Chapter Twenty-Eight: Orka

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

ORKA

What do they want with my Breca?Orka thought as she rowed. Why would they go to such lengths to steal bairns? My son. Harek. The others Virk spoke of. And why did they slay the Froa-spirit? Orka muttered to herself as she rowed. She knew that some of these questions could not be answered and that gnawing on them would only cause her pain and break her focus. Any thought of Breca caused her pain, not knowing where he was, if he was in pain, being mistreated. But the questions would not stay locked away. Instead they circled and spiralled through her thought-cage, like crows drawn to the scent of death. And the last question that loomed over them all.

Thorkel said one was dragon-born. Tainted seed of Lik-Rifa. But they do not exist. Was it a death-haze mistake? Thorkel was not one for mistakes. The thought of Thorkel felt like a fist squeezing her heart and she snarled and spat, imagining pushing a seax into her invisible enemy. She bent and rowed, bent and rowed, the questions swirling.

The Froa-spirit because we had bowed the knee to her, swore we would dwell in peace in her land, and so we were under her protection? To take Breca they had to break her power first. But why? Why is Breca so important to them?In a way it did not matter. It would not change what Orka intended to do: get her son back and kill everyone who was involved in his taking. But unravelling the answers to these questions might help her find him, and then it did matter. But the answers would not come.

She lifted her head, blinking sweat from her eyes. She had been lost in the heave and pull of the oar, and the swelling waves of emotion in her thought-cage and veins as well; she felt like a small, solitary figure drifting in a sea of grief. Images of Thorkel and Breca swirled around her. Hate consumed her.

“What is it?” Lif asked, sitting on the bench beside her and pulling on the other oar. He was sweating with the rowing and the summer sun, both of them stripped to linen tunics, Orka’s brynja and woollen tunic rolled and tied beneath the oar-bench. Mord was in the stern sitting on a pile of rope and weaving coppiced willow branches into a fish trap. They had spied plentiful trout and salmon in the river as they had rowed upstream but had little luck with their spears in skewering any for their supper.

“For fishermen, you are not very good at catching fish,” Orka had remarked.

“We fish the fjords and deep seas,” Mord had snapped. “Our nets are too big for this river. Not even a river, more like a stream.”

They had left the river they had fled Fellur upon, for fear of Jarl Sigrún sending larger, faster snekkes in search of them, and so were now using a tapestry of smaller rivers and streams that threaded the land like veins.

Orka had just shrugged at Mord’s response, and now Mord was building a basket-trap to set in the river once they made camp for the night, in the hope that they would rise to a basket of fresh fish to fry and break their fast with.

The water ahead was white-foamed, cutting through a steep-sloped spur of land, rocks breaching the flow like the knuckles of a giant’s fist. Orka had felt the struggle against the current growing in the fibres of her back and shoulders, but the realisation had not registered properly.

They were approaching rapids.

“We should set ashore,” Orka said, “and walk around these rapids.”

“Why walk when we can row through it,” Mord called out behind them.

Orka looked around. They were into their second day of hard rowing since escaping Fellur, the land shifting around them, leaving the cliffs and waterfalls of the fjord behind them and moving into a land of rolling hills and dense woodland. As the day had passed, the river they were rowing upon had quickened, the currents tugging at them as the banks had closed in and steepened. Now hills rose all around, the river cutting through sharp slopes dotted with holly and purple heather, the sky a cloudless, searing blue. The hiss and roar of water churning around rocks in the water drowned out all else, sounding like shattered crystals, a sweet, ice-touched music. All looked calm, the world empty and peaceful, but something gnawed at Orka, a tickling on the nape of her neck, like the prickle of frost’s first morning touch.

They were close to the first rocks, and Mord was right, with some care they could navigate their way among the white-foaming boulders.

Orka saw something poking from behind a boulder, sharp and jagged. It looked like the shattered, rotting strake of a boat’s hull.

The roar of water grew louder, something lurking deep within it, the hint of a tinkling melody that reminded Orka of better days, like a sun-kissed scent or the memory that a birdsong can evoke. The music was a gentle but insistent hand that tugged her into memories of the past, of spring sunshine and Thorkel’s voice and Breca’s laughter.

The boat bucked beneath them.

Orka looked at Lif and saw he was staring ahead, a smile touching his lips, frozen in mid-stroke of his oar. Orka shook her head, trying to rid the music that was spreading through her body, muting all else like a fog.

A boulder reared close, hidden by a swell in their course. Orka slapped Lif and dragged on her oar. Lif started and stared wide-eyed, tugging on his own oar. They swerved around the boulder, the hull scraping against granite, and then they were past it, a plume of white foam exploding around their prow. Orka glanced down, the river water clear and pure, and she glimpsed something on the shingle bed. The glint of bone.

“Row for shore,” she cried, heaving on her oar.

“What’s happening?” Lif called to her.

“NÄCKEN,” Orka yelled.

