Glendalough Fair (10 page)

Thorgrim crossed the weathered boards of the wharf and stepped onto the trampled dirt of the shore, the rest following. Starri was at his side, along with Harald and Agnarr and Godi and the rest of his house guard. He looked back toward the river. Bersi and a few of his men were crossing
Dragon
’s deck toward the shore, and Skidi’s
Fox
was coming alongside
Blood Hawk
. Thorgrim saw Skidi make the jump from his ship to
Blood Hawk
, coming to join the leaders ashore.

“Do you know who did this?” Thorgrim asked Kjartan.

Kjartan shook his head. “A madman. You’ll see.”

Thorgrim said nothing. A moment later Bersi and Skidi joined them and Thorgrim led them toward the closest house, a miserable little hut of thatch and wattle, the fence gate hanging torn from its leather hinges. As Thorgrim stepped into the yard and he could see that the door, made up of a few rough cut pine boards, was also hanging half torn off. He approached the house but he did not draw Iron-tooth. He already knew what he would find inside.

He stepped through the door and into the dim interior. It smelled of sweat and cooked meat and fish and blood. There was a body lying curled up to the right of the door. Thorgrim stepped closer and he could see it was a man, about his own age he guessed. His eyes were wide, his skin turning dark, his mouth open, a wide patch of dark blood surrounding him like a round carpet. In a darker corner of the hut he could see the white flesh of someone he assumed was the man’s wife. She had been stripped naked. Thorgrim did not need a closer look.

He reached out with the toe of his shoe and touched the pool of blood, found it was not a pool at all but a stain where the blood had seeped into the dirt floor. He pushed on the man’s shoulder and found his body was stiff and unyielding.

“You got here yesterday?” Thorgrim ask Kjartan. He had seen many bodies in various stages of decomposition, and he had a good idea of how they looked with the passage of time.

“Yes,” Kjartan said. “Tied up about midday. Found the village as you see it.”

“Come on,” Thorgrim said. He led the way outside. The sun was hanging just above the mountains to the west, and dark would be on them soon. He led the men down the village’s one hard-packed dirt road. The ruts of wagon wheels and the imprint of human and animal feet were visible where the soft mud had dried in the sun. They found another body fifteen feet up the road, a young man in a filthy shirt, hand clutched to his stomach, his viscera spilled on the ground, a hatchet still clutched in his hand.

The dead were strewn along the road and in the yards and the spaces between the huts. Men and boys, women, girls. Everyone, apparently, whom the raiders had found alive. Thorgrim frowned. Senseless. Such people would fetch a high price in the slave markets in Frisia. Even if there was no desire to transport them so far, it would have been little trouble to sell them in Dubh-linn or to one of the host of Irish kings. Instead they had been slaughtered.

The Northmen were silent as they walked. They found the source of the smoke, a building bigger than the rest, most likely the hall of whoever had played lord over that sorry collection of huts. The thatch had been torn down, the raiders probably looking for anything of worth hidden there.

Whether they had found anything or not it was impossible to tell, but they had set the rest of the building on fire, and now it was no more than a black and smoking ruin. It must have burned all night, and the fire was only now dying for want of fuel. Thorgrim did not doubt there were charred bodies under all that, the men who had fought back and lost or had run inside the hall seeking its illusionary safety. The perimeter of the building would have been ringed with armed men and torches put to the remaining thatch.

“Who sacked this village do you think?” Bersi asked, his eyes on the smoldering wreckage. “Norsemen?”

“Maybe,” Thorgrim said, but he didn’t think so. He didn’t see why Norsemen would bother. What could they hope to find in such a dung heap as this? Hardly worth the effort. No, it was more likely the Irish who did it, one of those petty kings trying to get some advantage over another, trying to teach someone a lesson.

Bersi nodded. Some of the men were using their swords to lift bits of thatch or burned sections of wall, no doubt looking for something of value, but Thorgrim did not think they would find anything.

He turned away from the smoldering hall and led the men further inland, down the dry mud road past more bodies in various stages of dismemberment. The dogs and pigs had been at some of them.

As the village began to peter out they came at last to the only stone building there, a small church, hardly bigger than Thorgrim’s hall at Vík-ló. Like the huts, the church’s front door was smashed and hanging on its hinges, iron rather than leather, and it had clearly taken considerable effort to hack in the big oak panels.

