Chapter One

The woman came from the sea. She pierced the early morning fog hanging over the water, her iron glinting on the waves. Before she cleared the mists, I thought her a monster—that the light I saw was the white of some great eye, seeking retribution from the depths. Soon I would learn she was not new to that name, nor to the name “hero.” Her light was the flash of a sword’s blade in the sun, raining steel, the stars’ dying breaths. The only difference between her names was who remained after the sky darkened. And as I stood at the entrance of Einar’s hall, squinting against the glare of her at the ship’s stern, I hated her.

She docked in the harbor and descended onto the pier with her crew of thirty men, all armed and armored. I watched their doll-sized figures scale the worn dirt road to the hall. From such a distance, I could not see much aside from the glint of the sun on iron. Even so, my skin prickled. The woman was staring at me.

“Áslaug, quit your idling.” I turned to Freydís, Einar’s newest wife, a sharp-eyed woman with taut white skin, golden hair, and a swollen belly. “We have no time for you to stand and gawk with preparations yet unfinished. Go help Hilde with the cooking.” She pointed a bony finger past benches filled with Einar’s warriors to the far end of the hall.

“Yes, Freydís.”

With a self-satisfied smile, she returned to our husband’s throne, placing herself upon his lap to bask in his kisses. I returned to work.

It was not long before the sounds of raucous speech flooded through the doors. Hilde sheltered behind the wall dividing the cooking quarters from the rest of the hall, staring into the fires beneath the cooking pot with wet eyes and absently stirring its contents. She had been taken shortly before Freydís, though unlike the pregnant woman, she had yet to acclimate to her new life as Einar’s wife. Apparently she lived on a pig farm to the southwest before Einar brought her here. She spoke none of our tongue. Rather than adapt, however, and make use of the bounty life in a warlord’s hall could bring, she spent most of her days sulking.

I sliced through a fatty chunk of pork. Perhaps I would pity her if her suffering were not so dull. She was not the first girl to be taken, nor was she the last. Still, it seemed as though she thought herself unique in her pain. The only thing that made her unique was her reluctance to bear it.

“Welcome, honored guests!” Einar called from the other side of the wall. Hilde flinched. “It is my pleasure to host you in my hall. Especially you, lady-war chief.” He paused. Appraising her, most likely. “When I received word you would join our raid on the Great City, I wondered if your messenger made an error. Received too many blows to the head, perhaps.” He chuckled. “Yet here you are. Tell me, what are you called?”

“Visna, daughter of Trygve,” the woman said with the cold clarity of a mountain spring. If she felt any displeasure at Einar’s scorn, her voice betrayed none of it. “I assure you, Arne’s mind is sound despite the blows he has received, though his looks may be lacking.”

Einar let out a hearty laugh. “And she has wit! Good, very good. We will make fine comrades.”

“You are too kind, Lord Einar. In all my travels I have scarcely received a more generous reception.” She certainly knew how to act the cordial guest. “Please, accept this token of our newfound brotherhood. It is fabric imported from the east. Its weight is that of a feather, and it is soft as down.”

“Indeed. It may make a fine gown for my wife. As fine as if she wore nothing at all!” The hall erupted into laughter. I tried to focus on stirring the pot instead of the knot in my breast.

“It is yours to do with as you please,” Visna said, her smile audible. “You have other wives, do you not? Should we succeed, you may dress them all so… immodestly.” The knife’s blade thunked against the cutting board. The thought of her imagining me in silks tightened the knot. I supposed I should have been flattered to have even crossed her mind, but I had never known a woman to unclothe me with her eyes as men do. A warrior was a warrior, I decided, no matter what form they came in.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hilde watching me. I met her gaze. “What?” I asked. She turned back to her work without a word.

“Of course, of course,” Einar said in a tone that indicated he had no interest in dressing the rest of us in such fineries. “Once the east is ours we shall have enough silk to wipe our arses with if we wish.” I bit the inside of my cheek. Of course Einar would pamper his own arse before his wives.

