There was an explosion of smoke and flame as Orka leaped from the doorway, down the steps, the hall collapsing behind her. She sucked in a deep lungful of air as a cloud of smoke and ash engulfed her, then waited for it to settle. Once she could breathe air again, she lay Vesli upon the ground beside Thorkel. The vaesen was breathing, limbs twitching. Orka placed the haft of the long-axe in Thorkel’s hand, folding his fingers around it. Then she was striding from the courtyard, out through the stockade’s gateway and searching for tracks.
They were not hard to find, many boot prints flattening the grass, and one set of horse’s hooves, heading east into wooded hills. There was blood, too. Bright droplets of scarlet sprinkled across the ground. She looked back through the gates of the steading, at Thorkel’s body, and then she was moving, breaking into a loping run through the clearing and into the trees, following the blood and tracks of those who had murdered her husband and stolen her son.
They had made no attempt at stealth, a wide path trampled through the undergrowth. Orka followed them eastwards, the trail slowly curving north, downhill, Orka guessing where they were headed before she heard the sound of the river.
The same as Asgrim’s killers. Thorkel followed their tracks to a river. He said three boats. A crew anywhere between twelve and thirty. Less the ten that Thorkel has sent along the soul road.
She increased her speed, the path clear, the thought of Breca setting a fire in her belly. Thorkel’s face hovered in her thought-cage: the blood on his lips, his words a whisper inside her skull. Grief swelled in her chest, melding with a forge-fire rage. Fear, anger, grief all spiralled and surged through her, merging into something new.
The sound of running water, and then, piercing through it, the scream of a horse.
Orka slowed, glanced up, saw it wasn’t long past midday. The trees were thinning. She glimpsed a fast-flowing river ahead, the diamond-glitter of icy meltwater from the mountains. Figures: two, three, maybe more. She stepped from the path into the undergrowth, crept in a half-circle through the woodland, until she was crouched behind a tree, fern and tall sage all about.
She peered around the tree.
A boat was pulled up on the bank. Snort the pony lay dead, blood soaking the ground from a wound in his neck, three men and a woman setting about butchering the animal with hand-axes and seaxes. They were all lean and hard-looking, wearing wool and fur and leather. Spears lay on the riverbank, and they all held sharp iron in their fists. A pile of offal steamed in the cool air. The river frothed and foamed, further on splitting into two channels as it forked around a slab of granite.
A deep, shuddering breath to still the tremors in her body, a whispered vow and then Orka stepped from behind the tree, hefted her spear and threw it. She was moving before it hit its mark, drawing her seax from its scabbard hanging across her stomach, slipping her axe from the hoop in her belt. There was a scream and gurgle as her spear pierced a man, tall and broad, wearing a green woollen tunic with a brown hood. The spear took him in the back, bursting out of his chest with a spray of blood as he crashed face down on to the dead horse.
The other three stopped, frozen for a heartbeat, one with her hand-axe raised in mid-stroke, chopping at the shoulder joints of Snort’s hind legs. They looked from their companion to Orka, who was speeding towards them, snarling, her blades glinting in the spring sun.
The two men spread wide, one old and grey, one too young to grow more than a few wisps on his chin. The woman in front of Orka set her feet and dropped into a crouch, axe raised. Orka veered left, her speed and change of direction taking the older man by surprise. Her hand-axe parried the rushed thrust of his seax as he stabbed at her; a twist and her axe blade bit into his wrist; a yelp and she crashed into him, her seax plunging deep into his belly. They staggered back together, close as lovers, Orka ripping her seax up, slicing and sawing flesh until her blade bit into his lower ribs. She shoved him and the man fell away screaming, intestines spilling about his ankles, and Orka stumbled on, towards the river, turning, slipping and skidding and then falling to her knees.
With a hiss of air, the woman chopped her axe where Orka’s head had just been. Orka hacked and sliced, axe and seax connecting with ankle and thigh and the woman screamed, wobbled, dropped to one knee, taking a backswing with her axe as she fell, slicing along Orka’s back and shoulder. A spurt of blood; a line of heat, of fire and pain. Orka growled at the woman, launched herself into her and the two of them crashed back on to the riverbank, rolling, spitting, snarling. Orka glimpsed boots striding close, the young warrior rushing after them, looming, hesitating as he searched for an opening. Orka’s axe went spinning and she grabbed the woman’s wrist, headbutted her, the crunch of broken cartilage. A gush of blood over the woman’s mouth and jaw as her eyes rolled back into her head, limbs flopping.