The thin scent of burnt wood hung in the air, and she could see that some of the buildings were charred. The streets were empty but for the crows that sat in thick, serried ranks upon the longhall’s roof. The pier that they were drifting up to was stained with dried blood which contrasted sharply with gauges in the planks that showed bright against the weathered stain.

It felt as if the wet, heavy wings of a raven were opening in the back of Skadi’s throat, making it impossible to breathe.

The silence was awful. Nobody on the Sea Wolf spoke. The stillness was entrancing. It felt as if a great spell had been cast over the village.

With frantic haste, Skadi sharpened her vision.

No threads showed anywhere.

“Begga!” she screamed, racing up the center of the dragon boat to the figurehead. “Ulfarr!”

Crows rose irritably from tree branches, cawing raucously, then settled again.

And she knew. In her bones, she knew, but she couldn’t quench her hope, her need to know for sure. Placing one foot on the gunwale she waited till the prow slipped past the beginning of the pier and leaped down onto the boards.

She took four long steps, the beginnings of a sprint, and then slowed, stopped. Stared in horrified fascination at the pier beneath her feet.

So much blood.

Not just natural spatters and puddles. Long drag marks, dried to black now, leading up the pier toward the dock.

The pier thundered as men began to leap down, one, two, a dozen, more, all with weapons in hand, shields raised, but even as the tears ran down her cheeks Skadi knew there was no danger, that the danger was long past.

She ran then, fleet as a deer, down the pier to the dock, crossing it swiftly, ducking under nets and swerving around barrels till she vaulted a waist-high wall, crossed the narrow enclosed yard, scrambled up the bank behind it, bursting through the bush that lined the street above, out and past Fengr’s home to stagger to a stop before their own.

The door hung from one leather hinge, the planks shattered by axe blows.

Breath trapped, she stepped into the entrance and peered into the gloom within.

It was almost as she remembered it, but for the cooking tripod knocked down beside the fire, the stains of blood on the ground, and Ulfarr’s pipe crushed as if stepped on.

Glámr arrived a moment later, breathing heavily, and then drew back from the sight, hissing, to turn wildly, casting around before glaring at her. “Where are they?”

Skadi stepped back out into the wan evening light. The hundreds of crows on the longhouse roof cawed and shook out their feathers.

Damian came rushing up. From the docks, she heard Aurnir’s desolate wail.

“Come on,” she said and pushed past her friends to walk the road that led from the greathouse to the Raven’s Gate. Up to where Kagssok’s hammer had been knocked over and onto its side, to face the great hall’s entrance.

Her uncle and his men had gathered before the closed doors. Too many bloody trails had converged on the steps, countless corpses carried up them so that everything was painted black and swarmed with flies.

So much blood.

As if within a dream, Skadi pushed through the hird to her uncle’s side. Together they climbed the steps which were tacky underfoot, and gazed up at the massive doors. As one they placed their hands on each door and pushed.

The doors swung in, revealing a deep darkness from which the stench of rot and flesh came gagging forth, a rich swelter so thick it felt like the very air was greased. Skadi felt her gorge rise and stepped back, her elbow across her mouth and nose.

“Torches,” said Kvedulf, so softly she doubted anyone heard him, but a moment later Marbjörn and Nokkvi stepped forth, flames licking the linen wrapped around the heads of stout sticks. The flames grew, and Skadi and Kvedulf took one each.

Raising the torches high, they stepped into that forbidding darkness.

The torches cast a nimbus of golden, dancing light, which gave vague shape to the deeper darkness, but only illuminated the first few yards clearly.

Skadi entered, barely breathing in that horrific air, and she saw the first bodies.

They lay without ceremony, thrown to the ground, hacked and stabbed and dismembered, eyes glazed and staring at nothing, blood everywhere.

Skadi took more steps inside and saw that there was a path between the bodies down the center of the hall. That the tables on either side were piled high, that bodies had been stacked about them like firewood.

How many people had they left behind? What was the entire population of Kráka?

Nearly a thousand.

