[Orkneyinga Murders 04.0] The Bear at Midnight by Lexie Conyngham

Author:Lexie Conyngham [Conyngham, Lexie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910926727
Published: 2021-12-30T16:00:00+00:00

XVI

Skorri was cleaning his axe.

It did not particularly need cleaning, being honed to perfection only this morning as was part of his waking ritual, but it gave him something to do outside the hall while he waited to find someone he thought he could talk with. It looked natural, he thought. And it made him feel better.

He had discounted Varin, as far too important to talk to a mere second-in-command. Or at least he thought he was. A seasoned follower of other men, Skorri was not sure he thought highly of Varin. He preferred leaders whose opinions of themselves were about the same as Skorri’s opinion of them, or even a bit lower. And if they did have to think highly of themselves, they needed to show some evidence of competence. Varin had not impressed him so far.

He had wondered about Sigvat, Varin’s younger brother — he could talk with him, he thought, as one second-in-command to another. Sigvat seemed friendly, had gone about trying to get to know the men allocated to Varin in the mock fights. Skorri had even seen him talking with some of the women, making connexions, having a laugh. He hadn’t done more than nod and grin at Skorri, but Skorri had not felt overlooked: it was more, he thought, that Sigvat had seen he was competent and had no need to offer him instruction or encouragement. It had almost been the nod and grin of equals, but somehow it was not quite. Somehow… and Skorri could not quite put his finger on it, but that nod and grin had just been a little out of joint, like when your hose was not quite straight in your boot and whatever you did you couldn’t find a crease or a hole but you knew that in a while your foot would start to hurt.

Skorri cleaned delicately round the wood where the metal of his axe met the haft, scraping with the tip of his knife blade. There was always the chance that something had got stuck in there since early this morning. It was important to set a good example to the men — well, to Alf and Geirod. Not that they needed it when it came to looking after their weapons. Alf tended to his as if they were works of art, while Geirod applied his usual resentment to cleaning weapons as easily as he did to everything else. Except the yellow dog, of course.

He wondered where Geirod was. Not that he wanted him around while he was trying to talk to people. Geirod made people uneasy. It was a bit of a gift.

People came and went around the hall door and he watched them as he cleaned and fiddled, looking for someone from whom he might glean some information. There was Oddr, for example, one of Einar’s senior men, but Skorri wondered if he would actually know anything useful. He was one of those people who thought they knew everything so no one bothered to tell them anything.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.