“Hit me, you craven piece of shit!” Rauðbjorn strode toward Aurnir with his arms still spread. “Hit me!”

Aurnir complied.

The punch would have driven a hole in the longhouse’s wall. It rocked the berserker’s head to the side and caused his whole body to sag, one knee nearly touching the floor, but he didn’t fall.

“That all you got? I thought you were strong.” Rauðbjorn stood up straight. “If you’re not strong, what are you?”

Aurnir let out a horrified cry and punched the other fist across Rauðbjorn’s jaw, his whole body behind the blow.

The berserker staggered away to crash into a table, and there laughed, snatched a horn of ale, and poured it over his face. “Nothing! You’re nothing!”

Then he screamed and hurled himself at the half-giant. Aurnir, horrified, backed away, but was too slow.

Rauðbjorn leaped and drove his shoulder into the half-giant’s stomach, then landed and slammed a fist into the inside of Aurnir’s knee.

Again and again, the berserker attacked him, and Aurnir desperately deflected his attacks, punches that seemed to hit as hard as warhammers. In seconds, the berserker stripped Aurnir of three threads.

Aurnir grunted in pain and reached down for the man, seizing him around the waist. Lifted the berserker up into the air, but Rauðbjorn screamed and jerked forward to seize Aurnir by both ears and smash his brow into the giant’s nose.

And again. And again. Faster and faster, till blood was fountaining between them.

With a cry Aurnir hurled him away, his last threads disappearing in the process, and the berserker crashed to the ground, rolled under a table, only to erupt back up to his feet with a roar, sending the table flying and come charging back.

Aurnir wiped the blood from his face and swung a fist, but Rauðbjorn leaped impossibly high, clear over the backhand, and brought both fists across Aurnir’s jaw.

Skadi felt the blow from where she stood.

Aurnir’s head wrenched around, his neck straining, huge tendons sticking out, his body sagging.

Rauðbjorn landed and threw himself into a tackle, diving into the half-giant’s foot just as Aurnir tried to catch his balance.

Aurnir tripped and fell to the floor with a wail.

“Nothing!” screamed Rauðbjorn, scrambling up, his movements frenzied, his beard covered in spittle and foam, his eyes so wide his eyes bulged. “Nothing! Nothing!” He leaped atop Aurnir’s chest and clawed his way up to the half-giant’s head, ignoring the great clobbering blows he suffered as he went.

“We have to end this,” hissed Glámr, seizing Skadi by the arm.

Rauðbjorn straddled Aurnir’s neck, ass on his chest, and began to pound at his face. Brutal hammer blows, again and again, punching him so fast that his arms blurred, his scream rising and rising.

Aurnir twisted from side to side, grabbed hold of the berserker, and tried to haul him off, but the man was strong as steel, his feet hooked under Aurnir’s neck, his whole body bent to his task.

“Surrender, Aurnir!” Skadi screamed. “It’s over!”

“Surrender!” cried Aurnir, slapping now ineffectually at the berserker. “Aurnir surrender!”

“Nothing! Make you nothing! Will make you nothing!” screamed Rauðbjorn, ignoring the half-giant’s cries, battering and punching as he strove to stave in the half-giant’s skull.

“Enough of this,” hissed Skadi and pulled Thyrnir from her belt. The berserker’s threads were still unwinding, but at least two-thirds yet remained of the rope they had formed. Too many for her halfspear to overcome, and that’s if Rauðbjorn even took damage from the attack.

Skadi drew her arm back, feeling the halfspear thrill. Didn’t think about the sixty other warriors present. What they would do, what Rauðbjorn would urge them to do once the spear was cast.

She could only hear Aurnir’s hiccuping wail.

The front doors slammed open and a rain-gusted gale blew into the hall, causing the flames in the fire pits and torches to stream and nearly go out.

Rauðbjorn reared up to stare, blood smeared blackly across his fists. Aurnir moaned and covered his face with both arms.

A woman stood in the doorway, crowned in twisting horns and dripping rainwater. A large, bearskin mantle bulked up her shoulders, but she wore nothing beneath it, her torso bare, tattoos resplendent over one shoulder, descending in a column of runes from the hollow of her throat to her navel. Elbow-length gloves were wrapped in leather straps, and she wore a skirt made of many different overlapping fabrics, part wolfskin, part chain, part dyed cloth, part rags. A fox’s skull was bound to her hip alongside many other pouches and charms, and the very sight of her filled Skadi with revulsion.

