Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [111]
So what was missing? What was wrong with it? He scarcely knew himself. All he did know was that he had been feeling a strange disquiet in recent months. Ever since the incident.
The disquieting incident had occurred at the turn of the year. He had been riding back across the Plain of Bird Flocks after delivering a message from his uncle to a small religious house in that area. As it was a fine day, one of his uncle’s sons had decided to ride out with him, accompanied by one of the slaves. There were several Viking farmsteads in that part of Fingal, with large open fields, and they had passed one of them and gone into a small wood when, suddenly, half a dozen men had jumped out onto the track.
Osgar had just time to think. Robberies were not unknown in the area, and travellers usually went armed. His cousin had a sword with him, but Osgar was only carrying a hunting knife. The robbers would be after their valuables if they had any; then they’d take their horses. Whether they meant to kill them he couldn’t guess, but it certainly wasn’t worth waiting to find out. He saw his cousin slash at two of the men with his sword and wound them. Two more were coming at him. The slave had already been dragged from his horse. One of the men was standing over him with a club. He raised it.
Osgar never really knew what happened. He seemed to be flying through the air. His hunting knife was out of its sheath and in his hand. He landed on top of the man with the club. They crashed to the ground, struggled, and a moment later Osgar’s knife was through the robber’s ribs and the fellow was coughing blood. Meanwhile, the rest of the robbers had decided not to risk the fight any longer and were running away through the trees. Osgar turned to the man he had stabbed. The robber had gone grey. A few moments later, he started to tremble, then he shuddered and became still. He was dead. Osgar stared at him.
They rode back to the farmstead they had just passed, where the big, red-haired owner called his men together at once to organise a hunt for the robbers. “It’s a pity my son, Harold, isn’t here,” he remarked, and Osgar realised that this must be the big Norwegian he had once seen at the Thingmount years ago. When Osgar explained who he was, the big Viking was delighted. “I’m honoured to meet one of the Ui Fergusa,” he said cheerfully. “You did well today. You can be proud of yourself.” When they got back to the monastery late that evening and told their tale, his uncle congratulated him, too. By the next morning, the story was all round Dyflin and meeting Caoilinn, she had come up and squeezed his hand. “Our hero,” she had said, with a proud smile.
There was only one problem. He didn’t feel like a hero at all. In fact, he had never felt worse in his life. Nor, as the days went by, did he feel any better.
He had killed a man. He wasn’t guilty of any crime. He had done what he had to do. Yet for some reason the dead man’s face with its staring eyes seemed to haunt him. It came to him in his dreams, but also when he was awake—pale, horrible, and strangely insistent. He assumed that after a while it would go away, but it hadn’t; and soon he found himself imagining the rotting body as well. But the worst thing was not so much the memory as the nagging thoughts that accompanied it.
Revulsion. Absurd though it was, he experienced all the horror and disgust he would have felt if he’d committed murder. He never wanted to do such a thing again. He vowed to himself that he would not. But in such a violent world, how could you be sure of keeping such a vow? And with the revulsion came another disturbing thought.
He had been a hair’s breadth away from death. What if he had died? What would his life have been? A few meaningless years, ended by a stupid brawl. It had nearly happened then; it could happen tomorrow. For the first time, he was afflicted by a terrible, urgent sense of his own mortality. Surely his life must have some purpose; surely he should be serving some cause. When