Chapter Eight: Orka

CHAPTER EIGHT

ORKA

Orka sat on the steps of the hall at their steading, running a whetstone along the blade of her seax. She kept one eye on Breca, who was collecting eggs from the chicken roost. The lad was constantly looking from his task to a small handcart. It had a bandaged tennúr sitting in the back, propped up on blankets.

The steps creaked and Thorkel sat down beside her.

“That’s a hard-thinking look you have upon your face,” Thorkel said, leaning close to look into her eyes. He stroked a strand of blonde hair out of her face, streaked with iron. “And I would like to know what is going on in that thought-cage of yours?”

Orka took her eyes from Breca and looked at him.

“I am thinking that you cannot say no to our son,” she said flatly, looking pointedly back at the tennúr in Breca’s cart.

A twist of Thorkel’s lips, a shrug of his shoulders. “Aye, I may be guilty of that, but then, he has your eyes, and I’m not remembering the last time I said no to you, either. You two have a strange power over me.”

“You wouldn’t dare say no to me,” Orka said, not able to keep the hint of a smile from softening the hard line of her mouth.

“Ha, true enough,” Thorkel grinned. He leaned closer and brushed her cheek with his lips, his beard tickling her.

“But you are too soft on him,” she said.

“Or maybe it is that you are too hard on him,” Thorkel breathed.

Orka snapped a glare at him. “It is a hard world, and we will not always be here to protect him from it. We are not just his parents; we are his teachers, too.”

“Aye, we are,” Thorkel agreed. “But he is ten winters old, and he has learned much already. Let him be a boy. Plenty of time yet before he steps out into that dark world.”

“And what if that tennúr decides to cut our throats in our sleep, or we catch a fever and die? How will all your softness help Breca then?”

Another shrug from the big man. “The tennúr will not harm him, or us. We have seen enough of life’s sharp edge. At his age I wore a thrall’s collar and my back had been opened by a lash.” He looked at Orka. “Remember what we have seen and suffered. I would shelter him from that, while I can.”

Orka nodded and stopped sharpening her seax. The blade’s edge gleamed, sharp as a razor. “Aye, I feel that too. But I worry. We will not always be here to protect him…”

Thorkel wrapped an arm around her shoulder and squeezed her so hard she felt her bones grind.

“Ach, woman, you worry too much,” he said, a finger tracing the sharp line of her cheek and jaw. “Look around you. We live free; we are the masters of our own steading, no oaths or bonds to tie us. The air is clean and pure up here. Spring is upon us, the sun is shining, and we have a fine son to raise.” He gave Orka a smile, and a look she knew well. “I have been thinking, perhaps Breca would like a little brother or sister, to help him with his chores.”

“Ha,” Orka sniffed, “it is dangerous when you think. Besides, we are too old.”

“Old!” Thorkel said, grinning now and stretching his arms wide. “I feel like a young colt with green meadows before me. I will always be here, with you and Breca.” He stamped a foot on the stair and snorted like a stallion. “These are the days we dreamed of. Now that they are here, are real, let us enjoy them.”

Orka shook her head. “You are like rune-magic to me, Thorkel Ulfsson. How is it that we have faced the same horrors, fought the same battles? The terrible things we have done. And yet…” She sighed. “I do not feel like a young horse before green meadows. How are you so strong, where I am so weak?”

“Weak? Are you moon-touched, woman? I would not challenge you to an arm-wrestle, let alone a holmganga duel.”

“I do not mean physical strength, or skill with a blade. I mean strong here.” She prodded her own head, hard, felt a ripple of anger flickering through her. Why could she not just rest, cut the ropes that moored the ghosts of the past to her?

Thorkel sighed, and she could see the care in him leaking from his eyes.

“I make a choice, each and every day,” he said, his smile gone now. “I think on what I have. On what is before me. You. Breca. And they make my heart swell and my head giddy. There is no room left for any dwelling on the past.”

She looked at him then, his nose twisted from being broken too many times, his eyes dark and kind, deep lines around them. Leaning forward she put a hand behind his neck and pulled him close, kissed him hard.

