“Elvar,” a voice called. It was Sighvat, who was standing and looking back at her. “This way, with us, you halfwit.”
Elvar shared a look with Grend and changed direction, following after Agnar and Sighvat and the others.
They climbed ever higher, winding through the streets of the town-in-the-skull, until Sighvat was red and blowing, sweat soaking him. They passed a tavern where a dozen or so warriors were stood outside, talking, leaning on a wall, drinking from horns. All of them were dressed well, in good war kit: mail and leather and wool, a few with swords at their hips, always the sign of a good gold-giving chief. Elvar noticed that each one of them had a black raven’s feather tied into their hair. Some had shields slung across their backs or resting against the tavern wall. They were painted grey, black wings unfurled around the boss.
The Raven-Feeders. Elvar knew them. A crew with a ruthless reputation, led by Ilska Raven-Feeder, or Ilska the Cruel, some called her.
The warriors eyed Agnar and his companions as they walked past the tavern. Agnar was well known, a man of high battle-fame and reputation, and Huld and Sólín had their red shields with painted spear and axe over their backs, the known sigil of the Battle-Grim.
One of the Raven-Feeders, a fair-haired warrior with a beard patched with red and gold, leered at Elvar, smiling at her.
“Come join us,” he said to her, gesturing with a horn of mead. He looked at fat-bellied Sighvat and grey-haired Grend. “I promise you a better time than you’ll get from these old timers.” He blew her a kiss, silver thick around his neck and arms.
Grend slowed, giving the man a dark look.
“Got something to say, old man?” the blond warrior said.
Elvar stepped between them, pushing Grend on, and looked the blond warrior up and down.
“I’d rather hump old Svin the dead boar,” Elvar said, then turned and walked on.
A few laughs rippled among the blond warrior’s companions, as well as a stream of insults that followed them up the street. Sighvat growled at Huld to ignore the taunts as she turned her head to glower at them.
They turned a corner and left the tavern and the Raven-Feeders behind them.
Checkpoints came and went, each time Agnar stopping to talk to guards at gate towers, showing the mooring rights the harbour official had given him, handing over more coin for a speedier passage to the fortress. Eventually they came to a levelled peak on the slope, and from here they began to climb the winding stair, built of timber thicker than masts, wide enough for a dozen to walk abreast. It hugged the back of Snaka’s skull, spiralling high above the town, and then disappeared into one of the gaping fissures through the serpent’s bone.
Elvar paused to look down over the thick railing posts, and saw the town spilling down the slope like too much porridge boiling over from a pot. Lights flickered through the smoke-smear, and her eyes picked out the Wave-Jarl, bobbing in the harbour, small as a rivet-nail from this height. Then Grend was grunting at her and she turned and walked into the bone tunnel, moisture dripping, the timber steps slick, smoke from oil braziers thick around her.
Elvar counted off the steps, as she had when she was a child.
“Two hundred and twelve,” she breathed as she broke into daylight, the party emerging on to the crown of the skull like maggots from a wound. Cold wind scoured them, a fine rain swirling like mist. Elvar sucked in clean air, feeling its chill crackle in her lungs. The sun was sinking into the western horizon, spreading a diffuse glow through rain-bloated clouds.
A road of timber planks led eastwards across the skull towards a plateau of granite, upon which the fortress of Snakavik stood. Thick timber walls and a strong gatehouse were touched by the last light of day, the roofs of buildings visible within, a mead hall at the heart of the fortress. Even from here Elvar could see the curling, snake-carved beams of the mead hall’s roof, the hall larger than some towns Elvar had seen on her travels. Behind the hall reared a Galdur tower, where Galdurmen learned their rune-dark ways.
Without a word they strode along the road, Grend ahead of her, his hood up, head down, shoulders hunched against the wind and rain. The gates were open, a dozen guards standing either side, more helmed warriors looking down on them from the gate tower’s ramparts. They wore fine mail and held yellow shields with a knotted serpent coiled around the iron boss, jaws gaping. A woman stepped out to meet them, a captain judging by her war gear. A helm with dark eye sockets and etched with bronze was buckled on her head, and her hand rested on the pommel of a scabbarded sword.