Konraðr the White knelt on a prayer bench, his ermine-fringed mantle spread out behind him. Clad in a hauberk of silver and black mail, his white surcoat sewn with a black Teutonic cross, the lord of Skara clasped a paternoster between his pale hands and prayed—for forgiveness, for the remission of sin, for victory. Most of all, though, he beseeched the Lord God, Almighty, for succor, for an end to the nightmares that plagued him.
Around him, the pavilion swayed. Night had brought a snow-laced gale down from the mountains to the west. Sleet ticked against the heavy canvas walls; the center pole, carved from the heartwood of a great oak, creaked with each gust. Flames danced in the wrought-iron brazier, its smoke curling up toward a hole where the harsh wind could snatch it away.
From the next chamber of his pavilion, he could hear the rattle of glass, the tinkle of silver implements as Father Nikulas prepared his nightly draught—a foul concoction of herbs and tinctures that, when mixed with raw Greek wine, did much to abate the fevers that had plagued Konraðr since returning from the East.
“You have the hands of a healer, my friend,” Konraðr had said, after the first draught proved efficacious. “Where did you learn this art?”
Nikulas had smiled, then—a rarity for the man, who gave new meaning to the word dour—and replied: “From the sisters of St. Étaín, at Kincora. They raised me after my parents died in the Burning of Dubhlinn. I brought their art with me when I came to enter the Lord’s service, at Lund.”
But regardless of the priest’s efforts to heal his war-shattered body, the fractures in his soul remained. Each night it was the same: an endless parade of screaming faces with their hot and reeking breath, their bloody hands clutching at his legs; the fetid stench of bowel and bladder, of rich marrow and foaming gore; the single, burning eye of the gray-bearded old man. Him, most of all. He wandered the fringes of Konraðr’s dreams, clad now in a voluminous robe with a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his features. He wandered and glared, cold guile replacing the innocence Konraðr remembered from Constantinople. That eye, wreathed in fire, caused the lord of Skara to awaken with a scream on his lips, his body bathed in a cold sweat.
“Why do I fear him now, O Lord?” Konraðr whispered, the paternoster—fifty beads of red coral, amber, and boxwood, trimmed in silver and sporting a crucifix of enameled silver—rattling as his hands trembled.
Konraðr’s colorless eyes fell upon the open codex on the shelf of the prayer bench. He knew the page by sight, its illumination done in the Byzantine mode and saved from the fires of Constantinople by a learned monk in Count Baldwin’s entourage. And though Konraðr could not make sense of the writing—in Greek rather than the vulgar Latin he was accustomed to—he knew it for what it was: the Gospel of Mark. In the margin, near the bottom, a fair hand had sketched an image of a storm-tossed boat, a Christ-figure in the bow depicted in red ink.
And Konraðr knew, then, that the Almighty had sent him his answer.
“‘And rising up,’” he said, eyes closing as he recited the passage from memory, “‘he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea: Peace, be still. And the wind ceased: and there was made a great calm. And he said to them: Why are you fearful? Have you not faith yet?’”
Konraðr sighed. The nightmares were a test of faith, and the Adversary took the shape of the old man—whose gaze had been kindly in life. The Adversary thrived on fear, and fear undermined faith. It made men question the will of God. Even the slightest crack in the righteous armor of faith gave the Adversary a toehold. Konraðr understood now. If he gave in to fear, damnation was but a step away.
“My lord?”
Konraðr stirred at the sound of the priest’s voice. He crossed himself, kissed the crucifix at the end of his paternoster, and rose to his feet. Father Nikulas brought him a horn cup. Konraðr took it, saluted the priest, and drained it without pause. He felt the draught’s warmth spread through his belly and limbs.
“You are troubled, my lord?” Nikulas said, taking the cup back from Konraðr. “I do not mean to pry, but I heard you reading from the Gospel of St. Mark.”
