Chapter Twenty-Two: Orka

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

ORKA

Orka crept through thinning trees, Fellur village appearing ahead as a blacker shadow against the crow-dark of night. Wind soughed through the woodland about her, stirring branches and picking white foam on the fjord that reflected faint starlight and moonglow. The sound of boats creaking drifted on the wind.

She reached the last of the trees and waited, staring, then glanced to the east. Dawn was still little more than a thought, here in the dead of night where all were asleep.

Except for the hunters, Orka thought. The prowlers and shadow-walkers.

But she knew she would have to move, soon. The journey from her steading to Fellur had taken over half a day, and then she had taken more time to stow her spear and hemp sack. She did not need them for what she was about to do. But dawn would not wait for her, and she had dark work to do. Every moment away from Breca grated on her, like claws scraping bone, but something in her gut told her this was the wisest course, rather than choosing to follow one of the two river channels, not knowing which one Breca had been rowed down. She needed information and an image clawed insistently in her thought-cage. Of Jarl Sigrún’s new thrall licking Thorkel’s blood from her seax.

The open strip of land that lay between the woodland and village gates was filled with the tents of those who had come to attend the Althing. Here and there the orange-glow of embers from half burned-out fires leaked into the darkness. Orka whispered an oath, then stepped from the trees and picked her way through the tents. She took her time, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness, avoiding looking at any fire-glow, until she had passed through them all and stood before the barred gates.

There were no guards.

She took a few long strides and leaped up at the wall, grabbed the timber top and heaved herself up, swung one leg over, the momentum carrying the rest of her body after it. She dropped into mud, boots first, with a squelching thud, and stayed there, crouched, listening.

Ten heartbeats, twenty and there was no sound. She stood and padded into the village, disappearing into shadow.

All was silent in the village, not even dogs stirring at her passing. Soon the courtyard opened up before her, cold and still, the mead hall looming dark against starlight. Another long pause, Orka listening, eyes scouring the darkness. She spied something on the steps to the mead hall’s doors: a deeper shadow. A guard sat sleeping, propped against a pillar, a thick fur pulled around their shoulders.

Orka slipped around the courtyard’s edge, always keeping a wall to her back, then froze. A sound.

A groan, coming from the courtyard before the mead hall’s steps.

She stared, shapes coalescing. Two figures were slumped on the ground, arms raised high, bound at the wrists and tied to a post. One of them was weeping, a sad, pathetic sound; the other looked to be asleep or unconscious.

The clouds parted, moonlight gilding the courtyard for a few heartbeats, then it was gone, hidden behind more cloud.

But Orka had seen who it was tied to the stake.

Mord and Lif, Virk’s boys.

They went back to the Althing.

If they were staked out in the courtyard then they had committed a crime and would be awaiting trial, or the enforcement of a punishment.

Orka paused, looking at the sleeping guard on the steps. She should leave them, and was about to, when Breca’s face appeared in her thought-cage.

“I feel sad for Mord and Lif, Mama,” he had said to her.

She ground her teeth, then she was creeping across the courtyard, bent low, coming up behind the two brothers. She slipped a hand around the mouth of the one who was awake, Lif, the younger of the two brothers. She felt him stiffen and struggle, hissed in his ear.

“It is Orka. Be still.”

He froze.

“I’m going to let you go. Make a sound and I’ll kill you myself,” she breathed in his ear.

He nodded and she released him then crept around so that he was between her and the guard on the mead hall steps. She put a hand to Mord, who was slumped against the post. Blood trickled from a wound in his scalp, but he was breathing.

“We went back,” Lif whispered. “Tried to kill Guðvarr. We failed. Tomorrow we will be tried: outlawry or execution, Sigrún said.”

Orka put a finger to her lips, then crept away from Lif, towards the sleeping guard. As she slipped her seax from its scabbard she saw that the guard on the steps was a woman, strands of fair hair escaping the hood of her cloak and shimmering in tattered starlight.

Timber creaked as she put her weight on to the first step.

The guard stirred and opened her eyes.

Orka stabbed her seax into her throat, pushing deep, her other hand clamping over the woman’s mouth as she felt her blade grind on the spine. She dragged the seax free with a surge of blood, black in the starlight, and the guard slumped, gave a gurgle and then she was still. Orka wiped her blade on the guard’s fur cloak, propped her up so that she would remain in her sleeping position, then padded back to Lif.

He was staring, eyes wide.

Orka raised a finger to her lips, then sawed at the rope tying Lif and Mord to the post. Lif came free first and caught Mord as his arms flopped and his body teetered towards the mud.

