Chapter Thirty-Seven: Orka

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

ORKA

Orka grunted and drank a draught of mead from a horn as Lif pushed a curved bone fishhook through skin and flesh in her back.

“Sorry,” Lif muttered as he stitched the wound Drekr had given her. He paused to pour more water over it, then snatched the horn of mead from Orka and poured some of that over the wound as well, wiping the blood away with a strip of linen. Orka stiffened, giving another huff of pain.

“Sorry,” Lif said again.

“Just get on with it,” Orka growled as she took the mead horn back, her voice an abrasive rasp, her throat sore and swollen from where Drekr had tried to crush her windpipe. The mead soothed the pain. A little.

They were sat in a small room, a divided hayloft above a steading that looked out over a pigpen, fields of wheat and rye beyond. Mord had opened a shutter to let some light in for Lif to work by, but the stench came in with the light. Orka heard raised voices outside, and the braying of a donkey that was refusing to pull a cart of hay. She heard the crack of a whip. They were in a barn on a farm on the outskirts of Darl.

“Why are you here?” Orka said as Lif stitched her wound. “Why were you still in Darl? I told you to leave.”

“Looking for you,” Lif murmured.

“And a good thing we were,” Mord said from the window, “judging by the giant who was throttling the life from you when we arrived.” He was watching the track that led to the farm, checking to see if they had been followed, and at the same time crushing some yarrow leaves in a bowl and mixing them with honey.

“I had it under control,” Orka muttered.

“Ha,” Mord laughed. “I would hate to see what out of control looks like to you.”

“What were you doing?” Lif asked. “Apart from fighting half of Darl, or so it looked.”

Orka sucked in a deep breath. A dark mood had settled over her, seeping through her like poison in the blood.

“The giant, Drekr,” Orka breathed. “He killed Thorkel. Took my Breca.” She felt a flare of rage, and of shame, as she said the words out loud, that she had been so close to him and come away without her son, or her vengeance.

“Oh,” Lif said.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what was your plan?” Mord asked. “When we arrived, you were surrounded by six men and women, all with sharp steel in their fists,” He paused. “How were you hoping to come out of that alive?”

“There were more of them to begin with,” Orka said.

“What, in the tavern with the smashed window?”

“Yes,” Orka snapped.

“So, you didn’t attack seven on your own? You attacked more? How many?”

“What does it matter?” Orka said.

“I am intrigued. You tell us to have patience. To wait until the time is right for our vengeance. But you walk into a tavern and try to attack…”

“… twelve people,” Orka sighed.

Mord just looked at her blankly.

“What was your plan again?”

“To kill them all, save one.”

“To kill eleven warriors?”

“I wouldn’t call them warriors,” Orka snarled.

“All right, not drengrs, maybe, but they still looked handy in a scrap to me. And you planned on killing them all, except for one.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Mord laughed. “How did you think you were going to walk out of there alive?”

Orka took another long sip of her mead and felt the sweet liquid spreading through her belly, into her limbs.

“Killing doesn’t come easy to most people,” Orka said. “Even if they tell you it does. Oh, the ones that brag about it, like Guðvarr, they can kill easy enough, if someone is holding their enemy down for them. But in a fight…” She shrugged. “When it comes to it, most people care more about staying alive. They hesitate.”

“And you don’t?” Mord asked.

“Killing’s always come easy to me,” Orka said. She sniffed. “Not something I’m proud of, but there it is. And I don’t hesitate.”

A silence settled over the room. Outside, pigs snorted and the wheels of a cart turned, the donkey finally deciding to move. Orka emptied her drinking horn.

“Why kill them all but one?” Lif said into the quiet as he stitched.

“The one would tell me where my Breca is. They would see what I have done to their friends and comrades, would know what I could do to them. They would be likely to tell me the truth.”

“See,” Lif said, “I told you she was a deep-cunning thinker.”

“Doesn’t sound like wolf-cunning to me,” Mord muttered, staring out the window.

Nor to me, now it’s had a chance to work its way around my thought-cage.

“That’s done,” Lif said, dropping his fishhook into a bowl of boiled water that was cooling now; they’d used it to sterilise the hook before stitching Orka’s wound. Lif poured more water over Orka’s back and Mord passed him the bowl of yarrow and honey. Lif dripped the herbs and honey on to Orka’s wound and then placed a patch of linen over it, finally wrapping a longer linen bandage around Orka’s shoulder and chest.

“How is that?” Lif asked her.

Orka stood and rolled her shoulder. She felt a twinge of pain, and the stitches tugged a little. She swirled mead around her mouth and spat out blood into the bowl. Put her hand to her nose and blew a clot of blood out. Her lip and nose were split and swollen from where Drekr had headbutted her.

