Chapter Four: Varg

CHAPTER FOUR

VARG

Varg walked into the square before the mead hall. He stepped over a pool of congealing blood and stopped.

His own blood was rushing in his ears, muting sound, though he could see smiling faces and mouths moving among the crowd lining the square, coin being exchanged. One woman with two wolfhounds at her feet watched him as she bit into an apple. She was lean-muscled with silver-grey hair knotted like rope, a white scar running through one ruined eye. She was clothed in a brynja, a spear in her fist, axe and seax suspended from her belt. She looked too old to be a warrior, with deep lines around her eyes and mouth. As Varg’s eyes met hers she smiled at him, but Varg saw no comfort in it. It was the kind of smile one gives a fool when they believe they can fly and leap from a cliff.

She dropped her apple and fished out a coin from a pouch at her belt, gave it to a man standing close to her.

They are betting on how quickly I lose, he realised.

Einar was bending to mutter something to the grey-bearded bald man and the tattooed woman. As he did so he wiped blood from his knuckles with a rag and passed it over to another warrior, a tall, blonde-haired woman, another of the Bloodsworn, going by her black shield and brynja. She took the rag and stuffed it in her weapons belt, then picked up a wooden shield that was leaning against the mead hall steps. Her eyes met Varg’s and she strode to him, offered him the shield.

Varg looked at it. Strips of limewood glued and bound with a rim of rawhide, an iron boss at its centre, a wooden handle riveted across the back.

“More useful if you hold it, rather than look at it,” the woman said to him. Her nose and chin were long and thin, sharp as a drakkar’s prow.

Varg shook his head. “Don’t want it,” he said.

“Don’t be an idiot. How long are you going to last against Half-Troll without it?”

Varg shook his head again. The truth was, he’d never held a shield before, let alone used one in a fight.

“It’s your life,” the woman shrugged.

“But look after this for me,” Varg said, taking his cloak off and folding it, holding it out to her.

The woman took it, curled her lip and dropped it on the ground.

“I’m no one’s thrall to be ordered,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Varg,” he said.

“He has no name,” Svik called out to them.

“And no shield,” she answered Svik. She looked back at Varg. “And no sense.” Then she turned away.

“VARG NO-SENSE TO CHALLENGE EINAR HALF-TROLL FOR A PLACE IN THE BLOODSWORN’S OAR-BENCH AND SHIELD WALL,” she bellowed as she walked back to the bald man and Einar. A roar went up from the crowd as Einar stepped into the square. His brows knotted as he saw Varg had no shield, but he walked on.

Close up Einar was bigger than he’d first appeared. His face was all slabs of bone and red hair, his fists the size of anvils.

Varg touched the pouch at his belt, glanced at Vol the Seiðr-witch, who was watching with dark eyes, then he looked back at Einar.

For you, Frøya. I do this for you.

He drew in a deep breath and shook out his arms and hands, bounced on the balls of his feet.

Einar loomed over him, blotting out the sun.

“When you go down, stay down,” the big man grunted at him, and swung a right hook.

Varg ducked the hook, whistling over his head, and darted close, releasing a flurry of punches to Einar’s gut, the slap of meat. It was like punching a tree. Einar gave no visible sign that he had felt anything. Varg ducked and stepped right, avoided another hook that swept over his head, stepped in and kicked at Einar’s knee. The big man grunted, beard shifting as his mouth twisted.

You felt that, didn’t you, big man.

A huge hammer-fist came hurtling down at Varg, who swayed and stepped right, air hissing past his face, and threw his own punch at Einar’s groin.

Varg had fought before, many times on the farm. The first time had been before he could grow hair on his chin, fighting among the farm’s thralls for an extra bowl of broth for Frøya, who had been shivering with a fever. Then more frequently as he found it a sure way to secure a few secret coins or extra meals. And finally, for Kolskegg, once his master had heard about his fast fists, putting Varg to work in bouts against the champions of other landed men. He had earned Kolskegg a chest of silver, and in the process fought many men and women bigger and stronger than him, but he’d not fought any man that could stand after a blow to their stones, no matter how big or strong they were.

