Chapter Thirty-One: Orka

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

ORKA

“Kill me,” Orka said, standing with her feet spread in the grass, her hands loose and ready at her sides.

Lif lunged at her, his seax wrapped with a strip of wool, stabbing at Orka’s belly.

She slapped the blade away with the flat of one hand, side-stepped and punched Lif on the jaw. He stumbled away a few steps, then his legs gave way and he sank to the ground, looking up at Orka with a dazed expression.

Mord laughed, sitting on a boulder as he filleted a salmon as long as his arm.

“I thought you were teaching us weapons craft,” Mord said. “This looks more like beating us up for fun. Not fun for us, I feel I should point out,” he added.

“I am teaching you,” Orka said, offering Lif her arm and pulling him back to his feet. “That if you do a foolish thing, pain will follow. Or death.” She scowled at Lif. “You took too large a step, which left you off balance. Small steps in, small steps out,” she said. “Never lunge. Never over-extend. It’s the same rule, whether you are using your fists, a seax, a spear or a sword. And never charge straight in. That only works for bulls and boars.” She paused. “And for trolls. Side steps: look for the openings; find the gaps in your opponent’s defence. And strike in flurries: two, three, four blows. Often the blow that ends a fight is the one your enemy did not see coming.”

Lif rubbed his chin, a bruise already mottling.

“Pain and bruises reinforce a lesson,” Orka said.

“Heya, agreed,” Lif mumbled.

“Then we must have learned much from you already,” Mord barked a laugh as he looked at her through one swollen, blackened eye. Other bruises speckled the faces and bodies of both brothers, varying from purple to green to yellow, telling the tale of how old the bruises were, and how long the brothers had been receiving such lessons from Orka during their journey north. Mord’s shoulder was still bound with linen where the Näcken had bitten him, though that wound was healing well, and his head still bore a red scar where he had been clubbed by Guðvarr at Fellur village. Orka had been silently impressed with the way he had thrown himself into the weapons craft lessons she had given the two brothers, despite Mord’s more serious wounds.

“By the number of your bruises you should be fit to fight a holmganga against Ilska the Cruel soon,” Lif said to Mord.

“Huh,” Mord snorted. “I hope never to meet her for any reason,” he said. “The tales tell how she fought three men in the holmganga, and cut the stones from each one of them.” He winced.

“Ilska has slain more than a few men in the holmganga,” Lif said. “Vaesen, Iskidan warbands, a Berserkir. But I am not so scared of her, now that Orka has taught me some weapons craft.” He smiled at his brother. “Ilska the Cruel, Agnar Battle-Grim, even the Skullsplitter. I feel like I could fight them all.”

“Then you are a hálfviti idiot,” Orka muttered.

“Who is the best?” Lif said, ignoring the dour twist of Orka’s lips.

“There is no such thing as the best,” Orka muttered. “And the Skullsplitter is dead.”

“I’ll fight Skullsplitter, then,” Mord said and Lif sat on the floor, laughing and holding his belly.

“Time to go,” Orka said, ignoring them and squinting at the sky. The sun was low on the horizon, newly risen, the air fresh and clean. An eagle soared high above them, wings spread. They were stood on the slope of a gentle hill, their boat pulled up and hidden in a reed bank below them. It had taken them close to fifteen days of hard rowing to reach this point, longer than the journey from Fellur to Darl should have taken, because they had left the wide and busy River Drammur for fear of pursuit, and so had threaded their way east and then north in a looping half-circle, rowing then pushing and dragging their boat across land to the next river, rowing again, then travelling across land for the next river again. It had been hard, back-breaking work, but they had not been followed, and the countryside was mostly deserted.

No one to see us, no one to sell information about us to any who might follow.

Only yesterday had they started to pass homesteads and farms, faces staring at them as they rowed on by. Orka’s eyes tracked the glitter of the river, one of a dozen that carved their way through the hills around her. At the edge of Orka’s sight a shadow spread across the high ground that overlooked its far bank: a town, smoke from a hundred hearth fires curling up into the sky above it.

Darl.

And Breca. A spark of hope flared in her chest, of longing, the possibility of finding her son blazing so bright within her that it was painful. Her hand brushed against one of the seaxes thrust into her belt. One of the blades that she had found in Thorkel’s body.

