“So he told us,” Enar said, sounding amused, “the father and son fought through the wall, and Unker hooked the royal bitch out of the ranks with the beard of his ax and his father opened her royal belly with his sword, Grayfang.”

One of the things they say about the úlfhéðnar is that they fight in a blind rage, like madmen. In battle, people say, the úlfhéðnar are possessed by the souls of wild beasts, of wolves who know no mercy and are hungry for flesh. They feel no pain and know no fear. Some, it is said, even fight naked to show they need no mail, no shield, no helmet, because no man can stand against them. The úlfhéðnar are beasts who fight like gods.

It was the word “bitch” that turned me into a beast. I stood up, ripped Serpent-Breath from her scabbard, and hacked at the two defenseless men tied to the tree. Finan tried to stop me, then must have backed away. He said I was howling like a soul in torment, that the prisoners were screaming, and then there was sudden warmth in the night as their blood sprayed onto my face and I was sobbing and still howling and hacking blindly in the darkness, hacking and hacking, driving the heavy sword into bark, wood, flesh, and bone. And when there was silence, when there were no more screams, when there were no more sounds of dying men moving or groaning, and when the blood no longer flew, I rammed the sword into the soil and howled at the gods.

Stiorra, my daughter, was dead.

Folk say parents have no favorites among their children, which is nonsense. Maybe we love them all, yet there is always one we love the most, and of my three children that one was Stiorra. She was tall, raven-haired like her mother, decisive, strong-willed, sensible, and shrewd. She loved the gods and had learned to divine their will, yet the gods had killed her in Eoferwic. Her blood was on the street and the gods were laughing. They have no pity.

We cling to shreds of hope. Maybe Stiorra had not died, but was wounded? Maybe Sköll’s tale was merely the boast of a defeated man, a defiant lie to restore his reputation? Maybe it had been another woman? Yet it sounded so like Stiorra. If Sigtryggr was far away then she would have led his troops, but why lead them in person? Why not inspire them and let the warriors do the fighting? Yet Stiorra would have known that her presence in Eoferwic’s main street would fire her warriors to greatness. And her death would have inspired them to a savage revenge, yet still Sköll had survived.

And Sköll’s survival gave me one small consolation, that I would never rest until Sköll Grimmarson was at my feet and whimpering for mercy, and at that moment I would show him the same mercy that the gods had given me. That was small consolation, very small, but I clung to it through that night of misery. I wept, though no one saw my tears, and there were moments of despair, but there was always the knowledge that I would find Sköll and I would slaughter him. A curse must be followed by an oath, and I swore that oath in the rain-soaked darkness. Sköll Grimmarson must die.