The air was brutalized by screams and shouts, the bright clangor of weapon meeting weapon and the first hints of burning thatch.

Skadi half-crouched, her two-inch blade held before her, the waxed boards slick beneath her wet, bare feet.

“Are you a water sprite, come to offer me gifts?” Bardas’s voice was distracted, his eyes flat and hungry like those of a stoat that has seen a fledgling fall from a nest. “Hmm? Will you invite Bardas down into the sea with you, to braid shells into my hair?”

But his blade never wavered. Over two feet long, broad and sharp along one edge, it was more cleaver than anything else.

Skadi glanced about the deck, seeking any advantage. Instinct urged her to move to the gunwale.

“Shh, shh,” urged Bardas, dropping his bow so he could raise his hand as one might placate a skittish horse. “No need for that. Stay still. Put down the knife.”

He moved against the gunwale as well, drawing ever closer, and Skadi forced herself to relax, to straighten as if the fight had gone out of her.

Bardas smiled, revealing missing teeth.

Then she flicked out her hand, throwing her knife as she’d done a thousand times before, but now she hurled it at a man’s face and not the knot in the old birch behind the smithy. The blade flashed through the air, and she ran after it. Bardas cried out as he jerked his head back reflexively; he staggered, then put his hand to his brow.

Her blade had bounced off his cap, spinning out to fall into the waters below.

“Cursed whore!” Bardas stared at the crimson on his fingers. She’d cut open his scalp, nothing more. “I’ll -”

But Skadi hadn’t hesitated. She closed and slipped within his guard to duck and rise so that her shoulder slammed into his chest, just as she’d done time and again against her brothers Svinnr and Riki when playing knattleikr in the clearing by the falls.

Bardas yelped then cursed as he went over the gunwale, top heavy, hand outstretched, eyes wide as blood ran between them to fall and disappear under the waves.

May the salt hags take you.

Skadi rushed to his fallen bow. It was a well-worn weapon, the yew polished to a gloss, the grip wrapped with black leather. Hunched over low, she scooted down the deck, snagged the closest quiver of black fletched arrows, and drew back.

The other archers were wholly focused on the fight swarming across the docks, loosing as quickly as they could arrow after arrow. Nobody heard or saw her until it was too late.

Skadi raised the bow, set an arrow to the string, and drew with a deep inhalation. It was a powerful bow, the draw too strong for her to pull all the way to her ear, but there were only a dozen yards between her and her prey.

She loosed.

The first arrow sank its wicked head deep between the closest archer’s shoulder blades, who screamed more in shock than pain and arched his back.

Her motion was smooth, as if she wove at the loom and was not plucking arrows from a quiver, and she neatly set another arrow to the string and loosed, then again, and then again.

Each arrow found its mark.

The other archers glanced back, their eyes widened, panic turning to disbelief then into fury. One of their number, a gold band about his arm, barked a command in their complex, liquid language, and three archers turned their bows on her.

The sound of the battle had receded. The world faded away but for this knot of Archean archers. She placed an arrow in the center man’s neck. Sidestepped as the enemy loosed and dropped into a crouch to nock another. Twin arrows sped through the air where she’d stood, buzzing like hornets.

She loosed her second arrow, but missed her man by a finger, thwipping past his cheek so that he startled and jerked away.

The third had a bead on her.

She dropped the bow and dove right over the gunwale into the bloody chop between the two triremes.

The water was shallow here, only a couple of yards, and she pulled up so that she’d not slam into the rocky bottom. The world was murk, light dancing in wavering rays, and she swam powerfully under the next boat, its barnacle-encrusted keel rasping her calf as she kicked, then kept going, under the third.

An arrow appeared beside her, having slipped through the water with terrible speed only to lose all energy as if suddenly grown drowsy. On she swam, through the large pilings of a pier, out the other side, then turning to rise and break the water’s surface, her hands grasping the waterlogged boards as she gazed at the battle engulfing her home.

The five triremes had disgorged some sixty, eighty men onto the shore, most of them still bunched on the docks and piers, pushing and shoving to reach the fight where the Kalbaek huscarls held the line. Some leaped into the shallow water and waded in, their shouts murderous, to clash and hammer at the defender’s round shields.

But the battle was already lost. The line of men holding back the black tide was pitifully thin; she saw white haired Ebek go down, an arrow blossoming in one eye, saw Thunor, twelve years old, run screaming into the melee with a raised axe and impale himself on a spear.

On the prow of the largest ship stood a large man, powerfully built and broad-shouldered, grand in his black finery and black chain, his cloak a fur of pure white, an impossibly long blade propped across one shoulder. His face was an anvil, his mouth cast into a cruel sneer, his sole eye alive with delight as he watched his men force their way forward. His black hair was graying at the temples, but he exuded more might and vitality than a dozen younger men.

Skadi hauled herself up onto the pier, crouched, and bit her lip. Could she reach that commander? For a second she agonized, then scowled. He was behind too many men, high up on his warship’s prow.

With a victorious roar the center gave way, and black-cloaked men pounded up the docks, spreading out like a puddle of oil. In her heart she knew the docks were lost, so without further hesitation she sprinted down the pier, between nets hung for mending, up onto the harbor road, then between Sibbe and Adils’s huts. Slipped out into the backstreet below the retaining wall, which she scaled with a leap.

The Archeans were fighting their way toward the longhouse that rose proudly in the center of their settlement, its sloping roof massive and distinctive, smoke coming from cook fires from the central shaft.

Mother and Riki.

Skadi turned to race along the top of the retaining wall toward the hall when a voice hissed at her from the shadows. “Skadi! Here!”

