philtucker

Chapter 38: The first and only time

“Listen up,” rumbled Hwideberg, moving to sit on a rock before the large central fire. They’d found a shallow cave whose rear narrowed to a chasm they’d been unable to sound, but which was out of the cutting winds that blew down the mountainside like a never-ending scythe cut.

Four fires were built on the frozen floor, with wood that had been carried up by the warriors. The wood was precious, but Skadi had overheard Kvedulf’s deliberations with his hird leaders, and ordered ha...

Chapter 37: Ten

The bear reared onto its hind legs, to stand more massive than a troll, a wall of pale pink skin crisscrossed with ridged scars. It roared down at Kvedulf, twisting its head to the side as it splayed its jaws open horrifically wide, then fell forward upon the jarl, a wall of collapsing death and talons.

Skadi shouted in horror and raced after it to try and swipe her blade, but the bear crashed down upon the slope and bounded forward, too fast for her to keep up with.

Kvedulf, roll...

Chapter 36: The cursed jarl

They left before dawn.

Sixty warriors strode out the patchwork Raven’s Gate, clad in furs and cloaks, round shields slung atop their leather packs, axes and swords at the hip, and many with bows and quivers as well. The members of Kvedulf’s hird wore bright-gleaming chainmail over thick quilted undercoats and strode at the front.

All of Kráka came to see them off, and Skadi had to force herself not to turn back to wave again to Begga, Kofri, and Ulfarr. With Glámr and Yri by...

Chapter 35: One for the ages

Tonight’s feast was to be the sole moment of gathering before the warband ventured forth to assail the peaks. There was no disguising the ruin of the longhouse’s back wall, so Kvedulf had chosen to have a new throne placed squarely amidst the fallen beams.

The chair was roughly built, hewn together with deliberate crudeness, a mighty seat that could have accommodated Aurnir. In the ruddy firelight, the night sky visible through the wreckage behind and above, it took on a more symbol...

Chapter 34: Victory Bringer

Jarl Kvedulf strode to the altar and laid Dawn Reaver upon the stone. The metal flashed, a shimmer running down its awesome length.

Skadi drew back. Like most, she feared the All-Father. He was an inscrutable god, friend to kings and heroes, fey and magic-wielding, his tales featuring as much duplicity as wisdom. Cruel and driven by his fear of Ragnarok, the All-Father was a force that bent the world to his will, whose lust for power and women was renowned, and whose knowledge of the de...

Chapter 33: To demand satisfaction of the All-Father

Skadi was unable to stop watching the fjord all that following day. With the night having proved silent if tense, hopes had risen. Even as she helped bind and hammer the new gate together, she turned from time to time to stare out across the water.

The day proved a cold, a bitter wind blowing in off the water, with the crows restless and constantly lifting from their perches with raucous cries to resettle again and again. The peaks were shrouded in clouds, and the land seemed inimical t...

Chapter 32: Challenges

Skadi staggered back against the longhouse wall and stared.

Kagssok lay unmoving, the tension slowly leaving his body, his back falling with his last breath, the sheer size of him awesome.

Her breath plumed before her face with each pant, small, ragged clouds that disappeared as quickly as they came.

She was unhurt. Her body ached, her shoulder, her hip, but she’d suffered no actual wound.

This alone seemed the greatest miracle of all.

Movement on the ...

Chapter 31: Her last golden thread

My wyrd against his own, thought Skadi, staring right back into the frost jotunn’s black eyes. My wyrd will win!

And with that thought echoing in her mind, Skadi ran along the rafter, fleet as a squirrel along a branch, and leaped out into the void, flung herself at the giant, Natthrafn clutched in both hands, her stomach lurching, her heart rising into her throat, her whole body thrumming with intention.

Kagssok reared back but was constrained by the confines ...

Chapter 30: Wait for my signal

Glámr awoke her with a touch. Skadi rolled smoothly up to sitting, Natthrafn in hand, and only then did she awaken, blinking at the half-troll in the pre-dawn gloom.

