The snow was coming down more heavily and it settled on Valkia as she lay where she had fallen. Deron stretched out his shoulders in an idle way. He untangled himself from the rope and moved towards her.
‘She is strong,’ he said to the assembled watchers. ‘But not strong enough, I think. She...’
Whatever Deron’s opinion of Valkia might be was cut short as he moved within striking distance. She had been carefully waiting for him to approach, feigning injury, and the moment he was in her reach, the rope snapped taut once again, this time coiling around the big man’s ankle. He flipped onto his back with a roar of surprise just as Valkia’s blade flashed and stabbed deftly into the meat of his thigh. It cut through the leather trousers and bit into the powerful muscle there. He let out a growl that was somewhere between pain and outrage and put his hand to the wound.
It came away stained with red.
‘First blood,’ said Valkia between gritted teeth that felt slightly loosened in her jaw from his earlier blow. ‘The victory is mine. Now give me one good reason why I shouldn’t change the terms of this fight and gut you where you lay?’
He sat up and thrust his mud-spattered face close to hers. The next words he spoke were pitched so that she and only she could hear them. Any hint of a language deficiency was gone. He spoke clearly and with such clarity that she almost salivated.
‘Because the Blood God favours you. And you want to know what that means. Kill me now and you will never know. Let me live and you will learn.’
He put out a hand to her and they stood together. He raised her arm into the air. ‘Valkia of the Schwarzvolf draws first blood. Your leader, she is quite the fierce little thing.’
That awful silence that had so filled Valkia with dread was torn apart by the sound of her people – of all her people – bellowing her name at the top of their lungs. In that moment, she realised that she had won them over.
The Bloody Hand remained as the tribe’s guest for one more day and Deron kept to his word. He told her of the god his people worshipped, an entity who in the telling was much like the god the Schwarzvolf knew as the Axefather. A dark, ancient god whose thirst for blood was engendered in the ruthlessness of his followers. He told her many things, but he did not tell her everything.
‘One thing at a time, hetwoman,’ he said when she had complained that he was not giving her the full truth. ‘There is a truce between your people and mine and that will be honoured. We will speak more of an allied future after the winter. We must go back to our own people now, before the snows come and the hill passes are blocked.’ He looked up to the dark, threatening skies and Valkia realised with a pang of annoyance that she did not want this strange warrior to leave. She had too many questions.
Deron smiled down at her. ‘We will meet again in the spring,’ he said. ‘When we will form an official alliance of our people. Together, the Bloody Hand and the Schwarzvolf will be invincible. But when you kill, whatever you kill, dedicate it to the Blood God. He will reward you in kind. Of that, I am sure.’
The bounty of the spring and summer combined with the careful rationing that was imposed on the growing tribe proved to be exceptionally effective and as such, losses of life over the hardest weeks of the dark winter were minimal. There were still a number however: the elderly, the infirm and infants who were too weak to survive the earliest days of life.
For Valkia, the long months of winter were a trial unlike anything she had ever anticipated. Juggling the demands of her people with the frequent incursions from small tribes who thought they could somehow take on the might of the Schwarzvolf was tiring. She had never realised just what leading her people would mean.
Politics.
Not all the dealings with small tribes were making short work of the more aggressive ones – and the Schwarzvolf did that with increasingly brutal style. The number of heads placed on poles around the perimeter of the camp grew almost daily. Valkia encouraged competition between her warriors; offering a prize to those who could take the most skulls in a battle. It kept them keen and eager.
Under her leadership, the Schwarzvolf were gaining a reputation as a bloodthirsty, relentless band of warriors. For some that acted as a deterrent and for others, it served as a challenge. For a handful, it opened up interesting trade possibilities. It was the latter that gave Valkia the most headaches. It was the latter that brought would-be suitors to the fore.
Valkia knew in her heart that Merroc had realised early on that he would never be able to sell his daughter off to the highest bidder – or to a worthy son of a worthy ally – and that this had inadvertently made her instantly more appealing to a wide variety of young men from across the steppes where the Schwarzvolf made their home.
She attracted the interest of a few old men as well. More than one of this seemingly endless stream of would-be consorts walked out of the camp of the Schwarzvolf having had Valkia laugh in their faces. Some walked out nursing wounds from the fiery, wicked-tempered hetwoman.
Several of these suitors had to be carried out along with the headless bodies of their entourage, having tempted the wrath of the warrior woman with their rancid breath, roving eyes and eager hands. Valkia made sure these trophies in particular adorned stakes that lined the entrance of her tent.
‘You will have to form an alliance at some time, Valkia.’ She was seated in the yurt that she had made hers, a cup of hot wine in her hand and a scowl on her face. She felt nothing so much as a child being on the receiving end of a lecture.
‘Tell me why I “have” to do such a thing if you would, Godspeaker?’ Her tone was imperious and haughty. Nearly every man who had presented themselves to her and broached the subject of an alliance had begun well enough. They had discussed ways in which they could expand the power of the Schwarzvolf. Ways in which they could strengthen the might of what was rapidly becoming acknowledged as the strongest, largest and most influential tribe in the region.
