and shield.

  Many years passed and Thorgrim continued to grow in wealth and reputation. Odd married and Thorgrim gave him the farm that Ornolf had given as a dowry. Then, after Thorgrim had passed forty winters, Hallbera found she was again with child. Hallbera was no longer young, and she died in childbirth, which broke Thorgrim’s heart.

  Thorgrim’s father-in-law, Ornolf, wished to once again go a’viking, this time to Ireland, and because Thorgrim found he was no longer happy on his farm with Hallbera gone, he agreed to go with him. Thorgrim took Harald, who was fifteen years of age. Harald was not overly tall, but he was very strong, and he soon earned the nickname of Broadarm. Having studied the use of weapons so long and diligently, he was a good warrior, if not quite as clever as his father.

  Ornolf and his crew sailed to Ireland aboard Ornolf’s ship Red Dragon, and there they had many adventures and won and lost several fortunes. Ornolf was killed in a battle against a Dane named Grimarr Giant who was lord of a longphort called Vík-ló. After Harald killed Grimarr, Thorgrim was made Lord of Vík-ló and there he and his men, as well as those who had followed Grimarr, spent the winter building ships for the spring’s raiding.

  When spring at last came, an Irishman named Kevin mac Lugaed, with whom the Northmen had been trading, arrived at Vík-ló to suggest that his men and Thorgrim’s men join together to raid a monastery at a place called Glendalough. This Thorgrim and his men agreed to, and they were joined by another army of Northmen led by a man named Ottar Thorolfson whose nickname was Bloodax.

  Thorgrim and Ottar went to Glendalough by rowing their ships as far up the rivers as they could. Glendalough was indeed a wealthy monastery, but before they reached it they were met by a great army of Irish warriors, with whom they fought. Thorgrim was betrayed by Kevin, who switched sides even before the fighting, and by Ottar who slipped away in the night. Ottar and his men made off with all the ships, save Thorgrim’s ship Sea Hammer, which was holed. Ottar wished to go to Vík-ló and claim the longphort and the wealth there for himself and leave Thorgrim and his men behind to be killed by the Irish.

  The Irish soldiers did great slaughter among Thorgrim’s people as they tried to escape, and in the end only Thorgrim and ten of his men were left alive. The Irish tried to burn Sea Hammer, but through a clever trick Thorgrim made them run off before the ship was set on fire. Then Thorgrim plugged the hole as best he could and he and his remaining men sailed the ship down river to a place of safety where they would fix it properly. Thorgrim vowed that he would get revenge on those who had wronged him.

  Here is what happened.

  Chapter One

  I, maker of the sword’s voice

  Heard two loon birds fighting

  And I knew that soon the dew

  Of bows would be descending

  Gisli Sursson’s Saga
r />   Six miles downstream from Glendalough, Thorgrim Night Wolf found the place on the river where he intended to beach Sea Hammer, his longship. He had noticed the spot on their voyage up, had tucked the location away in his mind. That was a week before.

  He had had no notion then that he and his men might find themselves in need of a place where they could hide their ship and make repairs so that they might carry out a desperate and unlikely escape. That thought had not occurred to him, and yet he had seen the place and noted it and remembered it. The gods, perhaps, whispering in his ear. Thor wishing to come to his aid. Loki, playing a trick to prolong his misery.

  The spot was on the south bank, which meant little on a river that was fordable in so many places, but still it put them on the shore opposite the monastery and the encampment from which the horse soldiers would come. The riverbank was heavily wooded on both sides, so the Northmen could not be seen from a distance, could only be discovered if someone hacked their way through the forest to the water’s edge. There was a gravel sandbar that reached out into the stream, perfect for beaching a ship. The wide curve in the river that had deposited the gravel there also helped hide the ship from anyone upstream or down.

  “There,” Thorgrim said, loud but not very loud. The gravel bar was two hundred feet down current, and Thorgrim spoke to let the handful of men at the sweeps know that their labor would soon be over. He held the tiller himself, keeping the ship midstream as best he could.