Orka leaned close and whispered in Lif’s ear.

“Take your brother to your boat, gather any provisions you can carry in a bag, and be waiting for me on the fjord, as close to the rear of the mead hall as you can get. If you see the first hint of dawn and I’m not there, leave.”

Orka slipped away before Lif could say anything.

She eased around the side of the mead hall and crept silently through shadow, until she was close to the hall’s rear. There were no openings along its length, only one shuttered window. That marked Jarl Sigrún’s sleeping chamber. Orka knew drengrs would be sleeping in the main chamber of the hall, around the hearth fire, though not Jarl Sigrún’s full strength of warriors. A party of riders had passed Orka on the path from the hills, six of Sigrún’s oathsworn warriors, and a handful of others, some walking, some driving an oxen-pulled cart. Guðvarr had not been among them. They had been ordered to investigate the fire and smoke from Orka’s steading, she guessed. But that would still leave at least a dozen drengrs at Fellur. Jarl Sigrún would want them around her to impose security at the Althing.

And Sigrún’s thrall will be with her.

Orka stood beside the shuttered window, quietly slid her seax from its scabbard and worked at the lock, slowly, gently, until she felt the clip give. In one swift movement she pulled it open and climbed into the frame of the open window, stepping into the chamber.

Darkness, a hearth fire glow, a bed, two figures in it. Movement at the bed’s foot as someone uncoiled from sleep around the hearth fire. The glint of fire-glow on iron: the thrall’s collar.

Orka stepped into the chamber, the figures on the bed stirring, a wool blanket pushed back, revealing Jarl Sigrún and a lover lying naked, entwined together. The man was waking, disentangling his legs from Sigrún’s and pushing himself up on to one elbow, his slim body pale, muscles etched in starlight and fire-glow. Orka slashed at his throat: a spurt of blood and he fell back gurgling. Orka clubbed the hilt of her seax into Sigrún’s jaw as the jarl jolted awake and started to sit up, sending her crashing back to the mattress, and then Orka’s seax was levelled at the thrall, who was on her feet, her seax half-drawn. The tip of Orka’s blade touched the thrall’s throat.

“Let it go,” Orka hissed.

The thrall stared at her, a hint of amber in her eyes, tension in her muscles. An exhaled breath, then she let her seax slide back into its scabbard and lifted her hand clear.

“I need their names, and where they are going,” Orka said.

The thrall’s mouth opened to speak.

“Do not lie to me,” Orka broke in. “I know it was you. I saw you taste my husband’s blood.” A tremor rippled through her, a wave of rage. She took a moment, controlling it, controlling the urge to stab and kill and destroy. “Their names, and a destination,” Orka breathed.

A hesitation, then a curt nod from the thrall.

“I am a niðing thrall,” the woman growled. “I do not give commands. I obey them.”

“Who commanded this? The murder of my husband; the abduction of my son?”

A silence, the thrall’s eyes fixed on Orka’s. They glittered with amber.

“Wolf-kin, tell me,” Orka growled.

“My name is Vafri,” the thrall said, “and I am descended from Ulfrir, the great wolf-god, and Hundur the hound. Proud and strong we were.” She shook her head with a twist of her lip. “If I am about to die, you will know my name, and my lineage.”

“I care nothing for who you were. You are a thrall now, and have my pity for that, but you are the reason my husband is dead…” Her fist twitched, knuckles white around the hilt of her seax. “Who commanded this?” Orka growled. “I will not ask you again.”

Vafri’s lip curled, the glint of her teeth. “My master is Hakon, son of Queen Helka,” she said. “I was ordered to report any sign of the Tainted.”

“Report to who?” Orka hissed.

Another silence.

Orka’s blade moved, a line of blood trickling down Vafri’s neck.

“He is… not a man to cross,” Vafri said.

“His name,” Orka said.

“Drekr,” the thrall grunted, a tremor in her voice.

Orka drew in a long breath, her thought-cage turning. She had heard that name from the lad by the river.

“And where is Drekr taking my son?” Orka said.

Vafri shrugged. “I am not told such things.”

A twitch of Orka’s wrist, and the seax sliced a deep line into flesh.

“I swear, I do not know,” Vafri hissed.

“Guess, then,” Orka said. “You are wolf-cunning. Where do you think they are taking my son?”

Another long silence. Their eyes locked.

“Darl, maybe,” Vafri said. Her eyes flickered away, looking over Orka’s shoulder for a moment, then returning to Orka. There was the creak of a bed and Orka turned and saw Jarl Sigrún reaching for her weapons belt.

