Together they strode to the gates as Breca swept the tennúr into his arms and ran up the steps into the hall.
The horses’ hooves grew louder, more than one, and Orka strode to their gate, Thorkel at her shoulder. A thumping on timber sounded, like a spear butt or sword pommel.
“Thorkel, Orka, open your gates,” a voice called out.
Orka reached them first. She pulled back a bolt and looked through a spyhole, then nodded at Thorkel. Together they shouldered the oak beam that barred the gates and dropped it. With a creak of hinges they swung the gates open.
Three riders sat looking down at them: a young man and two women, all warriors, the man with a sword at his hip, belted over a fine brynja, a glistening bead of snot clinging to the end of his long nose. The other two wore boiled leather and wool, felt and fur caps on their heads. Spears rested in the crooks of their arms.
“Guevarr,” Thorkel said with a nod to the man. Orka saw the light return to his eyes. They both knew these three were not the child-stealers. They would not have been capable of putting Asgrim and Idrun in the ground.
“And what brings three drengr warriors to our gates?” Orka asked. “You are a long way from Fellur.”
Guevarr stared down at Orka, looking like he’d eaten something that had left a sour taste in his mouth. Orka wished he would wipe the snot from his nose.
“Jarl Sigrún is returned to us,” Guevarr said. “She has called the Althing. Six days from now, on the Oath Rock in the fjord.”
“You have come all this way to tell us that?” Orka said.
“Aye. Serious matters are to be discussed. Jarl Sigrún wants all who live within her domain to be present, to hear what she has to say.”
“And if we do not want to hear what she has to say?” Orka growled.
Guevarr blinked, as if that thought were an impossibility.
“Then you should find somewhere else to live,” one of the other drengrs said, a tall, wiry woman with brown braided hair and a face of sharp ridges and angles. “If you choose to dwell within Jarl Sigrún’s realm, under her protection, then you will be at the Althing.”
“Well said, Arild,” Guevarr grunted.
“Our thanks,” Thorkel said. “You are welcome to some food and drink, and to rest your horses. It must have been a long, hard ride.” He waved a hand, gesturing at the courtyard and hall.
“No,” Guevarr said with a shake of his head. “We have three more steadings to visit, and then we are riding back for Fellur.” As he tugged on his reins and his mount turned away, Guevarr looked back over his shoulder.
“Six days, at the Oath Rock,” he said, and then they were riding away across the glade, following a narrow path into the trees.
Thorkel and Orka closed the gates and barred them.
“I do not want to go to this Althing,” Orka said. “With Sigrún talking of Queen Helka, of jarls and queens and their petty squabbles.”
“I do not want to go either,” Thorkel said. He was tugging his beard, a distant look in his eyes. “But we do not want to attract attention, either, by staying away. It will be noted, if by no one else then by Guevarr.”
“He is an arseling,” Orka growled.
“Aye, that he is,” Thorkel agreed. “An arseling who will flap his lips about us. I say we go to this Althing, keep our heads down and our lips stitched shut, and then leave quietly.” He shrugged. “A voice in my thought-cage is telling me we need to hear what Sigrún has to say. If Helka has her eyes on Fellur and these hills…”
They shared a look as Breca stuck his head out of the hall, the tennúr cradled in his arms.
“We’ll go to Sigrún’s Althing, then,” Orka said, blowing out a long breath and nodding her head, though she felt a wyrm of fear slithering in her belly. She had seen that look in Thorkel’s eyes before, and it had never meant anything good.
CHAPTER NINE
ELVAR
Elvar woke shivering, muted light glimmering in her eyes. Her back ached, stones from the beach felt through her cloak and mail. The rhythmic ebb and flow of wave over shingle was the first sound she heard. Above her an awning rigged with spear-shaft posts was heavy with last night’s snowfall, a spare sail used to provide some kind of protection against the weather. She rolled and crawled out from under it.
The sun was rising behind her, molten bronze gilding the hills and mountain that dominated this island, and to the west, over the sea beyond the rise and creak of the moored Wave-Jarl, the sky was a pale, cold blue, the wind off the bay feeling like shards of ice scraping across her skin. The sea moved sluggishly, patches of ice that the spring thaw had broken free from the Frost-Isles further north floating thick and churning on its surface. In the distance she saw the silhouettes of other islands, like the humped backs of submerged giants. White-flecked waves lapped the shore.