Keeping busy was good, because a wave of despair was building within him.
He had failed.
Sitting back, he held his hands out to the fire, trying to chase the ice from his bones, and stared into the flames.
Fr?ya, I am sorry.
He felt the grief welling, that he had kept shut tight somewhere deep in his mind, in his heart, walled in tight. Despair like ice clawed and cracked at those walls. He put his head in his hands, a sob building in his chest, writhing up into his throat, unstoppable. Tears rolled down his cheeks and memories of Fr?ya filled his mind. His sister. His only friend.
He had no memory of his father or mother, only what he had been told by Kolskegg, who had bought him and Fr?ya when they were bairns. Kolskegg had told him that Varg’s parents had sold him and Fr?ya for a loaf of bread and a dozen duck eggs when Varg was five winters old, Fr?ya four. All their lives spent as thralls, each other their only solace, their only comfort. He rested his hand on the pouch at his belt.
And now she is dead, and I don’t know how to avenge her.
After a while Varg looked up, rubbed his eyes, winced at the pain.
This is not the end, he told himself. I have come too far to just give up now. There must be a Galdurman or Seier-witch somewhere in all of Vigrie that will help me, for coin. I will find them, wherever they are. And if I cannot find them in Vigrie then I shall travel the whale-road sea to Iskidan, and search all of the Shattered Realms until I have found someone to help me.
I will go on.
He sucked in a long, ragged breath, pushing his memories back, somewhere deep and dark.
A twig cracked in the woods.
Without thinking he scrambled to his feet, kicked at the fire, sparks exploding. Stood there, listening, staring into the shadow-black.
A low, rumbled growl.
A figure burst from the undergrowth, a man dragged by a hound on a leash, more shapes behind him. The hound leaped at him.
Varg stepped to the side, snapped his left arm out, shoving the leaping hound away. The force of his blow sent him stumbling into a tree, and sent the hound crashing on to the fire. More sparks erupted, the hound yelping, fur igniting.
“Thought you could run from us for ever,” a voice snarled, coming from a woman that stepped around the houndsman, a spear levelled at Varg’s chest.
Varg pushed off the tree, reaching inside his cloak, the spear stabbing into bark. He fumbled the cleaver out and chopped at the spear shaft, splintering it, ducked as the woman still clutching the haft used it like a club attempting to cave Varg’s skull in. A slice of the cleaver as Varg stumbled away; a scream; the woman clutching her ribs and dropping to her knees.
The hound was rolling, yelping and whining, flames in its fur, the houndsman tearing his cloak off and wrapping it around the animal, trying to put the flames out. Other men appeared from the gloom: three, four more at least, it was hard to tell in the murk, but Varg saw all had spears in their fists. He looked wildly around and ran for a gap in the trees. A crack to the back of his legs and he stumbled, tried to right his balance but tripped over a root, fell to one knee, put a hand out to save himself and yelled, pain shooting through his injured hand.
Another blow across his shoulders, sending him face first to the ground; a mouth full of pine needles and dirt. He rolled, lashed out with the cleaver, felt it bite into someone’s leg, heard another scream. A man dropped to the ground beside him, tearing the cleaver from Varg’s grip.
A foot kicked Varg in the chest as he tried to rise, another man stamping on his wrist, pinning him. Varg snarled, tried to roll and a spear butt clubbed him across the forehead, sent him crashing back to the forest litter. Blood in his eyes. A spear hovered over his throat, another man standing on his other wrist, pinning him wide.
Varg stared up, breathing hard, blood pounding in his head.
“You thought I wouldn’t find you,” the man looming over him said. His face was lit by the stuttering fire, shadow and flame. A broad man, black-bearded, a scar running through his lip that twisted his mouth into a permanent sneer.
“Leif,” Varg spat, “you should not have followed me.”
“Ha,” Leif grunted. “You’d have to run faster and further to hide from me, after what you did to my father. Butchered like an animal. I only knew him by his chain.”
Varg did not remember. It had been a red-tinged haze, only coming back to his senses as he choked the life from Snepil. He had sat back, then, dazed, blood and carnage all about him.
“You’ve lost your collar, Varg the thrall,” Leif said.
“I am no thrall,” Varg grunted. He pulled in a breath through his pain. “Your father cheated me. I earned my freedom and your father broke his oath. I am a freedman, no different from you.V One of the men pinning Varg kicked him in the face. He spat blood.