Blood dripped from my face as I paused, my anger hunting for more because it was not satisfied. Could not be satisfied.
Only for my eyes to land on Bjorn. He stood a few paces away, covered in blood and gore, shoulders rising and falling as he panted for breath. There were dead men at his feet that didn’t fall to my blade, yet I hadn’t even known he was there. Hadn’t seen anything other than the men and women who’d fought against me, their faces already a blur.
“Do you know how many times you almost died,” he hissed. “How many men came at your back while you were lost to bloodlust? How many times I screamed your name and you never heard?”
I bared my teeth, still lost to the rage. I didn’t want to find my way out, because once I did, I knew there would be a reckoning. So I twisted away, screaming, “Where is Gnut? Where is your jarl who brought blood and ash upon you rather than swear allegiance to the king of Skaland?”
“Freya!” Bjorn snarled, but I ignored him, moving between the buildings, my voice a strange singsong tone as I crooned, “Come out, Gnut. Where are you?”
Vaguely I was aware others had joined Bjorn. Heard Snorri demanding that I silence myself, but I ignored them all as I hunted.
Then a familiar man with an axe stepped from between the buildings, a dozen blood-spattered warriors behind him, all of them eyeing me warily.
“There you are, Gnut.” I gave him a bloody smirk. “I thought I was going to have to hunt you down among the children.”
“You let them be, witch,” he hissed, hefting his axe.
“It isn’t me they should fear.” I stalked closer. “It’s you. You, who cared more for your pride than for their safety.”
“Says the monster who slaughtered their parents!”
A shudder ran through me, the tip of my blade wavering, but I shoved away the rising guilt. Buried it deep beneath my rage. They deserved everything they got for standing against us. For killing Liv and burning Halsar. For taking Bodil from me.
My eyes filled with crimson and smoke, my skull throbbing with such ferocity that I couldn’t think. There was only wrath.
Lifting my sword, I screamed wordlessly and charged, needing his blood on my hands.
A flash of flame shot past me.
Gnut’s grin faded. The spark of malice in his eyes dimmed as his severed head slid sideways, landing on the ground with a thud a heartbeat before his body collapsed.
Dead.
“Do the rest of you surrender?” Bjorn’s voice cut through the silence. “Or do you wish to die to the man?”
The remaining warriors shifted uneasily, then tossed their weapons forward and fell to their knees.
I stared at them, my hands shaking, the magic on my shield pulsing. Gnut had been mine to kill. All these men had been mine to kill, and Bjorn had stolen that away from me.
Whirling around, I stalked toward him. “Why did you steal vengeance from me?”
He snorted in disgust. “You mean, vengeance from them?”
Knocking aside my weapon with a careless swipe of his hand, he caught hold of my shoulders, spinning me to see Snorri’s warriors shove a pair of archers out from behind cover. “Gnut was luring you in, Freya. Another few paces and you’d have had a pair of arrows in you, and Gnut would have died with the honor of having put you in the grave.”
He twisted me back around, bending so that we were nose-to-nose. “But maybe that was what you wanted?”
“Back off!” I shoved him hard, but I might as well have shoved a stone wall for all the good it did.
“Why?” Bjorn demanded. “So that I won’t be close enough to save you the next time you try to get yourself killed?”
“Silence yourselves!” Snorri roared, but I ignored him.
“Gnut deserved to die,” I shouted. “All of this is because he refused to bend. Bodil is dead because—”
“Because she willingly went into battle, and in battle, people fall. She knew the risks as well as anyone, Freya. Certainly knew them better than you.”
I flinched, stepping back from him, my rage faltering beneath the onslaught of sharper emotions. I’d chosen to fight today knowing that I was weak. I’d stumbled. I’d dropped my shield. I’d left Bodil exposed.
I’d killed her.
My shield slipped from my hand, magic extinguishing as it hit the ground. Bodil was dead because of me.
“Bodil was a warrior.” Bjorn’s voice was quiet, as though his anger had been extinguished alongside mine. “She died with a weapon in hand and will be in Valhalla now.”
Except she hadn’t.
My breath caught, my chest a riot of pain as I remembered Bodil’s blade on the ground, dropped so that she might catch me. And I hadn’t stopped to put it in her hand before fleeing. I’d left her to die without it.
Suddenly, I was running. Sprinting through the smoking fortress toward the gate, each step like running over knives, but I embraced the pain. The gate was entirely gone, charred wood littered across the ground as though it had been smashed by a giant fist. But my eyes went beyond, to the smoldering remains of the ram and the unrecognizable figures scattered around it.
The smell of burning flesh and hair filled my nose and I gagged, slowing my pace as I picked through the wreckage.
So many bodies.
So many, and their faces were gone, leaving only size and shape and soot-stained armor to identify them. The wind gusted, sending plumes of smoke rushing sideways, but I caught a flash of silver.
Tears dripping down my face, I moved closer. A long lock of silver hair, spared by some act of the gods from the fire, floated on the breeze from where it was pinned beneath the charred remains. Dropping to my knees, I caught hold of the hair, tangling it around my fingers as it pulled loose. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “This is my fault.”
Taking a deep breath, I moved my gaze from her skull, down her arm, to where her skeletal fingers clutched the hilt of her sword. I exhaled a loud whoosh of air, my shoulders slumping in relief. She is in Valhalla.
The ground burned my knees, but I didn’t move as I wrapped her hair into a coil, then gripped it tight in my fist as I heard him approach.
“Come to say that you told me so?” I asked softly. “If I’d waited for a healer to tend to my feet, Bodil might still be alive.”
Exhaling a long breath, Bjorn shook his head. “Or perhaps she would have slipped and fallen to her death as we retreated to find the healer. Perhaps it was her time to die.”
I dug my nails into my palms, wanting to scream.
Bjorn crouched next to me, his gaze fixed on Bodil’s blackened blade. “To have these thoughts will drive you mad, Freya, for there is no way to know if your choices caused certain outcomes.” He was quiet for a moment, then said, “I think most people find comfort in being fated. In knowing that everything has already been set out for them, because…because no decision is truly yours but rather something determined by the Norns. Even the gods must take comfort in knowing that their fates are certain, the outcome of the end of days already known. But for whatever reason, those like you, and me, and Bodil are able to alter the weave of our threads, which means we must bear the full burden of every choice we make.”
“They say being given the blood of a god is a gift,” I whispered. “But it’s a curse.”
For a long moment, Bjorn was silent; then he said, “You were not yourself today. You—” he broke off, giving his head a sharp shake. “If you keep down this path, Born-in-Fire, if you allow yourself to be controlled by my father, it will destroy you. You need to change your fate.”
“You may be right.” I rose to my feet and headed back inside the fortress. “The trouble is that each time I try to change the course of fate, everything becomes so much worse.”
“Freya?”
A soft voice filtered through the door, but rather than answer, I rolled over in bed and buried my face in the furs. Just as I’d done for the past several days. At first it had been exhaustion that drove me to my bed, but it had grown into a desire to avoid facing what I’d accomplished.
Or rather, how I’d accomplished it.