There was no time to think, to weigh the moment and decide on the best course of action. She had to decide, make a choice, and own it with everything in her spirit.

To run with the others to do battle with Afastr? To turn and face the half-giants? Or to continue sprinting toward the walls?

An image flashed through her mind: their forces bunched up against the palisade, the ladders rising even as the half-giants cut through their ranks like a scythe through barley.

Was it the best choice?

She had no idea.

But their army would be destroyed if it was caught between the wall and their huge foes.

“Defend the rear!” Her scream was lost in the clamor. She stopped and raised Thyrnir, but warriors streamed past her, screaming as they sought to reach Afastr and crush him for his outrageous arrogance.

The half-giants were lumbering right after their forces, swinging their huge weapons at the rearmost ranks.

Skadi sharpened her gaze. Golden threads blazed forth, revealing six half-giants in all, three per flank. None of them had more than a dozen threads, with most having far less than that.

So, huge, but not indestructible.

Skadi ran toward the closest giant, swimming against the tide, and was gratified to see Glámr and Damian fighting to keep pace with her. Off to the right Aurnir had come to a stop, his dire flail raised, his confusion obvious as he cast around.

Skadi clutched Glámr’s shoulder. “Fetch Aurnir! Have him join us against these half-giants!”

A wave of shouts and screams burst forth from the battlefield, and Skadi ripped around to see that their army’s leading edge had collapsed as it hit something in the dark line between the second and third rows of torches.

“Trenches,” hissed Glámr.

Afastr’s laughter rolled over the battlefield like thunder.

Trenches as wide as the battlefield, hidden in the shadows, hidden from the sprinting men by his torchlight-blinded eyes.

“Go!” she shouted, shoving him away.

The closest half-giant was only a score of yards off to her left, blue-skinned and bald, his upper torso bare to the elements, massively muscled, his brow beetling out over his eyes, his double-headed axe gleaming wetly in the dawn light.

One of the half-giants that had visited Kráka.

Which meant he’d been part of the slaughter.

Skadi ran right at him, screaming her challenge.

The half-giant reeled back as he recovered his balance from a massive swing that had cut three men clear in half, their bodies collapsing in a welter of gore. He saw Skadi coming and bent over, every muscle clenching, to open his huge mouth and roar at her, muscles writhing, veins as wide as her fingers appearing along his arms and temples.

Six threads.

A small price to pay.

Skadi hurled Thyrnir. It flew from her hand, sure as a hawk diving on unsuspecting prey, and slammed into the half-giant’s left eye.

The sheer force of the blow drove it half-out the back of the half-giant’s head, and his roar was cut short as he released his axe and staggered back.

Skadi ran right past him, drawing Natthrafn and shouldering her shield. Any half-giant blow would shatter her shield and arm both.

The blue-skinned half-giant crashed to the ground behind her as she wheeled to come at the second huge foe.

This was the half-jotunn, half-troll one that had also visited Kráka; he wielded a huge sword in each fist and swung them about himself in a continuous pattern as he advanced laughing maniacally into the rear of the army, the human warriors melting away before him in horror.

Skadi wanted to summon Thyrnir to her hand, to hurl it again. She knew she could kill this half-giant with one strike, but she reined in the impulse.

If she burned through all her wyrd killing half-giants, she’d have nothing left for Afastr and Kaldrborg itself.

Instead, she snatched a spear from the loose grip of a young warrior who was gaping in horror and hurled it, nearly doubling over from the effort.

The spear flew right at the half-giant’s head, but by purest luck he cut it out of the air with one of his blades, shattering the haft and taking one of his five threads with it.

“How did he…?” asked Damian, eyes wide beside her.

“Luck,” she snapped as the half-giant turned to glare at her. “Just luck and wyrd! Don’t be so impressed!”

Damian nodded frantically and then had the wit to run out wide so that they weren’t both bunched up together as the half-giant approached.

“You!” boomed the massive foe. “You Afastr wants! I will earn great reward!”

“You have to catch me first, you bastard,” Skadi hissed, shifting her weight from side to side as she tried to detect a pattern to the giant’s sword swinging. He seemed tireless, each blade as long as Dawn Reaver, both whirling before the half-giant without pause.

There.

Skadi didn’t allow herself to hesitate. A brief flicker of a second where one blade was drawn back, about to sweep forth again, the second raised on high.

