“I can’t wait.” Skadi stood up to stare Rauðbjorn directly in the eyes. “In fact, you could say I’ve been looking forward to getting this over with.”

“Over with?” Rauðbjorn reared back. “Girl, I shall hump you till the mountains—”

“Are you a warrior or a skald?” Now it was Skadi’s turn to thrust her fists against the table and lean forward. “Because if you think you’re going to get me off with crude poetry, you’re not the man I thought you were.”

Surprised laughter escaped a few lips further down the table, only to be silenced the moment Rauðbjorn glowered back at them.

“Good, good,” he said. “That’s the spirit I yearn for. First I broke your baby giant. Now let’s find out—”

“Still talking?” Skadi raised her horn, drained it dry, then tossed it against the berserker’s broad chest. “I’ll be waiting in the bedroom for when you’re done.”

She strode down the length of the table, and now the men did hoot, given permission by Rauðbjorn’s grin.

“Oh, this is a woman after my own heart,” he said. “Don’t wait up for us, men.”

Glámr caught her eye, his expression panicked, and clearly mouthed, What are you doing?

To which she could only grin ferally. She didn’t have an answer, but she knew one thing clear enough: she was finished with this dark madness. Finished with watching, with allowing, with witnessing Bölvun and Rauðbjorn run roughshod over common decency, over goodness, over anything that wasn’t foul or perverse.

One way or another, she’d find an ending, and it was high time that blood began to flow.

The longhouse was smaller than Kvedulf’s, but there were still chambers set off the side. She made her way through the door and found a large bedroom, a great wooden frame lashed together on which sordid dirty sheets lay tossed. Water ran down the swollen planks of the back wall, and puddled across the floor. The air was cold and humid and she shivered.

“Charming,” she said, turning about in the gloom.

Rauðbjorn appeared in the doorway behind her, axe at his hip, torch in hand. “Get naked.”

“That’s how this usually works, yes.” Skadi moved around the bed slowly, trailing a fingertip over the yellow linen. “But first I have to ask, why are you such a coward?”

The monstrous man had been in the process of sliding the torch into a wall bracket when her words hit him harder than Aurnir’s fists. He jerked as if stabbed, then hunched his shoulders and turned to glare venomously at her. “What did you say?”

“It’s the only reason I can come up with, your being hidden here in Djúprvik.” Skadi drew Thyrnir and laid it across a small table set flush against the weeping wall. For a moment she considered the vertical planks. They were ancient, looked as strong as soaked bread. “A mighty warrior like yourself, so powerful, so unstoppable. Blessed by Odin, capable of fighting even a half-giant without fear.”

Rauðbjorn listened, entranced, poised between a mindless rage and curiosity to hear more.

“Yet here you are, whiling away your days, doing what? Beating up weaker men? Sleeping? Where is your glory, Rauðbjorn? If you were to die tonight, what tales of yours would impress the einherjar of Valhöll?”

“What tales?” This was almost a snarl, and Skadi suddenly felt trapped in this small room with a ravening beast. “What tales? I’ve never once been defeated in battle—”

“But what battles have you fought? I know you repulsed the men of Kráka, but I’ve heard that they were already reeling in fear. That was no great deed. That was just you finishing what Bölvun started. What have you done, Rauðbjorn, which is a testament to your might and your might alone?”

His lips distended into a silent snarl. “You know nothing about me.”

“No. Which is why I’m asking.” She walked back around the table, frustrated that he’d not fallen her cue and set down his weapon. “You are a powerful man. Your wyrd is potent. Odin himself blesses you. But all I’ve seen is a loudmouth who drinks and bullies lesser men. So educate me.”

“Why, you—” The berserker raised his fist to backhand her and then froze.

Natthrafn pricked his stomach.

The urge to slam it home was overwhelming, but she knew she couldn’t. If she tried to actually hurt him, his wyrd would protect him.

But he didn’t know that.

He glanced down at the gleaming blade. “Now that’s a pretty thing.”

“Isn’t it?” She withdrew her seax, sheathed it. “So tell me, brave warrior. What have you accomplished?”

“I wrestled an aurochs to the ground, and with my own bare arms snapped its great neck.”

Skadi pretended to consider. “Not bad. But it’s a low bar, killing cows.”

“Ha! I fought Djúprvik’s greatest warriors as Bölvun called them out. Fought them fairly in a square of birch branches, and killed each and every one.”

“Villagers. Was there a hero amongst them of your stature?”

Rauðbjorn sneered. “Of course not.”

“So not worth boasting about. Come on, man. I know you’re strong. I see your potency. Why do you hide your deeds?” She placed a hand on his chest. “What are you ashamed of?”

