A Tide of Black Steel

Book 1: Age of Wrath

by Anthony Ryan

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Dragons & Mythical Creatures; Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology

Synopsis

From the international bestselling author Anthony Ryan comes the spectacular first novel in a new epic new fantasy trilogy inspired by Norse mythology.

A new age has dawned. An age of blood and steel. An age of wrath.

The land of Ascarlia, a fabled realm of bloodied steel and epic sagas, has been ruled by the Sister Queens for centuries. No one has dared question their rule.

Until now.

Whispers speak of longships of mysterious tattooed warriors, sailing under the banners of a murderous cult of oath-breakers long thought extinct. A tide of black steel that threatens to vanquish all in its path.

Thera of the Blackspear, favored servant of the Sister Queens, is ordered to uncover the truth. As Thera sails north, her reviled brother, Felnir, sets out on his own adventure. He hopes to find the Vault of the Altvar—the treasure room of the gods—and win the Sister Queens’ favor at his sister’s expense.

Both siblings—along with a brilliant young scribe and a prisoner with a terrifying, primal power—will play a part in the coming storm.

The Age of Wrath has begun.

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Release date: September 24, 2024

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 576

Sample

Ruhlin

The morning mist hadn’t yet begun to thin when he saw the red sail. At first, it was just a vague interruption in the lingering, pale grey haze, a patch of dark that took on a bloody hue after a few seconds of squinting. As Ruhlin stared at it, captured by the novelty, he realised the sail bore a design of sorts. It wavered and swelled in the stiff breeze coming off the rarely calm waters of the Stern Speld Sea, requiring yet more squinting before he recognised the crossed hammer and sword sigil of Ulthnir, first among the gods. However, this arrangement differed from those he had seen carved into many a lintel, or the motif adorning the aged statue atop Aslyn’s Hill. The overlapping weapons were arranged to point down rather than up. The inverted hilt and haft created a cradle for another emblem Ruhlin didn’t recognise. It resembled a thicket, irregular, jagged spines set along a smooth, curved line.

“What do you make of that?” he said, turning to Irhkyn.

At first, the mahkla didn’t look up from his work, spade shovelling damp sand from the base of the hole they had dug. The old, rusted chain about his neck rattled in concert with his labour. Unlike many who wore the chain of an indentured servant, Irhkyn was no shirker when it came to work. Sour of mood and harsh of tongue, but never lazy, and Ruhlin knew the reason why: every day of toil performed to the satisfaction of Ruhlin’s grandmother meant one less day of servitude.

Ruhlin had awoken early that morning, an inescapable feature of living under his grandmother’s roof. “Up and out!” Bredda commanded, her old oakwood stick thumping the shore-scavenged timbers of his bed. “Work awaits idle hands, boy!”

His first awakening in this house, a scant five years ago now, had left Ruhlin painfully aware that his grandmother was not averse to redirecting her stick from the bed to its occupant should he prove a laggard. Still, on this particular day he found himself unwisely tempted to suffer a few blows if it meant just another few moments abed. The night before had been given over to his cousin Mirhnglad’s trothing celebrations, a raucous gathering which had seen ale and mead flow freely. Everyone had been there, all those who made their home in Buhl Hardta, and more besides from the surrounding skyrns. Once the ceremony was done and the strikers struck to send sparks into the great bonfire constructed in the centre of the village, songs were sung, fish and meat roasted, barrels tapped and bottles un-corked. Ruhlin wasn’t particularly seasoned when it came to liquor. Bredda wouldn’t have it in the house, proclaiming it the ruin of his father, that and dice.

“Hands that never reached for an oar nor a shovel were always keen to reach for a drinking horn or a wager,” she told Ruhlin more than once, sometimes jabbing her stick at his legs or belly for emphasis. Ruhlin often pondered the notion that his poor, drowned father might have been less fond of the distractions of drink and gambling if his mother’s hearth had been more welcoming.

