Chapter Forty-Six: Orka

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

ORKA

Orka pulled on Trúr’s reins, the horse slowing and coming to a halt, stamping his feet and blowing bouts of hot breath. His coat was steaming and sweat-soaked. Orka’s breath blew clouds, too, the temperature dropping as they climbed steadily into higher ground.

She stared at the sight before her.

They were in the highlands: sweeping hills that shifted into the slopes of the Boneback Mountains, sombre forests of pine spreading before her, frost glittering on the bark. Orka leaned and spat, then twisted in her saddle and looked back over her shoulder.

Mord and Lif were not far behind, cantering across an open meadow before they reached the treeline. Behind the two brothers the world sloped away, down to the river valleys that twisted through the land. Orka followed the line of the River Drammur, tracing it as it grew ever fainter and eventually disappeared, knowing it led to Darl, and along that line their pursuit would most likely come. Guðvarr was tracking them by land, as evidenced by the columns of smoke that rose from his pit fires each evening.

Idiot that he is. Orka snorted. But she also suspected that boats were following them via the River Drammur, as well. Sleek-hulled snekkes, rather than dragon-prowed drakkar, because of the stretches of rapids and shallows. To the east, the slopes they were climbing dropped away to the Drammur, the river narrowing and becoming fiercer as they approached its headwaters in the Boneback Mountains. The curl of smoke gave away a village upon the river’s banks, one of many that Orka and the two brothers had avoided on their journey towards the Grimholt, though being forced to take less-travelled paths had cost them in time. Orka feared the gap between her and Drekr was slowly widening.

But if he is heading where Skefil told me, then he may stop there, rest awhile. That is where I will catch him.

At the Grimholt. Orka stared north, eyes creasing as she saw the gap between the peaks of the Bonebacks that marked where the Grimholt Tower lay, a fortress built to guard one of the few passes through the mountains. To the north vaesen roamed in greater numbers, the Grimholt barring their entrance into the southlands of Vigrið.

The drum of hooves and Mord and Lif reached her, slowing as the horses left the soft meadow and entered the needle-soaked ground beneath the trees. Sunlight dappled the ground as branches swayed.

“Why have we stopped?” Lif asked her.

Orka nodded ahead.

They were a little way into the pinewoods, Orka following what she had thought was a fox trail. Ahead of them a small glade opened up, at its centre the shattered remains of an oath stone, much like the one on the Oath Rock in the fjord, back at Fellur village.

A slab of rock jutted from the ground, splintered and broken, lumps of granite scattered around the glade, overgrown with grass and moss. Upon what was left of the central slab a fresh carving stood out, a twisted, sinuous knot-carving with gaping, fanged jaws. It was coated in something dark and cracked, almost oil-black.

But that was not what drew Orka’s eyes.

Above the shattered oath stone a dead eagle hung, tied by one talon with rope to a bough above it. The eagle was huge, twice the length of Orka, its great, rust-feathered wings hanging down into the glade, blood dried in a slick from a wound on its white-feathered throat that had dripped from its curved beak. The rope creaked, the dead eagle twisting ponderously as the breeze soughed through branches.

Orka clicked her tongue and Trúr walked into the glade, let out a whinny to show his discontent. Dismounting, Orka padded across the glade, ducked beneath the eagle and kneeled before the oath stone. She touched the new carving, saw it had been coated in the eagle’s blood, now dried to black and cracked like a scab. She looked back at the two brothers, who sat on their horses looking uneasily at Orka.

“I saw something like that carving back in Liga,” Orka said as she stood and walked back to her horse.

“Worshippers of Snaka in Helka’s realm,” Mord said, incredulous. He hawked and spat.

“Not Snaka,” Orka said as she climbed back into the saddle. “Look closer.”

Mord and Lif urged their mounts into the glade and they both leaned in their saddles. Lif saw it first. He hissed.

“It has wings,” Lif said.