Valkia was always charming and interested up to this point. But then the tone would change and the suggested reciprocal cost would be discussed. And in four out of five negotiations, her hand in marriage was the key focus.
‘You need to marry, or at least take a mate. For a start, you need to assure your line of succession.’ Valkia flung a sour look at the Godspeaker, damning him silently for speaking the words that she constantly denied as truth.
‘I am not yet in need of such reassurance,’ she said, the scowl not leaving her face. ‘I am still young.’
‘Aye, hetwoman, you are young. But you know as well as I do what the gossip is throughout the camp.’ Her eyebrows raised and for the briefest of moments, the scowl was replaced by something that most resembled cynical amusement.
‘The rumours that I am not a woman? That I have no appetite for men? Or the one that I am barren? Which particular rumour is the favoured one of the day, Godspeaker? What do my people say of me now?’ In the months since she had wrested control of the tribe, Valkia had come to treat the gossip with the contempt it deserved, but kept a very careful eye on what was said. Tongues would wag and stories would be exaggerated, but the common talk amongst the people of the camp could more effectively reflect the mood of her people.
Fydor was more than a little apologetic and as he elaborated, Valkia could see that the subject made him uncomfortable. She did nothing to interject, taking a slightly malicious pleasure from his awkwardness.
‘In honesty, the current rumours are largely a combination of the two. The women say that you make yourself unwomanly; that you challenge the gods in doing so. You defend yourself with such ferocity that nothing short of the strongest man could hope to ever break down your – ah – your defences.’
Valkia stabbed the dagger she had been playing with down into the ground in front of her. ‘Every man who has presented himself to me and claimed any sort of desire to bed me has not done so with passion,’ she said. ‘They are all weak. I am more worthy than bearing a child with nothing more aggressive than a rabbit. I
want the mountain lion, Fydor.’
The Godspeaker knew who she referred to. Since Valkia had met Deron of the Bloody Hand, no other man lived up to him in her eyes. Fydor had considered suggesting to Valkia that she propose a more permanent alliance with the Bloody Hand, but the second he had mentioned Deron’s name, she had screeched at him to hold his tongue. Had she been as other women, he would have gently teased her about her obvious interest in the young man. But Valkia was most assuredly not as other women.
Today, though, she was far more amenable to discussing the matter. She was playing with the dagger, her hand held splayed out as she stabbed at the ground beneath her fingers in a listless, repetitive way. Valkia was bored. And that was dangerous.
Fydor judged the best way to proceed and hit upon the perfect way forward. ‘The darkest days of the winter are almost upon us,’ he said. ‘The Warspeaker’s scouts report that a tribe has set up a camp on the far side of the Vale. They have warriors of their own, but they have not come close to our camp that we know of.’
He had struck exactly the right chord and Valkia looked up, her dark eyes flashing. ‘My warriors have been idle for too long,’ she said. This was a little in-accurate; only two days previously they had engaged in a small but satisfying battle against a few desperate raiders. ‘Have this tribe shown any aggression towards our hunters?’
Her attention was dragged away from brooding and Fydor was grateful for that.
‘Not towards us,’ he said, ‘but Hepsus reports that they have allegedly raided one of the small camps to which your father extended our protection just before his death.’
‘Is that so?’ Valkia had always quietly approved of her father’s efforts to expand his leadership beyond the boundaries of the camp. It was the best way to maintain control of the smaller tribes who, as experience had shown, could easily be corrupted by other influences. They did not proclaim themselves to be Schwarzvolf, of course; Merroc had seen the sense in allowing them to keep their identities but they were more a part of the larger collective than they knew. ‘Then we must address this insult with due haste.’ She slid the dagger into the sheath at her waist. ‘Send Hepsus. The Warspeaker and I will discuss the best way to approach this enemy.’
A wicked glint came into her eyes and she smiled, a predator’s smile. ‘I am sure that we can find just the right way to deliver the message clearly. Nobody threatens my people or those under my protection.’ She put a finger to her chin thoughtfully. ‘It would end most tragically were they not to heed such a warning.’
She was hungry for blood. It showed in her eyes, her whole face and even the restless set of her body. The legacy of the Schwarzvolf ran strongly in her veins. Merroc would have been proud. He may not, perhaps, have approved of Valkia’s methods, but he would certainly have seen the sense in what she was doing. Fydor sensed she was still desperate for an acceptance that had she but looked, she would have seen she had already.
‘Most tragically,’ he agreed with her words and offered a rare smile of his own.
The message was delivered with typical vigour. A small party led by Valkia herself had arrived in the outlying camp at an opportune moment. The raiders had, by an uncanny chance, chosen that day to strike again. It had taken three days for the Schwarzvolf to arrive, a journey that should normally only have taken half a day. Heavy snowfall had brought down a number of trees in the forest and it had been largely impassable in places. To Valkia’s initial irritation, they had to find another route through. As such, by the time they finally arrived, she was in a mood that was most certainly not one which encouraged diplomacy.
The tiny camp that Merroc had adopted into his own people barely fielded two dozen inhabitants but that did not matter one bit. As far as Valkia was concerned, a slur against these people was a slur against her personally. When she and her group of eight warriors strode from the forest, they exuded a palpable air of competence and ferocity.
