A raised eyebrow.
“I’ll see your coin, first,” the trader said.
Varg reached inside his cloak, pulled out a pouch, loosened the leather-draw and fished out a bronze coin. He dropped it on the trader’s table, the coin rolling and falling, revealing the stamped profile of a woman’s head. A sharp-nosed profile, hair pulled severely tight and braided at the neck.
“A Helka,” the trader said, his beard twitching.
“Queen Helka,” Varg said, though he had never seen her, only heard snatched talk of her: of her hubris, thinking she could rule and control half of Vigrie, and of her ruthlessness against her enemies.
“Only calls herself queen so she can tax us down to our stones,” the trader grunted.
“No good to you, then?” Varg said, reaching for the coin.
“I didn’t say that,” the trader said, holding a hand out.
Faster than it took to blink, Varg snatched up the cleaver the trader had put down and chopped at the coin, hacking it in two. He lifted one half up between finger and thumb, left the other hack-bronze on the table.
“Where’d a dirty thrall come by a pouch of Helka-coin, anyway? And where’s your master?” the trader grunted, eyeing him.
Varg looked at him, then slowly put a hand out towards the coin again.
The trader shrugged and scooped a ladle of stew into the bowl, handed it to Varg.
“Some of that bread too,” Varg said, and the trader cut a chunk from a black-crusted loaf.
Varg dipped the bread in the stew and sucked it, fat dripping down his chin, into his newly grown beard. The stew was watery and too hot, but it tasted like pure joy to Varg. He closed his eyes, dipped, sucked, slurped until the bread was gone, then upended what was left of the stew into his mouth.
He put the bowl down and belched.
“I’ve seen hungry men before,” the trader said, “but you…” He whistled, gave a half-smile.
“Is there a Galdurman, or Seier-witch in Liga?” Varg asked, cuffing stew from his chin.
The trader signed a rune across his chest and frowned. “No, and what do you want with the likes of them?”
“That’s my business,” Varg said, then paused. “That’s my master’s business. Do you know where I can find one?”
The trader began to turn away.
Varg put the other half-bronze back on the table.
The trader looked at him appraisingly. “The Bloodsworn docked yesterday. They have a Seier-witch thrall.”
The Bloodsworn!
The Bloodsworn were famed throughout the whole of Vigrie, and most likely beyond. A band of mercenary warriors who hired themselves out to the highest bidder, they hunted down vaesen-monsters, searched out god-relics for wealthy jarls, fought in border disputes, guarded the wealthy and powerful. Tales were sung about them by skálds around hearth fires.
“Where are they?” Varg said.
“You’ll find them in Liga’s longhouse, guests of Jarl Logur.”
“My thanks,” Varg said. Then he dipped his hand back in his pouch and threw another hack-bronze on the table.
“What’s that for?” the trader said.
“Your silence. You never saw me.”
“Saw who?” said the trader, looking around, a smile twitching his thin beard, even as his hand snaked out and scooped up the coins.
Varg’s hand darted out, faster than the trader’s, and gripped the man’s wrist. He stared into the trader’s eyes, held his gaze a long moment, then let go; in the same movement he swept the cleaver from the table and hefted it.
“How much?” he said.
“You can have that,” the trader shrugged.
Varg nodded and slipped the cleaver inside his cloak, pulled his hood back up and walked into the crowd.
He made his way through the streets of Liga, past a quayside that heaved with activity, men and women unloading a newly docked merchant knarr. Its belly was wide and deep, sitting low in the water. Varg thought he heard the muted neighing of horses from deep in its hull and two more similar-looking ships were rowing into the docks. A group of strange-looking men and women were disembarking from the moored knarr. They wore caps of felt and fur and silver-buckled kaftans, with their breeches striped in blues and oranges, baggy above the knee, wrapped tight with winnigas leg-bindings from knee to ankle. Their skin was dark as weathered leather and they were escorted by a handful of warriors who wore long coats of lamellar plate that shimmered like scales as they moved. They had curved swords hanging at their hips, the men with long drooping moustaches, and their heads were completely shaven, apart from a long, solitary braid of hair. Varg paused and stared at them as they turned and shouted at sailors on the ship, gangplanks slamming down on to the jetty, pier-cranes swinging to hover over the ship’s belly.