They waited in silence as Edel and her scouts cut down the corpses, examined them and then scoured the land. Soon she was signalling a way forward, into the gloom. Glornir gave Skalk one last glower as he raised his hand and then he was marching after Edel and her hounds, the Bloodsworn following. Varg looked back at the corpses piled now beneath the trees and saw Olvir standing, staring at the first who had been cut down. Skalk barked a command and the drengr followed after them.
Tears were rolling down Olvir’s cheeks.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
ORKA
Orka grunted and drank a draught of mead from a horn as Lif pushed a curved bone fishhook through skin and flesh in her back.
“Sorry,” Lif muttered as he stitched the wound Drekr had given her. He paused to pour more water over it, then snatched the horn of mead from Orka and poured some of that over the wound as well, wiping the blood away with a strip of linen. Orka stiffened, giving another huff of pain.
“Sorry,” Lif said again.
“Just get on with it,” Orka growled as she took the mead horn back, her voice an abrasive rasp, her throat sore and swollen from where Drekr had tried to crush her windpipe. The mead soothed the pain. A little.
They were sat in a small room, a divided hayloft above a steading that looked out over a pigpen, fields of wheat and rye beyond. Mord had opened a shutter to let some light in for Lif to work by, but the stench came in with the light. Orka heard raised voices outside, and the braying of a donkey that was refusing to pull a cart of hay. She heard the crack of a whip. They were in a barn on a farm on the outskirts of Darl.
“Why are you here?” Orka said as Lif stitched her wound. “Why were you still in Darl? I told you to leave.”
“Looking for you,” Lif murmured.
“And a good thing we were,” Mord said from the window, “judging by the giant who was throttling the life from you when we arrived.” He was watching the track that led to the farm, checking to see if they had been followed, and at the same time crushing some yarrow leaves in a bowl and mixing them with honey.
“I had it under control,” Orka muttered.
“Ha,” Mord laughed. “I would hate to see what out of control looks like to you.”
“What were you doing?” Lif asked. “Apart from fighting half of Darl, or so it looked.”
Orka sucked in a deep breath. A dark mood had settled over her, seeping through her like poison in the blood.
“The giant, Drekr,” Orka breathed. “He killed Thorkel. Took my Breca.” She felt a flare of rage, and of shame, as she said the words out loud, that she had been so close to him and come away without her son, or her vengeance.
“Oh,” Lif said.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what was your plan?” Mord asked. “When we arrived, you were surrounded by six men and women, all with sharp steel in their fists,” He paused. “How were you hoping to come out of that alive?”
“There were more of them to begin with,” Orka said.
“What, in the tavern with the smashed window?”
“Yes,” Orka snapped.
“So, you didn’t attack seven on your own? You attacked more? How many?”
“What does it matter?” Orka said.
“I am intrigued. You tell us to have patience. To wait until the time is right for our vengeance. But you walk into a tavern and try to attack…”
“… twelve people,” Orka sighed.
Mord just looked at her blankly.
“What was your plan again?”
“To kill them all, save one.”
“To kill eleven warriors?”
“I wouldn’t call them warriors,” Orka snarled.
“All right, not drengrs, maybe, but they still looked handy in a scrap to me. And you planned on killing them all, except for one.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Mord laughed. “How did you think you were going to walk out of there alive?”
Orka took another long sip of her mead and felt the sweet liquid spreading through her belly, into her limbs.
“Killing doesn’t come easy to most people,” Orka said. “Even if they tell you it does. Oh, the ones that brag about it, like Guevarr, they can kill easy enough, if someone is holding their enemy down for them. But in a fight…” She shrugged. “When it comes to it, most people care more about staying alive. They hesitate.”
“And you don’t?” Mord asked.
“Killing’s always come easy to me,” Orka said. She sniffed. “Not something I’m proud of, but there it is. And I don’t hesitate.”