“Aye. Whoever did this, they worship Lik-Rifa, the caged dragon.”

Orka set her feet and waited.

Mord and Lif spread around her, left and right, seaxes in their hands, wrapped in wool. Mord moved first, darting in, and Orka stepped left, slapped his stabbing seax away, turned as Lif slashed at her side, twisted, felt it graze her waist. Another stab from Mord, Orka moving in to meet him, grabbing his wrist and heaving him forwards, a flicker of pain in his eyes from the wound in his shoulder. Orka ignored that, twisting to spin Mord into Lif’s path, who was already moving, committed to another attack, and he stabbed Mord in the belly. Or would have, if his seax were not wrapped in wool.

“Better,” Orka said. “You are both using your thought-cages, and beginning to react better. When you have done this enough times, you will not have to think. Your body will do it for you.”

“No hesitation,” Lif said.

“Yes,” Orka said with a curt nod. “Now, again.”

They fought on, Orka silent as they attacked, defeating them every time, though both Lif and Mord were getting closer to touching her with their blades, Lif especially. He was calmer, more thoughtful, and listened more openly, without any of the hubris that entwined Mord. He wanted to be skilled and dangerous, but without admitting that he was not good enough, yet. Mord’s patience would not last, and he would often try to rush Orka, which inevitably ended up with him on his arse.

“Hold,” Orka said, raising a hand. She tugged her nålbinding cap off her head, Thorkel’s cap, and wiped sweat from her brow. It was cold this high in the hills, their sweat steaming. Orka had seen the tell-tale gleam of a frost-spider’s web that afternoon in the pinewoods. “Enough for tonight.”

Mord and Lif did not look disappointed with that decision.

Although it was still light, even in the shelter of this pinewood, Orka knew that it was late in the day, and she knew rest was vital if they were going to avoid capture by Guðvarr and Sigrún’s drengrs.

“Tend to your weapons,” Orka said, walking to a bag and rummaging inside for the bread and cheese they had bought yesterday. They had crossed paths with an old farmer on the road, leading a mule and cart and heading to a nearby village to sell his goods at market. After they had convinced him they were not lawless men about to rob him, they had given him some coin in return for bread and cheese, a jar of milk, a dozen oatcakes and a joint of salted pork. She took it out and sliced them all a portion, handed it out and sat with her back to a tree. The wound in her back that Drekr had given her pulled as she stretched, the skin tight. Lif had cut the stitches and drawn them out, and it felt good to Orka. Just a little stiff, a tightness during some movements. She pulled her cloak about her, cold seeping in now that she had stopped moving, and there would be no fire to warm her bones.

Twilight lay heavy upon them, the long days and lack of darkness confusing Orka’s body. There was a stinging behind her eyes that spoke of exhaustion. She felt a weariness deep in her bones, and the weight of Breca’s absence gnawed at her.

You must rest, a voice whispered in her thought-cage, sounding like Thorkel’s rough voice.

I will rest when Breca is safe at my side, and when you are avenged, my beloved, she answered. Her thought-cage felt full to overflowing and sluggish. Fractured images of the glade with the dead eagle and rune-carved oath stone would not leave her.

Carvings of Lik-Rifa. Worship of the dragon-god. And at the same time a dragon-born whom all think are just saga-tales appears, slaying my husband and stealing my son. What does it mean?It ate away at her, like saltwater dripping upon a fine sword, rusting and corrupting. Her nerves felt frayed. The thought of finding Drekr and putting a blade in his belly, twisting it just to hear him scream, played through her head, over and over.

Answers before vengeance, she told herself, though I will settle for Breca back safe and Drekr in the ground. She unbuckled her weapons belt and took a whetstone from the small pouch built into the scabbard of a seax, and began the rhythmic scrape as she ran it across the blade.