“The time has come,” he whispered.

She nodded mutely and pulled on her boots. Fastened her seax to her belt, checked that Seimur was in her pouch, then rose and stretched, reaching for the ceiling first with one hand then the other. Relaxed with a sigh, then followed Glámr out into the cold.

He held the ba...

Chapter 29: Make your own luck

Ásfríðr and Glámr stared down at the golden chain in unabashed wonder.

“She was here?” asked the half-troll, expression devoid of all cynicism for once. “In this room?”

“She came to life and spoke to me. Gifted me this magical chain, and said that we should use it to deprive Kagssok of his maul when he set it down to drink.” Skadi hesitated. “But. She said that wouldn’t be enough.

Ásfríðr reached out with a finger, drew her hand back. “The chain is s...

Chapter 28: Seimur

The sere gold light burning off the gods’ gate was heatless; it raged but did nothing to the troll-folk. Skadi drifted through it for good luck, placing her feet as carefully as she could in the grass. Thanks to the wood spirit’s gift she was trackless, but that didn’t mean the troll might not hear her approach.

The moon was out, silvering the ground beyond the gate’s aureate burn, and Skadi felt terribly exposed. On she crept, Natthrafn a sliver of living steel in her hand, the...

Chapter 27: The gods favor the bold

“What just happened?” gasped Skadi as she ran after Glámr, racing between houses and toward the docks. “What the Hel just happened?”

Glámr slipped ahead of her, his rangy body navigating the fences, alleys, and sharp drops with ease, forcing her to quit complaining and focus on not getting behind. She wanted to turn and gaze back at the giant. She wanted to find herself another set of axes and drive the trolls out of Kráka.

But with Ragnarr’s spirit broken, she knew s...

Chapter 26: Surrender or die

The first thing Skadi saw was the giant.

It stood five times the height of a man and had skin the cool, depthless blue of the heart of a glacier. It loomed over the Raven’s Gate with awful dignity and violence, its alien visage composed, severe, flat-nosed like a goat, eyes alien black, face clean-shaven but for the jet-black beard that grew along its jaw line and fell in braids, each twisted and held by a silver or gold ring large enough to fit around a man’s arm.

Huge plates...

Chapter 25: Stay close, stay together

Jarl Kvedulf and his three dragon ships left Kráka on a fine and blustery morning three days later. The occasion was marked by Ásfríðr descending from her temple to bless the venture, and a grand speech by the jarl that Skadi mostly ignored. Instead, she gazed hungrily at the three ships, freshly painted, long-planked, with shields along the racks and men in their finest war gear sitting on war chests.

She marked Marbjörn on the jarl’s own ship, the Sea Wolf, and the oth...

Chapter 24: Resolve

“All this time!” Skadi resisted the urge to hurl a stool, her slaughter seax, anything against the wall. “All this time he was plotting behind my back!”

Her friends and crew sat or stood in wide-eyed shock, the central fire burning bright, the much-improved home warm and smoky.

“To have negotiated a marriage in five weeks’ time?” Skadi paced to the far wall, turned about savagely, and glared at them all. “He must have begun communicating with this Afastr the moment...

Chapter 23: Your father would approve

Skadi worked harder over the next four weeks at the tasks set for her by Marbjörn than at anything else she had ever done. At first she had to force herself to get up each dawn and do her shield run, but with each passing week, it felt less onerous and more like the right way to begin her day. She made a point of leaving a small offering where she’d seen the forest spirit that first time, and was gratified each time she saw that the little stone bowl she’d set upon the rock had been empt...

Chapter 22: Forest spirit

The storehouse was greatly changed when Skadi returned. Her crew had not been idle. The floor was swept out and Aurnir tasked with stamping it flat. Kofri had dug a firepit in the center and lined it with smooth rocks. Ulfarr had climbed onto the roof and cut out a square chimney hole, then cunningly fashioned a small, raised roof over that. The shelving had been taken down and Glámr was at work turning them into benches with which they’d line the walls.

