“You made the wrong choice,” Orka said.
The lad nodded, whimpering. “He said I’d get paid in gold for climbing over a wall and opening a gate. I’ve got sharp eyes, long arms and quiet feet.” His breath came in ragged spurts.
“You opened the gate to my steading,” Orka said, voice cold. A flash of Thorkel’s face, blood on his lips, hovered behind her eyes. She twisted her spear in the lad’s arm.
He screamed, writhed, screamed again.
“Who took my son? Who is the chief, the gold-giver?”
“I… can’t tell you,” the boy wheezed, strings of spittle drooling from his mouth.
Orka’s knuckles whitened on the spear.
“Please, no more,” the lad sobbed.
“His name,” Orka said.
“I… fear him,” the lad begged, weeping. There was a sharp tang of ammonia as his bladder failed him, a dark stain spreading through his breeches.
“Fear me,” Orka snarled. She twisted the spear again, leaned and grabbed the hilt of her seax still buried in his leg, dragging it slowly against the bone of his thigh.
She waited for his screams to fade. It took a while.
“His name,” Orka said.
The lad looked up at her, eyes almost mad with pain.
“Drekr,” he breathed.
Orka tugged her spear free and, as the lad opened his mouth to scream, she plunged it into his chest, put her weight into it, felt the blade pass between ribs and pierce his heart.
A gout of dark blood bubbled from the boy’s mouth, choking his scream, and then the life was fading from his eyes.
Orka tugged the blade free and wiped it clean on the lad’s tunic. She stared at the river, at the granite rock where the river foamed white, splitting and forking into two paths. Beyond the rock face the twin rivers twisted and disappeared as the land dipped, dropping towards the fjord and Fellur village.
“Drekr,” Orka whispered to the cold blue sky.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
VARG
Varg walked through the streets of Liga, Svik and R?kia guiding him. In a short time and with their help he had acquired two linen under-tunics, wool breeches, a grey-wool tunic woven in a fine herringbone, winnigas leg-wraps with bronze hooks, goatskin turn-shoes, a n?lbinding knitted cap and socks, leather gloves lined with sheepskin, a belt with bronze fittings, a seax in a plain leather scabbard with an elk-antler hilt, and a fine sealskin cloak. And a hemp sack to put it all in. He felt like a rich jarl, traders fawning over him. He knew it meant nothing, that they were doing it because of his coin and the two Bloodsworn warriors accompanying him, but part of him felt… good. That was a strange sensation, one that he had not felt for a long time.
He saw the trader who had given him the cleaver, and Varg gave him a coin because the man had shown him a kindness when he was a nieing thrall. And he bought Svik and R?kia a bowl of stew and a slice of bread.
“And a round of cheese?” Svik asked the trader.
“You like cheese, don’t you?” Varg observed.
“Who does not?” Svik answered, frowning as he took the cheese.
They walked on, R?kia stopping at a stall with knives and axes laid out across a trestle table.
“You need this,” R?kia said, hefting an axe. She held it out to Varg. He took it, felt the balance. The shaft was short, the axe head curved and unusually weighted. He was no stranger to working with axes, having felled much timber and chopped a mountain of firewood over the years on Kolskegg’s farm, but he had never felt one like this.
“It’s weighted for throwing,” Svik said. “See the curve of the haft and blade.”
“Ah,” Varg said, patting the axe’s poll in his palm.
“You ever fight with an axe?” R?kia asked him.
“No. I told you, only with my fists.”
“Aye, well, you should have an axe, then. You’ll have a spear, and you cannot afford to buy a sword.”
“Or know how to use one,” Svik added. “Most likely you’d end up chopping half your head off. Spear, seax and axe, they are a good place to start.”
“And it is always good to have a few blades on your belt,” R?kia said. “You never know what is around the bend in the road.”
Varg wasn’t sure how he felt about all this talk of warcraft. His driving thought had been revenge for Fr?ya: to make his sister’s murderer scream. It felt strange, and disloyal, to allow anything else to take up room in his thought-cage.
This is my way to fulfilling my oath. A twisting path, but it is the only way forward.