Your loyalty to Jarl St?rr’s coin, you mean, Elvar thought, unable to stop her lip curling.
Silrie took the chain and led Berak away, the two Berserkirs with her pushing close to Berak, snuffling and snorting.
“Well met, brother,” one of them growled. Berak ignored them and followed Silrie with his head down, feet shuffling.
“Silrie will bring you your payment,” Jarl St?rr said. It was clearly a dismissal. Agnar dipped his head and turned, walking away, Elvar and his small crew following him.
“Hold.” A voice rang out in the hall, vibrating through Elvar’s body. The giant head Hrung’s eyes were wide, nose twitching and sniffing. He stuck his tongue out, licked the air as if tasting it, then closed his mouth and smacked his lips.
“Elvar,” he said into the hall.
Jarl St?rr stared at Hrung, the two men at his shoulder taking a step forward.
“You must be mistaken,” Jarl St?rr said.
“Elvar is here,” Hrung said, his bass voice filling the room.
Elvar stopped with a sigh and turned, dimly aware that Grend was turning beside her, Agnar’s crew coming to a halt.
Elvar put her hands to her hood and pulled it back.
“Hello, Father,” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ORKA
Orka crept through thinning trees, Fellur village appearing ahead as a blacker shadow against the crow-dark of night. Wind soughed through the woodland about her, stirring branches and picking white foam on the fjord that reflected faint starlight and moonglow. The sound of boats creaking drifted on the wind.
She reached the last of the trees and waited, staring, then glanced to the east. Dawn was still little more than a thought, here in the dead of night where all were asleep.
Except for the hunters, Orka thought. The prowlers and shadow-walkers.
But she knew she would have to move, soon. The journey from her steading to Fellur had taken over half a day, and then she had taken more time to stow her spear and hemp sack. She did not need them for what she was about to do. But dawn would not wait for her, and she had dark work to do. Every moment away from Breca grated on her, like claws scraping bone, but something in her gut told her this was the wisest course, rather than choosing to follow one of the two river channels, not knowing which one Breca had been rowed down. She needed information and an image clawed insistently in her thought-cage. Of Jarl Sigrún’s new thrall licking Thorkel’s blood from her seax.
The open strip of land that lay between the woodland and village gates was filled with the tents of those who had come to attend the Althing. Here and there the orange-glow of embers from half burned-out fires leaked into the darkness. Orka whispered an oath, then stepped from the trees and picked her way through the tents. She took her time, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness, avoiding looking at any fire-glow, until she had passed through them all and stood before the barred gates.
There were no guards.
She took a few long strides and leaped up at the wall, grabbed the timber top and heaved herself up, swung one leg over, the momentum carrying the rest of her body after it. She dropped into mud, boots first, with a squelching thud, and stayed there, crouched, listening.
Ten heartbeats, twenty and there was no sound. She stood and padded into the village, disappearing into shadow.
All was silent in the village, not even dogs stirring at her passing. Soon the courtyard opened up before her, cold and still, the mead hall looming dark against starlight. Another long pause, Orka listening, eyes scouring the darkness. She spied something on the steps to the mead hall’s doors: a deeper shadow. A guard sat sleeping, propped against a pillar, a thick fur pulled around their shoulders.
Orka slipped around the courtyard’s edge, always keeping a wall to her back, then froze. A sound.
A groan, coming from the courtyard before the mead hall’s steps.
She stared, shapes coalescing. Two figures were slumped on the ground, arms raised high, bound at the wrists and tied to a post. One of them was weeping, a sad, pathetic sound; the other looked to be asleep or unconscious.
The clouds parted, moonlight gilding the courtyard for a few heartbeats, then it was gone, hidden behind more cloud.
But Orka had seen who it was tied to the stake.
Mord and Lif, Virk’s boys.
They went back to the Althing.
If they were staked out in the courtyard then they had committed a crime and would be awaiting trial, or the enforcement of a punishment.
Orka paused, looking at the sleeping guard on the steps. She should leave them, and was about to, when Breca’s face appeared in her thought-cage.