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Hard words are needed for this hard world.
“All that you can see before you is Vigrið, the Battle-Plain. The land of shattered realms. Each steppe of land between the sea and those mountains, and a hundred leagues beyond them: that is where the gods fought, and died, and Snaka was the father of them all; some say the greatest of them.”
In his death the world was shattered, whole realms crushed, heaved into the air, the seas rushing in.
This is a world of blood. Of tooth and claw and sharp iron. Of short lives and painful deaths.
“They call this the age of peace, because the ancient war is over and the gods are dead, but if this is peace…” She looked to the skies, clouds low and heavy, snow falling in sheets now, and back at the blood-soaked corpses. “This is the age of storm and murder…”
The Bloodsworn were famed throughout the whole of Vigrið, and most likely beyond. A band of mercenary warriors who hired themselves out to the highest bidder, they hunted down vaesen-monsters, searched out god-relics for wealthy jarls, fought in border disputes, guarded the wealthy and powerful. Tales were sung about them by skálds around hearth fires.
Holmganga is the old tongue for going to the island.
“The rules of holmganga abide here,”
“You must agree: first wound, submission, or death.”
And Snaka fell,
“How can you be brave if you do not feel fear?”
“Courage is being scared of a task and doing it anyway.”
If someone left you to die, I would throttle the life from them. I would stab them and gut them and…
Strange, how we revert to the behaviour of our childhood, when back in the presence of our family.
She failed to kill Drekr and complete her vengeance.
“I am intrigued. You tell us to have patience. To wait until the time is right for our vengeance. But you walk into a tavern and try to attack…”
“Why kill them all but one?” Lif said into the quiet as he stitched.
“And then we saw a ship rowing into Darl’s harbour. Jarl Sigrún’s drakkar, and she was stood at the prow,” Mord said.
“Kill who?” Lif said. “All of them.”
Also, she did not want their deaths on her shoulders. She carried enough of that weight with her already. Some nights she thought she heard the voices of dead friends muttering to her and she would wake with a start, her heart thumping and sheened in sweat. Sometimes she heard Thorkel’s voice, or Breca’s.
sold their boat in an attempt to save me
they could have
saved them...
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On the scales of...
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Orka owed them...
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And she did not like tha...
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They have made their choice and are in this,
where life and death are closer than lovers.
He walked after Mord.
She followed the burned man,
Orka picked up her pace.
His body spasmed and he retched and gagged, thrashing and panting muffled screams, shaking and thrashing like a trapped animal. His body seemed to swell, his face twitching, and Orka saw the teeth protruding from his mouth change shape,
“Harden your heart,”
“He is not a man any more. He is a stepping stone on the path to our vengeance. To me finding my son. Now see to your task.”
A tattoo wound around his ankle and calf: a curled, knotted serpent.
“North,”
“To the Grimholt Pass.”
I am just eyes and ears in Darl. I watch, I listen. I tell Drekr what I learn. Drekr does not tell me anything.”
Orka let out a long, deep breath
She believ...
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“It was you.”
“Where is Jarl Sigrún lodging?”
“He is involved with the Tainted bairns, but how, I do not know.”
Queen Helka does not know?”
“Because a cleaved head no longer plots,”
vaesen pit,”
before them a chasm opened,
wide and deep, and within it a river of fire flowed, black-crusted,
Lake Horndal
north, beyond the chasm