Varg’s blow was perfectly timed, a straight right, his legs well set, the power from his legs and hips channelled into his twisting arm, wrist snapping just before impact.

Pain exploded in Varg’s fist, shot through his wrist, up his arm and he staggered back a step. There had been no soft, squashing connection; instead Varg’s fist crunched into something hard as iron.

“Ha,” Einar grinned. “Little men have tried that before. Jökul the smith has made me some protection.” And then he swung a meat-hammer fist at Varg’s face.

Despite the pain exploding in Varg’s hand he managed to move, Einar’s fist connecting with Varg’s shoulder instead of his chin. The blow lifted him from his feet and sent him twisting through the air, crunching to the ground and rolling in the mud.

Einar strode after him.

Varg scrambled on to hand and knees, his injured fist clutched to his side. Waves of nausea pulsed from his gut. Then Einar’s boot connected with his ribs and he was lifted from the ground, weightless again, spinning.

The ground rose up to greet him, his head slamming into the mud. Stars exploded, his vision blurring, pain in his ribs screaming. He forced himself to roll, climbed to one knee, saw Einar closing on him again.

“I told you to stay down,” Einar growled.

A bloom of anger in Varg’s belly. The pugil-ring was the only place where he could not be told what to do. Where he had been free. Where the rage he always felt was unchained. It flooded through his veins now, white-hot.

Varg bunched his legs and leaped at Einar, snarling, rolled between the man’s feet and came up standing behind him. He punched once with his good hand to Einar’s kidney, then kicked into the back of the big man’s leg, sending him stumbling to one knee.

A silence from the crowd, as if everyone were holding their breath, then a huge roar.

Einar backhanded Varg, catching him on the side of his chin. It was a weaker blow, past its snapping point, but it still sent Varg to the ground. Einar climbed to his feet, face mottled with anger and raised a boot to stamp on Varg’s head.

Varg rolled, wrapped his arms around Einar’s ankle as his boot slammed into the mud, and pulled himself tight to the man.

“Get off, you little shite,” Einar grunted as he shook his leg, but Varg held tight. Pain was flaring everywhere now, Varg moving to a place beyond it. He opened his jaws and bit into Einar’s leg, through woollen leg wraps and breeches into the flesh of Einar’s calf.

Einar bellowed.

Varg tasted a spurt of blood, bit down harder.

The scream shifted higher in pitch.

Einar was abruptly still and through one eye Varg glimpsed a fist hurtling towards his face. He bit down harder, grinding his teeth.

White light exploded in his head.

Pain. Like hammers in his head. Knives in his side. Deep-stabbing needles in his hand. He tried to open his eyes but found he couldn’t.

Am I dead? Is this Vergelmir, Lik-Rifa’s chamber? Or have my eyes been stitched shut by a mischievous fetch?

More pain, all over, but spiking in his head, his ribs, his hand. A sound, the murmur of water. He groaned, got a mouthful of grit for the effort and rolled on to his back, lifted his good hand to his eyes and felt something crusted and sticky. Dried blood. He rubbed and managed to open his eyes a crack.

The moon and stars above, a ghostly blur in a death-black sky.

I am alive, then.

For a moment he was memoryless: he had no idea where he was or what had happened to him.

He licked his teeth and scabbed lips, tasted salt and iron, spat blood on to the sand.

Not just my blood.

A fluttering sound recalled, a man bellowing in pain.

An image in his mind, a huge fist speeding towards him.

Then memory crashed in like a dam breaking.

Einar Half-Troll, the Bloodsworn…

He pushed himself upright, saw that he was sitting on a black-sanded bank, behind him wind sighing through the branches of trees. A thousand lights glimmered from Liga, a glow leaking into the sky above it like light from a dying fire, all locked tight within the town’s stockade walls. Ships creaked and swayed on their moorings on the fjord, the moon and stars turning the dark waters to molten silver.

