Chapter Thirty-Nine: Varg

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

VARG

Varg sat with his back to a tree and chewed on a strip of hard mutton. His jaw was aching and he was certain it would be easier to chew through the leather sole of his turn-shoes. It was late in the night, or at least Varg thought it was. Sólstöður had begun, the month of day, where night was banished for thirty days. It was not full light, twilight hovering in the air like motes of dust, their camp set in a small glade among pinewoods. Faintly Varg could see the line of the moon, pale in a pale sky. But his body told him it was night and he pulled his cloak tighter about him.

He sat alone. Torvik was on guard duty, as were Svik and Røkia, all of them scattered through the woodland. Glornir sat with Vol, his long-axe cradled on his lap as he ran a whetstone along its edge. Einar Half-Troll was sitting with Sulich, grumbling about the hole in his belly that needed filling. Sulich was shaving the stubble from his head with his seax.

“A hot meal is all I can think of,” Einar muttered.

“No fire,” Glornir said through the scrape and rasp of his whetstone, not raising his eyes from his axe blade.

They all knew the rule by now, and the sense of it, but chewing on strips of cold hard mutton did not help to ease the absence of hot food.

Skalk sat nearby, Olvir and Yrsa beside him. The two warriors spoke in hushed voices, a strain etched upon Olvir’s face that had not left him since they had found the mutilated bodies hanging in the pine trees. Skalk’s head was bowed, his face a shadow. Varg still felt unsettled by those bodies and had dreamed of them each night since then, skinned carcasses swaying, ropes creaking. He thought of his conversation with Skalk before they had found the bodies, of how Skalk could perform an akáll, if Varg were prepared to leave the Bloodsworn and swear an oath to the Galdurman. Without thinking his hand strayed to the pouch on his belt and he thought of Frøya, his dead sister, murdered. He did not know where her body was or who had killed her. It gnawed at his soul like a rat chewing marrow from a bone.

Footsteps sounded, and Torvik appeared through the trees, saw Varg and strode to him, smiling as he sat beside him.

Varg offered him a strip of mutton.

“What is it you have in that pouch?” Torvik asked him, taking the mutton.

Varg pulled his hand away as if he’d been caught stealing.

“You protect it like it was filled with gold,” Torvik said. The young man shrugged. “It is your business, but if I can help you, I would.”

Varg blew out a long, tremulous breath. Then he reached back to the pouch, unhooked it and put his hand in, pulling out a lock of black hair.

“It is my sister’s,” Varg said. “I need it for the akáll which will show me who murdered her.”

Torvik nodded. “I will help you,” he said.

“Help with what?” Varg asked him, frowning.

“When Glornir grants you the akáll,” Torvik said, “I will help you hunt your sister’s killers. Edel tells me I have a good nose, that I will make a decent huntsman. I will help you find your sister’s murderers, and help you kill them.”

Varg just stared at Torvik. He opened his mouth to say something but found there was a pressure in his chest and a lump in his throat that words could not squeeze past. All his life he had been alone, Frøya his only companion, his only friend, the only one he had ever trusted. As he sat and stared at Torvik he knew that this lad before him meant what he said.

If Glornir ever deems me worthy, a voice in his thought-cage said.

Whether Glornir grants theakáll or not, that does not change what Torvik has just offered, he answered that voice.

He looked away and swiped a tear from his eye.

“My… thanks,” Varg muttered.

It will be hard to leave these people. Torvik, Svik, Einar, even Røkia, he thought. I have grown to… like them. But after talking to Skalk he knew what he should do, for Frøya, to fulfil his oath.

Torvik shrugged and smiled.

“Bannað jörð,” a voice called out and Varg turned to see that it was Skalk who had spoken. The Galdurman had raised his head and was staring at Vol. “Forbidden ground,” Skalk said. “That was the rune carved into the corpses of my drengrs.”

“It was,” Vol agreed.

“What does it mean?” Skalk asked her.

Vol frowned. “A warning, to stay away,” she said, then shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“It sounds like some gods-tainted warning to me,” Skalk said. “I am a Galdurman, have studied the rune lore and Galdur-law all my life, have travelled all Vigrið and beyond, and bent the knee at a score of Galdur towers, and that was a rune I have never seen before. And yet you knew what it said. It is part of your Tainted Seiðr filth, yes?”

Glornir raised his eyes from sharpening his whetstone and fixed Skalk with a hard look.

“Do not threaten me,” Skalk said with a wave of his hand. “I am no child or thrall to be cowed with a look or a reputation.” His gaze shifted to Einar, whose brows were knotted like a thunderhead. “You want a fire for your porridge, Half-Troll?” Skalk said. He held his hand out. “Eldur,” he breathed, and a spark ignited in his palm, a solitary flame crackling into existence.

Varg felt a chill slither through his veins. He had never seen Galdur-magic, and now that he had, he felt that he did not like it much. He could feel the power radiating from Skalk in waves, like heat from a fire.

Glornir looked from Skalk to the flame crackling in his hand.

