Free Dubh-Linn: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 2) by James L. Nelson

He might have laughed if the pain had not been so great and his mood so foul, and growing more so as the sun edged toward the horizon.
      In his right hand, Harald gripped a needle threaded with a sinew thread. With his left hand he tried to pinch together the edges of skin on Thorgrim’s lacerated chest. Harald’s fingers were slick with blood, and the skin was slick with blood, the edges lost in the red mess, and finally Harald simply gripped as hard as he could and drove the needle through the torn flesh. Thorgrim made no comment.
      The needle pierced the skin, adding a sharp pain as a counterpoint to the dull ache of the double wound, a laceration where the sword went in through Thorgrim’s mail, and another when it came out. As Harald pulled the sinew taut, Thorgrim dug into the sod with his fingers, but his face showed no reaction and he did not make a sound.
      “I’m sorry, father,” Harald said. “Did that hurt?”
      “No,” Thorgrim said, and at the same time Starri Deathless, sitting nearby, said, “Of course it hurt.” But it was just an observation, no more. By his tone Starri might have been commenting on the weather.
      To no one’s surprise, the berserkers had chased the Irish further than any of the other Vikings had, but they too were blown and exhausted and could only run so far. In truth, in the wake of a battle, when the fighting madness passed, the berserkers were often the most wasted of all the men. After the Irish had fled, Thorgrim found Starri sitting cross legged amid a heap of bodies, hunched over and crying bitterly.
      For a long moment Thorgrim had just stood there, not sure what to say, but understanding somehow that his presence was wanted and appreciated. At length Thorgrim said, “What is it that grieves you, Starri? Was one of your fellows killed?”
      “No, no,” Starri said, his words broken by his sobbing, “well, yes, some were. Damned sons of whores…”
      Starri looked up at Thorgrim. His tears had made white tracks through the brown, dried blood on his face, and Thorgrim thought, I would not have guessed this man could look more bizarre, and yet here he is…
      “Yes, some were killed,” Starri continued, “Hadd and Frodi. Alf was still here when last I saw him, but he will not be long. And here I am…here I am…still in this cursed world, even as the Valkyries lift my fellows from the field!”
      “You’re sobbing…” Thorgrim said, looking for the words, “because you were not killed?”
      “Of course, Night Wolf! What man could do anything but curse the fate that keeps him in this world and denies him the pleasures of Valhalla!”
      Thorgrim nodded. He was not sure what to say. There was not a man there, himself included, who did not believe with utter conviction that a glorious death on the field of battle would bring him to an even more glorious life in Odin’s Valhalla. And yet, how many of those held a belief so strong that they would weep to find themselves still alive? Many of those who lay strewn and bloody on the field, if given the choice, would likely have put off the journey to the afterlife for a few more years.
      And you, Thorgrim Night Wolf? Thorgrim asked himself. When his wife had died, most of the joy of this world had gone out with her. Thorgrim did not want to die, but he was indifferent about living. And that made him nearly as dangerous a man as Starri Deathless.
      Reflexively, Thorgrim glanced over to where one of his shipmates from the Black Raven was binding a cut on Harald’s arm. When the fighting had stopped, Thorgrim had immediately sought out his son. Harald was red faced, splattered with gore, jubilant from the fight. The cut on his arm, more of a tear from the point of spear, was an ugly, jagged wound, but not deep, and it had already stopped bleeding by the time Thorgrim had found the boy. Harald did not even know the wound was there until Thorgrim had mentioned it.
      So what of Harald?