“Show us,” Glornir said to Torvik, and the young scout turned and led them on.
They walked in silence, Glornir at their head, his long-axe held in both hands, Vol just behind him. Skalk, Olvir and Yrsa strode behind them, and then the rest of the Bloodsworn in a loose formation, shields ready.
Varg walked beside Sulich and R?kia, behind him the heavy tread of Einar Half-Troll.
“Stealth is never a possibility with you, Half-Troll,” Varg heard Svik mutter.
“I am doing my best,” Einar grunted.
Varg looked about him, his skin prickling. The pine forest felt strange, a sickly scent seeping through the air, creeping into Varg’s nose and sticking in his throat.
Glornir slowed to look up at a tree as they passed it. Varg saw it had a rune carved into it. Sap leaked down the bark and the rune was stained with something dark. Just the sight of it set Varg’s hairs standing on his neck.
They moved on and Torvik led them along a path that ran through an old stream bed. Banks of earth reared either side of them, roots of trees bursting free of the soil, twisted and knotted like arthritic limbs, draped with moss and lichen.
Varg saw shadowed figures ahead, Edel standing with her two wolfhounds, a few other scouts with her. Others stood on the streambanks. They were all staring in the same direction.
Fear trickled into Varg like seawater into a cracked hull.
Trees loomed around them, thick-trunked and grey-barked. Bodies hung from their boughs; rope was knotted about their ankles. Men and women were trussed like hogs for slaughter, arms stretched and dangling as if trying to reach the ground. They had been gutted and skinned, their flesh torn at by carrion, eye sockets dark and empty where they had been pecked clean, lips and tongues shredded. Piles of offal were heaped beneath each body, flies a swarm.
Varg counted twenty-four of them.
A rune had been carved into the meat of their chests.
Varg felt his gut lurch and he took a step out of line, bent over and vomited on to a moss-green bank.
“How long?” Glornir asked Edel.
“A month?” Edel said frowning. “It is hard to tell; the cold has preserved them.”
Some of Edel’s scouts were sifting through the offal with their spears. One called out and lifted a boot, and then a seax scabbard. Another speared a piece of fabric and raised it into the air. It was pinned with a cloak-brooch that glinted gold, fashioned in the shape of eagle wings.
Yrsa let out a hiss. Olvir strode towards the bodies, staring at the brooch on the cloak that the scout had lifted, then up at the corpses. His face was twisted, but it wasn’t fear that Varg saw there. It was grief.
“You knew them,” Vol said to Olvir. It wasn’t a question. She looked at Skalk, a frown creasing her face. “You sent them.”
Glornir looked at Skalk. Strode towards him. The Galdurman took a step away, shifting the grip on his walking staff.
“These are Helka’s drengrs,” Glornir growled. “You said she was stretched too thinly to send any of her warriors.”
A long moment passed as the two men stared at one another.
“I meant, any more of her warriors,” Skalk said with a shrug, breaking the silence. He walked around Glornir and stood beneath one of the corpses, prodding it with his staff, setting it turning. The rope binding its ankles creaked and frayed, and then the body dropped to the ground in a heap. Skalk turned it over with his staff, grunting with the effort, and squatted and stared at the rune carved on the torso. He frowned.
“Bannae j?re,” Vol murmured as she stood over him.
Skalk looked up at her.
“Forbidden ground,” she said.
I do not like this, Varg thought, wiping bile from his mouth and turning in a slow circle, his eyes trying to pierce the gloom.
He heard footsteps as Svik came to stand beside him, R?kia the other side.
“You all right?” Svik asked him.
“No,” Varg said. “I’m scared.”
“Fear is good,” R?kia said. “It sharpens the senses, makes you faster, stronger. It is the forge of your courage and will help you kill your enemies.”
Svik frowned at her. “It makes me want to piss my breeches and run away,” he said. Then he looked back at Varg. “We all feel fear.” He shrugged. “But we fight anyway. And we guard each other’s back. We are the Bloodsworn.”
“Edel,” Glornir said, “search the bodies. Search this ground. I would know all we can of who or what it is we are hunting.”
“Aye, chief,” she said.
“Bloodsworn, make ready to move out,” Glornir called out, his words setting crows flapping and squawking in the branches above them. He looked from Skalk to Vol, then at the Bloodsworn gathered behind him. “We have not been told the full truth, that is clear, but it makes no difference. We are the Bloodsworn, and we are here. We will rid these hills of whatever is lurking here, and we will earn our coin.”