It was an unworthy thought, however. She had taken him in when his father’s boat foundered in the great storm, her door open when so many others had been shut. Life in the Outer Isles was ever harsh, and another mouth to feed rarely welcome. He sometimes wondered if the villagers of Buhl Hardta would have let him starve that winter, even though he shared blood with at least half their number. Still, he found he couldn’t hate them for it. The darker sentiments had always been difficult for Ruhlin to muster, along with the anger and profanity that came with them. So, as he grew, they had taken to calling him Ruhlin ehs Kestryg: Ruhlin the Quiet.

“How the shit should I know?” Irhkyn said, his standard response to most questions, even those addressed to him by the likes of Ruhlin’s uncle Dagvyn, Mirhnglad’s father and Uhlwald of the village. Such truculence from a mahkla would usually earn a whipping. However, Irhkyn’s stature and violent reputation tended to discourage such chastisement. Before his slide into debt and shame, he had sailed far, raided distant lands, and fought battles. He rarely consented to share tales of these adventures with Ruhlin, preferring the misery of silent brooding.

Ruhlin watched Irhkyn scoop more sand from the hole, grunting in satisfaction at the worms he saw wriggling amongst the clumped grains. “Decent harvest for once. Might even have a few salmon weighing the bait lines tomorrow.”

“There,” Ruhlin persisted, nudging Irhkyn’s shoulder and pointing into the mist. “A sail, isn’t it?”

The mahkla snorted in annoyance and finally consented to raise his head. “Tides too low. And who berths a ship on sand when there’s a perfectly good harbour a stone’s throw away…?”

Irhkyn’s words faded as his sight lingered on the shape in the mist, his heavy, blue-inked brows tightening into a frown. Straightening, he shifted his grip on the shovel, Ruhlin seeing his knuckles whiten. He also saw how the mahkla’s stance had altered, a hunch to his shoulders, knees slightly bent, and both feet placed for balance. Ruhlin had seen Dagvyn and some of the other adults of the village adopt such bearing when they taught use of sword or spear to their children. Ruhlin’s own father had never done so, even though, like Irhkyn, he had sailed far and known battle in his youth.

“You know that sign?” Ruhlin asked him, a small knot of worry forming in his chest as Irhkyn continued to regard the sail.

“No,” he murmured. Ruhlin discerned an additional weight to Irhkyn’s tone as he spoke on, imbuing it with a disconcerting significance. “Never seen it before in my life.”

“A sail that size means a big boat, doesn’t it? Too big for the wharf, perhaps. That’s why they berthed here.”

“Not a boat,” Irhkyn corrected. “A longship. And yes, it’s a big bugger.” He paused, narrowed eyes flicking to either side of the red sail. “And didn’t come alone.”

The mahkla’s sight proved keen, for Ruhlin quickly saw two more sails resolve out of the mist to the right of the first. Each bore the same crossed hammer and sword emblem with the spiky thing on top. “Is it a thorn bush?” he wondered, then hefted his own shovel and started forward. “I suppose we can ask them…”

“No.” Irhkyn’s large hand fell heavily onto Ruhlin’s shoulder, holding him in place. “Ships that beach close to a port don’t do so with trade in mind, lad. Come.” He turned, tugging Ruhlin along as he spurred to a run. “We’ve a warning to deliv—”

Irhkyn’s hand hadn’t yet fallen from Ruhlin’s shoulder, so he felt it clench in pain and shock before it slipped away, the mahkla tumbling onto his face with a groan that was as much angry as it was despairing.

“Irhkyn?” Ruhlin stumbled to a halt, a wholly unfamiliar and uncomfortable chill coursing through him from head to toe as he watched Irhkyn convulse, then cough a red spatter onto the sand. Ruhlin dithered for another few beats of his labouring heart, fascinated by the deep hue of Irhkyn’s blood, then by the long, gull-fletched arrow that jutted from his back. He might have dithered longer if the mahkla hadn’t reached out to snare his ankle in a large hand and drag him down. A rush of displaced air and a flicker of movement, then Ruhlin found himself staring at a second arrow embedded in the beach less than a yard away, shaft still shuddering.

