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 draped bushes.

Howls of amusement resulted, and the man stalked off, glowering and cursing as several men exchanged pieces of hacksilver.

“Marbjörn.” Skadi stepped closer. “A word?”

The bear of a man was still chuckling, and turned to Skadi with a blank expression before seeming to place her. “Ah! The shieldmaiden of Kalbaek. What can I do for you, little Skadi?”

Little Skadi.

“Jarl Kvedulf has granted me leave to train and learn weaponcraft.” Skadi was painfully aware of the dozen other men listening with avid interest. “I want you to teach me.”

Marbjörn rubbed at his kinked and flattened nose in bemusement. “Train you?”

“Yes. You are an honored member of the jarl’s hird. You know the ways of war, do you not? Teach them to me.”

“Did Jarl Kvedulf command that I do so?”

With reluctance: “No.”

“So I am to give up my free time to teach a stripling girl to fight like a man? And if you die in your first fight? Will not your father blame me?”

Chuckles.

“I will pay you for the training.”

“Now we get to it.” Marbjörn leaned forward. “What are you offering?”

“A piece of hacksilver for each day of the first week. Then…” She paused. More than that and she’d soon deplete her meager hoard. “Then a further piece for each day you train me as needed.”

Marbjörn rubbed at his beard. “Seven little pieces of hacksilver? I am one of your uncle’s prized vikings, Styrbjörnsdóttir. I am accustomed to being paid in gold or not at all.”

More chuckles, eyes gleaming with delight at her awkwardness.

“Fine. A golden armband for a week’s training.”

His eyebrows rose and he sat up straight. “You have such wealth?”

“You insult me by asking?”

A rueful laugh. “No, no, of course not. But know this: I will take the charge seriously. If you pay me in gold, I will demand work from you equal to gold. You may come to regret this.”

Skadi’s smile was ice cold. “I think not.”

Marbjörn stood. “Then let us get to it. Fetch the armband, then meet me behind the great hall.”

She blinked. “Now?”

“War waits for no man. Or woman. You wish to train? We begin. Now.”

To which Skadi could only flush, give a curt nod, and then turn on her heel to stride back to their storehouse.

She pretended not to hear the hoots of laughter and shouted suggestions that the other housecarls gave Marbjörn as to how best to train her, and in what skills, and whether it was best to do so openly in a muddy yard.

Face burning, she hurried back down to the shore, ignoring curious gazes, and found Begga sweeping out the storehouse with a freshly bound broom of twigs. A curt nod, and she stepped into the gloom, where Ulfarr and Kofri were dismantling partitions so as to widen the room.

She threw open the chest, snatched out the largest arm ring, then slammed it shut.

“A problem?” asked Damian, who knelt in the pale light of the building’s sole window.

“None.”

“The arm ring?”

“Payment for my training.”

Damian raised an eyebrow. “A king’s ransom for training? Have you hired a demigod?”

“For this payment, he best be as good as.”

Damian climbed rapidly to his feet. “May I come? Surely that much gold will buy lesson enough for two.”

Skadi hesitated, but the earnestness in Damian’s gaze swayed her. “Very well. Keep up.”

They strode back up the street to the great hall, Skadi making no attempt to hide the red-gold ring which drew every eye, and around the building to where Marbjörn waited for them. The yard was small, muddy, and fenced in on one side by the stables, another by a pig pen. The smell was rank.

A half dozen men sat on stumps or leaned against the great hall, arms crossed, clearly anticipating a spectacle.

“The priest?” asked Marbjörn.

“To train with me.” Skadi raised the gold ring. “For this much wealth, I know you won’t haggle like a fishwife.”

Marbjörn frowned, then shrugged. “You are right. Stand before me, the two of you.”

He then proceeded to walk around them both, examining them from head to toe. “You are weak and clearly lack stamina,” he said when he reached the front. “But how weak are you? Let us find out. Go inside the hall and take a shield in each hand. Run out the Raven’s Gate, up the road to the Thor Stone, then back. I will wait for you here.”

Skadi gave a curt nod, jogged around the hall, and entered through a side door. Crates, shields, and bales of hay were stacked against the wall beside the door. She took up a shield. It was circular, bound in shrunken leather, its face painted in stripes of blue and white, with an iron boss the size of a bowl emerging from the center. A band of wood was bolted across the back side, with cloth wrappings around the grip. The wood was cut away beneath the boss, so that her fist fit into the space.

She hefted the shield. It didn’t feel too heavy, and would protect her from chin and waist. Cast around, took up a shield with similar white and blue bands across the front in her other hand, then glanced at Damian.

He’d selected shields of his own and held them awkwardly before him.

“Are you ready?”

The priest nodded, his uncertainty showing through.

“Then let’s run.”

She jogged up the road that she’d walked the night before with Glámr, and reached the Raven’s Gate with little difficulty. Held the shields high and to her sides, arms crooked, fists hovering just before the joints of her shoulder. She’d grown up scrambling about the mountainsides of Kalbaek and could run for an hour.

This would be easy.

Damian was already panting by the time he followed her out the gate, and the steep slope that rose toward the peaks did them no favors. The trail was rocky and uneven, so that she had to watch carefully where she put her feet, and soon her breath was burning in her throat, the back of her mouth filled with thick spit, and sweat running down between her shoulder blades.

Damian fell ever behind her, but she didn’t slow down.

