CHAPTER FOUR ORKA

CHAPTER FOUR

ORKA

"I am going to kill you," Orka spat through a mouthful of blood.

"You can try," Rotta snarled as he slammed his fist into Orka's nose, "others have and yet, look, here I am still …"

The last time Orka had seen Rotta he had been transforming into his rat form, screaming in agony after Spert had vomited his black-breath pestilence upon the god. Rotta had returned to his human form now, his face a mass of weeping sores and red weals from Spert's venom. A red stain on the rat-god's tunic was the only evidence that he had been skewered through the chest by a spear cast by Halja Flat-Nose as well, but the spear was gone now, and Rotta seemed remarkably alive and healthy. Although his ruined face twitched and juddered, raw holes weeping blood and pus, pain and rage shuddering through him. "Where is my brother ?" he snarled through gritted teeth.

Orka just gave him her wolf-grin, showing bloodied teeth through her blue-tinged, shivering lips and Rotta drew his fist back.

A pale sun glinted on ice-crusted snow, Orka lying on the charred ground before the broken gates and walls of Svelgarth, clouds of smoke swirling sluggishly as the town burned. She was dimly aware of a crowd gathered around her, trolls looming, tennúr hovering in the air, spertus and frost-spiders scuttling. But everything was blurred and ice-tinged, the frost-spider venom still coursing through her veins, her limbs numb, the wolf in her blood distant, confused and cowed by the ice that had flooded her.

Rotta's fist slammed into her face again, snapping her head back onto the ground, the sound of cartilage cracking. She rolled her head, a burning sensation in her neck as muscles slowly began to return to her control.

When my body returns to me I will show you why the rat fears the wolf.

"Strange, the power of emotion," Rotta grunted as he pounded Orka with another blow. "My intellect tells me that this is not the way to get you to talk, I am aware that violence is unlikely to give me the answers that I want." He paused, wiped sweat and dribbling blood from his face, "And yet, I cannot stop. It feels so satisfying."

Voices drifted through the smoke and Rotta turned to look over his shoulder, a red-knuckled fist raised high. Figures emerged from clouds of smoke and ash, the first one a dark-haired woman dressed in oil-black mail, a raven's feather braided with silver wire into her hair. One of her eye sockets was a puckered, scarred hole. She gripped a rope in her fist, dragging a handful of bound captives behind her, a man, a woman and a child.

Myrk. Orka spat a glob of blue-tinged blood.

"Jarl Orlyg's brats," Myrk called out as she strode towards Rotta, hauling her stumbling prisoners, and then she saw Orka. Her face shifted, red flecks sparking to life in her one eye, and she threw the rope in her fist to a warrior behind her, hands reaching for sword and seax at her belt as she broke into a run.

"No," Rotta said, taking a step to stand between Myrk and Orka. Myrk twisted to run around him, and Rotta moved again, faster than Orka thought possible, and then Myrk was bouncing off him, falling onto the ground and rolling to one knee.

"No," Rotta said again.

"This bitch took my eye," Myrk snarled, "I have sworn to kill her."

"Perhaps you will kill her, perhaps you won't, but you will definitely not kill her now ," Rotta said. "She's one of my brother's ilk, has spoken to him, may know where he is lurking. And, besides, you are not the only one who owes this she-wolf a red death." He gestured to the ruin of his face, then to bodies laid out upon the snow. A hulking, red-haired warrior, his face purple and swollen, a lattice of black veins and unseeing eyes. A dozen dead skraeling. A white-haired warrior mumbling and twitching, blood frothing through his torn cheek and jaw. He looked like he would soon be joining the dead. Other corpses were being carried over and laid beside the fallen.

"Look at the results of your visit," Rotta said to Orka with a sweep of his hand. "Ill-mannered, I call it," he tutted.

Orka looked at the dead and wounded. "They stood in my way," she grunted. They tried to keep my son from me.

Breca, where are you? She knew the river she had thrown him into would have carried him to the lake and meeting point, where Gunnar Prow, Halja and the others would surely be. They will get him away from here. But she remembered the frost-spiders that had hunted her down, felt a stab of fear at the thought of them catching Breca before he reached the lake. Some life was returning to her fingers, a tingling burn in her joints and knuckles and she clenched her fists, but her wrists were bound with frost-spider web. She looked at the sky, saw it was past midday. No, if they had caught him, they would have brought him back by now. He is away with the others. That thought seeped through her. She had been chasing after Breca for so long, trying to find him, trying to save him from these nieing dragon-born, that it snatched her breath away to realise she had accomplished that goal. He is free, my Breca. I have done what I came to do. She blew out a long breath, feeling the truth of that settle in her heart, and looked up at Rotta and Myrk. There are more I would like to kill, though. These two, for a start. And Drekr, who slew my Thorkel. And Lik-Rifa is behind it all – so I owe her a blood debt.

"You have beaten her half to death," Myrk growled sullenly as she stood, reluctantly sheathing her sword and seax.

"Yes, half to death, not to full death," Rotta said as he regarded his blood-spattered, mangled knuckles. "Unfortunately, she must live, for now."

"She will not talk, she is a stubborn bitch," Myrk said, stepping closer to Orka.

"There is always a path to making someone talk," Rotta said. "Pain is usually the fastest road, but not with her. Not her own pain, anyway." He looked at Myrk. "Feel free to try, as long as you promise to act with … restraint."

Myrk grinned and kicked Orka in the belly.

Feeling was returning to Orka, the ice in her veins thinning, retreating, and she felt the power of Myrk's kick shudder through her gut. She rolled onto her side, retching, and spitting out blue-tinged bile.

"Where is Ulfrir?" Rotta asked her.

Orka spat blood at his feet, felt the wolf returning to her and she glowered up at him with amber-flecked eyes.

"See," Rotta shrugged to Myrk.

Myrk screeched and kicked Orka again.

"Good girl," Rotta clapped. "Whatever you do, do it with all your heart."

Myrk drew back for another kick and paused, staring at Orka. "I will take these back," she snarled, seeing what hung from Orka's weapons belt. She ripped the buckle undone and dragged the belt from Orka's waist. "My brother will be glad at the return of these," she said, dangling two finely wrought seaxes in leather-tooled scabbards before Orka. "I believe he left them in your dead nieing husband."

My Thorkel.

Without thought Orka struggled against her bonds, veins bulging, the wolf in her heart howling. Thorkel's blood-streaked face filled her thought-cage, her oath to avenge him a storm in her blood.

Myrk laughed.

"You see, she feels more for others than herself," Rotta said thoughtfully. "Even when they're dead. The road to loosening her lips about my brother lies with her son."

"Well, where is the little shite?" Myrk asked, still smiling down at Orka.

"Escaped," Rotta said, "but we shall find him. And then … then she shall tell us whatever we need to know."

Screams and whimpers drew their attention and they all looked to see a fur-clad man step from the wooded slopes, a line of bound children stumbling behind him.

A cold fist clenched around Orka's heart .