CHAPTER SEVEN
ELVAR
Elvar blinked sweat from her eyes, her vision blurring for a moment as she searched the gloom.
“Halt,” Agnar called out, about a dozen strides ahead.
Warriors about her stuttered to a halt.
Elvar blew out a misted breath and wiped the sweat from her eyes, shrugged the shield from her back and set it down against a tree, then squatted beside a fast-flowing stream. Grend stood over her, then took a few steps into the gloom, eyes always searching.
They were high into the hills, snow falling heavily now, flakes drifting down through the canopy, thicker around the stream, its edge crackling with ice. Elvar tugged off a glove with her teeth and unstoppered her water bottle, drained it in one long draught, then leaned out and dipped the leather bottle into the stream’s centre, where it was not frozen, refilling it. Water bubbled, so cold it felt like it was burning Elvar’s fingers like fire. She took another long sip. The water was sharp as ice in her throat, and clear, the stones on the bottom of the stream shimmering with veins of colour.
It had been a long, hard climb since the fishing village. Through a break in the trees Elvar could see the village far below her, the Wave-Jarl moored in the bay, all of it blurred by the snow. A fence-line stood in a half-circle between the village and the trees. Wooden stakes, rune-marked to protect against vaesen. From this height she could still glimpse faint smudges on the beach, bodies and blood on the shingle marking the site of the battle.
Not much of a battle, it was over almost as soon as it began.
Agnar had slain the jarl, Hrut, and a dozen others had fallen against the Battle-Grim’s shield wall. That had been enough to convince the rest of the
villagers to throw down their weapons. The only casualty among the Battle- Grim had been an arrow in Thrud’s calf. Elvar thought she could still hear his cursing drifting up to her on the wind and snow, his fury that he had been left behind. Agnar had left another dozen warriors with Thrud to watch over the prisoners, leaving twenty-six of them to follow their chief into the wooded and snow-shrouded hills.
“On your feet,” Sighvat bellowed as Agnar took a few steps into the trees.
“Hundur, lead us on,” Agnar said to the thrall, who squatted to sniff the ground, nose sifting through a light covering of snow, then bounded on, the chain fastened to its collar pulling tight as Sighvat lumbered after it. Elvar stoppered her bottle and hung it from her belt, pulled her glove back on, stood and slipped on a snow- and ice-covered rock. A hand grabbed her arm, steadying her, and she looked into Biórr’s face. Without thinking she returned his easy smile. His grip lingered and she shook her arm free and slung her shield across her back. Grend stepped between Elvar and Biórr, glowering
down at him.
Biórr smiled and stepped away.
“Just helping,” he said. He looked at Elvar. “I don’t think your father likes me.”
He is not my father, she thought. Then they were moving out, into the shadows.
The path was narrow, following the stream on their left, but on the right the boughs were high, and the trunks spaced wide. Elvar picked up her pace and stepped from the path, padding across a thin covering of snow, made spongy with forest litter beneath, and moving up the line so she was closer to Agnar, Sighvat and the thrall. Grend followed, a few paces behind her.
There were more footsteps behind her and she glanced back and saw Biórr leave the path and head into the woods as well, his feet tracing her and Grend’s boot prints.
A dark mound appeared in the path ahead and the thrall slowed, stopped before it, sniffing. The mound was steaming, snowflakes drifting upon it and melting. Lumps protruded from it.
Elvar moved closer, a foul stench hitting her, clawing up her nose.
“Troll dung,” the thrall said. It reached out, grabbed a lump jutting from the pile and pulled at it. A sticky slap sounded as it came free and the thrall held up a large bone, a leg or arm: Elvar could not tell for the excrement and
slime that dripped from it. A fresh wave of stench hit, snatching her breath away, burning her throat, and she lifted her arm to her nose, fighting the urge to retch.
Agnar stared into the woods, a scowl on his face. His head swept left to right, and then he saw Elvar wide on his flank.
“Elvar, Grend, Biórr, as you are so keen to lead, you can be the boar’s snout and scout ahead.” He said it with a grunt, but Elvar knew the honour Agnar was giving her. “Stay within sight,” he added.
