Thyrnir burst through the berserker’s temple and into his brain. His whole body spasmed, his grip on her neck faltered, and then they were both falling, her halfspear torn from her grip to crash upon the sodden boards.

Skadi bounced back to her feet, coughing and gasping as she grasped her neck, ready for the impossible, for Rauðbjorn to somehow rise laughing, but he lay still, kicked out on his side, head pulled around by the weight of Thyrnir’s shaft.

With a hiss, Skadi darted forward and tore her weapon free. It tore a mass of brains out with it.

She stared, disbelieving.

He really was dead.

Her gorge rose as her stomach spasmed and she bent over, fighting the need to vomit. Mastered herself, hand over her mouth, then backed away from the corpse. Fierce exultation and horror welled up within her. Her eyes were scalded by tears and she pressed the back of her wrist to her mouth as she choked down a sob. The violence of her emotions and relief nearly undid her; she wanted to do nothing more than to run and keep running as disgust and fury and terror warred within her breast.

Instead, she forced herself to straighten and search the docks. There, a glint of steel, and with four swift steps she snatched up Natthrafn.

The berserker might be dead, but there might still be salt hags in the area.

She gave the corpse a wide berth. A vicious part of her wanted to stab him again to be sure, a wiser part to push his corpse into the water to be devoured, but she couldn’t force herself any closer. She needed to be gone as quickly as possible, so she broke into a run, cutting into Djúprvik proper, slipping between houses and then out into a road which she followed back to the longhouse.

The rain fell unabated. She slipped in the mud, nearly fell. Her wyrd was utterly depleted. She felt naked, raw, vulnerable. She couldn’t confront Bölvun tonight. What to do?

She reached the longhouse and found the gap she’d battered through the rotten wood. Soaked as she was, shaking and horrified, she couldn’t just stroll back to her friends. No—she had to wait out the night.

There was only one place she could go. Same as when she’d been a child and learned a key truth to the world: people didn’t look up.

Perhaps salt hags didn’t either.

She skirted the edge of the longhouse till she found a good spot, then scaled onto an old barrel which wobbled precariously beneath her while she placed a steadying hand on a column, then leaped, grabbed a ridge of wood, and hauled herself up onto the ancient roof.

Rain coursed off the wooden tiles, suffusing the moss and ferns and plants that grew across it with abandon. Carefully, aware that one misstep could plunge her foot through, she crawled higher and higher. Djúprvik was spread out about her, hidden by the night and the rain, a mass of shadows with the oak’s great dark canopy to her left. Higher she went, moving slowly, weapons stowed, until at last, she reached the spine.

With great caution, she moved to the covered smoke shaft. Oily smoke sifted out, and she hesitated as she considered slipping inside and down onto a rafter tree. The odds of anybody seeing her up there in the dark and smoke were infinitely small, but in the end, she drew back.

There was a fordæða below. No sense in risking it.

Instead, she sat against one of the slender poles holding up the covering and wrapped her arms around her shins, Thyrnir pinned by her knees against her chest.

She sharpened her vision.

One thread remained to her.

She’d had eighteen when she’d thrown her halfspear at Rauðbjorn, but had held back a little so that she’d cut only seventeen of his threads. He’d chased her with three, and when she’d expended her last thread to summon Thyrnir, it had returned with four instead of five. Four had been enough to quench the berserker’s remaining threads, leaving it with just the one?

But she lost her focus as a wave of giddiness swept through her. She’d called Thyrnir back to her hand! It had cost her a thread, and it had returned slightly diminished, but that meant she’d be able to hurl it in battle and summon it back—what—thirteen times before she ran out of wyrd?

The thought made her grin. To hurl Thyrnir and snatch him back, again and again—what power. She would be devastating in battle. Though it would come at a price—the halfspear lost potency with each throw. After its five threads were gone, would it act as a normal halfspear, losing its thrilling lethality?

No matter.

It was an incredible power. How glad she was that she’d chosen it over any other weapon of Kvedulf’s.

