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, rolled out to the side, his blond braids flying, Dawn Reaver dragging a trail of dark blood behind it, and Skadi realized he’d made a drawing cut across the bear’s stomach even as he hurled himself aside.

Ten of the jarl’s golden threads disappeared, and the same vanished from the bear. It rounded back on the jarl, huffing and snorting, blood sheeting down over the snow, drenching corpses, its huge paws crushing a shield without even noticing and ending the life of the broken man pinned beneath it.

It had but the five threads left.

They were so close!

But the other warriors had drawn back. Men were helping Marbjörn to his feet. Hwideberg was looming massive but not engaging. Even Nǫkkvi had ceased to loose arrows, though he had another massive one nocked to the string of his black bow.

Everybody watched and gave their jarl space to pursue his private duel.

The bear hugged again, swayed, then bounded forward, faster than Skadi could believe, an explosive charge which turned into a forward leap, claws swiping at where the jarl stood, sneering and ready, his great blade held before him with both hands.

Flicker-flash, Dawn Reaver slashed and sliced, Kvedulf springing aside again, but this time he hewed clean through the bear’s wrist, chopping a huge paw clean off with the sweetest footwork Skadi had ever seen. It was as if the jarl had spent his life training for just this moment, this movement.

The bear stumbled, crashed down onto one shoulder, furrowed through the snow and rock. Rose to its three feet, moaning and snarling, bloody froth on its ragged lips, to turn again and sight at the jarl.

It had but two threads left, one of them being that massive one as thick as her thigh.

Kvedulf was yet a fount of golden glory.

This battle was over, Skadi realized, and to her surprise, she felt disappointment. She’d wanted to contribute in some more meaningful way.

Worse, she felt insignificant beside Kvedulf’s mastery of this battle. How many threads yet burned forth from his chest? Forty? More?

And she had thought herself a grand warrior, Skadi the Giant-Slayer?

“I am honored to be the man to bring you peace, Jarl Nábjörn. Long have you haunted these mountains. As Odin guides my blade, so shall he set you free. Come. Hel awaits.”

The bear roared, the sound anguished now, and charged forward clumsily. This time Kvedulf refused to give ground and hacked at the bear, slashed deep cuts into its shoulder and head as it tried to snap its jaws at him.

The second-to-last thread disappeared, and when the bear reared up one last time, Kvedulf let out a mighty cry and skewered the beast through the heart.

For a moment they remained thus, the jarl with his arm outstretched, black blood pouring down the length of his blade, the bear looming over him, and then the final thread, the one as thick as Skadi’s thigh, burst apart into what looked like a hundred constituent ones which unraveled and began to spiral, and the bear changed.

Its lower half remained as before. But its torso split, unseamed itself, and fell apart like a torn tunic held in place by a belt. Its head and half of its torso fell one way, its paw-less arm another, the great weapon-strewn hide flopping down its back as the upper half of a golden figure emerged, just as massive as the bear.

It was an old man, his muscles withered upon his mighty frame, his face hollow-cheeked, his eyes sunken, his lips shriveled. Upon his brow, he wore a great crown of gold, and from his head fell a wispy wave of ethereal hair. He was clad in royal raiment, and in his two arms he bore a great axe, its blade fashioned into the face of a bear. He towered over Kvedulf, larger now perhaps than even the bear had been, easily the height of four men.

His eyelids fluttered, his face stretched, shifted, then settled into an expression of wounded horror, his milky eyes gazing out at nothing.

Kvedulf, stunned, withdrew Dawn Reaver and stepped back.

Their entire warband was silenced.

Skadi gaped at the monstrous half-bear, hirsute and scarred below the waist, regal and withered above. Was this Nábjörn’s true form, as it had been hidden within the curse?

No matter. It swirled with a storm of threads, and Skadi realized the battle had only begun.

“Death to Nábjörn!” she screamed and hurled herself forward, pounding over the compacted snow, leaping over a fallen body, shield held high, Natthrafn trailing behind her.

