Chapter Forty: Orka

CHAPTER FORTY

ORKA

Orka walked along a dirt track, leading her horse by the reins, a solidly built skewbald gelding called Trúr. Mord and Lif walked either side of her with their own mounts, Mord with his injured arm bound from the wound Skefil had given him. Blood seeped into a linen bandage and he held the arm close to his body. The sun was climbing into the sky, the fresh chill of dawn still lingering. Wisps of mist curled upon the stream they were following, the fortress and town of Darl behind them.

They were travelling back to the farm they were lodging at, which lay nestled in the curl of a valley up ahead.

“What now, then?” Lif asked Orka. He had been mostly silent since the questioning and killing of Skefil.

“We think,” Orka said. “About our choices, what is possible, what is not, and then we come up with a deep-cunning plan that will put sharp steel into Guðvarr and Jarl Sigrún, and see your father avenged.”

In truth all that Orka wanted to do was pack some provisions in a bag, leave Mord and Lif behind and ride north after Drekr. But she owed these brothers a blood-debt and that was weighing on her soul. She knew that she should help them achieve their vengeance, especially while Drekr was no longer in Darl to kill but Guðvarr and Jarl Sigrún were, so it made sense in her thought-cage to put them in the ground first, before she went in pursuit of Drekr.

But the thought of Breca was like a splinter in her heart. His face haunted her; his voice whispered in her ear. Her son: taken, scared, hurt. It set a wolf snarling in her blood.

“What is wrong?” Mord asked her.

“What?” Orka said.

“You were growling, and your face was twitching.”

Orka blew out a long breath.

I will find you, Breca, I swear it, she thought. Every moment away from him clawed at her.

But I owe these two brothers.

As long as we can do it soon. I must be away from here soon.

“We must kill Guðvarr and Sigrún, and quickly,” Orka said.

“Aye, I know that part,” Lif said. “It is the how that I am wondering about.”

Orka looked back over her shoulder. Darl lay behind them, the fortress silhouetted on the hill with the great eagle-wings spread wide, catching the risen sun and blazing golden, the River Drammur coiling about the town’s feet like a sleeping serpent. Meadows and rolling hills lay between the fortress and the farm they were staying upon, the meadows filled with fields of ripening barley and the hills dotted with herds of goats and sheep.

After throwing Skefil’s corpse into the canal they had used what was left of the night to scout out the Eagle-fortress. It was frustratingly well guarded, with plentiful drengrs on the gates and patrolling the high timber walls that ringed Queen Helka’s mead hall. They had also made their way to the docks and looked at Jarl Sigrún’s drakkar, which was guarded by a handful of Sigrún’s drengrs, but also under the protection of the harbour officials and their guards. An attack on Jarl Sigrún when she returned to her drakkar looked as unlikely to be successful as trying to infiltrate the fortress.

“I am thinking the best path will be to lure Guðvarr and Jarl Sigrún out of the fortress, rather than try and sneak into it,” Orka said.

“And how would we do that?”

“When you want to catch a wolf or a fox, you bait a trap,” Orka said.

“Bait? What bait?” Lif said.

“Me,” Orka shrugged. “I slew Vafri, Helka’s Úlfhéðnar thrall that she gifted to Sigrún, and I slew Sigrún’s lover and left a scar on her face, so it is me that Sigrún and Helka most want to see in the ground. Anger blinds some people, makes them more likely to make mistakes. To rush. So, we find a busy place. You and Mord hidden in the press of a crowd. I sow some chaos and Jarl Sigrún and Guðvarr come to take their vengeance on me. That will be when you put steel in Guðvarr’s belly, but first whisper a word in his ear, so he knows who his killer is, and why he’s dying.” She shrugged. “Then you slip away into the crowd.”

“I like it,” Mord said, nodding. “Let’s do it.” He had been surly since taking the wound from Skefil, his pride hurt, Orka thought. He had been keen to assault Helka’s fortress, though he probably couldn’t even climb the walls with his injured arm.

Pride and shame, she thought. Both enemies of a long life. He needs some ice in his blood, to see more clearly.