“I’ll show you what I’m ashamed of,” he snarled and went to grab at her wrist, other hand seeking her waist.

She slipped back sinuously. “I won’t bed a coward.”

“Call me that one more time. I dare you.”

Skadi met his burning gaze. “Until you tell me otherwise? A bully. And a coward.”

“Oh, tonight is going to be good,” whispered the berserker. “I’ve not met a woman like you before. There’s not even a flicker of fear in the depths of your eyes. Either you’re as mad as Bölvun or you’re truly a shieldmaiden in hiding.”

“One way to find out. I’m just afraid I’ll break your hips.”

“Ha!” He grabbed his axe, pulled it free, and set it against the walls. “The odds of your doing that, girl, are very. Very. Slim.”

Skadi backed away. “I’m genuinely confused. A man like you shouldn’t have so powerful a wyrd without greater accomplishments.”

“What is this obsession of yours? Odin has blessed me. As a child, I killed a boy six years my elder at knattleikr. At fourteen none could best me at glima. At sixteen I was trapped in a cave-in and survived a week by myself, wondering in the dark, attacked by spirits of the earth. I crushed three of them with my fists and fought my way free. At twenty I went raiding in Skaberi. I killed twelve men that summer. The next year we raided Isern. I killed more.”

He began to pace toward her, slowly, deliberately, like a predator cornering prey.

“Wherever I’ve gone I’ve left nothing but death and blood, broken bones and broken bodies. At thirty I was taken prisoner in Wuduholt and tortured. But I did not break. My captors were dismayed. They saw that I liked the pain. They thought me a troll, and left me to die. I chewed my bonds and escaped.”

Skadi backed up against the wall.

In the doorway, she saw movement.

Glámr.

He slid his arm in, took hold of the great axe, and withdrew.

She sharpened her vision.

Rauðbjorn’s twenty-four threads diminished to twenty.

Not enough. So close to her eighteen, but those two threads made all the difference.

Rauðbjorn loomed over her, breathing deeply, his odor thick and sour in the air, the wall at her back.

“Now,” he whispered hoarsely. “The time for talking has come to an end.”

“There’s always time to chat,” she said, and slammed herself back into the rotting boards. They gave, but not completely.

“No no no,” smiled Rauðbjorn. “I slam you into the wall, you don’t slam yourself.”

Skadi felt light-headed, almost delirious. She smiled brightly. “Oh? Like this?”

And again she slammed herself back.

This time the boards burst behind her and she fell onto her ass in the rainy yard.

Rauðbjorn peered at her through the gap. “Don’t be a fool. It’s death out there. Get back inside.”

Skadi climbed to her feet and looked around. The huge oak rose close by, its death-canopy little more than variegated shadows in the night. The rain sheeted down, soaking her in an instant.

“If you think a little crack has ever kept me out, you’re mistaken,” said the berserker, and with a thrust, he shoved himself out after her, the wood splitting. “Now don’t make me chase you down. I tell you true, woman: salt hags walk Djúprvik by night. They’re drawn by the death. Now get back in here before you regret it.”

Skadi drew Thyrnir. “You make a good argument. If you take my shaft, I’ll consider taking yours.”

And she threw it with all her strength and almost all of her wyrd.

Thyrnir fled her fingers and hurtled hungrily at the berserker, who let out a cry of alarm as he twisted aside.

The halfspear sank into the plank beside his head, where it quivered and then went still.

“Is that the nature of the game you wish to play?” he asked, tone livid. “Very well. Let’s skip the humping and get right to the killing.”

In her vision his remaining three threads began to wind around themselves, forming a slender cord.

She’d reserved just enough to retain a single thread.

“You can do that with just three?” The injustice of it made her want to cry, to laugh. “Oh, come on!”

He stepped back into the gap in the wall. “Let me just—wait. Where’s my damn axe?”

“Oops,” said Skadi, backing away.

His shoulders began to rise and fall as he panted. “Whatever this is, whatever you were planning, it won’t work. I’ll tear off your arm and shove it down your throat.”

“Very arousing. You’ll have to catch me first.”

And with that Skadi turned and ran.

A hoarse bellow sounded behind her, and she could all but feel the ground shake as the huge man chased after.

But Skadi had spent the whole summer running, and fear gave her wings. Drawing Natthrafn she raced beneath the hanging blót and out into the street. Everything was dark, the rain blasting down, the street a quagmire of mud. The homes all looked abandoned, and she knew there was no use in pounding on doors.

Instead, she turned and ran with the flowing water to the docks.

