Dubh-Linn: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

was going on in the man’s mind. Then Starri spoke, and his voice was calm. “Pray, what is your name?”
      “Thorgrim. Thorgrim Ulfsson, of Vik.”
      “But they call you something else, do they not?”
      “They call me Thorgrim Night Wolf.”
      “Yes, yes. The night wolf. You are the night wolf, and you are favored by the gods.” And then Starri nodded and turned away and ambled off, as if Thorgrim had drained the madness from him.
      “He’s an odd one,” Arinbjorn said.
      “It’s who they are,” Thorgrim said.
      “Here,” Arinbjorn nodded up the beach. “Hoskuld Iron-skull is calling the leaders together. Join me.”
      Thorgrim hesitated. “I am not a jarl, or the owner of any ship. I lead no men. I have no business at a gathering such as that.”
      “Nonsense! A man such as Thorgrim Night Wolf? Your council would always be welcome. Come with me.” So Thorgrim followed Arinbjorn White-tooth up the beach to where the men who commanded the ships of the fleet were gathered around Hoskuld Iron-skull .
      “You saw the riders on the ridge, I have no doubt,” Iron-skull was saying as they joined the circle. “They’ll be ready, waiting for us. We do not know how many.” Hoskuld was a big man, filling out with age, but he still exuded power in his bearing and his voice. He wore mail, finely wrought, a helmet that would have gleamed if the sun had been shining, and around his shoulders a cloak made of some fine fur. Ermine, perhaps. He was a wealthy and powerful jarl, and everything about him reflected that fact.
      “There’s a tower at Cloyne,” one of the other jarls offered, “maybe tall enough to have seen us at first light.”
      “A tower?” Arinbjorn said. “I was never told of any tower.”
      Hrolleif the Stout, who owned the ship Serpent and whose face was all but lost in his beard, shrugged as if it did not matter, and Thorgrim silently seconded the gesture. It did not matter.
      But jarls would talk, and each would be heard, so the conversation went back and forth for some minutes more. Bolli Thorvaldsson, a minor jarl from the south of Norway, owner of Odin’s Eye , the smallest ship in the fleet, favored the swiftest possible advance. Arinbjorn offered his own suggestion. “Let us take a third of our men, circle around to the south. If they are waiting for us in numbers, then the chief of our men will attack face on, and once engaged the third will attack from the side.”
      There was silence at that. Some nodded, but not with any great enthusiasm. Hrolleif spit on the sand, then wiped away the part that hung up in his beard. “Too fancy. Too fancy by half, I say,” Hrolleif said. “Right at them, that’s the way.”
      “Thorgrim Night Wolf?” Hoskuld Iron-skull asked, catching Thorgrim off guard. “You have spent some time now in this cursed country, what do you say?”
      Thorgrim thought for a second. He was with Hrolleif in spirit, but he was serving at the pleasure of Arinbjorn White-tooth. Arinbjorn was no fool, and his idea was not necessarily wrong. There was no shame in thinking things through or trying to outwit your enemy. Yet….
      “The Irish will not have mail, or few will,” Thorgrim said at length, “and they will not have battle axes. Some are mounted on creatures they call horses, but if any of you mistook them for swine it would be no wonder.” Some of the others smiled at that, some nodded. “I like what Arinbjorn suggests, but I think the biggest threat from the Irish are sheer numbers, in which case I would not care to have our company divided.”
      There followed a brief and disorderly discussion, with nearly all speaking at once, but it was clear that a great majority agreed with Thorgrim, and they would take that course. “That ridge is what we must worry about the most,” said one of the men whom Thorgrim did not know. He pointed with his chin to the high ground that bordered the beach, the narrow cut of a trail