The rain continued to soak her, and she began to shiver. How long would it take her wyrd to recover? She’d never thought to measure the passage of time before—had always been too busy surviving, or dealing with a new crisis to experiment. Would it return all at once, or thread by thread? Was there a logic to how it appeared or was that a foolish question to ask?

Perhaps her wyrd returned after a single crisis had been dealt with; in the past, she’d rediscovered a full complement of threads when dealing with a new threat. Did that mean that spending the night up here would be sufficient to restore her fate, or would she remain depleted while she remained in Djúprvik?

Skadi pressed her chin hard against her kneecap and ceased wondering.

She’d find out soon enough.

Better to spend her time planning out her next steps.

Everybody knew Rauðbjorn had left with her. When dawn broke they’d find his corpse on the docks. Even if Bölvun didn’t suspect her at first, her crown would ferret her out when the fordæða asked it who opposed her.

Come morning, they’d be at war.

Then? If she had her wyrd that would place her at eighteen threads. Far too few to challenge the fordæða openly with her thirty or more threads.

What a potent sorceress. And what madness her tale. To be buried for ten days? Who—or what—had succored her? Did those ten or so twined threads that all flew together in the same direction lead to her patron? The one with a hook in her? It had to be a troll or spirit of the land. Perhaps a dvergr?

Whatever had happened to Bölvun had broken her. Skadi almost felt pity for the young woman. Something about her had seemed almost…lost. But no. There was no room for pity. The oak tree blót precluded that, as did everything else.

Like what was happening below in the hall.

She could hear shouting, singing, the hammering of fists on tables, laughter. But it sounded crazed to her, unnatural. The kind of celebration that might follow a funeral, where grief found expression through excess. A scream, then laughter.

Skadi hardened her heart.

No. Bölvun might be a victim of abuse, but she’d become a monster in turn.

Rauðbjorn was dead. Bölvun would die next.

And then? Would Jarl Blakkr emerge from his broken shell?

Skadi sighed and pressed her brow to her knees. A plan. What would she do in the morning?

But for all her intentions, her need, and her shivering, wet cold, Skadi felt too exhausted to think. Instead, she simply replayed moments from the day in her mind, helpless to stop revisiting them. Seeing the corpse tree for the first time. Aurnir’s fight. Rauðbjorn’s sneering face. Bölvun setting her antlered crown upon the table.

And somehow, despite it all, she slipped into a light and troubled slumber.

* * *

Skadi jolted awake at the crow of a rooster and nearly slipped from her perch. For a panicked second, she simply flailed, and then clutched at the roof spine and steadied herself.

It was just before dawn. The sky was tremulous with low-hanging clouds, but the rain had ceased. Her woolen clothing was soaked through and she felt clammy and stiff. With a muffled grown she stretched first one way and the other, then turned to peer into the smoke shaft.

The fires below were little more than white coals. The tables were knocked about, and men slumbered where they’d fallen, so that the longhouse looked the scene of a bloodless battle.

No sight of Bölvun or her crown. Perhaps she’d returned to her cottage by the tannery.

But in the far corner were her friends. Glámr and Damian each slumbered against one of Aurnir’s sides, looking like children beside the half-giant.

Skadi’s relief was profound.

Before moving further she sharpened her vision. She had but five threads. Skadi scowled. How was she supposed to defeat Bölvun with so few?

With great care, she insinuated herself onto the shaft and lowered herself to the rafters. These were massive and stout, and while the area above them was filled with cobwebs and dust, the rot hadn’t affected the great beams. The longhouse wasn’t large enough to boast a central beam running down its center; the roof was supported instead by a dozen rafters that ran parallel to the front and back of the building.

Skadi made her way to her beam’s end, gingerly climbed out onto the column, then shimmied her way down to the ground.

Nobody stirred. The stench of vomit and spilled ale was everywhere. Men snored, and here and there Skadi saw the terrified faces of thralls crouched and waiting in the shadows.

None of them gave her away.