Skadi dove forward, throwing herself into a forward roll as the first blade tore out horizontally through the air, missing her by inches. She slashed at the half-giant’s knee as she rolled by, but the thick shaggy fabric of his knee-high boots tangled Natthrafn’s blade so that she did little more than slash leather.

She came up behind the half-giant and immediately hurled herself into a second dive, just as her enemy whipped a sword around to cleave through the air where she’d been.

When she came up again and turned, she saw that he was down to three threads.

His successes thus far however had him feeling invincible.

“Come here!” he bellowed. “Afastr not want you missing body parts!”

Damian grunted and hurled a spear. The half-giant flinched away, and Damian missed by a hand’s breadth.

Another thread disappeared.

This was taking too long. Skadi risked a glance at the battlefield. A huge mob had congregated around Afastr, who had leaped from his horse to lay about him with a huge black axe. There had been several trenches, and from those ragged wounds in the earth she heard screams and curses.

Worse, archers had appeared on the city walls and were loosing flights of arrows down upon their army.

The three other half-giants on the left flank were wading deeper into their lines.

Their whole plan had gone to shit.

The half-troll jotunn ran at her, slashing with his huge swords, but fury had robbed Skadi of her fear; she faced him and realized that for all he was huge, he was surprisingly slow. Observing him with cold fury, she saw that his blows were betrayed a few moments before he made them.

Skadi moved to engage, knowing that she was at once defended by her own wyrd, which was now down to nine threads, six for killing the first half-giant, and five for having cast away Thyrnir.

But no matter.

This half-giant she could handle.

It took all of her self-possession and skill, but she swayed aside from one blow, side-stepped a second, ducked a third, then stepped in to slam Natthrafn into the giant’s ribs.

The slaughter seax slid home, but the half-giant pulled back before she could open him up like a strung-up deer.

Another of his threads disappeared.

He scowled, slashed at her with both blades, and hatred at her inability to just parry him cold washed through her. But she darted back, moved from side to side as she waited for him to give her an opening again, and then his head disappeared in a spray of red mist.

Aurnir staggered through the huge swing, his expression wild, his dire flail having connected solidly with the side of the other half-giant’s head and annihilated it.

Skadi staggered back, gasping for breath, then nodded in stark relief to Aurnir as he straightened and lifted his dire flail once more, its huge head now clotted with bone and flesh and blood and brains.

The half-troll jotunn’s body dropped to its knees then fell chest forward, pumping huge amounts of arterial blood out into the dirt.

“Bad bad,” said Aurnir, voice hollow with something akin to shock.

“More bad bad to go,” said Skadi, nodding to Glámr as the half-troll came up.

“Should we help against Afastr?” asked Damian.

Skadi looked back at the melee. “He’s—he’s retreating?”

Indeed, the monstrous jarl was fighting off foes as he retreated through the Raven’s Gate, the sheer amount of concentrated arrow fire keeping the warriors from following. Even as Skadi watched large chains tightened and the double doors were hauled closed with a boom.

The warriors of the attacking army cheered, then realized how fucked they were as they looked up the towering walls and realized they’d left their ladders behind.

“What a mess,” hissed Glámr, and spat.

“Get that last giant!” shouted Skadi, pointing to the remaining figure on their flank, and ran back to the first to tear Thyrnir free so as to not expend any wyrd. She had to stomp it out the back of the dead giant’s head, and the moment her fist closed around its blood-smeared shaft she regained four threads, bringing her back up to thirteen.

Thirteen and the battle had just begun.

Skadi sharpened her vision and searched the battlefield. Kvedulf was by the front gate, shouting at the men to retreat, his fifteen threads giving him away. Nokkvi was further back, taking an archer’s life with each arrow he loosed at the battlements. They’d lost maybe a third of their number already, and the longer they stood under bow fire the more fell.

Cursing, Skadi sprinted after her friends who were closing on the last half-giant. This was a massive, sloping-shouldered brute, his gut prodigious, a dozen bearskins stitched into a single cloak, his body sheathed in fat. He raised a tree trunk of a club, however, betraying his strength, and roared a challenge at Aurnir who bellowed right back.

Skadi tried to reach the fight in time to help, but Aurnir ended it with one swing. The other half-giant’s club was no match for the dire flail; forged in the depths of Queen Grýla’s halls, it smashed clean through the club, causing it to explode in splinters, and then slammed into the other’s face, shattering his skull and flattening his head as it embedded itself deep into the half-giant’s chest.

The sheer force of the blow drove the enemy down onto his knees, and when Aurnir howled in fury and turned away so that he could rip the flail out, he tore half the monster’s upper body away with it.

