There were far fewer people living in Kaldrborg than Skadi had expected. They seemed to haunt their own settlement, proud yet reclusive, scornful yet melting away from all confrontations. For the most part, they remained hidden within their homes, while their remaining warriors were put to work demolishing the dock walls and carrying the timber to the temple courtyard.

Skadi never ceased moving from one location to the other, ensuring that she remained highly visible, ensuring that the enemy soldiers never worked in groups larger than four or five. She was painfully aware of how evenly matched they were in numbers; had the Kaldrborg fighters not lost all desire to battle on with the death of their jarl, it would have been entirely possible that they could have driven the invaders out.

Instead, Skadi made a show of being in charge, barking out orders, administering the construction of the pyre, stopping by the huge field hospital that Damian had created by dint of laying the wounded out in rows and commanding others to fetch water and as much clean linen as they could find. Valka worked with him, along with a score of older warriors and compassionate locals.

There was no disguising how little Damian could do, however; his threads were expended, his face already haggard with exhaustion, and as Skadi watched it seemed all he could offer was fresh bandages, cold water, and comforting words.

Aurnir was sore but alive, his skin badly sunburned, his head apparently pounding with a terrible headache. Damian had poured most of his healing into the half-giant, however, and split skin and seared flesh had healed miraculously.

Skadi found the half-giant seated against the wall by the Raven’s Gate, a barrel of rainwater held in both hands.

“You doing all right, big man?”

Aurnir lowered the barrel and gazed at her with dolorous self-pity. “Aurnir hurt.”

“You fought bravely. Without you, we’d not have stood a chance.” She smiled. “You knocked down the gate. You broke the shield wall. You released the völvas from their misery. You’re a hero, Aurnir.”

The half-giant brightened. “Hero?”

“Assuredly. But come. I want to show you something.”

Aurnir took a huge glug from the barrel then set it aside. Wiped his cracked lips dry, then rose slowly to his feet. He’d torn off the wooden armor, with the result being huge squares of clean cloth about his chest and shoulders and thighs, with their perimeters darkened by splattered blood. “Food?”

“Of a kind. Come.”

Skadi led him through the streets to the huge building that she had at first mistaken for the great hall.

The building Glámr had identified as the local half-giant’s home.

“Big door,” said Aurnir, slowing uncertainly as they drew close.

The front door was huge, fit for a longhouse, easily large enough for Aurnir to stride through.

“Don’t be afraid. It’s just you and me.” Skadi stepped up to the threshold and peered inside. Huge as the building was, it was but one vast room within; she saw six monstrously massive beds, each large enough for ten people to sleep in, a table on which three entire cows could have been served, chairs she’d have had to climb into.

Feeling a touch of awe, she stepped inside. It smelled… strangely pleasant in there, after the stench of blood and viscera. The rafters were easily fifteen feet overhead, and from which hung entire sides of cattle, legs of pork, and other cured meats. Barrels upon barrels of ale were set against the walls, and a cauldron large enough to boil five men was set over a central fire in which scorched tree trunks were laid.

Aurnir hesitated at the door, his expression fearful.

“Come in,” said Skadi. “They’re dead, remember? I want to find something for you.”

She moved around the huge room. Knocked on barrels, opened chests with much effort to reveal folded clothing, blankets, whetstones as long as her arm. Aurnir timidly entered and ghosted after her, reaching out with his huge stubby fingers to touch and peer at everything around them.

“Here, look.” She pulled a yellow tunic out of one chest. It felt as large as a knorr’s sail. “Tailor-made for a man your size. Take it. You don’t need to wear those improvised rags anymore, especially in the condition they’re in.”

Aurnir began to paw through the chest, and with growing animation drew out trousers, boots, belts, and a cloak big enough to completely cover a cart. He laughed, delighted, and hurried to the next chest, then the next. Soon he’d amassed a half dozen outfits, including knives and furred caps, leather gloves, and even a walking stick ten feet tall, as thick as Skadi’s forearm and beautifully carved.

Skadi wasn’t looking for clothing, however. She hunted on, till at last she found a final chest at the very back. This one was made from black wood and bound in iron, with a large padlock securing its front. Frustrated, she cast around for a key, then gave the lock a kick. “Aurnir, can you take care of this?”

The giant ambled over, curious, then leaned down. Frowned, seized the lock, set his other palm on the chest, and heaved.

Wood splinted, the chest shattered, and the padlock and metal casing tore free.