“Go!” Fresh blood erupted from Irhkyn’s mouth as he gasped out the command, Ruhlin looking into fierce, implacable blue-grey eyes. “Warn them…” The dying mahkla jerked, his grip loosening on Ruhlin’s ankle and his head slowly subsiding into the damp grains. “Go…”

Ruhlin’s chest heaved as he drew in rapid, panicked breaths, continuing to regard his friend’s unmoving body, watching the sea breeze twitch the feathers of the arrow’s fletching. He had known Irhkin from boyhood. They worked side by side on Ruhlin’s father’s boat in the days before one wager too many had made a renowned warrior into a mahkla, a chained man condemned to work off his debts or suffer the dread fate of exile. Now he was gone, his life snuffed in an instant. An impossible, horrible truth.

It was the hard, short thrum from the direction of the red sails that banished Ruhlin’s indecision. He knew the sound of a bowstring well enough. Shouting in fright, he twisted, rolling across the sand, the arrow arcing down amidst the scrape left in his wake. Sobbing, he scrambled upright and pelted away. More bowstrings thrummed behind him, but Ruhlin, although far from being the strongest lad in Buhl Hardta, had at least always been amongst the most fleet of foot. Hearing the thud of falling arrows, he dragged more air into his lungs and ran faster, soon losing himself amongst the grassy dunes beyond the beach. In the months to come, he would have occasion to reflect on whether he would have been better if one of those deadly darts had found a target.

He smelled the smoke before he crested the bluffs south of Buhl Hardta, an acrid sting to the nostrils that grew with every breathless, clawing step up the rise. Dagvyn! The name had become a mantra of sorts during his flight from the beach. Find Dagvyn! As Uhlwald of the port, and therefore holder of the Sister Queens’ authority on this island, Dagvyn would know what to do. He would call the village to arms. He would herd the old folk and children into the Uhlwald’s hall. A battle would surely be fought against these unseen interlopers and their red-sailed longships, but it would be short, for this was Buhl Hardta, the furthermost port of the Sister Queens’ domain. Here dwelt the hardiest folk in all their broad realm. Here there were warriors who had voyaged almost as far as Irhkyn, some who could even match his renown. Dagvyn himself had won fame when the Fjord Geld was reclaimed from the hated thief-king of Albermaine…

All such thoughts dwindled into shocked despair when, chest heaving and limbs shaking with the onset of exhaustion, he crawled to the top of the bluffs, there to see the Uhlwald’s hall aflame. The blaze appeared to have started on the roof, thrown torches or fire arrows setting light to ancient reed thatching, birthing an inferno that soon engulfed the building from end to end. The smoke settled in a thick blanket over the whole of Buhl Hardta, though not so thick as to conceal the sight of other buildings burning. Gethora’s gutting shed, Loffar’s smithy, his grandmother’s storehouse where she stored stockfish for the yearly tithe, all blazing bright through the drifting pall.

Ruhlin’s horror deepened at the sounds rising from the smoke. Whilst his eyes could detect only fleeting shadows, his ears collected the screams with terrible clarity. Some were brief, terrorised cries, quickly cut off. Others were more prolonged, screeching shrieks of distress that put him in mind of pigs in the slaughter pen. A tumult to his left swung his gaze to the harbour where the smoke was thinner and he saw a cluster of dim shapes on the wharf. Shouts rose in anger and distress and he fancied he heard the clang of clashing metal. A battle after all then, he decided, his blossoming hope fading when a gust thinned the smoke to reveal a broad red sail bearing the hammer, sword and thicket sigil.

With the tide so low, the longship’s rail sat below the edge of the wharf. It was a far larger vessel than Ruhlin had seen before. The wide, overlapping planks of its hull were of familiar construction, but the spiked iron ram jutting from its prow was beyond his experience. Ladders had been raised from its deck to allow the ship’s occupants to gain the wharf, finding themselves contested, but not so fiercely as to prevent many investing the village with arson and murder in mind.

