Thank you. Just remember who your friends are, hm? Now go inside. Your shift is up, and they’ll come looking.”
He turned to face the longhouse and struggled to sharpen his thoughts. Visions of power, strength, and victory swirled in his head. He staggered toward the stripe of light around the door, and soon man-shapes came into view. He raised a hard; they did likewise.
When he entered the longhouse, he blinked and shook his head. Somehow Thora had made it back before him and was now deep in conversation with Botolf. Valgard tried to comprehend how fast she’d need to be to have managed that, but his mind warped at the thought.
“—Your spot?” He became aware of a presence close to him. A big, thick-necked man, one of Hakon’s, was talking to him. “Where’s your spot?”
“Down by the channel, between the two huts,” Valgard muttered.
The man left, muttering some less than complimentary descriptions of southerners.
A clear thought popped into Valgard’s head: rest. He’d need rest. He had a big day tomorrow.
It could hardly be called a dawn. The night just became slightly less determined, slightly less oppressive. A couple of rays of light with the best of intentions could be discerned over the mountains, creeping interminably slowly across the peaks and slicing through the bleak blackness of the ocean.
Valgard tried to rub the aches out of his legs. His calves felt like ancient roots, and his thighs might as well have been bone. No wonder the raiders are always furious, he thought. A couple more weeks of this and I’d be very happy to split someone’s skull just because he looked at me wrong. He shifted, pushed, and stretched until he was finally standing up, then tried to roll his shoulders. The result was neither pretty nor pleasant, but he was up.
He limped outside and found Botolf sniffing the air, with Thora by his side. Valgard was relieved to see that she was playing her part perfectly. She looked mildly annoyed to see him. “Wolves,” the chieftain said without looking at him, “two of them. Last night. Big ones, too. We found tracks down there—by your post, actually. You keep your luck, Grass Man.”
Valgard looked toward his guard spot. The red was vivid in the pale half-light, the white bones even more so. There was not much left of the thick neck. Bile rose in his throat, but he clamped his mouth shut and forced it back down. “I think we need to check the caves. If you send Bug-eye, I’ll go with him,” he blurted out.
“Hm? Fine,” Botolf said. “The men need something to do. Take thirty. Skapti will follow,” he added. “Thora?”
“Send the fucker up the hill if he wants. Couldn’t give a shit,” she snarled, then went back to staring at the endless expanse of snow. “Can’t see a single flake out of place,” she muttered. “As if they flew in.”
Botolf wandered off, apparently led by his nose.
This was the moment. “I’ll be back,” Valgard said to Thora.
She turned to look at him. “What?”
“I’ll come back,” he said.
She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Bring your entire fucking family of crippled goat-babies for all I care, you reedy, dick-faced pus-bubble.” With that, she turned and went back to hunting tracks.
Valgard couldn’t help but smile. And here he’d been thinking he was good at games. This was a proper player right here.
“Crippled goat-babies.” He chuckled and shuffled off to find Bug-eye.
The light was the color of lamb’s wool, gray and cloudy. Skapti’s handpicked bunch stood in the yard, shuffling their feet and silently hating him. A handful of Hakon’s men stood to the side. Valgard swallowed and motioned to Bug-eye. It was time.
“Let’s go.”
WEST OF LAKE HJALMAREN, CENTRAL SWEDEN
LATE NOVEMBER, AD 996
They woke swaddled in a blanket of thick, heavy cold that the morning sun did nothing to dispel. Goran stretched, grimaced, and stretched again. Behind him, Arnar rose and went about his business with slow, steady movements, buckling on his sword-belt and feeding the horse some choice straw from his bag. Inga stirred on the ground.
Without taking his eyes off the shadowy forest behind them, Ulfar shook his head. “Let her sleep,” he said. “She’ll need the rest.”
“She gets the time it takes me in the bush,” Goran said. “If south is where we’re heading, we need to get going.” With that, he disappeared behind the trees, loosening the string around his waist as he went. Ulfar was left with Arnar, who made no more