“Huh,” Mord snorted. “I hope never to meet her for any reason,” he said. “The tales tell how she fought three men in the holmganga, and cut the stones from each one of them.” He winced.
“Ilska has slain more than a few men in the holmganga,” Lif said. “Vaesen, Iskidan warbands, a Berserkir. But I am not so scared of her, now that Orka has taught me some weapons craft.” He smiled at his brother. “Ilska the Cruel, Agnar Battle-Grim, even the Skullsplitter. I feel like I could fight them all.”
“Then you are a hálfviti idiot,” Orka muttered.
“Who is the best?” Lif said, ignoring the dour twist of Orka’s lips.
“There is no such thing as the best,” Orka muttered. “And the Skullsplitter is dead.”
“I’ll fight Skullsplitter, then,” Mord said and Lif sat on the floor, laughing and holding his belly.
“Time to go,” Orka said, ignoring them and squinting at the sky. The sun was low on the horizon, newly risen, the air fresh and clean. An eagle soared high above them, wings spread. They were stood on the slope of a gentle hill, their boat pulled up and hidden in a reed bank below them. It had taken them close to fifteen days of hard rowing to reach this point, longer than the journey from Fellur to Darl should have taken, because they had left the wide and busy River Drammur for fear of pursuit, and so had threaded their way east and then north in a looping half-circle, rowing then pushing and dragging their boat across land to the next river, rowing again, then travelling across land for the next river again. It had been hard, back-breaking work, but they had not been followed, and the countryside was mostly deserted.
No one to see us, no one to sell information about us to any who might follow.
Only yesterday had they started to pass homesteads and farms, faces staring at them as they rowed on by. Orka’s eyes tracked the glitter of the river, one of a dozen that carved their way through the hills around her. At the edge of Orka’s sight a shadow spread across the high ground that overlooked its far bank: a town, smoke from a hundred hearth fires curling up into the sky above it.
Darl.
And Breca. A spark of hope flared in her chest, of longing, the possibility of finding her son blazing so bright within her that it was painful. Her hand brushed against one of the seaxes thrust into her belt. One of the blades that she had found in Thorkel’s body.
And if I do not find him, then I shall have my vengeance.
I am blood. I am vengeance, I am death.
Without looking at Mord or Lif, Orka picked her way down to the boat and waded through the reeds, leaped into it and hefted an oar. She heard the brothers following behind her, but her eyes were fixed on the river and the course ahead.
Orka shipped her oar, Mord doing the same, and their boat coasted over the river. They were both staring at the sight before them, Lif, too.
Darl, fortress and seat of power of Queen Helka.
The river was wide and deep, dark and brown, unlike the crystal rivers and streams they had used to make their way here. Ships and boats of all sizes thronged on the river and clustered around a hundred wooden piers and jetties. Orka saw at least a dozen drakkars sitting sleek and wolfish at the docks, their hulls low in the water with proud eagle-carved prows.
Beyond the piers, taverns and buildings rose in a cluttered crush upon the slope of a gentle hill, rising towards a timbered wall, and beyond it a fortress. It was a swarming hive of motion, of sounds and smells, but Orka’s, Mord’s and Lif’s eyes were drawn to the fortress atop the hill. A mead hall crowned the fortress, and out of its walls swept the skeleton of a giant eagle. Two huge, skeletal wings, each one the size of a small hill, spread wide like protective hands, a skull and razored beak rearing above the mead hall thatch. Orka felt the pulse of a headache beginning in the knot of muscles about her neck.
No vaesen will ever bother the people of Darl, with Orna’s remains guarding it. One the size of this eagle skeleton would keep vaesen away for many leagues.
Behind the mead hall and eagle skeleton Orka glimpsed the Galdur tower of Darl, where Galdurmen learned their rune-dark arts. She hawked and spat into the river.
“Jarl Sigrún spoke true, then,” Lif finally said, “when she talked of the eagle-god protecting the fortress. I thought she was telling falsehoods to convince Fellur to give their oath to Queen Helka.”
“Aye,” Orka sniffed.
“What do we do now?” Lif asked her.
“Find a space to dock on one of those piers,” Orka said.
They reached for their oars and threaded a way through the boats on the river, so busy that it was like moving cattle on market day.