“If I say they were asking for trouble, then they were asking for trouble,” Guevarr said, his voice a hiss, like a sword leaving a scabbard. “As are you.”
The three warriors on the stairs took a step closer, hands moving to rest close to weapons.
Orka stared at Guevarr, felt muscles in her jaw twitch. Felt her blood pounding through her veins. Heard distant voices in her head, screaming, an image in her mind, an axe carving into a skull…
“You are shaking,” Guevarr said. “Do you fear me? You would be wise, if you did.”
Orka blinked, saw there was a tremor in her arm, her fist, passing into her spear. She looked at Breca, who was looking from her to Guevarr with worried eyes.
Orka took a deep breath.
“I brought them here because I thought Jarl Sigrún would wish to know there are killers and child-stealers in her hills,” Orka said, choosing her words slowly. Her heart was thumping, blood shivering through her veins. She chose to control it. Tried to control it. “And to see if Asgrim and Idrun had kin here. They should have a barrow raised over them, as is proper.”
A silence. Guevarr stared up at Orka. She returned his stare, flatly. Felt the hot flush of emotion leaving her, replaced by a coldness filling her veins. Some deep part of her knew that was a bad sign.
“Mama,” a voice said, filtering through the ice-fog in her head.
“Mama, Papa is coming,” the voice said, something tugging her sleeve.
“Orka.” Thorkel’s voice.
Orka blinked, tore her eyes away from Guevarr and saw Thorkel approaching, pushing through the crowd, spear in his hand, his n?lbinding woollen cap damp with sweat.
“Is all well?” Thorkel asked, his eyes flickering from Orka to Guevarr and the other drengr warriors on the steps. His black brows knotted, a thundercloud, his mouth becoming a hard line. He seemed to swell in size as Orka saw the anger fill him, the light in his eyes shifting from concern to some flat, dead-eyed stare.
“We were talking about raising a barrow over Asgrim and Idrun,” Orka said, blowing out a long, slow breath. She forced a smile of greeting on to her face and Thorkel’s cold, hard lines softened a little.
Guevarr looked from Orka to Thorkel. She saw him looking at Thorkel’s spear, at his size.
“My husband has been tracking Asgrim’s killers. They took his son, Harek.”
“Did you find them?” Guevarr asked Thorkel.
“No,” Thorkel said.
Guevarr’s lip curled back into what Orka thought to be his permanent sneer.
“I followed their tracks to a river,” Thorkel continued, “one of the many that feed out of the hills into the River Skarpain. There were signs of three boats pulled up on to the bank. Whoever slew Asgrim and Idrun took to the river and disappeared.”
Guevarr nodded. “We will look into it.”
Orka thought about pressing Guevarr, of asking him how many spears he would take with him; would he use hounds; would he send people and boats up the River Skarpain.
Instead she looked from Thorkel to Breca.
This is not our fight. Not our problem.
“Home,” she said to them, then turned and walked away.
CHAPTER FOUR
VARG
Varg walked into the square before the mead hall. He stepped over a pool of congealing blood and stopped.
His own blood was rushing in his ears, muting sound, though he could see smiling faces and mouths moving among the crowd lining the square, coin being exchanged. One woman with two wolfhounds at her feet watched him as she bit into an apple. She was lean-muscled with silver-grey hair knotted like rope, a white scar running through one ruined eye. She was clothed in a brynja, a spear in her fist, axe and seax suspended from her belt. She looked too old to be a warrior, with deep lines around her eyes and mouth. As Varg’s eyes met hers she smiled at him, but Varg saw no comfort in it. It was the kind of smile one gives a fool when they believe they can fly and leap from a cliff.
She dropped her apple and fished out a coin from a pouch at her belt, gave it to a man standing close to her.
They are betting on how quickly I lose, he realised.
Einar was bending to mutter something to the grey-bearded bald man and the tattooed woman. As he did so he wiped blood from his knuckles with a rag and passed it over to another warrior, a tall, blonde-haired woman, another of the Bloodsworn, going by her black shield and brynja. She took the rag and stuffed it in her weapons belt, then picked up a wooden shield that was leaning against the mead hall steps. Her eyes met Varg’s and she strode to him, offered him the shield.