Thorgrim mounted the single stone step and pushed past the broken door into the church’s interior. The sun had finally dipped below the distant mountains and much of the space was lost in the gloom, but Thorgrim could see it had been thoroughly sacked. The large basins in which the Christ priests held their ritual water had been knocked over and some were smashed. Carvings that had once adorned the altar space had been pulled down and likewise broken up. Pages from the books the priests used were scattered over the floor, the covers ripped away.

Pushed into the near corner of the church lay one of the priests, killed with a spear that had been left jutting from his chest, his face still frozen in a look of shock and horror. Thorgrim stepped past him, walked slowly toward the front of the church. That uneasy feeling that had being coming and going for days now was back, more pronounced than ever.

There was a dead man on the altar. Thorgrim approached slowly and he could hear the soft steps of the men behind him. Another priest. Or so Thorgrim guessed. He had been stripped and beaten and cut until he there was little of him that was not covered in blood. He had been nailed to a balk of timber, arms outstretched, the way the Christ God was always shown.

Thorgrim stopped and looked down at the remains of the man’s face.
The Irish did not do this
, he thought. They might have been merciless in sacking one another’s villages and ringforts, but they did not tear up holy books and they did not butcher priests. No Irishman would risk the bad luck that such a thing might bring down on their heads.

And that meant it had been done by Northmen, and not long ago. A day, perhaps. Were they moving up and down the coast, or had they gone up the river? How many were they? Were they heading for Glendalough as well, and would they join with Thorgrim’s crews or would they fight them?

More game pieces to be moved around
, Thorgrim thought. There was another player at the gaming table now. Thorgrim did not know who he might be, but he had a pretty good sense of the sort of man he was.

He turned to Kjartan. “You know nothing of who might have done this?” he asked.

Kjartan shook his head. “No, Night Wolf,” he said. “We found this…village of the dead as you see it.”

Thorgrim nodded. Two things were clear to him. One was that Kjartan was lying. The other was that Kjartan was afraid.

A dead man south of me, a dead man to the north,
they were not the darlings of a worthless army.

The Annals of Ulster

In the pre-dawn darkness, Louis de Roumois woke and joined his fellow brothers at the dawn prayer of  invitiatory. When it was over, so too was Louis’ vocation to the monastery, at least for as long as he could contrive it to be, which he hoped would be for the rest of his life.

Father Finnian drew him aside as he had the day before, but this time they did not go to the abbot’s house. They went instead back to Louis’s cell. There Finnian had laid out a tunic and mail and leggings, and a sword and belt, shield and helmet.

“There is not much time,” Finnian said. “I have men watching the coast, and they will tell us when the heathens reach the river, but I don’t think it will be very long.”

When Finnian took his leave Louis stripped off the cord belt and robe, slipped into the leggings, pulled the tunic over his head and the mail over that. They fit tolerably well. They were of good quality. Not the sort of thing he had been accustomed to wearing as a soldier in Frankia, but good enough. And in truth he would have gladly traded in his monk’s robe for a leather jerkin and a wooden spear.

He buckled the belt around his waist and adjusted the sword until it hung just right. He sighed. He was a new-made man. He felt the power surging through his veins as if he had taken a deep drink of strong liquor. He felt whole again. Reborn.

There were men to train. There were questions of logistics to which to attend. There was intelligence to gather. But first Louis had other business. Pressing business. He stepped quickly from his cell, down the hall and out the door into the sunlight, foreign and rejuvenating.

“Brother Louis?”

Louis turned. The voice had caught him by surprise, so taken was he with thoughts of the coming confrontation. He turned. Brother Lochlánn was there, though the haughty swagger that generally marked his demeanor was not.

“Brother Louis…you said I should come find you in the morning. You said you would…” His voice trailed off.

Louis sighed. Yes, he had said that. And Lochlánn had been eager enough for the morning’s lesson to sneak away from whatever duties he had been assigned, no easy task. The boy would have to return to it soon or suffer for his absence.

“Very well, come with me,” Louis said. He led Lochlánn toward the stables, relishing the sound and weight of the mail as he walked, the thump of the sword against his thigh. They stepped out of the bright morning sun into the twilight interior. There were a few stable boys at work, but no one who might question their presence there.

Louis drew his sword, handed it Lochlánn. He picked up a rake and held it as if it were a staff. “Go ahead,” he said. “Make your attack.”

Lochlánn advanced, but with little confidence. He made a few tentative pokes with the sword which Louis sidestepped with ease.