“That is quite the undertaking, to risk life and limb for a tender arse.” Laughter rolled through the hall.

“You have quite the foul tongue, Lady Visna! Though I suppose you are correct, it is a risk,” Einar said. “But should we lose our lives and limbs, we will have no need for fine fabrics. All we need awaits us in the Hall of the Slain!” The warriors cheered, clashing the blades of their swords against their shield bosses and pounding the floor with the hilts of their spears. The hall seemed to tremble. Then, there was a tap at my shoulder—Hilde, pointing at the knife and widening her eyes. She wanted to work in my place. The girl would probably cut herself if she tried, though I supposed that was her decision to make, not mine. I handed her the knife and sat on the stool in front of the fire, waiting for the noise to fade.

When it did, Einar spoke again. “Now, take your seats at my table and rest after your journey. Tonight, we feast; tomorrow, we sail for glory!”

The sounds of their elation could have toppled the hall.

Within the feast’s first hour, at least a dozen men had passed out under the benches. Those who were awake were well past drunk, their voices loud enough to compensate for the loss of the dozen others’ and then some. Still, there was more drink to be served. Freydís took charge of Einar’s cup. The rest of us kept to the shadows by the walls with our mead bowls in hand, watching for the other cups to drain. I found myself filling Visna’s. In the darkness of the hall, where the only light came from the hearth at its center, she seemed almost inhuman. Smoke blurred her body so she molded into the air itself, rising and falling, changing shape with every shiver of wind. On her helmet, the stamped figures of men in battle swung their blades in time as the flame crackled and sparked. I could hear the sounds of destruction: the screech of metal on metal, the wet squelch of pierced flesh, shouts and screams and cries blending with the roar of the fire. I imagined her there, shrouded in smoke as she was now, the sword currently at her hip tearing through cloth and gore alike. I imagined the bloodlust glimmering in the whites of her eyes. The spit flying from her mouth. Every man, woman, and child laying in pieces at her feet. Mother. Father. Then the smoke twisted her features and she was shorter. Broader. A man I would soon know.

“And what of you, Visna?” Einar asked, lifting his cup for Freydís to refill. “What do you hope to gain when Prince Ingvarr takes the Great City? Silver? Thralls? A husband, perhaps?”

Visna took a drink. The corner of her mouth twitched in what might have been a smile, though the air was too hazy to be certain. “Must I choose just one?”

Einar’s laugh echoed through the hall. “Certainly not, certainly not; with Romanos dead, we shall have all the wealth the east can offer.”

“Indeed, though I would be content with the knowledge of his death alone,” she said, the ease of her speech at odds with the way her hand clenched her glass.

Einar paused with his glass halfway to his mouth, then drank. He was not unused to violence; that I knew firsthand. Violence without something to gain, though—that was unusual. “Ah, yes. What glory it would bring to slay the emperor of the mightiest kingdom in our world!”

Visna smiled with tight lips. “Certainly, my lord.” She lifted her cup. “To victory!”

The others at the table echoed her words. They clanked their cups together, Einar with enough force to send his mead sloshing onto the poor boy sitting next to him.

“Freydís, another drink,” Einar said. Before she could move, Hilde hurried over, ladling mead into his cup. Freydís frowned but did not speak. Then there was a flash and a scream and a spurt of red, and out of Einar’s shoulder came a blade—a knife, still glistening with pig’s fat. Freydís tumbled out of his lap as he stood up, only for Hilde to stab him again, burying the knife in his forearm, then his hand. Einar roared and, with his good hand, reached for his sword.

Visna was faster. Before his hand had even brushed the blade she leapt over the table and swung her sword. Its edge drew across Hilde’s neck, opening a grin that drooled blood. Hilde brought her hands to it, eyes wide, and stumbled into the table, knocking food and drink and dishes onto the floor. Visna drove her sword through the girl’s ribs. Hilde fell.

The only sound was that of crackling flame. It was familiar, as was the iron tang of blood that stung my nostrils and coated my tongue. I was a young girl again, surrounded by flames and the creak of buckling wood, scrabbling on my hands and knees between corpses strewn across red-stained dirt. Kill the men, a voice I would come to know called over the din. Bring the women to me.