“What games are we playing at?” she asked, her voice slipping into the hall like a seax into a man’s back, and her full lips quirked into a smile.

“Games?” Rauðbjorn blinked, coming back to himself, then gazed down at Aurnir who yet moaned and covered his face.

“Games of blood and violence.” Bölvun walked delicately forward, her footsteps unerring despite the upper half of her face being covered by the face-fitting leather base of her crown. Each horn, Skadi saw, came from a different beast, so that the amalgamated whole was disconcerting to the extreme. “The spirits called to me. Said that the night had begun early. Who is this that you play with?”

“This?” Rauðbjorn was having difficulty rousing himself from his frenzy, and now seemed stunned.

His threads, Skadi saw, were unwinding themselves ever more quickly now, fraying apart and returning to normal. To her horror, she saw that his berserk fit had cost him nothing.

How was that possible? Was Odin’s blessing so powerful?

Rauðbjorn climbed off the half-giant and waited as Bölvun walked up to him, still blinking away his stupor.

The fordæða took up one of his huge fists and turned it about in the firelight, so that the blood gleamed hypnotically, then lifted it to her lips. Ran her tongue down the back of the berserker’s fist, then placed his open hand between her breasts and dragged it down so that a trail of blood was left in its wake.

“A wrestling match,” said Rauðbjorn thickly. “Just a game.”

Skadi hopped over the table. Now was the time to stay quiet, to remain in the background, but she couldn’t leave Aurnir out there alone. She crossed quickly to his side and knelt beside him.

“Hush, you fought well,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears again as she saw his ruined features up close.

“Skadi,” moaned the half-giant. “Aurnir hurt.”

“You’ll be all right,” she said fiercely. “Come, get up. Up.”

“Hark, I hear the footsteps of a valkyrie.” Bölvun canted her head to one side. “Who goes there?”

“Valkyrie?” Rauðbjorn wiped his hands on his pants. “’Tis nothing but a merchant girl. Skadi Alfwerdottir. Arrived today. Bandits got her father.”

“No, not her.” Bölvun raised a hand and twisted about, searching with a sinuous grace like a snake testing the air. “But no, it’s gone.”

Aurnir sat up, and Skadi hauled on his arm. He rose, swayed, and she pulled him back toward the tables.

“Skadi Alfwerdottir.” Bölvun said her name as if tasting it. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“What do you mean?” asked Rauðbjorn. “You don’t like the sound of it.”

Damn it, thought Skadi.

“Oh, but I do.” Bölvun turned to stare directly at where Skadi stood. “I smell a rich scent. Green like spring grass, rich with health and power. Come here, merchant’s dottir.”

Skadi flexed her hand, aching to draw Thyrnir once more. Her throat was parched and she felt light-headed.

But she had to know.

Skadi sharpened her vision.

Golden threads burst forth from the fordæða’s blood-streaked chest, many more than Rauðbjorn. Thirty? Ten or so of which braided into a rope and streamed together through the longhouse wall. What did that mean?

Skadi stepped up. She barely dared breathe. Up close Bölvun stank, stank of old blood and loam, of sweat and the rich, bloated smell of rotting flowers.

“Skadi Alfwerdottir.” Again she canted her head to one side, her crown of antlers raking through the air. “There is a presence to you. Who are you? What are you?”

She’s no wyrd weaver, Skadi realized in relief. She can’t see my threads. But she can sense them.

“I am myself alone,” she said. The entire hall was watching their exchange. Behind her, she heard Damian cajoling Aurnir to sit. “A stranger here. I’ve lost my family to bandits. I want to avenge them, but first I have to take care of my friends.”

Bölvun reached out and touched Skadi’s cheek with her gloved fingertips. Her caress made Skadi’s skin crawl. “That sounds true. And yet. What brings you to Djúprvik?”

How much lying could she get away with?

“I had no choice. The loss of my family has forced my hand. I need to seize my own wyrd, and to do so I have to keep moving.”

“Oh, but I like this one,” said Bölvun, her full lips twisting into a smile. “Come sit with me, Skadi Alfwerdottir.”