“Good,” Orka said. “My thanks.” She reached for her linen tunic, but Mord thrust another at her.

“Have mine,” he said. “Yours has got a hole in it.”

“Huh,” Orka grunted and took his tunic, shrugging it on. It was a little tight, but she could manage.

“Why were you looking for me?” Orka asked them. “I told you to leave Darl.”

“That is what we planned to do,” Lif said. “We were buying food from traders on Darl’s dockside as you advised, planning to row further north and find some land to farm, fish from the river, and make our deep-cunning plan to end Guðvarr next spring.” He looked at Mord.

“And then we saw a ship rowing into Darl’s harbour. Jarl Sigrún’s drakkar, and she was stood at the prow,” Mord said.

“You are sure it was her?” Orka said, frowning.

“Aye,” Lif nodded.

“She had a red-cleaved wound through her face,” Mord added, tugging on his blond beard.

Orka grunted.

“That still does not explain why you came galloping through a street on two horses and dragged me from a fight,” Orka said.

“She is looking for all of us,” Lif said, Mord nodding. “That must be why she is here. So, we sold our boat and bought some horses. Thought that if we could find you and ride inland, away from the River Drammur, where they are clearly searching for us, then we might escape them.”

“You sold your boat and came looking for me, to save me?” Orka said slowly.

“Aye, of course,” Lif said. “You did not know Jarl Sigrún was in Darl. You could have just walked into her and her drengrs.”

“At this point we did not know that you were happy to try killing entire warbands all on your own, you understand,” Mord said.

“And Guðvarr could be with her,” Lif added.

“We were trying to think of a plan with more deep-cunning than just walking into a tavern where we would be outnumbered twelve to one and try to put some steel in his belly,” Mord added, a smile twitching his mouth.

“Huh,” Orka said. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” She sighed and picked at a cut on her forearm, another reminder of Drekr and his axe. She looked at her brynja. It was draped over a chair, a rent across its back, rings shattered and twisted by Drekr’s axe blow.

“I need some rings and rivets,” she said. “And a hammer and tongs.”

Lif and Mord frowned at her. “What for?” Mord asked.

“I don’t want a hole in my brynja if we are going to go back into Darl and try to kill them,” Orka said.

“Kill who?” Lif said.

“All of them.”

Orka stood in a shadowed alley and waited, leaning on her spear, her hood pulled up over her head. She had crept back to the room she had rented alongside a stinking canal, climbed up a wall and through an open shutter to find, to her surprise, that her spear was still there, along with the rest of her kit. Not that there had been much of it.

Lif stood beside her, leaning against a wattle and daub wall and peering around a corner, into the street. Rush torches burned outside a tavern door, pushing back the darkness. It was a crow-dark night, cloud blotting out the moon and stars. People walked in the street, indiscriminate shadows, red-tinged when they passed close to the torchlight.

“Get back,” Orka growled at him and the young man stepped back into the shadows.

“He’s been in there a long time,” Lif muttered. “Too long.”

Orka ignored him.

Three days had passed since Lif and Mord had carried her from the fight with Drekr, during which she had bought rings and rivets from the farmer they were lodging with, repaired her brynja, sharpened her blades, and plotted with the two brothers. A seed of doubt lurked deep in her gut about their abilities, about whether they had the skills and hardness of hearts to do what had to be done. Also, she did not want their deaths on her shoulders. She carried enough of that weight with her already. Some nights she thought she heard the voices of dead friends muttering to her and she would wake with a start, her heart thumping and sheened in sweat. Sometimes she heard Thorkel’s voice, or Breca’s.

And another voice whispered that Mord and Lif would slow her down, pull her away from what she had to do. That she was better off alone.

But they stayed to warn me of Sigrún, even sold their boat in an attempt to save me when they could have just rowed away and saved themselves, she thought. On the scales of honour, Orka owed them a debt. And she did not like that, either.

It is what it is. I will take one step at a time, kill one enemy at a time. They have made their choice and are in this, now. They know the path we are walking, the steel-edge of it, where life and death are closer than lovers.

The tavern door opposite her opened, and Mord came out into the street, his fair hair and beard glowing amber in the rush-light. It was the tavern that Orka had first seen the burned man in. Mord looked both ways, then walked right, taking a quick glance at the alley Orka and Lif were in, giving a curt nod even though he could not see them and then he was walking past them, on down the street.

Orka waited.

“He’s not coming,” Lif whispered.

Orka made a sound in her throat, like a wolf would growl at an annoying cub.

The tavern door creaked and a figure stepped out, looking both ways then focusing on Mord’s back.