Her shoulders began to burn, her biceps. Still she struggled up the slop, following the twisting path of the trail, trying to match what she saw now to the road she’d followed under the light of the moon.

Up and up, thighs burning, breath rasping, until at last she saw the Thor Stone leaning crookedly by the next curve. White, deeply carved with runes, with an anonymous male face and armor that indicated Thor only by the presence of his hammer, she staggered up to it and finally let the shields drop, her arms numb, her hands aching from clenching the band, her shoulders burning, everything burning.

Gasping for breath, sweat running into her eyes, she turned to see that Damian had fallen far enough behind to be out of sight.

He’d asked for this.

She began to run down, confident that it would be easier, only to realize that the steep descent put more strain on her thighs than before. Huffing and gasping, shields slipping ever lower down, she staggered down the slope, turned a curve, a second, then saw Damian struggling toward her.

He was walking, face glistening with sweat, one shield slung over his back so that he grasped the handle over a shoulder, the other banging against his leg as he fought his way up.

“Not much farther!” she called out, lifting her shields smartly and controlling her breath as she passed him.

The look he gave her was somewhere between nauseous and despairing.

Down she ran, and finally she had to stop, to walk for a spell, lowering the shields all the way so that they flanked her legs. She spat thick spit, but more formed at the back of her throat. Wanted to drop the shields so as to wipe the sweat from her brow, but forced herself to keep striding.

Down and curving to and fro, until at last the Raven Gate came back into sight. She felt a second wind, inhaled sharply, and ran once more, opening up her stride as the road leveled out, arms aching, shoulders burning as she loped toward the gate, ignoring the grins, to enter Kráka and rush as best she could toward the great hall.

She was forced to stop twice more before she reached it, but finally entered the muddy yard only to find it deserted.

For a moment she just stood there, heaving for breath, then she moved to the hall’s wall, dropped the shields against it, and set out to find Marbjörn.

He was back where she’d found him, by the main entrance, seated on a bench and drinking from a horn.

“There she is!” He smiled affably at her. “I thought you’d changed your mind.”

She glared at him. “After paying you with that ring?”

“You took so long I gave up on you.” He rose smoothly to his feet. “That was terribly slow. A ten-year-old could have run it faster.”

Grins all around.

“And where’s your priest? Did he lay down and die somewhere along the trail?”

“I will get faster.”

“You’d better, if you want to keep up with a warband on the march. Come on. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

“How so?”

He stepped into the hall then emerged with a shield clasped in each hand. Dropped his mantle and cloak upon the bench and grinned at her, showing large white teeth. “Where are your shields?”

“I just ran it.”

He stared at her, eyebrows raised.

“I’ll fetch them.”

She met him at the entrance to the muddy yard. Her arms felt loose and liquid, her hands without strength, but she forced herself to grasp the shields again.

“Now,” he said. “Keep up as best you can, little Skadi.” And he took off at a run.

Pride and anger pricked her, and she ran after him, keeping abreast. Laughter and jeers trailed them but were soon lost as they powered up the street toward the Raven’s Gate.

Marbjörn ran like a charging bull: no subtlety, powering forward, his strength and stamina such that he needed nothing for grace. But she knew he couldn’t keep up such a run; he was trying to scare her into giving up.

She grinned at his broad back.

Never.

They raced through the gate and back out onto the slope. Already she was heaving for breath, a pain stabbing into her side, the shields dropped to bang against her legs.

Marbjörn charged up the slope without slowing at all.

Despite everything, she couldn’t keep up. It would have been different if she’d run unencumbered; she could have raced to the top and back without difficulty. But the shields had gone from light and graceful to anchors, each straining at her arms, chafing and banging against her legs, and forcing her to shorten her stride so that she didn’t kick them with each step.

Damian came into view, face soaked in sweat, and his eyes widened at the sight of Marbjörn running right at him. He stepped aside and the housecarl swept right on, never even looking at him.

Skadi growled deep in her throat and forced her legs to work, but she’d fallen so far back now that the housecarl disappeared from sight as he raced around the next curve.

It was unbelievable. He was keeping that impossible pace.

Damian tried to talk to her, but she forced her way past him, gaze locked on the bend.

If only the trail wasn’t so damn steep. If only the shields didn’t weigh so damn much. If only she’d been able to get her breath back at the end of the first run.

She lost track of the curves, but all too soon Marbjörn appeared, a fine sheen of sweat on his brow but otherwise unperturbed. He winked at her as he thundered past, and she could have spat in fury.

He was laughing at her.

Up she ran, until at last she reached the Thor Stone what felt like an hour later. Bent over and vomited all over the grass beside it, her mouth stinging from the bile, then heaved a deep breath and turned to run back down.

Marbjörn was back around the front of the hall laughing with the others when she finally made it back down.

“There you are. Did you stop for a nap on the way?”

Skadi had no words. Damian had taken it upon himself to run back up a second time, but it’d probably be an hour before he returned.

“That’s two runs. No doubt you’re light of foot when you’re chasing your friends back home in Kalbaek over a meadow of pretty flowers, but a warrior must cover miles with weight in his fist and upon his back. So. Three more climbs today, and five every morning from now on, shield in each hand. Clear?”

Skadi wanted to reel. Five? She’d puked at two.

But still she nodded.

“Find me when you’ve finished your fifth, and we’ll continue with your training. If you’re of any use at that point, that is.”

Skadi inhaled raggedly through her nose and turned back to her twin shields. No words. No wasting time.

She had three more runs to make.