“I fear, sometimes, my faith is not enough,” Konraðr said, turning to look at the open manuscript. “What if I am wrong? What if this whole endeavor is nothing but a trick of the Adversary to take us further from God? What if I am cursed, in truth?”
“Then I would say you do not understand fully the words of blessed St. Mark,” Nikulas replied. “Have you not faith, my lord?”
“I do.”
“Then why are you fearful? Trust in your faith, and trust in the word of the Lord whose work we do. The Adversary does not want the sword of Saint Teodor brought to light, so the wretch fills your mind with doubt. What we do, here, we do for God and for king—by bringing the light of Christ to this forgotten corner of your cousin’s lands, and by providing him with the tool that will win glory for the God we serve! Do not doubt, lord. Rejoice!” Father Nikulas’s eyes burned with righteous fervor. “Rejoice! For we are where we can do the most good!”
Konraðr nodded. He felt new strength flood into his limbs. “You are right, Father. As always. You—”
Spectral voices whispered to him. She comes, they hissed. Day-strider, Dagaz-bearer, raven daughter! Konraðr turned, eyes narrowing as he sought to make sense of the clamor rising around him. She comes!
“My lord? What is it?”
Konraðr raised his hand, motioning Father Nikulas to silence.
“There is … an intruder,” Konraðr said after a moment. He spoke slowly, as if in a trance. “A girl. She comes to steal back our captives. She is a Geat, but … but they have not seen her like, and she frightens them. There is a … a shroud over her, around her. Something protects her. Something not of God.” The lord of Skara looked up, fixing the priest in his colorless stare. “Where are our captive Geats?”
“In the chapel tent,” Nikulas replied, frowning. “Under guard. One cries for his brother, who was either slain or escaped, and will likely convert when the time is ripe. The other remains defiant. Him, we must make an example of.”
Konraðr nodded. He crossed to the door-flap of his pavilion, twitched it aside, and said to the soldier on duty: “Fetch ten good lads and bid them come to the chapel tent, but quietly! Raise no alarm. Go.” He turned back to Father Nikulas. “This is a little bird we must capture, for she is worth far more to us alive than dead.”
THE DARKNESS, THE RISING WIND; the cold and the spitting snow, they all worked in unison to provide Dísa with the cover she needed to slip past the cordon of sentries. The camp straddled the old, overgrown road that led south, away from the territory of the Raven-Geats. It boasted no defensive works; tents grew like fungus between the bare-limbed trees. Most were dark but some glowed with lamplight from within, the snap of canvas punctuated by ripping snores and low voices. Fires crackled, and racked spear shafts chattered together in the gale.
Dísa drew her cloak tight about her, her hood slung low, and kept to the tree thickets as she wandered the fringes of the camp, looking for some sign of where they might keep their captives.
She bit back a curse.
The young woman had the sensation of a thousand eyes on her. Dísa was conscious of the fact she sported no cross upon her person, and that she looked like something that had crawled from the woods; she knew she could not pass even the most casual scrutiny. If she stepped into the open she was certain her crude disguise would fail. She’d be exposed, and the teeth of the Nailed God’s dogs would rend her limb from limb. Still, she moved deeper into the camp, toward the center. There, a sprawling pavilion occupied a low hillock, a last rise before the weed-choked road descended to the bridge.
She crouched in the shadowy cover afforded by a gnarled birch grove and studied the pavilion. Near it was another, this one festooned with symbols of the Nailed God. She saw a single guard standing rigid before the curtained doorway of the larger pavilion, cloaked and muffled against the weather. Dísa frowned. The man kept glancing toward the cross-decorated tent; she saw him shake his head. He staggered as a particularly violent gust of wind threatened to topple him—in that same howling blast, Dísa saw the doorway to the Nailed God’s tent ripple; in that split second, she caught sight of a knot of men standing inside with blades drawn. Her gaze flickered over two kneeling captives, both bound and gagged—Ulff Viðarrson was one, and the other was Flóki. The men seemed to be waiting, listening. A bearded and tonsured priest in a black cassock peered out before quickly securing the doorway.
