They left before dawn.

Sixty warriors strode out the patchwork Raven’s Gate, clad in furs and cloaks, round shields slung atop their leather packs, axes and swords at the hip, and many with bows and quivers as well. The members of Kvedulf’s hird wore bright-gleaming chainmail over thick quilted undercoats and strode at the front.

All of Kráka came to see them off, and Skadi had to force herself not to turn back to wave again to Begga, Kofri, and Ulfarr. With Glámr and Yri by her side, she strode in the center of the warband, behind the hird proper.

The sun was bright in late Skerpla, and soon Skadi was sweating. But her habit of racing up this very trail each morning with a shield in each fist had paid off; where even some of the strongest warriors began to slow, she felt herself possessing endless energy, with a spring desire to move ever faster up the slope.

Jarl Kvedulf had made no stirring speeches that morning. In the pre-dawn gloom he’d gathered his men and moved amongst them, murmuring words of encouragement here, of recognition there.

Soon Kráka lay below them, and Skadi turned at one point to gaze over the steep valley, the fjord’s waters gleaming bright blue, the village so small it could have fit into the palm of her hand. Overhead an eagle soared on the thermals, winging its way in slow circles, and the flowers of spring had given way to lush, green meadows and verdant forest.

“It’ll be a long climb,” said Yri, thumbs laced under the straps of her pack. “I’ve heard the tale too many times to count.”

“Of the jarl’s first attack on Grýla?” asked Glámr.

“Aye. It’s been my obsession, as you know.” Yri shrugged, as if the admittance cost her nothing. “I’ve had the tale from everyone who returned. It’s a two-day climb to the snowline, and then another day’s hard going to the castle entrance. The way is dangerous, especially now. Might take us four days to climb, if we’re cautious.”

Skadi looked up the length of the column, the men marching three abreast up the ever-narrowing trail.

“This ends just ahead,” said Yri, following the direction of her gaze. “Meets the mountain road that runs the length of the Draugr Coast. Follow it north and you reach Djúprvikp. South takes you to Hake. It’s high enough to not dip into each valley, but not so high as to become truly perilous.”

“Then what?” asked Skadi.

“We climb without a trail,” said Glámr with a roguish grin. “Surely the Giant-Slayer could have figured that out.”

They reached the mountain road by late morning. Its name was far too glorious; it was little more than a crushed white gravel trail that meandered along the steep. They stopped there to drink and stretch, and Marbjörn approached, his grin wolfish under his thick mustache.

“Skadi Giantslayer,” he said. “It seems my training bore fruit.”

Skadi stared at the massive man, taken aback, then grinned in return. “You claim credit?”

“As an old master in the ways of war, it does my heart good to see my lessons put to such good use. I only lament that I wasn’t there to do the deed myself.”

“Kagssok would have stepped on you, Marbjörn, and that would have been the end of your laments.”

Those closest laughed, and to his credit, Marbjörn laughed as well. “Perhaps. But if we return from this venture, you have my word that I shall train you further. After all, it’s one thing to hurl a spear and trust to the gods. Another to step into a holmgang square and face off against a talented fighter, sword to sword.”

“I’d appreciate that,” said Skadi. “Especially seeing as I paid you with a golden armring for the lessons.”

More laughter.

“The wolf-maiden has a bite!” Marbjörn bowed mockingly low, his heavily ringed beard swinging free. “Then let us be sure we survive this adventure.”

They resumed their climb. Skadi learned not to pin her hopes on the peaks that presented themselves, for always they betrayed her, revealing themselves to be false, hiding a small valley behind them and an even steeper climb thereafter.

The bushes became wiry, the rock raw where it broke free of the thin soil, the air thin and chill.

A cry from up front. One of the scouts. They hurried forward and found a headless corpse lying chest-down in a crevasse.

“Skuggi,” whispered Glámr. “I told you trolls are not fond of our kind.”

“Where is the half-troll’s head?” asked Kvedulf, his tone mildly curious. “Perhaps they took it with them. We press on.”

The sun settled toward the western peaks, shadows began to lengthen, and still they climbed. Skadi’s breath burned in her lungs, her legs and hips felt loose and liquid, and her pack had more than doubled in weight.

But she didn’t complain.

Instead, she gave silent thanks to Marbjörn’s training. If she’d tried this climb before reaching Kráka, she’d have collapsed long ago.

They camped on a ledge with a generous overhang, built fires where they couldn’t be seen, and ate their heated food in a subdued mood. Refilled their water bottles from a trickling waterfall no wider than her arm, and after watch was set, Skadi bedded down with Natthrafn close at hand and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

From which she was torn by a great roar, a sound so deep and reverberating that she felt it more in her chest than heard it with her ears.

She leaped up, seax and shield in hand, everybody else clambering to their feet at the same time.

