“No,” Skadi called out. “This is between you and I. Leave my friends out of it.”

Afastr smiled. “You are the one who involved them. Who made this all so complicated? But if you wish. I am nothing if not considerate of my wives.”

Skadi began to pick her way toward him. “So you admit it?”

“That I have been married before?” Afastr propped Dauðakoss on his shoulder. The very sight of the cursed axe caused Skadi to shudder. Its blade was spattered with brains, gore, and clumps of hair. “I never denied it. Is it strange for a man of my age to be a widower?”

Kvedulf groaned, tried to sit up, and clutched his chest as he fell back. Skadi stepped over charred corpses, their bodies cooked by constant lightning, their eyes burst into jelly over their cheeks, their tongues sticking out, engorged and blackened.

And yet Afastr spoke with fond amusement as if they had taken a walk to an overlook and gazed out over the sea.

“It is strange when the widower in question has killed his wives to drain them of their wyrd.” Skadi moved as if in a dream. She felt eerily calm, detached from the horror all around them. “When they fabricate prophecies to trick young women into accepting their inevitable deaths.”

Afastr clucked his tongue. “My daughter Astrilda has a wild imagination, don’t you dear?” And he turned to where Astrilda had faded back to one of the temple entrances, there to stand behind one of the columns, her face ashen. “Come here, daughter.”

Astrilda flinched and stepped forth. Skadi wanted to call out to the other woman, offer her comfort of some kind, but from the skittish way her gaze leaped to Afastr only to dance away and then back, from the red swelling around her black eyepatch, from the way her hands trembled and shook, it was clear that her father had broken something deep within her.

“There she is.” Afastr put his huge, gloved hand on Astrilda’s shoulder. “Now, I believe you have something to tell Skadi, do you not?”

Astrilda looked down so that her crimson hair fell before her face, and Skadi saw that thick locks had turned silver. The woman murmured something.

“Louder, my dear.” Afastr smiled benignly, but his hand squeezed her shoulder, and Astrilda bit back a groan. “Let Skadi hear your words.”

“I regret the lies I told you,” Astrilda said mechanically. “I lied to make myself feel special, to make myself feel important.” Her sole eye brimmed with tears. “I’ve learned that I’m not. I’m nothing. Please forgive me.”

Skadi felt a hand reach into her chest and squeeze. Had she hated this man before? That had been mere distaste compared to what she now felt. If hatred could immolate a man, Afastr would have erupted in flames.

“Oh, come,” said Afastr. “Don’t glare at me so. I’m not the one who invaded your home with a coalition of warriors intent on destroying everything you love. Oh, wait. I did do that, didn’t I?”

“Fuck you,” hissed Skadi, drawing Natthrafn from its sheath. The slaughter seax slid free with a wicked sigh. “I swear before the gods—”

“Please, no oaths. I find them so tiresome these days, and the gods are naught but fools inebriated on their own power. Let us keep this personal. Let us keep this between you and I.”

Skadi saw movement in the periphery of her vision. Líføy, moving out to the flank, bow in hand. Kvedulf yet lay on the ground, wincing and clutching at what had to be his shattered sternum. Damian prayed over Aurnir. Glámr had found himself a spear and watched impotently. Trygrr was drifting closer, unobtrusively, sword in hand.

All of them admirable friends and allies, but none of them were a Stórhǫggvi or Kvedulf in his prime.

All her friends could do here was die.

Skadi’s shoulders slumped. Afastr yet boasted his full set of threads. All this and he’d lost not a thread. He was bathed in blood, a gore hound, but none of it was his. For all his supposed age he stood with the poise and athletic ease of a twenty-year-old.

“How do you live with yourself?” she whispered. “All these long centuries. How have you not gone mad, steeped in your solitude and evil?”

“Evil?” Afastr tilted his head. “What does that mean? That I have hurt those you loved? Our people—we Northmen—have done much the same to the Skaberi, the Isernians, the Wuduholtians, for centuries. Your father, your uncle, every warrior from your home. Raiding and killing strangers, enslaving their women and children, burning their homes, looting their wealth. Over and over and over again. Yet you welcomed them home with open arms and delighted laughter, whereas I’m evil?”

Skadi narrowed her eyes. “Our people never massacre an entire town and put their corpses on display.”

