Elva the Ember, her ginger hair draped over her eyes, wet with sweat and melted snow, watched as her husband slumped over the dead body of who had once been their friend. Her hand – lack of hand, though she could still feel it there, those missing fingers twitching – still burned. The iron had since been taken off her wrist, the wound cauterized – she could live if she cared for it – but she still felt the burning. But that was nothing compared to the rot she felt in her heart. The snow looked ash, and the men standing around, holding their shields in now silent ceremony – they had long since stopped drumming – the men were shades, shadows in the trees watching on, nothing more. They had no presence, no weight, no value.

  She finally convinced herself to sit up. She slowly, with great effort and pain, forced herself to stand, and she stumbled towards the two dead bodies, stained in blood and snow and sweat. Barely noticeable below the smell of burnt flesh, the smell of drying blood, of steel, of sweat, and of piss.

  She knelt, beside the bodies, though she cared only for one of them. The other, was simply a prop. Nothing more. It took all the strength she could muster, but she pulled the dead body of her husband off of the dead body of his betraying friend, with her one remaining hand, to look upon Yngvar’s face for the last time. Or at least, what was left of his face.

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  Once handsome, strong lines were now weathered by blood and scratches. His eyes, once deep and dark, now seemed flat, gazing into the nothing that was death. Throat was stuck between his bared teeth, and his cheek was opened into a ravine of teeth, a crooked grin that marked the rage of his last moments.

  Tears stung her eyes, and her one remaining hand came up to close his eyes, and his lips. Her missing hand – her stump – came to caress his ruined cheek, and for the last time, she pressed her forehead to his. She whispered her love, kissed his bloodstained lips, lingering there for a moment that meant an eternity. Then, finally, she stood, her eyes locked on the ghost that was the man who would be in charge, fur cloaked, iron helmed, and with a ringshirt and tall broadspear. She stalked towards him, dead in the eyes, bloody and muddy boots trudging through snowy ashes in a world without light.

  “Take care of his body,” she ordered the man, her voice a croak. “Of Yngvar’s. Bury him. Send him off to his ancestors, and to the gods, with the respect he deserves.”

  He said nothing.

  “I couldn’t give less of a fuck what you do with Eigil’s.”

  He said nothing.

  She pushed past him, her shoulders batting into, and past his. The remaining men watched her, and the circle of shields opened to let her pass into the night, alone, through a world in which there was, now, only gray and ash.