  Forward he saw heads turning to look, not many, as there were not that many heads aboard to turn. Harald, his son. The massive Godi, pulling the oar opposite Harald. A warrior named Olaf Thordarson, who had been with them since leaving Dubh-linn, and another named Ulf. Ten men in all, including Starri Deathless, wounded in the first fight with the Irish and left aboard Sea Hammer when they had launched the attack on Glendalough. Ten men out of more than two hundred who had sailed from Vík-ló on this raid.

  “Harald, get some lines ready to run to the trees ashore,” Thorgrim called. Harald nodded and pulled his long oar inboard and laid it across the sea chests that the rowers used for benches. The loss of Harald’s oar did little to slow Sea Hammer’s progress downstream. It was the current that was driving the ship, not the rowers. The men at the oars were concerned mostly with keeping the vessel in the middle of the river, keeping her from turning sideways, and making a bit of headway when needed to give the steering board some bite.

  And that was fortunate, because ten men, ten wounded, exhausted, dispirited men, and two prisoners, one a woman, were not about to move sixty-five feet of oak and pine longship through their own strength of arm.

  “Give a pull! Unship your oars!” Thorgrim called next and the men still at the oars, five to larboard and four to starboard, leaned back for one last pull, then slid their oars in and laid them out as Harald had done. Thorgrim gave a twist of the tiller and Sea Hammer slewed sideways, coming up onto the gravel not bow-first but with the round part of her bilge sliding up into the shallow water in a way that would allow the sandbar to most effectively support the injured vessel.

  The ship gave a slight shudder as she touched and Harald leapt off the sheer strake and onto the sandbar, ropes in hand. The water that ran an inch deep over Sea Hammer’s deck boards rolled to the larboard side like a small tidal surge.

  Another ten minutes and we would have been on the river bed, Thorgrim thought. Dead men’s tunics stuffed into a two-foot hole in the ship’s bottom would not stanch a leak in any meaningful way.

  Sea Hammer was the only ship of nine left after Ottar, the lunatic, and his men had abandoned Thorgrim’s warriors to the Irish in the predawn hours before battle. Sea Hammer had been left behind only because Ottar’s brother, Kjartan, who had turned against him, had cut a hole in her to stop Ottar’s stealing her as well. Thorgrim and the handful of men who had escaped the butchery that the Irish had doled out found her run up on the riverbank and half sunk.

  Then the Irish had found her, too. Twenty of them, mounted warriors, too many for the Northmen to take on. As Thorgrim and his men watched from the cover of the trees, the Irish made ready to burn her where she lay. That, for Thorgrim, was too much. He was willing to die, indeed he preferred to die, before suffering such a final humiliation.

  In the end that sacrifice was not necessary. Thorgrim’s prisoner, his male prisoner, was an Irish warrior named Louis, and Thorgrim sent him to warn the soldiers off, to tell them there were sixty Norse warriors coming up river. Thorgrim then made a show of force with the few men he had, and that had been enough to make the Irish ride off. But he knew they would not be gone for long, and they would not come back alone.

  With the sound of the horses’ hooves growing fainter, Thorgrim led his men back aboard Sea Hammer. She was badly holed, true, but she did not have to voyage far, just a ways beyond where they might expect the Irish to come looking for them.

  “We need something to stop up that hole,” Thorgrim said after peering at the damage through the clear water that flooded the hull. He straightened and looked around. There were dead men all over the shore. Most were his own men, those who had been left behind to guard the ships. They had given their lives in that effort, but they had not been enough to stop the near three hundred men under Ottar’s command.

  Not all of the dead, however, were Thorgrim’s men. “Find some of Ottar’s dead,” Thorgrim ordered, “strip off their tunics and bring them to me. Just cut them away.” Thorgrim was tormented by the memory of the men who had died because of his misjudgment. He was tormented by the fact that he had no time to give them a proper funereal. He could not stand the thought of leaving their corpses, naked and bloating, for the ravens and the wolves to feast on.