Indecision gripped him as he knelt amidst the grass. Join the battle or find Bredda? Taking shameful fortitude from his dearth of arms, his shovel abandoned on the beach and only the scaling knife on his belt, Ruhlin staggered upright and set off towards the further reaches of the village. His grandmother needed him. He would see her safe, then arm himself with the wood axe and join the fight. Yet, as he straggled down the slope, ears filled with the screams of his dying kin, a small, viciously honest voice hissed in his mind: You won’t be fighting anyone today. You’ll be hiding, you worthless craven dog.

Ruhlin grunted angry, wordless defiance at the whispering truth, pressing his sleeve against his nose and mouth before forging on through the haze. The pall had grown thicker in just a few moments, stinging his eyes and sending tears down his cheeks. He caught brief glimpses of people, faces lost to the gloom. He heard some babbling in fear or confusion, knotting together in confused terror, soon to be assailed by others moving with swift purpose. Ruhlin made out the shape of an unfamiliar helm on one. A flare of blossoming flame from the Uhlwald’s hall painted a gleam on the conical form, marking it as a thing of iron rather than the hardened leather favoured by those who kept arms in this village. The fire also drew a thin shine from the sword in the helmed figure’s hand and the boss on the round shield it bore.

Ruhlin deafened himself to the screams, hunching smaller and hurrying on. He collided with an upended cart a few steps on, rebounding from it only to lose his footing, his shoes slipping on wet cobbles. Landing hard on his arse, Ruhlin raised a hand from the damp stone to find it red. His eyes quickly fixed upon the unseeing visage of Selvy, daughter of Loffar the smith. A hearty soul several years his senior, and possessed of enticing curves his youthful gaze couldn’t help but admire, Selvy was now transformed from person to thing. Her round, apple-cheeked face was still, mouth gaping open and lips loosened in a way that revealed her bottom teeth, tongue lolling from the corner of her mouth. The blood he had slipped in flowed from a recent wound in her belly, pale, snake-like innards strewn amongst the crimson slick. Ruhlin found himself once again fascinated by a novel but dreadful detail, this time in the form of the steam rising from Selvy’s wound, the warmth remaining in her corpse seeping away to merge with the swirling smoke.

Cover yourself in her blood and lie still, the irksomely honest whisperer advised. The guts too. Make it look real.

Snarling defiance at his cowardice, Ruhlin crawled clear of Selvy’s blood and regained his feet. The house was close now, just a short run through the gap between Othyr’s pig pen and the woodshed. The dwelling he shared with Bredda sat atop a rise near the eastern edge of the village and, he saw with a welling of relief, appeared untouched by flame. He had often griped about the steep climb to his own door, to which Irhkyn replied that his grandmother chose to build her home on this spot so she could have a clear view of everyone else’s business. Scaling the slope in a rapid frenzy, he barrelled into the sturdy door, finding it unlatched. Inside, he looked upon a roundhouse dwelling as neat and orderly as ever. The floor swept, seasoned firewood stacked. Pots, pans and knife were all arrayed in the proper place along the counter where Bredda fashioned inarguably excellent meals she assured him his idle carcass didn’t deserve. Everything was how it should be, except for his grandmother’s absence.

The snap of wind-tossed laundry drew him to the dwelling’s rear door, heart flaring in hope as he shoved it aside. And that was where he found her. Not, as he dared wish, engaged in pegging a shawl to the rope whilst offering waspish commentary on this bothersome smoke. No. Bredda, daughter of Ilthura, mother of Kultrun, grandmother of Ruhlin, who, by the grace of the Altvar, had drawn breath upon this earth for more than seven decades, lay dead in her own herb garden. She had been killed by a single stroke to the throat, recently judging by the blood still gushing from it. Her features were slack, much like Selvy’s, although Ruhlin detected an expression in it. A slight drawing of the brows and pursing of the lips betraying something he had never seen on this woman’s face in life: surprise. It captured him more completely than any other dire novelty this day, so much in fact that he barely noticed the man crouched at his grandmother’s side with a bloody knife in hand.