He put a hand to those parts that hurt the most. His ribs, a hand over his woollen tunic. No broken skin, just painful to the touch. Probably a broken rib or two. He looked at his injured hand, the knuckles purple-black in the night, and swollen. He tried to make a fist, but the pain and swelling stopped him. Then he put his good hand to his face. A gash over his eye, blood crusted upon it, the whole side of his face swollen, his jaw throbbing. One tooth loose.

His fingertips brushed the iron collar around his neck.

Panic.

The key. My cloak.

He staggered to his feet, ignoring the pain, checking himself over, a surge of relief that his pouch still hung at his belt. He fumbled at the leather draw, blew out a long breath when he saw the contents were still there.

But my thrall-collar…

And then he saw it, a darker shadow on the black sand: his woollen cloak, neatly folded. He bent, lifted it, checking the hidden pockets. Something heavy and cold: the cleaver he had taken from the trader; in the same pocket the bag of coin, by its weight untouched, and then he found the key.

A long, frozen moment, relief flooding him, and he put the key to the lock, fumbling with one hand, finally a click as the key bit. The collar creaked open on sweat-rusted hinges and he put it back in the cloak pocket, along with the key.

He walked unsteadily to the fjord’s edge, kneeled and cupped his hands, sipped the cold water. It was like slivers of ice in his throat and belly, painfully sharp and refreshing. He splashed his face and spent a while trying to wash the blood away, then shook his head, droplets spraying. Filled a water bottle from his belt. When he was done, he stood, shivering, and clumsily threw his cloak around his shoulders, pinned it and walked wearily towards the treeline.

Stepping among the trees he threaded his way up a gentle slope through the pine, maybe thirty or forty paces, until he could no longer see the shimmer of the fjord behind him. Moonlight filtered down from above, silver dappling the ground as branches swayed. Dropping to his knees he scraped the woodland litter away until he had cleared a circle of hard-packed earth, then set about finding something that would burn. He returned with an armful of dead timber and set it down on the cleared space, reached for his kindling pouch, pulling out a stone and striking-iron, and a handful of dried kindling, and then set to sparking a fire. Soon he was blowing gently on the first sparks, fanning the flames into life.

Keeping busy was good, because a wave of despair was building within him.

He had failed.

Sitting back, he held his hands out to the fire, trying to chase the ice from his bones, and stared into the flames.

Frøya, I am sorry.

He felt the grief welling, that he had kept shut tight somewhere deep in his mind, in his heart, walled in tight. Despair like ice clawed and cracked at those walls. He put his head in his hands, a sob building in his chest, writhing up into his throat, unstoppable. Tears rolled down his cheeks and memories of Frøya filled his mind. His sister. His only friend.

He had no memory of his father or mother, only what he had been told by Kolskegg, who had bought him and Frøya when they were bairns. Kolskegg had told him that Varg’s parents had sold him and Frøya for a loaf of bread and a dozen duck eggs when Varg was five winters old, Frøya four. All their lives spent as thralls, each other their only solace, their only comfort. He rested his hand on the pouch at his belt.

And now she is dead, and I don’t know how to avenge her.

After a while Varg looked up, rubbed his eyes, winced at the pain.

This is not the end, he told himself. I have come too far to just give up now. There must be a Galdurman or Seiðr-witch somewhere in all of Vigrið that will help me, for coin. I will find them, wherever they are. And if I cannot find them in Vigrið then I shall travel the whale-road sea to Iskidan, and search all of the Shattered Realms until I have found someone to help me.

I will go on.

He sucked in a long, ragged breath, pushing his memories back, somewhere deep and dark.

A twig cracked in the woods.

Without thinking he scrambled to his feet, kicked at the fire, sparks exploding. Stood there, listening, staring into the shadow-black.