The burned man.

He walked after Mord.

Orka and Lif watched him as he strode past the alley they were in, Orka gripping Lif’s shoulder as he started to move.

She tutted at him.

The burned man walked on, fading into the shadow-filled street.

Orka let go of Lif and stepped out into the street, making sure her cloak was tight about her, hiding any glint or gleam of her brynja, and her hood was pulled to hide her face in shadow. She walked along the street, limping a little, more from the kick Drekr had given her than the axe-cut below her knee. She had washed and stitched her winnigas so there was no sign of blood and used her spear as a staff to speed her walking.

People in the road thinned as they moved through the streets of Darl towards the canal district where Orka had found Drekr. She followed the burned man, slowly catching up with him until she could see the shape of Mord beyond him. Mord turned into an alley, disappearing, and the burned man followed.

Orka picked up her pace. Heard voices. A scuffle. She broke into a limping run and turned into the alley, gesturing at Lif to stand guard.

Mord was standing with his back to a wall, clutching his right arm to his chest, a seax at his feet. The burned man stood in front of him, a short axe in his fist.

“I won’t be asking you again,” the burned man said. “Who are you?”

“He’s a friend of mine,” Orka grunted, pulling her hood back, and the axe man spun around. His eyes flared in recognition and he swung his axe as Orka lunged, but she dipped her blade beneath his wild parry and stabbed on, her spear blade slicing his bicep. The burned man squealed in pain as his axe fell from his fingers and he stepped back, reaching clumsily with his left hand for the hilt of the seax at his belt.

Orka drew back with her spear, carving a red line across his cheek, and then Mord clubbed him across the shoulders, sending him to his knees.

Orka stood over him, spun her spear and punched the butt into his jaw. He toppled into the mud like a sack. With a quick step forward, Orka kicked the axe away.

“Pick it up,” she grunted to Mord as she crouched and drew the seax from the burned man’s belt, tossed it to Mord, then bound the unconscious man’s wrists and ankles with twine. She stood and dragged his limp body deeper into the alley, Mord and Lif following.

“Wake up,” Orka said as she sat the burned man against a wall. They were close to the far end of the alley, open ground beyond and then the ripple of the canal. Clouds parted, starlight leaking out, silvering the burned man’s scarred face. His front teeth were too big for his mouth, protruding from his lips. Orka slapped him and he blinked.

“You should not have come back. You are a fool,” the burned man said.

“A fool who has you trussed like a hog,” Orka said.

“Drekr said you would be a pain in the arse,” he muttered.

“Your name?” Orka asked him.

He glowered at her.

“The axe,” Orka said, holding her hand out to Mord. He passed her the burned man’s fallen weapon. Orka took it, thumbed the blade and then cut a strip of linen from the burned man’s tunic. She folded and rolled it, grabbed his face and started stuffing the linen into his mouth, filling it. He struggled and twisted, strings of spittle flying from his mouth, but Orka’s grip was iron.

Only when his mouth was full to bursting and he was making choking sounds did Orka stop. She showed him the axe again, and then chopped into his knee. There was a crack and a spurt of blood.

His body spasmed and he retched and gagged, thrashing and panting muffled screams, shaking and thrashing like a trapped animal. His body seemed to swell, his face twitching, and Orka saw the teeth protruding from his mouth change shape, growing longer, sharper. She grabbed his flailing arms and looked at his fingers. The nails were darkening, growing.

“What is happening to him?” Mord hissed.

“He is Tainted,” Orka said. “Sometimes they cannot control the beast in their blood, especially when experiencing sudden pain or shock. He is one of Rotta’s kin.” She spat on the ground.

“Rotta, the rat?”

“Aye, the betrayer.”

“What shall we do?” Mord said.

“We wait. He cannot escape. He could gnaw through his bonds, but I will smash his teeth with his own axe if he tries to do that.”

The burned man slowed in his thrashing, breathing hard.

“Your name,” Orka said, holding his gaze.

He glared at her, shook his head and snapped his sharp rodent teeth.

Orka raised the axe and chopped into his other knee.

The burned man’s eyes bulged as he hissed and gagged, flailed and floundered in his bonds, banging his head against the wall. Bloodied froth dripped from the linen in his mouth where his long teeth gnashed into his lower lip, blood dribbling down his chin.

Orka waited.

Lif made a sound behind her.

“What?” she said, looking up at him. “Is anyone coming?”

“No,” Lif said with a quick shake of his head. He was staring at the burned man, eyes wide and his face pale.

