“Naked I come and naked I overcome,” whispered Eyvind, raising his hands before him. “Against you, I use no weapon that you cannot use; equal we do battle, equal under the gaze of Thor. And if I cannot defeat you thus, I am myself defeated.” Then he sprang forward, and the wolf leaped, and the two of them rolled together, this way and that, a frenzy of tooth and claw, of straining limb and screaming, growling, bloody combat. Eyvind could not tell where his own body ended and the creature’s began, so close-locked were they. It was pain and blood and darkness; it was a pair of strong hands, holding and squeezing and never letting go as the enemy scratched and gouged and snapped, as the blood flowed and the desperate sounds rang in his ears, and the night became a chaotic jumble of moon and stars and shadow, of rock and treetop and sky, of silent, waiting forms that were not man and were not beast, but Other.

At the end, at the very end, they lay panting, spent, almost like lovers worn out by a night of passion, and Eyvind looked into the wolf’s eyes one last time. The creature was still now; the golden gaze grew dim as Eyvind’s hands maintained their merciless grip about the neck. The wolf bled from mouth and belly; Eyvind knew his own blood flowed from countless wounds on his body, on his chest, his shoulder, his face, his hands, somewhere in another world. He stared into his adversary’s eyes and the truth looked back at him. This was the moment: the moment of changing. There were no words, simply the recognition of place, of tribe, of kingship: the knowledge of being, wild, free, strong. Then the shadow, and the darkness. The wolf shuddered and grew limp. The shining eyes clouded and were blank. Time to draw a single breath, and to begin to sense a weariness bone-deep, a pain in every corner of the body, a cold sudden and fierce that numbed his heart and froze his very blood. An instant only; and then with a rustling and a stirring, the waiting circle of beings rose and moved and closed in around him. The world reeled; the stars began to shift in crazy patterns. Beyond them, he thought he saw a man, a great, tall man like a giant with the mask of a wolf and eyes of brightest gold, and the man said, Son, well done. Then for Eyvind, too, came the darkness.