Damian sat outside on a stool...

Chapter 21: Free him, or die trying

Skadi and Damian ate at the far end of the longhouse tables, devouring bowl after bowl of vegetable soup, dried mutton, freshly baked bread, and hard cheese. Stuffed, exhausted, she parted ways with the priest, bought a set of clean clothing and some black soap from an old lady in town with a tiny fleck of hacksilver, and then trudged back out the Raven Gate.

She moved hard right to follow the palisade wall, the old trunks tightly bound together, their tops sharped to wicked stakes, and...

Chapter 20: Yri

The world swayed. Skadi staggered through the Raven’s Gate on legs that felt like leather that had been boiled to pieces, while her arms burned as if each was stuck deep in a mass of embers. She could have gone slower, but she’d refused, had pushed herself as hard as she could the whole way up, the whole way down.

No pauses longer than she could manage. Her tunic was soaked through, her hair matted, her vision reduced to a tunnel.

But this was the last time. Down the road she ...

Chapter 19: War waits for no woman

Skadi found Marbjörn with the other housecarls outside the great hall the next morning. The men were seated on benches set on either side of the entrance, laughing and watching as one of their number tried to hurl a hatchet at a tree stump with one eye blindfolded.

His task, Skadi realized, was made more challenging by the other men hurling insults that kept breaking the man’s concentration.

Finally he threw, and the hatchet spun clear over the stump to disappear into snow drap...

Chapter 18: Oaths

They re-entered the main temple chamber. Glámr sat uneasily by the entrance to the passageway leading out to the night; he turned a cup about endlessly in both hands, not drinking.

“Bad dreams?” he asked.

“No.” Skadi considered. “Not bad. Just… overwhelming.” And she sat and told them both of her vision, of the vast hall and the Valkyrie, Hjörþrimul.

Ásfríðr moved to stand before the statue of Freyja, where she raised her arms and intoned a prayer under h...

Chapter 17: Valkyrie of Freyja

Ásfríðr rose and filled a wooden cup with mulled wine then handed it to Skadi. She drank, trying to absorb the völva’s words, the promise, the threat.

“Finish your tale.”

Skadi took another sip. There was a strange bitterness to the wine, a taste she couldn’t identify. But she spoke on, telling of how she was brought onto the Skrímslaeyjan ship, how she broke free, killed the crew. The times her wyrd saved her from death. How they sailed north, their encounter with Tr...

Chapter 16: Yours is indeed a mighty wyrd

Skadi dressed warmly in winter furs, with a great sheepskin mantle about her shoulders and fur-lined boots upon her feet. Her uncle gifted her a copper broach with which to pin her heavy cloak about her figure, and she pulled a heavy woolen cap down upon her freshly braided hair. Reindeer mittens encased her hands, and with a scarf wrapped around the lower half of her face, she stepped out into the frigid evening with Kvedulf by her side.

The smoky warmth and cheer of the great hall see...

Chapter 15: Vengeance demands nothing less

Garmr picked himself off the floor, his expression one of shock and confusion. Skadi resisted the urge to feel sympathy; this was the way of warriors.

“We must talk, you and I,” said Kvedulf. “But first you must have time to clean yourself and dress as is fitting for a jarl’s daughter. Unless you wish to remain clad in filthy slave clothing to prove your toughness?”

Skadi inclined her head. “A hot bath would be welcome. Perhaps the same can be arranged for my crew? Thi...

Chapter 14: She-Wolf

Skadi squared her shoulders as she entered the great hall. She felt Natthrafn’s loss keenly and was painfully aware of how her fate threads had dropped to three. But this was her uncle’s hall, she would be granted guest right, and she had nothing to fear.

Or so she told herself.

The hall was vaulted and massive, lit by the central fire pit that ran down the length of the room, trestle tables flanking it on either side. Shadows wreathed the walls, obscured the rafters overhead,...