“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 she couldn’t do it alone.

Glámr reached the docks, leaped off them onto the gravel and stones, and ran along the water’s edge till they reached where the palisade met the water. These timbers were huge and slick, their bases black and covered with barnacles, and only at low tide was there a chance to get around them without having to swim.

They sloshed through the cold waves, rounded the palisades’ edge, and then ran beside the steep slope of the mountainside to where the forest grew thick, and there hid amongst the trees.

Glámr dropped into a crouch, bow in hand, and watched warily through the undergrowth.

Skadi was surprised to find herself barely out of breath; once that headlong flight would have severely winded her, but now she felt composed and ready for more.

“Talk to me, Glámr. How did that just happen?”

“In summer, you mean?” He looked sidelong at her, his distaste obvious. “An excellent question. She’s a bloody ice queen. She’s never attacked during Skerpla.”

She’d never seen Glámr so agitated. His ears wouldn’t stop flicking, and he kept swaying from side to side, peering through the bushes, unable to get a vantage point that satisfied him.

Skadi took a deep breath and held it. Forced her grip on Natthrafn’s hilt to loosen. “What will happen now?”

“Do I look like a full-blooded troll to you?” Glámr’s voice was a whipcrack. “I’ve never lived amongst them. Don’t know their minds, don’t know their ways, and rarely, unless forced to do so by human cruelty, consider myself genuinely related to them. But if I had to wager?”

Skadi nodded for him to go on, and his ire deflated somewhat. “If I had to wager, they want to hold Kráka for when Kvedulf returns, then force him to some agreement.”

“To marry Grýla.”

“Perhaps. Which means they won’t destroy the town. Won’t slaughter everyone. Will simply squat in the longhouse till the dragon ships return, and then parlay with them from a position of strength.”

“What’s to stop Kvedulf and his hird from coming to shore and doing battle?”

“How many trolls do you think the ice queen will flood into Kráka before they return? And if they line the villagers along the shore, knives to their throats?”

Skadi scowled. “All for Kvedulf’s hand? To think that he ordered me to marry Afastr so as to save lives. Someone should give him the same advice.”

“I doubt anybody’s so bold.” Glámr sighed and turned to her. “But we’re not accounted for. We can plan. Attempt a stratagem.”

“To do what? Defeat that giant?”

“What else? Aurnir couldn’t have slipped away, and Damian was too far for me to collect. Begga, Kofri, and Ulfarr are no doubt waiting for succor from within our home. We must save them.”

Skadi grimaced and palmed her eye. “Of course. We just need a way to kill that giant. Did you see how the spears bounced off his hide?”

“A bigger spear.”

“Or one with a sharper blade.” Her gaze fell upon Natthrafn. “This could cut his skin.”

“Especially if you mounted it on a stout enough pole.”

“Huh.” Skadi hefted her seax, and then a thought occurred to her. “Ásfríðr?”

“Good question. I’ve no idea.”

“It was her ward that the giant shattered on the gate. Perhaps her own defenses have proven as weak.”

“Or she put extra effort into them. It’s worth trying to find out.”

“Yes.” Skadi glanced up in the direction of the slopes. “If we can get to her temple without being noticed.”

“I’ve learned a few paths over the past month or two. We can avoid the main trail. It won’t be easy, but if it’s our wyrd to reach her, I’m sure we shall.”

Skadi sharpened her gaze. He was down to one thread, she to five.

It’d have to do.

“Lead on.”

They crept through the trees. The forest here was little more than a band, squeezed against the mountain slope, with the majority of the wood having been chopped down over the years so that the ground between the palisade and the trees was a mess of old stumps. But gradually it thickened, the cliff face grew less steep, and Glámr led the way up, twisting back and forth between icy boulders outcroppings.

“Wait a second,” whispered Skadi, pausing once they were high enough. She peered out over Kráka. The giant stood in the town’s center, illuminated from below as if by a dozen torches, as large as the great hall, its hammer propped over one shoulder. He gazed down with his severe dignity, listening, she thought, as if someone out of sight spoke to him.

Of the trolls, there was no sight.

She sighted toward the Raven’s Gate. The angle wasn’t right for her to make out the shattered timber, but with no warriors standing guard along the top of the wall, she didn’t need to see it.

The thought of that raw hole opening Kráka to the rest of the Draugr Coast gave her chills. There was no accounting now for what might creep in under the cover of night, nor what tolerance the blue giant had for death and feasting on the dead.

She nodded to Glámr and resumed their climb.

The half-troll had spent his weeks well; he led them with confidence along ridges and down into gulleys, higher and higher, moving from copse of firs to copse of firs, until at last they reached the trail. For a long time he simply waited, looking both up and down its familiar length, then gestured and darted across.

Those few seconds out in the open were harrowing, but then they were hidden once more, the darkness beneath the canopy absolute.

Up they climbed, never crossing the mountain meadows directly, always sticking to the edges, the covered spots, the shadows. Until, just as Skadi thought they were going to make it, Glámr froze.

Quirked his head to one side, then the other.

“Troll,” he whispered, and dropped into a crouch and insinuated himself with supernatural grace into a mass of withered bushes.

Skadi tried to do the same but was unable to execute the move as gracefully. She wriggled between the ornery branches into the bush’s center, but caused it to shake and rustle as she did so.

Glámr glared at her, but she could only shrug back helplessly.

They waited.

She couldn’t hear a thing. Just her heart pounding and her harsh breathing.

