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“It takes eneral to lead ten thousandwould die before they reached the true ice Ten thousand who knew enough to survive would know enough not to go There is nothing there for men Even the Inowen keep to the shore and the sea ice Whale, seal, and fish is all that will sustain men in such places

“It boats at his coht more treasure across the North Sea, ith axe and fire froather ten thousand from the bleak shores of the fjords where a hundred men were counted an army, and to march them into the Bitter Ice

“Olaaf Rikeson had a vision He had the gods at his side The wise echoed what he said The rune stones spoke for hiue over how he caiven it to Olaaf after he burned the cathedral of the White Christ at York and slaughtered twice a hundred monks there What Olaaf had to promise in return was never told

“The fact that the god’s gift had been a key had always disappointed Snorri, but then Loki was the god of disappoints such as lies and trickery Snorri would have preferred a battle ram A warrior destroys the door—he doesn’t unlock it But his father told him that Olaaf’s key was a talisman It opened any lock, any door, and more than that—it opened men’s hearts

“The oldest legends have it that Olaaf iants in their lair, to shanarok of s in a last battle Snorri’s father never denied the tale but spoke of how one thing ht hide another, like a feint in combat Men, he said, were reed, and lust Stories grew froods touched Rikeson, or perhaps a bloody-handed reaver took a few hundreda song that bards wove into a saga and placed ast the treasured memories of the North Whatever truth there was, years have stolen it from us”

• • •

Snorri left his son’s pyre, the last logs still blazing, the snow on all sides retreating to expose the black earth of the Wodinswood Behind him embers swirled skyward amidst dark s the Uulisk far behind, tracking Sven Broke-Oar and the men of the Drowned Isles across the boulder fields of Törn, where vicious winds shape the rocks themselves Above Törn the Jarlson Uplands, and beyond those, the Bitter Ice

What he would do when he reached his eneuilt and rage consumed him Perhaps any of these on its oould have destroyed him, but in conflict, each with the next, they achieved a balance within him and he carried on

The pace the raiders set was fierce and Snorri couldn’t think it one that Freja or Egil, with just ten years to his na with the tireless corpses that had coht Quays But Karl had been alive; they had shackled prisoners—itthem inland, but the necromancers had wanted live prisoners, that much was clear

Only night stopped hiht fled early, still new to the world after the winter darkness that had held the ice for ht a man can’t follow a trail All he’ll find in the dark is a broken leg, for the hinterlands are treacherous, the rocky ground ice-clad and fissured

The night had lasted forever, a ht Quays Of Karl, broken and dying by the Wodinswood, of E had followed Snorri into the wilderness and the wind spoke it all through the long wait for dawn

And when the light cah Snorri had thought it too cold for snow He’d roared at it Lofted his axe at the clouds and threatened every god he could na into his openhis eyes

Snorri carried on without a trail to follow, lost in the trackless white What else was there for him? He took the direction his quarry had taken and struck out into the empty wastes

He found the dead man hours later One of the Islanders who had been dead on the deck of his ship as it sailed the North Sea bound for the ry The led uselessly, bound chest-deep in a drift whose soft snow had accepted his dead flesh, then locked about it as his efforts to escape co hard as rock He reached for Snorri, his fingers black with the freezing blood locked inside A sword blow had opened his face fro a jawbone wrapped in freeze-dried muscle, shattered teeth, frost-darkened and bloodless flesh The re eye fixed Snorri with inhuman intensity