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

was right, but he would not spend another winter in Dubh-linn. He would go to the bottom of the sea first.
      Which was now a genuine possibility if they did not reef the sail, and soon. Those men who were not bailing, or those who were sick of bailing, moved to the various lines that controlled the big square sail, bellying out hard from the yard above. They were experienced hands and needed no instructions on how to reef, no lessons on the proper way to tie up the bottom edge of the sail and reduce by half the amount of cloth spread to the wind.
      Men arrayed themselves along the foot of the sail, which was at chest height and hauled nearly fore and aft. Just forward of where Thorgrim stood at the tiller a man named Agnarr took the long halyard off its cleat. Agnarr was just a bit younger than Thorgrim, an experienced mariner who had been in Dubh-linn for several years. He had tried his hand at fishing off the Irish coast, a less lucrative endeavor than he had hoped, but from that experience he came to know the waters and the coastline well. He sailed with Thorgrim and the others to Tara and had proved himself a good man in the fighting. Now, like Thorgrim, he was ready now to return to Norway, and so had been pleased to join Far Voyager’ s crew .
      Agnarr looked forward, saw all was ready. He took the halyard off the cleat to which it was made fast and eased the thick rope away until the sail bellied out in a great round arc to leeward, in a manner reminiscent of Ornolf’s gut. Fore and aft the men grabbed onto the sail, pulled it down to them, bundled up the bottom edge and tied it along its length with the short lines, the reef points, that were woven at intervals through the cloth. That done, a half a dozen men staggered aft and took up the halyard. With Agnarr calling the cadence they heaved on the line and hauled the yard back up, though with the sail shortened it now rose only half way up the mast.
      Thorgrim could feel the change in the ship’s motion. Before, Far Voyager had felt on the knife edge of control, like a skittish horse ready to bolt at any moment. Now she felt solid and ready to respond to the nuance of the steerboard. She felt ready to ride out the ugly weather coming, and that meant Thorgrim did as well.
      “Ha!” Ornolf shouted from his seat on the low bench. He wiped mead from his beard. “You are old women, the lot of you! To tuck a reef in the sail in this pathetic breeze? It would not be so if I was in command here!”
      “Of course not, Ornolf!” Thorgrim agreed. And he did not doubt Ornolf’s boast. Ornolf’s recklessness, which he called leadership, would have taken him, his ship and his men to the bottom two dozen times by then if Ornolf had not yielded the de facto command to Thorgrim years before.
      And now Thorgrim did not even have to pretend Ornolf was in command because for the first time in all their voyaging together, the ship belonged to Thorgrim. Not Ornolf. Thorgrim had taken it in battle and not even realized as much.
      It was all part of the great intrigue in which they had managed to tangle themselves. A hired crew of Danes had been sent to Dubh-linn to kidnap the young woman whom Thorgrim and Harald were protecting. The subsequent fight had left most of the Danes dead on the muddy roads by the banks of the Liffey. It had not occurred to Thorgrim that their ship would become his legitimate prize, not until Ornolf, claiming the prerogative of a father-in-law, had taken it for his own use.
      She was a relatively new vessel, well-built and seaworthy. She met with Thorgrim’s approval, which was no easy thing for a ship to do, as Thorgrim had strong opinions backed by the experience of the many, many miles of water that had passed beneath his keel. What the Danes had called her, he did not know, but he renamed her Far Voyager , because that was all he wished from her: to ride the seas back to his home in Vik.
      Far Voyager seemed a good ship, but not a