The fire whirled higher and hotter. Ragnhild began to walk around and around it. This brought her close to him as she passed by. He saw that she was fair of hue, with gray eyes, curved nose, firmly held lips, strong chin. Though now and then her fists clenched, she strode unfaltering.

The sun went below the heights. Shadow swept over vastness and pooled in the deeps. The fire guttered low, but must still gleam like a red star across many miles. Wind died away. Air grew swiftly colder. Ragnhild went into her tent. Hadding waited. He kept tautening and loosening his thews, shifting from ham to ham, making any movement he could where he was. Ill would it be if his body stiffened.

A few stars blinked forth, but the sky was blue gray and only the lightest of twilights dwelt below. One could see nearly as far as by day, though clefts and gorges were darkened, cliffs and peaks dim above them. The dying fire growled, spat, hissed.

Ragnhild came back out of the tent. She had not undressed. She stood again with fists knotted, tight and aquiver as a struck harpstring, to stare eastward.

Hadding amidst his boulders heard the noise shortly afterward. Rocks rattled. They slipped aside and downward. Small landslides made a racket like dry waterfalls.

Footsteps sounded, stone-heavy, ever nearer. Breath went stormwind-loud.

Jarnskegg climbed onto the Troll’s Hood.

Taller than three men he loomed, broader and thicker than that, a hill murky against heaven. Skins wrapped bearlike hairiness, with a sharp stench. His mane and beard bristled stiff, rusty black, around shelving brows, pocked lump of a nose, mouthful of greenish snags. In his right hand he bore a club, and tucked under his thong-belt was a sax, both made to his bigness.

He stopped and stood agape. Ragnhild held fast, looking up toward eyes hidden in their bony caves.

“Ha!” Jarnskegg’s voice grated thunderous. “It is you, then, come to your lover.”

Only the embers answered, sparks snapping from their white heart.

The jotun’s left hand reached downward. It shook. Nor were his words altogether steady. “We will be happy, you and I. We both belong in the uplands. I will show you wonderful things. I will stamp on your foes. You shall be queen with me, Ragnhild.”

Hadding slipped a coif onto his head. Above it he set and fastened his helmet. It was of the closed kind, hiding his face behind an iron plate graven with a wolf’s mask. He would need every warding he could have. Shield in hand, he writhed out of the room and around it to the open. Drawing sword, he ran at the giant.,

“Faithlessness!” Jarnskegg screamed, as the earth itself might scream.

“No doing of hers!” Hadding shouted. “Get aside, woman!”