When she let him go Thorkel was grinning again.

“Ah, but I love you,” he breathed. “And I love my son.” He looked over at Breca, a bruise purpling on his cheek where Orka had cuffed him. “He has learned his lesson today.”

“Has he?” Orka asked, looking at Breca. He was pulling the handcart by a rope towards the stream, lifting out a bowl and squatting beside Spert’s rock. The creature’s grey-skinned head breached the water and regarded him.

“You’re late. Spert dying of hunger,” the creature grumbled.

“Here you go, then,” Breca said, placing the bowl down on a rock beside the stream. “Best eat before you collapse and die.” The many-legged creature crawled out of the water, its segmented body glistening. Spert paused, lifted its head and sniffed, its spiked antennae twitching.

“Vaesen,” it hissed, and abruptly its mouth seemed to grow, skin peeling back, the bones of its jaws protruding, opening wide, its teeth sharp and slick. It hissed, a black vapour issuing from its throat, becoming a cloud in the air.

“NO,” Breca said, holding up a hand. “It’s only Vesli.” He pointed at the wounded tennúr in the cart, who was staring at Spert, her lips drawn back in a blend of fear and threat, like a cornered fox.

The black smoke pouring from Spert’s mouth stopped bubbling, hung in the air.

“She is injured, has been outcast by her pack. She is alone, just like you were.”

“Don’t trust vaesen,” Spert muttered.

Breca laughed.

“You’re vaesen,” he said.

“Huh,” Spert grunted. “Tennúr are sly, not to be trusted. They will steal your teeth.” One of Spert’s many legs rose and stroked his bristling fangs. “Spert like his teeth.”

The tennúr shifted in the cart, the blanket around her falling away to reveal the bandages Breca had wrapped around her wounds.

“Vesli be true,” she said in a voice like the rustle and scrape of wind through leaves. “Vesli swear oath to Spertus and Maður-boy.” She looked from Spert to Breca. “Vesli swear to be a friend to Spertus and Maður-boy. And friends don’t steal teeth.”

Spert stared at Vesli, his too-small, old-man face creased and thoughtful. “Swear it with blood, then. Blood is binding.”

Vesli looked from Spert to Breca. With a shrug and ripple of her wings she placed a taloned finger against her palm and drew it slowly across her skin, blood welling. She bunched her fist, blood dripping.

“Vesli swear to be faithful and true, to the Maður-boy Breca, and to his guardian Spertus. Vesli swears it on her life-blood.”

Spert regarded her, then his body also rippled, like a shrug, and he took a deep breath, sucking back in the black mist that was hanging in the air. His head dropped into the bowl and he began to eat his porridge mixed with Orka’s blood and spit, for it was she who had caught him and bound him to her, all those years ago. There was much slurping and sucking.

“It looks like he has a new pet to play with. As if Spert wasn’t enough,” Orka said, frowning.

“That evil little bastard is no pet,” Thorkel said. “But Spert does his job well enough. We all sleep safer for him. And that tennúr, it will be bonded to Breca now. It owes him a blood-debt, if it survives. I think he is safe enough. And besides, vaesen live a long time and friends are good. Does it ease your mind that Breca will have a tennúr watching over him when we are food for worms?” He smiled at her, prodded her shoulder.

“You won’t be smiling so much when you wake up to find the little shite has stolen all the teeth from your gums.”

Thorkel blinked at that and put a hand to his mouth.

“Do you think she would?”

Orka sheathed her seax in its scabbard and stood.

“That thing you said earlier, about making a brother or sister for Breca…” She held out her hand and Thorkel smiled up at her.

“We’d best be quick about it. Your smile won’t charm me the same once it’s just red gums and your teeth are in Vesli’s belly.”

Thorkel took her hand, pulled himself upright and they walked into their hall.

A sound drifted through the steading. A horse’s whinny, the jangle of harness and the steady rhythm of hooves.

