Chapter Thirty: Varg

CHAPTER THIRTY

VARG

Varg banked and shipped his oar as the Sea-Wolf cut across the current towards the east bank of the River Slågen. Strakes bumped on timber as the ship grated against a pier, Svik and Røkia leaping from the top-rail on to wooden boards and tying off mooring ropes. Beyond the riverbank was a farm. A stockade wall with a single gate surrounded a turf-roofed longhouse and outbuildings, and beyond the timber wall fields of barley and rye rippled across a meadow that stretched towards tree-shrouded foothills.

They had rowed hard up the river for five long days, the muscles in Varg’s back and shoulders coming to feel like they were in a permanent state of spasm, his hands raw, but now it seemed that the time for rowing was over. Glornir had announced a little earlier that they were about to make landfall and continue their journey by foot, moving into the foothills of the Boneback Mountains in their quest.

Glornir slotted the tiller and shouted orders, Einar Half-Troll echoing them, and then all was movement, warriors stacking oars in racks and delving into their sea-chests. Svik appeared at Varg’s shoulder as he sat on his sea-chest, still staring at the farmstead. Between the pier and the stockade wall was an area of ground dotted with moss and grass-covered mounds.

Barrows, of the thralls who died in the service of this farm, most likely. The sight of it stirred memories in Varg’s thought-cage, dark memories that felt more like long-clawed nightmares, now he was free of them.

How did I live so long with a collar around my neck?

A wyrm of anger uncoiled in his gut, slithering through his veins.

“Hurry up, or you’ll be left behind to guard the ship,” Svik said as he rummaged in his own sea-chest.

Varg blinked and shook his head, trying to banish the memories of Kolskegg’s farm, but they clung to him, like flies to a rotting corpse.

“What should I bring?” Varg asked Svik.

“Your war gear,” Svik said. “We are marching to a fight, so wear all that you can. Leave behind what you can’t fit on your body. You will soon get tired of carrying a sack over your shoulder.”

Varg shrugged on a grey woollen tunic over the linen one he’d been rowing in, then lifted out his weapons belt, with seax, throwing axe and cleaver hanging from belt loops and scabbard, and buckled it around his waist. He looked at the war gear he had taken from the druzhina warrior back in Liga, the horsehair helm and coat of lamellar plate. Somehow it felt wrong to wear it.

I did not win it through any great act of skill, just a desperate, lucky thrust in the man’s back with my seax, he thought. Instead he lifted out the simple iron helm he’d bought from a trader in Liga, along with a leather pouch, and last of all his sealskin cloak. Then he closed the chest and bolted it. He buckled the pouch and helm to his belt and slung the cloak around his shoulders, fixing it with an iron brooch. His shield was set in the top-rail rack and he prised it free, slung it over his shoulder and then returned his oar to a rack close to the central mast-lock, exchanging it for his spear. He followed Svik over the top-rail and on to the pier, his legs unsteady as they tried to adjust to being on solid ground. He was glad to have the earth under his feet again. Svik was gleaming in his bright brynja, a sword and seax hanging from his weapons belt along with a buckled helm. He looked at Varg in his linen tunic and cloak, and shook his head.

“You may regret not wearing that fine coat of plate you have stowed away,” he said. “Most likely half a moment after you get punched in the chest by an angry troll.”

“It’s too heavy,” Varg said, at the same time noticing almost all of the Bloodsworn had shrugged their way into coats of mail, only a handful in wool or leather. He looked at his feet, feeling foolish.

“No-Sense,” Svik said, then shrugged. “You’ll learn the hard way, if you live long enough.”

A horn rang out, deep and braying, Einar standing on the riverbank with a horn at his lips, Glornir and Vol there, along with Skalk and his two warriors.

“Bloodsworn, with me,” Glornir cried out, then turned and walked away, his shield over his back and a long-axe in his fist, using it like a walking staff. Mail clinked and leather boots slapped on timber as fifty warriors strode along the wooden pier, leaving ten of their band behind to guard the ship.

They marched across a hard-packed path and through the barrow-field, Varg setting his eyes ahead, determined not to look at the mounds of stone and earth, fearing the memories they would unleash. Einar called out to the farm as they approached, but there was no answer, no sign of movement. Varg had known the farm was deserted as soon as he’d seen it: no plumes of smoke to mark any hearth fire or forge, no movement in the fields where there should be workers and animals, and the gates were creaking in the breeze, half-open.

“Set a shield-line,” Glornir ordered Svik, then marched through the gates, Edel and her two hounds behind him, followed by Einar, Røkia, Vol, Sulich and a handful of others. Skalk followed, with Olvir and Yrsa in his wake. Olvir had shrugged his shield from his back, his sword drawn, and Yrsa held a spear over her shield rim. Varg stared after them and looked at the longhouse beyond them, its roof green with turf, its doors closed.

Svik called out an order and the remaining Bloodsworn moved into an open line around the farm wall, looking out towards the rye and barley-filled fields, weeds thick among them.

These crops have not been tended for a good long while.

To the east of the farmstead a fenced paddock stood with grass grown long, the gate open. Two shaggy-haired ponies stood staring at the Bloodsworn.

They have decided the grass here is tasty enough, Varg thought, seeing that the gate was open and no ropes tethered them to the paddock rails.

Jökul the smith walked towards them, signalling for a few others to follow him.

Varg stood in silence, the only sound the wind soughing through the barley and Jökul trying to catch the ponies in the paddock. Eventually he enticed them with a few apples, and in short time they were harnessed up with tack found in a stable block and being loaded with food barrels and kit for the Bloodsworn.

There were footsteps behind Varg and he turned to see Glornir marching out of the farm gates, his face twisted in a scowl.

“Empty,” the Bloodsworn’s chief said to Svik. “No bodies, no blood.” He paused and rubbed a hand over his bald head.

Edel walked out of the gates, a tunic in her hands. She drew her seax and sliced the tunic into two, then offered the two halves to her wolfhounds. They took deep snorting sniffs of the fabric.

“Bloodsworn,” Glornir called out, lifting a hand in the air and turning it in a tight circle, one finger pointed skywards. Torvik and a handful of other scouts stepped forwards, moving north, halting before the field of barley and rye. They were all young men and women clothed in wool and leather, apart from Edel in her brynja. She loped past Glornir and joined the other scouts, taking their lead, her hounds at her side. Edel stepped into the field of barley, Torvik and the others following her.

“Let’s go and earn our coin,” Glornir called out, and set off after Edel and the scouts.

Varg sucked in a deep breath. Beyond the fields of abandoned crops, meadows rolled into foothills that glittered with streams and were draped with birch and rowan, and beyond them the towering heights of the Boneback Mountains reared, their peaks wreathed in cloud and snow. Varg fell in alongside Svik, but before they reached the barley Varg looked back over his shoulder and saw sullen faces staring out from the Sea-Wolf, watching them. Lots had been drawn to decide who would stay with the ship, for it seemed that none wanted to. They were the Bloodsworn and were marching into danger, where no doubt fair battle-fame and silver awaited them. No one wanted to hear tell of the great deeds after the fight was won.

Apart from me.

I just want to survive long enough to find out how my sister died, and avenge her, Varg thought, his hand brushing the pouch on his belt as he walked towards the Boneback Mountains.