And Dísa, crouching in darkness, felt the unseen jaws of a trap closing about her. She wanted to scream. They know I’m here, but how? She was careful not to leave a glaring back-trail; she caused no ruckus, raised no alarm. She could not fathom how they’d discovered her presence inside their camp, but the evidence was damnable—they knew someone was out here, and they knew who they came for.
This was foolish, she chided herself. Better to return to Hrafnhaugr and fetch Grimnir, perhaps raise the Jarl’s sworn men and attack this rabble on the road, ere they reached the village. She stared hard at the Nailed God’s tent. “Kiss their crosses, you daft bastard,” she whispered. “If it keeps you alive one more day, sing their hymns and keep the Tangled God in your heart.”
Slowly, Dísa made to disengage and retrace her steps from the camp.
Suddenly, a voice rang out over the keening wind. “Day-strider,” it said. “Dagaz-bearer! Raven daughter, come out!”
From around the corner of the Nailed God’s tent came a figure with skin the color of milk, his pale hair unbound; a white mantle floated on the wind. The silver in his mail caught and reflected jags of firelight. With a start, Dísa recognized him—the crucified man from her nightmares.
“Come out, Dísa Dagrúnsdottir!” he bellowed. A chill danced down her spine. Flóki or Ulff must have talked; otherwise, how could he know her name? Damn them! “Come out and perhaps your precious Flóki will live another day! Bring out the captives,” the man said. “Bring them out. She knows they’re here, and that we’re using them as bait for a trap. She’s a smart one, our intruder.”
The priest held the door to the Nailed God’s tent open while four of the men sheathed their weapons and wrestled Ulff and Flóki out into the open. Ulff, who was closer to Dísa’s age, sobbed, begging for mercy through his gag. Flóki, however, remained defiant. He snarled at his captors, cursing through the knotted cloth between his jaws.
“You’ve come all this way from…” The pale man paused, as though listening to something only he could hear. “Hrafnhaugr, in the land of the Raven-Geats. I am bound for your village. Perhaps you could show me the way?”
Around them, the camp stirred. Men stepped from their tents to watch this odd display. Was their lord drunk? Had heathen spirits possessed him? But the harshly whispered truth quickly squelched such rumors; word spread from tent to tent: there was a Geat hiding among them.
The pale man hissed the growing throng of men to silence; he listened for some reply, some indicator his words had struck home. But Dísa bit her tongue; she swallowed every retort that came to her lips. He heard nothing but the rattle of the wind through naked branches. The priest stirred. “My lord Konraðr—”
“Oh no, good Father Nikulas,” the man called Konraðr said. “Temper your doubts. She’s out there in the darkness, near enough to hear my voice. Aren’t you, little bird? You do well not to curse at me. You know to give voice to your anger would only betray you. Who taught you this? Was it your mother, Dagrún … Spear-breaker? No, it could not have been her, could it? She has long since shuffled off to whatever Hell you heathens are bound for.”
Dísa snarled to herself. What all had Ulff or Flóki told these bastards? Did they spill the soup on every man, woman, and child inside Hrafnhaugr’s walls? Ymir’s blood! What did they not tell them? Even Grimnir’s pet name … “No! Impossible!” she hissed under her breath, eyes growing wide. Tendrils of fear wormed through her guts. That milk-colored wretch! He had called her “little bird”—she’d heard it plain as can be—but that was a name neither Flóki nor Ulff could have known. So, how did he know it?
Konraðr smiled. “I know more than you could ever imagine, little bird. The wind brings me your secrets; I hear your thoughts in the chirp of insects, your dreams in the crackle of leaves. I know what it is you fear, Dísa Dagrúnsdottir.”
Men were actively searching around their tents, looking for the figure their albino lord spoke to—and wondering if they followed a God-cursed madman. “Sorcerer!” she muttered. Limbs trembling, Dísa sank deeper into the well of shadows and plotted her withdrawal, back the way she’d come.