“Breca, take your new friend inside,” Orka called out as she stepped inside the hall and reached for her spear. She stood at the top of the steps, listening, as Thorkel disappeared into their hall. He reappeared with a long-hafted axe in his fists, the haft as tall as him, the blade bearded and sharp. Orka stared at it, in her head heard an ear-splitting scream and saw a warrior silhouetted by flames swinging a long-axe, gore dripping. She felt her skin prickle with sweat, then looked at Thorkel, saw that he had that flat, dead-eyed look, like a shark when it strikes.

Thorkel looked back at her.

“There are child-stealers in this land. They’ll not be taking my son from me.”

A curt nod from Orka. She shook her head and gave a shudder of muscle through her whole body, as if shaking off memories like a horse does flies.

Together they strode to the gates as Breca swept the tennúr into his arms and ran up the steps into the hall.

The horses’ hooves grew louder, more than one, and Orka strode to their gate, Thorkel at her shoulder. A thumping on timber sounded, like a spear butt or sword pommel.

“Thorkel, Orka, open your gates,” a voice called out.

Orka reached them first. She pulled back a bolt and looked through a spyhole, then nodded at Thorkel. Together they shouldered the oak beam that barred the gates and dropped it. With a creak of hinges they swung the gates open.

Three riders sat looking down at them: a young man and two women, all warriors, the man with a sword at his hip, belted over a fine brynja, a glistening bead of snot clinging to the end of his long nose. The other two wore boiled leather and wool, felt and fur caps on their heads. Spears rested in the crooks of their arms.

“Guðvarr,” Thorkel said with a nod to the man. Orka saw the light return to his eyes. They both knew these three were not the child-stealers. They would not have been capable of putting Asgrim and Idrun in the ground.

“And what brings three drengr warriors to our gates?” Orka asked. “You are a long way from Fellur.”

Guðvarr stared down at Orka, looking like he’d eaten something that had left a sour taste in his mouth. Orka wished he would wipe the snot from his nose.

“Jarl Sigrún is returned to us,” Guðvarr said. “She has called the Althing. Six days from now, on the Oath Rock in the fjord.”

“You have come all this way to tell us that?” Orka said.

“Aye. Serious matters are to be discussed. Jarl Sigrún wants all who live within her domain to be present, to hear what she has to say.”

“And if we do not want to hear what she has to say?” Orka growled.

Guðvarr blinked, as if that thought were an impossibility.

“Then you should find somewhere else to live,” one of the other drengrs said, a tall, wiry woman with brown braided hair and a face of sharp ridges and angles. “If you choose to dwell within Jarl Sigrún’s realm, under her protection, then you will be at the Althing.”

“Well said, Arild,” Guðvarr grunted.

“Our thanks,” Thorkel said. “You are welcome to some food and drink, and to rest your horses. It must have been a long, hard ride.” He waved a hand, gesturing at the courtyard and hall.

“No,” Guðvarr said with a shake of his head. “We have three more steadings to visit, and then we are riding back for Fellur.” As he tugged on his reins and his mount turned away, Guðvarr looked back over his shoulder.

“Six days, at the Oath Rock,” he said, and then they were riding away across the glade, following a narrow path into the trees.

Thorkel and Orka closed the gates and barred them.

“I do not want to go to this Althing,” Orka said. “With Sigrún talking of Queen Helka, of jarls and queens and their petty squabbles.”

“I do not want to go either,” Thorkel said. He was tugging his beard, a distant look in his eyes. “But we do not want to attract attention, either, by staying away. It will be noted, if by no one else then by Guðvarr.”

“He is an arseling,” Orka growled.

“Aye, that he is,” Thorkel agreed. “An arseling who will flap his lips about us. I say we go to this Althing, keep our heads down and our lips stitched shut, and then leave quietly.” He shrugged. “A voice in my thought-cage is telling me we need to hear what Sigrún has to say. If Helka has her eyes on Fellur and these hills…”

They shared a look as Breca stuck his head out of the hall, the tennúr cradled in his arms.

“We’ll go to Sigrún’s Althing, then,” Orka said, blowing out a long breath and nodding her head, though she felt a wyrm of fear slithering in her belly. She had seen that look in Thorkel’s eyes before, and it had never meant anything good.