It is a barrow, now, not a home.
A flare of grief and anger bubbled up inside her. It had been kept at bay by the confrontation with Sigrún and the thrall, then the escape, hard rowing and burning muscles and exhaustion suppressing all else for a while.
Orka carried her bag and dropped it beside Mord, then sat with her back to the wide tree and began to rummage through it.
Lif kneeled beside his brother, undid the blood-soaked bandage around Mord’s head and took it to the riverbank to clean.
Mord sat and stared at Orka.
“Here,” she said, handing him a strip of salted pork. He reached out and took it, and chewed.
“Why have we rowed a circle around the fjord?” Mord asked Orka.
Lif joined them, wringing out the bandage.
“To deceive that nieing Guevarr?” Lif said, looking to Orka.
“Aye,” she grunted, chewing on a strip of pork. She passed some to Lif. “He watched us row away south, towards the sea,” she said.
“So, when dawn came that is the way he would go to search for us,” Lif said, a smile creasing his face.
“I hope so,” Orka said. “He is idiot enough.”
“Jarl Sigrún is no idiot, though,” Mord said. “She would send boats and scouts in all directions, out on the fjord and along the fjord bank.”
“Aye,” Orka nodded, “maybe. Though Jarl Sigrún may be too busy having her face stitched back together to think on anything else.”
Lif raised an eyebrow. He cleaned Mord’s wound, which looked like it had come from some kind of blunt weapon, a club, a spear butt or sword hilt, and re-tied the linen bandage around it.
“Why are you helping us?” Lif asked Orka as he worked. “What grievance has caused Jarl Sigrún’s face to need stitching? And where are Thorkel and Breca?”
Orka said nothing, just chewed her meat. She drew the three seaxes at her belt, two that she had taken from Thorkel’s body and one from Sigrún’s thrall. She had left her own seax buried in the timber doorpost of Jarl Sigrún’s sleeping chamber. She turned the thrall’s seax in her hand, looking at the knotwork carved into the horn hilt. Wolf heads, jaws gaping.
Fitting, for an úlfhéenar.
Two of the seaxes had blood on them, dried to black stains now. She opened her pouch, took out a cloth and some oil and set about cleaning them.
“Thorkel is dead. Slain,” she said flatly as she worked, “and Breca has been taken. I went to Jarl Sigrún to talk to her about it.”
“And opened her face with a blade?” Lif said.
Orka ignored him.
A silence settled between them as Orka cleaned her blades, then she set them down and went back to her sack, where she pulled out the loaf of bread and the round of hard cheese and sawed off slices for the three of them.
“What now?” Lif said as he chewed on black bread.
“We sneak back to Fellur and kill that nieing Guevarr,” Mord said.
Orka looked at him.
“Orka?” Lif said.
“Do as you wish,” she said with a shrug.
“Where are you going?” Lif asked her.
“Not back to Fellur village,” she grunted.
“Where, then?” Lif pressed.
Orka gave him a flat look. “I am going to find my son.”
“And we are going to kill Guevarr,” Mord repeated.
Lif looked at his brother with sorrow. “How?” he asked.
Mord opened his mouth, but no words followed.
“Help us,” Lif asked Orka.
“No,” Orka said.
“We do not need anyone’s help,” Mord said angrily. “Guevarr is for us to kill. It is our father who is a corpse because of him, us who owe him blood feud, and that filthy thrall of Jarl Sigrún’s.”
“You only need to kill Guevarr,” Orka told them.
“No, Guevarr and the thrall,” Mord said. “Our father’s death is Guevarr’s fault, but the thrall dealt him his death wounds.”
“Sigrún’s thrall has a hole in her belly. She may already be dead,” Orka said, chewing on some cheese.
Mord and Lif both stared at Orka, eyes wide, mouths flapping like fish.
“She may yet live, but most die of a gut-wound,” Orka added.
A silence settled between them, Lif staring at Orka with a mixture of fear and awe.
“Guevarr, then,” Mord said eventually.
“But, we tried to kill him, and ended up tied to a post,” Lif pointed out.
Lif looked at Orka. “You have some clever about you, and some stones,” he said, “to sneak into Jarl Sigrún’s bedchamber. And some weapons craft, to cut her up and put a hole in her thrall’s belly. How would you advise us to go about our revenge?”