He woke, and for an instant thought he was home in his bed. Then he remembered, and disappointment hit him like a hard fist. A dream; imagination, the whole thing, and all he had done was sleep here by the fire like some lad too young and weak to hold his ale. They had not even let him attempt the trial. He moved, rolling to sit up, and felt pain lance through every part of his body. He rubbed his eyes against the daylight, and when he lowered his hands he saw the crust of dried blood on them. He was naked under the blanket, and on his chest, scored deep in flesh still coated with powdery ash, were four angry red stripes. A drum pounded inside his head; his mouth was dry and foul-tasting.

“Here,” said Eirik, appearing at his side with a skin water bottle in his hand, and a big grin on his bearded face. The others were behind him: the toothless one, the earless one, the sharp-featured Hakon, the whole band of Wolfskins, and now they were laughing and congratulating him, and he winced in pain as someone thumped him on the back, and someone else was saying now there were twelve again, and Thor would be glad indeed.

“I–I passed, then?” Eyvind croaked, clutching the water bottle and wondering greatly about a number of things. “That was…real?”

Eirik’s smile was fierce and proud. “For each of us, it is different,” he said. “For each of us, it is real. You passed, yes, and more than passed, I think.”

“But I saw—” Eyvind broke off. How could he find the words to tell of such wonders, the strangeness of those figures in the darkness, the way the wolf seemed a part of himself, so he knew its thoughts, and yet how it seemed at the same time to be the embodiment of the god? How he had seen death, and for a moment had understood it? And if he had truly slain a wolf, where was it now?

“You’ll be hungry,” Hakon said, “and thirsty. Get some clothes on, and fill your belly, for we’ve a long ride today.”

And when he was sitting, water bottle in one hand and strip of roast meat in the other, he looked across the fire and saw the skin. They had scraped it more or less clean; it hung over one of the extinguished torches, a great, shaggy pelt, the silver-gray hair faintly gleaming in the morning sun. The breeze stirred it; there was a movement in it, a ripple of life, as if the spirit of the forest chieftain still lingered in the mantle he had passed to his conqueror.