Elvar nodded, felt a flush of pride and fear. Pride to be picked, fear that she might run into a full-grown bull-troll. Trolls were not to be sniffed at.
The Battle-Grim had hunted them before, for a price, but not when they were at half strength, and running blind through a forest. Trolls were fiercely territorial, a male usually solitary unless there was a female in season close by, in which case males would compete for her affections, fight, mate and remain with her for the duration of her gestation and a month or two after his brood had been born. After that he would return to his territory.
So, there could be one, two or more, if the cow-troll has given birth. And newborn trolls were not much smaller than Elvar, strong and nimble when they were born, voraciously hungry. And notoriously fond of human flesh.
“Let’s pick up the pace. I don’t want my prize ending up in a troll’s belly,” Agnar said.
Elvar set off, veering back on to the path and breaking into a slow jog, Grend staying in the woods level with her, Biórr moving to her left, and then running parallel to the stream, his boots crunching in snow. Elvar felt her heart beating time as she loped ahead, eyes scanning the path and woodland.
The path steepened and twisted, veering around rocks that were becoming more frequent. Something caught her eye, a silver line glistening in diffuse patches of daylight that filtered through the trees.
A strand of cobweb, thick as Elvar’s finger, ran from the rotted, hollowed trunk of a pine tree up into higher boughs. Elvar tracked it upwards, saw the cobweb spiral, spreading wide among the branches, dark husks hanging.
Rats. A crow. A pine marten, big as a cat.
Frost-spiders.
Elvar shrugged her shield from her back and into her fist as she ran, whistled, drawing Grend’s and Biórr’s eyes, and pointed with her spear.
There are too many of us, Elvar thought, but her eyes searched the
boughs, just in case. She’d seen what a frost-spider’s venom could do, freezing blood in veins and stopping the heart.
Snowflakes as big as leaves drifted down about her, muting the sounds of the forest. Grend was a dark shadow flitting on her right, Biórr slower, navigating the snow and rocks of the stream’s bank, which was becoming deeper and wilder, foam-flecked. Snow fell thicker about Biórr, the canopy thinner above the stream, which made his route slicker and harder to navigate.
That will teach him for following me. He has some stones, though, risking Grend’s ire.
Elvar glanced back, glimpsed the thrall on the path, moving in a stooping run, Sighvat puffing like a bellows behind him.
A sound filtered through the forest, a distant, constant hissing, like an angry cat. It grew louder. A waterfall? Whatever it was, Elvar was running towards it, her lungs and legs starting to burn, then a new sound pierced the forest. A huge, roaring bellow cutting through all else, for a few moments drowning out the roar of the waterfall.
“Troll,” she said, an attempt at warning Grend and Biórr, but the word came out of her mouth a rasp rather than a warning shout. It wasn’t needed, though; Grend and Biórr both heard it, judging by the way they slowed, their eyes flitting from the path ahead to Elvar.
She couldn’t see anything but held her spear up as a warning to Sighvat behind, then she ran on, though more cautiously than before.
The path steepened, then levelled out and Elvar spilled out on to a snow- covered plateau, blinking as trees thinned about her. A torrent of molten fire plummeted down a granite cliff, like a waterfall, roaring and hissing, cascading into a molten pool that bubbled and churned. Snow fell upon it, melting and hissing, sending a permanent mist swirling into the air.
On the fire pool’s eastern edge two figures stood, a woman and child, as close to the pool as they could bear, waves of heat rolling off the molten rock.
And between Elvar and the woman and child were two others, one taller than
the other.
A troll and a man.
They were fighting.
The man was broad and thick-bearded, wrapped in fur, his head roughly in line with the troll’s belly. He held a spear two-handed, was jabbing and
ducking as the troll swung a club of knotted wood, spiked with iron nails as long as Elvar’s forearm. An explosion of turf as the club tore into the ground, the man leaping away, falling, rolling, staggering back to his feet, stabbing with his spear at the troll’s leg.
“MINE!” the troll roared, deafening, even over the din of the molten waterfall and fire pool.
Grend stepped close to Elvar, Biórr just standing and staring.
