'Not so easy,' insisted the Erlking. 'The others you failed. You will prove as unwise as you are weak.'

Russ laughed. 'We shall see.' He swept his arm out behind him to where he had supped with the shadow wolves. 'Your guest Amarok bade me drink his bowl dry. How could I succeed in draining that lanx, when he had me attempt to swallow the Savage Sea? First, as ice, when frozen in the Helwinter, then when molten in the Fimbolsommer. He held the Wolf's Eye itself to my head in pretence of help, and yet I did not burn.'

The Great Wolf's expression set. 'Very good. You have guessed well once. You will not again. Be ready my wolves, to rend this false wolf and gulp down his flesh.'

Russ gave a confident smile. 'We shall see,' he said. 'The old woman. She is Bad Wyrd, a foe no man can beat, the fate of those who do not fall in battle. Age slaughters every warrior in the end, if he does not sleep upon the red snow. Is the Muspjall not her domain, staffed as it is by her victims?'

The Great Wolf growled.

'Your wolf, your pet. Why! What fool do you take me for?' He pointed at the sleeping monster. 'That is none other than Morten himself, the greatest wolf of all, and lord of the lowest of death's halls.'

The wolf looked up. Two heads, not one regarded Russ with piercing eyes. One mouth yawned capaciously, then it settled back down to sleep.

'No man can move death,' said Russ. 'It is a point we all must come to, and it cannot be dislodged by mortal effort. There! In naming the three of your challenges I win the fourth. They were not fair, you sought to deceive me. The deceiver is always undone.'

The Great Wolf laughed. It began as a wet, grumbling noise, the growl of a predator warning a hunter from its kill, rising to become the clashing of pack ice loosed by the burning sun. It finished as peals of thunder cracking around an erupting volcano's peak.

'Not so, Leman of the Russ. Now you must name me. Here you shall assuredly fail.'

Russ smiled broadly and stabbed a finger at the being. 'You are the Great Wolf. You are me.' And then he spoke the name Kva had whispered in his ear, a name he had never borne, but that encapsulated who he was. 'I know you by your spear. My spear.'

A hot wind blew.

'No!' The wolf howled in anguish, and all his shadow wolves howled with him. 'No!' Its shadow skin writhed and turned in on itself. It grew larger, more hulking, more bestial.