Fin Gall by James L. Nelson Read Free Book Online Page A

dropped to the deck, began stepping cautiously around the dead.
                  “It was the finn gall, I’ll wager,” Donnel said at last. It was no great mystery who had killed these men. The mystery was who these dead men were.
                  “Are they fishermen?” Patrick asked. Donnel shook his head. There were too many of them. And though their bodies had been looted and stripped, Donnell could see in the remnants of the clothing that these were wealthy men, king’s men, not common folk like him and Patrick.
                  “I don’t know...” Donnel began and then he gasped, tried to scream, but only a choking sound came out. Then Patrick screamed and Donnel found his voice and screamed as well, a shrill sound of unadulterated panic.
                  He looked down. One of the dead men, his face white, his eyes bulging, had a hold of Donnel’s ankle.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Seven
     
     
     
     
     
    Who can tell
    at the table
    if he laughs with angry men?
                               Hávamál
     
     
     
     
     
                  T
    he sun was setting, brilliant and red, and the wind was gusting hard by the time the longship Red Dragon found the mouth of the River Liffey and Ornolf’s warriors readied for the hard pull upstream.
                  For two mostly miserable days they had remained tied up in the cove where Ornolf and Thorgrim had buried the crown. The storm howled around them, dumping rain as they huddled on deck under an awning spread over a frame set up to bear it. They heard sounds from the shore that might well have been trolls, or something worse. The Vikings, to allay their fears, and for want of anything better to do, ate and drank themselves into insensibility.
                  Finally the storm blew itself out, leaving in its wake blue sky and winds gusting hard. They got underway with a single reef in the sail and Thorgrim taking careful note of the landmarks that would lead them back to the little bay.
                  They worked their way down the coast with two long tacks before fetching the mouth of the Liffey, but the wind was foul for them to sail up to the longphort of Dubh-linn, so with a fair amount of grousing the Vikings stowed the sail and broke out the long sweeps.
                  Now Thorgrim stood at his place at the tiller, shielding his eyes from the brilliant orange glow of the setting sun, and guiding the ship between the muddy banks, the low rolling green hills.
                  Ornolf the Restless was roaring drunk.
                  He was up in the bow, a cup in his hand, flinging curses at the gods and anyone he could see on shore. His hand rested on the stump of the prow, where the long tapering dragon’s neck was generally fastened. The dragon head was always removed when approaching land, in case any land spirits should see it and be frightened, though Thorgrim wondered how a carved head could be any more off-putting than a drunk Ornolf.
                  He scanned the southern bank of the river. There was a scattering of houses, some sheltered behind circular stonewalls, or wattle fortifications. A church sat back from the water a little ways. That close to a Norse longphort, it must have nothing of value , Thorgrim thought. Or, more to the point, it had nothing left of value.
                  There were a few people as well, a plowman guiding his oxen through the last bits of daylight, some children gleaning a field. A woman was washing clothes in the river and Ornolf shouted to her as they passed. She looked up, watching the longship glide by. Thorgrim wondered if she understood the Norse tongue. He did not think so. If she did, she would have fled in terror to hear what Ornolf was