Chapter Forty-Seven: Varg

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

VARG

Varg woke to screaming: dull, distant, growing louder as his consciousness returned, like being buried alive and clawing out from the soil. He gasped, twisted, felt hands holding him down.

“Easy, No-Sense,” a voice said.

He didn’t listen; saw blurred figures around him and fought and twisted, until other hands were grabbing him, holding him. He fell back, gasping, his vision focusing, tasted iron and spat blood. The first person he saw was Røkia. She was holding him, her face twisted with worry.

“You’re with friends,” she said to him, and he blew out a long breath and sagged in her arms, and Svik’s, he realised.

He was still in the same chamber, the smell of blood thick and cloying. Olvir’s corpse lay close by, limbs twisted, his throat a ragged, open wound. And then he saw Torvik and felt the weight of grief fall upon his shoulders.

Torvik is dead. Vol is gone.

Someone was still bellowing. There was a crashing and pounding sound and he saw Einar standing by the door to the bone-sword chamber.

Before Skalk stole it.

Einar was leaning against the door, bracing it with his shoulder, a few other Bloodsworn with him, Sulich and Halja, all holding the door shut. As Varg stared he saw the door tremble and buck, Einar straining to keep it shut. Muffled sounds leaked out: pounding, a growling, grief-filled roar.

“What is in there?” Varg muttered, thinking they had caught another troll.

“Glornir,” Svik said to him.

Varg blinked at that.

“He is a little angry,” Svik said. “Best that he is not around others right now.”

Another crash against the door. A splintering sound.

“What is happening?” Varg breathed, then lifted his hands and knuckled his eyes.

“Vol is gone,” Røkia said, as if that explained everything.

“I know,” Varg muttered, “but…”

“Vol is not a thrall,” Svik said. “She is Glornir’s woman.”

It took a few moments for that to sink into Varg’s thought-cage.

“Skalk took her,” he said. “Yrsa stabbed Torvik.” Varg felt a fist clench in his belly: anger, grief. “I…” He stopped, remembering Skalk’s offer to him, how he had thought about accepting, just for a moment, felt a wave of shame, and loss. If Vol was gone, then the chance of fulfilling his oath to Frøya was gone, too.

“We have to get Vol back,” Varg said, stumbling to his feet. Pain in his side, pulsing from his ribs, stealing his breath, but he pushed through it. Swayed, fought the urge to vomit.

“That’s the spirit,” Svik said, smiling at Varg, “but perhaps you should put some clothes on first.”

Varg looked down and saw that he was still in his boots and breeches, but he had no tunic on, his belt gone.

Svik held up a linen tunic for Varg, helped him thread it over his arms. Then a woollen one. Varg hissed and gasped, gritted his teeth to the pain. Røkia held up his belt. His seax, cleaver and axe were hanging upon it, and his pouch. He felt a weight lift from his shoulders at the sight of it and took it from Røkia.

The door crashed again and Einar was thrown back into the room, scrambling back to brace the door.

Varg stared. “Glornir is strong, but he cannot do that to a door,” he said. “Not with Einar on the other side of it.”

“He can,” Svik said.

“How?”

Svik looked at Røkia and she nodded.

“It is time,” she said.

“I think so, too,” Svik shrugged. He looked at Varg. “Glornir is Berserkir,” Svik said to him.

Varg just stared at him, feeling the beginning of a laugh sputter and die in his throat. “Glornir is Tainted?” he breathed.

“Aye. He is god-touched, has the blood of Berser the bear flowing in his veins.”

Varg stared at the door, incredulous.

“I am Tainted, too,” Svik said to him. “Refur the fox lives on in my blood.”

Varg stared at him. A silence fell over the chamber. Even Glornir’s pounding and roaring stopped for a few moments.

“This is one of your twisted jests,” Varg said.

“No jest,” Svik shook his head. He stepped closer to Varg and tugged on his red beard, an abrupt intensity in his gaze. A change came over his face, a subtle shifting of features, the angles sharpening. His eyes, always so blue, swirled and clouded, shifting to a greenish yellow, and the teeth in his mouth changed, suddenly small and sharp-edged.

“You see,” Svik smiled. A toothy grin.

Varg stumbled back and collided with the wall.

“There will come a time when you can control the beast in your blood, summon it when it is needed. But you are a long way from that,” Svik said. He cracked his neck and his eyes shifted back to blue; his teeth reverted to normal.

“This can’t be true,” Varg said, shaking his head. “You and Glornir, Tainted…”

“It is true,” Svik said, “but not just Glornir and me. All of the Bloodsworn. We are all god-touched.”