Turning to Ruhlin, the man grunted and rose to his full height. He stood an inch or two taller than Ruhlin, his iron helm and armour of broad ringed chain mail and leather concocting an impression of some unassailable monster. Angling his head, eyes narrowed on either side of the brass nose guard, the man took a moment to study the blank-faced youth staring at the murdered old woman. Grunting again, this time in apparent derision, the man said something in a harsh, rasping tongue. The words, if words they were, meant nothing to Ruhlin. He shrugged, faintly annoyed by the distraction from his fascination with Bredda’s absurd expression. She would have said something, at least, he decided. She would never have died wordless.

The man sighed, weary and workmanlike. Ruhlin swayed as a hand descended onto his shoulder, holding him in place, the bloodied knife coming up, angled for a lateral stroke across his throat. Ruhlin barely noticed, eyes finally shifting from Bredda’s face to track over her form. Never fond of finery, her dress was the same plain, scrupulously clean garment of homespun wool she always wore, although today he noticed a stain. There, on the sleeve near her wrist, dark and wet. He also noticed the red spatter discolouring her hand and the blade lying close by, the small sickle she used to harvest herbs.

Ruhlin shuddered then, feeling a grinding lurch deep in his guts. The movement drew him back from the iron-helmed man, causing him to mutter something in his gibberish tongue, tightening his grip on his victim’s shoulder. Ruhlin stared at the face of the man about to kill him, not in fear but scrutiny, searching across the bearded, part-obscured features, set in a grimace of anticipated slaughter. It was under his left eye, a cut, still bleeding. Small, but deep enough to require stitching in time.

Ruhlin’s gaze returned to his grandmother’s face, words coming unbidden to his lips. “So, she had something to say after all.”

The lurch in his guts grew in violence when his neck felt the edge of the helmed man’s blade, pressing hard, then stopping. Ruhlin saw the man frown, eyes narrowing then widening as he looked upon Ruhlin’s face. Features suddenly pale, the man stepped back. The hand on Ruhlin’s shoulder slackened and fell away, much as Irhkyn’s had done. Ruhlin felt a small pulse of puzzlement at the man’s fear, but it was soon smothered by the sensation building within. He shuddered again as the grinding pain flared, transformed in an instant into a raging, burning flame in the centre of his being. When the flame settled, and the shuddering abated, Ruhlin thought it strange that the helmed man, who had seemed so tall seconds before, now seemed so small, and so fragile.

Although hate was a rare visitor, Ruhlin was not immune to anger. Sometimes it was slow to arrive, but, even as a child, when it came, it could be a frightening thing, something his father would shame him for on many an occasion. Now, Ruhlin felt no shame at his burgeoning rage. In truth, he welcomed it, and in so doing, stoked the fire raging inside into an inferno. It blazed through him, clouding his sight with a red fog and drawing a roar from his gaping mouth, a mouth that now felt impossibly wide.

He heard screams, joined by the squeal of crushed metal and the crack of bone which ended them. The fog receded a little, revealing the mangled mess of iron and pulped skull between his hands, hands that were clearly far too large to be his own. A small corner of Ruhlin’s mind wondered if he had gone mad at the point of death, if his gift from the Altvar upon entering the Halls of Aevnir would be this gruesome vision of vengeance. If so, he was allowed no time to ponder the curious nature of such a reward.