A low, rumbled growl.

A figure burst from the undergrowth, a man dragged by a hound on a leash, more shapes behind him. The hound leaped at him.

Varg stepped to the side, snapped his left arm out, shoving the leaping hound away. The force of his blow sent him stumbling into a tree, and sent the hound crashing on to the fire. More sparks erupted, the hound yelping, fur igniting.

“Thought you could run from us for ever,” a voice snarled, coming from a woman that stepped around the houndsman, a spear levelled at Varg’s chest.

Varg pushed off the tree, reaching inside his cloak, the spear stabbing into bark. He fumbled the cleaver out and chopped at the spear shaft, splintering it, ducked as the woman still clutching the haft used it like a club attempting to cave Varg’s skull in. A slice of the cleaver as Varg stumbled away; a scream; the woman clutching her ribs and dropping to her knees.

The hound was rolling, yelping and whining, flames in its fur, the houndsman tearing his cloak off and wrapping it around the animal, trying to put the flames out. Other men appeared from the gloom: three, four more at least, it was hard to tell in the murk, but Varg saw all had spears in their fists. He looked wildly around and ran for a gap in the trees. A crack to the back of his legs and he stumbled, tried to right his balance but tripped over a root, fell to one knee, put a hand out to save himself and yelled, pain shooting through his injured hand.

Another blow across his shoulders, sending him face first to the ground; a mouth full of pine needles and dirt. He rolled, lashed out with the cleaver, felt it bite into someone’s leg, heard another scream. A man dropped to the ground beside him, tearing the cleaver from Varg’s grip.

A foot kicked Varg in the chest as he tried to rise, another man stamping on his wrist, pinning him. Varg snarled, tried to roll and a spear butt clubbed him across the forehead, sent him crashing back to the forest litter. Blood in his eyes. A spear hovered over his throat, another man standing on his other wrist, pinning him wide.

Varg stared up, breathing hard, blood pounding in his head.

“You thought I wouldn’t find you,” the man looming over him said. His face was lit by the stuttering fire, shadow and flame. A broad man, black-bearded, a scar running through his lip that twisted his mouth into a permanent sneer.

“Leif,” Varg spat, “you should not have followed me.”

“Ha,” Leif grunted. “You’d have to run faster and further to hide from me, after what you did to my father. Butchered like an animal. I only knew him by his chain.”

Varg did not remember. It had been a red-tinged haze, only coming back to his senses as he choked the life from Snepil. He had sat back, then, dazed, blood and carnage all about him.

“You’ve lost your collar, Varg the thrall,” Leif said.

“I am no thrall,” Varg grunted. He pulled in a breath through his pain. “Your father cheated me. I earned my freedom and your father broke his oath. I am a freedman, no different from you.V One of the men pinning Varg kicked him in the face. He spat blood.

Leif laughed.

“You are Varg the thrall, and you are my thrall, now. My property. You belong to me. Leif Kolskeggson; son of the man you murdered.” Leif glanced at one of the men beside him. “Put a collar and chain on this dog.” He touched his spear tip to Varg’s chest, traced it over his torso, then slowly slid the blade’s edge across Varg’s ribs, a line of blood welling. “I am going to bleed you, but death would be too much of a kindness to you,” Leif said. He stabbed his spear into the ground and squatted down beside Varg, checking him over for weapons. There was a chink of metal as Leif reached inside Varg’s cloak and pulled out the bag of coin.

“Stolen from my father, no doubt,” Leif said and spat in Varg’s face. “I am going to chain you to my horse and drag you all the way back to my farm-steading,” he said slowly, taking care over his words, anger putting a tremor into them. “Once there you will have the lash, until you can no longer stand. Until I have seen your bones. And then I shall put you back to work. For me. Making me coin for the rest of your stinking, miserable life.”

Varg twisted and writhed, heaved one hand free. Booted kicks rained in, curling him up. He lay their gasping.