Varg looked from Svik to Røkia to Einar. Røkia nodded, and Einar looked back over his shoulder and grinned at Varg.

“Welcome, brother,” Einar said.

“Brother?” Varg whispered.

“Aye,” a voice from the far door said. It was Edel, standing in the entrance with her two wolfhounds. “You are Tainted, Varg No-Sense.” She reached into a pouch at her belt and pulled out a linen rag, black with dried, crusted blood. She held it up. “This was used to tend your cuts after you fought Einar, in Liga. Hundur the hound lives in my veins, and I could smell the wolf in you the moment your blood was spilled.”

“Wolf,” Varg mumbled.

“Aye, Ulfrir lives in your veins,” Røkia said. “You are Úlfhéðnar, like me.” A shy smile touched her lips.

“No,” Varg said.

“Search yourself,” Røkia said. “All your life you have hidden it, suppressed it, no? But it has always been there. A whisper in your thought-cage. A howling in your blood. A fierceness, a red mist that gives you strength and speed when you need it most.” She looked pointedly down at Olvir’s corpse, his throat open, and Varg remembered waking up on Kolskegg’s farm, seeing Kolskegg and a handful of his freedmen dead, blood everywhere. Kolskegg’s throat had been torn out.

“You know it to be true,” Røkia said.

Varg stared at them all, felt the world spinning in his thought-cage, his gut twisting, found it hard to breath, as if the walls were pressing in upon him, squeezing him, crushing the air from his lungs. He bent over and vomited, wiped his mouth and stumbled away, pushing past Edel and out through the door.

A tunnel split two ways, but he just followed the path in front of him, stumbling. He spilled into a larger chamber, his footfalls taking wing and echoing like a swarm of bats. In the hall’s centre was a huge slab of rock, roughly chiselled. Great chain links had been hammered into it, four iron collars for wrists and ankles. The rock was pitted and scarred like a blacksmith’s apron. Close to the rock Varg saw a handful of Bloodsworn around a hearth fire. They raised hands to him in greeting.

“Air,” he grunted.

They pointed to a tunnel and Varg ran through it, the path climbing, and then he saw light and burst out into the bright day, fell to his knees and gasped in fresh, clean air. He still had his belt clutched in one fist, weapons hanging from it, and his pouch.

I am Tainted. He knew it was true, the thought a dark, malignant cloud in his thought-cage. He did not want to believe it, felt ashamed, sickened, repulsed. Tainted. Lower than a thrall, only good to be hunted, enslaved, used. But he knew it was true, his whole life fitting together, making sense, like a key fitting into a lock.

He looked up and saw the muddy glade was busy with Bloodsworn. A hearth fire burned, a pot hanging over it, and elsewhere warriors were saddling and harnessing a line of horses. The body of the troll lay close to Varg, where it had fallen, but the other dead had been carried to one side of the glade and laid out side by side: skraelings, warriors, thralls. The warriors had been stripped of their war gear.

A line of thralls stood close to the hearth fire, at their head a man using hammer and a chisel to free them of their iron collars. He looked up and Varg saw it was Jökul. He saw Varg and handed the hammer and chisel to another Bloodsworn, then strode to the hearth fire, where he spooned porridge into a bowl and walked towards Varg. A bandage was still around Jökul’s head.

“They have told you, then,” the smith said as he squatted beside Varg.

Varg grunted, nodded.

“Here, you look like you need a good meal.”

Varg ran his tongue around his mouth, could still taste blood. Not his own.

Jökul took a water bottle from his belt and handed it to him.

Varg swilled it around his mouth and spat it out, then drank some. He handed the bottle back to Jökul, who pushed the bowl of porridge at him.

“Eat. It will help.”

Varg sniffed the porridge and his belly growled. He began to eat.

“It is a shock, and no denying,” Jökul said. “I remember when I discovered the truth: descended from Gröfu the badger.” He shook his head and was quiet a while, then sighed. “But you must deal with this, and quickly. We have Vol to find and Torvik to avenge.”

Varg looked at him and felt those words light a spark in his soul.

Svik walked out of the tunnel entrance, Edel and Røkia with him. They saw Varg and Jökul and made straight for them. Sat around him.

“Cheer up,” Svik said, smiling. “I know you are probably jealous and wish that you were descended from Refur the Handsome as I am, but you cannot have everything.” He shrugged.

Varg glared at them. “You have all deceived me, kept it hidden for so long.”

“You have been watched with a close eye,” Edel said. She shrugged. “We have to be careful. If word spread of what we are, we would become the hunted, not the hunters. We had to know that you could be trusted. If we had told you and you had left,” she shrugged. “Vigrið is not a safe place for the Tainted.”

