Chapter Six: Orka

CHAPTER SIX

ORKA

Orka woke with a gasp. For a moment she did not know where she was, could only see a vivid picture in her mind, of blood and battle, bodies falling around her, the roar of the sea, the sounds of violence. The battle cries and death screams were sharp and as clear as if she were standing in the middle of the bloody conflict, rather than lying upon a sweat-soaked mattress of straw in her own steading. She stared at the timber beams above and took a long, ragged breath as recognition seeped into her. As the tension eased, she loosened her white-knuckled fist around a clump of her mattress.

The grey of dawn crept through shutters. Thorkel slept beside her, his hairy back to her, one foot out of the woollen blanket. His chest rose and fell in slow, gentle rhythm, a rumbling snore deep in his throat. Orka reached out to touch him, fingertips hovering over his skin.

Let him sleep. Why burden him with my weakness.

She withdrew her arm and swung her feet over the side of the bed. Sat there a while, head in hands, allowing her body to settle and the sweat to dry. She wished there was a jug of mead or ale at the bedside, felt the need for it in her bones. To dull the memories, the pain. She felt a flash of resentment towards Thorkel, as he had asked her to drink less. Then she pulled on a pair of woollen breeches, leather boots and a linen tunic, and padded across the room, opening the door slowly so as not to wake Thorkel. Her thought was to start a hearth fire and then wake Thorkel and Breca with some porridge, honey and cream, but as she walked into the hall of their cabin, which took up most of the building, apart from hers and Thorkel’s bedchamber, she knew something was wrong, like a tingling in her blood.

Where’s Breca?

She looked to his cot, close to the burned-out hearth fire, where he liked to go to sleep with the blurred glow and crackle of embers in his eyes and ears.

It was empty, the woollen blanket thrown off.

A trickle of ice in her veins; worry fluttering like wings in her chest.

“Breca,” she called as she searched the hall, quickly looking behind tables, piled blankets, in cupboards. There was a sound behind her as Thorkel emerged from their chamber, barefoot, with breeches on and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He was blinking, the muscles in his face not yet caught up with the fact that he was awake.

“You’re making enough noise to wake the dead gods,” he muttered.

“Breca’s not here,” Orka snapped, a coil of dread in her gut putting some bite in her words.

“Outside?” Thorkel suggested. “Fetching water, firewood?”

“I do that in the morning. He sleeps until I wake him,” Orka said.

“You do? He does?” said Thorkel, frowning.

Orka scowled at him. “This, from the man who usually sleeps like a bear in his winter’s cave until the smell of porridge wakes him.”

“Fair enough,” Thorkel shrugged. “Still, he might be outside. Something might have woken him, like his bladder.”

“He’s not an old man, like you. He can hold his piss.”

Thorkel opened his mouth, clearly thought better of it and disappeared back into the bedchamber. He re-emerged, boots on and tugging on a woollen tunic as Orka was reaching for her spear in a rack, throwing open the doors and striding out into daylight.

She stood on the first step that led down into their courtyard, scanning the steading. The woodshed, forge, charcoal kiln were all clearly empty and undisturbed.

“Breca,” she cried as she hurried down the steps, mud soft under her boots. Past the herb and vegetable patch and beehive. She peered into the barn as she passed it, where their shaggy pony stood with his head over the stable door, regarding a hay bale with a two-pronged fork stuck in it, just as Orka had left it last night. Striding on, Orka stopped at the stream that flowed fast and clear through the steading, crouched beside a moss-slick rock. She stuck the butt-end of her spear into the icy water, jabbing it beneath an alcove under the rock.

“Spert, wake up,” Orka grunted.

A dark shape appeared, as long as Orka’s arm and wide as one of Thorkel’s tree-stump legs, uncoiling from beneath the rock and spreading into the stream. Its chitinous, segmented body straightened, tapering to an oily sting, sharp as a needle that curved over its back. A multitude of long legs clawed into the stream’s bank and it crawled towards Orka, its head breaking the water.

“Food,” the Spertus croaked, its voice like scratching dry skin. It looked up at Orka with a too-human face, bulbous eyes under grey sagging skin, and a mouth full of too many sharp-spiked teeth.

“Have you seen Breca?” Orka asked the creature.

“Spert sleep until food,” the creature muttered. It looked around, searching for Breca, who usually brought it a bowl of porridge mixed with blood and spit each morning. “Hungry,” it complained.

“I should kill you, you useless creature,” Orka grunted as she stood.

“Ungrateful,” the creature grated, a hiss of scraping skin. “Spert work hard. Spert protect you from vaesen.”

“If you protect us, then where is Breca?” Orka snarled.

The Spertus blinked.

“Can’t watch everything, everyone, all the time,” it grumbled. “Have to sleep sometime.”

“Orka,” Thorkel called from behind her.

She stood and turned, and there was a splash and ripple of water as Spert submerged and returned to his chamber beneath the rock.

Thorkel was kneeling by the single gate that was built into the larger gates that were only ever opened when taking their pony and cart to Fellur with goods to trade. Otherwise they came and went by this single door. It opened with an iron latch-bolt. Orka ran to Thorkel, fear pounding in her head like a drum.

“He was here,” Thorkel said, pointing at a clear boot print in the mud, half the size of hers. “And he has used this gate.” The iron bolt was drawn, the gate just pulled to. Thorkel pushed it open, looking out on the glade beyond their steading, bordered by woodland. There were more boot prints in the mud.