And if I do not find him, then I shall have my vengeance.

I am blood. I am vengeance, I am death.

Without looking at Mord or Lif, Orka picked her way down to the boat and waded through the reeds, leaped into it and hefted an oar. She heard the brothers following behind her, but her eyes were fixed on the river and the course ahead.

Orka shipped her oar, Mord doing the same, and their boat coasted over the river. They were both staring at the sight before them, Lif, too.

Darl, fortress and seat of power of Queen Helka.

The river was wide and deep, dark and brown, unlike the crystal rivers and streams they had used to make their way here. Ships and boats of all sizes thronged on the river and clustered around a hundred wooden piers and jetties. Orka saw at least a dozen drakkars sitting sleek and wolfish at the docks, their hulls low in the water with proud eagle-carved prows.

Beyond the piers, taverns and buildings rose in a cluttered crush upon the slope of a gentle hill, rising towards a timbered wall, and beyond it a fortress. It was a swarming hive of motion, of sounds and smells, but Orka’s, Mord’s and Lif’s eyes were drawn to the fortress atop the hill. A mead hall crowned the fortress, and out of its walls swept the skeleton of a giant eagle. Two huge, skeletal wings, each one the size of a small hill, spread wide like protective hands, a skull and razored beak rearing above the mead hall thatch. Orka felt the pulse of a headache beginning in the knot of muscles about her neck.

No vaesen will ever bother the people of Darl, with Orna’s remains guarding it. One the size of this eagle skeleton would keep vaesen away for many leagues.

Behind the mead hall and eagle skeleton Orka glimpsed the Galdur tower of Darl, where Galdurmen learned their rune-dark arts. She hawked and spat into the river.

“Jarl Sigrún spoke true, then,” Lif finally said, “when she talked of the eagle-god protecting the fortress. I thought she was telling falsehoods to convince Fellur to give their oath to Queen Helka.”

“Aye,” Orka sniffed.

“What do we do now?” Lif asked her.

“Find a space to dock on one of those piers,” Orka said.

They reached for their oars and threaded a way through the boats on the river, so busy that it was like moving cattle on market day.

Eventually they found a small pier on the eastern fringe of the docks, Lif tying off the boat and Orka climbing a ladder on to the pier. She found a harbourmaster waiting for her, a fat man with a felt cap and numerous chins beneath his thin, wispy beard. His tunic spoke of wealth, edged in fine tablet weave, and his guard was kitted out well, a tall woman with a bored look on her long-nosed face.

“How much?” Orka asked, and she paid the sweating man from her pouch of coin. She did not haggle, did not want to be remembered. Lif gasped as he clambered up the ladder and saw the coin exchanging hands, but the man and his guard had turned and were striding away from them before he managed to blurt out any words.

“We would fish the fjord a whole month to earn that amount of coin,” Lif said to Orka.

She ignored him, climbing back down the ladder into the boat. Her brynja was rolled beneath the oar-bench. She heaved it up and slithered into the coat of mail, the boat swaying as she did so, then buckled her weapons belt about her waist, feeling the weight of axe and seax settle. Finally she hefted her hemp sack and threw it up on to the pier, gripped her spear and climbed back up the ladder.

Mord followed her up. Lif stood and waited for her.

A horn call rang out, high above them, echoing down from the walls of the fortress. Other horns joined it, blaring, spreading throughout the fortress and town, people on the docks stopping and staring.

An answering horn rang out, distant, and Orka looked downriver.

Three drakkars were on the river, tall-prowed, oars dipping and rising in perfect time, water falling from the rising oars glistening in the sunlight. As they drew closer to the docks Orka realised they were huge, seventy or eighty oars, at least. Activity exploded on the dockside as they curled in towards a large pier, noticeably empty of ships despite being in prime docking location. Voices shouted and ropes were thrown from the first drakkar, men and women on the pier catching them and tying the ropes around mooring posts. A gangplank was dropped over the drakkar’s top-rail to the pier and figures were disembarking: ten or twelve warriors, clothed in mail, men and women, the sides of their heads shaved and covered in flowing, swirling tattoos. Swords and seaxes hung from their belts, grey woollen cloaks upon them, edged in fur. They spread across the pier in a half-circle, a protective fist.

