Elvar took Sólín’s arm with a grin.
They sat and drank their ale together.
Laughter drew Elvar’s eye, and she saw Biórr with Uspa, Kráka and the Hundur-thrall. He walked away from them, to the iron food pot hanging over the hearth fire.
“Would you watch Grend for me?” Elvar said as she drained her mead horn. “I have some thanks of my own that needs saying.”
“Aye,” Sólín said.
Elvar stood and walked through the camp, and saw that Biórr had left the food pot and was walking away. She followed him, weaving through the camp, past a dug-out pit fire and warriors sitting and talking. Sighvat was humming to himself. She raised a hand to their calls and shook her head at their invitations to sit and drink with them, and she walked on to the far edge of camp that ran along the stream’s edge. Here the wagons were drawn tightly together, and the surviving ponies had been unharnessed and picketed.
Biórr was handing bowls of food to Uspa, Kráka and the Hundur-thrall, all four of them laughing at some unheard jest. He sat down and began to eat with them. They looked up at Elvar as she stood over them.
“I wanted to thank you,” Elvar said, the words abruptly evaporating, her mouth dry.
“Well, go on, then,” Biórr said with a smile.
“My thanks,” Elvar said. “You saved my life, and Grend’s. We would be food for tennúr now, if you had not come back for us.”
“Heya, you would,” Uspa agreed.
“The tennúr would be making a fine feast of your young, white teeth by now,” Kráka said, and they all laughed and cackled.
She stood there a few moments, the laughter fading, and a silence settled.
“You are welcome, Elvar Fire-Fist,” Biórr said.
“Why did you do it?” Elvar asked him. “Break ranks from the shield wall? Risk your life for me?”
He smiled at her. “You have to ask?” he said.
Elvar reached down and gripped his hand, pulled him upright and dragged him close, kissed him, soft and long, tasting sour skyr on his breath. When they parted, Biórr was blinking at her, his cheeks flushed, and she could feel her heart thumping in her chest. She turned, still holding his wrist, and led him along the streambank, away from the camp. Kráka’s cackling laughter drifted after them. An old willow squatted ahead of them, branches a curtain that floated on the stream and loamy ground. Elvar pushed a way through the branches, into a hidden space around the trunk where the ground was moss-covered and soft, then turned and looked at Biórr. He stood there, gazing back at her. She brushed a strand of dark hair from his face where it had fallen from his braid, traced the line of his freckled cheek, then her hand slipped behind his neck and she dragged him to her and kissed him again. Harder than before. Slowly she pulled him to the ground.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
VARG
Varg followed Svik and the others down the tree-shadowed slope. The ground levelled as he caught up with them. He could hear his heart pounding in his head, beating time like a drum, and everything around seemed to become brighter, sharper, louder. He saw Glornir striding down the centre of the glade, his eyes dark pools in his socketed helm, his long-axe held across his body. Edel was with him, her wolfhounds either side of her, and a handful of other Bloodsworn. Skalk, Olvir and Yrsa were behind them, hovering at the treeline. All around the glade other groups of the Bloodsworn emerged, each one led by one of Glornir’s captains: R?kia, Sulich and Vol.
The thralls in the glade were staring open-mouthed, the warriors there shouting, some frozen, staring, others moving together. The skraelings were unnaturally still, heads twitching like predatory birds as they looked at the various groups of the Bloodsworn emerging from the trees. As Varg drew closer to them he saw they bore the rough features of a man or woman, with small dark eyes, mouth and nose, but they were uneven, like a melted candle, and small tusks grew from their lower jaws.
A woman in mail raised a horn to her lips and blew it, long and loud.
The thralls screamed, many of them breaking away from their carts and running in all directions, chains clinking.
One of the skraelings drew a short, wide-bladed weapon from its belt, looking like something between a sword and a cleaver, and hacked at a thrall. She gave a scream as she collapsed, blood spurting from a gaping wound between her shoulder and neck. Others tried to steer the fleeing thralls back into the tunnel, grouping together, facing out at the Bloodsworn.
It looked like the glade had burst into madness.