Fin Gall Read Online Free Page B

cared only about Magnus’s success. If Magnus had met with no success, then Magnus would wish the storm had taken him. Orm would see to that.
                  The longship crawled toward the dock at a pace too agonizing to watch. Orm turned hard on his heel. “Send Magnus to me, when he lands. If he ever lands,” he said to Asbjorn. He pulled his heavy fur cape further up his shoulders and ran a hand through his thick beard to comb the water out. He pushed through the wind and rain back to his quarters.
                  It was another hour before Orm heard the knock on the door. He was seated then in his imposing wooden chair, one leg over the arm, a cup of warm cider in his hand. The house had a low, square fireplace, more a fire pit, in the center of the room, after the Norse style. The fire was roaring, casting a yellow glow over the dirt floor and the gloomy interior of the small house, built against the north corner of the fort’s interior wall. The smoke that was not able to escape through the windows piled up against the thatch ceiling overhead.
                  Orm’s impatience had turned to a smoldering fury, but when the knock came he took a long drink and waited for Magnus to knock a second time.
                  “Come!”
                  The door creaked open. Magnus Magnusson stood there. The wind ripped in around him, fluttering the papers on the table beside Orm’s chair but it could not move Magnus’s drenched fur cape or his long hair, plastered down by rain and spray. Asbjorn hovered behind Magnus and he seemed to be hopping from one foot to the other, though whether from eagerness or a need to urinate, Orm could not tell.
                  Magnus stepped into the house and Asbjorn followed, closing the door. Magnus gave a shallow bow. He was handsome, clean-shaven, with a reputation that was well earned. He was ambitious. He did not do subservience well.
                  “Yes?” Orm said.
                  Magnus shook his head.
                  “You failed?”
                  “They failed. Either they did not dare go out, or they were sunk in the storm. In any event, they did not enter the River Boyne.”
                  Orm pressed his lips together and stared off into the dark end of the house. Damn this impertinent bastard... he thought. Magnus did not fail often, and when he did, he had a genius for making it appear as if it was not really failure, or that the failure belonged to someone else.
                  He looked back at Magnus, who stood, stoic and expressionless. Orm had a notion that this was exactly how Magnus would look facing his own execution. Perhaps we’ll find out , he thought.
                  “How do you know they did not get into the river? How do you know they are not there now? While you stand here dripping on my floor.”
                  “We kept at the mouth of the river for as long as we could, until my ship could bear no more. We were nearly wrecked half a dozen times. If my longship could barely live, then no ship built by Irishmen could have survived.”
                  Orm grunted. Magnus could well be right. Orm had been a bit surprised to see Magnus’s ship come limping in - he had thought it would certainly be lost. If it had been anyone else living through that storm at sea, then he might have won Orm’s grudging respect. But Orm reckoned that Magnus had respect enough from every other quarter, and needed no more.
                  “I suppose,” Orm said at last, “we won’t know for certain if you’ve failed until these Celt whoresons are putting our heads on pikes as an offering to their Jesus. Very well. You may go.”
                  Magnus gave another quick bow, turned and left. Asbjorn remained, eager for some intrigue, but Orm had had enough of