  The others nodded their understanding and climbed back ashore to find the corpses from which to strip clothing. They shuffled, they limped, they moved with obvious pain. They had all been wounded in some manner during the fight: a slash from a sword, a wound from the spear of a mounted warrior, a hard kick from a horse. They were wounded, but they could still move and that was why they lived. Those too wounded to run had been hacked down on the field.

  One by one the men returned with the bundles of cloth that just that morning had clothed living warriors, and Thorgrim knew he had another decision to make. A harder one. He took the tunics and once again ran his eyes over the shore. His men had died fighting. The Choosers of the Slain had been among them already—they must have been; it had been hours. What need had they of weapons? They were in the corpse hall now, or they never would be.

  “I need four of you to find helmets to bail the ship,” Thorgrim said, gesturing toward the river water that had flooded into Sea Hammer, a foot high at its deepest. “The rest of you, gather up all the swords, shields, mail, any weapons you can find and get them on board.”

  “From Ottar’s men, Lord Thorgrim?” Ulf asked. “Or from all the dead men?”

  “From all the men. They have no use for weapons now,” Thorgrim said, and his tone did not welcome discussion. “And do not call me ‘Lord’,” he added. “I’m not the lord of anything. Not a dung heap, nothing.”

  I am not a lord because I am a fool, he thought.

  Once again the men climbed over the side and spread out along the shore. Starri Deathless limped after them, his wound graver than the others, and greatly aggravated by the day’s events. He had been there when Ottar’s men arrived, had taken up arms despite his agony, and fought until he had collapsed. But for Starri, the torment of having to stay still was worse than the torment of having to move.

  “Starri,” Thorgrim said as Starri was swinging a leg painfully over the ship’s side. “Stay aboard, listen for the riders coming back. None of the others will hear them before you do.”

  Starri nodded. His hearing was legendary. He brought his leg back inboard and climbed up onto the foredeck, leaning against the tall stem. The elegant, sweeping post terminated ten feet above with a carving of an angry, vengeful Thor looking out past the bow. Now Thor
and Starri together faced the land beyond the riverbank, alert for any sound of danger.

  Thorgrim draped the cut tunics over the sheer strake and kneeled down into the water in the ship’s bottom. He took up one of the tunics and shoved it into the hole, jamming it as tightly into the corner as he could, then reached for another.

  He heard the sound of someone climbing aboard and then the splash of water. He looked over his shoulder. Harald was there with a leather helmet in hand, already scooping water from the bilge and throwing it back into the river. Thorgrim had guessed that he would opt for that job. As much as Harald liked to play the man, Thorgrim did not think he would relish the idea of stripping mail from the corpses of the dead.

  “Harald,” Thorgrim said. “Wait until I’ve plugged the hole before you start bailing.”

  Harald flushed. “Oh…yes…of course,” was all he managed to say. Harald was always eager to be foremost in everything, and sometimes he got ahead of himself.

  Two more tunics, and the hole was as filled as it was going to get. Thorgrim had no doubt water would stream though it, but not as fast as they could bail, not for a while, anyway.

  “All right,” Thorgrim said. “Start bailing.”

  Harald went right at it, filling the helmet and flinging the water over the side. He had been voyaging for several years now. The Norse longships were the finest seagoing vessels on earth—fast, nimble, flexible and seaworthy—but they were still essentially just big open boats, and Harald, like the other mariners from the North countries, had considerable experience with bailing.

  Harald was joined in his efforts by Thorodd Bollason, who flung water with great vigor despite the deep gash on his upper arm, left in the wake of a stroke from an Irish sword and bound with a blood-soaked bandage. Two others, Vali and Armod, joined in, and it was not long before Thorgrim could see the level of the water dropping against the ship’s side.