Yngvar Magnrsson spat warm blood into the cold snow, breath heaving in his chest as he worked. He had little to work with in the first place – she was a mess, blood ran down her face, her fine features bruised and swollen to an overripe tomato, a sword blade having gouged a deep line above one of her brows, the wound bathed in red as the northerly grasses were bathed in snow in the winter months. A wound gouged in her side as well – an axe had bitten through her ringshirt to bury itself in her ribs. She would need stitching and sutures, sure as the sun needs the sky. She shuddered and shook, retched blood in chunks mixed with vomit.

  His own head was a jumbled mess. His vision frayed at the edges, seemed to blur and sparkle, and his eyes felt moist and stinging, which helped none. He felt as though his boots – or his knees – were not rooted to the ground the way they should be, his heart in his chest felt as though it was floating in water.

  The first, to him, was a joke. But this was no joke. Not any longer.

  “Look at me, Elva,” he whispered, making her meet his pine green eyes with her own, bloodshot emerald. “Look at me. You will be fine. We have had worse. Do you understand me?”

  Elva’s eyes were cloudy, the fire within them dying out slowly, as they had been the past handful of minutes. Still she had blood stained upon her axe, and more bodies than just hers and his were lying, dead or dying, twitching on the snowy forest floor. She took a shaky, stuttering nod, a puppet stirred by unskilled hands. Little time remained, and less so, as they were pursued. They would be spread out, combing through the forest, the underbrush, to find Yngvar Magnrsson. Elva was only a secondary target; everything he wrought, he wrought upon himself. And unto her.

  “I am so sorry,” mumbled Yngvar, mind worried and frayed with thoughts of what he had done without seeing. He felt himself a blind man having gutted an intruder into his home, only to find that this intruder was his brother, his own flesh and blood. “This – all of this – is because of me. I listened to your words, I heard them – but I did not hear them, not in my heart.”

  His glossy eyes searched in the dirt and fallen needles and twigs and snow, as though for an answer – a sign from the gods and his forefathers that this was simply all a terror dream, wrought from the stress of a hard life soldiering, living from job to job with fist wrapped around cold steel every day.

  He cut a long strip from a dead man’s tunic with a keen-edged dagger, the handle slick with sweat in his tight grasp, which, combined with a square of thick cloth he had hewn from the jacket of one dead man’s corpse. Yngvar bound her head wound, placing the padding there to stop the bleeding. Unclean, and perhaps dangerous, but the best he could work with.

  The sounds of their pursuit grew louder; heavy leather boots crunching through snow in the distance, the movements of ghosts, shrouded in the breeze whispering through the pines and their jostling branches, as Yngvar worked frantically to carve away another strip of padded jacket to use to stop her bleeding. They would be upon the two of them in moments, if not heartbeats. Time was running short, as was Yngvar’s breath. Elva’s, though, hers was faint where Yngvar’s was panicked.

  “Magnrsson!” came a bellow from behind, as Yngvar pressed the padded cloth to Elva’s side wound, wormed under the ringshirt. He pulled close the blue strip of tunic, wrapped it around his wife’s waist to keep the padding still and tight. It’d not hold for long, but it was all he had.

  “Magnrsson! Come out, now! You only make things worse for yourself!”

  He gritted his teeth against the urge to shout, to bellow back against that familiar voice. That would only lead to his death, and the death of his beloved Elva. Yngvar could not be the battle commander here, the warlord, he had to trust himself, and only himself. Quick and quiet, Yngvar padded over the forest floor, masking his steps in the footprints gouged out of the snow from the fight before, stepping lightly to keep his ringshirt from jingling too much. Yngvar pressed his back against a tree outside the clearing, watching over his shoulder as three men, each in ringshirts and iron helm, one with a torch and sword, the other two with spear and shield, stepped into the clearing. The three of them looking over the bodies of their comrades, their betrayers-in-arms, and to see Elva lying there, wounded, but bandaged. Weakly, the girl began to pull herself upright, resting back on one elbow, a dagger clutched in her right hand, likely found among the dead.

