“I’ll have the axe, then,” he told the trader, and fished out more coin. “How about that?” he asked, pointing to a fine brynja shirt of mail hanging on a rack, riveted rings gleaming with oil.
“You cannot afford it,” Svik said.
“And besides, it is better to take one from the corpse of your enemy,” R?kia said. “Better to win it in a scrap. How else are you going to earn your battle-fame?” She looked at him as if he was moon-touched.
The thought crossed his mind that if he fought a warrior already wearing a coat of mail, then the odds were that the warrior was skilled, certainly more skilled than him, and would have the extra benefit and protection of ring mail, so the likelihood of Varg surviving long enough to take the brynja off his enemy’s dead body was not high. And besides, Varg had never thought about battle-fame in all his life. Even when he was fighting in the pugil-ring it had only ever been for the next meal, and then after that because Kolskegg had given him no choice.
“A coat of mail is a wonder,” Svik said, “and very good at keeping sharp iron out of your body, but more important is this,” he said, tapping a plain helm that sat on the table. Four plates of iron riveted with bands and a nasal guard.
“A stab to your body, you may live. A stab to the head…” he shrugged.
Varg picked it up and looked inside it, saw a sheepskin liner and leather strips to adjust the fit. He tried it on, buckling up the chinstrap.
“Good,” R?kia said, rapping it with her knuckles.
“And it conceals your hair, which is also good,” Svik said. “I suggest you keep it on until your hair is as long and beautiful as mine.”
R?kia snorted.
“Here,” Svik said, pointing at more goods laid out on the table. There were flints and iron for striking sparks, fishhooks and animal gut for the stitching of wounds, rolls of linen bandages, another flat piece of iron fixed to a curved grip of wood and leather.
“What’s that?” Varg asked.
“An iron for the cauterisation of wounds,” R?kia said, with another twist of her eyebrows at his ignorance.
“We have bought everything you need to put holes in other people,” Svik smiled, “but you need to take some precautions in case someone else puts a hole in you.”
“Sensible,” Varg muttered, feeling like he was marching blindly down a track that he would not be able to return from.
“Good. We are done then,” R?kia said, looking at the sun in the sky. “Best be getting back.”
Varg had thrown his old tunic and breeches on a fire that was burning in a space outside near the back of the mead hall, beneath stooping cliffs and pine trees, along with his shoes that were more holes than leather. Then he scrubbed his body in ice-cold water from a barrel, using a brush of stiff horsehair lathered with soap of ash and fat. A trencher of cold mutton and pickle had been put in front of him by Svik as he’d dressed, and he had stuffed in mouthfuls of the smoked meat as he’d wrapped his winnigas tightly around his calves and buckled on his belt. Finally, he hooked the chinstrap of his iron helm through his belt and buckled it, so that it hung alongside his weapons. It felt strange, with the weight of axe, seax, helm and cleaver hanging at his belt alongside his pouch, and unimaginable that he could be dressing like this. But it felt good to be clean, to be wearing such fine clothes that he would never have worn to his dying day if he had stayed on Kolskegg’s farm. He felt a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth and he wished that Fr?ya could see him. The thought of her cold in the ground withered his smile.
“Better,” Svik said, regarding Varg as he stood straight. “You no longer look like a thrall or a nieing beggar. Oh, and this is yours: a gift from Glornir,” he said, holding up the black-painted shield Varg had used in training the day before. He slung it across his back and picked up his sack with all else that he had purchased in Liga. Then a horn was blowing and Svik was hurrying Varg into the mead hall’s courtyard, where Jarl Logur and his wife S?lla stood in the open doors, a dozen of his oath-guard around him. Glornir stood at the head of the Bloodsworn in a gleaming brynja, an iron helm hanging at his belt, his long-axe in his fists. Behind him a mass of warriors were gathered, with their black-and-red spattered shields slung over their backs, a mixture of brynjas, woollen tunics and boiled, hardened leather, spears and long-axes held in fists, resting on shoulders.
A nod passed between the two lords and then Glornir was leading them out of the courtyard. Glornir saw Varg and Svik standing at the courtyard’s side; he said something and held his hand out, and Vol handed him a grey, ash-hafted spear with a leather cover over the spearhead.