Glendalough Fair Read Online Free

leading with his shield, knocking Kjartan’s weapons aside and lunging for his chest. He felt the familiar sensation of his blade scraping off chainmail, then he swung back in the other direction as yet another of Kjartan’s men joined the fight.
    Mail …Thorgrim thought. Mail … Some warning was ringing in his head, but with the rain and the shouting and searing wound in his side he could not understand it. He batted the new attack away, slashed at the attacker, missed his face by inches as the man leapt back.
    Again Thorgrim felt his feet going out from under him, but he managed to step back before he went down and met a new attack from Kjartan.
    Mail! The man’s wearing mail! No one else in this fight was wearing mail, but Kjartan was. As if he had been anticipating this all along. Planning it.
    Thorgrim met Kjartan’s sword with Iron-tooth’s blade, caught Kjartan’s ax with his shield. He stepped in and gave Kjartan a kick in the stomach which sent him reeling but he did not go down.
    “Is this what your fight is all about?” Thorgrim shouted. “All this to kill me?”
    Kjartan made a sound somewhere between a growl and a shout. He pushed himself off, leading with his sword, ax raised. Thorgrim dropped his shield to his side and waited, Iron-tooth ready to move. Two steps and Kjartan was on him, but Iron-tooth stayed where it was. Thorgrim brought his shield up fast and slammed it into the oncoming man, stopping him dead, hurling him back. Kjartan stumbled, arms wide, eyes wide. His feet came up and he shouted as he fell and came to a stop flat on his back, half sunk in the grabbing mud.
    Thorgrim leapt forward. There was a ringing in his ear that seemed to blot out the liquid noise of the rain and the shouting and the odd voice calling, “Lord Thorgrim! Lord Thorgrim!”
    The voice seemed to come like a dream and then hands grabbed his arms and shoulders and stopped him as he was stepping up to Kjartan to drive his sword through the man’s chest. It was only after he heard the words repeated again that he realized someone was actually calling for him.
    “Lord Thorgrim!”
    Thorgrim lowered his sword and shield and his body relaxed, and those holding his arms and shoulders let them go and stepped aside. Thorgrim turned to see a young man running up to him, one of Skidi’s men who had been posted as a sentry on the newly rebuilt wall.
    “What?” Thorgrim asked. His eyes were back on Kjartan.
    “Skidi bid me tell you there are riders. Riders coming. Irishmen.”
    Thorgrim let those words swirl around in his mind. Riders. Irishmen. That could be anything. Important. Mundane. But the one thing it could not be was ignored.
    Thorgrim looked at the blade of his sword. The rain had washed it clean. He thrust the weapon back into his scabbard. He looked down at Kjartan, still supine in the mud. “I’m called away by other concerns,” he said. “We’ll see to finishing this later.” He turned his back on Kjartan and walked away. He did not wait for a reply.
     
     

Chapter Three
     
     
    The Monastic city of the western world
    Is Glendalough of the Assemblies.
    Féilire of Oengus, c. 800 CE
     
     
    The country west of Vík-ló, the land that the Irish called Cill Mhantáin , rose quickly as it left the sea, climbing up into a series of high, rounded mountains that marched away inland. These were not the ragged and inhospitable cliffs of the Irish coast or those of the Northmen’s homeland, but altogether more gentle and welcoming hills. And in those days of early spring the high country did indeed seem to welcome the traveler and tempt him to weave his way through the lush valleys.
    Twelve miles into those mountains, nestled in a valley where two lakes where held like water cupped in God’s hands, was the monastic city of Glendalough.
    Christianity had come to Glendalough two hundred years before with the arrival of St. Kevin, who sought only solitude there. The valley of the two lakes was well chosen.