“No, you are Berak Bjornasson. I have tracked you a long way.”
The man shook his head.
“Take the chains; it is your best choice. Struggle again and I shall have Sighvat beat you bloody with the collar that you will be wearing. There is no escaping us. You must know this.”
The man looked from Agnar to the warriors behind him, eyes flickering across Elvar and Grend. Over twenty warriors, all pointing sharp iron at him.
He lowered his head.
“I am not who you think I am.”
“My Hundur-thrall says that you are.” Agnar pointed his sword at the thrall still pinned to the tree. He looked over at them, his face creased with misery.
Sighvat slipped the collar around the man’s throat and tapped the pin in with the pommel of his seax.
“He is mistaken,” the fur-clad man said, his shoulders slumping.
“Are you sure about him?” Elvar whispered to Agnar.
Agnar looked at her, frowned.
“Yes,” he said.
“It is only, he is big, yes, strong, yes, but I have seen…” Elvar paused, choosing her words carefully, as there were more ears than Agnar’s around her. “I have heard tales of the Berserkir. I expected… more.”
Agnar shrugged. “Watch,” he said, then looked away towards the slope, where warriors were returning with two captives, a woman and child. “Bring them to me,” Agnar said.
The woman and child were pushed stumbling to Agnar, their wrists bound with rope. Agnar grabbed a fistful of the child’s unkempt black hair. He took his sword and touched its edge to the child’s throat.
“No,” the woman cried and Sighvat clubbed her across the shoulders, knocking her to the ground.
“Show yourself,” Agnar said to the man, who returned his gaze.
Agnar drew the sword back a half-inch, a red line trickling down the boy’s neck.
“Don’t,” the man said. A shift in his voice, deeper, more a growl than a word.
Agnar smiled. “I will bleed him here, now; watch as his life spills on to the snow and you can see him flop and die like a gutted fish.”
Elvar looked away. Killing children was not her way of earning her battle-fame.
“Watch him,” Agnar snapped at Elvar, and she focused on the prisoner on his knees.
The man closed his eyes, seemed to take in an impossibly long breath.
Agnar jerked the boy’s hair, a yelp breaking from his lips.
The man’s eyes snapped open. They were flecked with amber, now, inhuman. As Elvar stared at him he seemed to swell, to grow, the furs about his shoulders and chest straining.
“Let him go,” he snarled, and his mouth looked different, the tips of his teeth sharp.
“No,” Agnar said, and twisted the boy’s hair again. Another yelp.
The man lurched to his feet, roaring, and surged at Agnar, arms reaching, dragging six men and Sighvat along with him, as if they were puppies holding on to a wolf.
Or a bear.
“HALDA!” Agnar bellowed, taking an involuntary step backwards.
There was a flash of red fire in the iron collar about the fur-clad man’s neck and he stumbled another step, took another as if wading through water, then stopped. Froze. He glared at Agnar, every muscle in his body quivering as if he fought against some invisible restraint. His eyes were threaded with red veins, foam and blood on his lips where he was snarling and gnashing his teeth, his hands grasping. Elvar noted his nails had grown, become more like claws.
“On your knees,” Agnar said.
The man glowered at him, a mad rage in his eyes.
“á HNéN!” Agnar yelled and the fur-clad man dropped to the ground, panting.
The boy and woman were sobbing.
Agnar looked at Elvar.
“You still have your doubts?” he asked, a smile twitching his lips.
Elvar shook her head.
Agnar looked back at the man at his feet.
“You are Berak Bjornasson, and the blood of the dead god Berser flows in your veins. You are Tainted, you are Berserkir, and you are wanted by three jarls for murder, blood-debt and weregild. And now you are mine,” Agnar said, and smiled. “You will fetch a fine price.”
He looked around him, at the dead troll, at his warriors, both standing and fallen.
“Gather our dead. Butcher the troll. Bring all that is of value.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
ORKA
Orka sat on the steps of the hall at their steading, running a whetstone along the blade of her seax. She kept one eye on Breca, who was collecting eggs from the chicken roost. The lad was constantly looking from his task to a small handcart. It had a bandaged tennúr sitting in the back, propped up on blankets.