The gods damn it.

“She’s mine,” rasped Rauðbjorn, his brows beetling.

“I don’t wish to bed her, just speak with her,” said the fordæða with obvious amusement. “Anticipation will whet your appetite.”

“It doesn’t need whetting, it needs slaking,” growled the huge man.

But the fordæða seemed utterly unconcerned. She took Skadi’s hand and pulled her to the cross table set before the slumbering jarl. None sat there, but a place had already been set by the thralls, no doubt in anticipation of the sorceress’s arrival.

The tables were sufficiently disjointed that they were able to step between them, and it was with trepidation that Skadi sat down beside Bölvun. Who sat with delicate grace, removed her crown, and set it on the table beside her.

The fordæða turned to study Skadi with an enigmatic smile; her black hair was shorn close to the scalp, her eyes were dark and lively, and without her fearsome headpiece she appeared suddenly as young as Skadi, a woman of barely twenty summers.

“I can’t wear it all the time,” she confided. “Gives me headaches. That and hearing him mutter drives me to distraction. So. Skadi. Why does your presence excite me so?”

Almost Skadi could imagine the other woman as a stranger she’d by chance sat beside while visiting another longhouse. Were it not for Aurnir’s blood streaked down her tattooed chest, her hideous stench, and the madness that she saw glimmering in the depths of her black eyes.

“I…I was training to be a völva before we left Havaklif,” she said. “I was apprenticed for a summer and learned certain chants. My patroness told me I was gifted.”

“That must be it.” Bölvun took Skadi’s hand and examined her palm, running a finger over the lines there, her nails marked by grime. “Yes, I sense a quickening in the air, a thrill. Makes me feel much like a spider when a fly strays into its web. Are you a little fly, Skadi? Do you fear the spider?”

“Very much so,” whispered Skadi, and that was true as well. “I just want to hire a boat and be gone from here.”

“Of course you do.” Bölvun released her hand. “And perhaps you will if you survive the night with Rauðbjorn. He can be so rough with his women.”

Thralls set platters before them.

It was only now that the power of being a wyrd weaver truly hit home. Skadi could see the thirty or so threads burning forth from Bölvun, but the other woman had only a vague intuition, and that was because she was a powerful fordæða. A man like Rauðbjorn had no idea as to what Skadi could do.

It felt like being the only person able to see in a world of the blind.

“It’s good that you ceased your training,” said Bölvun, raking her fingertips briskly through her shorn hair and turning to her food. “Nothing good comes from dealing with the gods and spirits, with tempting the norns and fate.”

“You seem to have accumulated much power.”

The fordæða looked at her sidelong. “And is it good to have power?”

“Only you can tell me that. I have none.”

“Yes, it is good to have power. Because power allows you to redress wrongs.” Bölvun turned fully to face her once more, her spoon dropping to clatter in her bowl. “With power, you can control your fate, which means others can’t control it, which means you can’t be used, at least, not by common wretches and fools. Because there’s no escaping the clutches of someone, there’s always someone who has their hooks in you, and no worm should ever think themselves so mighty that they forget they’re impaled on a hook, do you understand?”

“I… I think so.” Skadi had to fight not to rear back. “But you don’t even fear Rauðbjorn—whose hook could you be on?”

“Whose hook?” Bölvun’s eyes unfocused and she stared right through Skadi. She sat thus for a moment, frozen, then blinked and turned back to her bowl, fishing out her spoon neatly. “There’s always a greater angler. Every fisherwoman has a hook stuck in her back in turn. Rauðbjorn’s hook is sunk between your shoulder blades. Mine is between his. And between my own? Hmm? Whom do you think has poor little Bölvun hooked?”

Skadi glanced at where Blakkr slumbered—only to realize that the old jarl was awake, his eyes slit, his mouth pursed.

“Him?” Bölvun raised her eyebrows incredulously and turned to stare at Blakkr. “What do you think, jarl? Do you have your hook in me?”

Blakkr tried to sink deeper into his chair.

“Not him.” Bölvun laughed and returned to her food. “But knowing the origin of hooks confers power. Do you want power over me, Skadi?”

“I…yes?” Skadi fought hard to sound honest. “So that I could compel you to let me go?”