The thrall loped up to Elvar’s side, and there was a clink of chain as Sighvat huffed up the slope and into the open glade, sweating, cheeks red. He dumped the sack he’d been carrying on to the snow with a rattle of iron.
Agnar and more warriors emerged from the trees, spreading wide around Elvar.
The troll was naked, a young bull, judging by the sharp, stubby antlers curling from its thick, moss-covered skull and its swollen testicles, swinging like two rocks in a sack. Tusks jutted from its lower jaws, legs thick as pine saplings, its scaled skin scabbed and patched with moss and lichen.
“MINE,” it roared again.
“No, that man’s mine,” Agnar growled, though Elvar knew the troll was referring to the land. To its territory.
“MINE!” the troll bellowed, spittle flying, eyes and veins bulging with rage, and it swung its club, the man stumbling away, the weapon crunching into a tree, a ripping sound as roots tore and the tree swayed, toppled. The iron nails stuck in timber, dragging the troll off balance, and the man stepped in and lunged with his spear, scouring a red line along the troll’s ribs.
With a bellow of pain the troll ripped its club free in a spray of splinters as it spun to face the man.
“Best be putting that troll down. I need that man,” Agnar shouted. “In pairs, no shield wall; it will only give the beast a better target.”
Sighvat reached into the sack at his feet and pulled out a hammer and a thick iron pin, lifted the thrall’s chain and dragged him to the nearest tree, then threaded the pin through the chain and hammered it into the trunk. He returned to the sack and pulled out a new collar and more chain.
Elvar stepped forwards, then paused as movement from the mother and child caught her eye. The mother took something from within her cloak, shaped like a wax tablet or parchment book, though Elvar had only seen a handful of those in her life, and all had been in the courts of wealthy jarls.
The woman pulled her arm back and threw the item through the air, spinning high and arcing down into the pool of fire. Flames were erupting from it before it even touched the molten rock. A hiss and it was gone. The woman yelled something to the man fighting the troll, who bellowed back at her, and then the woman was tugging the child away, both of them breaking into a run and climbing a steep slope of scree, studded with pine, a twisting path among them. Elvar touched Agnar’s shoulder and pointed at them.
“Good.” He barked commands and four warriors ran for the slope and path.
Elvar hefted her spear and hurled it, but saw it skitter off the troll’s scaled shoulder. With a hiss she drew her sword as Grend stepped close to her.
Together they strode towards the troll and man, lifted their shields, locking tight, Elvar’s sword raised high, pointing out over her shield’s rim. The snow turned to sludge underfoot as they drew closer to the molten pool, waves of heat rippling across them. Other warriors moved forward in twos, scattered wide, approaching in a loose half-circle.
Someone hurled a spear, the blade slamming into the troll’s back. It was well thrown and pierced the thick troll hide, but not deeply. Blood seeped in a line down its back, ran in the folds of muscle.
The troll roared its pain, reached around for the spear in its back, ripped it out and spun away from the man it was trying to crush, its slabbed brows knotting in confusion. It looked at the spear in its fist, then it saw these new warriors approaching it. Its face twisted and bunched, muscles bulging, veins and tendons in its neck standing rigid.
“MINE, MINE, MINE!” the troll screamed, loud enough to make the world shake, and it broke into motion, thick nails on its huge three-toed feet sending up gouts of snow and earth. The sight of these new intruders in its domain must have sent it into a greater level of apoplexy, because it forgot it held a club and just lowered its head and charged with its antlers and tusks, as it would against a rival bull competing for mating rights.
Warriors leaped away, but despite its bulk the troll was fast, and it clipped the shield of one warrior. His shield exploded like so much kindling and antlers and tusk punched through mail and skewered the warrior’s torso. The woman he had been partnered with flew through the air and crashed into the molten pool. A scream cut short as she was incinerated with a hiss of sizzling flesh and then a few flakes of ash floated on the heat thermals.
The troll skidded to a halt, raised its head, the warrior impaled upon him screaming even as he chopped feebly at the troll’s head with his axe. The troll grabbed the warrior’s arm and shook his head, blood pouring like rain. A savage wrench, the warrior’s screaming rising in pitch as flesh, tendon and muscle ripped, bone cracked, and then the warrior’s arm was dangling in the troll’s fist. It shook its head, muscles in its back and neck rippling, and the dying, whimpering warrior fell from its antlers, crashing into two more warriors.