Something smashed into the keel with a crunch and the boat rocked, the prow lifted clear of the river, Orka and Lif hurled from the oar-bench. A shout sounded from behind them and Orka twisted to see Mord’s boots as he disappeared over the side with a splash and gurgle. The prow of the boat crashed back into the water, slamming into a boulder and rolling, water pouring in. Orka staggered to her feet, ripped her oar free of the hole and rammed it into the river, pushing away from rocks, then scraping on the bottom, shoving them towards the bank. Behind her she heard the truncated screams of Mord as he rose above and slipped below the water. A snatched glance and she saw the hint of something below him, a shadow beneath the foaming water, and a thick, green-flecked arm wrapped around Mord’s throat.

“Here,” Orka shouted, thrusting her oar at Lif, “get the boat to shore. Do not get into the water.”

“What are you doing?” Lif said as he took the oar, standing and setting his feet.

She drew a seax and leaped over the side.

The water was cold as ice, snatching her breath away. She resisted the involuntary urge to gasp, kicking with her legs and swimming beneath the surface. Her head cleared, the lulling melody abruptly gone, and she saw a greenish shadow ahead, dense as oil, wrapping around a thrashing Mord. Orka kicked harder, swerved around a boulder and then she was upon them. Air bubbled from Mord’s mouth as the shape of a man dragged him beneath the water. A hate-filled face, hair floating like clumps of rotting reeds, dark eyes glinting like jade, his mouth and jaw distended, too big for his face, rows of needle-long teeth gnashing. He had long fingers that were wrapped around Mord’s throat, thick arms slick with green slime, his body a striated shadow amid the oil that seemed to coil and curl around him like smoke. Mord was thrashing in the water, beating upon the creature to no effect.

Orka kicked, her head breaking water, and she sucked in a deep breath, hearing that ice-cold melody seep into her like mead, lulling, intoxicating, and then she was diving beneath the water again and the music in her head evaporated like sun-touched mist.

Below Mord and the Näcken Orka saw a pile of bones, elk, bear, wolf and human, and upon it all sat a huge lyre with long strings of rotted gut. Thick branches of crumbling, sunken trees wove together around and above the lair of bones.

The Näcken’s mouth opened wide and bit down into Mord’s shoulder, a pulse of blood seeping into the water, and Mord’s mouth opened in a scream, an explosion of bubbles.

Orka kicked her legs, reached the two figures and slashed with her seax, at the same time grunting out words, expelling precious air.

“Járn og stál, skorið og brennt,” she murmured through a burst of bubbles as her seax bit into the Näcken’s side, slicing, green-tinged flesh parting, oily blood flowing like the pulp of grass and leaves.

The creature spasmed and jerked in the water, its jaws releasing Mord and opening wide in an unheard scream. Orka grabbed Mord by the tunic and dragged him away, letting her feet sink to the bone-thick riverbed as she bunched her legs, then she was pushing up and away, heaving Mord through the water, the two of them bursting into fresh air, gulping and gasping. Mord coughed and hacked, floundering in the water, Lif on the riverbank dragging their fisher boat on to the shore and yelling his brother’s name. Orka kicked and swam, pulling Mord through the white-foaming water, and then she felt something wrap around her ankle. She shoved Mord away, towards the riverbank, and then she was being dragged beneath the water. She twisted and slashed with her seax and saw her blade bounce off the green-scaled skin of the Näcken’s wrist.

Words and deed together, you hálfviti idiot.

The Näcken’s jaws opened wide, a black maw filled with silver-sharp teeth, and Orka struggled, jerking away with a flush of panic and she slashed her blade across the vaesen’s mouth.

“Skörp járn brenna og bíta,” Orka snarled as the seax connected and the blade sliced through skin and flesh into the creature’s mouth, teeth spraying, green blood gushing like oil. “Brenna og bíta,” she repeated as she stabbed into its shoulder. A shriek erupted from the Näcken that Orka felt rather than heard, the force of it pulsing through the water, filling Orka’s body and ears with pressure, hurling her away, though she somehow managed to keep a grip upon her seax. Another shriek behind her, of pain and rage, but she did not look back. She used the momentum to keep kicking, swimming towards the shore until her feet touched shingle and her head and shoulders were bursting into daylight. Lif ran along the bank and held a spear out. Orka grabbed the shaft and hauled herself to the shore. She glanced back at the river, saw a dark cloud boiling beneath the surface, speeding away, fading from sight. She stumbled on to land, coughing and spluttering, Lif trying to support her, and they staggered to where the boat and Mord lay upon the bank. He was pale-faced, his shoulder lacerated and bleeding.

“What was that?” he breathed.

Orka stabbed her seax into the ground, then took the spear from Lif, tugged off the leather sheath and strode to the other side of Mord and the boat, where she buried the iron blade into the ground.

“A Näcken,” she said. “Sneaky, slimy bastards.”

“What are you doing?” Lif asked her, staring at the seax and the quivering shaft of the spear, both stabbed into the riverbank.

“Näcken don’t like iron. They can sense it, feel it through the earth,” Orka said, then dropped to her hands and knees, vomiting water and slime.