Orka threw her seax at him. Guevarr leaped backwards into the drengrs thick behind him and they all fell tumbling. The seax slammed into the doorpost, quivering. With a quick step forwards, Orka swept Vafri’s seax from her grasping fingers, the thrall’s hand falling away.
“Walk the soul road without a blade,” Orka snarled at the dying woman, then turned and ran at the window, hurling herself through into the darkness.
She landed on her shoulder, the soft ground breaking her fall, and rolled, managed to find her feet, a seax still in each fist, and ran. Shouts echoed out of Sigrún’s window, then the sound of someone scrambling through, dropping to the ground. Other voices sounded further away: drengrs using the mead hall doors.
Orka sprinted through an alley, spilled into a street, skidded, righted herself and ran left, then turned right, back into another alley. Lights were flaring as torches were lit, heads poking from doorways as the yelling of Jarl Sigrún’s drengrs woke the village.
Another street, figures stepping out of doorways, then another alley, and then Orka saw the glimmer of the fjord between buildings.
Horns blew out, loud and shrill, the village rippling to life.
Orka burst out of the alley into open ground, a gentle slope down to the fjord dotted with boats pulled up on to the beach, a small pier jutting out into the water. Orka’s feet slapped on timber as she ran, eyes searching, looking past the boats moored to the pier for Lif and Mord.
Then she saw them, both of the young men sitting on benches in their small fisher boat, oars ready. Orka ran harder, skidded on timber and leaped into the boat, where she fell in a heap.
“Row,” she gasped, pushing herself up. “Head south, for the sea.”
Mord and Lif dipped their oars without a word, Mord with a bloodstained bandage around his head.
Feet drummed on the pier; voices shouted at them. A spear hissed through the air, then disappeared with hardly a splash to Orka’s right. She saw Guevarr on the pier, shouting insults, swearing vengeance, veins bursting in his neck. The boat picked up speed, cutting a silver-foamed wake as it took them into the darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ELVAR
Elvar woke before dawn. For a moment she did not know where she was. The scent of mead and ale and urine helped her memory. She was in the hayloft of a tavern in Snakavik. Her head was full of memories and emotions, guilt, anger, pride, all swirling in her thought-cage as if caught in the current of a whirlpool. Rolling over she sat up, Grend close to her, his bulk a shadow as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. All about her lay the crammed, snoring bodies of the Battle-Grim. Pulling her boots on she stood, picked her rolled weapons belt up and made her way among them. A gentle glow showed her the opening to a steep ladder and she climbed down into the tavern.
Tables and benches were spread about a large room, the floor covered with dried rushes, dark patches of urine here and there, a flickering light coming from a hearth fire and an iron brazier of stinking whale oil.
Biórr and Thrud were down there and awake, Biórr stirring a pot of porridge over a small hearth fire and Thrud sitting with his legs stretched out, picking at his nails with a knife. Uspa and Bjarn were sitting on a bench in the corner of the room, a blanket across them both, a tafl board on the table in front of them. Bjarn smiled at her as she climbed down the ladder. So did Biórr.
There was a clatter of pots through a doorway and Elvar glimpsed the innkeeper and his wife.
“Porridge?” Biórr asked as she reached the ground and stretched. He was ladling some into two bowls, which he took over to Uspa and Bjarn. Elvar didn’t much feel like company; she had hoped to sit at a dark table alone and sift through her thoughts. But the smile of the lad, Bjarn, drew her to him.
The bench scraped as she pulled it out to sit with them, laying her weapons belt on the table beside the tafl board, sword, seax and axe looped in the belt. Thrud’s eyes rose from his nail-picking to follow her. He gave her a nod and a grunt, then went back to the dirt beneath his nails.
Biórr brought her a bowl and spoon, and put a clay jar of honey on the table, spooning some into Bjarn’s bowl.
“My thanks,” Uspa said to Biórr.
“Back to our game, then,” Biórr said, picking up a pair of bone-carved dice. “Your jarl will not escape my warriors,” he said, curling his lip in a false warrior-snarl.
“We shall see,” Bjarn said, fingers twitching, eager for his next move.
Elvar dipped her spoon and blew on her porridge, shifting her weight in her brynja. She had slept in her coat of mail. Although she was home, after almost four years of travelling with the Battle-Grim she did not feel safe here. Especially after her words with her father last night.