“Ha! Freedom. There is no such thing. You would flee where?”

Skadi’s voice was hushed. “Afastr. I’m to be wedded there.”

“Another hook. The world is nothing but. You can’t step but have your foot pierced, you can’t hump, you can’t kill, you can’t do anything but become indebted.” Bölvun’s shoulders slumped and she stared out moodily over the hall. The warriors had grown subdued with her arrival, and even Rauðbjorn had sat down and accepted a new horn.

Skadi tried to untangle Bölvun’s throughline. “So you regret needing power?”

“Regret is for idiots.” Bölvun spooned soup into her mouth aggressively. “What’s done is done. Do you know she buried me in a box?” She turned to stare brightly at Skadi, lips pulled into an expectant smile. “Ten days I was buried. The dark was so absolute it had texture. Ten days in the ground?”

“I—your patroness? The woman who taught you to be a völva?”

Bölvun frowned. “Whom else? Are you slow?”

“I’m sorry.”

Bölvun stared at her in disgust then waved her spoon airily. “No matter. You’re just…whatever you are.”

And resumed eating her soup.

Skadi glanced toward her friends. Damian had cleaned Aurnir’s face, revealing several deep cuts along his cheek and brow, but no bones seemed to have been broken.

“Why do you want more power, then? I’ve heard you plan to attack Kráka.”

“Because Kráka already attacked us.” Bölvun frowned. “There is no peace in this world. Eat or be eaten. Their jarl wants me gone so that he can raise his sights to his next tasty treat. So I’ll kill him first. Tie him down and pull out his red tummy ropes and strangle him with them.”

She had to wrest some advantage from all this. “Why were you buried?”

“Why?” Bölvun blinked as if she’d never asked herself that question. “Why, because she wanted to steal my wyrd. My youth.” Turned to consider Skadi. “It’s why she trained me at all, though I’d not know it. A farce. A means to an end. But she couldn’t kill me directly. She had to let me run dry. So she buried me in a box, planted me like a seed. A seed whose fruit she wished to eat.”

“By the gods,” whispered Skadi. “That’s…”

“Not nice? No.” Bölvun grimaced. “But haven’t you been listening? Anyway, I turned the tables on her. That’s why I’m sitting here, isn’t it?”

“You did?”

“I did. With some help. A new hook. That’s the best you can do, you see. Switch one hook for another. So when she dug me up and opened my box, there I was, all smiles, and I pulled her into that box with me, and oh, I ate my fill and drank deep. You get awful thirsty after ten days.”

Skadi’s throat tightened. “I…see.”

“And then I came to Djúprvik, and I met Jarl Blakkr, and I raised Rauðbjorn, and I sacrificed to Odin, and we danced and had fun, and those who complained we killed, and it’s been a better place ever since.” Bölvun looked sidelong at Skadi again, but now her gaze was dangerous. “Don’t you think? We sleep when we wish, we hump whom we wish, we drink and eat what we want, and soon we shall go to Kráka and bring the same blessings to them. Oh, they’ll protest, they always do, but once the boring ones are cleared away, Kráka too shall be freed and dedicated to Odin.”

“And then?”

“And then?” Bölvun’s expression turned unsure. “If I still live? Hake, perhaps. Havaklif?”

“I see. I think I understand.”

“You do, do you?”

“You want power so that nobody buries you again. You want power so that you can bury those who want to get their hooks into you. So that you can please Odin, so that you can do what you want, when you want.”

“Yes.” Bölvun smiled suddenly. “Yes, that’s it. You’re really quite smart. Talented. Maybe I’ll keep you. You can help me.”

“You’d protect me from Rauðbjorn?”

“What? Oh. No. He gets to hump you whenever and however he wants. But he can’t do it for long. Only a few hours at a time. Then you can be mine.”

“Speaking of which,” rumbled a voice, and Skadi tore her eyes free of Bölvun’s to look at where Rauðbjorn now loomed over them both. “I tire of waiting. I don’t want to participate in tonight’s revelry. I want Skadi. Now.”

Bölvun laughed and sat back. “Then she is yours, darling. Just don’t tear her up too badly. I want her to have breakfast with me in the morning.”

“No promises,” leered the berserker, leaning forward. “Come on, Alfwerdottir. It’s time you earned your keep.”