“The New Sun wept,” whispered Damian as Skadi reached them.

Aurnir growled and shook his dire flail, trying to get the flesh and body parts off its blades.

Skadi stared at the blood-spattered face of her friend. “Aurnir! It’s all right! Come on, we’ve got to get to Kvedulf.”

Even as Aurnir nodded and allowed the huge multi-bladed axe head drop to the ground, she saw a new thread emerge from his chest, bringing him up to six.

It seemed the norns approved of exceptional brutality.

They ran through the retreating crowd to where Kvedulf was striding, his back turned contemptuously to the walls, his helm knocked off his head, both golden braids hanging past his shoulders.

“The bastard played us for fools!” he shouted, grasping Skadi by the shoulder. “And me the greatest fool of them all. I saw red, like he knew I would!”

“Ladders,” said Skadi. “I’ll guide Aurnir to the front gates, you take our remaining men to the walls. We have to keep fighting!”

“Aye.” Kvedulf turned to eye the mob of Havaklif warriors who were falling back in disarray from their failed attack on the gate. “Though the fates are not smiling on us. Turn this around if you can, Skadi. I’ll take the walls!”

And so saying her uncle turned to shout commands at his men.

“Aurnir!” Skadi pulled on the half-giant’s arm so that he looked down at her. “We go to the front gate! You smash it down!”

Aurnir’s eyes were wide, his stare half glazed with shock, but he turned to point questioningly at the Raven’s Gate.

“Yes. Right there. Bring it down. I’m coming with you!”

“As are well all,” said Glámr, unslinging his shield. “Do you think I’d miss the chance to meet each and every arrow remaining in Kaldrborg?”

“For Kalbaek!” screamed Skadi, raising Thyrnir. “For Kráka!”

Almost she spent a thread of wyrd to accompany her words with a thunder crack, but she controlled the impulse.

Aurnir broke into a slow, loping run. At least it looked slow; in practice he covered six yards with each stride, and Skadi was forced to push herself to keep up. She unslung her shield and raised its upper edge to her chin, so that she was armored from her helm down to her shins.

The dawn light was growing brighter, and Skadi could make out the three lines of ditches that had been dug between the rows of torchlight. Each had been covered with branches, hay, and dirt. The disguise would never have fooled anybody by daylight, but in the pre-dawn gloom?

Aurnir crossed each ditch with ease, while she and her other companions were forced to break into sprints so as to vault over the six feet of treachery that dropped a good ten or more feet down onto sharpened stakes.

Or screaming, dying men, as the case now was.

Arrows began to fall upon them after they cleared the first ditch. They thudded into her shield, bounced off the metal boss, careened off her helm. Skadi hunched her shoulders and ran on, confident in her wyrd, knowing that her companions were similarly protected, unless one of the archers was a being of fated might.

They leaped the second ditch.

“Stop that half-giant!” someone screamed from above, voice tight with fury and fear.

Spears fell upon them now, thocked into her shield, the tips of their heads punching through the interior surface, their weight dragging down her shield. Straining, crying out with effort, Skadi kept her shield up, saw the final ditch coming, then tossed her shield aside as she raced forward and leaped.

This last ditch was the widest. Eight feet across and perhaps twelve feet deep, Skadi caught a glimpse of Hel at its base, a flash of impaled warriors, blood, screaming mouths, bulging eyes.

Then they were over.

The ground here was littered with corpses. How many had Afastr alone killed? More than a dozen. The bodies were chopped apart, limbs cloven right off, torsos split in two. She’d have thought it the work of a full-grown giant if she’d not seen Afastr himself wielding the axe.

Aurnir let out a roar of rage and swung his dire flail over his head as he closed on the gate. The metal shaft, six feet long, bent like a wand as the huge flail head screamed around and around over Aurnir’s head. His wooden armor bristled with spears and arrows, an absurd amount, but spears and arrows couldn’t pierce actual logs. His cauldron helm had slipped down over his eyes, but Aurnir didn’t seem to care: with a scream of sheer fury, he brought the huge flail tearing around and into the gate.

Massive logs shattered, cracked and flew apart, and then Aurnir’s bulk slammed into the gate at full tilt, knocking it wide open, the crossbar within cracking in half, so that he staggered into the clearing just beyond.

Skadi let out a war cry, Natthrafn in one fist, Thyrnir in the other, and ran after her friend, her mind given over to a single imperative: slaughter.