“Oops,” said Aurnir, holding up the still closed lock. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. Look.” Skadi knocked the broken planks away to reveal large chunks of black stone. She took up a rock and held it up to the morning light. It was made of smooth planes and sharp ridges, was surprisingly light and glimmered in its depths. “Is this what Grýla gave you to eat while you were at her hall?”

Aurnir had stilled. Carefully, delicately, he took the rock from her and studied it. Turned it about in his huge fingers, then nodded.

Skadi grinned. “Well, you’ve got an entire chest of the stuff here. It’s all yours, Aurnir. Do with it what you wish.”

Hesitant, Aurnir placed the black rock in his mouth. It crunched lightly as he moved it about, his jaw working, then cracked loudly when he chomped it with his molars.

Skadi winced. “You all right?”

Aurnir didn’t answer. He hadn’t heard her. He continued to chew, the sound uncomfortable and sharp.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” she said, patting his knee. “Don’t eat it all at once, all right?”

In response, Aurnir sat down and brought the chest onto his lap. With great care, he took out another chunk and placed it in his mouth.

Skadi’s smile lasted about halfway down the street before the nature of the day stole her mirth away. She descended to the docks to wish Tryggr and his selected crew a safe journey down the coast. She checked in on Astrilda and found her still sleeping. Kvedulf refused to engage in conversation, and remained as still as a statue and as dour as a granite boulder as he sat on a plain chair facing the temples, Dawn Reaver laid across his knees.

Fights broke out. This was a conquest. Though Skadi sought to impress on all and sundry that they were to respect the homes and locals, she knew it was futile. Warriors killed local men who refused to show the proper respect. She knew women and men were being raped as the search for supplies was conducted. Several fires began and were only slowly put out. She had to intervene several times to prevent other warriors from claiming slaves. Loot was stripped out of every home and place of business.

But as brutal as the occupation proved, it was not the slaughter that Kvedulf had desired, nor the nihilistic brutality that Afastr had claimed the Northmen always indulged in. With Snorri, Tryggr, and Úrœkja all ordering that violence be kept to a minimum, the majority of the surviving warriors stayed in line.

In truth, Skadi surmised, they were mostly so exhausted from the all-night trek and the slaughter they had faced that few had the stomach for more blood.

Morning turned to afternoon, and Skadi found herself back before the temples. Afastr lay in a large black pool of blood. Nobody had touched him. Dauðakoss lay by his hand.

Skadi contemplated the cursed axe. What should she do with it? Her uncle had even thrown it into the sea, but that had not stopped its evil. Finally, she wrapped it in a blanket, wound an oiled cord about it tightly, and had placed it amongst the goods claimed for Kráka.

As for the jarl’s corpse, she ordered it dragged into the center of the temple courtyard and placed atop the altar. It took eight men to haul him in with ropes, for nobody wished to touch his corpse, and his neck gaped awfully as his head dragged in the dirt.

More and more bodies were brought, and soon the courtyard was a charnel house with corpses piled atop each other. Skadi felt a draining sense of recognition ; was this what it meant to have a powerful wyrd? Would her life be a series of great pyres, the burnings of hundreds, great towering columns of smoke wherever she went and fought?

She found an empty house. Let Glámr know where she would be, and slept.

It was late afternoon when she awoke. She was still sticky with blood. She did her best to wash in a rain barrel, smashing the patina of ice that covered it, and then took fresh clothing from the empty home she had claimed.

It helped, but only a little. Her hair was a matted mess, her fingernails dark with dirt and dried gore, her boots heavy, her skin filthy but for her hands and face.

No matter.

She visited Astrilda once more. Found two guards from Hake outside her door, but they stepped aside for her without a word.

Astrilda was awake, seated in the bed with the blanket about her waist, staring out into the afternoon gloom.

Skadi said nothing as she pulled a chair out and sat.

For a while they simply stared at each other. The other woman’s face was still drawn with lines of pain and loss. Her thick mane of crimson and silver-threaded hair fell loose about her shoulders. She was still beautiful, Skadi realized, but her beauty had become unimportant; with the weight on her shoulders, her stark eyepatch, the depths of pain in her remaining eye, Astrilda had been flensed of much of her humanity, her wry personality, reduced to an elemental creature, eroded to her most essential core.

“We fire the temples at dusk,” said Skadi at last. “It would be fitting if you lit the pyre.”

Astrilda picked at the stitched pattern in the blanket. “My father gravely underestimated you. As did I.”

Skadi considered those words. “I feel like you’re the one he underestimated.”

“I’ve been trying to understand how I was able to do it. All my life he appeared invincible. Yet I killed him with a knife. I saw him knock arrows out of the air, avoid blades he couldn’t have sensed coming. But mine slid home. It doesn’t make sense.”

