The last time Orka had seen her, Froa had laughed and danced and offered Orka a hand of friendship. Orka stared down at the corpse. Froa’s body had been chopped and hacked, splintered; here and there were blackened patches where she had been burned.
“Froa, what have they done?” Orka breathed as she dropped to her knees.
Froa, spirit of the Ash Tree, guardian of the forest, born of a seed from Oskutree, the great tree that had stood at the heart of Vigrie, the Battle-Plain, as the gods-fall had raged. Orka reached out and stroked Froa’s face. It was cold and hard.
“I wanted to give our thanks for your protection while we have lived within your forest, and ask your advice, of where we could go; a place where one of your kin still dwell.”
Froa’s frozen death-scream stared back at her.
Ach, who, or what, has done this? Who would dare? And who has this power?
Froa were powerful vaesen, their spirits bound to their tree of ash. They lived and died with it, so this Froa would have fought savagely to save the tree. Orka stood and walked to the stump of the ash tree. It had been hacked with many axes, and burned, too, bark black and blistered in great patches. Looking at the ground she could see great swathes of earth had been upturned, roots of the tree visible where it had lashed its assailants, and there were dark patches in the grass. Orka crouched, touched one with her fingertips. The blood was dark and congealed, almost black.
She stood, searched the area, found more patches of blood.
Many did this, and some died, or were grievously injured. They took their dead with them.
The dread that had been lurking in her veins surged.
Whoever did this, are they the ones who murdered Asgrim and Idrun, and stole Harek?
A sound on the breeze, faint and ethereal, coming from the west, beyond the ridge Orka had climbed to get here.
Screaming.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
VARG
Varg woke to pain. His body ached, a throbbing in his muscles that he had never experienced before, and he had worked a farm since before he could remember, and fought in the pugil-rings. He rolled and sat up, groaned.
I hate R?kia.
Various scabs pulled where she had nicked him intentionally with her spear, and his muscles ached as if fire were flowing through his veins, his left arm and shoulder from wielding a shield for a whole day, his back, torso, legs from trying to avoid R?kia stabbing him. And his right hand was blistered from the spear shaft she had eventually allowed him to hold.
But the pain in his body was as nothing to the pain in his head. A constant, rhythmic thumping, that reached fingers down his neck and into his churning belly.
He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands.
I hate mead more than I hate R?kia.
“No lamb for the lazy wolf,” a voice said.
“Huh?” Varg grunted, opening one eye.
“You’re a late riser, then,” Svik said, looming over him.
“Late?” Varg frowned, opening both eyes. The light seeping into the hall was bright, felt like it was burning into his skull. On the farm he had always risen before dawn, so in truth Svik was right, but these were exceptional circumstances. First, he had been beaten close to death by a man called Half-Troll, which didn’t happen every day, and then he had been kicked and beaten by a group of freedmen intent on chopping his hand off and dragging him fifty leagues across rocky ground. For six days he had sweated and writhed in a fever, and when he awoke he had been mocked, trained, stabbed, pushed and stabbed again by a lunatic woman with murder and contempt in her eyes. And finally, he had woken with what felt like a miniature J?kul the smith living inside his head, pounding and beating on an anvil inside his skull.
He looked up at Svik.
“What’s wrong?” Svik asked him.
“When I woke, I thought I was dead,” Varg mumbled. “And when I sat up, I wished that I was. I am never drinking mead again.”
“Ha,” Svik laughed, deep and genuine. “If I had an arm ring for every time I’ve heard that – or said it myself, for that matter – I would be rich as a jarl.”
Thralls had set fires in the hearths and hung black-iron pots over the flames, other warriors already risen from their beds of rushes around the hall’s edge, the smell of porridge and honey hanging thick in the chamber. Varg’s belly growled.
“You’re lucky R?kia is talking with Glornir, otherwise she would likely be prodding you with her spear for more training.”
“Stabbing me with it, you mean.”
“Aye, true enough,” Svik smiled.
He is always smiling, and mostly at my misfortune.