But Orka knew the truth was a blood-soaked saga.
She looked to her right and saw on the ground the droplets of blood from the injured wolf. In her mind she saw those droplets spreading, growing into pools, more blood spraying, ghostly bodies falling, hacked and broken, voices screaming…
This is a world of blood. Of tooth and claw and sharp iron. Of short lives and painful deaths.
A hand on her shoulder, Thorkel reaching over Breca’s head to touch her. A sharp-drawn breath. She blinked and blew out a long, ragged sigh, pushing the images away.
“It was a good throw,” Thorkel said, tapping Breca’s spear with his water bottle, though his eyes were still on Orka.
“I missed, though,” Breca muttered.
“I missed the first throw on my first hunt, too,” Thorkel said. “And I was eleven summers, where you are only ten. And your throw was better than mine. The wolf robbed you. Eh, Orka?” He ruffled Breca’s hair with a big hand.
“It was well cast,” Orka said, eyeing the clouds to the west, closer now. A west wind was blowing them, and she could taste snow on that wind, a sharp cold that crackled like frost in her chest. Stoppering her water bottle, she stood and walked away.
“Tell me more of Snaka,” Breca called after her.
Orka paused. “Are you so quick to forget your friend Harek?” she said with a frown.
Breca dropped his eyes, downcast, then stood and followed her.
Orka led them on, back into the pinewoods where sound was eerily muted, the world shrinking around them, shadows shifting, and they climbed higher into the hills. As they rose the world turned grey around them, clouds veiling the sun, and a cold wind hissed through the branches.
Orka used her spear for a staff as the ground steepened and she climbed slick stone that ascended like steps alongside a white-foaming stream. Ice-cold water splashed and seeped into her leg-bindings and boots. A strand of her blonde hair fell loose of her braid and she pushed it behind one ear. She slowed her pace, remembering Breca’s short legs, even though there was a tingling in her blood that set her muscles thrumming. Danger had always had that effect on her.
“Be ready,” Thorkel said behind her, and then Orka smelled it, too.
The iron tang of blood, the stench of voided bowels.
Death’s reek.
The ground levelled on to a plateaued ridge, trees felled and cleared. A large, grass-roofed cabin appeared, alongside a handful of outbuildings, all nestled into a cliff face. A stockade wall ringed the cabin and outbuildings, taller than Orka.
Asgrim’s steading.
On the eastern side of the steading a track curled down the hills, eventually leading towards the village of Fellur and the fjord.
Orka took a few steps forwards, then stopped, spear levelled as Breca and Thorkel climbed on to the plateau.
The stockade’s wide gates were thrown open, a body upon the ground between them, limbs twisted, unnaturally still. One gate creaked on the wind. Orka heard Breca’s breath hiss through his lips.
Orka knew it was Asgrim, broad shouldered and with iron-grey hair. One hairy arm poked from the torn sleeve of his tunic.
A snowflake drifted down, a tingled kiss upon Orka’s cheek.
“Breca, stay behind me,” she said, padding forwards. Crows rose squawking from Asgrim’s corpse, complaining as they flapped away, settling among the treetops, one sitting upon a gatepost, watching them.
Snow began to fall, the wind swirling it around the plateau.
Orka looked down on Asgrim. He was clothed in wool and breeches, a good fur cloak, a dull ring of silver around one arm. His hair was grey, body lean, sinewed muscles showing through his torn tunic. One of his boots had fallen off. A shattered spear lay close to him, and a blooded hand-axe on the ground. There was a hole in his chest, his woollen tunic dark with crusted blood.
Orka kneeled, picked up the axe and placed it in Asgrim’s palm, wrapping the stiffening fingers around it.
“Travel the soul road with a blade in your fist,” she whispered.
Breca’s breath came in a ragged gasp behind her. It was the first person he had seen dead. Plenty of animals; he had helped in slaughtering many a meal for their supper, the gutting and skinning, the soaking of sinew for stitching and binding, the tanning of leather for the boots they wore, their belts and scabbards for their seaxes. But to see another man dead, his life torn from him, that was something else.
At least, for the first time.
And this was a man that Breca had known. He had seen life’s spark in him.
Orka gave her son a moment as he stood and stared wide-eyed at the corpse, a flutter in his chest, his breath quick.