Visna stood still, her outstretched arm frozen in place, watching Hilde’s body as though it might move again. But the girl’s death spasms had ceased, her dead eyes staring on that which none of us were privy to see. Then Freydís screamed, a horrible, animal noise, and the world released its breath.

“Filthy bitch,” Einar howled, clutching his wounded shoulder. Blood oozed between his fingers.

Visna sheathed her sword. “Are you well, my lord?”

“Am I well?” Einar laughed, though this time, there was no humor in it. It was wild, crazed with pain. A madman’s laugh. “She stabbed me. Butchered me like a pig. Bitch. Filthy little whore—”

“You should dress your wounds. They look deep,” Visna said. Nothing about her, not her tone nor expression, betrayed any sense of shock or fear or even grim satisfaction. If anything, she seemed annoyed that a few droplets of the girl’s blood had splashed onto her coat. Of course. What is death but an inconvenience?

Einar took a breath. “Yes. Yes, you are right. Freydís, tell Áslaug to fetch her needle.”

“Wait, my lord,” Freydís said, rising shakily to her feet. “Áslaug was helping Hilde earlier. She gave Hilde the knife. I saw it.” She pointed to me. Every eye in the hall followed her gaze.

“Áslaug.” Einar’s voice was barely more than a whisper, yet still it filled the hall, rumbling like distant thunder. He stepped towards me.

“No,” I said. “No, my lord. I had nothing to do with this. I swear to you.”

“Hilde was a quiet girl, a gentle girl,” Einar said. “You expect me to believe she planned this on her own? You think me a fool?”

“No, my lord, I would never—”

“But you, Áslaug. You have always wanted more, ever since I found you, a child of poor merchants. You yearned for the luxury of being my wife.” He was very close, then, and I could retreat no further—my back pushed against the wall. “But now you grow bored of it, so you try to kill me without dirtying your own hands, because you think yourself above it. Always expecting to be given what you think you deserve, never working for it yourself.”

“It was Freydís, my lord,” I said, turning my head away from his hot breath. “She lies. She means to manipulate you, my lord, to turn you against me—”

“Foul woman!” Sharp pain rang across my cheek. The bowl of mead I was holding clattered against the planked floor. Its contents drenched the front of my dress, cold and sickly sweet. I touched my throbbing skin. My fingers came away sticky with Einar’s blood. “You dare defile the mother of my children?”

“No, my lord,” I said, though I could scarcely hear the words through the ringing in my ears. “I only meant…. I thought she wanted the knife to make dinner. Had I known she intended to kill you, I never would have lent it to her. That is all.”

“Lord Einar.” Visna. She stepped beside my husband, partly between us, offering me no more than a glance. I was grateful for that. I did not want to envision what I looked like through her eyes. “Your bleeding is profuse. I believe it best to tend your wounds now, before they worsen.”

“I will fetch the needle, my lord,” Freydís said. Her eyes had not left me since her accusation. They burned with hate.

“Yes,” Einar said. She hurried away. “And you.” He turned back to me. “You will dispose of the body.”

I looked to Hilde’s corpse, with its bloody smile and vacant eyes. “How shall I do that, my lord?”

“Burn her,” he said, “and throw her ashes into the sea. May Rán’s daughters ferry her to the Corpse Shore.” Freydís returned, placing a hand on his shoulder and ushering him to his sleeping quarters.

I remained in the hall, smelling of stale mead and blood, staring at the body. It was small, so I could drag it with minimal difficulty. Burning it would be unpleasant. Removing the leftovers from the pyre would be, too. And once it was discarded, I would clean the stains from the floor. The night would be sleepless, but the hall would be pristine, and Einar would see my devotion. It mattered little that he never had before.

The girl’s ashes weighed no more than the bag that held them. I knew she was small when she first came to the hall, though I supposed I had not realized how small. All that remained of her now was a pile the size of a loaf of bread or a box of freshly-churned butter, maybe even the box itself. She must have been young. I never bothered to find out.