Skadi lowered her arm from her face. With Kvedulf beside her, she walked slowly down the passage between the corpses. Everywhere was blood, swirling curtains of flies, familiar faces, butchered flesh that no longer gleamed in the light.

These bodies were days old.

On they walked, carrying their own island of light with them, so that it seemed as if they sojourned within a bubble of flame. Halfway through the hall, Skadi felt a wave of panic sweep through her, borne of too much horror and grief. Her breath caught audibly in her throat and the urge to turn and run nearly consumed her.

“Stay with me, Skadi,” whispered Kvedulf. “Stay with me.”

With great difficulty Skadi forced herself to straighten, and spoke out into the seething dark:

“With iron are our minds bound

Our bulwarks are unbroken.

Your power finds no purchase.

Your weak corruption crumbles

Before the majesty of our crowns.

We fight on free of all fear

We fight on free of all doubt.”

She fed her wyrd into the galdr spell and felt her terror wash away. Her strength returned, her resolve, and though the spell did nothing to assuage her grief and horror, she was herself once more.

Kvedul led the way. Down they walked till at last, they reached the lord’s table set athwart the long lines that flanked the hall. The torchlight fell upon the figures seated in grotesque mimicry in the chairs, and Kvedulf grunted as if he’d taken a blow to the gut.

Rannveyg sat in his chair, her head lolling, patches of her hair torn free, her chest a bruised mass of raw flesh where she’d been stabbed over and over and over again. Young Sif Einarrsdottir sat beside her, throat slit, while Ulfarr, Begga, and Kofri were propped up in the remaining chairs. All had been brutally slain.

Skadi felt the power of her spell tremble, but it held. She gazed at her the old, familiar faces, disfigured now and waxen. A terrible sorrow swept through her, something akin to grief but wracked with regret, and her eyes brimmed with tears.

They stood thus, Kvedulf and her, stunned by the sight, giving testament to their deaths. Footsteps sounded behind them, and others arrived, their torches swelling the island of light and disturbing even more of the flies.

Marbjörn moved up behind them and intoned, voice deep and reverent:

“Cattle die,

Kinsmen die,

So, too, must you die.

But golden fame

Never dies

For those that earn it.”

“Cattle die,

Kinsmen die,

So, too, must you die.

I know

That which never dies:

Judgment of a dead man's life.”

* * *

They emerged into the evening air as if from Hel itself. Skadi felt numb, overwhelmed, but only one imperative remained: to see what had befallen Ásfríðr.

“Yes, of course,” said Kvedulf with surprising gentleness. He frowned vacantly at the air before him even as the warriors from the other ships began to gather on the docks below. “Marbjörn, tell the other captains what has taken place. We shall… how does one prepare a pyre for so many dead?”

The pain in her uncle’s voice nearly undid her again, but Skadi searched out Glámr and Damian. They stood with Aurnir, who gaped around as if unable to understand what had happened.

“Come with me?” She meant it as a command, but her words were pleading.

Glámr nodded firmly, his jaw set, and the other two followed as they climbed the road to the Raven’s Gate. Everywhere were signs of violence. Shattered doors. Overturned flowerpots. Blood stains. But no weapons. No bodies.

“Must have taken them hours,” said Glámr grimly as they reached the gate. “Not just to slaughter so many, but to drag them all into the hall. And a large force.”

“When did this happen?” Damian stopped before the Raven’s Gate. It stood ajar. “The fires have long gone out. The corpses are old.”

“Looks like almost a week,” said Glámr, stepping aside so that Aurnir could shove the gate open wider. “But how does that make sense?”

They emerged into the road outside, and Skadi paused. “Baugr sent word to Afastr that the All-Thing was to take place. He must have struck Kráka on his way south, long before my storm, perhaps a day after we left.”

The men stare at her.

“But he was coming to parlay for you,” protested Damian. “Do you mean he would have shown up and addressed the All-Thing after this?”

Skadi laughed bitterly. “What need would he have had to mention this? He would have argued in bad faith and with Baugr tried to convince the All-Thing to hand me over to him. Only to return home with his prize, and Kvedulf to come back to this.”

