A pace behind her like a faithful hound another warrior strode: a woman, her face lean and scarred, the sides of her head shaved and pale, swirling with tattoos, a thick strip of grey-black braided hair running across the top of her head. She wore plain breeches and a tunic of wool, and had two seaxes hanging at her belt, one across the front, one suspended behind her back.
And she wore a thrall’s collar.
But it was to her eyes that Orka was drawn. Flat and merciless, they scanned the crowd, as if weighing up their prey.
Jarl Sigrún had many thralls, to clean and cook and work her farms, but Orka had never seen her with a warrior-thrall before. And this one had a look that Orka had seen before.
A hopelessness that leaked from her.
The sight of her set Orka’s skin crawling, as if spider-legs scuttled down her spine.
“Welcome, all,” Jarl Sigrún said as she came to stand before the shattered oath stone, her drengrs arrayed about her like a curling hand, the warrior-thrall prowling behind her. Sigrún’s voice was strong and confident, rising above the hiss of the wind and reaching across the crowd of hundreds. “I am not one for the flapping of lips and tongue, so I will say this straight and simple. I have sworn my oath to Queen Helka.” She pulled up the woollen sleeve of her tunic and showed a fresh-scabbed cut on her forearm. “And sealed it with my blood.”
A ripple of murmurs sounded around the clearing.
“You have come to tell us the good news of higher taxes, then,” Virk called out beside Orka. Other voices shouted their agreement, and their anger.
Jarl Sigrún turned her eyes on Virk and held his gaze a long moment. Virk returned it. Orka could smell the anger seeping from him.
“No, I have come to tell you that the world is changing, and we must change with it,” Sigrún said. “I became jarl of Fellur eight years ago and swore on my blood and life to protect the village, and those who lived within it. That is what I have done, and I have spread that protection, making life safer for you all on the plains and hills as far as your eyes can see.”
“On a cloudy day, perhaps,” one of Virk’s sons whispered to the other.
“But I cannot protect you from what is to come,” Sigrún said.
“Life is good here as it is,” Virk answered, his sons adding their voices. “We do not need change, or Helka.”
“Aye, life has been good, here at Fellur, but life runs in seasons, and seasons do not last for ever. Jarls are rising throughout all Vigrie, powerful jarls that I can no longer protect you from. Jarl St?rr in the north-west has spread his borders ever south and east, and he has his eyes on this land. This fjord. Jarl Orlyg sitting in Svelgarth to the east has raided our lands. And Queen Helka, she too is… ambitious.”
Ambitious jarls, I have seen the price of that. And Helka calls herself a queen. She would lift her head above the pack and rule them. It is as Thorkel feared. Worse.
Orka shared a look with Thorkel, whose brows were knotted in a thundercloud.
“She wants our land, and the fruits of our labour,” Virk cried. “She would make of us tenants who pay tribute for land we’ve hunted and tamed and farmed with our own hands, no help from her.”
The warrior-thrall stopped pacing and turned her flat eyes upon Virk. She stood unnaturally still.
One of Virk’s sons touched his arm, but he shook it off.
Many shouts from the crowd agreed with Virk.
A man stepped forwards, a fine red felt hat upon his head, trimmed with fur, a pale beard hanging with gold rings across the breast of his red-wool tunic. Orka and Thorkel had traded with him before: Fálki Torilsson, once a farmer, now made wealthy by deposits of tin found beneath his pastureland.
“Virk speaks what many of us are thinking, Jarl Sigrún,” Fálki said with a respectful bow. “And I am also thinking that we will be taxed for the honour of Helka’s protection?” he added.
Jarl Sigrún shrugged. “Most likely, Fálki,” she said. “It is the way of the world. Look at Iskidan in the south, a vast realm ruled over by one city, Gravka, and by one lord, the emperor Kirill. That is the way that Vigrie is going. It will happen soon. In our lifetime. The season is changing, autumn to winter, maybe, but there will be a spring beyond that, for those that survive the cold.”
“Aye, Helka would make herself an emperor, like Kirill of Gravka,” Virk spat. “But don’t forget that his throne is built upon a mountain of corpses, that there are more thralls than freedmen in Iskidan, and that they sacrifice children.”