“No, really, attack me,” Louis said. “Make as if to injure me. I’ll give you a silver arm band if you draw blood.” Louis did not actually possess a silver arm band, but he was fairly certain that would not be an issue.

Lochlánn advanced again, bolder, and Louis deflected the blade with the handle of the rake. Finally Lochlánn made his move, a fast, lunging attack. Louis knocked the blade aside, swung the rake, checking the swing when the handle was an inch from cracking Lochlánn on the side of the head.

“Good,” Louis said. “Now, you see how I waited until you had committed to your attack? And how you committed while I was ready for it, and in a good position to parry and riposte?”

They worked through the move again. Louis was patient and Lochlánn was attentive and they went step by step through the attack, the defense, the counter-attack. They drilled again and again, and then Louis took the sword and handed Lochlánn the rake and they went through the scenario once more.

Louis had intended to give Lochlánn fifteen minutes of his time, no more, because he had no more to give. But when the bells tolled for breakfast, Louis realized he had lost track, that he and Lochlánn had been going at it for an hour or more.

He wiped his brow. He and the boy were both sweating profusely. “Go, now, Brother Lochlánn,” Louis said. “Your breakfast awaits. If anyone gives you trouble for skipping out on your duties, tell them I had need of your service.” In truth Louis did not know if his new-found status gave him the authority to excuse Lochlánn from his work, but it was worth a try.

“Very good, Brother Louis,” Lochlánn said. He was smiling. Louis wasn’t sure he had ever seen him smile before. “You’ll train me some more, won’t you? Please?”

“Yes, yes, I promise,” Louis said, again not certain that he had the authority to make good on his words. Lochlánn raced off. Louis caught his breath. He considered the task he had been going off to do when Lochlánn had interrupted him.

That will wait no longer,
he thought, though he could feel himself hesitating. He was not afraid to do what needed to be done, but he was afraid of the consequences, the possible end of his new status as man-at-arms and the joy it brought him, which he had enjoyed now for less than two days. He sighed, settled the sword on his hip and headed off.

He stepped from the stable and blinked in the morning sun, wiped his eyes and headed for the gate in the vallum and then the gate in the outer wall. Glendalough - not the monastery but the town around it - looked different than it had even the day before. People by the hundreds were flocking to the monastic city. Wagons loaded with goods came creaking up the steep roads to the village in the hills. Peddlers with great bundles on their backs trudged along, leaning on walking sticks for balance. Even garishly painted caravans of players, a thing Louis would never have thought he might see there, came rolling through the streets.

In the fields that surrounded the monastery’s stone walls pavilions sprouted like mushrooms, and one by one merchants laid claim to the temporary stalls lashed together in the square. It was as if Glendalough had woken from a deep slumber, was stretching and springing to life.

Incredible
, Louis thought, but he spared only a glance for this unprecedented bustle of activity. He walked down a road that ran at an odd angle from the monastic wall, the ground hard-packed underfoot as the mud dried in the morning sun. Soon he was past the small cluster of buildings that made up the town and was making his way through the fields beyond.

A row of tents and pavilions in the distance marked where the
ad hoc
army was making its encampment. This was what the Irish called a
dúnad
, an encampment thrown up by an army on the move. And though they were not moving much now beyond their camp fires and the field on which they were training and the trench that had been dug so they might relieve themselves, that would change soon. Louis would see that it did.

The soldiers called up for duty were arrayed around the field where they carried out drills of some description. They were the
bóaire
, the small-time farmers with a dozen or so cattle, and the
fuidir
, those who were not freemen, not entirely, but tenants of the rí túaithe
or one of the Lords of Superior Testimony. Along with rent, taxes, tithing and labor, they owed their superiors a certain amount of military service. And now that debt was due.

Louis walked slowly past the grounds, watching the activity there with more than casual curiosity. Turning the farmers into men-at-arms was his duty now, and if he still held that duty in half an hour’s time he would take the task up immediately.

He was not, however, much encouraged by what he saw: a motley band of a hundred or so men, unarmed and outfitted for the farm, not the battlefield. They seemed to be under the direction of a captain wearing mail and waving a sword, and they trained with all the enthusiasm of men who did not want to be where they were, being made to risk their lives for someone they did not like.