“What did you call me? Seiðr-man?” Konraðr considered the insult, and then shrugged it off. “I have been called worse. No! Do not run!” He snapped his fingers, gesturing for his men to bring Ulff to him. “You killed a man of mine, did you not? Poor Haakon? His ghost is here.” Konraðr looked surprised. “Minus his scalp, you pitiless little beast!” Men muttered and swore.
“Where’s his body, lord?” one said.
“She left him … in a ravine … with this one’s brother.” Ulff glanced up, eyes wide as a small glimmer of hope kindled deep inside. Konraðr crushed it like an ember. “Both dead, alas. Fear not, young Ulff.” The pale lord drew his belt knife. “Fear not. She can save you with a word. Do you hear me, little bird? Speak up and Ulff Viðarrson lives!”
Flóki threw himself against his bonds, cursing and spitting through his gag. He struggled to rise, got a leg under him, but the men holding him forced him back to his knees.
Out in the darkness, Dísa clenched her fist around the shaft of her short spear until her knuckles cracked; the nails of her off hand bit into her palms. She relished the sharp jags of pain. She wanted to lash out, to kill that freakish maggot with his pale skin and reddish eyes. She longed to slash his wretched belly open and throttle him with his own entrails. But she kept still. She kept quiet. She heard Grimnir’s voice echo in the back of her skull: Make a sound and die!
Dísa said nothing.
After a moment of silence, Konraðr tsked. “So be it.”
He seized a handful of Ulff Viðarrson’s hair, wrenched his head back; as the youth kicked and screamed around his gag, eyes glassy with terror, Konraðr sawed his knife through the tough muscle and cartilage of the young Geat’s throat.
Blood spurted. Ulff writhed and snorted, froth spewing as he fought to take a breath through the wreckage of his windpipe. Steaming gore sheeted down his neck, down his chest. Konraðr held him by the hair as his struggles ebbed. Finally, as the blood slowed to a trickle, Konraðr slung him to the ground to finish dying.
“That was the blood-price for the man of mine you killed!” Konraðr roared. “Consider that account settled. Now, what will you do to save good Flóki, eh? Or will you let him die like you did poor Ulff?” He walked over to where his warriors kept Flóki on his knees, bent low to the ground. Hreðel’s son glared up at Konraðr with murder in his eyes. “Will you trade your life for his?”
Tears of rage sprang unbidden to Dísa’s eyes. With a soundless scream, she punched the ground with her balled fist. Thud followed thud, too low to hear; she punched until her knuckles bled and her bones threatened to crack. She loved that daft bastard. She did! She’d loved him since she was old enough to know what that sensation was that he caused in the pit of her stomach. But Dísa would not bear his children. Such was not the fate of the Hooded One’s priestess. She would leave nothing of herself behind save for the fame of her name, and that fame had to be built on something. On Glory. And, in that moment of silver-bright truth, she realized to her utter shame that she loved Glory—and the promise of her name wreathed in splendor for an eternity—more than she loved anything else. Or anyone else.
She would not die for Flóki Hreðelsson, but she would kill …
Dísa’s nostrils flared. Her lips peeled back over her teeth in a murderous snarl. She drew upon the rage seething just under the surface. Rage as red as blood, as hot as fresh-spilled gore. She called upon the spirits of the earth …
And though weakened by the hated symbols of the Nailed God, and by the natural barrier of the Hveðrungr River, they nevertheless heard her silent plea.
As Dísa looked on, Konraðr flinched when the fading power of the spirits struck him; this White Witch-man who meant to lead his army into the land of the Raven-Geats looked around as though he’d lost sight of something that only a moment before had appeared with great clarity. He looked confused.
Dísa chose that instant to spring. Muscular legs drove her forward a handful of steps; with a savage grunt, she hurled the spear in her right fist. Nor did she wait to see if it struck its target. Like a quick moving shadow under a windswept moon, she vanished into a night made darker by cloaking spirits.
