Njord seized me by the klifrigg. I grabbed onto his klifrigg in turn, as we began to wrestle. His face was as red as his fiery hair, his bull’s horns looking ready to gore me.

He shoved and I pulled away, making no effort to overpower him. Yet, if I moved with him, letting him push me around as I pulled him, or push him when he pulled me… strong as he was, he started to lose his balance as I exaggerated his motions.

We circled around the twig, which was only a horse length and a half wide. Our steps were careful to avoid the sprouts that would trip us, the burls that would make us slip, the rounded parts of the branch that threatened to roll us off. I was working well and quick, but Njord clearly was better with his feet than his face, and his strength made him able to right himself even as I unrighted him. He would pull me towards him, and I’d leap against him with great force, trying to take him off his feet—but such is a norn’s strength that he endured this, keeping his footing.

He pushed hard on my shoulder, forcing me to turn. Grabbing his arm, I tried to pull him along with me, so that he would circle around me as I was spun around. But his other hand caught my belt and lifted me so I was standing on just one leg, hopping. I had almost no strength like this. I kicked at his knee, but he was already barrelling into me, his arms wrapping around the chest as he performed a crushing bearhug.

I heard ribs creaking, threatening to break… but so long as I resisted, he didn’t have quite the strength to break anything. He couldn’t keep this up, and the moment he let go… I’d finish this with my dagger.

“Crow, what kind of knot from Hel is this!?” Birger’s call interrupted our wrestling match. Njord tossed me aside, using his whole body to cast me away, before turning to look.

I fell off the twig.

“That’s a… lower tree ram’s knot, isn’t it?” Njord said, towering over the kneeling Birger.

“No it’s not, that one has more twists.” Birger was untying and retying it, testing its strength.

“Your hands are in the way, so I can’t see.” Njord pointed out.

“Let me see!” Erik said, pushing his way in. “Huh… pretty simple knot, looks like the hands of Frigg.”

“I’m all right, by the way.” I had grabbed onto a sprout during my fall. It was threatening to break, though.

“Where did you learn this knot?” Birger vaguely regarded my precarious position, motioning to Erik.

“I think it was from a sendlína,” I said, catching the line Erik tossed me and hauling myself up. “Noticed they had a funny way of tying the message to it.” Sendlínur were like clothesline pulleys, strings that let you reel messages and small packages up the tree.

“Really?” Erik grinned as he towed my line. “I worked in a sendlínhús! Learned all kinds of knots people would tie their messages with. Can learn a lot about a person by how they tie their knots.”

“Oh, really?” I made eye-contact and smiled, the perfect picture of interest until he got me back on the branch.

“Yes! The lower tree will send up clay tablets, you know, made from the earth of Midgard below—and some of those knots were just so tight you have to cut them, they were terrified of them falling and breaking!”

Nodding and smiling, I came onto the twig. “What a good story, Erik! Tragic it’s over already.” Three quick steps removed me from Erik, towards my two good friends who were never boring when they tried to kill me.

“But I haven’t told you about the adulterers, yet!”

“Oh…?” I took three quick steps back.

“Yes, you must’ve gotten a lot of them at your sendlínhús, too? Or didn’t you notice?” He winked, looking like Odinn if he were young and stupid. “I’d look at knots that seemed to be tied by a woman, or an overeager hand—and it was always a sealed message, usually a scrawl-leaf or a birch-letter. There was a fellow in the sendlínhús, Ivar, who always kept the ketill on the fire, so we had warm mead while working in that cold wind. And since wax seals were popular then—”

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“Wax seals!? The idiots!”

“Yes! So I’d take them to the kettle, and the steam would break the seal. I’d then unfold the letter… and they write the most shocking things! Just rolling in their shame, getting a thrill from talking about what they’re doing to their wives and husbands!”

“Any Jarls? Rich bǿndr?”

“Jarls? Not so much; nobles always send up a missive requesting a servant to be there before they send up the letter, to prevent any funny business. The servant sends down a note to confirm he’s there. Though sometimes… we’d open the letter with him!”

I cawed with laughter, enjoying this other side of Erik. “And how much did you make?”

“Make?”

“By blackmailing them, of course.”

“Oh….” Erik’s face clamped shut. “Sometimes we talked about it… but we never did get to trying that.”

“I suppose that’s why you’re here, instead of sipping mead with a hóra on each arm.” I turned to rejoin the others, realizing his other side was as much a fífl as the first.

“What about you? Did you blackmail anyone at your sendlínhús?” He followed after me, annoyingly.

“Oh, I never worked at one.”

“What? But you said you learned knots from a sendlína?”

“Yes—stealing letters from them.”

For the first time I’d seen him, and possibly the first in his life, Erik frowned.

“You stole people’s letters?”

“Yes.”

“How could you do such a thing?”

“I lowered myself on a rope, and was quick at untying the knots.”

“I didn’t mean it like that! Poor karls use the sendlínur. Were you stealing their letters?”

“Not if I could tell the sender was poor. There’s little interest reading about the price of eggs and mushrooms being too high. Though some of them were from karls.”

In retrospect, I wished I had said something meaner, like I shook them to search for pennies and then threw them away out of spite.

Erik reacted as if I had. “Do you realize many karls have to pay someone to write and read those letters for—”

Birger shrieked with laughter, his tattoos contorting into a twisted parody of protective runes. “Looks like the wolfling has more teeth than you do, Erik.”

Rather than look angry, Erik’s features sagged in exhaustion. “You’re always going on about Loki giving Asgard, or the Tree or pretty Valkyries to mankind, but you’re fine with robbing poor karls?” He was the sort of soul who felt obligated to reach out to people… no matter how many fingers he lost.

Birger sneered, “I said mankind… not karls and thralls.”

“I said karls, not thralls. Though even thralls are part of your glorious ‘allir menn’.”

“Barely any difference between slaves of the gods. They’re happy to rake the dirt and toil for any master, so it doesn’t concern the feeble-minded. You, for instance, who blubbers over stolen letters of karls, while you steal precious sap from your own gods.”

“The tree has oceans of sap to spare, the karls scrape the bottom of the barrel for the dregs of sauerkraut.”

“If they had courage, they wouldn’t starve and give all they have to the gods and jarls. It’s their own fault.”

Erik was consternated, and ‘consternated’ is an awfully big word for Erik. “Njord, you say something. Your parents were poor karls, weren’t they?”

Njord’s jaw clenched when Erik said that. “I’d rather hear how Crow managed this little trick hanging from his rope.”

He said it as if my life was hanging by a rope, or a thread of one.