A fist slammed into Orka’s jaw, Vafri moving as soon as Orka’s eyes were off her. Orka stumbled back, slashed with her seax to keep Vafri back, shook her head to clear the white spots dancing in her eyes. She took another shuffle-step, back and to the side, closer to Sigrún, at the same time drawing one of the seaxes in her belt: one of the blades she had pulled from Thorkel’s body.

Sigrún had a fist around her sword hilt and was on her feet, drawing the blade from its scabbard. She yelled and was answered by the sound of movement beyond the chamber’s door, in the mead hall. A voice called out. Orka slashed, diagonally from above, right to left, and Sigrún fell away with a scream, blood spraying from a red gash stark across her face, from forehead to chin.

Vafri snarled and rushed Orka, a seax in the thrall’s fist. Her eyes glowed amber, the battle-joy bright in her. Orka remembered how the thrall had rushed and overwhelmed Virk. She snarled and ran at Vafri, taking her by surprise.

Vafri stabbed with her seax and Orka swayed to the side, letting her coat of mail take the seax’s edge. She wrapped her left arm around Vafri’s and heaved it into a lock, strained harder, hearing the crack of bone breaking. Vafri gasped, her momentum carrying her into Orka, jaws wide, teeth suddenly sharp, snapping for Orka’s face and throat, her empty hand raking at her, nails razored as claws. There was a burning pain across Orka’s cheek. She slammed her head forwards, crunched into Vafri’s nose and upper lip and heard the crackle of cartilage snapping, a gush of blood, lip mangled, teeth knocked loose. Vafri’s legs buckled, the woman still conscious, snarling and spitting froth and blood as Orka plunged the seax in her right fist into the thrall’s belly.

With a grunt and whine, Vafri curled over the blow.

The sound of boots and voices outside the door.

Orka shoved Vafri away, ripping her blade free, the thrall stumbling back and dropping to her knees, blood sluicing from her belly and nose. She toppled to her side, one hand clutching the wound in her gut, her other searching for the hilt of her seax, lying on the floor close to her.

Shouts outside; a kick and the door was hurled inwards, silhouettes filling it.

Jarl Sigrún stumbled towards Orka, swinging her sword overhead, her face a ruin of blood and gaping flesh. Orka caught the sword on her seax and swept it away. Sigrún was thrown off balance and tripped over the bed.

A wordless scream came from the doorway as drengrs pushed into the chamber, swords and axes in their fists. Guðvarr was first into the room, his shoulder bandaged from the wound Virk had given him, his sword held in front of him. He froze a moment, seeing blood and bodies in the fire-glow and moonlight, then his eyes fixed on Orka.

Orka threw her seax at him. Guðvarr leaped backwards into the drengrs thick behind him and they all fell tumbling. The seax slammed into the doorpost, quivering. With a quick step forwards, Orka swept Vafri’s seax from her grasping fingers, the thrall’s hand falling away.

“Walk the soul road without a blade,” Orka snarled at the dying woman, then turned and ran at the window, hurling herself through into the darkness.

She landed on her shoulder, the soft ground breaking her fall, and rolled, managed to find her feet, a seax still in each fist, and ran. Shouts echoed out of Sigrún’s window, then the sound of someone scrambling through, dropping to the ground. Other voices sounded further away: drengrs using the mead hall doors.

Orka sprinted through an alley, spilled into a street, skidded, righted herself and ran left, then turned right, back into another alley. Lights were flaring as torches were lit, heads poking from doorways as the yelling of Jarl Sigrún’s drengrs woke the village.

Another street, figures stepping out of doorways, then another alley, and then Orka saw the glimmer of the fjord between buildings.

Horns blew out, loud and shrill, the village rippling to life.

Orka burst out of the alley into open ground, a gentle slope down to the fjord dotted with boats pulled up on to the beach, a small pier jutting out into the water. Orka’s feet slapped on timber as she ran, eyes searching, looking past the boats moored to the pier for Lif and Mord.

Then she saw them, both of the young men sitting on benches in their small fisher boat, oars ready. Orka ran harder, skidded on timber and leaped into the boat, where she fell in a heap.

“Row,” she gasped, pushing herself up. “Head south, for the sea.”

Mord and Lif dipped their oars without a word, Mord with a bloodstained bandage around his head.

Feet drummed on the pier; voices shouted at them. A spear hissed through the air, then disappeared with hardly a splash to Orka’s right. She saw Guðvarr on the pier, shouting insults, swearing vengeance, veins bursting in his neck. The boat picked up speed, cutting a silver-foamed wake as it took them into the darkness.