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Deadfrozen-footed through the snow Between the ver Lutens’ huts a hundred yards upshore, the Broke-Oar and a handful of his houls found the rooftops, blowpipes ready

Froe, clipped like those of Brettan uided in by Sven Broke-Oar It made no sense

The first dead man set his frost-black hands upon Snorri’s door When Snorri had seen Euile along the long-quay, he’d known a terror like no other His child had been, in that er It hadn’t been the danger that unmanned him but his inability to stand between it and her

“Thor Watch ods He on to Odin on feast day, or swear by Hel when they stitched his wounds, but in general he saw them as an ideal, a code to live by, not an ear to h, he prayed And launched himself into the corpse-crowd before his door

As Snorri broke cover he heard nothing above his own battle roar: not the ghouls’ sharp exhalations or the hissing flight of their darts Even the sting as they punctured his shoulder, arm, and neck he barely noticed He took the head from the closest of the dead men, the arm that reached for him, a hand, another head All the time Hel felt heavier in his hands, as if the axe were stone Even his arht of the bones they wrapped A black fist struck hiht hold around his knees, sorievous wounds Snorri started to fall, toppling to the side With the last of his strength he launched hi heels over head along the icy ins of his hut The invaders pressed on towards the hut’s door in a tight huddle, leaving only the pieces of bodies shorn by his axe and a corpse near-severed at the spine but hauling itself towards him hand over hand

A nuh Snorri, deep as any that cold will put in a h he saw his arms before him corpse-white and smeared with the dark ichor that lay still in the dead h every fibre of his will de shocked his traitor body into rising An avalanche ha on the roof of his hut—ghouls, shifting the snow as they sca him doith a soft but implacable hand

Snorri lay helpless, the last of his strength gone, his naked body entorip of dead hands or the teeth of ghouls or the axe of one of the Broke-Oar’s reavers Nopaid, he would want no witnesses to this night’s shame

A high shriek reached hih his cocoon of snow Ee, the roar from Karl, his eldest, as he attacked Every part of histo force his ars to puer and desperation, yet only a sigh escaped the nu into the blind white all about him

• • •

The incessant tapping had woken hi off the eaves, washing away the snow, taking the ice from his eyelids so he could open them to the day He turned his head and the water ran from his eyes The remains of the snow heap lay around him, a touch whiter than the marble of his flesh

Snow makes a soft bed, but no man wakes froh drunks frozen where they slept to know the truth of it A groan escaped him This was death His dead body would shaions, his ht watch helpless from behind dead eyes, in thrall to necromancers

Still the water splattered across hirey curtain all along the roof’s edge It beat at his ear, ran across his chest, al the thaw He rolled clear across half-frozen ground The motion took him by surprise, left him unsure whether he owned it or not

The raid! As if Snorri’s an to leak behind his eyes In ato clean thethrough hi him for the first ti for the wall for support, though his hands had no more sensation in them than his feet