“I feel sad for Mord and Lif, Mama,” he had said to her.
She ground her teeth, then she was creeping across the courtyard, bent low, coming up behind the two brothers. She slipped a hand around the mouth of the one who was awake, Lif, the younger of the two brothers. She felt him stiffen and struggle, hissed in his ear.
“It is Orka. Be still.”
He froze.
“I’m going to let you go. Make a sound and I’ll kill you myself,” she breathed in his ear.
He nodded and she released him then crept around so that he was between her and the guard on the mead hall steps. She put a hand to Mord, who was slumped against the post. Blood trickled from a wound in his scalp, but he was breathing.
“We went back,” Lif whispered. “Tried to kill Guevarr. We failed. Tomorrow we will be tried: outlawry or execution, Sigrún said.”
Orka put a finger to her lips, then crept away from Lif, towards the sleeping guard. As she slipped her seax from its scabbard she saw that the guard on the steps was a woman, strands of fair hair escaping the hood of her cloak and shimmering in tattered starlight.
Timber creaked as she put her weight on to the first step.
The guard stirred and opened her eyes.
Orka stabbed her seax into her throat, pushing deep, her other hand clamping over the woman’s mouth as she felt her blade grind on the spine. She dragged the seax free with a surge of blood, black in the starlight, and the guard slumped, gave a gurgle and then she was still. Orka wiped her blade on the guard’s fur cloak, propped her up so that she would remain in her sleeping position, then padded back to Lif.
He was staring, eyes wide.
Orka raised a finger to her lips, then sawed at the rope tying Lif and Mord to the post. Lif came free first and caught Mord as his arms flopped and his body teetered towards the mud.
Orka leaned close and whispered in Lif’s ear.
“Take your brother to your boat, gather any provisions you can carry in a bag, and be waiting for me on the fjord, as close to the rear of the mead hall as you can get. If you see the first hint of dawn and I’m not there, leave.”
Orka slipped away before Lif could say anything.
She eased around the side of the mead hall and crept silently through shadow, until she was close to the hall’s rear. There were no openings along its length, only one shuttered window. That marked Jarl Sigrún’s sleeping chamber. Orka knew drengrs would be sleeping in the main chamber of the hall, around the hearth fire, though not Jarl Sigrún’s full strength of warriors. A party of riders had passed Orka on the path from the hills, six of Sigrún’s oathsworn warriors, and a handful of others, some walking, some driving an oxen-pulled cart. Guevarr had not been among them. They had been ordered to investigate the fire and smoke from Orka’s steading, she guessed. But that would still leave at least a dozen drengrs at Fellur. Jarl Sigrún would want them around her to impose security at the Althing.
And Sigrún’s thrall will be with her.
Orka stood beside the shuttered window, quietly slid her seax from its scabbard and worked at the lock, slowly, gently, until she felt the clip give. In one swift movement she pulled it open and climbed into the frame of the open window, stepping into the chamber.
Darkness, a hearth fire glow, a bed, two figures in it. Movement at the bed’s foot as someone uncoiled from sleep around the hearth fire. The glint of fire-glow on iron: the thrall’s collar.
Orka stepped into the chamber, the figures on the bed stirring, a wool blanket pushed back, revealing Jarl Sigrún and a lover lying naked, entwined together. The man was waking, disentangling his legs from Sigrún’s and pushing himself up on to one elbow, his slim body pale, muscles etched in starlight and fire-glow. Orka slashed at his throat: a spurt of blood and he fell back gurgling. Orka clubbed the hilt of her seax into Sigrún’s jaw as the jarl jolted awake and started to sit up, sending her crashing back to the mattress, and then Orka’s seax was levelled at the thrall, who was on her feet, her seax half-drawn. The tip of Orka’s blade touched the thrall’s throat.
“Let it go,” Orka hissed.
The thrall stared at her, a hint of amber in her eyes, tension in her muscles. An exhaled breath, then she let her seax slide back into its scabbard and lifted her hand clear.
“I need their names, and where they are going,” Orka said.
The thrall’s mouth opened to speak.
“Do not lie to me,” Orka broke in. “I know it was you. I saw you taste my husband’s blood.” A tremor rippled through her, a wave of rage. She took a moment, controlling it, controlling the urge to stab and kill and destroy. “Their names, and a destination,” Orka breathed.