Halvar closed his eyes and held his sword doing naught else but breathing. His stomach quaked in protest urging him to reach for the fruit, meats, and mead perched on the long table before him. He knew he would in time, the sight showed him but what would he see and feel when he did?

Like with all things now that he was cursed with the sight, he could reach out, grasping the smooth surface of an apple. But just as likely he’d feel Gry’s soft skin as he bedded her. Or perhaps his father’s hand, the last time he’d held it before death, right before the familiar grip of a sword he had yet to wield.

Last time, maybe a day ago or a handful beyond now, was the worst if Halvar was still in where he thought he was.

He had tried to eat and found a draugr with its sharp teeth moments away from tearing out his throat. With a jerk, its head came off but another draugr replaced it, one in gleaming armor almost as grand as the silver and gold Halvar wore, would wear. Next came a trident clashing against his shield wielded by a raging jötunn cover in scales like a creature of the sea. And then it was an apple again, so Halvar held his sword and closed his eyes.

Even as the room spun from strategic conversation to bountiful laughter, the sword, the rune blade Gramr, gleamed in his mind. Even in the sun, it filled him with strength, that nearly of the troll inside his flesh. It was a constant reminder.

Holding the magnificent rune-blade meant he was after it was offered to him by that strange Sirklander sorcerer, Nergal. When it wasn’t in hand or strapped closely to his back meant he drifted into the future, hopefully, a far-flung one where it had been stolen, lost, or offered to his son. Any outcome would be a worthy outcome if they survived this siege.

“Halvar,” someone called.

Halvar waited. No point in answering one voice among so many.

“Halvar?”

This time the voice was like that of a beast but somehow a question.

“This is too much,” Halvar heard himself mutter, weep even. And then the man, the beast, gave a howling laugh filling the Jarl to bursting with hopelessness, crushing him with despair as hot tears rolled down his face mixing with the blood already drenching him.

“Halvar!” The first voice called again, and this time his voice was recognized.

Halvar opened his eyes wanting to squint as so many visions played around him. Soon they narrowed, the hazy possibility of Arvid becoming inevitable. “What is it, Arvid?”

The fellow Jarl had concern in his too old eyes. Made Halvar want to laugh. They’d been trying to kill each other not even a week ago. Now, all that mattered was that they both lived because death was the enemy.

“It’s time,” Arvid said. “The sun will soon abandon us.”

Halvar stood and stretched his neck and back, sounding like scraping stone. It was night indeed, the troll certainly knew, turning his skin gray, eyes red and flesh hard. And better yet, his hunger was sated by some other piece of magic his nature offered him. Halvar thought just that until he looked down, his food now scraps and bones. Maybe he'd have a vision of the feats in the coming weeks.

By the time Halvar left the great hall the last beams of sunlight were vanishing, one after the other. Only minutes now, so the Jarl hurried past the fighting men but more than half their number were encamped on the fortress’s wall.

Two-thirds of both the Hastingy and Wodandar waited on the oversized rampart, clutching weapons and stinking the already putrified air with fear. Gry was among them, her red-hot dagger cutting through the growing darkness along with torches, braziers, and piles of burning wood, anything to see the coming enemy. Syn, Arvid's mist-cursed daughter, was by her side along with Nergal, the other sorcerers holding the rear.

Halvar walked past Syn without a word. Better not to even look at the woman. Made it easier not to snap her small neck. She’d enchanted his mind and stolen his seed, did what no man could answer but with death. But death came for them all soon and Halvar’s sorcerers were few. What to do after the danger was gone? Hopefully, he’d get the chance to find out.

Instead, Halvar stopped in front of Nergal and glowward. The man just chuckled, still no fear in him, like the mounting dead each night meant naught? At least he fought, but not with the weapon the gods themselves meant for him.

Halvar freed Gramr from his back and plunged it into the ground at Nergal’s feet, splitting the stone like a bail of hay. A foot down and the rune-blade still reached both men’s waist like it was a fucking spear. It was half again wider than any sword ought to be weighing no more than a short sword, but it wasn’t Halvar’s to wield.

“Take the sword,” Halvar demanded.

“We're doing this again?” Nergal sighed. “I'm not a warrior, Jarl. You might as well put it to good use.”

“I am not chosen by the gods.”

“Neither is he,” Syn spat at the Serklander.

“He pulled Gramr from the tree,” Halvar said. “Only he can use it.”

Nergal’s gaze turned to Arvid. “I'd let you use the rune-blade. Or give it to one-legged arse-licking slave for all I care. Just fucking use it.”

Halvar turned to the Jarl. A war raged on the man’s gray-beard face between a primal lust for the weapon and the honor his dead sorceress wife had robbed him of for so long. She died by her own machinations, trying to bind a vaettir beyond her power leaving Arvid’s mind free. Though the unmanliness of her magic was still a part of Arvid, he could choose now to be a proper Jarl. A hard feat thanks to the year he’d spent holding Gramr’s hilt and feeding off its strength. But in the last days he still refused the blade.

“No,” Arvid finally answered.

Nergal seemed to want to protest but Gry spoke over him. “Enough about the sword,” she said and leaned off the edge of the wall. “The dead are here.”

Halvar looked into the darkness, his eyes immediately shifting into the astral realm to see. It was green firelights at first, pairs of them leaving the wood and rushing into the clearing before the fortress. When the final hint of sunlight vanished, more came, faster, until the distance was filled like the starry night. Halvar and those with the site finally saw the the hourd when all others could hear them charging.

They waled a chorus of inhuman battle cries as they raised shields like any army. No arrows flew their way though. No point as draugr only fell after removing head from neck or being torn asunder. Halvar clutched a great ax to do just that, abandoning Gramr again and daring any to touch her.