More spears were hurled, one punching into the troll’s shoulder, another lodging between its ribs. Blood oozed like ichor. The troll screamed, lashed out with its club, smashing another shield, breaking the arm of the woman holding it. She stumbled away, the troll following, club rising.
Elvar darted in, Grend following her. She moved in from the side, running as the troll’s club whistled through the air and crunched down on to the woman with the broken arm. A wet slap, punctuated with the crunch of bones breaking, and she was gone, unrecognisable, just a pile of shattered bones in a sack of skin. Blood hung in the air like mist.
Agnar ran at the troll’s back, dropped his shield and leaped, stabbed two- handed with his sword into the troll’s back, high. Elvar heard the grate of iron on ribs, Agnar’s blade sinking deep.
The troll let out a scream that set snow tumbling from pine boughs, arched its back, arms flailing, Agnar trying to cling on to his sword hilt, failing and flying through the air.
Elvar ducked under pendulous testicles as the troll twisted and turned, trying to reach the pain in its back. She stabbed her sword into the troll’s thigh, high, hoping that its body worked like hers.
A fountain of blood jetted around her hilt as her sword found an artery and smacked her in the face, sending her sprawling, her sword still lodged.
She stumbled away, Grend catching her, swinging his axe at testicles that slammed into them like a hammer, and they both fell to the ground.
Dark blood pulsed with the troll’s heartbeat: three, four pumping spurts and the troll was swaying, sinking to one knee. It stared at Elvar lying on the blood-slushed snow.
“Mine,” it said, like a confused child, and then crashed to its side in an eruption of snow, sighed, and was still.
A victory cry rang out in the glade, the Battle-Grim shaking shields and
spears in the air.
“Are you hurt?” Grend asked, rising and offering her his hand.
“I… no,” Elvar said, climbing to one knee and taking his wrist, pulling herself upright. She was covered in thick, steaming blood, but it was not hers.
She strode to the troll and gripped her sword hilt, put a boot on its leg and heaved. With a sucking squelch the blade pulled free.
Shouts, another scream drew her attention and she whirled to see the man who had been fighting the troll stabbing one of the Battle-Grim with his spear. The blade had scored a deep wound across a man’s shoulder. As Elvar watched his shield arm dropped, and the spear stabbed into his throat, a burst of bright blood as he fell gurgling. Six or seven warriors pressed in about the fur-clad man, all with shields raised, a half-circle closing tighter. Sighvat was behind them, swinging a chain around his head.
Now that the fur-clad man was stood close to other men and women rather than the troll, Elvar realised that he was huge, tall and broad, swathed in furs, his beard hanging almost to his belt. He swung his spear in vicious swipes, backing away from the shields closing about him.
He moved closer to the molten pool, heat battering at his back, the pool and waterfall hissing and deafening. Sparks flickered along his fur cloak, his hair sizzling as he took another step backwards. He stopped, face twisting, realising he was trapped. A shift in his eyes as he looked at the Battle-Grim closing about him. A deep breath, muscles tensing for a charge, and then Sighvat’s chain crunched into his head, hurling him to the ground, his spear falling away. He pushed himself on to all fours, blood welling, pouring down one cheek. He rose to one knee, hand grasping for his spear. Sighvat pushed through the Battle-Grim and punched the fallen man on the chin, his head snapping back, and he fell again, rolled on to his side, spitting blood. Began to rise.
How is he still conscious? Elvar thought. She had seen Sighvat in the pugil-ring. When he punched someone, they usually didn’t get back up.
Agnar appeared, striding over, his sword retrieved from the troll’s back and dripping with gore. Elvar and Grend followed.
Sighvat was booming orders, warriors holding spears at the fallen man’s throat while others pinned iron collars and chains around his wrists. A thrall- collar appeared in Sighvat’s big fists as the prisoner was dragged to his knees, arms bound. Sighvat moved to place the collar around the man’s neck,
but his eyes bulged at the sight of the iron collar and he dragged two warriors holding his chains off their feet, started to rise.
