This man on the ground before him, that had been different. He remembered everything, but most of all the sensation of his seax grating along the steel plates of the druzhina’s lamellar coat, finding the gap between plates and stabbing into it. Flesh parting; the hot rush of blood. It had been so easy, like slicing open a skin of wine. The man’s strength was fading, emptying from him along with his blood.
Varg’s guts spasmed and he vomited on to the stone.
“Huh,” a voice said and Varg looked up and saw R?kia standing over him. She was blood-spattered, arrows embedded in her shield. Her gaze moved from Varg, to the dead druzhina, to the pile of vomit between Varg’s feet.
“Your first kill then,” she said.
He didn’t feel like explaining, just spat bile from his mouth and looked back at her.
“It gets easier,” she said with a shrug.
There was a blowing of horns and the scrape of timber on timber. Varg climbed to his feet and saw the first of three huge drakkars pulling in alongside a pier close by, ropes thrown and moored. The eagle-sail had been furled and lowered, now, but the sight of the ship still made Varg gasp. Out on the fjord the three dragon-ships had looked impressive, but it had been the eagle-inscribed sails that had stopped the fighting and silenced all on Liga’s docks. The image of Orna the eagle-god spread in gold across the black sails: Orna, who had been slain on the day of Guefalla, and was now the banner of Queen Helka. Now that the drakkar was close Varg saw it was almost twice the size of the Sea-Wolf. Figures leaped over the top-rail on to the pier, a gangplank laid out.
And then people were walking across the gangplank, passing from the ship to the pier. Six, eight, ten, twelve of them, spreading in a loose half-circle across the pier, facing Varg and the docks. Warriors, clothed in mail, men and women, the sides of their heads shaved, skin covered in flowing, swirling tattoos. Swords and seaxes hung from their belts, grey woollen cloaks upon them, edged in fur. Even from this distance Varg knew there was something different about these warriors, just by the way they walked. They had that warrior’s confidence in their gait that Varg was becoming accustomed to in the Bloodsworn and Jarl Logur’s drengrs, but there was something more to these warriors on the pier, something fluid. They moved like a flock of birds, or a pack of wolves, as if without looking each one knew where the others were. But the thing that stood out most to Varg was the thrall-collars about their throats. He had never seen a thralled warrior before.
After them a woman crossed the gangplank, tall, hair long and black as ravens’ wings. It was pulled tight at her nape and braided, threads with gold wire curling through it, a red flowing cloak across her shoulders pinned with a brooch of gold. Arm rings glinted as her cloak blew and lifted in the breeze off the fjord. She, too, walked like a warrior, a sword at her hip, gold on the pommel and crossguard, gold wire wrapped around the leather hilt, the scabbard ornately tooled, a throat and chape of gold.
Queen Helka.
Behind her followed a man, young, black-haired, tall and broad, his clothing almost as fine as Helka’s, but where she wore gold, he wore silver. Beside him walked another man, equally as tall, dressed in a dark tunic and breeches, blond hair and beard braided with what looked like pewter or bone tied into and hanging from the braids. A thick, twisted torc coiled around his neck like a sleeping serpent. He wore no weapons upon his belt, just a gnarled staff in one fist, but he walked with the same confidence as one of the Bloodsworn. Behind him came more warriors in mail, spears in their fists and shields slung across their backs, though none of these wore thrall-collars.
Helka strode down the pier, her retinue keeping pace before and behind her.
Jarl Logur stepped out to meet her, and Varg saw Jaromir dismount, hand his reins to one of his druzhina and stride towards the queen.
“Well met, Queen Helka,” Jarl Logur called out as he strode to her, two of his oathmen with him. Helka stopped, the warriors spread before her rippling to a halt, barring Logur’s way. Helka said something and two of them stepped aside, allowing Logur to pass between them, but not Logur’s warriors.
“A fine greeting for me,” Varg heard Queen Helka say, looking at the warriors spread along the dockside: Bloodsworn, mounted druzhina and Logur’s warriors.
“There was a disagreement,” Logur said. “I was resolving it.”
Helka looked at him a moment, then nodded.
Jaromir reached Queen Helka’s thralled bodyguards. He walked as if he expected them to part for him. They did not, instead regarding him with cold, flat eyes. One of them sniffed him.