“Sounds like there are many ways for that plan to go wrong,” Lif said. “Like, how will you get away?”

“All plans go wrong,” Orka said with a shrug. “And when this one does, we will improvise.”

“No hesitation,” Mord said, looking at Orka.

“Exactly,” Orka grunted.

They walked on, turning a corner in the dirt track and passing around a spur of land, the farm appearing in a valley below. The longhouse was built alongside a narrow river, barns and paddocks around it, a field of barley beyond. A gentle breeze lifted the blended smell of smoke, barley and pig-shite up out of the vale. The sound of geese squawking rose on the breeze.

Orka frowned, felt a tingling in her blood.

She stopped.

Mord and Lif carried on a few paces, their horses’ hooves a rhythmic thud on the ground. They realised Orka had stopped and slowed to a standstill.

“What is it?” Lif said.

“Come on, my belly needs filling,” Mord grumbled.

Orka frowned, sniffing.

They were a few hundred paces from the farm, and at a glance all seemed well. But Orka’s skin prickled. The donkey wasn’t braying, as he seemed to do from dawn until dusk, and there was no smoke rising from the green-turfed roof of the longhouse’s smoke hole.

“Get on your horses,” Orka said, slipping a foot into an iron stirrup and swinging herself up into her saddle, her spear gripped in one fist. She shifted her weight, settling on to Trúr’s back. The horse whickered.

“Why?” Mord frowned.

“The plan has already gone wrong,” Orka muttered.

Figures appeared in the farm courtyard: mounted figures. Lots of them. Ten, twelve, fifteen, more still hidden. The glint of weapons and brynjas. One of them rode to the farm’s entrance, drew his sword and pointed at Orka and the brothers.

“It’s Guðvarr,” Lif said.

“Stay and fight, or flee and fight another day?” Orka asked them. Her blood was thrumming, the imminence of violence calling to her, dancing in her veins. But a distant part of her thought-cage whispered that the numbers were too great, that Mord and Lif would likely die. Part of her didn’t care.

“Over a score of them,” Lif said.

“Sigrún’s drengrs, and some of Helka’s, too,” Orka said, seeing the glint of gold eagle-wings on cloak brooches. She looked at Mord and Lif and saw the gleam of vengeance bright in their eyes as they stared at Guðvarr, but also the hesitation that hovers like raven’s wings over impending battle, when the possibility of death looks you in the eye. Fear can be ice or fire in the veins, freezing the body or setting a blaze within it.

Guðvarr had started to ride up the track towards them, Orka able to see his dripping, pointed nose, and close behind him rode Arild, the drengr who always seemed to accompany Guðvarr. She wore a brynja that gleamed in the sun, whereas Orka had only seen her in wool and leather before. The warriors that followed behind them were also clothed in mail with iron helms, all drengrs with sword skill and weapons craft.

Orka looked back to Mord and Lif, still standing, holding their horses by their reins, just staring. They wore wool and leather, armed with seaxes and axes, Mord with a fishing spear, no helms. And they were hesitating.

Orka made the decision for them.

“We ride,” she said, dragging on her reins and touching Trúr’s ribs with her heels. She saw Lif clamber into his saddle and Mord lingered a moment, his face twitching, then he was heaving himself on to his horse’s back with a grimace of pain at his injured arm and the three of them were riding away, back along the track they’d been travelling on.

The sound of hooves came behind them, like rumbling thunder, and Guðvarr’s squeaking voice. Orka rounded the spur that hid the farm from view, her gelding moving at a fast canter, Mord and Lif catching her up. Ahead Darl reared, the river massed with a forest of masts. Soon the farm track joined a road with a few people upon it: carts pulled by oxen, other travellers.

Going back to Darl is not a good idea. It would be like riding into the wolf’s jaws, with Helka’sdrengrs before us and Guðvarr and his crew behind us.

A crossroad loomed ahead, straight on to Darl, south to the river, north to…

The Boneback Mountains.

They reared in the distance like jagged teeth, a gap in their profile marking where the Grimholt Pass lay.

