A figure sat next to her and she looked up to see Agnar. He was grinning, as he always was when they were at sea. Sighvat stood by the tiller and rudder, steering them southwards.
“You are either very brave, or very crazy, maybe even moon-touched,” he said, shaking his head, “leaping into a serpent-infested sea.”
Elvar shrugged, not sure which one it was. Courage or madness.
Maybe madness. I do not take the time to think about it. Can that still be courage?
Agnar took a gold ring from his arm and slipped it around Elvar’s upper arm, squeezing it tight.
“My thanks, lord,” she breathed.
“Courage and madness in the face of vaesen-serpents are both admirable qualities, and deserve rewarding,” Agnar said.
His smile faded.
“You should know, I am planning on taking our prize to Snakavik. Jarl St?rr is famed for his Berserkir thrall-guard, and I am thinking he will give us the best price.”
Elvar stared at Agnar. She felt like a stone had just been dropped into the pit of her stomach, dousing the joy she had felt at Agnar’s ring-giving.
Agnar shrugged. “Best you know now. Will this be a problem to you?”
“No,” Elvar said when she found her tongue, though the churning in her belly told her different.
“Good,” Agnar said, standing. “You have climbed high in the Battle-Grim,” he said. “Think of this as another battle, but one you fight with your wits and cunning, not the edge of your blade.”
Elvar nodded and Agnar walked away.
Grend turned on his sea-chest and just stared at her.
“We are going home then,” she said.
CHAPTER TEN
ORKA
Orka climbed the winding path that led to the Oath Rock. A westerly wind hissed across the island in the fjord and whipped the waters around it, sending white-tipped waves on to the beach before the village of Fellur. Orka paused, and looking back saw a host of boats rowing across to the Oath Rock island, mostly fishing boats and light snekkes, though Orka saw a drakkar pull away from the village’s pier. Thirty oars made for a small drakkar, though its hull and strakes were sleek and wolfish, the prow tall and proud. Seeing it stirred Orka’s blood.
Jarl Sigrún and her drengrs.
“Come on, Mama,” Breca said, pulling at her sleeve. He was excited at his first Althing, and Thorkel was striding ahead of them, disappearing around a curve of moss-covered rock. Orka grunted and walked on, following a path that twisted up through bracken and wind-blasted trees until it levelled out and spilled into a clearing. The remnants of a huge, rune-carved stone stood there. It had stood taller, once, but now it was smashed to little more than a stump, the faint angles of runes barely visible in the jagged shards of its base.
Breca gasped as he saw the rock, then frowned.
“What’s wrong?” Thorkel said as he leaned against the trunk of a twisted hawthorn tree. He wore his grey n?lbinding cap and a wolfskin cloak over his woollen tunic, a seax and hand-axe hanging at his belt.
“It’s smaller than I thought,” Breca said.
“Well, it was bigger once. Maybe as tall as a mead hall,” Thorkel said. “It has been smashed with hammers.”
“That is a shame,” Breca said.
Thorkel raised an eyebrow.
“Why destroy something that someone cared enough to build?” Breca said.
“Ha, that is some deep-thinking, there,” Thorkel smiled. “Hmm, some take pleasure in destruction. But this is different. This was an oath stone, where humankind swore their blood oaths to the gods, pledged their allegiances, worshipped them. And worshipping the dead gods is forbidden, now, punishable by death.”
An image flashed through Orka’s mind, of a woman hanging in an iron cage, ravens picking at her eyes and tongue.
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Breca said. “What harm can it do?”
“What harm?” Thorkel laughed. “The dead gods caused a lot of harm, most would say. They broke the world. That is why they are hated, why when the few survivors of the Guefalla emerged from the ruin of Snaka’s fall they hated and hunted the offspring of the gods, those whose blood was tainted with the gods’ bloodlines.”
Breca chewed his lip as he thought about that.
“Then why do they hold the Althing here?”
“Another good, deep-thinking question,” Thorkel shrugged. “Perhaps because the past runs deep in our blood and bones,” he muttered. “A rope we cannot see, binding us to it, whether we like it or not.”
Orka could see by the frown on his face that Breca didn’t much like that answer. She stood by her husband, letting the hawthorn tree and Thorkel’s bulk shelter her from the worst of the wind’s bite. She nodded a thanks to Virk, the fisherman who had invited them on to his boat, along with his two sons Mord and Lif, and rowed them over to the Oath Rock.