Fin Gall (10 page)

             
“I imagined you would think so,” Orm said. “But still I must insist we talk.” He turned to the men behind him. “Is this the man?”

             
The fat one, with a smug look on his face, nodded. “Yes, this is the man who was in command of the longship. The one who attacked me.”

             
“Very well,” Orm began but Magnus cut him off.

             
“Wait, my Lord.” He looked Thorgrim in the eye and Thorgrim met his gaze. “This man is not in command. He is second. That man,” Magus pointed to Ornolf, who was slumped on the bench beside the table, “is the jarl Ornolf, and he is in command.”

             
“And you told me Ornolf is an old fool, and this Thorgrim is the clever one,” Orm said.

             
“Exactly,” said Magnus. “And I would rather try to get information from a fool than a clever man.”

             
That seemed to stir Ornolf “Fool?” he roared, getting to his feet. “Give me my sword and we will see who the fool is!”

             
Orm ignored the request. Instead, he nodded toward Ornolf, and the guards grabbed the jarl up by the arms and half pushed and half dragged him toward the door.

             
“I’ll rip your lungs out, all of you, you bastards!” Ornolf shouted as he was taken from the room.

             
Orm stepped up to Thorgrim so their faces were just inches apart. For a moment he said nothing, just seemed to study Thorgrim’s face, and Thorgrim stared back.

             
“We’ll see what your jarl has to say,” Orm said at last, “and then you and I will talk.” He turned and stepped out of the room. One of the guards slammed the door and Thorgrim stood looking at the rough wood.

             
He had not counted on this. He had always imagined they would take him, but they had taken Ornolf instead.

             
What will Ornolf tell them?
Thorgrim wondered. Would he tell Orm everything? And if he did, what reason would there be then to let any of them live?

Chapter Twelve

Often it’s best

for
the unwise man

to
sit in silence.

                 
Hávamál

              O

rnolf the Restless lay in a great fat heap on the floor. After a moment he managed to push himself up on his arms and glare with the one eye that would still open at the Danes who surrounded him. He spit a glob of bloody mucus on the floor.

              “You are all a lot of sons of whores... I’ll rip your lungs out, you bastards...” he gasped through split and bleeding lips. And then Orm kicked him in the side of the head and he went down again.

             
Magnus was impressed. The old man had taken hours of this abuse, alternately worked over by himself and Orm and the two guards. And for all that he had given away practically nothing, and his defiance had not wavered a bit.

             
That last kick knocked him out cold, and for a moment Orm stood panting and looking down at his motionless form.

             
“Is he dead?” Magnus asked.

             
Orm nudged him with his foot. Ornolf groaned a bit.

             
“Water, here,” Orm said and one of the guards stepped up with a bucket, dashed it in Ornolf’s face. The jarl opened his eyes. Orm crouched down and grabbed him by his long gray and red hair.

             
“Are you part of a Norwegian fleet? Olaf the White’s fleet?” Orm asked. He had asked it so often that Magnus had lost count. He was sick of hearing the question. Ornolf, apparently, was sick of denying it.

             
“Yes, we’re part of Olaf’s fleet! A thousand longships! We’re going to tie you down and take turns buggering you to death, you son of a whore!” He voice was surprisingly strong for someone in as much pain as he must be in.

             
Orm let go of the hair and Ornolf’s head hit the floor. Magnus folded his arms and regarded the old man. He had denied being a part of any fleet and Magnus, for one, believed him. Orm probably did too, but he was too afraid of Norwegian vengeance to let it go at that. Besides, he enjoyed this sort of questioning.

             
Orm kicked Ornolf in the stomach and elicited another groan. “By Thor, I’ll have you disemboweled and burned at the stake for piracy, raiding a Danish ship, if you don’t tell me the truth.”

             
It was not an idle threat, Magnus knew. He had seen Orm do it to more than a few men and he would probably do it to Ornolf. But the punishment would have nothing to do with their raiding the Danish trader. No one cared about that. It would be to make Ornolf, or his men, admit to being part of a Norwegian fleet, or, barring that, to make sure that they never would be.

             
Magnus had his own interest in the interrogation. The Crown of the Three Kingdoms. It had not occurred to Orm that these men might have found the curragh when Magnus could not, but it had occurred to Magnus, and Ornolf’s near slip of the tongue had all but confirmed it in Magnus’s mind.

             
Magnus had carried out a systematic search of the longship, in the early hours, while Asbjorn still slept and Orm was busy with other matters. Under the guise of searching for some evidence of treachery, he and his men all but tore the ship apart. Every deck plank was ripped up, every dark corner explored. They found discarded bones, a few coins, a little statue of Thor that had fallen down behind the afterdeck. But they found no crown.

             
Orm crouched down and looked closely at the bleeding Ornolf. He straightened. “This one is useless. We’ll get no more out of him.”

             
“Leave him for me,” Magus said. “I’ll let him rest a bit, and then try again.”

             
Orm turned his eyes from Ornolf to Magnus. Orm, Magnus knew, saw treachery everywhere. Hardly a surprise. There was treachery everywhere.

             
“What more do you think you’ll get out of him?”

             
Magnus shrugged. “I’ll know when I get it out of him.”

             
Orm wavered, his near complete distrust of Magnus wrestling with his desire to get some genuine information out of the fat jarl.

             
“Very well,” Orm said at last. “Let me know if this pig says anything of interest.” And with that he marched quickly out of the room.

