![a northman longphort a northman longphort](https://armstreet.com/catalogue/more/linen-viking-tunic-bjorn-the-woodman-with-decoration-6.jpg)
At his side he carried the sword Oak Cleaver, a magnificent Ulfberht blade which had belonged to his grandfather, Ornolf the Restless. Like Thorgrim he wore a mail shirt, but he wore no cloak over it, and the polished iron links, wet with the rain, shone in the muted light. He tromped through the mud and the rain toward Thorgrim. His hair was blond, like his mother’s, and braided behind, and his beard, such that it was, was blond as well. Harald was sixteen and not quite as tall as Thorgrim (though Thorgrim was of no great height) but he was powerfully built and considerably more filled out than he had been when they sailed from Vik several years before.
![a northman longphort a northman longphort](https://thewildpeak.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/vikingdublin.jpg)
“Harald! Louis! With me!” he shouted and moment later his son Harald ducked out from under the tent. He knew there were men sleeping in the small huts that had been left standing within the confines of the walls. There were more men under the tents, some gaming, some tending to weapons. Thorgrim watched the sentries on the walls moving slowly back and forth, no doubt miserable in the rain and waiting for their watches to end. They had pulled down a half dozen houses, depriving any attackers of the cover the structures might have provided, and used the timbers to build a crude half-circle wall, running from shoreline to shoreline and enclosing that part of the river bank they meant to defend.
![a northman longphort a northman longphort](http://www.ivargault.com/bilder/shrinex.jpg)
When they realized they would be in that place for more than just a few days they had fortified it against an attack from the landward side. He stopped for a moment and looked behind him, running his eyes over the walls that made up the longphort. He crossed the open ground, heading for the river’s shore, the mud pulling at his soft shoes. But at least the wool garments spared him the irritation of having the rain falling on his head and his shoulders.
![a northman longphort a northman longphort](http://www.ivargault.com/bilder/relic.jpg)
The hood and the cloak he wore over his mail shirt were still damp from the last time he had ventured out from under the tent, and he knew they would never actually be dry until the sun came out, which he assumed it had to do eventually. Thorgrim stared for a moment at the mud and the wide and growing puddles, then sighed and pulled his hood up over his head and stepped out into the rain. When a fleet of longships appeared off an undefended town, the folk rarely stayed behind to welcome the newcomers. They found the village deserted, which was hardly a surprise. They tied their ships to the docks and pulled them up on the muddy banks, putting the water between them and the Wessex army to the north. Thorgrim and his men reckoned it a victory of sorts, seeing that the English had retreated, but they had paid a heavy blood price for that dubious honor. The Northmen had been a few weeks at that place, landing there after doing battle with an English fleet that had surprised them on the river. There were fishing boats pulled up on the banks and nets spread out on the shore to dry, Thorgrim guessed, though how anything was supposed to dry in that miserable country he could not imagine. It was a sorry place, a cluster of a few dozen wattle and daub-built thatched huts, a couple of wooden docks extending out from the shore, a church with a stunted, square tower. This village where they had come ashore was on the south side of a wide river the English called the River Terstan, or so they had been told by Geldwine, the Saxon fisherman they had taken as their pilot. Good day to take a man’s head off, he thought. He stood just back from the stream of water coming off the bolt rope and looked out over the soaked ground. Thorgrim Night Wolf stood under the edge of the tent, a massive affair made from one of the ship’s sails spread over a stout frame. The open ground between the hovels closest to the river and the river itself, which was damp earth in the best of times, was a field of mud now, interspersed with great puddles that danced and rippled in the downpour. Maybe the entire world, as far as anyone could tell. It buffeted the squalid fishing village - now a longphort - as well the larger town of Hamptun across the water and all of the south coast of Engla-land, it seemed. The sky was thick with cloud, and the rain was coming down in sheets.