Skadi crept down the length of the building to her friends, but as she drew close Glámr’s eyes cracked open, only to flare wide as he sat forward.

“Skadi!” he hissed, then grimaced and lowered his voice to a whisper. “You’re alive!” He caught himself. “A stupid statement, obviously you’re alive, but the concern in which you left us to stew—”

Damian had also awoken. “Rauðbjorn?”

“Dead,” she whispered. “Aurnir, your face?”

The half-giant pouted, then reached up with his huge shovel hands to touch lightly at the terrible bruises and deep gashes. “Aurnir hurt.”

“Shhh,” they all whispered at once.

Aurnir hunched his shoulders and pouted.

“I’ve told him I’ll heal him as soon as the sun rises,” whispered Damian. “Right, Aurnir?”

“Damian heal,” agreed the half-giant, nodding solemnly.

“You killed him though?” Glámr shook his head. “I thought it a literal impossibility. How?”

“By plunging Thyrnir through his temple,” she replied grimly. “I’ve discovered how to summon it back to my hand without needing to wait. But his corpse is down by the docks. We need to be ready for what’s to come.”

Damian stretched and yawned. His expression however became harder than anything Skadi had ever seen. “I say we slit every man’s throat while they sleep. After what we saw last night, it’s all they deserve.”

“Bölvun left halfway through the night,” agreed Glámr. “It was…horrific. Beyond anything I could imagine.”

“I’m sorry you had to witness that,” whispered Skadi. “I’m sorry we had to come here. That I thought it a good plan to infiltrate the town. Never again will I willingly put myself in the power of monsters.”

“Be careful of what oaths you swear,” said Glámr. “You can’t foretell what the future may bring, and your plan has worked thus far. The berserker is dead.”

“Dead good,” rumbled Aurnir.

“Dead is good, for him,” agreed Skadi. “This whole place needs to be cleansed with fire.”

“Were it not for the villagers,” whispered Damian. “They’re the true victims.”

“A plan,” repeated Skadi.

Glámr rose to a crouch. “We can buy ourselves time by hiding Rauðbjorn’s body. These others here fear him so that they’ll be glad to be rid of him for a spell. The docks, you said?”

“The docks,” agreed Skadi, and led them to the front doors. Aurnir stepped forth to lift the huge crossbar, his muscles rippling as he did so noiselessly, and with their help propped it against the wall.

Together they slipped out into the dawn gloom.

The bodies that hung from the oak branches stirred and dripped water.

“This can’t be pleasing to a god,” said Damian as they turned away from the blót. “No good god could find such horror good.”

“Your sun god does not accept sacrifices?” asked Glámr haughtily.

“He does. But! The men and women go willingly to his altar to be slain, and it happens very rarely.”

“Willingly,” snorted Glámr.

“You would be surprised. Their families are taken care of for the rest of their lives by the church, and they are guaranteed to enter the Fields of Golden Grain. That, and they may change their mind at the last second if they desire.”

“And do they?”

“No,” admitted Damian. “Because it’s an honor, and by doing so they provide for their families. It’s an honor eagerly sought after by many.”

“By beggars and criminals, I’m sure,” said Glámr.

“Actually, no.” Damian looked at the half-troll victoriously. “The offerings usually come from the nobility. The greater the person who sacrifices themself, the more pleased the Sun is to receive them.”

Skadi frowned. “So you sacrifice your best?”

“We don’t sacrifice them. They volunteer, I said.”

Skadi and Glámr exchanged a look, and by tacit agreement decided to drop it. They wound their way between narrow homes, along boards laid out over the mud, until at last, they stepped out onto the docks.

To see a crowd gathered around Rauðbjorn’s corpse. Armed men and some villagers, their faces aghast, all of them sunken into whispered, urgent conversation.

With Aurnir there was no chance of fading back into the village.

Skadi froze, hand moving to Thyrnir.

Snorri the Bald emerged from the crowd to stare at her accusingly. “What have you done?” he hissed. “What have you gone and done?”