Eventually they found a small pier on the eastern fringe of the docks, Lif tying off the boat and Orka climbing a ladder on to the pier. She found a harbourmaster waiting for her, a fat man with a felt cap and numerous chins beneath his thin, wispy beard. His tunic spoke of wealth, edged in fine tablet weave, and his guard was kitted out well, a tall woman with a bored look on her long-nosed face.
“How much?” Orka asked, and she paid the sweating man from her pouch of coin. She did not haggle, did not want to be remembered. Lif gasped as he clambered up the ladder and saw the coin exchanging hands, but the man and his guard had turned and were striding away from them before he managed to blurt out any words.
“We would fish the fjord a whole month to earn that amount of coin,” Lif said to Orka.
She ignored him, climbing back down the ladder into the boat. Her brynja was rolled beneath the oar-bench. She heaved it up and slithered into the coat of mail, the boat swaying as she did so, then buckled her weapons belt about her waist, feeling the weight of axe and seax settle. Finally she hefted her hemp sack and threw it up on to the pier, gripped her spear and climbed back up the ladder.
Mord followed her up. Lif stood and waited for her.
A horn call rang out, high above them, echoing down from the walls of the fortress. Other horns joined it, blaring, spreading throughout the fortress and town, people on the docks stopping and staring.
An answering horn rang out, distant, and Orka looked downriver.
Three drakkars were on the river, tall-prowed, oars dipping and rising in perfect time, water falling from the rising oars glistening in the sunlight. As they drew closer to the docks Orka realised they were huge, seventy or eighty oars, at least. Activity exploded on the dockside as they curled in towards a large pier, noticeably empty of ships despite being in prime docking location. Voices shouted and ropes were thrown from the first drakkar, men and women on the pier catching them and tying the ropes around mooring posts. A gangplank was dropped over the drakkar’s top-rail to the pier and figures were disembarking: ten or twelve warriors, clothed in mail, men and women, the sides of their heads shaved and covered in flowing, swirling tattoos. Swords and seaxes hung from their belts, grey woollen cloaks upon them, edged in fur. They spread across the pier in a half-circle, a protective fist.
“úlfhéenar,” Orka muttered and spat on the pier.
“What!” Lif said, his eyes wide.
“Tainted, descendants of Ulfrir, the wolf-god,” Orka said. “Like Vafri, the warrior who slew your father.”
And then a woman was crossing the gangplank to the pier, tall, her hair long and black, braided with threads of gold wire. A red cloak was draped across her shoulders and gold arm rings glittered in the sun. She wore a sword at her hip with gold on the pommel and crossguard, gold wire wrapped around the leather hilt, the scabbard ornately tooled, a throat and chape of gold.
“Who is that?” Lif breathed beside Orka.
“I am guessing Queen Helka, as this is her fortress,” Orka said.
The queen stopped and turned, waiting for two men to cross the gangplank. One was a raven-haired young man, tall and broad, his clothing all fine wools and silks, rings of silver on his arms and about his neck. The other stood out as different. He was as tall as the younger man, but his head was shaven clean apart from a thick blond braid that stretched down his back, his face angular with a short, neatly cropped beard. Instead of a tunic he wore a fine wool kaftan and breeches that were baggy above the knee and striped, wrapped tight with winnigas from ankle to knee. He wore a curved sword on one hip, and a bow case and quiver of arrows on the other.
“And them?” Mord said.
“Helka has a son called Hakon,” Lif said.
“That is most likely him, then,” said Orka.
“What about the other one?” Mord asked.
“A guest from oversea, I am guessing,” Orka said. “I have seen others dressed similarly. They were from Iskidan.”
Lif whistled.
The three of them watched in silence as more warriors disembarked from the drakkar, and Queen Helka and her companions strode down the pier. People close to her dropped to their knees, bowing. There was the sound of many feet, and warriors emerged from a street, spreading on to the docks, an honour-guard come to greet Queen Helka. They wrapped around her and her retinue, and then they were all marching into the streets of Darl and disappearing from view.
Slowly people on the dockside climbed back to their feet and returned to their normal business.
“What now?” Lif said.