It was an hour before dusk. The fires had died down to embers. The guards stood at the western edge of the ledge having formed a line, shields raised, spears held over them—but there was no battle.

“What was that?” asked Yri, voice breathless.

“Bear,” muttered Hwideberg as he strode toward the guards.

“That sounded like no bear I’ve ever heard,” whispered Glámr.

They remained alert for a good span of time, but no attack came, and no sighting was to be had of the bear. Finally Kvedulf ordered everybody back to sleep, added a few men to the guard, and returned to his bedroll himself.

Skadi lay down, head on her pack, cloak pulled tight about herself, her nerves stretched as taut as sinews. How could she sleep after such a roar?

But a second later a rough hand shook her awake.

Dawn had come.

She crouched beside the fire and ate her breakfast blearily. Washed her face, stretched her aching muscles, and shouldered her pack.

They filed off the ledge, only to pause at the pocket meadow beyond.

Murmurs, consternation, and Kvedulf and his prized men crouched around something in the dirt.

It was only when they moved on that Skadi saw what had concerned them.

A pawprint bigger than a shield, the claw marks having torn into the grass leaving sharp brown gashes.

“Jarl Nábjörn,” said Hwideberg with quiet certainty, speaking to one and all. “It must be.”

Skadi looked askance to Glámr, who shrugged, then to Yri, whose face had turned ashen.

“A legend. A jarl from ages past, a berserker who won every battle, a great leader blessed by Odin. But he lusted after a völva who refused him again and again, until finally he broke into her temple in a rage and raped her. After he left, she invoked Freyja, who demanded justice from Odin. The All-Father cursed him to remain forever in the form of a bear, and to watch all he had built crumble to dust, and to wander the mountains consumed by his hatred forevermore.”

Skadi shivered and stared at the monstrous pawprint.

They climbed.

The warband had found its marching rhythm, and when the stope grew especially steep, Marbjörn would call out a marching song about a wandering man as stupid as he was beautiful, who slept with everything anything that crossed his path.

To her surprise, Skadi found that it helped.

Looking back, she could make out the fjord now as a finger of vivid blue water. Of Kráka she could make out nothing.

Great crowns of rock rose around them now, ragged and raw. They wound their way back and forth up slopes so steep they were almost cliffs, occasionally being forced to climb up narrow cracks in the folded rocks like chimneys, ascending vertically for fifteen, sometimes thirty yards.

They found the trolls’ camp just before midday. No fire, no sign that they’d slept, but a mass of fresh bones, vultures hopping and flapping their wings about the pile.

Auðun rushed at them, hurled an axe, and brought down one particular massive bird who squawked and fluttered till he stomped on its head. Expression furious, he turned to stare at the bones with the rest of them.

The trolls had picked them mostly clean, cracked open the larger bones to suck out the marrow, and left only the heads in a line as a testament to the warriors who’d been devoured.

Even with his eyes plucked out, Skadi recognized Ragnarr’s head.

The warband studied the pile of bones in grim fury, and then Kvedulf strode past and led them on.

The green gave way to rock and firs. The trees grew ever smaller and more stunted, no longer appearing in forests or copses but one by one. Scraggly bushes with bright red berries clustered where the mountain shield them from the winds. Small rodents watched them from safe distances, rising up to their rear legs, and once Skadi saw a black fox with green eyes observing them from the mouth of a small cave.

They reached the snow a few hours before dusk.

Smatterings at first, hidden in hollows and places the sun reached but rarely, but then thin sheets of it over the gravel and rocks. On they marched, resolute, and the snow grew thicker until all but the outcroppings of rock were covered.

The fjord was gone from sight. The mountainside descended steeply behind them, but on all sides, other crags and mountains rose, so that it felt as if they struggled through a world of peaks and nothing else.

The snow lay heavy, and went from ankle to shin-deep in what felt like moments. The last of the trees ended, and as dusk fell Skadi found herself climbing an alien landscape, raw and ever-present snow. She felt drenched in sweat under her clothing, but a moment’s inactivity chilled her. The setting sun glimmered off the ice above them and set it to sparkling like white chips of flame.

The bear burst out of a sheer canyon without warning.

It was massive, gaunt, the size of her house back in Kráka. Gray fur covered its back, haunches, forearms, but the rest of it was bare, its flesh a pale pink. It was everywhere scarred, and countless broken spears and arrow shafts emerged from its back and arms and neck. The remnants of an ancient net were pulled cruelly tight across one shoulder, affixed with iron claws that hunk deep into its flesh, and pinned beneath this was an old shield and fragments of a skeleton.

But its head. Ursine to be sure, but the fur was mangey, the ears shredded, its maw strangely narrow and filled with fangs the length of a table knife.

And its eyes. They gleamed with human intelligence, filled with unyielding hatred and madness and endless gulfs of pain.

