“How old were you, when they died?”
“Ten, eleven winters?”
“If you die, I’ll never forget you,” Breca said, eyes wide and dark.
“I wanted to forget them,” Orka shrugged. “I am glad that you do not feel the same way.”
“Mama, were you…” Breca faltered, looking away.
“What?” Orka said. “A question is better out than in.”
“When we took Asgrim and Idrun’s bodies to Fellur, that man, Guevarr, he said you were shaking, said that you were scared of him…”
“Aye, he did,” Orka said, remembering the little weasel standing on the steps of Jarl Sigrún’s mead hall, snot dripping from his nose. “What of it?”
“Were you… scared?” Breca asked her.
Orka remembered the feelings that had swept through her, memories of blood and death, a cold rage spreading through her limbs, making her blood tingle and her muscles twitch. It had been a fear, of sorts. Not of Guevarr, but of what she might have done to him.
“I was,” Orka said.
Breca’s mouth dropped.
“Fear is no bad thing,” Orka said. “How can you be brave if you do not feel fear?”
“I don’t understand,” Breca said, frowning.
“Courage is being scared of a task and doing it anyway.”
Breca’s brow knotted as he thought on that, and then he slowly smiled. His eyes shifted focus and he scowled and sat up in bed, reaching over Orka’s shoulder.
“What is it?” Orka said, turning.
Breca stood in his cot, standing on his tiptoes, trying to reach a spiderweb in the crook of the beam. A moth was stuck in it, wings flapping, and a bloated spider had emerged from its lair, standing on a vibrating thread.
“Leave it, Breca. It is nature’s way. This is a red world of tooth and claw. The bird eats the mouse, the cat eats the bird, the wolf eats the cat, and so on. You cannot change this.”
“Ah, but, Mama, look how frightened that moth is,” Breca said, jumping now, but still not able to reach the web. “To see your death approaching with fangs like that, to be poisoned but still alive while your life is sucked from you. Surely that is no good death?”
Orka shrugged. He had a point.
The spider began to scurry along the thread towards the frantic moth.
“And if you were caught in a snare, or I, and someone could help us,” Breca said, “but instead turned their backs and walked away, what would you have to say about that?” He jumped higher, managed to touch the web and the scuttling spider froze.
If someone left you to die, I would throttle the life from them. I would stab them and gut them and…
Orka shook her head.
“There is too much room in that thought-cage of yours,” Orka grunted, but she stood and swiped at the web, knocking the moth free. It fell on to the floor, spun in a circle to shake off the last of the web that clung to it, then it was free and flying away.
Breca smiled at her, as if he had won a battle.
“Go to sleep,” Orka said, leaning over and tucking Breca back into his cot, kissing his cheek. He wrapped an arm around her and squeezed her tight, then settled back into his mattress of straw and down. Orka stood and padded to the back of the hall. As she stepped through the door into the chamber beyond, she looked back. Breca was curled in his bed, woollen blanket pulled up tight to his chin. Beside him she saw the glint of Vesli’s eyes in the firelight, watching her. She closed the door.
Moonlight threaded through shuttered windows, silvering her bedchamber, the bulk of Thorkel a snoring lump in their bed. Quickly she took off her boots and woollen socks, unbuckled her belt and laid it on a wide chest at the foot of their bed, pulled her wool tunic and linen undertunic over her head, climbed out of her breeches and slipped into bed beside Thorkel. He reached out a big hand and touched her hip.
“Now, do you want to be telling me what’s troubling you?” he murmured, his voice thick with sleep.
Orka sucked in a deep breath, felt the wyrm in her belly uncoil.
“Sigrún’s new thrall,” she breathed.
A silence. Thorkel rolled over, facing her. His eyes gleamed in the moonlight.
“Aye. She is úlfhéenar,” he said.
“She tasted your blood. I saw her lick it from her seax.” Orka’s fingers found the wound, a thin line across his ribs, scabbed now. It had not been deep.
“You do not know that. It could have been Virk’s blood. And anyway, she is úlfhéenar, not a Hundur. It would mean nothing to her.”