A half a heartbeat later, Konraðr’s clarity returned. “’Ware!” he cried, spinning around and pushing a stunned Father Nikulas aside. The razor-edge of Dísa’s spear sliced through the flaring hem of the priest’s cassock; it tore through the outer thigh of one of his mail-clad guards. The man grunted as he threw himself out of the way.
The spear thudded on impact, quivering, its blade buried deep … in the ground, inches from Flóki. Were it a slender javelin and not a thrusting spear, on a windless night the son of Hreðel would have joined his ancestors, slain by the merciful hand of the girl he loved. But the Norns were ever full of surprises.
He looked at the juddering spear and bellowed like a wounded animal.
Konraðr sprang up. “Sound the alarm!” he screamed. “Rouse the sentries! Do not let her escape, do you hear me? I want Dísa Dagrúnsdottir alive!”
Flóki’s bellow turned to derisive laughter. He laughed as Konraðr took a step toward him and backhanded him across the mouth. Flóki laughed through the blood and the spittle soaking his gag. He laughed even as the pale lord of Skara pronounced his fate.
“Let him taste the punishment meant for Barabbas!”
“My lord?” the guard replied, puzzled.
Konraðr spat; his eyes gleamed with a red haze of cruelty as he glanced at the man. “Crucify him!”
DÍSA FLED INTO THE NIGHT and Flóki’s screams followed her. The sound of his agony dogged her as she slipped from thicket to thicket; it was the screams of a wounded animal punctuated by the dull thud of hammers. What was it the man she’d killed in the ravine said? Kiss the Cross or hang from it? She knew Flóki would not submit, not after the maggot killed Ulff. Dísa swiped at her eyes, brushing away the tears. They were tears of shame; her face burned with it. She had failed Flóki; she’d broken her oath to fetch him back, repudiated him, and left him whole and hale in their enemies’ clutches. And she let Ulff die.
Recrimination’s blade stabbed deep. Sigrún would not have let this happen. Oh, no. Sigrún, her mother, even Auða would have devised some wily stratagem to fetch them all home. Grimnir would have fetched them home after killing every last man in that damned war-camp. Even Halla would have spirited them to safety. But not me! No, she thought, I blundered into this like a fool and where’d that get us? The lads dead, or as good as, and me running back to find a set of skirts to hide behind! She tasted gall.
So distracted was she by these thoughts that Dísa didn’t realize how near she was to the sentry cordon. Indeed, she thought she’d passed it, stretched her pace into the loping stride of a hunting wolf, and was blindsided when a figure rose up before her.
The sentry yelped as she collided with him. They both went down, knees and elbows flashing. The sentry—a young Norseman with a short golden beard—scrabbled for his sword hilt; Dísa punched him and rolled to her feet. “Ymir take you!” she snarled, her seax flashing from its sheath. Her first blow skittered across his mail-clad shoulder. “Faugh!”
Dísa stepped back as he surged to his feet; she braced herself to fend off his blows. But the sentry stopped in mid-stride, sword rising to a high guard. His eyes grew wide; behind her, Dísa heard the slaughterhouse sounds of steel cleaving flesh—but she dared not look. She could not risk taking her eyes off the foeman in front of her to survey the carnage behind.
The young Norseman backpedaled; he dropped his blade, then turned and hared off toward camp. He bellowed an alarm. Dísa saw her opportunity. She snatched her Frankish axe from her belt, drew back, and hurled it with all her might. The heavy blade tumbled twice before striking edge-on at the base of the Norseman’s neck. The blow split the collar of his mail shirt as the head of the axe buried itself in the hard bones of his cervical spine.
The sentry dropped.
Quick as a snake, Dísa twisted and resumed her fighting crouch, seax at the ready. The second sentry was a handful of yards behind her, but he was on his knees, his horn forgotten and his arms slack at his sides. She saw a gory crevasse of splintered bone and bits of brain where his face should have been, caused by the blade of a bearded axe that had split his head nearly to the chin.