“Harden your heart,” Orka growled at him. “He is not a man any more. He is a stepping stone on the path to our vengeance. To me finding my son. Now see to your task.” She turned her back on Lif and focused back on her prisoner. He was weeping, snot hanging from his nose, but his eyes glared hate and defiance. Orka showed him the axe again, dripping with his blood, and then began to pull one of his boots off.

He convulsed, kicking and writhing, but Mord held him and Orka tugged his boot free and held his foot on the ground. She paused, looking at his pale flesh. A tattoo wound around his ankle and calf: a curled, knotted serpent. She frowned and raised the axe, then looked the burned man in the eye.

“I can do this until the sun comes up,” she said, then looked at the sky. “Long enough to go through your toes, your feet and up to your stones. Answer my questions, or this will only get worse.”

The burned man was weeping. He sagged, like a sail with no wind, and nodded.

“Call for help and you lose your foot,” Orka said and tugged the linen from his mouth.

“What is your name?”

“Skefil,” the burned man said, his voice shaking with pain, or fury, or shame.

Probably all of them.

“Where is Drekr?”

“He will rip your head from your shoulders,” Skefil wheezed.

“I would like to give him the opportunity to try,” Orka said. “Where is he?”

“Gone,” Skefil muttered.

“Gone where?” Orka said.

Silence. A hate-filled gaze.

Orka raised the axe.

“North,” Skefil blurted. Another twitch of Orka’s wrist. “To the Grimholt Pass.”

“Why?” Orka asked him.

Skefil clamped his teeth tight.

Orka swung the axe, blood and toes sprayed and Skefil sucked in a gasp of air, ready to scream. Orka pressed the axe into his mouth, the hooked blade drawing blood at the corners. Skefil froze, a tremor passing through him.

“I can make your mouth bigger, if you wish.”

A long, slow-tremored exhalation.

“Good. Why is Drekr travelling north?” Orka asked. She removed the axe blade a handspan.

Skefil sucked in a long, ragged breath, more tremors rippling through his whole body. “He is taking more Tainted children to the Grimholt,” he finally moaned.

Orka’s breath caught in her chest.

Was Breca in Darl, then? Is he one of the children with Drekr?

“Was my son, Breca, with him?”

“I don’t know,” Skefil said.

“Be careful how you answer. What is left of your life will be decided here, by your next words.” She lifted the axe.

“I swear, I do not know. I never saw any of the bairns, only their backs as Drekr rode away. I am just eyes and ears in Darl. I watch, I listen. I tell Drekr what I learn. Drekr does not tell me anything.”

Orka let out a long, deep breath as she studied him, thinking. There was terror and pain in his eyes, his defiance crushed. She believed him.

“Your son will change the world: that is what Drekr said to me. What did he mean?”

Skefil shrugged, “I only know Drekr and his crew have been swiping Tainted bairns and sending them north. That’s all I know, nothing else, I swear.”

Orka nodded.

“All right.” She glanced at Mord, who was standing over them, watching against anyone passing along the canal. “Jarl Sigrún is in Darl, you know this?”

“Aye,” Skefil said.

“Tell me what you know.”

“She is searching for outlaws from her village. Someone who slew Queen Helka’s Úlfhéðnar and put a scar in Sigrún’s face… Ah,” Skefil nodded, the flicker of a knowing smile. “It was you.”

“And us,” Mord grunted. “She is searching for us, too.”

Skefil gave Mord a disdainful look. “I am no Úlfhéðnar and yet look at your arm.”

“Where is Jarl Sigrún lodging?” Orka pressed.

Skefil shook his head and let out a wheezing laugh, drool hanging from his lip. “You wish for death. Or are moon-touched. Jarl Sigrún is a guest of Queen Helka. She is staying in the Eagle-Hall.” He nodded his head, gesturing to the winged fortress that loomed on the crest of the hill that Darl was built upon.

Orka blew out a breath.

“One last question, and then you are free,” Orka said. “What was Hakon Helkasson doing in a tavern with Drekr?”

Skefil shrugged. “He is involved with the Tainted bairns, but how, I do not know.”

“And Queen Helka does not know?”

“That would be my guess,” Skefil said, “from the cloaks and hoods and shadows.”

“Mine, too,” Orka murmured. She looked at Skefil. “You have been helpful. My thanks.” And then she lifted the axe and slammed it down into Skefil’s head. A crunching crack into his skull, a gasp and spasm, his tied feet drumming and then Orka was ripping the axe free, fragments of bone and brain spraying. Skefil sagged into the mud.

A hiss came from Lif and Mord.

“You said he was going to be free,” Lif breathed.

“Aye, free of this life,” Orka grated.

“Why did you kill him, when he answered everything?” Mord pressed.

“Because a cleaved head no longer plots,” Orka growled.