The stern was in sight, a handful of oars dipping and rising between him and Glornir, who stood at the tiller. Varg landed on an oar, his leg bending to go with the oar’s flow, but it jerked beneath him, dipping when it should be rising. He swung his arms, balanced for a heartbeat, then his foot was sliding and he was falling, plummeting to the water below. He glimpsed a snarl of red beard staring over the oar-port, Einar Half-Troll grinning as he watched Varg fall, and then he hit the water.
It was cold as ice, snatching his breath away. He sank, turning, thrashing for a moment, unsure which way was up. He expelled some air and tracked the bubbles, followed them, and then his head was bursting from the water and he was gasping in air.
The hull of the Sea-Wolf was gliding away, Glornir steering the ship towards a shallow bank on the fjord. A few figures were still leaping across the oars, Svik among them. Varg swam for shore, along with a dozen or so others.
Shouts drifted from the Sea-Wolf and the anchor-stone in its wooden frame was heaved on to the top-rail and dropped overboard, Glornir choosing to get his feet wet rather than scrape the hull on the fjord’s bank. Bloodsworn were leaping over the side and splashing ashore as Varg’s feet touched the ground and he began to wade to shore. A figure appeared, standing on the bank, waiting for him.
It was R?kia, a shield and spear in her hands.
Varg shook his head as he emerged from the water, a wind blowing across him and causing him to shiver, despite the lingering warmth of the setting sun.
“You are not serious?” Varg said to her. “I am soaked to the skin – unfairly, I might add, as Einar Half-Troll threw me from his oar.”
“I am always serious,” R?kia said, stone-faced.
This is a truth, Varg thought. He sighed. “Give me a few moments to change my tunic and breeches and dry off in what is left of this sun.”
“Ha, just what I would have expected from a warrior with No-Sense,” R?kia said. “Do you think your enemy will kindly wait for you to dry your feet and arse if they come upon you in a fjord or river? No, they will fall upon you like wolves and seek to carve you into small pieces, using their good fortune of finding you unprepared. You must learn to fight and survive under the worst of conditions, not the best.”
“That is what I have done all my life,” Varg muttered under his breath.
R?kia threw his shield to him and strode away, either not hearing or choosing to ignore his words. Varg caught the shield rather than let it empty his mouth of teeth, and trudged after her, dripping on the fjord’s grassy bank. He glimpsed Svik on the Sea-Wolf’s top-rail, holding his arms up and dancing a jig.
He must have won the oardance.
R?kia turned again, this time throwing him his spear, which he caught deftly, its leather sheath in place over the blade.
“Come and kill me then,” R?kia said, a cold smile on her lips as she raised her shield and set her feet.
There was a smell of woodsmoke as fires were kindled and iron pots hung for supper, the crackle of butter melting in pans. Varg’s belly growled.
He sighed, shoulders slumped, then sucked in a deep breath and straightened.
Might as well get on with it. Getting beaten up by R?kia is the only path to food.
He lifted his shield and checked the grip on his spear, as R?kia had taught him. They were only a few days away from Liga, but each night R?kia had put his shield and spear in his fists and continued with his training. At first, she had continued teaching him shield work, adding the principle of treating the shield as a weapon as well as a form of defence, using both the iron boss and the hide-bound rim. The second night she had put a spear in his hand and taught him the two main grips. He approached R?kia now with an overhand grip, the shaft angled down, his blade pointed at her shield boss. This gave him a longer reach than the reverse grip, with which he noted R?kia held her own spear, though he knew his overhand grip was weaker.
Best to use the longer reach as I approach, a chance to draw blood before I am in range of her own strikes.
R?kia grunted as he approached and he took that as her approval of his choice, and then he was jabbing at her, aiming at shoulders, legs, trying to find a weakness around her shield.
“Side steps,” she grunted at him over her shield rim. “You’ll not find an opening by coming straight at me like a stupid old boar.”
Varg listened, shuffling left and right, keeping his spear shaft jabbing, in and out, his strikes almost finding her flesh, but always ending with the dull thud of his leather-bound blade meeting her linen-wrapped shield. And then R?kia was stepping in, using her reverse grip on her spear to sweep his own away, stepping closer still, her blade slipping inside his shield and raking across his chest, her sharp-angled face close enough that he could smell the apple and onions on her breath.