Varg sucked in a long breath. The Raudskinna, said to contain the knowledge of life and death. Orna used Rotta’s own rune-spells to keep him alive during his torment, always living, pain without ending.
“Just a saga-tale, surely,” Varg said.
“Aye, that’s what I thought about Rotta’s chamber, and dragon-born, until yesterday.”
Varg couldn’t argue with that.
“It is a strange place,” Torvik said, “and far more beneath the ground than you would ever imagine. Chambers and scores of tunnels. Barrack rooms and kitchens. They even have horses stabled down here. And there is a chamber full of hundreds of straw mattresses, but only big enough for bairns.” He shook his head.
Varg realised his throat was dry, and painful. It hurt to swallow his own spit. He lifted a hand and touched his neck.
“Ah, yes, that most likely hurts as well,” Torvik said. “The troll tried to squeeze the life from you, remember?”
It came flooding back.
“But you stabbed him a dozen times in his hand, like a furious wasp,” Torvik smiled.
“Water,” Varg wheezed.
Torvik unstoppered his water bottle and helped Varg to sit up, leaning him against the cold rock wall. Varg realised his tunic was gone, his torso wrapped in a linen bandage. The pain in his left side surged and spasmed with each movement, but the water in his throat was worth it, soothing as liquid silver. Varg looked around the chamber: a room maybe twenty paces across, with thick wooden doors at either end. Water dripped from the roof, glistening in the torchlight. J?kul still lay close by on a bed of straw. His bandage had been changed, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. Beyond him the two dead Bloodsworn lay wrapped in their shrouds. One was Vali. Varg remembered fighting shoulder to shoulder with him in the shield wall.
“You have won your battle-fame, brother,” Torvik said. “Glornir must surely invite you to make your oath. I just hope he asks me too.”
Through the pain, Varg noticed that he was growing accustomed to Torvik calling him brother. More than that, he was liking it.
“He will. You fought well, and bravely,” Varg croaked. “I saw you.”
“Aye,” Torvik looked away. “Truth be told, I was scared to death and cannot remember the half of it. But I am alive, and there was blood on my spear when the fighting stopped.” He looked at Varg. “But you have outshone me with your battle-fame, Varg No-Sense, like a sun outshines the stars.” He looked at Varg, his smile gone. “I think many would be jealous of your battle-fame.” He shrugged. “But not I. I am proud to call you brother.”
“You saved my life,” Varg said, remembering the skraeling as it had stood over him. “That is battle-fame enough, in my thought-cage.”
Torvik’s grin returned, warm and genuine. “And I will save your life again, if need calls, and I have breath in my body.”
“And I you,” Varg breathed.
Torvik laughed. “Listen to us,” he said, “like two grey-beards of battle.”
Varg could not help but laugh, and regretted it, pain pulsing in his ribs.
One of the doors opened and Vol walked in, a plate of bread and a bowl in her hand. She smiled to see Varg awake and pulled up a stool, sitting down beside him.
“Fish stew and some bread,” she said, offering the plate and bowl to Varg. She looked him up and down. “I did not expect to see you looking so well. To be struck by the talon of a dead god is no small thing.”
Varg realised he was starving hungry and spooned the fish stew into his mouth, huffed and blew at its heat. He dipped the chunk of bread into the bowl, soaking up the stew and sucked on that instead.
“Where is it?” Varg asked her as he blew on the stew.
“In there,” Vol said, nodding at the door on the far side of the chamber. Varg realised he could sense it, a pulsing through his body, like a dull headache. Vol undid the knot of his linen bandage and unwound it, nodded and clicked his tongue as she looked at Varg’s wound. He looked down and saw that his whole left side was mottled purple and black, a line of blisters across his rib where the bone sword had connected with him.
No wonder it hurts.
Vol laid her hand upon the wound, palm open.
“Sár g?mlu gueanna, sára galdrabeins, l?kna, laga, ná sér,” Vol breathed, and Varg felt a relief from the pain, like when he had scraped the skin from his knee as a bairn and Fr?ya had blown upon it.
Vol looked into Varg’s eyes.
“You saved me. You saved Glornir, and we are grateful.” She smiled at him. “This akáll you want. Tell me of it.”