Lif was checking on their horses, the three animals nearby, hobbled by a stream, and Mord sat close to Orka. He lay his spear, seax and hand-axe on the pine needles and began to check them, cleaning with scouring sand and a linen rag, then sharpening their blades. Lif joined then and the three of them sat in silence, eating and sharpening.

“What is the plan, then?” Mord asked over the hiss and rasp of whetstones.

Orka did not answer for a while. She was still thinking it through.

After fleeing Guðvarr she had thought to travel north after Drekr, towards the Grimholt, hoping to either catch up with him or find a place suitable to ambush Guðvarr. Thus far neither of those hopes had borne fruit.

“We will continue to the Grimholt, and see,” Orka muttered. “It is maybe a day’s travel away, no more than two.”

“What is the Grimholt?” Lif asked her.

“A fortress, built to guard a gap through the Bonebacks against the vaesen of the north,” Orka said. “A hall, walls north and south.”

“Have you seen it, then?” Mord asked her.

“Aye,” Orka nodded. “A long time ago.”

In another life, or so it feels.

Mord and Lif glanced at one another.

“We may end up caught between hammer and anvil,” Mord said. “Enemies before and behind us.”

A precipice in front and wolves behind.Orka did not like that thought, either.

“You have seen the campfires on our trail,” Orka said. “Guðvarr not even having the clever to hide his fires. We have opened up the gap between us and him. Maybe a day and a half.” She shrugged. “If we get to the Grimholt, then we shall make a decision. Move on, or stand and fight Guðvarr.” She looked at them both. “Blood will be shed, and soon.”

Lif nodded, and Mord smiled.

“Fighting me is one thing,” Orka said, “and you are doing well.”

“Less bruises,” Lif smiled.

“Aye,” Orka nodded. “But for you to fulfil your oaths of vengeance you must fight Guðvarr.”

“That is what we want,” Lif said. “And I don’t think he will be as hard to kill as you are.”

“He is a troll-shite niðing,” Mord grunted, and shrugged, as if dispatching Guðvarr would be a simple task.

“True,” Orka said, “he is a troll-shite niðing, but he will be a troll-shite niðing who wears a coat of mail and carries a shield and sword. A drengr’s kit. And there will likely be other drengrs with him, such as Arild, and Helka’s warriors who were with him at the farm. So, you must be ready to fight a drengr, and more importantly, know how to defeat one. Their strengths and weaknesses. You will be in wool, most likely with a seax or axe in your fist.”

“Aye,” Lif grunted attentively.

“So, are you ready? How do you defeat a warrior in mail, with sword and shield? They are better protected than you, and skilled in weapons craft.”

The two brothers were silent a while.

“Speed,” Lif eventually said.

Orka nodded. “Good. You must use what you have to counter what they have. So, you will be light, not carrying a coat of mail on your back. A brynja chafes the shoulders and slows your movement. Move in quick, never a straight rush, though. Small steps, sway, and get in close, inside their guard; make it harder for them to swing a sword or stab with a spear. Their shields will be a problem. Again, move to the sides, not straight on. If you are using your axe, hook the shield rim, pull them off balance. And once you are in close, their mail will be another problem.” She stopped scraping the whetstone along her seax. “Strike here,” she touched her throat. “Or here,” and put her hand to the inside of her thigh, high, close to her groin. “Open those veins and your opponent is dead. And a brynja does not cover those spots perfectly.” She shrugged. “Of course, while you are trying to do that to them, they will be trying just as hard to stab you anywhere, as you will be wearing wool that parts like butter.”

“That’s encouraging,” Mord said, frowning.

“Realistic,” Orka said. She shrugged. “Speed will win you your vengeance. And remember. Do not—”

“Hesitate,” they both said.

Orka smiled.

“And how about you?” Mord said. “You were on your knees with Drekr’s hands around your throat the last time you saw him. How do you plan on killing him?”

Orka looked at Mord.

“Slowly,” she said, then went back to the rasp and scrape of whetstone on steel.