Chapter Thirty-Three: Orka

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

ORKA

Orka sat in the corner of a tavern with a jug of watered ale and a drinking cup. It had not helped to relieve the headache that pounded and pulsed. Smoke from a hearth fire was slowly filling the room, too much of it to filter through the smoke hole in the vaulted roof, the reek of whale oil and hops and urine thick in the air. She had chosen the darkest corner of the tavern, wrapped a new cloak that she had purchased from one of the many traders lined along the dockside streets of Darl about her and pulled up the hood. The cloak was a grey wool herringbone that covered her brynja and weapons, and the hood was brown homespun wool, casting her face in shadow. This was the eleventh tavern she had visited in little more than a day since she had walked away from Mord and Lif, mostly just sitting and listening, sometimes asking a barkeep or serving girl a question or two. In return, so far, she had received only silence or dark looks.

A dozen or so people sat at tables, mostly sailors from docked ships and a couple of whores smiling at men deep in their cups. Closest to her was a man sitting and stirring a bowl of stew. One side of his head was burn-scarred, what hair he had left on his head tied back tight at his neck. A short-axe and seax hung from his belt, and Orka spied the hilt of another seax poking from his boot.

“Want something to eat?” a serving girl asked her, a young girl in a dirty hangerock over a threadbare tunic.

“No,” Orka said. The girl moved to turn away, but Orka pulled her hand from her belt and rolled a bronze coin on the table. The sound of it drew the girl’s gaze like carrion calls to crows.

“If you want a man, or a woman, I can find one for you,” the serving girl said. A pause. “I finish soon…”

“I’m looking for someone,” Orka said.

“Who?”

“Drekr,” Orka said, loudly enough to fill the room.

The serving girl blinked; other heads turned, looking Orka’s way for a moment.

“Don’t know anyone that goes by that name,” she muttered, turning and hurrying off. She glanced at the burned man as she passed him, but he continued to stare at his bowl of stew. Slowly he lifted the spoon and slurped a mouthful. The girl reached the bar, where what looked like the landlord dragged her close and had a hissing conversation with her.

Orka took a sip from her cup.

The landlord strode around the bar towards her. He was balding, with a flat nose and red veined cheeks. On his belt he wore a seax in a worn leather scabbard.

“You should go,” he said.

“I’m minding my own business,” Orka said, “and I haven’t drunk this jar of horse-piss that I have paid for, yet.” She lifted the cup and sipped, twisting her lips.

“Have your coin back,” he said, flipping her a half-copper. “Don’t need your sort round here.”

“My sort?” Orka said.

“Out,” he grunted, his hand going to the hilt of his seax.

Orka stood, her chair scraping, and rose to her full height, looking down at him. She was a head taller, and wider as well. He took a step back, a ripple of fear crossing his face, his eyes flickering to the burned man and then back to Orka.

“Don’t want no trouble,” he said sullenly.

Orka walked past him and out through the tavern door into a face full of hissing rain. It was dark, which meant it was somewhere between midnight and dawn, as the summer nights were lengthening towards solstice. Orka turned left and walked on twenty or thirty paces, then turned into a shadowed alley that ran between the tavern and the next building. She stood and waited, hidden in darkness, leaning against a wattle and daub wall at an angle where she could see the street in front of the tavern’s entrance. After a count of a hundred the tavern door creaked and a figure stepped out, looked both ways, then turned right and walked away. It was the burned man.

Orka followed him.

She kept at a distance, clinging to the shadows. Despite the hour the streets were busy, song and laughter echoing out from numerous taverns, drunks stumbling, traders shouting to sell their wares, spits of rabbit and squirrel turning over fires that hissed in the rain, soups and stews steaming in cauldrons. The burned man walked through a series of wide, bustling streets, seemingly in a half-circle around the base of the hill the fortress of Darl was built upon. Canals had been carved into the land, feeding from the river like leeches, and the burned man led Orka past a host of moored ships, boathouses and barns. The acrid stench of a tanner’s yard clawed up her nose and she saw a courtyard with skins pinned and stretched upon frames ready for scraping. It was quieter here. The burned man was turning again and they were soon back in a street full of taverns, torchlight flickering, deeper shadows in the alleys, whores and cutpurses plying their trades. Mud sucked at Orka’s boots.

The burned man stopped at a large tavern, a sign creaking above the entrance painted with a red-wounded warrior and runes. Orka moved a few steps closer to see through the rain, then stopped, merging with the shadows at the entrance to an alley. The tavern was called The Dead Drengr. Three figures stood outside, two of them men in wool and leather, both tall and thickset, one bald and with a cudgel in his hand. He nodded to the burned man.

The other figure was a woman, clothed in a brynja and cloak, the bulk of a sword visible beneath the cloak. She had a shield slung over her back, painted black with gold eagle wings spread.

One of Helka’s drengrs.

She stepped in front of the burned man, but the bald man with the cudgel said something and she moved aside.

