Eyvind rose to his feet, no longer careful to be silent. The wolf turned its head. Eyvind stepped forward and began to walk up across the rocks toward the vantage point where the creature now stood facing him. There was a deep, low growling, very quiet, a sound that said plainly, Come no farther. This place is mine. When he had reached a spot ten paces from the wolf, Eyvind halted. Naked, ash-smothered, he held his head high and his shoulders strong. With the sharpened stick in his right hand and the little knife in his left, he looked the great beast straight in the eye.

Now, said a voice that was not a voice: perhaps his robed guide, though Eyvind had believed himself alone on that journey, perhaps another. Maybe it was his own voice he heard. He would not turn. It seemed to him that as long as he held that glowing, amber gaze with his own the wolf would not attack him. The creature stared back unblinking, and for an instant he thought—no, it couldn’t be—it seemed it was a man he saw there, stern-faced, strong-jawed, with eyes as yellow and feral as any forest predator’s. Ware behind you, said the voice, and he heard a breath, sensed the furtive pad of a foot, and there was no choice now but to break that stare and spin around, arms raised. The creature behind him lunged, jaws snapping, breath rancid in his face; a wolf, a masked man, a demon, he did not know, but he slashed high with the knife and stabbed low with the stick and rolled out of the way as the long claws raked down across his shoulder. He smelled blood; he felt the blow, but no pain. Eyes were watching, a circle of eyes in the moonlight. They were all around him. A wolf does not hunt alone.

Eyvind rose to his feet. He could still hold the knife; that was good. Think like a hunter, not the hunted. This was a challenge, not an ambush. Take the strongest; forget the rest. Oh, for a burning brand, for the weapon of fire. That would buy precious time. Fire, muttered Eyvind. Fire. And the world spun and steadied and spun again, and he felt the fire within him, growing ever fiercer and hotter until his head burned with it, his breast near burst with its power and he opened his mouth and screamed, a cry that made of his whole being a mighty battle trumpet. Perhaps he called Thor’s name, perhaps something far older and darker. He turned in place, once, twice, three times as if to ready himself for a great flight of the war hammer or throwing axe. Tonight, his deadliest weapon was the fire within. Roaring his challenge, Eyvind hurled himself across the open space toward the golden-eyed chieftain of the wolves.