Aurnir let out a low, desolate wail and clutched at this head.

“Come on,” said Skadi. “We have to reach the temple.”

She’d made this climb countless times, but this evening it felt five times as long. She kept thinking of Afastr’s face, benign and resigned to his false prophecy, how all the while he’d been marking out her friends, noting Begga, Ulfarr, and Kofri for death. She could see it with perfect clarity. How he would have presented his lies to the All-Thing with patience and regret, his authority and presence massive, every ounce of his being a perverse monstrosity.

She had rejected him before. Had been enraged by his demands, disgusted by his ploys and how he’d treated Astrilda. But now a trembling loathing filled her, a hatred so personal and overwhelming that she thought it would devour her, leave her as nothing but a thin skein of skin stretched out over a raging void.

Faster and faster she climbed the trail, crossed the meadows, traversed the woods, until at last she saw the short cliff and broke into a run. Scrambled up it and out onto the opening before the temple, and there staggered to a stop.

Ásfríðr hung from the gods’ gate. Crows sat on her shoulders. They might have explained her missing eyes and the torn-out tongue, but not the severed hands and feet which hung about her neck like a ghastly necklace.

Aurnir let out a bellow of rage and hammered his fists into the turf, then strode off toward the closest trees to grab a trunk and shake it, causing the roots to flex, the canopy to sway alarmingly, and the trunk to creak and groan.

“By the gods,” whispered Glámr.

“Let the New Sun never shine on those who did this,” said Damian, voice hoarse.

“Come on,” said Skadi. “We have to get her down.”

* * *

It was night when they returned through the Raven’s Gate. Gone was the awful silence. Now the air was filled with the chopping of axes, hundreds of blows dealt every second as the warriors from all five ships set to cutting down the buildings around the great hall.

Skadi and her friends stopped at the edge of the activity and stared. Entire buildings had been demolished, their timber carried into the great hall or stacked carefully about its walls.

“Of course,” said Glámr. “The only way to burn so many dead.”

Kvedulf sat on a plain chair to one side, back erect, hands on his knees. He sat alone. Everyone else toiled at providing enough timber.

Skadi approached him alone.

“Uncle.”

“Ásfríðr?”

“Dead.”

He nodded, expression not changing.

“He must have done this shortly after we left. Then proceeded south to address the All-Thing.”

“I never dreamed that he would move so quickly. That Baugr would betray us so.” Her uncle’s voice was terribly soft. “That he could slaughter in this manner while on his way to a hallowed gathering. He truly is a monster in human guise.”

Skadi stared at the work teams carrying the huge planks into the building. She wanted to make a terrible oath, but nothing felt suitable. In the face of what had happened, it felt only like posturing.

“This was my mistake,” her uncle said. “I left only one dragon ship to defend the city. Sixty good warriors. Nowhere near enough to fend off Afastr. I shouldn’t have underestimated his evil. His capacity for destruction. I thought we had time. That we would be quick enough. But for him to have struck so soon after we left means that he must have never returned home. He sought to abduct you, and when that failed, waited just out of sight to the north. Baugr then told him that the All-Thing was taking place, and he knew that I would be leaving. So he simply rowed back into the fjord once we were gone and killed everyone.”

“With just two ships?” Skadi stared at her uncle. “He did all this with but a hundred men?”

“Not men,” said her uncle softly. “Monsters.”

“So now he is returned home,” said Skadi. “He slaughtered our friends and family, tried to address the All-Thing—we think—and has now returned to Kaldrborg to gather his full strength.”

“It’s where we shall meet him in battle,” said Kveldulf simply. “In a day or two the others will catch up, and then we shall all proceed north. And we shall find Afastr and slaughter him and his like he did the people of Kráka. And I will not rest, will attempt nothing else in this pitiful life of mine, until he and every man, woman, and child in Kaldrborg are dead.”

Skadi stepped back from the venom in her uncle’s voice and sharpened her vision. Her shock doubled; his threads, which had once been almost too numerous to count, had dropped to around fifteen.

Her uncle’s wyrd had been shattered.