He was here. My Breca was here. Alive.
Hope flared.
Where is he now? Where have they taken him? What do they want with him?
She thought of what to do next, of the choices before her.
Sometimes there are no choices. We are swept along in a current not of our own choosing.
She clenched her jaw, teeth grinding.
I will be the current. I will be the course.
Muted laughter filtered through floorboards from the tavern below. Orka pushed back the swell of emotion in her chest. Blinked away the tears. Made a fist around the wooden pendant, her knuckles whitening.
Made a fist of her heart.
She looked down at the floorboards, light filtering through cracks from the room below, and heard voices, laughter.
Drekr. The ones who stole my boy: who murdered my husband.
I will be their death.
She pushed the pendant and cord into a pocket in her belt pouch. Then she turned and stepped carefully down the steps, back into the small room, and walked to the door that looked into the tavern.
A man stood behind a bar, grey-haired and balding, a bronze ring binding his beard. He was pouring ale into jugs. Most of the tables in the tavern were empty, one near the entrance beneath a shuttered window filled with six or seven people, men and women, all playing knucklebone. The burned man was sitting with them, smiling as he threw the bones. His face was thin and angular, his mouth wide, his upper teeth too long for his lips to cover them.
Closer to Orka stood a woman, her back to Orka as she faced into the room. She was tall, wearing a quilted tunic, axe and seax hanging at her belt. Her gaze was fixed upon a table. Two figures sat there, heads close together, deep in conversation, and another man, a dark-haired warrior in mail with a shield upon his back, stood behind them. One of those sitting had a fine cloak pulled about them, a brooch fashioned as an eagle-wing, their face in shadow with a woollen hood pulled up high. The other man at the table was huge and hulking, his muscles bunched thick on his shoulders and back, looking like he had no neck. He wore a dark tunic, with knot-weave embroidery around the neck and chest, raven-hair pulled tight and braided down his back; his black beard had silver rings in it and his face was handsome, thick-browed and sharp-lined, or would have been but for the claw marks that scarred him. Four raking lines carved through him from forehead to chin, twisting his face and mouth. They were recent, judging by the rawness of the wounds, by the stitches and the scabbing.
Orka stepped into the room and grabbed the female guard by the hair, dragged her back. She stabbed her seax into the woman’s throat, sawing through cartilage and flesh to slice the blade free. The woman’s arms flailed as a hiss and gurgle escaped her mouth, an explosion of arterial blood.
The man at the bar saw Orka first, his mouth dropping open, ale pouring over the rim of a jug and pooling on the bar as he stood frozen, staring.
Chairs scraped and shouts erupted from the knucklebone table. The hiss of steel dragged from leather. At the closer table the hooded figure looked from Orka to the bleeding woman in Orka’s grasp and stood, stumbling back, their chair falling over, the hood falling clear to reveal a black-haired man, young and proud-faced.
Orka recognised him from the dockside.
Helka’s son, Hakon.
Behind him the drengr in mail stepped forwards, shrugged the shield off his back and into his fist, drew his sword and stood in front of Hakon.
“That’s her, that’s her: the one asking questions,” the burned man shouted, pointing at Orka. Those around him spread wide, drawn steel in their fists.
The scar-faced man still sat in his chair, turning to regard Orka with a scowl.
“That’s my friend you’ve just put a blade through,” he growled, his voice like gravel.
Orka held the dying woman up by her hair. She wiped her seax on the woman’s quilted tunic and let her drop, grabbing the axe from her belt as she slid to the ground.
“Do you recognise this?” Orka said, holding the seax for the scar-faced man to see.
He blinked and lifted a hand to his face. His mouth twisted in what once would have passed for a smile.
“You are Drekr, then,” Orka breathed.
“He was your man?” Drekr asked as he stood slowly, his eyes still on the seax. He was taller and wider than Orka, seemed big enough to blot out the sky in this dark tavern. An axe hung from his belt. “He fought well, your man. But he squealed like a pig when I stuck him.”
“Where is my son?” Orka growled as she strode forwards into the room, her rage a white-hot flare, burning through her limbs.
The drengr guarding Hakon tried to guide the prince backwards but Hakon pushed the warrior forwards, towards Orka.