The burned man entered the tavern.

Orka stood in the shadows, watching, waiting, thinking, the rain soaking into her hood and cloak. Grey light began to leak into the street, the herald of dawn.

Then she was slipping into an alley. It was empty apart from rats, and she emerged on the far side to see the glitter of an oil-black canal dappled with rainfall, boats moored and bumping gently on the water. She crept along the back wall of a building, and then she was at the rear of The Dead Drengr. A high wattle wall and gates enclosed a courtyard, stables and other outbuildings. Orka heard the whicker of horses. A voice.

“Move,” the voice said, and then a figure emerged from the open gate. It was a man, tall and thickset like the two on the tavern’s front door, a hood pulled up over his head, a wooden staff in his hands. Behind him walked a line of children: seven, eight, more, all in cloaks and hoods, their hands bound at the wrists. Orka could hear some of the children crying. Another man followed at their rear.

The first man reached a boat moored on the canal and jumped in, ushering the children after him, spitting out sharp commands. An awning had been rigged across the rear half of the boat behind the oar-bench, and the first children clambered underneath the woollen sheet. One refused to climb on to the boat and just fell to her knees, sobbing. The man at the rear cuffed the child and hoisted her up by her hair, throwing her into the boat.

Orka cursed herself for leaving her spear in the room she’d rented earlier, but she had wanted to look as inconspicuous as possible. Her hands checked over her other weapons, an old habit. She had bought plain scabbards for the two seaxes she had pulled from Thorkel’s body, and now one of them was hanging from the front of her belt across her hips, and the other was nestled in the small of her back. She checked the draw on both, that they would not stick, and then lifted her hand-axe from the loop on her belt.

Without conscious thought she was moving, running across a mud-slick path to the canal, her axe in one fist, a seax hissing into the other.

The man on the boat must have glimpsed movement because he stopped pushing children into the boat and looked up at her. Orka’s arm swung and her axe was spinning through the air. It took the man in the face with a wet slap like splitting wood. He fell back and disappeared into the canal with a splash.

The second man stared, frozen for a moment, then turned. He was reaching for an axe at his belt and opening his mouth as Orka hit him. Her seax punched into his belly and she headbutted him across the nose. He gave a grunt and muffled cry as she ripped her blade across his torso, then shoved him hard. He stumbled backwards, blood and intestines spilling at his feet, tripped over the edge of the canal and then he was gone, too, just a widening ripple in the canal to mark his existence.

There was a frozen moment as Orka looked back at the tavern gates, waiting to see if anyone had heard. No movement, no sound.

“Breca?” Orka asked desperately to the children who stood staring at her from the boat, more shadows beneath the awning peering out at her.

“Breca?” she said again, then a child opened her mouth to scream.

“No,” Orka pleaded. “I won’t hurt you. They took my son, Breca. Is he here?”

Another silence, all of the children staring. One snuffled, started to cry again.

“No one called Breca here,” a boy said, with dark curly hair and large eyes. He looked older than the others, with maybe twelve or thirteen winters on his back.

“Are you sure?” Orka said, stepping into the boat. Children cowered away from her and she froze, then pulled her rain-soaked hood back. She was wearing Thorkel’s nålbinding cap, her blonde hair braided, a coil across one shoulder.

“Anyone here called Breca?” the boy said, looking at his companions. They were all grime-streaked and hollow-eyed. Some shook their heads; others just stared.

“There are others,” a girl said. “Like us.”

“What do you mean?” Orka said. “Where? Here? Come close. I’ll cut your bonds,” she added and squatted down.

The girl took a hesitant step towards her and held her arms out, tied at the wrists. “I heard Bersi talking about them.”

“Bersi?” Orka said as she raised her seax to the leather cord around the girl’s wrist.

The girl nodded over the side of the boat, a twist of revulsion creasing her face and she spat where the man who had received Orka’s axe in the face had fallen. Orka lamented the loss of her axe.

I will find another.

“Bersi was talking about others like us, that had been kept in there.” The girl looked at the tavern. “They’re gone now.”

Orka sliced through the leather cord, freeing the girl’s arms. She rubbed her wrists and gave a hesitant smile.

“You’re free now,” Orka said.

Others held their wrists out and Orka sawed at them until all were free of the leather bindings.

“Why have they taken you?” she asked the older lad. “What do they want you all for?”

“Don’t know,” the lad shrugged.

“One last thing,” Orka said. “Do you know a man named Drekr?”

Looks of fear.

“Where is he?” Orka said, a snarl.

“In there,” the first boy who had spoken to her said. He pointed at the tavern.

Orka stood and stepped off the boat on to the canal side, then looked back at the older boy.

“You’re free now,” she said. “Will you help these others?” She gestured to the rest of the children, who were sniffling, wide-eyed with fear.

“I will,” he nodded.

“Good. If you can row a boat, take this one. If not, run, fast and far, and do not look back.”

She walked towards the tavern.