Orka sighed, a long exhalation.
“Wait,” she said. “No point rushing back with all of Fellur seething like a kicked wasp nest. Wait until things are quiet, when they have given up searching and are getting on with planting their fields, or reaping the harvest. That is the time to strike.”
“I like it,” Lif said, nodding. “See, Mord, now that is some deep-cunning.”
“Too long,” Mord snarled. “I want Guevarr dead today. Or on the morrow at the latest.”
Orka turned her flat stare on him. “Have you not learned already, what you want has little to do with it?” She shrugged again. “You asked for my advice. You don’t have to take it.”
“I think we should listen to her,” Lif said. He chewed his bread slowly. Clearly his thought-cage was turning over in his head. “And we need to learn some weapons craft.”
Mord’s face twisted. “I know weapons craft,” he said.
“Aye, as that lump on your head declares,” Lif said.
“I was outnumbered,” Mord muttered.
“You could teach us,” Lif said to Orka.
Orka blinked.
“No,” she said.
“You fought Jarl Sigrún and her warrior-thrall, defeated them both. We are not good enough to do this, and our father’s bones cry out for vengeance,” Lif said. “I would not let him down.”
“I am about my own vengeance. I have no time for yours,” Orka grated.
“We could help you,” Lif said.
“No,” said Orka and Mord together.
“Why not?” Lif said.
Orka looked at them both. “I do not want your help. I do not need it. Come with me and you will most likely get yourselves killed. Or me.”
“We could help you,” Lif said stubbornly. “Where are you going, on this vengeance of yours?”
“North, and west,” Orka muttered, looking to the north, towards the fortress and town of Darl, where the snow-tipped peaks of the Boneback Mountains glittered.
“Wherever it is you are going, you would get there faster if we were rowing you,” Lif said. “If you leave us, then you are walking, as that is our boat.”
Orka stared at him. “I could take your boat,” she said.
Lif’s face twitched at that, a flicker of fear and hurt. Mord growled a curse, his hand reaching for the axe loop at his belt. It was empty, their hastily gathered weapons slung in the boat.
“I will not take your boat,” Orka told them. “I will walk.”
“Those who took Breca, do you think they are walking?” Lif asked.
A twist of pain, like a knife in Orka’s belly, at the mention of her son’s name.
“No,” she said. “I followed their tracks to the river. They took him from there by boat.”
There was a long silence as she chewed that over in her thought-cage.
“Fine. Row me to Darl,” she said into the silence, “and I will teach you what I can.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ELVAR
Elvar took another draught from her mead horn and swallowed, feeling some of it trickle down her chin.
“You’ve had enough,” Grend said.
She gave him a dark look, one that she had learned from him on the many occasions he had inflicted it upon her. Grend shrugged and leaned back in his bench.
They were still sat in the tavern in Snakavik, Elvar drinking an endless river of mead and ale. It was growing dark outside, torches lit and smoke thick in the air, though it always grew darker in Snakavik before the rest of the world, the sun blotted out by the serpent’s skull. Agnar and many of the Battle-Grim had returned, filtering in like mist-wraiths as Elvar’s thought-cage was consumed with all that her father had said to her, picking over his words like a carrion-crow over old bones.
You should not have left, he said, I want you back at my side, he said. Agnar of the Battle-Grim is a mercenary whore, he said…
She ground her teeth.
“What are you going to do?” Grend said quietly, his voice sinking into the hum of the tavern. “I mean besides grinding your teeth to dust.”
“Don’t know,” Elvar muttered sullenly.
Shock had shifted to anger as Elvar sifted through her father’s words. As ever, he said more in the words unspoken. Their meeting had not been what she had expected.
Judgement, disappointment and a sense of my own inadequacy are my most vivid memories of growing up with Jarl St?rr as a father.
“He offered you drengrs of your own. A warband of your own,” Grend said.