Her yell awoke the company, who roared as if to banish their horror and charged.

Kvedulf stood still, glaring in horror and fascination.

Nǫkkvi loosed his great shafts. Marbjörn rushed in, swinging his axe with both hands. Hwideberg was there, throat singing as before, his dirge deep and harrowing. Men hurled more spears, and the whole company fell upon the cursed jarl as one.

But Nábjörn never looked about him. His gaze remained locked on the skies, his expression one of harrowed grief. But even so, his body moved as if of its own accord, and a dozen ghostly bear paws materialized around him, tipped with wicked claws and moving with minds of their own.

He hunched himself and threw himself forward to meet his attackers.

Bedlam.

Madness.

Bloody chaos.

Skadi leaped and stuck at the cursed jarl’s back, slashing through his billowing cloak of golden tablet weave, cutting through the ghostly material to hack at his spine even as a bear claw smashed into her shield and sent her flying. The world spun, the ground rushed up and around her to slam into her side, she rolled, came up into a crouch, fell back onto her arse, ears ringing.

Her shield was split down the side, held in place only by its rim and the leather covering.

A deep breath and she rose to her feet. Looked around, saw a fallen spear. Sheathed Natthrafn, hefted the weapon, and then took three rapid steps and threw.

The spear flew to true at the back of the jarl’s head.

Who shifted at the last moment so that it missed.

Perhaps a thread disappeared.

Skadi couldn’t tell.

For under assault on all sides, his mass of threads were being snipped faster than she could count.

But so were the Krákan warriors.

The cursed jarl let loose a low moan of piteous horror and swiped his axe into a shield wall, crunching wood and knocking the men back. His bear arms swiped and slashed at those behind him, ethereal and insubstantial until they hit. Men raised shields and were buffeted back, but not all deflected the attacks—Skadi saw one man take a blow squarely to the neck and shoulder and be pulped, reduced to a bloody sack of skin encasing his mangled interior.

Then Kvedulf roared, raised his blade, and shouted one clear word: “Odin!”

He burst forth again and the cursed jarl oriented on him, swinging his axe at the smaller jarl, who ducked and dodged and then parried with a great swing of Dawn Reaver, so that golden axe and silver blade clashed with a terrific clangor. Sparks of fire leaped forth where they smashed together, and the axe head went flying, the golden haft cleaved clear through.

And then did Kvedulf get to work, wading deep into the cursed jarl’s guard to hew and hack and slash and stab.

Marbjörn buried his axe so deep in the cursed jarl’s side he couldn’t tear it free; Hwideberg lopped off an arm with a roar so bestial it could have belonged to the bear. Nǫkkvi sank shaft after shaft into the jarl’s back, and Auðun fell back to hurl axes at the jarl from a distance. On all sides the other warriors hemmed him in, shields raised and overlapping, taking blows and falling back to surge back in.

The cursed jarl moaned and wailed and dropped his axe to catch hold of Kvedulf with both hands. The bear axe blew away into mist before it hit the floor. The cursed jarl lifted Kvedulf clear off the ground like a father might lift a darling child, and Kvedulf swung with all the power he could muster and hewed Nábjörn’s withered head clear off his shoulders.

The body stiffened as the head flew clear, the hands released the jarl, and Kvedulf dropped into a crouch. The warriors drew back, and silence befell the bloodied slope between the high ragged rocks.

Everyone watched as the cursed jarl reached up with its ancient hands to tap and touch the stump of its neck.

The ghostly bear paws faded away.

Nábjörn staggered, its bear hind legs growing weak, and then it crashed to its knees, swayed, and fell forward full length in the crimson snow.

Skadi watched, mesmerized.

Kvedulf had sacrificed half of his threads to slash through the cursed jarl’s remaining twenty. In one blow he had ended Nábjörn’s wyrd.

