Skragdal sighed. “Summon the Kaldjager,” he said to Thorun. “We’ll need to leave this place. Swiftly.” Thorun nodded, thrusting his axe through his belt-loop, moving with steady deliberation through the flame-streaked darkness. A good lad, Skragdal thought, watching him go. A good one.

Gerflod Keep lay waiting, its open doors like the mouth of a grave.

Shouldering his axe, Skragdal trudged across the courtyard. He paused in the open door and cocked an eye toward the stable. Its roof sagged as a beam collapsed somewhere inside the burning structure, sending up a huge shower of sparks. Safe enough, he reckoned. Gerflod Keep was stone; stone wouldn’t burn.

He entered the Keep, his taloned feet leaving bloody prints on its marble floors, mingling with the tracks of the Fjel who had gone before. He followed their trail, opening his nostrils wide.

The stink of fear and lies had given way to the reek of terror and the stench of death. All along the way, Men lay dying; Gerflod’s Men, Earl Coenred’s men. Here and there, where they were unarmored and wore only livery, the Nåltannen had given in to old instincts, slitting their bellies with the swipe of a steel-taloned paw. Those Men groaned, dying hard. The Nåltannen had been in a hurry.

Skragdal snorted at the odor of perforated bowels, bulging and blueish through the rents in soft mortal flesh, oozing fecal matter. Those Men, clutching at their spilling entrails, still had terror in their eyes. Murmuring a prayer to Neheris, he raised his axe to dispatch them, one by one. Some of them, he thought, were grateful for it.

In the Great Hall, he found Osric and his Men. None of them were alive. Osric was leaning backward in his chair, grinning. A half-empty tankard sat in front of him and the hilt of a belt-knife protruded from his throat. It was a small knife, made for a Man’s hand, with the earl’s insignia on the hilt. A trail of blood lay puddled in his lap.

“Ah, Osric,” Skragdal said, with genuine sorrow. “I tried to tell you.”

The Staccian lieutenant continued to grin at the ceiling, wordless and blind. Near the head of the table there was a low groan and a scraping sound, a hissed curse. Skragdal trudged over to investigate.

On the floor, Earl Coenred writhed in his shadow, one hand clamped to his throat. Blood seeped through his fingers, where the rending marks of Nåltannen talons were visible. He did not, Skragdal thought, look so smooth with red blood bubbling on his ruddy lips. Stooping, he leaned in close enough to grasp a handful of the earl’s auburn hair and ask the question.

“Why?”