“First pit!” Gry called out, her voice echoing far with a hint of magin as a hundred or so draugr fell into one of the trenches dug throughout the day.

Another hundred fell and more and more. Some few more fell on mounted spears of wood. Others broke legs on tripwire, but there were always more.

Gry reached out her fist holding her glowing dagger. Suddenly, a blaze rose up, consuming dried wood to make a wall of flame. The whole fortress charred as Halvar beat his chest. He chanted not a spell but a warsong, Arvid, Gry, Syn, even Nergal joining after learning its words.

Shields and weapons bashed together and the stomp of a thousand feet had the wall quaking. The stench of fear still held but excitement was with them now. What a show for the valkrys they were about offer. And hopefully, no, Oden had to see this battle. The King of Asgard and his wife Frigg, and Bragi, Vé, and Vili. All the gods were with them now, old and new, Aesir and Vanir. How else could they still fight on after so many nights?

The walls shook greater than before with a crash. Halvar was on the edge now, the draugr smashing into the fortress and easy to seen by firelight.

It was an ocean of bones and rusted mail, the clattering and scraping near deafening. Less so were the draugr with flesh. Thankfully Halvar was spared their stench by the cold. Children, men, women, there were too many to see, some with weapons and most only armed with teeth and claws sharpened by the vaettir possessing the corpses.

In their fervor, Halvar saw a mound of draugr rise. One stepped over another and another over that. A dozen times over and a tower began forming, one that would reach the ramparts in moments. Before that could happen, four men sent a boulder nearly the size of a man over the edge smashing into the mound. Such stones were placed all around ready to buy time for the sun still 10 hours away.

“There,” a spotter called and a boulder was let loose. Still more mounds of the dead appeared.

Halvar lifted boulders himself, throwing them with a great heave. A few of the dead towers halted entirely as Nergal reached out with his hand and murmured. Moments later, they fell apart. Bone shattered into dust at the sorcerer's will while rotting meat seemed to burn without flame

Five hours went by like that until the undead rose like a mountain on several sides. And then skinless fingers took hold of the rampart's edge.

Halvar brought his great axe down splitting a draugr in half. A wall of the abominations followed. They crashed into him, biting clawing, tearing great gouges out of his armor.

The Jarl didn’t bother with skill. He pulled on the troll’s strength and swung his ax in a sideways ark. The draugr exploded into bones and hunks of half-frozen flesh as the axe-blade sliced through them. Another swing and another four fell, then Halvar was done with counting.

He roared, diving into the oncoming dead.

Halvar could let go now, forget all his worries and rage. Behind him, a shield-wall had formed fighting back the draugr that passed him. He could see in some conjured image of the sight Gry joined a shield wall of her own taking not a single wound as her visions prompted her from injury.

A mass of tree-like tendrils sent draugr careening over the wall as flowers grew over Syn’s shoulders and back. Arvid fought close by his daughter, turning to icy mist to wade through the carnage, turning solid for only moments to take heads.

Soon the trance of battle fell over Halvar. Cut, bash, swing, let the fucker bite and shatter its skull. Dodge the sword, it could slow you. Take its arm and bisect the one next to it. The pain of hundreds of wounds came and went but breath came hard as the hours passed. Screams echoed from deeper in the fortress. A line had broken like the nights before, forcing boys and mothers to fight.

“This is a past you isn't it,” Nergal siad.

Without warning, Halvar was in his room, the Sirklander sipping on mead and wincing as he did.

Halvar’s eyes darted around, still looking from draugr, his mind reeling while his body was hot with battle.

“The battle!” Halvar shouted. Never had he been pulled on by the sight while so mired in death. Was he even now been devoured?

“Relax,” Nergal soothed. “I’m sure you're fine. Another you is probably fighting or not even a breathe has passed by the time you go back. These things happen when your sight is untethered. So fucking tether it.”

Halvar leaned back, his hands still shaking. This vision could end at any moment. “I don't understand. Another me?”

“Of course you don’t. Gry hardly knows enough to practice magic and Syn and her ilk are idiots. You might have to bed the entire coven to gain anything useful but that might just make things worse.”

“Your god’s damned point,” Halvar demanded. Couldn’t let Nergal just talk or the man would never shut up.

“Pyromancers bind their sight to fire, aqua mancers to water, other vocations to the moon, dice, and so on. Most don’t have to as they see in some unconscious manner what they want to.”

“I don’t need a Volva’s lecure! There is a battle-”

“The battle has already happened, Jarl. In fact I think you talk to me because you have this very vision. Now if you don’t want to go mad after staring into the past and every future there can be, listen.”

An hour later, Halvar found himself in the present again but such distinctions were becoming unclear. In his hands was the same draugr he’d seen trying to rip out his throat. With a twist for the second and first god’s damned time it came off. Another came at him with a sword. He took that sword, using it to beat the creature to death with it more anything else.

The smell of blood was thicker than before. Halvar took a moment to look back into the fortress. It was overrun with the dead. The tribes fought without order, charging with abandon as the dead raced back to and over the ramparts. They were fleeing in mass, some already felled by newly shed beams of sunlight.

“We win again,” Nergal said as he pointed a finger at a draugr. Its head shattered a breath later forcing Halvar to wonder if the foreigner could do that to living men.

Halvar turned from the man and ignored him. Through his own power in Gry he could tell she lived. Syn and Arvid too lived. He saw them on the steps leading to the great hall, Arvid holding his stomach from some wound he falled to mist out of.

Yes, they’d won again. But how many more victories would the gods give them? Losing more than a hundred each night meant not many more. And still they had to burn the newly dead and dig the trenches without sleep. Not very many more victories indeed.