A searing pain ran across Orka’s waist and she yelled, thrust the stunned woman away, rolled on the bank, the young man following, slashing wildly at her with his seax. Orka swung her blade, sparks flaring as the seaxes clashed and she kicked out, took the lad in the ankles, sending him crashing down beside her. She rolled and stabbed her seax into his thigh, deep; heard him scream; felt the blade grind on bone; pushed herself away as he swung at her.
Orka climbed unsteadily to her feet and spat blood, pain throbbing across her back and shoulder, her waist. She ignored it all, walked a few paces and bent and picked up her hand-axe.
The lad tried to climb to his feet, screamed and collapsed. He wrapped a fist around the hilt of Orka’s seax, embedded in his leg.
The woman groaned, moving groggily.
Orka stumbled over to the waking woman and looked down at her.
“You killed my husband and took my son,” Orka snarled, lifting her axe.
“Mercy,” the woman blurted, raising a hand.
Orka chopped down, severed fingers spinning away, the axe blade crunching into the woman’s face. A strangled scream cut short. Feet drummed on the grass.
Thorkel’s blood-covered face hovered in Orka’s mind, Breca’s voice ringing out. At the Froa-tree, it had been his screams she had heard at the steading. She ripped her axe free, her mouth twisting, tears clouding her vision, and she chopped down again, and again, and again, arm rising and falling, the crunch of bone turning to a wet, pulped sound. Orka screamed, a feral, tortured noise of rage and grief, and all the while she chopped her axe into what remained of the woman on the ground. Blood and bone flew, spraying Orka, drenching her red.
A whimper came from behind her and she slowed, stopped, breathing hard. Turned.
She looked to the lad.
He was on the ground, one hand clenched around Orka’s seax that was buried deep in his leg, his other holding his own blade, pointing it at Orka. He was staring at her with wide eyes, transfixed, trembling, his face pale as sour milk, twisted in pain and fear and revulsion. Tears cut lines through grime on his cheeks.
Orka threaded her axe haft into the loop on her belt and walked towards the corpse of the man draped over her slaughtered pony. She grabbed her spear shaft, put a boot on the dead man it was buried in, and heaved it free, then walked towards the boy.
“Back, stay back, or I’ll gut you,” he said desperately, face twitching, seax wavering.
“You couldn’t gut a dead fish,” Orka snarled, striding closer. Her spear darted out, around his clumsy parry and stabbed into his forearm. He shrieked, dropping his seax. Orka levelled the spear at him.
“Please,” he squawked as he scrambled away, whimpering with pain as the seax in his leg shifted, realising he could go no further when he felt the river lapping at his back.
There was one boat pulled up on the riverbank, eight oar-stations in it. The ground along the riverbank was scored deeply with ruts from two other boats. Spatters of blood led up to one of the spaces a boat had occupied.
Injured among the survivors. Breca?
Orka looked north, downhill, saw the water foam white around a wedge of dark granite, the river splitting, forking into two channels. Two paths the nieings who had stolen her son could have taken. She looked back to the lad on the ground before her.
“Where is my son?” Orka asked him, spear pointed at his chest.
He looked at her, blood-drenched and grim, then at the spear. With a twist of his body he threw himself backwards, into the river. Orka lunged forwards, grabbed an ankle and hauled him back out. She held her spear high, spun it into a reverse grip and stabbed down, into his shoulder, leaving the blade embedded in flesh and muscle.
He screamed, tears running down his cheeks, snot hanging from his nose.
“I am going to kill you,” she said. “Your days are done.” He screamed and begged as she stood over him, holding the spear in his flesh. “Tell me what I want to know, and it will be quick,” she snarled at him. “Or you can have more pain.” She paused and stared into his weeping face until his snivelling faded to a whimper and she was sure she had his attention. “Where is my son?”
“On the river. They took him,” the lad squeaked.
Orka pushed down on the spear and the lad shrieked. The spear blade sliced deeper, through his shoulder and out into earth, pinning him to the ground.
“I know that, you little weasel-shite,” Orka grunted. “Where are they taking him? What route did they take on the river where it forks?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he mumbled, “I came with my uncle.” He glanced at the dead man flopped over the horse’s carcass.