Natthrafn was bright in her fist.

Glámr looked increasingly panicked.

The troll had to be getting closer.

She closed her eyes, listening as hard as she could.

There. A soft crunch of a footfall in the underbrush. Surprisingly gentle and almost inaudible. Then again, trolls were creatures of the forest. Why had she expected it to crash through the undergrowth like her?

“He has your scent,” said a little voice by her elbow.

Skadi nearly cried out but controlled herself. It was the tiny forest spirit, shaped like a hedgehog, its beard and eyebrows bristling forth, its eyes bright like a sparrow’s, its whole body seeming to be more head than anything else.

Skadi didn’t know what to do, so she simply whispered, “What should we do?”

It blinked at her, quirking its whole body to one side. “Hide your scent.”

“I don’t know how.”

It frowned at her, and its expression would have been comical if Skadi wasn’t so terrified.

Another soft crunch, louder now, and then a sharp inhalation. She wanted to burst out of hiding, to run, but it was the mad fear of prey, the terror that drove the rabbit out into the open before the hounds.

She resisted.

“I’ll teach you,” said the forest spirit, and reached out with a tiny nut-brown hand. One of her golden threads flowed around its fingers. “If you wish it?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Please.”

Her golden thread turned green.

“There,” it said. “Now think on being trackless, one with the forest. Be the forest, part loam, part fern, part pine cone, part rock, part root, part moss, part flower, part rot.”

Not knowing what she did, Skadi focused on those words, and summoned to her mind her favorite spot—the goblet waterfall, the cascading white waters, the rocks, the vibrant emerald moss, the forest all around, the clear minty scent, the serenity of it, the stillness.

Her green thread disappeared.

She blinked. The forest spirit was gone.

Glámr was watching, wide-eyed.

Can it smell you? she mouthed.

It was so rare to see the half-troll wordless, but finally he blinked, thought on her question, then shook his head.

She heard the huge sniffing sound. Another crunching footstep, a second, a pause, and then sudden, long strides as it walked away.

Glámr waited a long while before extricating him from the bushes.

“That was incredible,” he whispered. “You spoke with the bushling? It spoke with you?”

“I’ve seen it before,” she whispered, pulling a braid free of a thorn as she followed him. “Remember? I told you, at the beginning? I’ve been leaving it offerings since.”

“Wise of you.” Glámr seemed to want to say more but lacked the words. “I couldn’t hear what it said. What did it do?”

Skadi looked around the pale expanse of the pocket meadow. Massive footprints were barely visible in the light of the moon. “It taught me how to hide my scent.”

“More than that. Look where you just stepped.”

Skadi studied the dirt behind her. She could see her old footprints leading in, but none emerging.

Surprised, she took a few more steps.

She left no prints behind her.

“And your smell.” Glámr leaned in, sniffed. “Truly gone.”

She could feel it. The soft, thrumming power, the golden thread turned green, enveloping her, protecting her with its charm. “It taught me its spell.”

“And you were able to cast it. Wonders will never cease. But we should continue. You’re still visible, plain as a flashing blade at midday.”

“Lead on.”

They climbed, higher and higher. Skadi’s thoughts strayed chaotically; to Kalbaek as it burned, to Kráka as she left it behind, the awful parallels, Naddr at the cliff’s edge, Ragnarr losing heart, the blue giant’s regal mien, the trolls roaring and killing with each blow of their fists.

She thought of her first, true battle, how she’d thrown axe after axe and whetted Natthrafn’s edge with troll blood.

Her heart lifted. She’d fought without fear, too swept up with her desire to feed the eagles to fear being slain herself.

“Up ahead,” whispered Glámr. “The final climb.”

They left the tree line to scramble up the ridge and peered over its edge at Ásfríðr’s clearing. The great gods’ gate burned with a raging silvery-gold fire that consumed it not, and which cast fierce light over the clearing. A troll squatted before the front door, which was slammed shut, its chin on its knees, arms wrapped around its shins, so that from a distance it appeared little more than a great, moss-covered stone.

Skadi wondered how many trolls she had walked passed in her life without realizing it.

But there were other creatures, small and slender like snow-born children, their faces without features but for over-large black eyes, their fingers long and trailing, their bodies emaciated, their movements furtive and sudden. They had scaled the temple, moving over it like spiders, four of five of them, prodding and prying, seeking entry.

One of their number lay dead in a bank of dirty snow and ice against the wall, badly burned.

Even as Skadi watched, one inserted its finger too deeply between a pair of shutters, only to yank it out as a flash of bright, golden light sparked into being.

Ásfríðr’s warding charms held, but who knew for how long?

Skadi ducked her head back below the ridge, gestured for Glámr to lean in close. “This is what we’re going to do. I’ll creep in behind the troll. It won’t notice me with my trackless charm up. When I attack, it will roar to life. I’ll cut at its wyrd as much as I can, while you loose arrows upon it from here. With a little luck, we’ll cut it down before those white children—”

“Snærún.”

“Before those Snærún manage to drop down and close with me. You’ll then turn your arrows upon them, and I’ll fight as best I can as they approach.”

“That’s your plan?”

“That’s my plan. It’s simple and bold. The gods favor the bold.”

“Because they get to collect them to their halls quicker. But very well. If you’re sure.”

Skadi gazed at Natthrafn. She had four threads left. That would have to be enough.

A simple decision, a decisive nod.

“I am.”

Skadi climbed over the ridge.