Heaving for breath Kvedulf staggered back, his eyes wide, and then he raised Dawn Reaver to the heavens and screamed, a primal sound of dominance and victory.

Every man capable of drawing breath roared their victory with him, and Skadi found herself screaming just as loudly, her heart pounding, her terror turning to euphoria, disbelief, and the sweet realization that the fight was over.

Men crumpled, sat, collapsed to their knees. Others stood swaying, laughing cursing, fumbling for water bottles, or moving forward to prod at the fallen monster.

Yri stumbled over to her, uninjured but favoring her right leg. “We did it!” Her laughter was part sob. “To have slain Jarl Nábjörn, to have ended his centuries-old legend—I can’t believe it!”

And from Yri’s chest burst forth a golden thread, her wyrd burning brighter. Kvedulf, Marbjörn, Hwideberg, all the warriors were so rewarded, their destinies burnished by this deed.

Skadi gazed at her own chest and saw that she, too, had been rewarded.

Ten threads she had now, though several had been expended in this fight.

Ten.

Joy and exhilaration flooded through her, and in an excess of emotion she seized Yri and hugged her tight, then turned to beam at where Glámr had dropped into a crouch to lean against his bow.

“Help me collect my arrows,” the half-troll said. “I’ve emptied my quiver.”

“This is a deed as amazing as the slaying of Kagssok,” said Yri, brimming with enthusiasm. “And that we did but a couple of days ago. If our wyrd remains this charmed, we’ll all go down in legend as the greatest warriors that ever walked the middle realm.”

“Steady on,” said Glámr, unable to restrain a smile. “We didn’t slay Jarl Nábjörn alone. This glory will go to Jarl Kvedulf, who hewed the cursed beast’s head from its shoulders.”

“Still!” Yri beamed. “I can’t wait to hear Anarr recount this tale in the great hall when we return.”

Skadi still had her arm looped around Yri’s waist, but turned now to consider their losses.

They were grave. Most of the blood spilt on the snow belonged to the bear, but enough was there to show they’d paid for this victory dearly. Men were already tending to the wounded, straightening the corpses of those fallen. Fifteen had died in this fight, while another five were so badly hurt they’d be of no use in the battles to come.

“There’s only forty or so of us to go on,” said Skadi, her cheer dying down. “And Jarl Nábjörn wasn’t even our real enemy.”

She looked to where Kvedulf was speaking with his hird leaders. They were clearly discussing the same reality.

“Let’s see how we can help,” said Yri.

For the next half hour, they collected arrows and spears and hand-axes, helped bandage those whose wounds were not life-threatening, and brought the bodies off the bloodied snow to lay them under an overhang.

Kvedulf moved at last to address the warband.

“We have accomplished a deed worthy of the greatest legends here today.” He said this without much emotion, simply stating it as fact. “But it has cost us. Five of our warriors are too wounded to press on, and must return to Kráka. Five more will help them descend, to both help fend off wolves and drag the pull-sleds for those too injured to walk. The rest of us shall continue up a ways to get away from the blood, which will surely draw scavengers, and then camp for the night.”

Grim nods, reluctant sighs, and then Hwideberg selected the warriors chosen to help the wounded return. They fashioned stretchers from spears and cloaks on which two men could be laid, and then the hale fighters set to pulling these down the slope, while the others hefted packs. The reluctance of the healthy men to return to Kráka was obvious, but other than cursing under their breath none dared protest.

“Let us proceed,” called out Kvedulf. Dusk was falling fast. The snow had turned ashen in the gloom, the blood black, the body of the cursed jarl more nightmarish for the impending night. “We shall have double rations tonight, and come this hour tomorrow, we shall exact our vengeance upon Queen Grýla and liberate our kinsmen.”

The warband hefted shields, adjusted packs, and followed Marbjörn as he led the way ever up. Everybody stared at the slain monster as they passed it, but soon it was gone from sight, hidden behind the outcroppings of rock, and gone as if it had never been.