After throwing Skefil’s corpse into the canal they had used what was left of the night to scout out the Eagle-fortress. It was frustratingly well guarded, with plentiful drengrs on the gates and patrolling the high timber walls that ringed Queen Helka’s mead hall. They had also made their way to the docks and looked at Jarl Sigrún’s drakkar, which was guarded by a handful of Sigrún’s drengrs, but also under the protection of the harbour officials and their guards. An attack on Jarl Sigrún when she returned to her drakkar looked as unlikely to be successful as trying to infiltrate the fortress.
“I am thinking the best path will be to lure Guevarr and Jarl Sigrún out of the fortress, rather than try and sneak into it,” Orka said.
“And how would we do that?”
“When you want to catch a wolf or a fox, you bait a trap,” Orka said.
“Bait? What bait?” Lif said.
“Me,” Orka shrugged. “I slew Vafri, Helka’s úlfhéenar thrall that she gifted to Sigrún, and I slew Sigrún’s lover and left a scar on her face, so it is me that Sigrún and Helka most want to see in the ground. Anger blinds some people, makes them more likely to make mistakes. To rush. So, we find a busy place. You and Mord hidden in the press of a crowd. I sow some chaos and Jarl Sigrún and Guevarr come to take their vengeance on me. That will be when you put steel in Guevarr’s belly, but first whisper a word in his ear, so he knows who his killer is, and why he’s dying.” She shrugged. “Then you slip away into the crowd.”
“I like it,” Mord said, nodding. “Let’s do it.” He had been surly since taking the wound from Skefil, his pride hurt, Orka thought. He had been keen to assault Helka’s fortress, though he probably couldn’t even climb the walls with his injured arm.
Pride and shame, she thought. Both enemies of a long life. He needs some ice in his blood, to see more clearly.
“Sounds like there are many ways for that plan to go wrong,” Lif said. “Like, how will you get away?”
“All plans go wrong,” Orka said with a shrug. “And when this one does, we will improvise.”
“No hesitation,” Mord said, looking at Orka.
“Exactly,” Orka grunted.
They walked on, turning a corner in the dirt track and passing around a spur of land, the farm appearing in a valley below. The longhouse was built alongside a narrow river, barns and paddocks around it, a field of barley beyond. A gentle breeze lifted the blended smell of smoke, barley and pig-shite up out of the vale. The sound of geese squawking rose on the breeze.
Orka frowned, felt a tingling in her blood.
She stopped.
Mord and Lif carried on a few paces, their horses’ hooves a rhythmic thud on the ground. They realised Orka had stopped and slowed to a standstill.
“What is it?” Lif said.
“Come on, my belly needs filling,” Mord grumbled.
Orka frowned, sniffing.
They were a few hundred paces from the farm, and at a glance all seemed well. But Orka’s skin prickled. The donkey wasn’t braying, as he seemed to do from dawn until dusk, and there was no smoke rising from the green-turfed roof of the longhouse’s smoke hole.
“Get on your horses,” Orka said, slipping a foot into an iron stirrup and swinging herself up into her saddle, her spear gripped in one fist. She shifted her weight, settling on to Trúr’s back. The horse whickered.
“Why?” Mord frowned.
“The plan has already gone wrong,” Orka muttered.
Figures appeared in the farm courtyard: mounted figures. Lots of them. Ten, twelve, fifteen, more still hidden. The glint of weapons and brynjas. One of them rode to the farm’s entrance, drew his sword and pointed at Orka and the brothers.
“It’s Guevarr,” Lif said.
“Stay and fight, or flee and fight another day?” Orka asked them. Her blood was thrumming, the imminence of violence calling to her, dancing in her veins. But a distant part of her thought-cage whispered that the numbers were too great, that Mord and Lif would likely die. Part of her didn’t care.
“Over a score of them,” Lif said.
“Sigrún’s drengrs, and some of Helka’s, too,” Orka said, seeing the glint of gold eagle-wings on cloak brooches. She looked at Mord and Lif and saw the gleam of vengeance bright in their eyes as they stared at Guevarr, but also the hesitation that hovers like raven’s wings over impending battle, when the possibility of death looks you in the eye. Fear can be ice or fire in the veins, freezing the body or setting a blaze within it.