Kvedulf led them up the snowy slope, powering through the knee-deep powder to gain the bottom of the heavily eroded steps and charge them.

The warband came behind, shields unslung, weapons ready.

Skadi’s breath was rapid and tight. She couldn’t tear her gaze off the six men and women that stood stiffly before the archway through the wall. Who leaned forward as if on the balls of their feet and never fell forward, heads tilted back, who didn’t turn to gaze down the steps as those who had come too late to help them.

Kvedulf slowed at the last and hissed in fury as he stepped onto the causeway that crossed from the top step to the arch, snow and rocky ground falling away on both sides. Moved forward warily to stop at last before the figures.

They were of Kráka, and each was impaled upon a spear of ice whose base had turned black with dried blood. Each spike emerged from their open mouths, bursting through teeth.

None spoke.

The cold air had preserved their flesh so that they were pale and unrotted, the wounds frozen so that they looked fresh.

Skadi recognized the men, but only knew one of them. Fengr, whom Begga would often trade with, and about whom she loved to gossip, noting his passion for strong tea and how in need of a woman’s governance his home was.

Kvedulf growled deep in his throat, the sound reminding Skadi of the dread wolf Naglufr’s snarl from the forest of the norns.

Hwideberg pounded his axe against his shield, again and again, and the other warriors joined in. Skadi did the same, cracking Natthrafn’s pommel against the iron boss. The sound grew, echoed off the wall, the cliffs that rose on either side of the cleft. Louder and louder, every warrior smashing their weapon against their shield, and then Kvedulf let out a great cry:

“Grýla! I come for your head!”

With a roar he raced forward, into the archway, through the long passageway that ran through the cleft, so narrow only a couple of men could charge down it at a time, as if the world’s greatest giant had cleft the crag with an axe the size of the world.

Skadi restrained the urge to yell wildly, all soreness and aches gone, her rage fierce and burning bright. She ran with the others in a torrent along the crevasse and together they emerged onto a massive ledge of snowless rock, gray and rough, cliffs rising at their backs and a vast chasm dividing them from a wall of rough stone.

A great bridge crossed over this chasm, a bridge of stone that no mortal man could have ever fashioned, without supports, without separate pieces, just a great raw ragged spit of rock that spanned the void like a blade laid flat across the chasm, its far end terminating in the open maw of a huge face carved into the living rock.

Skadi’s eyes flared wide as she stared. The face was crudely carved, as massive as Kagssok had been, but with such talent, such raw artistry that she half expected its closed eyes to open. Its mouth yawned wide, fangs high over the entrance into the mountain, and all around them tumbled and fell away the lesser peaks and mountains.

They were not alone.

A mass of trolls, Snærún, white wolves, and three small jotunn awaited them there, gathered in a loose crowd before the bridge, shifting and pacing and snarling and ready for battle.

Skadi couldn’t focus on any single individual; her gaze leaped from troll to wolf, from wolf to jotunn, from jotunn to snow-skinned Snærún.

Too many for their force.

She sharpened her gaze.

Gold threads burst from Kvedulf in glorious profusion, from Marbjörn and Hwideberg, from Nǫkkvi and Auðun. Glámr and Yri were similarly blessed, and to her amazement and delight, she saw that every warrior in their band now had threads of golden fate, one or two, with some particularly noteworthy individuals boasting three.

But the enemy. The wolves and Snærún were without threads, the three jotunn, each only two or three times the height of a man, with perhaps five or six; the trolls were the toughest opponents, most boasting seven or eight threads, and of them there were six.

Perhaps the battle wasn’t as hopeless as she’d thought.

“Warriors of Kráka!” roared Kvedulf, raising Dawn Reaver on high so that it blazed like a brand stolen from the heart of the sun, “fight for your kin! Fight for your home! Fight for glory!”

The men and women roared, smashed their weapons on their shields once more, and when Kvedulf pointed his blade they broke forth, sprinting across the rough stone ledge toward the enemy.