Panic, like a viper’s venom, flushed through her veins.

Virk’s words from Fellur village whispered in her head.

Children are being taken.

“Others?” Orka asked. She was too full of anger and anxiety to read the ground. Her eyes searched the glade beyond their walls, tried to pierce the shadows beneath the woodland. “Has he been taken, like Asgrim’s boy, Harek?”

“No signs of anyone else,” Thorkel said, rising. He passed through the rune-marked gates and turned left, Orka following. Thorkel had buckled on his weapons belt, seax and hand-axe hanging from it, and Orka had her spear.

Enough to look after ourselves, if it comes to blood.

They padded across an open glade, a few patches of snow left among the grass that was wet with dew starting to steam as the rising sun washed the glade. Then they were passing beneath high boughs, moving north-east from their home, into a twilight world. Orka followed her husband, knew Thorkel was the better tracker. He loped along, every few heartbeats his eyes scanning the ground then flitting up ahead of them. Their path curled to follow the stream that flowed through their steading, moving steadily upstream, climbing a gentle slope. Orka looked above and to their flanks, searching for the tell-tale movements of vaesen or other predators, but saw nothing. The woods were silent and still, as if holding their breath.

Where is he? If someone or something has hurt him, I will…

An image in her mind of an axe falling, blood spraying.

She sucked in a deep breath, feeling the rage building, the ice in her veins tingling, with an act of will pushing it back down. Her son needed her, and all that mattered was finding him. A white-blinding anger would not help that.

The ground levelled and they crested a ridge and saw a pool spreading before them, its cold waters black and still. The stream that fed into their steading ran from here.

“Breca,” Thorkel cried. A shadowed form crouched at the pool’s edge.

“Papa,” Breca said, looking up at them, his small voice loud in the stillness.

Orka sped up, passing Thorkel and running to her son, a flush of relief and joy melting the icicles of fear in her chest. Breca was crouched by the poolside. White lilies floated, pale as winter. Orka dropped to the ground and skidded up to Breca upon her knees, wrapped her arms around him, crushed him so tight in an embrace that he grunted and gasped.

She kissed his cheek, blinked tears from her eyes, stroked his unruly black hair.

“Come away from the water’s edge,” Thorkel said as he reached them, eyeing the water suspiciously. He sniffed. “Smells like Näcken to me.” He drew his seax and stabbed it into the soft loam. “Move away,” he repeated.

“Why are you out here?” Orka breathed as she pulled Breca away from the water’s edge.

The thought that a Näcken should not be this far from its mountain river entered her thought-cage, but it was pushed aside by her worry and relief at finding Breca.

“I heard a sound,” Breca said as Orka released him. He looked down at his cloak, which was folded in his lap, and pulled it open.

Orka gasped, fell back on to her backside.

A creature lay curled in Breca’s lap, maybe half the length of one of Orka’s legs, if it stood upright. It had arms and legs with thick, pointed claws where fingers and toes should be, and fragile, parchment-thin wings wrapped about its torso. Blood leaked from beneath one wing, staining the skin. With a sharp nose and chin, it was hairless with large, black eyes and ink-dark veins threading pink, hairless skin, like a newborn rat. It turned its head, looked up at Orka and opened its mouth, which was very wide, revealing two rows of teeth, the outer one sharp, the inner row flat, like grindstones. A thin line of blood trickled from a cut on its lip.

“A tennúr,” Thorkel said from somewhere above and behind Orka.

Orka slipped to one knee and backhanded Breca across the cheek, throwing him flat on his back.

“You left our steading, left safety, for this,” she snarled, rising to her feet. “Vaesen lurk out here, and there are murderers and child-stealers.” Wordless sounds escaped her throat. “You witless fool, you could have been taken, eaten, killed.” The fear of that filled her and she lifted her arm for another slap.

The tennúr still in Breca’s lap spread its wings with a snap, shielding Breca, and it bared its teeth and hissed at Orka. Though it looked too weak to stand.

Thorkel caught her wrist, wrapped it in one of his huge hands.

“You’ve made your point.”

She could have fought him, would have won, but long years had taught her to trust her husband’s judgement, even when her blood was high and she didn’t agree with him. Especially when her blood was high and she did not agree with him.

Breca was looking up at her, the skin on his cheek already swollen and bruising. His eyes flickered to his father.

“It was a foolish thing, leaving the steading,” Thorkel said, his voice and eyes hard. “We are fortunate to have a son who still draws breath and who still has all of his blood in his veins.”

Breca’s bottom lip trembled.

Thorkel sucked in a long breath. “How did you find it?”

“I heard it scream,” Breca said, looking at the tennúr, which had collapsed back into his lap again, wings once more wrapped tight about it. “It’s in pain.”

You could have been in pain. Or dead.

Orka opened her mouth to scold him some more.

“It’s quiet enough now,” Thorkel said.

“That’s because I gave it one of my teeth,” Breca said and smiled, a gap in his gums proving the truth of his words.

“What!” Orka hissed.

“You told me, tennúr love teeth. One of my first teeth is loose, so I pulled it out and gave it to her.” He shrugged, putting a fingertip to the red hole in his gum. “Another is growing through.”

“Her!” Orka said.

“Aye. Her name is Vesli. She told me.”

Orka shook her head. Thorkel whistled.

“Can we keep her?” Breca asked, looking at them both with pleading eyes.

The sound of Thorkel’s laughter echoed through the trees.