At last Louis pulled his eyes away from the spectacle, unable to endure any more of what he was seeing, forcing himself to think on his more pressing business. He looked down the length of makeshift shelters. The largest of them, an oval-shaped pavilion with banners streaming from poles mounted above its roof, was a hundred feet beyond the farthest of the soldiers’ tents. Louis set his eyes on it, picked up his pace.

There were no guards at the door flap, which surprised him, but he was grateful for it. He reached the entrance and tossed the canvas aside, burst into the pavilion, one hand on the grip of his sword. A table took up most of the ground within. Its top was scattered with parchments, an ink stand, two tapers with flames dancing at their ends, a few pewter plates with remnants of bread and cheese and roast meat of some sort, a tankard, and behind the desk,
Colman mac Breandan, hunched over a document.

Colman looked up as Louis came in. His face showed no expression, and that did not change at all as Louis approached. Colman said nothing. He looked down again and continued to read, as if Louis de Roumois’s entrance was a minor irritant, as if Louis was some buzzing insect that had momentarily distracted him.

Louis looked off to the right. Failend was there, seated in a folding chair, a fur across her lap. The light was dim inside the pavilion but there was illumination enough to see the dark bruise on the side of Failend’s face. The sight of it swirled up an ugly sediment of emotion; impotent rage, shame, disgust. Louis’s first instinct was to call Colman out on her behalf, to ignore his own grievances with the man and to rectify the terrible wrong that had been done Failend, a wrong that was as much his fault as Colman’s.

Their eyes met. Failend’s face was as blank as Colman’s but as he looked into her dark eyes Louis understood that if he fought Colman, he would not be sticking his sword in Colman’s gut for her sake, but for his own. Such an act would be as thoughtless and self-serving as was his rutting with her and then leaving her to her husband’s rage.

“Brother Louis,” Colman drawled. He had a way of coloring those two words with just the right tinge of irony to infuriate Louis de Roumois. Louis shifted his gaze from Failend to Colman, and tried to summon the rage he had felt before the sight of Failend’s damaged face had so confused his purpose. Colman was sitting straight in his chair now, as if he had finally finished with important business and could make time for this inconsequential visitor.

“
Colman mac Breandan,” Louis said, taking a step toward the desk, putting as much menace as he could in the advance, though Colman seemed wholly unimpressed. “It’s a cowardly thing to send an assassin in the night. If you want to kill me, be a man and make your attempt face to face.”

Colman leaned back and the flicker of a smile moved over his lips, an expression which, if it was intended to drive Louis even closer to complete fury, succeeded beautifully. “An assassin, you say? An assassin came to kill you? Have you no friends at all in this world?”

Louis took another step forward, placed his hands on the table and leaned it, a move which elicited not a hint of a reaction from Colman. “You know full well an assassin came for me,” Louis said. “An assassin you sent.”

At that Colman actually chuckled. “If an assassin came for you he did a damned poor job,” he said. “You see, Brother Louis, this is why a man like me can never trust inferiors such as…well…yourself. If I wished to kill you, I would have most certainly done so myself, and you would most certainly be dead.”

“If you wish to kill me, do it face to face. I come here now to give you that chance.”

“If I wished to kill you I would have done it when you were standing limp-cocked and naked in my own home,” Colman said. “And perhaps I should have done. But I did not.”

Louis glared at Colman and tried to think of something to say, but the logic of Colman’s response stripped him of words. Of course, if Colman had wanted him dead, he could have killed him when he found him with Failend. Could have killed him quite easily, and likely suffered no consequences for doing so.

Perhaps you only decided later you wanted me dead
, Louis thought, but he still possessed enough sense to see that arguing would only make him look foolish.

Louis straightened and waited for Colman to say something, but Colman, clearly enjoying the moment, allowed Louis to twist in the wind a bit longer.

“Very well,” Louis said at last, “you give your word as a gentleman you did not send the killer for me?”

Colman chuckled again. “A gentleman gives his word to another gentleman, not to a cretinous little turd like you,” he said. “It is enough for you that I tell you I did not send an assassin. It is, in fact, more than one of my station owes to one of yours.”

Louis pressed his lips hard together. In Frankia a man of Colman’s station would have been licking the boots of Louis de Roumois and asking for more. But they were not in Frankia. And he was no longer Louis de Roumois, but just Brother Louis now.

Colman let the silence hang a moment more, and then said, “You may go.”

And Louis could think of nothing more to say. Once again Colman had humiliated him in every possible way. Even remembering that he had put horns on Colman could not sooth Louis’ ego, because Colman did not seem to care.