             
Magnus watched him go, then took a seat, relaxing as he waited for Ornolf to regain a little strength. The Crown of the Three Kingdoms represented as great a threat to Orm’s rule as any Norwegian fleet. It was why Orm was so desperate to get it. And why, if he discovered its whereabouts, Magnus intended to keep it to himself.

             
It was past dark, and the spirit of the wolf had Thorgrim in its teeth, when the door opened.

             
Thorgrim was leaning against the back wall, near where Harald lay tossing and sweating. The rest of the men had moved away, leaving open ground between themselves and their irritable second in command.

             
At the sound of the creaking door Thorgrim looked up. They had returned Ornolf a few hours before, beaten worse than Thorgrim had ever seen him beaten before, and Thorgrim had seen Ornolf the Restless pretty well thrashed. He imagined they were coming for him now. He was not feeling very cooperative.

             
A guard came in first, sword in his right hand, a guttering seal-oil lamp in his left. Some of the sleeping men stirred and grunted as the feeble light spread around the room. Thorgrim recognized the man to whom he had offered gold. The guard stepped aside and a woman came in behind him, all but lost under a cloak and hood, and Thorgrim leapt to his feet.

             
“I’ve brought a healer,” the guard said when Thorgrim approached. He shut the door behind him. He looked nervous. Thorgrim was not sure if he was more afraid of the prisoners inside or his fellow guards out.

             
Thorgrim took the lamp and despite a near overwhelming urge to drive the sharp end of the lamp’s base through the man’s heart, handed him the gold coin he had promised, and then a second. “Here is another, which one of my men offered,” Thorgrim said with forced control. “You have our thanks.”

             
The guard nodded and he looked pleased despite the concern on his face and Thorgrim was glad, because here was a man he might need again. “This thrall’s safety is in your hands,” the guard said and with that he was gone through the door.

             
Thorgrim turned to the healer as she reached up and pulled back the hood of her cape. Thorgrim had expected a stooped and wrinkled old crone - among the Norse such women were generally the healers - but this woman was not. She was young, not much beyond twenty, Thorgrim guessed, and pretty, despite being a bit on the thin side with somewhat overly large eyes.

             
She looked at him and there was a touch of defiance in her expression, and had she been a man that might have caused trouble with Thorgrim in his present mood. But a woman, and moreover a woman who might heal Harald, was different.

             
“My name is Morrigan,” the woman said. “I am Orm’s slave.”

             
“You are not a Dane,” Thorgrim observed. She spoke the Norse tongue, but her accent was otherwise.

             
“No. I am Irish.”

             
“How do you come to speak our language?”

             
“When my brother and I were young, we lived among you Norsemen in Jelling. And now I am a slave to the Norsemen. First slave to the fin gall, and now to Orm.” She did not try to hide the bitterness there. Thorgrim knew that the Irish, generally, made good, docile thralls. But apparently not this one.

             
“Do you come here by Orm’s leave?” Thorgrim asked.

             
Morrigan smiled. “Certainly not. He’ll beat me severely if he finds me out.”

             
Thorgrim felt the spirit of the wolf begin to dissipate like morning fog. There was something about the thrall that affected him, and it gave him hope for her powers as a healer.

             
“My name is Thorgrim Ulfsson. You’ll be rewarded for your risk,” Thorgrim assured her. “Now, come.”

             
He led her over to the back wall where the wounded men were lying on their piles of cloaks. Olvir Yellowbeard was the first of them, with a deep gash that ran from his shoulder across his chest and stomach. The wound, undressed, gaped open like an ugly trench dug in white earth.

             
Morrigan set down her large basket and peered close at the wound, sniffing and probing while Thorgrim held the lamp close. Olvir, asleep, shifted and groaned.

             
“The rot is setting into this wound, but it may not be too late,” Morrigan said soft, and Thorgrim did not know if she was talking to him or herself. He made no reply.

             
Morrigan pulled a handful of downy material from her basket. “Cobwebs,” she said, as if she thought Thorgrim did not trust her. Gently she packed the soft bundle of webs on Olvir’s wound. Olvir’s eyes opened wide in surprise and he made to sit up, but Thorgrim’s hand held him down.

             
“Don’t move, Olvir Yellowbeard,” Thorgrim said. “This thrall is a healer.”

             
Olvir groaned and lay still again. With sure hands Morrigan pulled a length of linen cloth from the basket, and a small jar filled with an unctuous paste. She rubbed the paste on the cloth and wrapped it around Olvir’s wound.

             
“That is a yarrow poultice. That’s all I can do for now,” she said. “We must wait and see how it goes.”

             
Thorgrim nodded. They moved on to the next man and she treated his wounds in a similar manner, and then the next. “You should have sent for me right off,” Morrigan scolded. “The medicine is not as powerful when the wounds are old.”

             
Thorgrim nodded, said nothing.

             
They came next to Giant-Bjorn. Morrigan looked at him close, probing the wounds, looking close in the lantern’s light. She pulled out another small jar, and with Thorgrim’s help tipped some of the contents into Giant-Bjorn’s mouth. “Skullcap will help him sleep. There is nothing I can do for this one,” she said and they moved on.

             
As the minutes passed into the first hour Thorgrim’s anxiety rose like the tide. He wanted Morrigan to treat Harald before her presence was discovered. He wanted her to ignore all of them and concentrate her efforts on his son, but he dared not say it, or give any indication that Harald meant anything more to him than any of the others. He did not know what her relationship with Orm was, or what information she might be willing to barter with her master for some consideration.

             
Ornolf the Restless was next, his face battered, his clothes torn, bruises and cuts visible through the rent cloth. Morrigan looked him over, looked up at Thorgrim. “These injuries are new,” she said.