If there were salt hags, that’s where they’d be.

Rauðbjorn bellowed as he charged after her, and Skadi had to run all out to keep ahead, her long stride devouring the blocks. In seconds she spilled out onto the warped wooden docks, almost slipped on the slick wood as she turned, and then ran on, along the water’s edge, leaping crates and coils of rope, ducking under fish racks and swaying around posts.

Rauðbjorn simply roared as he broke through everything. She heard wood splinter, heard wood crash.

Heart in her throat she saw the dock’s end fast approaching. To her left the dockside buildings, hunched and dark. To her right the piers and ships, and beyond them, barely visible in the heavy rain, the fjord.

And there—furtive movement by one of the ships, hunched and quick.

Skadi turned and continued backing away as Rauðbjorn came upon her. He was breathing like a bellows, his hands opening and closing.

“Going to tear you apart,” he barked hoarsely. “Make you nothing. Going to make you—”

Fog began to boil up around them even as it rained. Thick as wool, it rose like smoke from a wet fire, engulfing their legs, swarming into the air, curdling into tendrils that spread into great smothering blankets.

The berserker paused, whipped around, searching the fog. “Get you gone, trollwomen! I’ll tear you apart if I have to, but this is none of yours!”

His twin threads were still slowly unraveling. He had more than half still to go.

A shuffling shape emerged from the fog, a hideous crone of a woman, her stomach bloated as if drowned, her limbs overlong, her hair braided with gleaming seaweed, her clothing torn and sodden upon her brackish form. Long-nosed, with eyes of the purest white like pearls, the salt hag hissed and flared her fingers, each of which was tipped with a six-foot ragged talon. Sea water ran down her shins and bony clawed feet to wash out endlessly over the dock.

“Troll scum!” Rauðbjorn charged her. The salt hag screeched and clawed at him, but her talons raked his arms and chest without effect. With a roar he lifted the bloated creature off the dock by the neck and punched his other fist into her swollen gut, puncturing it.

Sea water and slime gouted forth as the salt hag screeched. Rauðbjorn hurled her headfirst down upon the boards and then stomped her head, crushing it.

Her screeching stopped, but the fog didn’t abate.

The berserker whipped around, sniffing at the air, and then dove into the fog.

Skadi heard the flap of bare feet, a hiss, a screech. Rauðbjorn roared, and then the sound of tearing flesh.

Skadi felt frozen. How was he just tearing them apart?

With a roar, the berserker hurled a corpse through the fog, then charged into another bank. Panicked footsteps and then a plop like a large fog diving into a pond.

The fog began to abate.

Breathing heavily, forearms beslimed, Rauðbjorn turned to where Skadi stood rooted. “Now it’s your turn.”

She knew she should run, but the strength had gone out of her legs. Her last hope, that the salt hags would find a way to sever his wyrd, had collapsed.

She held Natthrafn before her in the rain. “Come on then, you wretched slug. I’d rather die a thousand times over than lie with you.”

Rauðbjorn stepped in close. His expression was that of a madman, his whole body throbbing with rage, and before she could react his hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck.

“You think me a monster? I’ll prove you wrong. I’ll kill you first, and then fuck you.”

Skadi screamed and slammed Natthrafn into his chest. The blade slid right off his skin. She stabbed again and again, but couldn’t harm him.

His last three threads were about to unravel. If she could last but a moment longer—

Rauðbjorn lifted her off the ground and smacked her seax out of her hand.

She clutched at his wrist, but it was like trying to wrestle a root out of the ground. He squeezed and black spots appeared in her vision. She kicked, lashed out at him, but she might as well have kicked a standing stone.

“I always win,” he said as he brought her in close. “It is my wyrd. I always win.”

Her throat was on the verge of being crushed.

His three threads finally unwound themselves.

She had but the one, and she could sense it slipping away. And once it was gone, she was dead.

A wild thought. Instinct. Brute, desperate hope: Thyrnir. It was still plunged deep into the longhouse wall.

But it was bound to her in some way.

Would return to her in time.

But could she call it before then?

With her final thread, she reached for it, fumbled with her essence, her wyrd.

Let go of Rauðbjorn’s wrist and extended her arm toward the longhouse.

Come to me, Thyrnir. Come!

Her final thread snapped.

Rauðbjorn chuckled and brought her face to his, mashing his lips against her own, forcing his tongue into her mouth as she died.

A shaft appeared in her grip, worn and bent.

Four new threads blazed forth from her chest.

With every last desperate ounce of strength, she slammed Thyrnir’s point against the side of Rauðbjorn’s head.