A gust of wind off the sea cooled the lingering heat in my face. It smelled of salt and fish. This was the wind that would carry Hilde to the Corpse Shore, the residence of murderers and oath- breakers, the dragon’s feast. I should not have pitied her. Her actions brought Einar’s wrath upon me. Had Visna acted any slower, she would have been a murderer. She broke her oath to her husband. Still, I hoped it would carry her elsewhere. After all, her failure saw that she committed no murder, and could she truly break an oath she never knew she made? Perhaps I was growing soft.

I untied the bag and released her. She lifted into the air, twirling like flurries of snow. I imagined it really was her, dancing, free from a life she never wanted. Maybe her journey to death would lead her to worlds she only imagined—the wall surrounding the home of man, the dwarves’ dark field, the ever- flowing rivers veining the realm of the gods. How beautiful they must be, and how frightening. How tempted I was to join her. A few steps off the strand, and I could. My feet itched in the wet sand. But I did not move. She dove beneath the waves, and I stood on the shores of the living, alone.

Smoke wisped from the roof of Einar’s hall. That dark building, casting its shadow over port and shore, would be my home until my death, just as it was Hilde’s. I was content with that, once. I believed the very things Einar used to insult me. What girl from a poor family wouldn’t seize the chance to run a powerful man’s home, to be keeper of his power, to wear fine fabrics and sip wine from glass cups? Never mind that I had been seized, because surely, some good had to come of it. Something that would make me more than another slave. And there was good, and fine fabrics, and glass cups. For a while. Then it ran out, leaving me with an empty title and a fate sealed in flame.

I could not flee. If I did, I would lose even the smallest scraps of power I still clutched, and every hand and harsh word I suffered would mean nothing. No. I would endure until the last star fell from the sky if I had to. I would not be made nothing.

Yet as I turned to ascend the hill to the hall, something stopped me. Why did my legs refuse to move? Fear? Cowardice, more like—Hilde lost her life that night, and there I was, afraid of a little slap. But knowing my absurdity did not free me. The hall repulsed me, shielded by that which I could not see nor pass no matter how hard I pushed. I kept trying until the effort brought strained tears to my eyes. Still, my body remained fixed. Exhausted, I collapsed onto the sand and let them flow freely down my burning cheek.

Damn Einar. Damn him, damn his hall, damn his blade, damn his filthy hands. Damn Freydís, whose face I saw reflected in silver coins when I was younger. Damn Hilde for making me pity her. Damn Visna and her foreign silks, and her ship, and her brotherhood. Damn every warrior adorning her helmet, damn every fiber of her tunic. She had it all, and how did she suffer for it? She did not have to, because the only pain they encountered was what they inflicted on people like me, whose blood was worth what they could sell it for. I wished I was worth more. I wished I did not have to be worth anything. I wished I could define my own worth. I wished I could define theirs.

And what if I could? I had wondered that very thought for nights on end, but never as anything more than a passing fantasy. That night, maybe because no other solution to save myself came to mind, it demanded attention. If I had the means to define myself, I would not need Einar. I would not be tasked to run his hall. I would have my own hall, and I would fill it with silks and wines and warriors under my command, with thralls to tend my needs. I could learn to fight. But how to leave? Thralls could not leave their masters, so I needed to keep that fact secret. Áslaug Ingeldsdottir needed to die.

The pyre. Some of Hilde’s bones were still intact—I could dress them in my clothes. It would appear as though I disposed of her body, as Einar asked, and left my own behind. Once I was dead, then, I would stow away. Einar would surely recognize me aboard his ship, but Visna had scarcely seen me until Einar’s confrontation. With armor and a helmet from Einar’s stash, I could be just another warrior. One of his men, joining them aboard for communications or camaraderie. It was not a perfect plan, but it would have to be enough. I would not get another chance.

Brushing the sand from the hem of my dress, I ascended the hill and prepared for my funeral.

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