The Lord of Vik-Lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

old man. Forward, the men huddled against the weather side turned their heads away as the drama came to an end, though their expressions were still dark. They did not care for Ornolf’s taunting the gods. Neither did Thorgrim.
      Some of the Far Voyagers were men who had sailed with Thorgrim and Ornolf from Vik a year and a half before, and they were accustomed to Ornolf’s behavior. But there were not too many of those left. Most of the ship’s company did not know the men from Vik well. They had joined the ship in Dubh-linn, having come there from every part of the Norse world, though Norway in the main. They joined because they were looking for a way back home, and because they had heard of Thorgrim Night Wolf and they wished to be part of his company.
      Another gust rolled the ship to leeward and Ornolf cursed as he spilled mead all over his tunic. He was not angry at wetting his tunic - it was soaked through already - but at spilling mead, a limited resource on board the ship. They had a long voyage ahead. Nearly a year and a half earlier he and Thorgrim, Harald and the others had sailed from Norway to go a’viking for the summer in Ireland. That simple plan, however, had become vastly more complicated, as was wont to happen, and their return to Vik was now long overdue.
      Indeed, Thorgrim had come to suspect that the gods were toying with him. Time and again they dangled before him the prospect of a return to his farm in East Agder, the only thing in life he now desired, and then snatched it away. He wondered if perhaps he was being punished for Ornolf’s blasphemy. It would be no easy task for the gods to punish Ornolf, because even when he was sober, which was rare, he did not seem to care a rat’s ass what became of him. Vik, Dubh-linn, life, death, it did not seem to matter much to Ornolf as long as there were no restraints put upon his outrageous behavior. It would be terribly unfair, or course, for the gods to punish Thorgrim for Ornolf’s transgressions, but fairness was never a hallmark of those who dwelled in Asgard.
      Far Voyager ’s last leeward roll had shipped enough water to set the men to bailing. With wooden bailers and buckets and the odd helmet they scooped water from the bilge and threw it over the larboard side. Thorgrim had been driving the ship hard, but he was pushing the limits now.
      “Let us put a reef in the sail!” he shouted forward. “Two reefs!” His voice was strong and it cut like a battle ax through the rising wind. For all the years and the hard usage, the sundry injuries he had sustained, some minor, some nearly fatal, his strength was not much diminished.
      He had only just recovered from the last, a knife wound that had nearly been the end of him. It had been delivered as they were plundering the church at a place called Tara, delivered by a fellow Northman who had fixed on the idea that Thorgrim was his enemy. They had carried Thorgrim to his ship and sailed him back to Dubh-linn. Cursed Dubh-linn, that Norse longphort, once just a foothold on the Irish coast, now the largest, richest city on the island. Dubh-linn, from where Thorgrim had tried time and again to escape only to have the gods fling him back at the city’s feet, on the muddy banks of the river Liffey.
      Thorgrim’s men had borne him up the plank road to the house where he and Harald and Starri had lived during the winter months. The house belonged to an Irishwoman named Almaith, Thorgrim’s lover, and widow of a Dane blacksmith. Almaith was a skilled healer, and as spring yielded to summer she nursed Thorgrim back to health. Or nearly back to health. His recovery was still not complete when the height of the summer passed, and the weather, fine by Irish standards, threatened to worsen, and Thorgrim knew if he was to sail for home that year he had to do so soon. It was time to go.
      Almaith had begged him not to sail, had assured him his strength was not what it should be. Thorgrim knew she