Skadi awoke stiff, sore, and alone. The others were rousing themselves, talking gruffly, laughing grimly as they packed their belongings and chewed on dried strips of beef. Propping herself up on one arm she saw Yri close by, sharpening a throwing axe.

Their eyes met, and Skadi felt a pang of fear. What if that closeness from the night before would fail to last into the light of day?

But then Yri smiled, warm and bright, and a shiver ran through Skadi.

She smiled back.

She rose, stretched, groaned, then packed her belongings and prepared to march. She wasn’t hungry but still she forced herself to eat, and the whole time she remained aware of where Yri was, what she was doing, and whom she was talking to.

Finally, the warband was ready.

Kvedulf faced them from atop a rock by the cave entrance.

“No fancy speeches. We’re done with pretty words. Today we march and climb and fight and kill. By day’s end, Kráka will be safe, our friends recovered, our glory endless. The valkyries must be with us now, hungry-eyed and fingers flexing. But we shall deny them for as long as we can. We have jotunn to kill.”

Grunts and rumbles of assent, and then Kvedulf wrapped his great fur cloak about himself and strode out into the dawn light.

The first ten minutes of climbing were wretched. Skadi’s thighs were stiff as jerky, her back ached, her neck had a crick. But soon she warmed up, stood taller, and the pains fell away.

Yri moved up alongside her. “Morning.”

“Morning.”

They shared shy smiles and climbed in companionable silence. Skadi wanted to say something, but didn’t know what to mention; small talk felt inane, and the big subjects overwhelming. So they simply moved close to each other, part of the line of warriors who clambered over rocks, occasionally scaled vertical walls, up and up and ever up.

They paused a couple of hours later. The whole party sat on an exposed ridge and gazed out over the world. Skadi felt as if she could touch the dome of the sky itself if she but jumped and reached for it.

There were no trees this high. No bushes, no scrubby growth, nothing but occasional patches of lichen, and even that was rare now. The air had grown thin. The sunlight was bright but without warmth. A strange stillness suffused the air, making their voices seem small. As if the mountains throbbed with their own energy, the crags aware of them, the whole world holding its breath.

Skadi sat next to Yri, hip touching hip, both munching on dried jerky. They shared a water bottle. Yri pointed out an eagle soaring far, far below them.

Skadi closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun.

The moment of peace ended.

Kvedulf clapped his mittened hands together. “The ice cliff glitters up yonder. It’s like a vision from my past. We’ll scale it together, and consider it a warm-up for the battle that awaits us at the top. We’ll climb five men abreast, six rows. Hwideberg, Marbjörn, Auðun, Nǫkkvi, and I will go first. If we’re met with battle, we’ll hold the line so that the rest of you can climb. Be wary on the ice. It’s not as bad as it looks, but one mistake and you’re dead.”

Nods all around.

Skadi stood and sighted up the white slope. The rock was black where it broke through, and then, far up ahead, a glittering, blinding curtain of glory that rose into the fog.

The ice cliff.

They climbed. Nobody spoke. One final hour, and every moment brought the ice cliff closer. It was the opposite of what Skadi had imagined; she’d envisioned a smooth wall akin to glass. This was chaos and fury frozen in place, great ragged billows of water having turned to ice, the surface frosted with snow, with occasional streaks of the black cliff beneath.

Finally they stood at its base. Ice spread beneath the snow, and several men muffled their yelps as their boots went out from under them.

“Time to put on your crampons,” smiled Hwideberg. “We’ll scale it in groups of ten. The rest stay wary.”

Skadi pulled out the broad leather wraps. Six metal cleats were punched through to emerge from the bottom. She stepped on one, and tied the ropes over the top of her boot and then around her ankle. Did the other. Took an experimental step. Felt the metal dig into the ice. Felt herself immeasurably sturdied on the ice.

Soon all were prepared. The moments were slipping by as if in a fever dream. Each second lingered forever, but then Skadi would blink and they’d already be at the next phase. Kvedulf and Marbjörn were scouting the great ice wall, and finally, they found what they were looking for.

“The ice has shifted since last we were here. But this route is still the best. Nǫkkvi is our best climber. He will ascend and every fifty feet tie off a rope for the others to use. The next man up will bring another coil, which they will pass to Nǫkkvi, who will then climb the next fifty feet. By this means we’ll climb the beast. Now, drop your packs, bring only water, food, and weapons. Prepare yourselves, and pray for Nǫkkvi. Our lives are in his hands now.”

