“Miss.” I whispered it as I let fly.

Two heartbeats passed and I was sure I’d done no better than Arne.

“Yes!” The man spun around as if from a sudden impact. “Yes!” Snorri shouted.

“Shit!” That from Tuttugu as the guardsman remained standing, advanced to the wall, unsteady and clutching his arm, then turned to flee.

“Hel! Shoot him again!” Snorri shouted.

The man had descended by steps to the main wall and was running hell for leather towards the far tower where presumably his companions were housed. Why he wasn’t watching from that tower, I couldn’t tell you.

“We’re done.” I gestured at the distant wall. The man could be glimpsed every half second or so as a dark streak through the crenels notched down into the battlements.

Arne snatched his bow back, strung an arrow, and loosed it at the sky. “A pox on all the gods.” He spat and his phlegm froze before it landed.

“Why waste another arrow?” I watched the walls, wondering if they would come out to kill us or leave us to freeze.

The man fell with a thin cry, nailed as he and Arne’s arrow arrived together at the third crenel before the tower door, six yards short of his sanctuary.

“Dead-Eye!” A quad punched Arne in the shoulder.

“Dead arm if you’re not careful.” But he sounded pleased.

Snorri had already hurried away from us, towards the walls. We gave chase. It seemed to take forever to cross the hundred-yard gap. He had out a long coil of rope, knotted for climbing and stored away from the ice for this moment. At one end a grapple hook that looked suspiciously like the anchor from a small fishing boat. He threw it over the wall and it caught first time. Snorri had already reached the top as I made it to the base of the wall. A quad went up next, then Arne, then me, slipping and cursing now the knots were slippery with ice from the others’ boots. The body of the man Arne shot plummeted past me as I reached the halfway point. I bit off another complaint and kept my mouth shut after that.

• • •

With only Tuttugu yet to climb, we pulled our packs up on a rope and then hauled Tuttugu after them. That effort at last got a little warmth into my blood. I helped him to his feet after his rather undignified struggle between the battlements to reach the walkway.

“Thanks.” He grinned, a nervous thing, quick then gone, and unslung his axe from across his back. An unusual weapon, closer to the armour-piercing wedge design favoured down south.

On the gritted ice beneath my feet, spatters of the tower guard’s blood—shocking colour after what seemed an eternity of white. The droplets captured my gaze. All the talk, all the travel, had come to this moment, these crimson splashes. From abstract to real—too real.

“Are we ready?” Snorri from before the door our man had been running for. The word no fought to get past my lips. “Good.” Snorri held his axe in a double grip, Arne a broadsword, the brothers each with a double-headed broadaxe, short-handled, a knife in the off hand. I drew my longsword, last of all of them. Satisfied, Snorri nodded and set his hand to the iron door handle. The plan did not have to be reiterated. It was, as plans go, a simple one. Kill everyone.