Skadi was unable to stop watching the fjord all that following day. With the night having proved silent if tense, hopes had risen. Even as she helped bind and hammer the new gate together, she turned from time to time to stare out across the water.

The day proved a cold, a bitter wind blowing in off the water, with the crows restless and constantly lifting from their perches with raucous cries to resettle again and again. The peaks were shrouded in clouds, and the land seemed inimical to their kind, wild and savage and resentful of their village.

And yet, despite her frequent glances, she wasn’t the first to see the sails.

“The jarl!” It was Sif who raised the cry, her voice burning bright with elation. “The jarl!”

All work ceased, and Skadi wouldn’t have been surprised if even the guards had quit their posts to rush down to the docks. In a great tumult, they ran, old men and women, children and the wounded, down to the broad docks to stare out over the leaden waters at the two ships returning home.

Two.

“Where is the Wrath Hammer?” asked someone from the crowd.

Murmurs broke out.

Skadi pushed her way to the fore, where Rannveyg and Ásfríðr stood. Frowned at the approaching ships, and saw that their jarl’s venture had not gone well.

Shields were missing from along the racks. The sails were freshly patched. The oars that plied the frigid waters were far fewer than they should have been, the gaps in the ranks obvious.

“A hard-won victory,” asserted Rannveyg.

The crowd watched in silence as the dragon ships rowed ever closer. The dip of their oars seemed lethargic, their progress painfully slow.

But finally they swept in, the steersman’s bark causing all oars to lift and retract, and the dragon ships slid home along the piers.

The crowd tensed.

Jarl Kvedulf stood at the prow of the Sea Wolf, golden and fell, massive in his bear pelt and black cloak, clad in his bronze fish scale mail, his mighty sword, Dawn Reaver, at his side.

Skadi sharpened her vision.

Half of his threads were shorn clean away. Even so, he was surrounded by a nimbus of glory; she’d guess that twenty, maybe more yet, coruscated about his regal form.

“Husband,” said Rannveyg, stepping forward to greet him. “Welcome home.”

His brow was low over his glittering blue eyes as he scanned the crowd, the village. His warriors were rising behind him, but none dared speak or quit the ship till given the command.

“What has happened? Where is Ragnarr, where are my warriors?” He lifted his gaze, took in the ruptured great hall, and from his vantage point perhaps even the Raven’s Gate. “Who dared attack us?”

“Grýla the Ice Jotunn,” replied his wife.

The jarl’s jaw clenched so tightly that bands of muscle appeared beneath his beard, his fury such that his eyes narrowed to slits. “She dared.”

“Yes, my lord.” Rannveyg raised her chin. “But now you are returned, and our fortunes have turned.”

To this gracious welcome he made no response, but leaped down upon the pier, his weight a hammer blow on the boards. Hand on the pommel of his sword, he swept past them all, the crowd parting before him as he strode up the street toward the great hall.

His threads, Skadi saw, ceased to extend out into the sky, and instead bent into arcs that dropped amongst the town, disappearing as they passed through roofs and walls, sinking into the streets, connecting him once more to Kráka.

Marbjörn was the next down, a bandage wrapped around his head and covering one eye. “Arms,” he shouted, and the other warriors opened their chests and began to draw forth their weapons, their helms, their once gleaming coats of mail.

Half of them were wounded, Skadi saw. Their weapons notched, their armor as patched as the sail.

And from their dour mood, foul and black, it was clear who had been the victor between the two jarls.

In moments warriors were swarming onto the pier, the crowd drawing back, their alarm and shame renewed.

Skadi, hand on her seax, hurried to keep up with her uncle, who dragged his hird behind him as one might a cloak of steel and blood. Almost a hundred men had left to do battle. Only some sixty returned, a score of which were too wounded to fight.

Kráka had never been so weak.

Kvedulf strode imperiously to the front of his longhouse and stared, lips pursed, at the gaping hole where the once glorious doors had been torn free. Skadi, a few steps behind, tried to imagine what he might make of it: the shattered tables, the far end open to the sky, the fallen rafters, the darkness and destruction.

Then he caught sight of the soles of Kagssok’s boots, just within view around the corner.

Kvedulf drew Dawn Reaver, the blade so long he wielded it with two hands, and Skadi saw in its glory a deep font of the jarl’s own power. It was a mystical blade, its edge keen and unmarred, a wavering snake pattern down its length, runes carved down the length of the fuller.

Steadily, his fury baking off him, Kvedulf walked around the longhouse to stare at the fallen frost jotunn.

For a long while he simply stood there, chin raising, eyes going wide, and then he turned to stare past the warriors massed at his back at the crowd that had followed them up.

“Who killed the giant?”

Her stomach fluttering, her body light, Skadi stepped forward. “I did, Uncle.”

The gaze of sixty blooded warriors fell on her.

Considered her.

Marbjörn looked the most stunned.

“You.” The word was almost an accusation. Kvedulf turned to gesture at the giant, as if there could be any doubt. “You did this?”