Skadi screamed as she sprinted, Natthrafn hanging from her wrist by its hoop. She pulled a throwing axe from her belt and hurled it at the closest giant, putting so much strength into the throw that she nearly stumbled, bent right over, head to the ground when she finally loosed.

The axe sped amongst a hail of spears and arrows, flew true, flew mightily at the giant, who reached out to catch it and took the blade square in his palm, the edge cutting through skin and meat and sinew and blood to lop his hand in half.

The giant bellowed, wolves howled, the trolls roared and hurled huge rocks, and then Skadi was amongst them, moving through a forest of legs and great icy bodies. No time for thought, for hesitation, calculation, just pure, unadulterated fury and the despair of a mortal battle.

Natthrafn was a needle, and where it passed she left behind a thread of blood. A wolf leaped upon her shield, drove her back, but she titled the shield and stabbed around its rim, sinking the tip deep between white-furred ribs. Threw herself into a dive, lost her shield, and came up just as a giant brought a hammer upon her head. Danced aside, the weapon whispering past her, and slashed open the giant’s arm just above the elbow, dragging her seax’s blade across bone.

Laughter. Whose? Hers—she was screaming, laughing, her terror and fury melding into something that felt akin to joy.

A troll pounded toward her, bristling already with arrows, and she backed away, passed right over her shield, scooped it up again, then a Krákan warrior collided with her, knocked back by some terrible blow.

They both went down. The press of cold rock against her side, shield trapped under the man, hot blood sluicing over her furs. With a cry she pushed the man over, scrabbled to her on her feet, and saw the rock hurled at her too late.

Raised her shield.

The rock was the size of her torso.

One of her threads disappeared as the rock clipped her shield and missed her by a finger.

Laughter. Marbjörn was there, hewing with his axe, singing gloriously, his voice golden, his delight and happiness insane. He cleaved a troll’s hand off, hacked its ribs into a broken bloody bird’s nest of shattered twigs, drew a hand-axe and hurled it right at Skadi—

—no, right past her, to take a Snærún in the chest.

“Look alive, Skadi!” he roared.

She gasped, saw a giant pounding toward them both, and ran right at it. The giant snatched at her, but she dove under its hand, crashed roughly against its leg, slashed upwards with Natthrafn, sliced a deep, oblique cut into its thigh.

The giant roared and kicked her off, sent her rolling. Skadi looked up as a troll raised its foot to stomp on her, and then Yri was there with a spear, skewering it in the gut, placing the spear butt against the rock so that the troll forced the head deeper into itself as it fought to get closer, a thread and then another disappearing as it did so.

Yri hauled Skadi up, but there was no time for words. They split, flanked the troll, who finally shattered the spear haft and staggered forward.

Skadi slashed again and again at its side, slicing open its rocky skin, Natthrafn having no trouble while Yri’s axe but cut shallow wounds into its hide.

A wolf appeared out of nowhere and knocked Yri onto her face, began savaging the back of her neck.

Skadi screamed and shouldered the troll aside, who was so surprised and off-balance that he staggered forward again, and then Skadi tackled the wolf as one might a foe in a game of knattleikr. The wolf twisted about, snapping at her, but she plunged Natthrafn into its side, again and again and again. Fangs crushed her shoulder, raked across her scalp, but then the wolf yelped and lay still.

A huge roar. Skadi looked over. Kvedulf had just chopped a giant’s leg clean out from under it. The jotunn wailed and fell.

Somebody hauled her up. Glámr. His bow was gone and now he held a long-axe, not his, its head scarlet.

Yri?

Gone.

The troll they’d been fighting tried to backhand them both, but Glámr swung his axe to meet the blow and buried the blade deep between the monster’s knuckles. Hoisted its arm up with all his strength and Skadi ducked in and stabbed Natthrafn into the troll’s armpit, sinking it to the hilt.

The troll grated out a cry of horrific pain, reeled back.