Afastr shrugged. “I’ve developed a certain flair, I’ll admit. But my point remains.”

“No,” said Skadi with great deliberation, resuming her approach. “You are evil. You lie. You manipulate. You murder. You siphon women’s wyrds so that they fuel your unnatural life. You feel nothing for murdering hundreds, and have probably killed thousands, tens of thousands. The raiding and fighting our people do is for glory and gold. You crave neither. You are just a miserable wretch who refuses to die, who considers nobody his equal, who long ago lost what compassion, mercy, or ability to love you might once have had.”

She stopped before him, looked up into Afastr’s contemplative expression. “All you have left is cold amusement. How bored you must be, but for moments like this. How bored you will be gain once all the bodies are dragged away.” She paused, realizing something. “You wanted this. For me to resist. To rouse the Draugr Coast against you. This is your entertainment. This is all you have to live for now. Slaughtering your people so as to stave off the boredom of centuries.”

Afastr’s expression hardened.

“Oh, you poor, pathetic man,” said Skadi softly. “How I pity you.”

Afastr snarled and backhanded her. The blow was thunderous and smashed her to the ground.

“You pity me?” He reached down and took her by the neck, lifting her off the ground with ease. “You? Pity me? I am the master of this land. I was here long before your great, great-grandfather emerged squalling from his mother’s cunt, and will be here long after I bury our great, great-grandchildren for daring to speak against me. You are a worm, Skadi Styrbjörnsdóttir, nothing more, of limited understanding, primitive morality, and naive faith in her own uniqueness.”

Skadi choked and stabbed Natthrafn into Afastr’s wrist. The blade cut through his sleeve but slid off his wrist.

Afastr brought her face close to his own. “All too soon I will forget your face. Then your name. You will blur into all the other women I have fucked and bred and killed over the ages, unremarkable, lost to time and thought. A worm.”

Glámr yelled hoarsely and hurled his spear.

Afastr didn’t even flinch. The spear slammed into his side and shattered.

Líføy loosed her arrow, but Afastr simply moved his head aside so that it missed.

Aurnir groaned, tried to rise, and failed.

Skadi hissed through her clenched teeth and stabbed over and again to no avail.

“All of you are worms. Children who play at jarls and shieldmaidens. All of you are beyond pathetic. Only in moments like these do I show my true power, and now with this axe I shall stretch forth my arm and capture the entirety of the coast, exert my dominion where I see fit, and breed and rut with any wyrd-blessed woman who catches my eye, drink deep of their souls and spread my own age of darkness across the land—”

Afastr jerked and stepped back, releasing Skadi suddenly so that she dropped to her knees and clutched her throat, choking and gasping as the black motes receded from her vision.

To look up and see Astrilda standing with her arm extended to her father’s side. She’d plunged a knife deep between his ribs.

Afastr looked down at the wound with incomprehension, then back up to his daughter. “How?”

Skadi blinked, sharpened her vision. Saw a maelstrom of threads. They no longer extended from Afastr’s chest to plunge into Kaldrborg, however, but now spiraled into Dauðakoss. Spiraled and sank into the black axe who drank of them greedily, leaving a great hole in Afastr’s wyrd through which Astrilda had plunged her simple blade.

Astrilda’s expression curdled with hatred and she slammed the base of her palm into the knife’s hilt, ramming it in even deeper.

“Whore!” cried Afastr, and punched her square in the face. Astrilda fell to the ground and tore out the knife in the process.

Blood began to pour from the deep wound. Afastr placed his hand to it, but seemed confused, unable to understand what had happened to him.

“There,” hissed Astrilda. “Feel the pain I’ve felt by your side all these years. Suffer. Bleed out like a stuck pig.”

The last of Afastr’s threads were sucked into Dauðakoss. The huge jarl dropped the weapon. It thudded into the bloody mud, leaving Afastr naked of all wyrd for perhaps the first time in his life.

“You think this will end me?” He raised his gloved hand to stare at the blood-soaked palm. “This is but a scratch. I’ll stomp the life out of you like I should have done when I cut you out of your mother’s belly. You ungrateful—”

Afastr loomed over Astrilda, but then an arrow took him between the shoulder blades.

Líføy’s shoot.

Afastr grunted.

Úrœkja darted in, graceful as a deer, and stabbed her slender blade into the giant’s gut, punching clean through the black chainmail.