A hungry, feral snarl filled his ears as his overlarge hands, now affixed to arms of equally monstrous proportions, cast aside the lifeless carcass and the red fog descended once more. Ruhlin would always recall much of what followed as a vague, unwelcome nightmare, though some brief moments lived on his mind with terrible clarity for the rest of his days. Another man in an iron helm swinging an axe at his head, Ruhlin catching the descending blade with bare hands that suffered no injury. Fortunately, the memory faded at the moment he began to force the haft of the axe down its owner’s throat. Another man he caught near the Uhlwald’s hall, this one lacking a helm which revealed his red tattooed features in full, along with the gibbering, spit-flecked terror that doused his legs in piss before Ruhlin bore him down. He remembered delighting in the tattooed man’s screams, laughing as his impossible hands snapped legs and arms like twigs before tossing the wailing figure into the blazing ruin of the hall. But mostly, the rampage of Ruhlin ehs Kestryg through what remained of Buhl Hardta village would be a tale told by others, for he knew little of it.

It was only when he neared the wharf that clarity began to return. He ascribed it to the sight of so many of his kinfolk lying dead in a heap, faces and bodies bearing the signs of battle. Plainly, they had fought well, their many wounds a testament to the ferocity of their resistance. But they had died for it. He recalled rising from the still twitching corpse of a man who had broken his spearpoint attempting to jab it into Ruhlin’s throat. His sight was once again captured by horror, this time in the form of the two corpses lying atop the pile. Dagvyn lay partly across Mirhnglad, as if he had been trying to shield her from a final blow. If so, he had failed, and both father and daughter lay entwined in death.

A sob built in Ruhlin’s chest as he staggered towards them, sorrow momentarily overcoming rage. It still burned bright, and he would soon return to his slaughter of these red-faced strangers, but in this moment, his grief forced a pause. He couldn’t claim to have harboured great affection for his uncle. He had offered food and a shed to sleep in when Ruhlin’s father passed, but no place by his hearth. But he had been a good Uhlwald, fair in his judgements and scrupulous in administering the laws of the Sister Queens. Ruhlin hadn’t loved him, but he was blood kin and would be missed. But Mirhnglad… Sweet, soft spoken Mirhnglad, who had cried with him the night his father failed to return from the sea. His kind, golden-haired cousin who sang at every celebration with a voice that was surely a gift from the Altvar. Her gold hair was matted with blood now, her hands stained red from finger to wrist. He hoped it was the blood of their foes, of which he would spill all before he was done.

The rage surged again, the red fog along with it, and Ruhlin accepted both with gratitude. Another inhuman snarl scattered drool from his mouth as he scanned the wharf for victims, finding only one. A slender figure with long dark hair. Like the others he had slain, her face bore designs in red ink, though they seemed more elaborate and artfully crafted. Unlike the others, she wore no armour, clad instead in a cloak of fox fur and hardy leather gear, lacking any weapon he could see. What distinguished her most from her compatriots, however, was her complete absence of fear at the sight of what she beheld. Her eyes were wide in wonder rather than terror.

Advancing towards her, the red fog obscuring much of his vision, Ruhlin had occasion to note the woman’s evident beauty, but neither that nor her fearlessness would save her. He closed the distance to his prey quickly, gore-covered hands rising. When he drew within a dozen feet of her, the woman raised a small metal tube to her lips and Ruhlin felt a sharp, searing pain in his tongue. The flare of agony was so intense it brought him to a halt, instinct bringing his fingers to his mouth to pluck forth a long metal dart. Looking again at the woman, Ruhlin saw her slotting another such projectile into the tube. Lurching forward, he found his legs no longer consented to obey him and he stumbled onto all fours. The pain left by the dart had shifted into a chilling numbness, spreading from his tongue to his throat before making icy, inexorable progress through his whole being.

Trying to rise, he gaped at the sight of his hand upon the granite surface of the wharf, watching it twitch and reduce in size. Dark, knotted veins paled and bulging tendons pulsed, then thinned until, once again, he beheld his own hand. It was the last thing he saw before darkness claimed him, although his ears did detect a voice, presumably that of the tattooed woman. Unlike the other, she spoke words he recognised as old Ascarlian. Although the meaning behind them escaped him then, he would learn it in time and come to detest their every utterance: “Vyrn Skyra” – Fire Blood.

