“What is going on here?” Orka asked Virk, who had come to stand at her shoulder. He was a tall man, but he still had to look up to meet her eyes.
“Guevarr came down the river on a snekke this morning. Word is that Jarl Sigrún has sent him ahead of her return.”
“Jarl Sigrún isn’t here?”
Virk looked at Orka like she was touched.
“Jarl Sigrún was summoned…” He coughed. “I mean invited, to Queen Helka’s court in Darl. She has been gone more than two months.”
Orka raised an eyebrow and nodded.
“I have news,” Guevarr called out, the crowd quieting.
He let the silence grow, clearly enjoying his moment before the crowd.
“I am to tell you that Jarl Sigrún will be back with us within a nine-day. She bid me tell you that Queen Helka is just, and good and wise, and that we could do worse than swear our oaths to her. To be under her care would be a benefit to our village.”
“Care!” Virk muttered. “Not so long ago we were all freedmen and women in Fellur, and queens and kings were arseling-jarls who had grown too big for their boots.”
Orka did not disagree with him.
“You mean RULE, not CARE,” Virk shouted, others in the crowd adding their voices.
“Times are changing,” Guevarr answered, glowering at Virk and the crowd. “Jarl St?rr threatens in the west, the vaesen are growing ever bolder, murdering and stealing. We are better off uniting with the strong, and Queen Helka is the strongest.”
More muttering.
“When Jarl Sigrún returns, there will be an Althing, held on the Oath Rock, where all can have their say about these important matters,” Guevarr called out, gesturing to a rocky island that stood in the fjord, green with moss and dense with bracken and wind-blasted trees.
Voices called out, protesting, asking questions.
“Save your moaning for my aunt and the Althing,” he growled. “That is all.”
Orka took the lead-rein from Breca and clicked the pony on, pulling the wagon through the crowd. People parted for her.
“Drengr Guevarr,” Orka called out, her voice loud, cutting through the crowd.
Guevarr paused and turned, looked down at Orka, Breca and the wagon. He wiped the drop of snot growing at the end of his nose.
A silence fell around her as she led the wagon to the steps of the longhouse, wheels creaking as the pony came to a stand.
“What is this?” Guevarr said as he stepped down the first two steps and stood staring at the bloodstained blanket in the wagon. The three warriors with him, two women and a man, all came to stand behind him. They carried spears, axes and seaxes hanging at their weapons belts.
“Asgrim and Idrun,” Orka said. “I was with my husband and son, hunting in the hills. We heard screaming, went to look and found Asgrim and Idrun murdered in their steading.” She pulled back the blanket.
Gasps rippled around the square.
“You see,” Guevarr cried out. “Vaesen doing murder in our own hills. We need the strength of Queen Helka.”
“Vaesen did not do this,” Orka said.
“Oh ho, and how do you know that?” Guevarr said, looking suspiciously at Orka. The ball of snot was starting to grow at the end of his nose again. “Are you a Seier-witch to see the past?” He looked at Orka with a sneer on his face, as if he had won some great contest of wits.
“I don’t need to be a Seier-witch to know a sword wound to the heart when I see one,” Orka said. “Vaesen hunt with tooth and claw, not swords of iron.” She paused, looking at the sneer that twisted Guevarr’s lips. “I would have thought Guevarr the fierce drengr would have known that at a glance.” She regretted the words even as they were leaving her mouth, knew that they would only bring her trouble. But she didn’t like the twist of his smug, arrogant face.
A few sniggers around the courtyard and Guevarr flushed red.
He scowled at Orka. “Loners, living in the wild, they were asking for trouble.”
“Asgrim and Idrun did not ask for this,” Orka said.
“And Harek, their son, has been taken,” Breca squeaked in his high voice.
“Children taken,” Virk said. He had followed Orka through the crowd. “That is not the first time I have heard this.”
Orka frowned at him.
Guevarr walked down the longhouse steps and stood before Orka. She was taller and wider than him, but he had the hubris of the powerful in his eyes: that belief that one is better, faster. She felt a tingle in her blood, a sharpening of her senses. The herald of violence.