Thorkel slid into the grave, his fist still wrapped around the haft of his long-axe. Orka arranged it on his chest, then placed the scabbarded seax beside him. She slipped the rings of gold over his wrists and up his arms. She stood and continued her work, gathering timber from about the yard, stones as well, and she built a barrow about him. Finally, there was only one space open to the sky, only Thorkel’s face still visible. Orka paused and went back to the chest, reached in with both hands and pulled out a rolled sheepskin, laid it out on the ground and unrolled it, revealing a brynja of riveted mail. It had been inside a chest, buried in the ground for over ten years, but it glistened as if new, the grease and absence of air within the chest keeping it free of rust. Orka unbuckled her weapons belt that held her seax, axe and a pouch of tinder and kindling, and laid it on the ground. Then she lifted the brynja and threaded her arms into it, raising it high, her hands searching for the sleeves, and hoisted it over her head, the iron shirt slipping around her like the coils of a serpent. Orka shifted and wriggled and the coat slipped over her head and down her torso, hanging just above her knees. She twisted and shrugged, rolling her shoulders to settle it into place, adjusting to the weight, feeling it mostly upon her shoulders. It pulled at her wound. Crouching she reached back into the chest and pulled out a pouch that chinked with coin, then she picked up her weapons belt and buckled it tight, looped it, the belt helping to take some of the brynja weight from her shoulders.
A long moment, feeling the iron settle about her, as if it had never been gone. She turned and walked to the barn, found a hemp sack and filled it with provisions: a jar of oats, dried strips of salted pork and smoked trout wrapped in linen, a sealskin bag of whey and a round of hard cheese. A loaf of black bread. An iron pot and pan, a wood and leather water bottle. She filled that at the stream and packed everything into the sack, slung it over her shoulder and dropped it beside Thorkel’s barrow.
The sun was dipping towards the sea, sending Orka’s shadow stretching across the steading and she knew she had to go. But instead she stood and looked down upon Thorkel. With a sigh she stooped and picked up the seaxes that had taken his life. They were as long as her forearm, thick at the guard, single-edged and wide-bladed, with a sudden taper towards the blade’s tips. The hilts were carved from ash, knotwork spiralling around them, a brass cap where a sword’s pommel would be, a pin threaded with leather. Orka stared at them and slipped one into her belt. A coldness seeped through her blood like frost-touched iron, settling deep into her marrow. The other seax she held out and drew its blade across her forearm, a line of blood welling. She held her arm over the open barrow and watched as blood ran down her arm into her palm, and dripped from her fingertips on to Thorkel’s face.
“I am blood. I am death, I am vengeance,” she said, her voice flat, empty. Then she wiped the seax clean and slipped it into her belt, finally placing timber and stone on to the barrow, sealing Thorkel inside. She stooped, lifted her sack and picked up her spear, then strode out through the gateway.
With a hiss of wings Vesli flew around her, hovered over her.
“Vesli come with you, help mistress get Breca back,” the tennúr said.
“No,” Orka said. “Death is my only companion. Stay and help Spert.”
Vesli looked at the two seaxes that had slain Thorkel, thrust inside Orka’s belt.
“What are you going to do with them, mistress?” the tennúr asked.
Orka looked out, over the sloping hills and down to Fellur village, a smear far below.
“I’m going to find the owner of these blades, and give them back to him,” Orka snarled.
CHAPTER TWENTY
VARG
Varg sat on the cold stone of the dockside and stared at his hands. They were shaking, blood spiralling a pattern across his skin.
People were moving all around him, Jarl Logur’s drengrs filling the docks, a wall of blue-painted shields and bristling spears separating Glornir and the Bloodsworn from Prince Jaromir and his mounted druzhina. Voices were shouting, horses neighing. Varg looked down at the dead warrior on the ground before him. One of Jaromir’s warriors, clothed in lamellar plate, his horsehair-plumed helm twisted at an angle where he had fallen from his horse. Blood bloomed from the wound in his side that Varg had given him, pooled on the stones. But all Varg could see was the man’s eyes: flat and empty, staring at nothing.
Lifeless.
I took that life from him.
Varg had killed before, but he could not remember it. All he knew was that he’d come to his senses with his hands wrapped around the throat of one of Kolskegg’s freedmen, then looked around to see another handful dead, Kolskegg among them, a ragged wound where his throat had been torn out.