The Wolf Hunt by Tim Hodkinson

Author:Tim Hodkinson [Hodkinson, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788549974
Publisher: Head of Zeus

Thirty-Five

They were marched through the snow over to the longhouse and in through the door in the side.

Einar blinked for a few moments, unable to see anything. After the bright sun and its reflective glare from the snow, the interior of the house was dark. If it had any windows in the walls they were buried in the snow. There were whale oil lamps lit and set on the four wooden pillars that held the roof up and a fire glowed in the middle of the floor but it was not enough to dispel all of the gloom. The smell was overpowering as well. The air inside reeked of musty, unpleasantness: A mixture of old, rotting straw, stale sweat, cold grease and bad breath, the fug of many people all living in the one place, no doubt stuck inside perhaps for weeks on end by the wild mountain weather outside. There was also the unmistakable tang of cats’ piss. Three of the animals rushed over to rub themselves around the legs of the newcomers. As Einar’s eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw another large black and white piebald one, sitting near the fire, arch its back and hiss at him.

Affreca pushed one of the cats away. It hissed at her for her lack of attention and moved on to Skar’s leg.

‘Don’t like cats?’ Einar said.

‘I don’t mind them,’ Affreca said. ‘But for some reason whenever one is near me I start sneezing.’

‘That’s because you smell the evil inside them,’ Surt said.

Peering around, his eyes already smarting a little from the smoke that hung in the air, Einar saw a long room with a fire in the middle of the floor and sleeping cots along the walls. The floor was strewn with old straw and there were discarded animal furs everywhere, some hanging on the walls, some across the cots, many around the floor. The inhabitants of the house clearly spent a lot of time hunting.

Two scrawny slave girls with thin hair and bare feet scuttled around, laying out tables in preparation for a meal. Their faces were dirty, their clothes ragged and threadbare. One of the girl’s hair was streaked with grey but they were so thin it was hard to tell how old they really were. They hurried at their work, avoiding all eye contact.

The house was like a smaller version of the jarl’s halls that Einar had been in, and like them, at the far end of the room was a high seat for the lord with two sturdy wooden pillars on either side of it. The left high seat pillar was carved with Thor’s hammer and the right spinning sun-wheels.

A man sat on the high seat. He was of later middle years with black, greasy hair flecked with dandruff. His nose was round and red and he wore fur boots, expensive breeches and a richly embroidered linen shirt. Over it all he had a fur cloak that was pinned at one shoulder by a magnificent gold brooch.

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