And looming over him, with one hand on the haft of the axe—the other was a fist forged of black iron—stood a scar-faced woman with braided hair the color of wood-ash, clad in leather and mail. She nodded at the man Dísa had slain.
“Fetch your axe and follow me,” she growled, “unless you want these dogs of the White Christ to find you first.”
Dísa nodded; she backed away from the woman, who was easily as tall as Bjorn Hvítr, sheathed her seax, and wrenched her axe from the neck of the Norseman. He moaned weakly, clawing at the earth. Dísa struck him again, for good measure.
She turned as the woman kicked the corpse of the second sentry off her bearded axe. “I know you,” Dísa said. The woman was familiar, but she could not place where she’d seen her.
The woman raised an eyebrow. “I am Úlfrún of the Iron Hand, child. Many know me, and some even live to tell the tale.”
Úlfrún. Her dream, the cart of severed heads. One, she knew, was a woman called Úlfrún—and that woman had been as a mother to her. Dísa shook off her discomfiture. “I am Dísa Dagrúnsdottir.”
“I know. Come.”
And like shadows, the two women faded into the night.
ÚLFRÚN LED HER WEST, INTO the forested hills overlooking the Horn. She had the impression they did not run alone; twice, from the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of wolf fur. She wondered, albeit a bit late, what kind of woman she’d fallen in with. By the end of an hour, as the night grew old, they reached a camp nestled beneath an overhanging bluff, hidden from view by hurdles of thorn and yew branches woven with hides; beyond, fires warmed the air, though very little light escaped into the night.
“Coming in,” Úlfrún announced, ushering Dísa in before her. Men rose from where they’d been crouched, crag-faced giants in bear-skin cloaks, heavy spears and axes at the ready; among them were smaller men, lean and feral, clad in wolf skins, the flesh around their eyes daubed black. They bared yellowed teeth in snarls of greeting.
The lot of them stared at Dísa as though Úlfrún had brought them a rabbit for their sport.
Úlfrún brushed past her and went to the far end of the camp, where a score of men were entering from a different direction—men clad in wolf fur and sporting crossbows with rune-carved stocks and iron-headed quarrels fletched with hawk feathers. They spoke in low voices to Úlfrún, some glancing in Dísa’s direction. She made to move closer, so she might hear what they said, but one of the bear-men stepped into her path. He looked down at her, his eyes a gentle brown.
“What are you supposed to be, little sister?” he rumbled.
“I am a Raven-Geat,” she said. Dísa tried to worm her way past him, but he stopped her with an outstretched arm.
“She will speak with you when she’s ready. Brodir, I am called. Sit, drink with me, and tell me of your people. Are they all as small as you?” the bear-man said. He motioned to another, who passed him a horn cup of warmed wine. This he offered to Dísa, who accepted it with a nod.
“Most are much larger,” she said. It was warm here, and the exhaustion of the past few days finally caught up to her. She sighed as she sat on a sawn log, near one of the fires. “Our land starts beyond the river and goes on for a day. We hunt, we till our fields, and sometimes we trade with the folk of Eiðar, or with the boat-merchants of the Swedes. We keep to ourselves. We have nothing valuable enough to draw an army. So I can’t understand what the White Witch-man wants. Who is he and why does he threaten my people?”
Brodir spoke slowly, brows knitting: “A hateful bastard, that one. Konraðr the White, he is—made a name for himself off in Miklagarðr, a few years back. He’s the lord of Skara, across the water, and cousin to the young king of the Swedes. As for what he wants…” The giant man leaned forward and tugged a leather cord from inside his shirt. On it was an amulet of silver—Mjölnir, Thor’s enchanted hammer. Gently, he touched it to the raven tattoo decorating Dísa’s cheek. “He wants to see an end to the Old Ways. He has called a crusade against our kind, little sister. We sons of the Bear and of the Wolf, we will answer his call!” Soft growling and hooting answered his boast.
Dísa looked from man to man, her gaze finally coming to rest on Brodir. “You are all berserkir?”
