My oath. Varg’s hand went instinctively to the pouch at his belt, but it was gone: must have been taken off with his tunic. A rush of panic. Fr?ya. Only moments ago, he had been talking of her with Vol. His hopes were like ashes in the fire now. And Skalk offered him a chance of fulfilling his oath to Fr?ya. My oath, he thought. My whole life, everything I am is bound up within that oath. He looked at Torvik, at his dead eyes.
“I can walk,” he said. He shifted his weight, grimaced, pushed himself up with one hand, then stopped when Olvir’s sword tip touched his chest.
Skalk smiled and nodded. “Help him,” the Galdurman said to Olvir, who lowered his blade and offered Varg his arm.
Varg gripped it, and heaved Olvir forwards, the warrior stumbling and falling on to Varg, trying to raise his sword.
He felt a burst of pain as Olvir fell on him, the man’s mail coat scraping on Varg’s bare skin, an elbow in Varg’s ribs. Olvir’s feet scrabbled on the rock floor and Varg locked the warrior’s sword arm and punched him in the face with his other hand, Olvir grunting, spitting blood. He twisted, breaking free, and Varg dug his heels into the wall at his back, propelled himself forwards and the two men fell across the room. Bright bursts of pain but Varg ignored them, spat and snarled at Olvir, bit into skin as Olvir was crushed close to him. He felt the spurt of blood in his mouth, hot and metallic, bit down harder, wrenching his neck. Olvir screamed, Varg feeling the change in the warrior, from fight to fear, writhing and bucking, now, terror-filled, just trying to get away. Blood was in Varg’s throat, on his face, in his eyes, blinding. Olvir’s body was jerking, slowing, twitching. Varg rolled away, gasping, spitting up globs of blood. Wiped his eyes. Saw Skalk’s snarling face, his boot hurtling towards Varg, connecting with his wounded ribs.
An explosion of pain: he heard himself scream, but that was sucked away into darkness.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
ORKA
Orka pulled on Trúr’s reins, the horse slowing and coming to a halt, stamping his feet and blowing bouts of hot breath. His coat was steaming and sweat-soaked. Orka’s breath blew clouds, too, the temperature dropping as they climbed steadily into higher ground.
She stared at the sight before her.
They were in the highlands: sweeping hills that shifted into the slopes of the Boneback Mountains, sombre forests of pine spreading before her, frost glittering on the bark. Orka leaned and spat, then twisted in her saddle and looked back over her shoulder.
Mord and Lif were not far behind, cantering across an open meadow before they reached the treeline. Behind the two brothers the world sloped away, down to the river valleys that twisted through the land. Orka followed the line of the River Drammur, tracing it as it grew ever fainter and eventually disappeared, knowing it led to Darl, and along that line their pursuit would most likely come. Guevarr was tracking them by land, as evidenced by the columns of smoke that rose from his pit fires each evening.
Idiot that he is. Orka snorted. But she also suspected that boats were following them via the River Drammur, as well. Sleek-hulled snekkes, rather than dragon-prowed drakkar, because of the stretches of rapids and shallows. To the east, the slopes they were climbing dropped away to the Drammur, the river narrowing and becoming fiercer as they approached its headwaters in the Boneback Mountains. The curl of smoke gave away a village upon the river’s banks, one of many that Orka and the two brothers had avoided on their journey towards the Grimholt, though being forced to take less-travelled paths had cost them in time. Orka feared the gap between her and Drekr was slowly widening.
But if he is heading where Skefil told me, then he may stop there, rest awhile. That is where I will catch him.
At the Grimholt. Orka stared north, eyes creasing as she saw the gap between the peaks of the Bonebacks that marked where the Grimholt Tower lay, a fortress built to guard one of the few passes through the mountains. To the north vaesen roamed in greater numbers, the Grimholt barring their entrance into the southlands of Vigrie.
The drum of hooves and Mord and Lif reached her, slowing as the horses left the soft meadow and entered the needle-soaked ground beneath the trees. Sunlight dappled the ground as branches swayed.
“Why have we stopped?” Lif asked her.
Orka nodded ahead.
They were a little way into the pinewoods, Orka following what she had thought was a fox trail. Ahead of them a small glade opened up, at its centre the shattered remains of an oath stone, much like the one on the Oath Rock in the fjord, back at Fellur village.
A slab of rock jutted from the ground, splintered and broken, lumps of granite scattered around the glade, overgrown with grass and moss. Upon what was left of the central slab a fresh carving stood out, a twisted, sinuous knot-carving with gaping, fanged jaws. It was coated in something dark and cracked, almost oil-black.