“Put it out,” he said.

“No fires,” Einar muttered.

Skalk closed his hand into a fist, the flame stuttering and dying.

“Is this sacred ground, to you Tainted?” Skalk asked, eyes moving back to Vol.

She shrugged. “We are walking across Snaka’s bones. I can feel them even now, like a song in the ground, deep beneath us. He made us, made the world; of course this is sacred ground. But that is no reason to string and gut a warband of drengrs.”

Varg saw Olvir shift, his mouth twisting.

“But the rune did not say sacred. It said forbidden,” Vol said.

“Sometimes the two walk hand in hand,” Skalk mused. “Then why is this forbidden ground?” Skalk asked again.

“I do not know,” Vol said.

“No doubt we shall find that out, when we find whatever did that to your warriors,” Glornir said.

A silence settled between them.

“What is the difference between a Galdurman and a Seiðr-witch?” Varg asked into that silence. The thought had formed in his thought-cage and he had not realised he asked it out loud.

Skalk turned his gaze on to Varg, staring at him as if he had just uttered the greatest insult.

“I have worked on a farm my whole life,” Varg said with a shrug. “Magic is magic to me, regardless of who performs it.”

“Galdur-magic is taught by the wise, by scholars, to the worthy. Years of learning, of truth-seeking. It is honour and skill and patience. But Seiðr-magic, it is a pollution in the Tainted’s blood. A glimmer of old Snaka in their veins, the bloated god. It is not earned, like my power.” Skalk shook his head. “There is no honour in it, no skill. It is just in them.”

“And why is that so bad?” Varg said.

Yrsa snorted, giving a twist of her lips, and Skalk just stared, speechless for long moments. He sat up straighter. “The gods almost destroyed this earth,” he said, as if speaking to a child. “Almost destroyed us, mankind. And their offspring are no better. They fought in that war too.”

“So did humankind,” Sulich said, not breaking the scrape of his seax across his head.

“They were forced, little different than thralls,” Skalk said. “But the Tainted, they chose to fight, wanted to fight, just as their cursed parents did.” He stared at Vol as he spoke. “Cursed blood flows in them. That is why when mankind rose from the ashes of the Guðfalla they swore to hunt out any of the gods who survived the gods-fall, and to hunt out their seed, their mingling with humankind. It was only when Ulfrir’s chain was found that we began to thrall the Tainted, rather than execute them.”

“Ulfrir’s chain?” Varg asked. Tales had been told at Kolskegg’s farm, round the fire pit and food table, but from an early age he and Frøya had learned it was best to keep apart from the others. He only knew some of the tales.

“Ulfrir the wolf-god was chained on the last day,” Yrsa said. “A rune-wrought chain, filled with Seiðr-magic by Lik-Rifa, the dragon, Ulfrir’s sister. It bound him tight and cast him down, and then Lik-Rifa’s followers swarmed upon him and slew him with many wounds.”

“Aye, I have heard that tale,” Varg said.

“And when Snaka was slain and fell, he broke the world,” Yrsa said. “The chain was broken, links and shards hurled in a thousand different directions.”

“That is right,” Skalk agreed, taking up the tale again. “And many years later, as humankind began to spread through the world again, we found some of those links, buried in the ground, half-submerged in rivers or fjords, and we used Galdur-magic to break them down, to mix them with iron and forge the thrall-collars. Wherever they were found, that is where the first fortresses grew. Darl, Snakavik, Svelgarth in the east. That thrall-collar around Vol’s neck, there is a remnant of Ulfrir’s chain forged into it. That is how she is controlled. The same with Queen Helka’s Úlfhéðnar, and with Jarl Störr’s Berserkir. And the Galdur-tongue is used to command them. Glornir will have been taught the words of power when he bought that collar.”

“This is true.” Glornir nodded his agreement.

“I have always thought it a strange thing, to judge a man or woman by their parentage,” Sulich said, stopping the shaving of his head and sheathing his seax. “Far better to judge them on their deeds, to my mind.”

Skalk’s eyes snapped from Vol to Sulich.

“A strange thing for an escaped murderer to say,” Skalk said. “Am I to judge you on your deeds?”

Sulich looked at him, stood and strode towards Skalk.

“I am no murderer,” he said, his voice cold and hard.

Olvir and Yrsa stood, their hands hovering over their sword hilts.

“That is not what Prince Jaromir said,” Skalk answered, still sitting, calm and relaxed.

Sulich stood a few paces from him, Olvir and Yrsa ready.

“I am no murderer,” he repeated.

Skalk shrugged. “A matter we shall resolve, when this is done and we are back in Darl.”

“Sulich,” Glornir said. “Sit down.”

The shaven-haired warrior turned and looked at Glornir, then strode back to Einar.

Varg felt the hairs on his arms prickling. He knew that violence had been a hair’s breadth away.

They heard the sound of footsteps in the trees and all of them looked, hands reaching for weapons, an expression of the tension bubbling within the camp.

Svik walked out of the woods and stopped.

“What?” he said, looking around.