She nearly tripped. Glámr crouched in Reistr’s byre, a shadow against the velvety darkness, the pale morning light causing the twin tusks that jutted up on either side of his nose to gleam.

“Here!” he hissed again. “Get out of sight!”

It was more words than the half-troll had ever spoken to her at once; his expression was scrunched and panicked, his long ears lying flat against the shorn sides of his skull.

Skadi shook her head, but the sound of battle and screams had made it impossible for her to talk. She rose to run on.

“Then take this!” And Glámr tossed her a scabbarded slaughter seax, almost two feet long. Skadi snatched it out of the air, and when her fingers closed about the scabbard she heard - or felt - a golden note sound in the air. When she looked back at the byre, the half-troll was gone.

Holding the blade tight, wondering where the half-troll, whose job it was to muck out sheds and slops and sweep fish guts from the docks, could have found such a treasure, she ran along the wall, a path she’d taken a thousand times as a child, spearing toward the longhouse.

Flashes of violence as she ran past the short alleys that led to the docks. Thick, black, woolen smoke was rising as flames spread, showers of sparks stinging the air.

She leaped down when she reached the wall’s end, into the open space before the longhouse’s end. The great doors were barred, the carved and twining figures of both deer suddenly alien and frightening to her for the first time in her life. They’d be barred.

Shouting and screams from the front where the main doors were.

Skadi wasted no time. She’d lived here her whole life. No set of barred doors could keep her out. She slid the seax under her belt at the small of her back, ran, leaped, placed her bare foot on the rain barrel at the foot of a porch’s column, and surged up to grasp the lintel. Smooth as a fox she pulled herself up onto the thick, wooden tiles, then ran lithely across the porch roof to leap again and grasp the crossbeam embedded deep in the longhouse’s triangular face. Up she went, hand over hand, till she clasped at last the edge of the great roof, and with a final pull found herself high above the village.

Bent over almost to all fours she scaled to the roof’s spine, and there froze as she saw the horror of the attack laid plain before her.

The bulk of the Archeans were bunched upon the broad steps that led up to the main door hidden beneath the eaves. The last of the battle was taking place, but there was no doubt of the outcome. Bodies lay strewn where they had fallen, each summoning a name, a history, a terrible loss. Blood was splashed everywhere. Buildings by the docks had become pyres. The last of the invaders were leaving their ships, running into the village, kicking down doors, dragging out women by their hair, cutting down those who protested.

At the far western edge of the village, Aurnir the half-giant was backed against the tannery wall where he swept a bench back and forth to keep a dozen soldiers at bay, his bellows deep and plaintive as he stared at them in terror.

Skadi felt her eyes glaze in horror, but then a victorious shout went up from directly below and a crunching thud sounded as an axe buried itself in stout wood.

They were cutting down the front door.

Skadi ran light as a cat down the longhouse’s spine to the great central shaft. It was covered by a raised square of thatch, but she slipped beneath this then hopped down onto the rafter tree with practiced ease.

Below, the great hall was thick with smoke and dancing torchlight. A crowd was pressed toward the back wall, her mother amongst them, tall and regal, her distaff still in hand, while her younger brother Riki stood with a thin line of their last huscarls. Old Anuherr was at their head, a massive bear of a man still, clad in his ancient chainmail and with a reaver’s helm upon his head.

The door shattered even as Skadi crept toward the closest pillar down whose length she could climb, and the Archeans swirled in like leaves before a storm. Riki threw himself forward with a scream, the other members of the hird roaring right after, but Skadi froze when she saw the Archean leader in the van.

He wielded his five-foot blade as if it were a straw; with every fell sweep he cut down a man, with one blow shearing clear through both of Iofast’s thighs, so that his torso went one way and his legs the other.

Anuherr raised his great, double-headed axe and bellowed a challenge before charging at the captain, who stepped back, appraising the old warrior, before surging forward to meet him.

Skadi watched, unable to move, as the captain somehow ducked aside so that Anuherr ran right past him, the length of the Archean blade sliding along his stomach, slashing open chain as if it were old wool.

Anuherr staggered to a stop as his innards spilled out. He dropped his axe, clutched at the glistening coils, and sank to his knees.

The captain recovered himself, swung his blade about, then spun and took off Anuherr’s head with a terrible sweep.

Skadi clutched her hand to her mouth as Anuherr’s head sailed free to thunk wetly on the dirt floor and fetch up against an Archean, who placed his boot atop it and grinned sourly at the trapped women and children drawing back against the wall.

Riki had taken a stab to the thigh and a mighty blow to the brow and lay prostrate upon the floor.

“Well,” said the captain, resting his huge blade across his shoulder and turning to face Skadi’s mother, his grin amused, his single eye burning bright. “How strange. For the life of me I thought we’d be catching the infamous Jarl Styrbjörn at home. How unfortunate that he’s away.”

Not knowing what she did, Skadi drew the slaughter seax from its sheath. A sound like a plucked harp string sounded, though nobody below seemed to hear. The blade was almost as long as her forearm and gleamed sullenly in the gloom. Runes inlaid with silver were carved down its center. She crept along the rafter till she was right above the captain.

Her mother stepped forward, shrugging off the hands of the Nearós Ílios priest who sought to draw her back, her chin raised, nostrils flaring, her fury evident and completely without fear.

“Coward. Styrbjörn will hunt you down to the ends of the earth. Laugh now, for one day you will weep like a broken child.”

The captain began to laugh.

Skadi rippled her fingers along the seax’s hilt, its long, tapered point reversed, and then with a deep breath leaped down out of the rafters to silence the man’s laugh forever.