Beyond the hall, to the north, another wall stretched across the valley, looking to be identical to the southern wall. More figures walked upon it. A fire smoked and flickered in a brazier inside the gates, figures standing around it and warming themselves.
The river frothed and foamed through the valley, but a new route had been carved into the land, a horseshoe-shape curling away from the natural river course, clearly built for vessels to row close to the hall, a pier jutting out into the river from the courtyard. Two snekkes were moored there now, and a wide, flat-bottomed trader.
“What now, then?” Mord whispered beside Orka.
Orka was muttering under her breath.
“What?” Mord said.
“I count sixteen warriors,” Orka said. “On the walls and in the courtyard. Probably more in the hall, or off-duty. Then there will be thralls and craftsmen. Their families. And Drekr, with his crew.”
If he is still here, she thought. He could be five or six days ahead of us, with the longer route we’ve been forced to take.
“Forty people in there, at least,” Orka whispered to herself.
Too many for me to kill.
“Well?” Mord said. “What now?”
“Too many for my first plan, which was to walk in and kill them all, except one.”
“I am starting to think that this is always your first plan,” Mord said, shaking his head. “It is what you did in Fellur, when you broke into Jarl Sigrún’s chamber, and back at the inn in Darl.”
Orka shrugged. “It is a plan I like,” she said.
“Not overflowing with deep-cunning, though,” Mord pointed out.
“No,” Orka admitted. “And deep-cunning is what we will need here. We watch a while, see if there is any sign of Drekr. Any bairns. We wait,” Orka said. “Perhaps we will go in when they sleep.”
“How?” Lif whispered, staring down at the fortress.
“Over the wall, or swim up the river,” Orka shrugged. “Either that or we will need to lure some of them out, into these woods, and thin their ranks a little.”
“How would we do that?” Lif asked.
“Some kind of distraction,” Orka muttered. Then she frowned and cocked her head.
“What is it?” Mord asked her.
“Listen,” Orka grunted.
In the distance, behind them, a sound filtered out from the trees.
“What is that?” Lif said.
It was a raucous, grating sound, like a disturbed murder of crows flapping and squawking as they rose into the sky, but Orka thought she could pick out words in the sound.
Ignore it. You have other things to worry about. The Grimholt. Drekr.
The sound grew louder.
Orka looked to the gatehouse of the Grimholt. If they heard it, they would send people to investigate.
“Perhaps we have our lure,” she said.
The sound grew louder, filling the pinewoods.
Orka ground her teeth and snarled. Then she was creeping away from the cliff edge and striding into the cover of the trees. She took her spear from where it leaned against a tree beside Trúr. The gelding whinnied at her and she patted his neck. Then she strode into the pinewoods towards the sound.
“Where are you going?” Mord called after her.
“To kill anyone who comes out of the Grimholt to investigate,” she said.
Lif and Mord followed, Mord swearing under his breath.
Orka ducked under boughs as the trees grew thicker and felt something brush her face, a sharp tingling sensation across her cheek and she looked up to see a hanging strand of frost-web. Twisting, she looking up, but the boughs above her were empty. She shifted her grip on her spear and walked on.
The ground sloped downwards, Orka moving north through the woodland, a voice in her thought-cage telling her that she was moving steadily closer to the Grimholt and west-running track she had spied from the cliff. There were more strands of frost-web in the trees, thicker, criss-crossing, making sunlight dance in fractured beams. The noise was deafening, now, the sound of boughs shaking and cracking, and as Orka walked deeper into the woods a word amid the clamour became clearly discernible.
“HELP!” Terror-filled: over and over.
“Orka,” Mord hissed. She glanced at him, saw fear in his eyes. “It sounds… dangerous.”
“This is Vigrie,” she answered. “Living is dangerous.” And she marched on.
She heard Mord and Lif’s voices behind her. It sounded like they were arguing, but she ignored them. After a few moments their footsteps followed her.
The sound was close: branches splitting, a voice screeching, a noise like a storm raging through the woods. And other sounds: a scuttling, scraping noise that echoed in the branches above her. It was darker here, the boughs above dense with frost-webs as thick as Orka’s wrist. She pointed at trees and bushes for Mord and Lif to hide behind, then stepped around a tree and froze, taking a moment for her eyes to adjust and fully understand what she was seeing.