“My leg,” a voice whimpered close by, the man Varg had struck with his cleaver. The blade was still embedded in his leg.

“Bastard thrall’s cut me, broken my ribs,” another voice wheezed: the woman, sitting propped against a tree, one hand pressed to a black glistening wound in her side. Leif stood, walked over to the man and leaned down, grabbed the cleaver’s wooden handle and wrenched it free of the injured warrior’s leg, eliciting a high-pitched scream. “Orl, tend to their wounds,” Leif ordered the man still sitting close to the fire, patting his hound down. The flames were out, patches of fur blackened, the hound whining. Orl stood and moved to the injured man and woman, giving Varg a dismayed look. He was old, his grey hair thin and lank, and he wore an iron collar around his throat.

“You hurt my old girl,” he muttered at Varg as he pulled a knife and kneeled beside the wounded woman, began cutting at her tunic and cleaning her wound. The hound limped after him.

Leif hefted the cleaver.

“Murdered my father,” Leif said, and slashed the cleaver through the air. “Slew three other freedmen.” Two more slashes of the cleaver, air whistling. “Now you injure two of my hird.” He pointed the cleaver at Varg. “I’ll give you part of your punishment now, I’m thinking. One for you to think over on the journey back to my steading.” He looked at the two men standing over Varg. “Pull his arm out; hold him tight.”

Varg stared at Leif, then at the two men as one gripped his hand, the other twisting his other arm up behind his back.

He’s going to cut my hand off.

Varg hurled himself against the men, straining and thrashing, but the man behind him held him tight, a white-hot pain lancing into his shoulder, his arm close to breaking. He collapsed, gasping.

“Don’t worry. When we get home, I’ll have Orl carve you a hand of wood, so you can still work on the farm,” Leif said, his lips twisting.

A sound behind Leif, of branches snapping. Leif paused, all of them staring into the darkness.

A man stepped out of the woodland, tall and broad, with a bald head and grey beard. A coat of mail shimmered in the moonlight. He held a bearded long-axe in both hands. Like a staff. There were shadows behind him, patches of deeper darkness. The silver-haired woman appeared, two wolfhounds at her side. They were snarling, hackles raised.

“Let him go,” the grey-beard said.

Leif raised the cleaver high.

The grey-beard moved, faster than Varg could track, and then Leif was doubled over, the cleaver falling to the ground. The men holding Varg burst into motion, reaching for their spears, stabbing at the grey-beard as Leif coughed and retched on his knees.

The wolfhounds leaped forwards, jaws latching on to the arm and leg of one man, dragging him to the ground.

A cracking sound and trees ruptured apart, Einar Half-Troll emerging, a punch sending one of Leif’s men hurtling through branches, disappearing into the darkness. Another figure darted past the grey-beard: Svik, the slim, red-haired man who had first spoken to Varg. His face was twisted in a snarl, his seax in his fist, cold iron gleaming. He swayed around a stabbing spear, stepped in close and ran the seax-blade along the spear shaft, slicing. A scream and severed fingers fell to the ground. The spear dropped and the slim man grabbed the screaming warrior by his woollen tunic, dragged him forward and headbutted him. He fell with a gurgle.

Silence in the clearing: just heavy breathing, the wind in the trees, Leif groaning. Varg stared at the fallen men, too stunned to move. Leif was still on his hands and knees, one hand cupping his groin. Saliva dribbled from his mouth. Orl sat against the tree, eyes wide. His hound growled at the newcomers.

Svik strode towards Orl and growled at the hound, a deep, animal sound, and the hound tucked his tail between his legs, whined, and pressed tightly into Orl.

Svik laughed as he wiped blood from his forehead and braided hair.

The grey-beard stepped past Leif and stood over Varg.

“He’s… mine,” Leif spluttered. “My thrall, and mine by right of weregild. He must answer for… murder.”

“No,” the grey-beard said, his voice like gravel. “He’s one of the Bloodsworn now.”