The small camp’s defenders, who were little more than farmers, were not doing a good job of holding back the raiders and several men lay dead on the ground. A handful of others kept the raiders at bay with primitive weapons: mostly sticks, rocks and burning fire brands. They may not have been well versed in warfare, but they were certainly tenacious.
The Schwarzvolf force charged with a single word from their leader. She prowled at their head, smaller and slighter than any of the burly warriors who had come with her, but there was murder writ large in her face. She brandished the spear that she favoured and her slender figure was clad in ornately tooled leather armour. She had hand-worked the design herself years ago and it was that of a wolf, its head thrown back as it howled towards a moon far above. It was clumsy work, but the effort she had put into it had given her great pride.
She had been offered better since taking leadership of the Schwarzvolf of course, but she had turned it all down. It had served her well enough, as had her spear and the supposedly enchanted silvery dagger.
The raiders were clearly as hungry for a fight as Valkia and her men because they charged immediately. Perhaps fourteen unkempt warriors turned away from the work of slaughtering the minimal livestock that the outlying tribe kept and turned their attentions instead to better sport. The inhabitants of the camp fell back swiftly, relieved and scared in equal measure.
One of Valkia’s warriors was felled swiftly, a well placed strike from the enemy slitting open his belly. His entrails steamed as the heat of his internal organs was exposed to the cold winter air. He clutched at them as though he could hold his body together through sheer force of will and snarled a colourful array of curses as he stubbornly faced his death. His tenacity was to be admired, Valkia thought. He was doomed and yet he made no complaint about the agony. Instead, he used what remained of his strength to spit at the man who had killed him.
He sank to his knees, no longer able to keep himself upright and blood poured from his opened stomach, blossoming on the snow around him. As she leaped over him on the way to engage another enemy, Valkia drove her spear through the back of his neck, tearing off his head. Better a quick death than a lingering one in agony as the belly wound festered. She owed him that much.
Pulling her spear from the broken body, she flung herself into the heart of the battle, moving with such speed that she was little more than a dark-haired blur in battered leather.
With every blow she struck, Deron’s parting words lingered in her memory. But when you kill, whatever you kill, dedicate it to the Blood God and he will reward you in return. It was hard, she thought, to dedicate anything to a god whose name she did not even know, but with each killing strike, she called out the words that Deron had given her.
‘Blood for the Blood God!’
None of the other Schwarzvolf understood what she was calling out, but they were all hungry for the battle and after two bloody kills at her hand, they all picked up the battle-cry until they chorused it together. There was such lust in their words and such ferocity in their attack that the enemy were hugely intimidated. Of the fourteen who had begun the battle, eight were already dead and three more were grievously – if not fatally – wounded. Their leader had died early on in the proceedings and without his command, the rest of the raiders simply fell to pieces.
Valkia hacked and slashed her way through the enemies, each blow she struck filling her with a desire to land more. Deron’s words perhaps had merit. Perhaps this was the reward from this blood god he had sworn by. This insatiable hunger to keep fighting until every drop of blood her enemy possessed had been spilled.
Her spear served her well until only two of the raiders remained and then the shaft splintered, breaking in two. Even this inconvenience did nothing to stop her. She picked up the spear-tip and drew her dagger. Thus armed with twin blades, she continued to mutilate and maim, each time crying out in praise to the blood god.
‘Hetwoman, stop.’
She did not hear the words of her warriors for several moments. It was only when a hand closed on her shoul
der and she had almost turned and butchered one of her own men that she realised that the battle had ended. Only then did she discover that she was sat astride one of the fallen enemies, carving out his heart. The raider’s severed head lay a few feet away, the ragged flesh and shattered vertebrae of its neck torn by brute force rather than parted by blade. What madness had filled her with such unholy strength?
She blinked up at the man who had disturbed her work. She could not recall his name to mind for a moment. Eilif, that was him. She knew him. She knew them all. Cold reality came crashing down around her and for a moment she felt faint. Her face and armour were smeared with blood and her beloved spear was broken. She took a deep, steadying breath.
‘Hetwoman?’ Eilif’s brow was furrowed in concern and more than a little fear. She despised the expression. She hated the fact that one of her own people would show so much trepidation before her. ‘Are you... do you need...’
‘Stop babbling like a fool.’ Valkia got to her feet and brushed herself down, not meeting Eilif’s eyes. He had glimpsed her in that moment of madness and it troubled her deeply. ‘Are they all dispatched?’
‘Almost to a man. One lives still. I am no healer, but I wouldn’t think that it will be long before he joins his brethren.’ Eilif nodded over his shoulder to where a single warrior lay groaning. ‘We lost three of our own. These bastards put up quite a fight, but they’re dealt with.’ His expression became grim. ‘They certainly won’t be raiding again.’
‘Yes,’ she said, absently. Her mind was still filled with the echoing shouts and cries of the dying and, once again, that almost unquenchable thirst, that need to snuff out the spark of life from those who dared oppose her. It was the first time she had truly allowed herself to succumb to the darkness within. It was exhilarating. It was what had been lacking in her life.
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