Glendalough Fair by James L. Nelson Read Free Book Online Page A

the young Louis de Roumois knew in a general way. For a good part of his childhood his father had been absent, either fighting or intriguing at court. Louis spent his days pursuing those things that interested him. He became skilled at horseback riding and hunting, falconing, wrestling, fencing, archery, swimming and avoiding his tutors.
    Though he had been too young to participate in the war, Louis was drawn to the notion of fighting. Unlike his father, however, he had no interest in nor aptitude for politics, intrigue or statecraft. But Louis did not have to worry about affairs of state because he was not the eldest son.
    His brother, named Eberhard after their paternal grandfather, would inherit the title of count. The governing of the Roumois was his problem. Louis had only to enjoy the great bounty of the region, and the benefits of being born into the regnum , the ruling class, while remaining free of the responsibility of actually ruling.
    Like any young man of his standing, Louis had trained with weapons from a young age, and unlike many he had a natural gift for the use of them, and loved all things military. At fifteen he begged his father to give him some role in the defense of Roumois. His father considered his son too frivolous and immature to take on such a responsibility, and he made no secret of the fact. But Louis persisted, and managed to make such a nuisance of himself that his father relented, as much to shut the young man up as anything.
    Domestic tranquility was not Hincmar’s only motive, however. Charles the Bald had secured peace with his brothers, but now there was a new threat to Roumois, carried on the very river that ran like life’s blood through the region. Norsemen. Danes, mostly. The brutal raiders from the north were coming upriver in their swift longships and plundering the countryside. Their appearance was a profound terror but it was no surprise. The riches to be found in Frankia, the churches bursting with silver, the wealthy estates at the water’s edge, could not go unnoticed forever.
    Roumois had warriors enough to counter the threat but Hincmar needed the right man to lead them, someone he could trust completely, someone who would maintain the prestige of his family and not see this as a chance to gain power for himself. Louis was impetuous and sometimes foolish, but he had proven his courage and his skill, and Hincmar did not doubt his loyalty. He appointed Louis to lead a division of two hundred horsemen and set him the task of defending Roumois against the Northmen when next they appeared.
    To act as counterweight to Louis’ rash tendencies, Hincmar also appointed as second in command a man named Ranulf, an old campaigner with whom he had fought during the war for West Frankia. Hincmar made his wishes perfectly clear; Louis was in command, but when it came to fighting Ranulf would make the decisions. Someday, Hincmar told his son, with enough years and experience behind him, and if he learned what Ranulf had to teach, he might lead the men in something other than name only. But not yet.
    Louis understood what his father told him. Then, a month later, when word came that the Northmen were on the Seine, he promptly ignored it all.
    The mounted men-at-arms had been training under Louis’s ostensible leadership when the first of a stream of messengers arrived, this one from Fontenelle, twenty miles downstream from Roumois. The Danes had come.
    Not a moment was wasted. The men-at-arms slipped on mail, belted on swords, strapped helmets in place and rode off west. Plumes of smoke rising up over the rolling green hills marked those places where the Danes had come ashore and done their work, moving faster than even mounted troops could travel, and Louis led the men in that direction.
    “Lord,” Ranulf said, his horse keeping pace with Louis’s as they rode. “Where the smoke is, the heathens have already been. If we want to catch them, which we do, we should send scouts down to the