Orka pulled on her reins and nudged with her leg and Trúr turned, heading north. Mord shouted after Orka, but the wind dragged the words away and Orka ignored them, seeing that he and his brother followed her. There were more shouts behind them as Guðvarr cleared the spur of land and saw them. He was only two hundred paces behind now, screeching and kicking his horse into a lathered gallop. Drengrs swarmed behind him.

Orka lifted her weight in her saddle and kicked Trúr on. He was a strong, big-boned gelding, built more for the plough or battle rather than speed, but he had a big heart and Orka could feel the joy in him at the gallop. Trúr’s stride opened up and it felt to Orka like she was flying, wind whipping tears from her eyes as they sped across rolling meadows of heather and gorse.

This is what it must have felt like to be one of Orna’s daughters, Orka thought, to fly and rule the skies, and she whooped with the joy of it. They rode on, the terrain changing about them as they moved away from the River Drammur. A gap widened between them and Guðvarr’s crew, four hundred paces, five hundred, the drengrs riding more carefully than Orka and the two brothers. The land rose, hills swelling around them, covered in fern and heather and patches of woodland, dissected by a myriad of streams. The path narrowed, slopes rising, and Orka heard the sound of rushing water. Then a wooden bridge was before them, narrow, crossing over a ravine. Orka pulled on her reins, shifting her position, and Trúr slowed, moving from a gallop to a canter. She heard the thunder of hooves on timber as she crossed the bridge, Mord and Lif slowing, taking the bridge one at a time.

Orka looked down and saw steep-sided slopes and a white-foaming river perhaps forty or fifty paces below her. She reached the far side of the bridge and dragged on her reins, leaped from her saddle and ran to a lightning-blasted hawthorn tree. She swept her axe into her fist and chopped at wood, dry-splintering as branches snapped.

Mord and Lif reached the far side of the bridge and reined their horses in, Lif calling to Orka, Mord staring back over his shoulder. Hooves thundered, the sound of Guðvarr and his drengrs far closer than Orka wanted them to be.

Orka swept the splintered branches up into her arms, ran back to the bridge and threw them down on the timber, then crouched and took her tinder and kindling from a pouch on her belt, her striking iron. Sparks leaped, the kindling hissing into flame among the dry branches. Fire crackled, flames clawing, and the hawthorn branches burst into fire, the timber of the bridge beginning to blacken and smoke. Orka stood, looking between the new-kindled flames and the far side of the bridge. Guðvarr appeared around a bend in the slope. He saw Orka and the others and spurred his mount on. It was sweat-soaked and salt-streaked, foam flying from its mouth. Guðvarr yelled a victory cry, grinning as he looked at Orka, Mord and Lif. Then he saw the flames. They were spreading now, along the timber walkway and up the posts and rails. Black clouds of smoke billowed, obscuring Guðvarr and the drengrs from view. Hooves thudded on timber as Guðvarr attempted to cross, but timber creaked, weakened by the flames, followed by a splintering, cracking sound, and Guðvarr retreated. He sat on his horse and hurled insults across the bridge at them. A spear hissed from one of his drengrs, and it thumped into the ground close to Lif’s mount.

“Take it,” Orka told Lif as she climbed back into her saddle, leaned and patted her gelding’s neck, then clicked him on.

“That’s bought us some time,” Orka said, looking east and west along the ravine as Mord and Lif rode up alongside her, Lif holding his new spear. The ravine curled into the distance, meaning Guðvarr and his drengrs would have to travel some distance to find another crossing point, and then travel back here to pick up their trail.

“Will they give up?” Lif asked.

“I hope not,” Orka said.

Behind them, from beyond the flames and smoke they heard a frustrated, furious screech.

“Why not?” Lif asked.

“Because I want Guðvarr to follow us, so that you can kill him,” she said.

“I like it,” Mord said, a smile spreading across his face. He frowned. “Follow us where?”

“North, to chase my vengeance, as your vengeance chases us,” she said, a cold smile touching her lips. “We are riding there. To the Boneback Mountains; to the Grimholt Pass.”

To find Drekr and my son.