Glámr brought his axe around his head in a huge loop to lop off the troll’s head, only for a hurled rock to impact the side of his head and jelly his skull, an eyeball flying free—

The rock missed as Glámr struck it accidentally with his long-axe, his own momentum wrenching him out of the way.

One of the half-troll’s threads disappeared.

Who had thrown the rock? The last standing jotunn. Three warriors with overlapping shields hemmed in against the chasm’s edge.

Snatching up her shield, Skadi rushed to help them. She’d never practiced at a shield wall, but had seen the men of Kalbeak form them time and again back home, working at the formation over and over as older warriors kicked their shields and tried to break their formation.

So it was with confidence that she placed her shield as a second row above the first.

Glámr was there, his own placed beside hers, overlapping.

“Push!” she shouted, and the five of them strained forward, slamming into the giant’s waist. He pounded down at them with his fists, but Skadi raised her shield and took the blow which splintered the wood.

Then Hwideberg joined them, his own shield forming the tip of their pyramid, and with his mass shoving at the shields they roared and screamed and shoved at the giant, who clutched at them, tore the shields apart only for them to reform, and with one final effort they pushed the giant back again and he fell into the chasm.

But not before clutching hold of a man’s arm and pulling him in after them.

Skadi staggered, nearly fell in after, and stared in horror as both fell, slowly spinning in the air, the warrior drawing a seax so as to stab at the giant before the mists below claimed them.

“Kráka!” yelled Kvedulf, drawing her eyes back to the fray.

The giants and wolves were dead. Three trolls remained, with a handful of Snærún creeping between their legs.

Skadi saw a hand-axe on the ground. Dropped Natthrafn so that it hung from its loop and snatched the weapon up. Took three quick steps and hurled it at the troll with no threads remaining.

The axe flew through the air and embedded itself in the side of the troll’s head. It cried out, tore the weapon out, and fell.

Two trolls left.

Marbjörn ran in with Kvedulf. They hewed at the troll, scything through its threads, and then Kvedulf decapitated the monster with a monstrous hack.

The remaining warriors hurled spears and hand-axes at the enemy. The final troll shielded its head and ran for the bridge.

Auðun, the blue tattoo along his temple bright against his pale skin, hefted a huge spear, took four hopping steps, and threw.

The spear hit the troll between the shoulder blades.

Still it ran on. Nǫkkvi placed arrows in its back, and just before the troll reached the gaping maw Hwideberg took a hand-axe and hurled it high into the sky.

It flew in a great parabola, spinning into the white sky then dropping, dropping, to crash into the back of the troll’s head at a distance of some fifty yards.

“What a throw!” shouted Marbjörn, his grin wide. “I’ll do better one day, old man!”

Hwideberg grinned at him. “That day shall never come!”

A long-fingered hand wrapped around his throat and tore it out from behind.

Hwideberg had no threads left. His neck became a crimson gulley of flapping skin and glistening cartilage. He turned, seized the Snærún by the neck, and hurled it into the chasm with tremendous rage and strength.

Then crashed down to his knees, blood darkening his bear mantle, sheeting down his front, gusting out in tremendous quantities.

Before Kvedulf or Marbjörn could reach him he toppled forward and lay dead.

Skadi, heaving for breath, swung Natthrafn up by its loop and snatched it from the air.

Looked around.

The enemy was defeated. A few Snærún were climbing up the cliff face behind them, disappearing amidst the stones. The trolls and giants lay butchered. The white-furred wolves lay crimson.

But amongst the enemy lay the men and women of Kráka. Head spinning, Skadi tried to count. Five. Eight. Ten. Fourteen.

With Hwideberg, that made half their number dead.

She searched the living with urgent desperation, saw Glámr dropped into a crouch, his threads all gone, his shoulder a mauled and wounded mass.

And there, at the edge of the fray, hands on her knees as she fought for her breath: Yri.

Kvedulf rose from his crouch, his expression harsh and unyielding.

“We are not done yet. Queen Grýla awaits us within. Let us end this.”