Nǫkkvi had been limbering up, swinging his arms back and forth and hugging each knee to his chest. At this, he adjusted the thick coil of rope attached to his back, tapped the two ice axes on his belt, rubbed his thumb down the center of his forehead tattoo, and began to climb.

Skadi and Yri watched him go. He was confident and fast. It almost seemed as if he feared hesitation, as if it was his faith in his abilities that allowed him to ascend, and to pause, to second guess himself, would be to court doom.

Skadi saw why they’d chosen this spot; the route followed a deep vertical crack in the wall that was almost a chimney, and often Nǫkkvi inserted himself into it altogether, so that he could lean back against the rock

Up he went, higher and higher, a dark figure against the rock and ice, and finally, he found a place where he could wedge himself and hammer in the first spike.

Each blow rang like a spasm across the great frigid fastness.

He tied off the rope and then hurled it free.

The entire warband watched it uncoil itself, sinuous and lazy, and fall at last to slap against the cliff.

Kvedulf took hold of it and yanked. Yanked again, then leaped and allowed it to take his full weight.

The rope didn’t drop an inch.

“Very well,” said Kvedulf. “Let us climb.”

He led the first five men. The rope helped, but they didn’t rely on it. They were loath to place their combined weight on that single iron peg. Up they went, slowly, deliberately, each member carrying their own rope that they would hand to Nǫkkvi in stages.

Nǫkkvi, for his part, relaxed within his chimney chute of rock, lit a pipe, and blew thin oily smoke out into the void.

Skadi grinned.

The man’s insouciance cheered her to no end.

Still, it was terrible, terrifying work, but none of them seemed affected. Marbjörn whistled as he hacked his way up.

Skadi held Yri’s hand as she watched.

When Kvedulf reached Nǫkkvi, he carefully handed over the next coil of rope. The rangy climber slung it over his shoulder and leaped up, scaling the next fifty feet with alacrity.

Soon his hammer rang out once more, the sound thinner, and a second coil fell to Kvedulf.

Who began the second leg.

Once all five men were on the second rope, Skadi moved forward. Glámr appeared by her side. “Let me go first. Follow where I go.”

She nodded.

He climbed with confidence, his fingers finding cracks and minuscule ridges. Skadi followed right behind, watching where he went, where he placed his hands. Yri came after, then two warriors.

It was close and difficult work. The rock froze her fingers, but she’d never have been able to climb with the reindeer hide mittens. They reached the chimney and the way became easier. The rope was frequently a lifesaver; she tried not to rely on it, but several times she skirted over impassible stretches by simply hauling herself up.

They developed a rhythm: climb five yards, stop, lean into the chimney, rest. Climb five, rest. Climb five, rest.

The morning sun set the great ice flows to glimmering. It was indescribably beautiful. Sometimes the thickness and clarity of the ice would be just right for the sun to shine through it, and in those moments the whole curtain that draped the rock face beside her would burn like a molten medley of sapphire and diamond.

Once she thought she saw a cave mouth buried behind the ice, and standing in the entrance a wizened blue child with huge eyes and rocky growths for hair. They stared at each other through the three yards’ worth of ice, and then the troll child stepped back into the narrow cave and was gone.

Time ceased to have meaning. Her fingers were pure misery, and every rest she’d breathe into her hands and then trap her fingers under her chin. The cliff climbed forever. Occasionally she heard Nǫkkvi hammering in a new spike. All around her came the sound of grunts, of axes cutting into ice, muttered curses, insults. The chimney widened, and the face they were climbing began to slope to the side, making for an easier stretch.

They entered the fog and the world disappeared. Skadi climbed within a dream. She could see Glámr above her, Yri below, the rope dancing by her side, but nothing more. The ice turned opaque and white. Her shoulders burned, her fingers bled, her palms raw from the rope, the tips of her boots tore.

Every moment she expected to hear a scrabble of rock, a desperate cry of alarm, then a long, drawn-out scream as somebody fell to their death. Each moment it didn’t happen seemed a miracle.

But every member of the warband had been raised in the ice and cold, the snow and mountains. They went slowly but surely, followed the same route, used the rope when necessary, and nobody fell.

The ice swelled around them, reducing the rocky ascent to a black strip. Then widened, the rock filling with cracks as if a giant had hammered it above and shattered its integrity.

“I see the top,” hissed Glámr. “The jarl’s over the edge!”