Thera

“Don’t!”

The warrior’s sword halted its progress from its scabbard, his arm frozen by the curt snap of Thera’s voice. He was young, a few years shy of her own age. Had he been older, and therefore more attuned to the shift in fortunes her presence signified, he might have saved himself. A veteran would most likely have taken one look at the Vellihr’s brooch on her leather breastplate, slid his sword back into its sheath and disappeared into the night. But the young are ever keen to prove themselves, especially when given the honour of guarding their Veilwald’s hall. So, despite the authority in her tone, and her brooch, the youthful warrior chose duty to clan, and a chance at glory, over wisdom.

Thera struck before he managed to draw the sword another inch, reading his intent in the sudden narrowing of the eyes and hardening of the mouth. Her spearpoint, black except for the silver gleam of its edge, took him under the chin, thrusting up through the lesser bones of the skull to skewer his brain. A swift and, she decided as she drew it free, more merciful death than that deserved by one who defied a servant of the Sister Queens. She caught the body before it fell, wary of the thud and clatter drawing unwanted attention. However, the raucous sounds leaching from the narrow windows above would most likely have smothered the commotion.

Propping the corpse against the weathered stones of the hall’s east-facing wall, she moved towards the front of the building. The unwise young man was but one guard Kolsyg had set this night. Others were scattered about the village and would at this moment be making their own choices between duty and wisdom. The warriors of her menda were skilled in such things and she detected only a few muffled shouts and scuffles as she rounded the corner to stand before the ornately inscribed doors of Kolsyg’s hall. The two warriors stationed there, a man and a woman with the blue-inked features and scars of veterans, stood warming their hands next to a coal-filled brazier. Both displayed a good deal more judgement than their youthful kinsman when Thera stepped into the light cast by the glowing coals, neither reaching for their weapons nor attempting to bar her path.

“We had no part in it,” the woman said, eyes flicking between Thera’s brooch and her spear. Thera couldn’t recall a previous encounter with her, but the tale of the Vellihr who bore a black spear was well known. “Counselled against it, in fact. Didn’t we, Gryn?” The woman darted a glance at her companion, a large man, bald of pate but with a copious red beard. In contrast to the woman’s contrite submission, his features were set in grim acceptance.

“Weren’t there, either of us,” he grunted. “That’s the truth of it.” He hesitated, then stood straighter. “But I’ll not pretend I’ve ever gone against my Veilwald’s word, and will pay for it if that’s the law.”

Prideful, Thera concluded, turning away from the pair without a word. But not so much as to bare steel or stand in my way. She took comfort from the notion such attitudes were likely to be common amongst Kolsyg’s kin. It would make the night’s work easier.

As Thera reached for the great iron ring on the door, Eshilde and Ragnalt appeared from the shadows beneath the low edge of the hall’s tiled roof. Not for the first time, Thera reflected on how, when silhouetted in the gloom, the pair resembled a cat and a bear; shaven-headed Eshilde, all lithe lethality, and shaggy-haired, black-bearded Ragnalt, the embodiment of Ascarlian strength. She watched Eshilde wipe a rag over the blade of her dagger and took note of Ragnalt’s untarnished axe.

“One fought, one didn’t,” he explained before inclining his head at the door. “Will you need us?”

Thera shook her head, lifting the ring and pushing hard to lever the great door open. After the smoke-laced chill covering the port of Skor Hardta, the warmth of its Veilwald’s hall was so fierce as to be uncomfortable. Nevertheless, Thera kept her sable-furred cloak about her shoulders. At first, the general din of merriment continued unabated, but gradually diminished at the sight of the tall, spear-bearing woman maintaining a purposeful stride towards the Veilwald’s chair. Soon, the only sound in the hall came from the fall of her boots and the steady thud of her spear’s brass butt on the flagstones.

The gathered folk of the port parted before her, the young amongst them either