“Where are they from?” Varg asked a dock worker who was hurrying past with a thick coil of rope slung over her shoulder.
“Iskidan,” she grunted, not slowing.
“Iskidan,” Varg whistled. The land beyond the sea, far, far to the south. Varg had heard tales of Iskidan, of its wide rivers and grass plains, of its beating sun and of Gravka, the Great City. Part of him had thought it just a tale, a place to escape in the mind during the cold, harsh months of winter.
Varg took one last look at the strangers and then walked on, turning into another street that steepened, climbing a slope towards the cliffs that brooded over the town, Jarl Logur’s mead hall nestled at their foot. The reek of fish lessened as he climbed, replaced by urine and excrement. Steps were carved into the street that led to a wide-arched gate, beyond it the thick-timbered beams of the mead hall visible. A press of men and women were shoulder to shoulder on the steps. Varg paused a moment, looking for a way through, and then slipped between a man and a woman, trying to thread his way up the steps.
A hand grabbed his shoulder.
“Wait your turn, like everyone else,” a woman said. She was dark-haired, her face hard and sharp, her eyes cold. A woollen tunic and fur-edged cloak were draped about her shoulders, a weapons belt around her waist with scabbarded seax and hand-axe hanging from it.
“I need to see the Bloodsworn,” Varg said.
“Ha, don’t we all?” the woman said. “What makes you so special?”
Varg looked at her, then at the crowd around him.
“All these, they are here for the Bloodsworn?” Varg said.
“Aye,” the woman grunted, “what else?”
“Why?” Varg asked.
“There’s an empty sea-chest and a spare oar on their drakkar,” the woman said.
“Empty sea-chest?” Varg frowned.
“Are you touched in the head?” the woman said, prodding his temple through his cloak-hood with a hard finger. Varg didn’t much like it. “One of the Bloodsworn has been slain, and they are holding a weapons trial to fill his place.”
“Ah,” Varg nodded, understanding blossoming.
“So, wait your turn,” she said, then looked him up and down. “Or are you in a rush to have your arse dumped in the dirt?”
Laughter rippled through those around them.
Varg just looked at the ground and waited.
The crowd shuffled up the steps. As Varg drew closer to the mead hall the sounds of shouting drifted down to him, punctuated with cries of pain. A slow, steady stream of bloodied faces filtered back down the steps, some groaning and supported by others. Others were carried unconscious.
Varg reached the top step and looked over the shoulders of those in front of him. An arched gateway led into an open space before Jarl Logur’s mead hall, a huge building of scrolled timber sitting upon thick stone footings. In the space before the hall the ground was trampled and muddied, dark patches glistening here and there. Warriors ringed the area, fifty or sixty of them, hard-looking men and women, some wearing brynja coats of riveted mail with swords at their hips. Varg had only seen a sword once before, when the local drengr had visited Kolskegg’s farm to collect the tax due to Queen Helka. Varg had suspected that sword was worth more than all the goods loaded upon a wagon and the chest of coin that Kolskegg had given the man. Varg’s eyes were drawn to a bald-headed, thick-muscled warrior, more grey than black in his braided beard. He wore a plain-scabbarded sword at his hip, a fine brynja of riveted mail over his broad frame and rings of gold and silver wrapped around his arms and neck. The sword and brynja alone were probably worth as much as Kolskegg’s farm. There was wealth to be had in death-dealing. The bald man was talking to a raven-haired woman, a pattern of blue tattoos across her lower jaw and throat. The Seier-witch. Varg blinked in surprise at the iron collar around her neck, and instinctively put a hand to his own throat. The old warrior was leaning upon a long-axe as he spoke, the butt stuck in the ground, the single iron blade hooked and cruel-looking. Varg was accustomed to axes, the callouses on his hand testament to long years of use, but this was not an axe made for chopping timber. This was made for killing. Varg looked away, the sight of it setting some uneasy feeling trickling through his veins. All of the warriors in the square bristled with a mass of assorted weapons hanging from weapons belts. Big round shields were slung across their backs, some propped against the wall and steps of the mead hall. A few were painted pale blue as a winter’s sky with a red sail upon it, Varg recognising that as the sigil of Jarl Logur, but most of the shields around the square were painted crow-black, each one with a splattering of red across the pitch-paint, as if someone had cast droplets of blood across each shield.