• • •

They came that night.

Snorri had often said that Freja saved his life. She took from him the rage that had forged his skill with axe and spear, setting in its place new passions. He said she had given him purpose where all he had before was confusion that he hid, as most young men do, behind an illusion of action. Perhaps she saved his life again that night, some dream-murmured warning thinning his sleep.

What woke him, Snorri couldn’t say. He lay in the dark and the warmth of his covers, Freja close enough to touch but not touching. For long moments he heard only the sound of her breathing and the creak of ice re-forming. He had no concern over attack—the jarls had settled the worst of their squabbles, for the now. In any case, only a fool would risk a raid with the season barely starting to turn.

Snorri set a hand to the smoothness of Freja’s hip. She muttered some sleepy rejection. He pinched.

“Bear?” she asked. Sometimes a white bear would nose around, take a goat. The best thing to do was to let it. His father advised, “Never eat a white bear’s liver.” As a boy, Snorri had asked why, were they poisonous? “Yes,” his father had said, “but the main reason is that if you try to, the bear will be busy eating yours, and he has bigger teeth.”

“Maybe.” Not a bear. Where his surety came from, Snorri didn’t know.

He slid from the furs and the cold gripped him. Clad only in skin, he took down his axe, Hel. His father had given him the weapon, a single broad blade, half-moon cutting edge. “This blade is the start of a journey,” his father had said. “It has sent many men to Hel, and it will send her more souls before its time is done.” With the axe in his hand Snorri felt clothed, the cold laying no finger upon him for fear he might hack it off.

Someone stumbled outside, close by the hut, yet not so close that it left no room for doubt. “That you, Haggerson? Taking a piss on the wrong ground?” Sometimes Haggerson would drink with Magson and Anulf the Ship, then stumble off in search of home—lost even though he had but forty huts to choose from.

A soft but penetrating cry went up, almost the call of a loon, but not quite, and in any case the birds were silent before the ice left. Snorri slipped the latch, set the ball of his foot to the timber, and kicked his door open as hard as he could. Someone howled in pain and staggered back. Snorri barrelled through, into a moonless night pierced by lantern light, more lanterns being unhooded by the moment. Snow lay thick on the ground. It fell in fat and heavy flakes: spring snow, not the tiny crystals of winter. Snorri’s bare feet nearly slid from beneath him, but he kept his balance, swung, and sank his axe into the spine of the man still clutching his face after kissing the door. A savage tug ripped the blade free of the man’s lower back as he collapsed.