Silence in the clearing: just heavy breathing, the wind in the trees, Leif groaning. Varg stared at the fallen men, too stunned to move. Leif was still on his hands and knees, one hand cupping his groin. Saliva dribbled from his mouth. Orl sat against the tree, eyes wide. His hound growled at the newcomers.
Svik strode towards Orl and growled at the hound, a deep, animal sound, and the hound tucked his tail between his legs, whined, and pressed tightly into Orl.
Svik laughed as he wiped blood from his forehead and braided hair.
The grey-beard stepped past Leif and stood over Varg.
“He’s… mine,” Leif spluttered. “My thrall, and mine by right of weregild. He must answer for… murder.”
“No,” the grey-beard said, his voice like gravel. “He’s one of the Bloodsworn now.”
CHAPTER FIVE
ELVAR
“ROW, you nieing bunch of gutless troll-turds!” Sighvat bellowed as he beat time on a barrel with a knotted lump of rope.
Elvar gritted her teeth and dragged on her oar, the muscles in her back and shoulders screaming. A swell lifted their drakkar high, her dragon-prow pointing at the slate-grey sky and Elvar’s oar breached the water. She felt a weightlessness in the pit of her stomach as she lost her balance and almost slipped from her sea-chest, then the prow was surging down, cutting into the ice-flecked waves. An explosion of sea spray crashed over the bows, the wind whipping it across Elvar’s back like hailstones. She cuffed sleet and a strand of her blonde hair from her face, corrected her oar, found her rhythm and bent back to the rowing, losing herself in the motion, muscles contracting, extending, a burning deep in every fibre. In front of her Grend’s broad back filled her vision, the grey streaks in his hair made dark with sweat and salt-spray. Beyond him, glimpsed through the rhythm of Grend’s lean and pull, was fat-bellied Sighvat beating time, and behind him in the stern stood Agnar, her chief. He was laughing like it was his name-day with a belly full of mead, his blond braid of hair whipped by the wind. His hands gripped around the tiller, wrestling the steering oar as he fought to guide the Wave-Jarl between the arms of two curving promontories, the open sea and glowering clouds behind him.
“ROW!” Sighvat yelled again and fifty oars dipped into the white-frothed sea, backs bending, straining as the Wave-Jarl carved her way through the waves.
“BEACH!” a voice cried from the drakkar’s bow, and Elvar felt a burst of new strength at that cry, a hope that the toil and muscle-burning would end. They had found Iskalt Island easily enough, marked by the red veins of fire that glowed within the mountain that dominated the island, but finding a beach to land upon had been harder going. She bent and pulled, bent and pulled.
Somewhere behind her torn fragments of Kráka’s chanting drifted back to her, the Tainted thrall singing her dark magic to keep the serpents and other sea vaesen from their drakkar’s hull.
A black-granite spur of rock appeared to her left, seals and puffins upon it regarding the dragon-prowed ship as it slipped past them. Elvar felt the sea calm about the Wave-Jarl, as if obeying some rune-cast spell. The rowing became easier as they swept into a natural harbour, waves gentling, a white-flecked wake rippling wide behind them. Agnar barked a command at Sighvat.
“HALF-TIME!” Sighvat bellowed and decreased the rhythm of his barrel-thumping.
Elvar slowed her strokes and felt excitement bubbling, melting her exhaustion.
We are here.
Another shouted word from Agnar.
“OARS IN!” Sighvat yelled. He ceased his beating on the barrel and strode along the deck, passing Elvar and heading to the prow. Elvar dragged her oar back through the hole, hearing the clatter of wood as oars were laid in their racks, and swivelled the oar-hole plug into place. There was the crunch of timber as the Wave-Jarl ground along a wooden pier and then Agnar was tying the tiller and striding along the deck, yelling orders.
Elvar stood, stretched, hearing bones click in her neck and back, then threw open her sea-chest. She unrolled a strip of sheepskin, pulled out her brynja, the riveted mail glistening with oils from the sheepskin that protected her precious mail from rust. With long-practised ease she lifted the coat of mail, threaded her arms through it, then heaved it up over her head. A wriggle and shake and it slipped over her shoulders and down her torso. A thin belt buckled tight to take the weight of mail from her shoulders, and then she was reaching for her weapons belt, sword, seax and axe suspended from it. She drew her sword a handspan to check it hadn’t snared, then let it drop back down: a habit she had learned from Grend since the first day she had laid her hands around the hilt of a sword. Last of all she reached into her chest for a n?lbinding cap of coarse wool, pulled it over her head and then lifted her helm, polished plates of banded iron, a curtain of riveted mail to protect her neck, adjusted it so that her vision was good through the spectacled eye-holes, then buckled it tight. She flashed a grin at Grend as he went through the same process, the warrior rolling his shoulders to settle his brynja. He gave her a flat stare, his face creased and dour, which only helped to broaden her own smile, then she was reaching for her shield that stood wedged into a rack along the top-rail, tugging it free and slipping her hand around the wooden grip, fist settling into the boss. She moved to a rack of spears, took hers and waited for Agnar’s orders, eager to disembark.