“The axe he claimed from Kráka was cursed. It’s called Dauðakoss. It makes its bearer invincible in battle, but doomed to die at the hand of one they loved.”

Astrilda stiffened. “He didn’t love me.”

Skadi sat silent, but she couldn’t lie. “That’s what Kvedulf told me. That they were vulnerable only to the one they loved the most.”

Astrilda paled. “No. He didn’t know the meaning of the word love, couldn’t conceive it. We were all tools to him. Pathetic tools, to be used and then discarded. No.”

Skadi pursed her lips.

Astrilda’s expression crumpled. “He didn’t love me. He couldn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

The other woman bowed her head, knotted the blanket in her fists, and wept.

Skadi moved to sit beside her on the bed and placed an arm around her shoulders. After a moment Astrilda leaned her head upon Skadi’s shoulder, and shivered and shook with barely restrained sobs.

Skadi gazed out the window. She thought of little. Heard the sounds from without, the calls and shouts, the laughter and caws of the crows. Held Astrilda and waited patiently. Once she would have rushed to console the other woman, to fill the silence with words.

No longer.

Finally, Astrilda drew away, sniffed sharply, and wiped her tears away. “By the gods. This life.”

Skadi took Astrilda’s callused hand in her own.

The crimson-haired woman looked up. “Thank you, Skadi. I’ve been meaning to say those words, but they’ve… they’re hard to say. Thank you.”

Skadi inclined her head. “He wished to take me down into that room. You’ve nothing to thank me for.”

“But I do. You broke me out of my numbness. I never felt so alive as when I defied my father on the deck of his ship after our night together. Not before, not since.”

“That’s when he put your eye out?”

“No.” Astrilda turned Skadi’s hand over to trace the lines of her palm with the tip of her forefinger. “That was later, when we’d returned home. He had more pressing matters to deal with. The destruction of Kráka, getting to the All-Thing on time, and then riding out the storm.”

Skadi nodded, said nothing.

“He couldn’t tolerate independence. It’s why Aldulfr lasted so long. He was little more than a hound, willing to hunt whatever father pointed him at. When I defied him, Afastr welcomed the challenge. He brought me home, and…”

Astrilda trailed off, shuddered, and fell silent.

Skadi closed her hand around hers. “He failed. You never lost your strength. You showed him that at the last.”

Tears filled Astrilda’s remaining eye. “But why did he have to look so betrayedwhen I killed him? So shocked? Curse him. Curse him for his… stupid… hypocritical…”

Skadi grimaced. Said nothing.

Astrilda sighed and her shoulders slumped. “So, thank you. Without you, none of this would have happened. That room, his jarldom… it would have lasted forever. None of the Draugr Coast lords would have ever been able to depose him.”

“Do you believe his threat?” Skadi’s voice was almost a whisper. “About Niflheim and the again-walkers.”

Astrilda stilled. “I don’t know. He never took me north. He would go for a month or two at a time with Aldulfr and the half-giants, would sometimes take his hird. I don’t know what they did. Maybe.” She hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Skadi thought of the again-walker they’d discovered in the gulch. How the Stórhǫggvi had lopped off its arms, and by doing so only enraged it more. “I guess we’ll find out.”

“What will you do now?”

It was the question she’d been avoiding all day. Her sole goal for so long had been to destroy Afastr, such that with his death she felt almost at a loss. “Go to my father, I suppose. Kveldulf promised me a dragon ship, and those he now has to spare.”

“Stóllborg?”

“Stóllborg. The Archean empire is coming. All of this will be as nothing if they simply conquer the entirety of the North.” Skadi felt her old resolve return, thought of Riki, of her mother, of Kalbaek burning. It all felt so distant, however. “I have a man I need to kill, and will do whatever it takes to stop the Archeans.”

Astrilda bit her lower lip and studied Skadi. “I don’t want to be jarl.”

“No?”

“No. It would be like remaining in Kaldrborg. I would exist in the shadow of my father. I want to escape it. Escape him. I want a different life.”

Skadi felt her heart begin to beat strongly. “Do you want to come to Stóllborg?”

Astrilda inhaled raggedly, a broken smile crossed her lips and then disappeared even as she nodded. “Yes. If there’s room on your dragon ship.”

Skadi felt a bewildering surge of emotions, but in the end could only squeeze Astrilda’s hand tightly, even as the other woman squeezed hers in return.

“Of course there is,” she whispered. “But you already knew that.”