  “You are still alive, woman?” asked the man with the torch.

  “Fuck you, Eigil,” she spat, her voice barely a whisper on the wind.

  That got only a chuckle from the men as the two with the shields flanked her on either side, Eigil with his torch crouching down in front of the wounded woman. “I am sure you wish you could,” he said, a sly smile slithering over his lips.

  Yngvar crept out from the trees, closer towards the edge of the clearing. The men were largely turned away from him, but he took care to not stray too close to the light in case they could see him. Sword still sheathed at his hip, Yngvar crouched low to the ground and scoured the earth and the bodies for abandoned weapons. The pounding in Yngvar’s skull grew louder as their conversation went on, and his hand finally wrapped around the haft of a small hand-axe.

  “Now I will ask only once, Elva,” said Eigil, “Where is your fatherless husband? I know he’d not leave you all alone out here without telling you where he would go.”

  Standing tall, Yngvar cocked the axe over his shoulder, and from the shoulder, let the weapon fly from his hand, tumbling end-over-end through the air to slam against the back of one of the spearmen’s helms. A deafening clang in the dark of night, and Yngvar rushed forward, choking down the battlecry tearing its way up through his throat.

  The man who had been struck in the head fell, face-first into the snow, and Elva fell upon him, driving the dagger into the back of his neck as the two other men turned, to see Yngvar charging, sword gripped in left hand.

  “Yngvar!” Eigil shouted, blood staining his teeth from a strike taken earlier in the coup. Eigil lifted his sword and torch, arms out as if to invite a strike, his eyes so bright as to be near luminescent in the night. Yngvar made as if to charge for Eigil, then, as the spearman to his right lowered his stance, raised his shield and lowered his spear, Yngvar turned towards the man, batting the spear out of his way as he came close, and leapt off his left foot to kick the spearman backward. Yngvar dropped and faced Eigil as the spearman stumbled backward, passing his sword from left hand to right.

  Still intent on getting involved despite her wounds, Elva lunged for Eigil, planting a hand on his foot to hold him still as she raised her dagger, but Eigil’s sword came down in a whirling arc, the cold steel batting into bone, and Elva reeled backward, screaming.

  Eigil laughed. A hand lay in the cold snow. He turned to face the quickly advancing Yngvar.

  Steel met with steel as Yngvar screamed his vengeance at the top of his lungs, no longer thinking of the other betrayers who would now be closing in on them. Eigil deflected the blow with his own sword, slipping aside with the strike, and settling his stance. Both fighters were shieldless, Eigil had a torch in his off-hand, which he held towards Yngvar as though he were a wolf, and the flame would chase him off. Both men were low, knees bent and shoulders hunched forward, Eigil with torch forward and Yngvar with blade. Eigil lunged first, shoving his torch forward towards the man, the flame snapping towards Yngvar’s face, making him take a quick step backward, swinging his sword by the wrist to fend the torch away. It did, though not to any great effect – Yngvar’s attention was quickly captured by a lunging broadspear point from his right – to which Yngvar slid his feet away from and whirled to face in the same motion, narrowly missing the spearpoint by a quick sideways twist of the shoulder. Yngvar stepped in and probed at the spearman’s defenses, thrusting with the blade, attempting to at least catch ringshirt, if not throat.

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  “Back off,” then came Eigil’s voice. He was standing straight, now, Yngvar saw, torch and sword held at his side. “I want to finish this myself.” Eigil nodded sideways towards Elva. “Keep her blood in her wrist.”

  Yngvar stood straighter himself as the spearman rushed to follow Eigil’s orders, Yngvar peeking aside Eigil to get a look at his wife, now one hand less as she was. She was pale, clutching the stump where her left hand had been, blood staining the snows around her. He found that, as much as he wished to speak to her, to comfort her and tell her that he would kill this bastard, and they would escape alright, he could not. Not a sound other than ragged, hateful breathing escaped his throat. Accepting the challenge, Yngvar settled into his stance once more to face his enemy, and as did Eigil.