“Úlfhéðnar,” Orka muttered and spat on the pier.

“What!” Lif said, his eyes wide.

“Tainted, descendants of Ulfrir, the wolf-god,” Orka said. “Like Vafri, the warrior who slew your father.”

And then a woman was crossing the gangplank to the pier, tall, her hair long and black, braided with threads of gold wire. A red cloak was draped across her shoulders and gold arm rings glittered in the sun. She wore a sword at her hip with gold on the pommel and crossguard, gold wire wrapped around the leather hilt, the scabbard ornately tooled, a throat and chape of gold.

“Who is that?” Lif breathed beside Orka.

“I am guessing Queen Helka, as this is her fortress,” Orka said.

The queen stopped and turned, waiting for two men to cross the gangplank. One was a raven-haired young man, tall and broad, his clothing all fine wools and silks, rings of silver on his arms and about his neck. The other stood out as different. He was as tall as the younger man, but his head was shaven clean apart from a thick blond braid that stretched down his back, his face angular with a short, neatly cropped beard. Instead of a tunic he wore a fine wool kaftan and breeches that were baggy above the knee and striped, wrapped tight with winnigas from ankle to knee. He wore a curved sword on one hip, and a bow case and quiver of arrows on the other.

“And them?” Mord said.

“Helka has a son called Hakon,” Lif said.

“That is most likely him, then,” said Orka.

“What about the other one?” Mord asked.

“A guest from oversea, I am guessing,” Orka said. “I have seen others dressed similarly. They were from Iskidan.”

Lif whistled.

The three of them watched in silence as more warriors disembarked from the drakkar, and Queen Helka and her companions strode down the pier. People close to her dropped to their knees, bowing. There was the sound of many feet, and warriors emerged from a street, spreading on to the docks, an honour-guard come to greet Queen Helka. They wrapped around her and her retinue, and then they were all marching into the streets of Darl and disappearing from view.

Slowly people on the dockside climbed back to their feet and returned to their normal business.

“What now?” Lif said.

“Now we say farewell,” Orka said as she bent and rummaged in her sack. She took out Thorkel’s nålbinding wool cap, which she pulled on to her head. She looked at the two brothers. They were staring at her, open-mouthed.

“What?” she said.

“You can’t just leave,” Lif said.

“That was our agreement,” Orka said. “You row me to Darl; I teach you some weapons craft.” She looked at their bruised faces. “I have done my best.”

“But what shall we do?” Lif said.

“That is up to you,” Orka said. “Not my business.” She took a few steps, then paused.

“Do you have any coin?” she asked them.

“A little,” Lif said.

Orka walked back to them, took her pouch from her belt and opened the drawstring, before sifting through it. “Here,” she said, holding out a few coins. “This will buy you food for a while, long enough for you to make some more.”

Mord scowled at her.

“We cannot take that,” Lif said. “Our father, he taught us…”

“Be in no one’s debt,” Mord said. “Earn your own keep; pay your own way, he always said.”

Orka shrugged. “Take it, or don’t,” she said. “It is nothing to me. Though I think you have earned it. You have rowed me here, and I have taught you a few things that might help you in a scrap. The scales are not even, to my thinking.” She pressed the coins into Lif’s palm and closed his fingers over them. “Your life is your own,” she said, quietly, “as is your vengeance. I have told you already, I think you should wait, earn some coin, make a home for yourself somewhere quiet and let some time pass.” She looked at the town and fortress, her mouth twisting. “Far from this stink, if you ask me. And when the time is right, go back to Fellur and put sharp steel in Guðvarr’s belly. But it is your choice, the two of you. If you wish to rush back in search of your vengeance and practise your newfound skills on Guðvarr now,” she shrugged.

Mord and Lif looked at one another.

“Keep your wits about you and your blades sharp,” Orka said to them and then she was turning and striding down the pier and on to the dockside. She did not look back, her thought-cage filled with the task ahead of her.

My son, if you are here, I will find you. And anyone who stands in my way will wish they hadn’t.