“Being Tainted does not mean you are Bloodsworn,” Svik said, his smile gone. “We are not the only Tainted in the land, or the only warband of Tainted. And not all of them are as… agreeable, as us.” He leaned forward and held Varg’s eye. “It was not enough for us to know that you are Tainted. We had to know what kind of man you are, in here.” He poked Varg in the chest. “An oath-keeper, or an oath-breaker?”

Varg bowed his head, feeling a rush of shame, remembering how close he came to accepting Skalk’s offer.

But I did not go. I am here.

“And now we know,” Røkia said. She smiled again, which Varg found disconcerting. He was not used to seeing that expression on her face, except when she had put his arse on the ground or given him a new bruise.

“You will have many questions,” Svik said, staring intensely at Varg, “and we shall try to answer them all. But before all of that, you must hear this. We are the Bloodsworn, closer than kin. A brotherhood, a sisterhood: we live and die together. You have not sworn the oath, yet, but you are one of us. Of that I am sure.”

That was not a thought that Varg could fully comprehend. All of his life he had been alone, apart from Frøya. They had kept the flicker of life burning in each other’s hearts. Their only kin, their only home was each other.

“But before your questions, we need to know what happened with Skalk. Tell us everything that happened,” Edel asked him.

Varg took a deep breath, pushing away the questions that were buzzing in his thought-cage like bees after pollen, and he began to speak.

“That is all I remember,” Varg said and blew out a long breath.

Svik, Røkia, Edel and Jökul sat there in silence.

“Good that you slew that snivelling arseling, Olvir,” Jökul said.

Røkia stood up and walked away, across the muddy glade.

Einar emerged from the tunnel entrance. He saw Varg and the others and approached them, walking around the troll’s corpse.

“Not one of your kin, I hope,” Svik called out to the big man.

Einar just shook his head. “Svik is only joking. I am not really a half-troll,” he said to Varg. “I am just big-boned.”

“Glornir?” Edel asked Einar.

“He is in his right mind,” Einar said. “He is coming.”

Svik got up and strode into the tunnel.

Einar looked at Varg. “So, Biter, are you all right?”

Varg looked up at him, not even knowing how to answer that.

Røkia walked back to them. She carried a bundle of mail tied with rope, and a helm. When she reached them, she dropped the mail and helm at Varg’s feet.

“This is yours, earned in the battle-fray with your blood and valour.”

It was the red-eyed man’s brynja, and his helm.

“You have won yourself quite the collection, since you have walked with the Bloodsworn,” Edel said. She tugged on the ear of one of her wolfhounds and it licked her arm.

“You have,” Einar said. “I think we are bringing you good luck.”

Varg put a hand to his ribs, where the red-eyed man had struck him.

“If this is good luck, I would hate to see what bad luck looks like,” he muttered.

“That,” Røkia said, pointing at the stripped corpses that lay along one side of the glade, their bodies pale, eyes sightless.

Glornir strode from the tunnel, his long-axe and shield both slung across his back. Svik walked at his right shoulder, talking to him, and Sulich at his left. The rest of the Bloodsworn that were not already in the glade walked at Glornir’s back. They were dressed in their battle-mail, bristling with weapons, shields upon their backs.

Glornir walked up to Varg and stopped, looked down at him. His eyes were red-rimmed, black pools around them, a vein pulsing at his temple.

“So, you know what we are,” Glornir said. “And what you are.”

“I do,” Varg breathed out.

“I, Glornir Shield-Breaker, lord of the Bloodsworn, invite you to join us, Varg No-Sense. To bend your back with us on the oar-bench, to stand with us in the shield wall, in the battle-storm, to drink with us in the mead hall. Will you take our oath?”

Varg stood and looked around at the Bloodsworn, Svik, Røkia, all of them, staring at him.

“I will,” Varg said.

A cheer rang out in the glade.

Glornir drew the sword at his hip, looked at the sharp-glint of steel, then took an arm ring from his bicep, twisted silver with bear’s heads at its terminals. He threaded the ring on to his sword blade and held it out to Varg.

“Take this and know that I am indebted to you. And that you are one of us.”

Varg stared at the sword and arm ring, then held his hand out. Glornir tilted his blade and the ring slid down it, into Varg’s palm. He threaded it around his left bicep and squeezed it closed.

Svik grinned his approval.

“The oath-words shall be spoken soon,” Glornir said, “but now there is no time. Now, we must go and get my wife back.”

There was another roar from the Bloodsworn, but this one filled with malice and threat. Varg joined his voice to theirs.

Skalk, the Bloodsworn are coming for you.