Agnar stepped forwards, his sword levelled at the man’s throat.
“I would stay still, Berak, if I were you,” Agnar said.
The big man froze, looked at the sword point at his throat, then up at
Agnar.
“You have the wrong man,” he said.
“No, you are Berak Bjornasson. I have tracked you a long way.”
The man shook his head.
“Take the chains; it is your best choice. Struggle again and I shall have Sighvat beat you bloody with the collar that you will be wearing. There is no escaping us. You must know this.”
The man looked from Agnar to the warriors behind him, eyes flickering across Elvar and Grend. Over twenty warriors, all pointing sharp iron at him.
He lowered his head.
“I am not who you think I am.”
“My Hundur-thrall says that you are.” Agnar pointed his sword at the thrall still pinned to the tree. He looked over at them, his face creased with misery.
Sighvat slipped the collar around the man’s throat and tapped the pin in with the pommel of his seax.
“He is mistaken,” the fur-clad man said, his shoulders slumping.
“Are you sure about him?” Elvar whispered to Agnar.
Agnar looked at her, frowned.
“Yes,” he said.
“It is only, he is big, yes, strong, yes, but I have seen…” Elvar paused, choosing her words carefully, as there were more ears than Agnar’s around her. “I have heard tales of the Berserkir. I expected… more.”
Agnar shrugged. “Watch,” he said, then looked away towards the slope, where warriors were returning with two captives, a woman and child. “Bring them to me,” Agnar said.
The woman and child were pushed stumbling to Agnar, their wrists bound with rope. Agnar grabbed a fistful of the child’s unkempt black hair. He took his sword and touched its edge to the child’s throat.
“No,” the woman cried and Sighvat clubbed her across the shoulders, knocking her to the ground.
“Show yourself,” Agnar said to the man, who returned his gaze.
Agnar drew the sword back a half-inch, a red line trickling down the boy’s neck.
“Don’t,” the man said. A shift in his voice, deeper, more a growl than a word.
Agnar smiled. “I will bleed him here, now; watch as his life spills on to the snow and you can see him flop and die like a gutted fish.”
Elvar looked away. Killing children was not her way of earning her battle- fame.
“Watch him,” Agnar snapped at Elvar, and she focused on the prisoner on his knees.
The man closed his eyes, seemed to take in an impossibly long breath.
Agnar jerked the boy’s hair, a yelp breaking from his lips.
The man’s eyes snapped open. They were flecked with amber, now, inhuman. As Elvar stared at him he seemed to swell, to grow, the furs about his shoulders and chest straining.
“Let him go,” he snarled, and his mouth looked different, the tips of his teeth sharp.
“No,” Agnar said, and twisted the boy’s hair again. Another yelp.
The man lurched to his feet, roaring, and surged at Agnar, arms reaching, dragging six men and Sighvat along with him, as if they were puppies
holding on to a wolf.
Or a bear.
“HALDA!” Agnar bellowed, taking an involuntary step backwards.
There was a flash of red fire in the iron collar about the fur-clad man’s neck and he stumbled another step, took another as if wading through water, then stopped. Froze. He glared at Agnar, every muscle in his body quivering as if he fought against some invisible restraint. His eyes were threaded with red veins, foam and blood on his lips where he was snarling and gnashing his teeth, his hands grasping. Elvar noted his nails had grown, become more like
claws.
“On your knees,” Agnar said.
The man glowered at him, a mad rage in his eyes.
“Á HNÉN!” Agnar yelled and the fur-clad man dropped to the ground,
panting.
The boy and woman were sobbing.
Agnar looked at Elvar.
“You still have your doubts?” he asked, a smile twitching his lips.
Elvar shook her head.
Agnar looked back at the man at his feet.
“You are Berak Bjornasson, and the blood of the dead god Berser flows in your veins. You are Tainted, you are Berserkir, and you are wanted by three jarls for murder, blood-debt and weregild. And now you are mine,” Agnar said, and smiled. “You will fetch a fine price.”
He looked around him, at the dead troll, at his warriors, both standing and fallen.
“Gather our dead. Butcher the troll. Bring all that is of value.”