  Eigil looked as though he was about to say something when he settled into his low stance, but he bit his tongue, and pressed forward, probing and threatening, looking for an opening in Yngvar’s guard. The broad-bladed swords clanged and scraped together, steel over steel as the other man’s defense turned away the prods with ease. The longer the fight went on, the more Yngvar’s blood boiled, the harder it was for him to keep his eyes away from Elva, her right stump being cared for, bandaged, pressured, while they awaited a torch to cauterize the wound. She looked pale.

  Yngvar couldn’t hold it anymore. A bellow raised from his stomach, or deep in his soul, he knew not which, “I am going to gut you, Eigil,” He screamed – screamed to Eigil, to the man’s blackened liver, to his own ancestors, and Eigil’s, “I will prepare a feast for the ravens from your fucking corpse!”

  Not that it mattered – Eigil’s betrayers were already advancing towards the clearing, and even if Yngvar won the duel, the odds that he and Elva would walk away were outmatched by the odds of lighting a fire in a blizzard.

  Eigil seemed as though honestly taken aback by the threat, those blue eyes widening in a shock so powerful it could be felt in the depths of the soul. Yngvar took his chance, lunging forward, planting his off-hand on his wrist to aid in the power of his slash, pushing his main hand down. He switched the direction of the cut at the last second, testing Eigil’s defenses – torch lashed up to meet blade, but when it came to Eigil’s left, his own blade was just a moment too late, and the weak structure of it was crushed by the power of Yngvar’s cut. Broad, hefty sword clashed against ringshirt, and Eigil grunted in pain, stepping aside from the force of the sword slamming into his shoulder. It was no cut – cutting a ringshirt was damned near impossible – but it would hurt, and Yngvar so desperately wanted to hurt this man.

  Eigil, the betrayer, regathered himself then, as more of his men entered the clearing to watch the duel, spears and axes drummed on shields. He adjusted his stance – higher, taller, torch forward along with his left knee, the pommel of his sword next to his right ear, the point facing downward, towards Yngvar in his lower stance, the noble man battling the vengeful beast.

  The betrayer stepped forward with his lead foot, swinging torch from left to right by the wrist – a fending offense, nothing more, but the slash coming from his right was real – hips whipped, shoulders followed as Eigil brought down his blade in an attempt to crack Yngvar on the skull, but Yngvar’s own blade, by the flat, slammed against Eigil’s attack, with far more force than necessary to defend. Yngvar roared, and lunged off his back foot to his left, passing by the torch, free hand outstretched to grab the other man by his collar – but his aggressive defense left him open, and Eigil backpedaled, foot over foot, and his blade recovered from being batted away only for the foible to scrape into Yngvar’s cheek, caught, and tore, cracking against a tooth, which batted out in the same spray of blood into the wintery air and against the snow.

  The moment seemed to hover as Yngvar’s grisly grimace peered up at Eigil, now looking something far less than human – a crooked smile raked across his cheek to his lips, the corner of his mouth hanging open, teeth exposed in some sort of twisted mockery of Yngvar’s misery and hatred, his rage.

  A low droning settled into the base of Yngvar’s skull. The shield-drums became pounding in his skull, and tears stung his eyes. He thought no more than of killing Eigil – of hurting him, taking from him what he had taken from Yngvar, making him feel what he felt. His vision was dark around the edges – and all he saw, this man. This wretch.

  Yngvar lunged like a bear, crossing one arm over his grin, sword point dropping to face behind him, and he slashed upward at Eigil, only to keep his defense busy – torch fended blade as Eigil fell to the back foot, being pushed back by a new creature in whose soul only remained malice and hate. Eigil lashed out with his own blade, as Yngvar’s own came up next to his right ear, and crossguard whipped to meet the cut, binding the blade. Yngvar’s hand wrapped around the broad blade held by Eigil, hand clawing and pulling, controlling, moving the blade the way Yngvar wanted it to move. There was so much fear in Eigil’s eyes. This is what he had created.