“I had help. Glámr the half-troll and Yri Alfwerdottir.”

Kvedulf stared balefully at her, then turned again to stare at the giant. Propped Dawn Reaver over one mantled shoulder and strode the giant’s length.

None followed.

The jarl reached Kagssok’s great helmed head and stared at his face. Sighted the length of his hall, then turned to stare at Skadi once more.

He did not seem pleased.

He marched back, sheathing his blade as he came. “Hwideberg,” he snarled, not taking his eyes off Skadi as the older, bald warrior stepped forward. “Secure the village. Marbjörn, have the wounded brought into the hall. Ásfríðr, tend to their injuries. Rannveyg, prepare a feast as best you can to celebrate our return. Skadi, with me.”

The crowd and warriors broke apart as men began to bark commands, Rannveyg to martial help in preparing some manner of feast, some returning to the ships, others streaming toward the gate, others entering the great hall to begin lighting fires and righting furniture.

Kvedulf strode up the street and out the ruined gate. Turned to follow the faint path along the meadow, and for a moment Skadi thought he might be heading toward the waterfall. To bathe, after so long a trip?

But no, he passed the waterfall by and climbed the steep hill to the plateau that looked out over Kráka, where the standing stones rose.

Skadi had never ventured here. Had been either too busy, too tired, or too wary of entering their circle.

But Kvedulf moved into their midst and turned about slowly, frowning as he inspected them.

There were eight sarsen stones, slender and tapering to a height of some thirty feet. Skadi thought she could discern the faintest of carvings along their faces, intricate knotwork, the depiction of beasts of some kind—but the ages had weathered the stones so that she wasn’t sure.

A great stone lay in the center, massive and blocky, an altar. Kvedulf stepped up to it, placed a palm upon its surface, then turned to stare at her. “Tell me everything that happened.”

Skadi did so.

She omitted no detail. The suddenness of the attack, Ragnarr’s surrender, her flight with Glámr, the battle before the völva’s temple. Freyja’s visitation, the gift of Seimur, the preparation of the poison. Their return to Kráka, their attack, the giant’s death when she hurled Natthrafn straight into his eye.

She omitted the threads, however, and the fact that she was a wyrd weaver.

Kvedulf drifted to the plateau’s edge to gaze down on Kráka as she spoke, his arms crossed over his chest, his chin lowered, his mood remaining foul. When at last she finished he shook his head and spat.

“Grýla will pay for this. I swear it by my lifeblood and Odin.”

They stood in silence, but Skadi was fascinated by the effect his oath had on his threads. The runes of power that floated about them flashed and shrank, drawing closer to the threads and now spiraling around them quickly, like serpents coiling about a branch.

“You have done well, Niece.” He said these words with reluctance. “Were it not for your skill and bravery, my reception would have been far different. Later I will honor you before the hird.”

“Thank you, Uncle,” she said.

“My own venture did not go well.” He laughed bitterly. “As I am sure you have noticed. Our weather-luck was foul. We were separated by a storm, and the Wrath Hammer broke upon the Jotunn’s Teeth.”

Skadi looked askance.

“A broken reef that takes skill to navigate even with good weather.”

Somehow he made her feel guilty for not knowing this.

“We found Djúprvikp was undefended. Blakkr’s dragon ships were gone. We swarmed ashore. What need for a shield wall with no foes to contest us? We laughed as we raced into that foul village, only to learn too late that it was an ambush.”

The jarl worked his broad thumbnail into the pommel of Dawn Reaver, as if seeking to find some blemish.

“Blakkr’s hird burst forth. We were surrounded and in disarray. I sounded the retreat, and we cut our way back to the dock. Luck was against us. He had a völva with him, a seiðr witch, whose chanting filled our ears and drove needles of pain into our thought cages. We formed a shield wall, but it was clear we would not hold. The witch cast unnatural fear upon us as a large berserker charged our ranks. We broke for the ships.”

Kvedulf’s hatred and anger seared the air.

“They laughed as we rowed away. The only blessing was that in hiding their ships they’d lost the means to follow us. They loosed burning arrows at us, but we managed to escape. To limp home like whipped hounds, and to find this.”

There was no need for him to gesture at the ruined village below them.

“My life has been long and filled with glory. Queens have asked me to be their king, and I have declined. Kings have asked that I bend the knee, and I have laughed in their faces. I rescued Dawn Reaver from an ancient tomb lost in the land of the Skaberi, and battled a draugr king for it. I have drunk mead with valkyries, have visited the Isle of Vatnarr beneath the waves, and dined in its drowned halls. All this and more I have done, but never have I felt my wyrd so thin, so weak, so fragile.”

He clenched his fist so tightly his knuckles popped.

“I must know if this is to be my end. You have spoken with Freyja, Skadi. It seems it is our family’s blessing and curse to arouse the interest of the gods. Stay if you wish, or leave. I shall summon Odin, and if he heed my call, demand satisfaction of the All-Father.”