Fin Gall by James L. Nelson Page B

you’ll get out of him?”
                  Magnus shrugged. “I’ll know when I get it out of him.”
                  Orm wavered, his near complete distrust of Magnus wrestling with his desire to get some genuine information out of the fat jarl.
                  “Very well,” Orm said at last. “Let me know if this pig says anything of interest.” And with that he marched quickly out of the room.
                  Magnus watched him go, then took a seat, relaxing as he waited for Ornolf to regain a little strength. The Crown of the Three Kingdoms represented as great a threat to Orm’s rule as any Norwegian fleet. It was why Orm was so desperate to get it. And why, if he discovered its whereabouts, Magnus intended to keep it to himself.
     
     
                  It was past dark, and the spirit of the wolf had Thorgrim in its teeth, when the door opened.
                  Thorgrim was leaning against the back wall, near where Harald lay tossing and sweating. The rest of the men had moved away, leaving open ground between themselves and their irritable second in command.
                  At the sound of the creaking door Thorgrim looked up. They had returned Ornolf a few hours before, beaten worse than Thorgrim had ever seen him beaten before, and Thorgrim had seen Ornolf the Restless pretty well thrashed. He imagined they were coming for him now. He was not feeling very cooperative.
                  A guard came in first, sword in his right hand, a guttering seal-oil lamp in his left. Some of the sleeping men stirred and grunted as the feeble light spread around the room. Thorgrim recognized the man to whom he had offered gold. The guard stepped aside and a woman came in behind him, all but lost under a cloak and hood, and Thorgrim leapt to his feet.
                  “I’ve brought a healer,” the guard said when Thorgrim approached. He shut the door behind him. He looked nervous. Thorgrim was not sure if he was more afraid of the prisoners inside or his fellow guards out.
                  Thorgrim took the lamp and despite a near overwhelming urge to drive the sharp end of the lamp’s base through the man’s heart, handed him the gold coin he had promised, and then a second. “Here is another, which one of my men offered,” Thorgrim said with forced control. “You have our thanks.”
                  The guard nodded and he looked pleased despite the concern on his face and Thorgrim was glad, because here was a man he might need again. “This thrall’s safety is in your hands,” the guard said and with that he was gone through the door.
                  Thorgrim turned to the healer as she reached up and pulled back the hood of her cape. Thorgrim had expected a stooped and wrinkled old crone - among the Norse such women were generally the healers - but this woman was not. She was young, not much beyond twenty, Thorgrim guessed, and pretty, despite being a bit on the thin side with somewhat overly large eyes.
                  She looked at him and there was a touch of defiance in her expression, and had she been a man that might have caused trouble with Thorgrim in his present mood. But a woman, and moreover a woman who might heal Harald, was different.
                  “My name is Morrigan,” the woman said. “I am Orm’s slave.”
                  “You are not a Dane,” Thorgrim observed. She spoke the Norse tongue, but her accent was otherwise.
                  “No. I am Irish.”
                  “How do you come to speak our language?”
                  “When my brother and I were young, we lived among you Norsemen in Jelling. And now I am a slave to the Norsemen. First slave to the fin gall, and now to Orm.” She did not try to hide the bitterness there. Thorgrim knew that the Irish,