New life filled Skadi. She passed the message down to Yri and struggled to go quicker, but Glámr refused to change his pace. Up he went, confident and sure, then he scrambled into a narrow crack, bouldered his way up, and was gone.

Skadi followed right after, breath coming in gasps. Entered the crack—and ah, the glory of having rock underfoot again! Her knees went weak with relief, but there was no time to give praise. She leaped after Glámr, climbing up the big, jumbled rocks, and at last broke free of the mist to step out onto the ice lake.

The urge to just stand there and gape was nearly overwhelming. The sight was stunning, beautiful, otherworldly. But some instinct bade her reach down to help Yri with the last part, then together they stumbled forward, eyes wide.

Where the ice wall had been snarls of endlessly falling ice, this plateau was a great and utterly smooth expanse of sea-green ice, hidden here and there under drifts of snow, surrounded on all sides by a cliff only twenty yards high—a cliff, Skadi realized, that was worked stone, chiseled and smoothed and perforated with great dark arches. A great set of stairs rose from the far end of the plateau to a final stretch of steep snow, a broad path wending its way between large rocks, to find a second set of deeply eroded stone steps that rose to a distant crack, dividing the peak that soared up past it in two.

A wall had been built in that crack, with crenellations and sharp jagged spikes, but the archway through it stood open, and glowed with a soft blue light as if enticing them on.

Skadi glanced behind them, felt even more wonder: the mist, stretched out as far as the eye could see, eventually breaking up into clouds, but so deceptively flat that it felt as if she stood on the shore of an alien world gazing out over a white ocean.

“By the gods,” whispered Yri.

Kvedulf and the other four had moved forward, weapons at the ready, but no foe awaited them. Skadi drew her slaughter seax and unshouldered her shield and followed behind, Glámr on one side, Yri on the other.

The sea-green ice beneath their feet was textured with great, frozen rings of bubbles, as if something within the depths of the lake had exhaled playfully even as the water had turned as hard as steel.

More of the warband came over the edge, and ever more, until at last they all stood together, their number pitifully small compared to the grandeur of the setting.

A figure emerged from one of the dark archways that delved into the black wall that surrounded the lake. Tall and slender, draped in an insubstantial gray cloak that must have done nothing to prevent the cold, it walked calmly forth into the morning brightness.

“A Snærún?” whispered Skadi, but this figure made the attackers they’d killed look like children in truth.

It was as tall as Hwideberg, and radiated a calm, effortless dignity that was somehow a reproach to the massed warriors. Its black eyes were massive and unblinking, its face otherwise smooth, and its long, eerie fingers rippled slowly as if in an invisible current.

“Greetings, Jarl Kvedulf,” called the Snærún. “Queen Grýla welcomes you to her domain.”

Kvedulf kept his shield up and led the warband over the ice.

“Our gracious queen has an offer to make.” The Snærún’s voice carried perfectly, though it never opened its mouth. “Accept her offer and become her king, and all are free to stay or leave as they please.”

“Spear,” muttered Kvedulf, and took one from Nǫkkvi.

“Or insist on violence and lose all that you hold dear. She—”

Kvedulf threw the spear with a grunt. It flew from his hand, faster than a loosed stone, and passed clean through the Snærún as if the troll were as insubstantial as mist.

The Snærún ceased making its offer and simply disappeared.

Ásfríðr stepped forward. “A sending. Like a waking dream. That was Grýla’s seiðr witch, if the troll-folk can be said to have such things.”

“My next spear will not be so easily ignored,” rumbled Kvedulf. “We press on!”

“Why aren’t they fighting us here like before?” asked Skadi quietly.

“They must want us to come closer,” replied Glámr. “A trap, perhaps. Or a desire to keep their forces together in one army instead of strewn across their home.”

Yri rippled her fingers on her axe haft. “No matter. We’ll kill them wherever they choose to stand.”

The warband pressed on, crossing the ice in silence. Skadi watched the archways like everyone else, trying to detect movement, but saw nothing.

The lack of resistance was eerie.

They reached the far side of the lack and mounted the broad steps.

“Up at the top,” said Glámr, shielding his eyes. “I see people.”

Skadi shielded her eyes as well and stared at the crenellated wall with its open archway within the crag’s steep cleft. There were people flanking the archway. Unmoving, their bodies stiff, facing each other.

“Not people,” she said at last, lowering her hand. “Corpses.”