No roar. No warning.

It simply burst out of the canyon, sending up huge sprays of snow as it charged forward with terrible speed, big as a house and then it was upon them.

The warriors shouted, screamed, unslung shields, tried to react, but it was amongst them before they could. It bit a man, whipped his head to one side, and sent the warrior flying, blood spraying through the air in a vivid, incarnadine spray. It reared up and swiped claws through the massed ranks.

Men fell back on their training, began to form a shield wall, and upon this the bear fell like a thunderbolt.

“Spread apart!” bellowed Kvedulf, Dawn Reaver in his fist. “Spread apart!”

Skadi pulled her hand-axe from her belt, staring wide-eyed at the bear.

A mass of golden threads burned forth from it, forty, perhaps, maybe more, spinning and weaving so quickly she couldn’t count them, with one central thread as thick as her thigh spearing straight into the clouded heavens.

Three hopping steps and she hurled her axe, that massive, all-her-weight-behind-it kind of throw, both feet leaving the ground as she did so, and saw her weapon blur toward the bear.

It was so massive she couldn’t miss.

Shouldn’t have missed.

But her axe flew high as if knocked up by a sudden gust of wind, and she thought she saw a thread of the bear’s disappear.

Men were shouting. Spears were being thrown. Those caught directly before it, a knot of some ten warriors, were clearly overwhelmed, gazing up in horror at the beast that loomed over them, their shields raised.

Auðun ran to the cliff face, began to climb.

Skadi drew Natthrafn.

Glámr dropped back, bow in hand, arrow at the string.

Hwideberg began to throat sing, the sound deep and raw, and waded forward with his long-axe in both hands, fearless, his eyes wide.

Marbjörn hefted a spear, scowled, and hurled it.

The spear flew wide.

The bear roared and collapsed upon the men before it like a crashing wave. Shields splintered, bones shattered, men screamed.

Hwideberg’s singing rose in pitch and he hurled himself forward. Swung his huge axe with both hands, and Skadi saw half of the bald old warrior’s golden threads disappear in a flash.

The bear swayed back, the axe missed, but still, six of its threads disappeared all at once.

How had Hwideberg done that?

Auðun screamed and leaped from a high rock, both axes lifted on high. He landed on the bear’s back and began to hack with both of them as if at an ice cliff.

The bear roared, swiped at Hwideberg, who rolled away with surprising skill, losing two more threads in the process.

There wasn’t enough room for everybody to come to grips with the bear. A dozen warriors were grouped together farther up the slope, some thirty bunched below the fight. Skadi shouldered her way ferociously through the mass, shoving aside shields, dragging her own clattering behind her, and with Natthrafn in hand stepped out into the open.

Blood was vivid across the snow.

Auðun flew from the bear’s back as it stomped down on all fours with enough force to cause snow to sift from rock faces all around them.

Hwideberg came up just as Marbjörn charged past him, his double-headed axe swinging around his head, roaring his challenge at the bear.

Who roared right back and sprang onto the charging warrior, burying him beneath its bulk through sheer size alone.

More threads disappeared from the bear, and now Skadi guessed it had but twenty or so left.

She ran forward, over the packed snow, her pants loud in her ears, her seax pitifully small in her fist. Shield raised she ran right at the bear’s rear and stabbed with all her strength at the snarled gray fur.

Its hide was as tough as cured leather. Her blade bit deep, but then it hopped to the side, head down between its forepaws as it tried to devour Marbjörn, who had thrust the haft of his axe between its jaws and was fending it off, the muscles of his arms writhing like huge eels beneath his skin.

Skadi cried out and slashed once more.

Nǫkkvi, a key member of the hird, had climbed atop an outcropping and drawn his massive black bow. He put a yard-long arrow to it, drew to his ear, and loosed.

The arrow punched into the side of the bear’s head with all the force of a battering ram, and all five of Nǫkkvi’s golden threads disappeared, taking a quarter of the bear’s in turn.

The bear roared for the first time, and they heard again that horrendous cry from the night before. More snow sifted off ledges, and it backed off Marbjörn, shaking its head as it tried to dislodge the arrow that had punched through its cheek and shattered some of its teeth.

Marbjörn rose shakily to his feet, but the bear slashed with its huge paw and sent him crashing across the slope.

Spears flew at the monster. Arrows.

Many missed, but others sank deep amongst the old and broken weapons that pocked its hide.

The bear seemed impervious to them.

And then did Kvedulf step forward, golden and glittering, Dawn Reaver clasped in both hands, and the bear stilled as if sensing a true foe. Turned its great and mangy head to glare at the jarl, who laughed and pointed his blade directly at its head.

“I am Kvedulf, monster.” Never had Skadi heard her uncle sound so joyous. “Your time has come. Odin! Bless my blade! I send this beast to Hel!”