  The beast yanked Eigil’s blade towards himself, lunged with his full body to take the man to the floor with a howl of rage. Torch rolled in the snow – leaving the battle dark, one man and one creature of hate, sweaty, wrestling on the snowy forest floor, blood dripping from one’s grin onto the face of the other, staining vision red. Yngvar raised the pommel of his sword up by his ear as he passed his thighs to sit atop the other man, a low scream pulling itself from his throat, more grunt of a beast than the sound of a man, and he slammed his shoulders, his full weight, and the weight of the world, the metal pommel cracking against Eigil’s face, a deep gash opening above his right brow, and up – Yngvar raised again, as Eigil’s blade wrenched free from the claws of the beast, perhaps taking a finger or two. It mattered not, anymore. Yngvar wanted blood­.

  The beast slammed down again, letting out a low roar, metal pommel cracking skull – the whole world lulled for one moment – even the chants and drumming upon shields was muffled, the look on the face of his horrified wife, his perfect Elva, terrified of the thing her husband had become – with its awful grin hanging fat from the cheek and dripping red – and only as Yngvar raised himself up again like a barrel of sloshing mead did he feel it – cold steel, now warm and dripping red in his guts.

  The beast made a choked sound, wide, wild eyes looking down at the thing that would finally end it – steel? A man’s fucking steel?

  Yngvar dropped his blade, letting it fall into cold snows as he looked up, around at the gathered men – betrayers, one and all, every single one having come to hunt him and his wife down, driving them into the forest like animals.

  He choked again, the tears stinging his eyes now rolling down his cheeks – and on the left side, into the open maw of his cheek. He looked at his wife – her eyes wide, chest heaving with fast breaths as the spearman struggled to keep the tourniquet from becoming sloppy with blood. He looked then down, at his killer. Eigil, betrayer.

  There were tears in his eyes too. His face was stained by blood, his own eyes wide and wild, right eye shut from the blood dripping into it. His teeth were bared, stained red, and drops of blood slowly stained his face further, from the twisted grin of Yngvar Magnrsson.

  Yngvar felt himself fall. Sag, down, overtop of the other man, breathing heavy breaths into the snow, as he felt the beast within him curl and wither, dying just as he was.

  Beyond eyesight, a man received a torch, and unwrapped bloody bandages.

  “I am – sorry, Yngvar,” whispered Eigil, his voice shaking, words stuttering as he choked his breaths. “I didn’t want it to be like this.”

  The beast stirred. Sorry? It was Eigil who did this. Eigil who betrayed his warlord, who betrayed Yngvar for his own fucking ambitions. His own fucking greed, his envy. Small cinders stirred among the ash and blood in Yngvar’s stomach.

  “I didn’t want it to be like this –” repeated the betrayer. The bastard. “I just, wanted, to –”

  To what?

  A scream cut off the thoughts of the dying beast, and the words of the betrayer. The scream of a woman whose hand was lopped off by a man she and her husband once would trust with their lives, as hot iron engulfed, ate her wrist, charring the flesh, smoke rising into the cold night air. And what a cold night it was.

  The beast howled with her. The last arrow to enter its carcass, the beast lurched again, throwing its head back in pain with its soulmate, its soulmate now one hand less, and alone. The injustice of it all lit the beast on fire – the rage began to eat at him even more. He put all he had into one last effort – and his crooked, broken grin fell upon the throat of his prey. A third scream joined the two others – one in pain, one in mourning, and one between the two. Teeth tore, rent, hot blood washed over a tongue, filling the beast’s mouth.

  The beast that was once Yngvar Magnrsson, with the windpipe of his enemy in his mouth, swallowed into his guts, thought of how good it tasted. Vengeance, blood, death, and human flesh.

  Its last thoughts were of its soulmate. Of the life they dreamed of having – to retire one day from war, to settle along the shores of the clan’s lands, to have a child, perhaps two. A son, a daughter, and a small farm – a few animals, enough to sustain them, and they’d not have to fight any more.

  The beast died, then. Slumped over its prey, throat between its teeth and in its gullet. What was once Yngvar Magnrsson, a respected warlord, husband of Elva the Ember.