Afastr tried to backhand her, but Úrœkja leaped back.

Skadi rose to stand. Her throat burned, her heart was raw with grief and loss, but rage sustained her.

Afastr coughed, blood appearing on his lips. “Get back. You know not what you do. If I fall, Niflheim will spill forth across our borders. The North will be drowned in again-walkers and cold.”

“Fuck you,” hissed Skadi. “I won’t do what you tell me.”

And with a huge slash, she cut open his throat from ear to ear.

Afastr clasped at his neck with both hands. Staggered back, eyes wide, then tried to snarl only to cough up a mass of blood. He swayed but refused to fall.

Astrilda rose to her feet. Blood streamed from her broken nose, but she glared at her father with feverish animation. “How I have dreamed of this moment.”

She extended her hand.

Skadi placed Natthrafn in it.

And Astrilda screamed and leaped and rode Afastr down to the ground, one hand clamped on his shoulder, knees against his stomach, other hand rising and falling as she screamed and stabbed him over and over and over again.

Finally, she stopped. Úrœkja moved up to help her stand. Astrilda was panting, sobbing. Natthrafn fell from her red fingers and she crumpled to the ground, her sobs overwhelming her, great, terrible sobs that shook her whole frame.

Skadi stood there swaying. She felt utterly spent. Wherever she looked she saw the dead. The ground was covered with the flower of the Draugr Coast’s finest. Countless men and women, broken and burned, dismembered and butchered.

Her gorge rose and she turned to hunch and vomit bile. Little came up, but her body fought to clear her gut regardless, again and again, until a familiar hand pressed a waterskin into her own.

“It’s over,” said Glámr.

Skadi lowered into a crouch and forced herself to sip. “Aurnir?”

“Damian got to him in time.”

“Uncle.” Skadi forced herself to rise and on shaking legs stumbled to where Kvedulf lay, his face a mask of pain, beaded with sweat, his hand pressed to his chest.

“Skadi.” He grimaced and tried to sit up. “Bastard near caved in my chest.”

“Easy.” Skadi pushed her uncle back down. “Maybe he did. Pain?”

“Every time I breathe.” Her uncle winced. “But I’ll live. Just can’t… feels like a white-hot axe blade plunged into my chest. But never mind that.” He reached out and clamped tightly onto her arm. “Baugr’s dead. The warriors need a leader. I can’t… not like this. Can’t shout. You need to gather the men. All the clans. Lead them through Kaldrborg. Burn it all to the ground. Kill… kill them all.”

Skadi studied her uncle’s face. When had he grown so old? He’d aged a decade since she’d first met him.

“No, Uncle.” Skadi pulled his grip free. “I won’t be doing that.”

“Burn them,” her uncle pleaded, falling back into the mud. “For Kráka. Burn them.”

“No. The cycle of destruction ends here.”

Kvedulf stared up at her with bewildered rage, then closed his eyes and turned his face away.

Skadi rose wearily to her feet. Some of their warriors were creeping back. Others, the wounded who yet lived, were moaning and calling out from where they lay. Skadi stared briefly at Baugr, his face slack and covered in mud, then walked stonily to where Astrilda yet wept.

“Astrilda.” Skadi crouched before the other woman. “Who rules in Kaldrborg now that Afastr is dead?”

Astrilda lowered her hands and stared at Skadi with her sole, blood-shot eye. “Rules in Kaldrborg?”

“We need a leader here to make sure this doesn’t become a massacre. Someone to order your warriors to surrender. Is that person you?”

Astrilda wiped her hand across her face, smearing blood from her broken nose across her cheek, and stared at Aldulfr. Blinked, dazed, then nodded slowly and turned back to Skadi.

“Yes. I rule here now. I will lead the people of Kaldrborg.”

“Good. Then get up.” Skadi seized her by the forearm and pulled her to her feet. “We’ve got to act now if we’re to prevent this from becoming any more of a disaster. I’m going to need your help.”

“Yes,” said Astrilda, then glanced at her father’s body and immediately looked away with a flinch. “Yes. I’m with you.”

“I know.” Skadi took Natthrafn back. Its blade was already preternaturally clean. She slid it home in its sheath. “I know.”

Together they turned to face the gathering warriors, and as they did, the last of the dark clouds overhead began to break up.