Brodir shrugged. “Some are; some are úlfhéðnar, the wolf-folk. And some are simply good men who’ve sworn to end the scourge of the White Christ.”
“It will end soon enough,” Dísa replied, staring into her wine.
Brodir looked askance at her. “You sound certain, little sister.”
“She is,” Úlfrún replied. The older woman joined them, taking a seat when one of her bear-men rose and moved aside for her. Another handed her a cup of wine. She drank it in three swallows, and then held it out for a refill. “She is the Dagaz-bearer, the Day-strider.
“Wolf shall fight she-Wolf | in Raven’s shadow;
an axe age, a sword age, | as Day gives way to Night.
And Ymir’s sons dance | as the Gjallarhorn
kindles the doom | of the Nailed God’s folk.”
Dísa’s eyes narrowed as she heard the words of the prophecy. “How do you know this?”
Úlfrún smiled. “I am the she-Wolf. Our pale friend, back there, is the Wolf—the Ghost-Wolf of Skara, he is called—and the Raven’s shadow…”
“Is Hrafnhaugr,” Dísa whispered. “When it speaks of the Day giving way to Night, what does it mean?”
“Aye,” Brodir said. “And who are Ymir’s sons?”
Úlfrún shrugged; absently, she massaged her forearm above her iron hand. “Who can say? All we know is the prophecy is coming to pass. What we do in the next few days will kindle the doom of the Nailed God’s folk. But we must push on, get in front of this rabble, and meet them at Hrafnhaugr, in the heart of the Raven-Geats’ land. Will your folk fight with us?”
Dísa glanced up. “They will. But I beg a favor of you, Jarl Úlfrún: lend me a few of your men. My people expect me to return with my Jarl’s son, who is at the mercy of the Witch-man’s dogs. Help me free him! My friend—”
“Your friend hangs from a cross,” Úlfrún said. “He’ll likely be dead by sunset. If you go back now, with my help or not, all you’ll accomplish is to die alongside him.”
Dísa’s jaw clenched. “Then at least he won’t die alone. Loan me a bow, if nothing else, so I can get close enough to end his suffering!”
Úlfrún scratched and stroked her lower jaw as a man might his beard. She was of two minds, Dísa could see. A part of her wanted to err on the side of caution, to get her men to Hrafnhaugr and await the hour of the prophecy; the other part of her longed to bloody this upstart crusader’s nose. She glanced between Brodir on one side and an old úlfhéðinn on the other, a gray-bearded man wrapped in wolf fur.
Brodir shrugged his mighty shoulders. “You and the wolf-brothers scouted their lines for a reason, lady. Why not a quick strike?”
Úlfrún leaned back and scowled. “You would risk the prophecy?”
“How can we know what risks the prophecy and what does not? Seems to me, if we succeed we say it was meant to be. But if we fail, was that not also meant to be? I leave it to the will of the Norns.”
“Forne?” Úlfrún glanced at the old úlfhéðinn, who leaned to one side and spat.
“The more of these cross-kissers we kill here, the fewer we have to kill there.” The man, Forne, nodded toward Dísa.
For a moment Úlfrún was silent. Then, nodding, she glanced over her shoulder. “Herroðr, fetch Skaðmaðr.” Herroðr, the youngest man Dísa had seen among this war band—and still at least ten years her senior—brought an oiled leather sack to Úlfrún. From it, she extracted a crossbow. Its stock was fine-grained yew, carved and inlaid with ivory runes; of iron was the lock and trigger, while the bow was made of composite material: wood, horn, and sinew.
Úlfrún handed it stock-first to Dísa. “This is Skaðmaðr, the Man-slayer. She has sent three-score hymn-singers into the arms of their Nailed God, and she does not miss. Take her and free your Jarl’s son—one way or the other. While you do that, we will make sure that white-skinned bastard has his hands full, won’t we, boys?”
Grunts and wolf howls echoed off the stone walls of the bluff as the Sons of Úlfrún Iron-Hand girded themselves for war …