The Damaged Soul

It was a hard season when my father and his men returned from the war defeated. Vandil, the Southern Tyrant king, defeated and killed our King Teowulf. He marched upon his throne in Chillshore and captured it, leaving it in the hands of the Southern Tyrants. They’re usurpers. My father and the rest of the clans fled back to their Strongholds and villages, hidden from the Southerners and preparing for an attack that never came.

Our town spent the entire summer season building up our defenses and looking out for a battle that never came. We lacked the resources we normally have that never came to be. Walls were built by the Builder clan with spikes and towers for archers. Father had a barricade and armory built.

By the time winter arrived, without raiding we didn’t have the resources we needed and many people died because of it. Fortunately, my family and friends all survived. We were blessed by the gods. Our clan has always been faithful servants of the gods. When spring finally came, my father and his men were eager to get out to sea, leaving my mother in charge. All of us – my older brother, Thorkel, my younger brother, Thormar, and myself – were free to do as we pleased without the rigorous routines my father enforces on us, as long as we continue to learn our crafts. My younger sister, Svala, and my youngest brother, Bodvar, are far too young to join us, and this would be my older brother’s last summer as a boy before he joins my father on raids as he becomes a man. He’s excited about it, but I will miss having Thorkel around.

Father makes us spend much of our free time learning crafts. He tells us we’ll never know when we need to know it, for it could save our lives. Most crafts seem to be tedious and time-consuming. Some are not quite manly, but we’re forced to learn it anyway. Like how to stitch clothing. Or how to weave and to cook. Women’s tasks if you ask me. We also learn how to fletch, chop trees and split wood, build fires and houses, and gather herbs, which is far more difficult than I ever imagined. So many herbs. And it’s hard to tell which ones will kill you and which ones will cure some strange illness. My Aunt Sigvor, my mother’s older sister, was quite thorough in teaching us what to look for in herbs and how to test whether they are poisonous or actually help with sickness. Most of the time, she just uses them on animals to see what happens. She is our town’s Wise One. The one everyone goes to for their illnesses, sicknesses, or any other herbal remedy or concoction. I’ve even seen a man come to her needing something for his wife’s bum because he stuck… Well, I don’t need to go into detail about that. Some things I will never understand.

We spend a lot of time chopping wood. I think it’s slave work and I don’t like it, but regardless, father won’t budge. Eventually, he tells us that chopping wood is a good way to develop our swing with an ax and build our strength. Same with cutting trees. However, father is always criticizing the way we swing our axes. Always telling us we’re doing it wrong and we need to use our legs more. I don’t understand. How can you swing an ax with your legs? Eventually, he explains that the power behind the swing comes from our legs. It starts in our legs and moves up our body to our arms. You bend your knees to start, but as you bring your ax above your shoulder, you straighten your legs out in a stretch. Then, when you bring the ax down, you bring it with the full force of your body and end in a crouch position. Like a squat, not as much as if you were taking a shit, but with your knees should be slightly bent. If done right, your full body should be used.

By far my favorite skills are those we learn from the dwarf, Aldam Bronzehammer. He’s a grumpy, bald dwarf with a thick, long, braided, auburn beard that hangs down to his belt and stays tucked under his apron. The dwarf is thick with muscle, which he has forged with his hammer and pickaxe. He’s got dark iron skin that looks like metal. He teaches us many skills. How to prospect ore, how to mine it, how to smelt it, and how to forge it into tools and weapons. Of course, to a dwarf, weapons are just tools of the killing sort. The body is the true weapon. And I find swinging a pickaxe is much like swinging a wood chopping ax. You do the same motion, and Aldam is quick to criticize.

We spend much of our youth with the dwarf. He grumbles much of the time, complaining about our efforts, but I can tell he enjoys our company. We travel with him up the mountains, finding coal and iron. There’s plenty of it, along with some strange glowing mushrooms and glowing ore. Aldam tells us we are not ready for the glowing ore, it’s too heavy for us. That ore is for experts, and the mushrooms will turn your skin dark but have many benefits such as healing and increasing your senses. It is hard work, mining the raw materials we need, and it takes all three of us to push and pull the cart down the mountain full of the ore. Once we get back to his little shop, we have to refine it and get all the crude from it. We run it through water several times to get the dirt off, and then we heat it up with charcoal and pound it with a hammer to get rid of the slag.

“Put your balls into it. Swing that bloody hammer with all your body,” the dwarf yells as we beat on the heated metal. We spend much of our time pounding the iron with our hammers. He makes us switch hands so we don’t make one side too much stronger than the other.

After we’ve refined it, then we get to make something out of it. Of course, it’s not always the stuff we want to make, like weapons. Most of the time, its nails, hammers and ax heads, knives, cooking pots and pans, horseshoes, belt buckles, chisels, and other boring tools. He shows us how to make moldings for them, which is hard in and of itself. Thorkel always tries to engrave the same symbol on everything he works on and owns. I think it’s supposed to be a hammer, but I don’t know for sure. “Why do you put that on everything?” I ask scratching my head.

Thorkel looks at me with an eyebrow raised. “Do you really have to ask? It’s Thunar’s hammer! You know… Mjolnir. It gives me protection.”

“Oooh. I see,” I say, wide-eyed. The name Mjollnir and Thunar ring inside my head for some reason. As if I’ve heard those names many times before. “I’m going to do it, too.”

“Now you’re just copying me,” Thorkel says with a sigh.

Aldam sighs. “You call that a hammer? Looks like a goat turd.”

I laugh, and then Aldam looks at my work. “Boy, do you not know your head from your arse? Because that ax head looks like you took a shit on the anvil and beat it into a bloody lump.”

Both Thorkel and Thormar laugh. Aldam turns on both of them, and his eyes dart to Thormar’s work. “What kind of horse hoof are you looking at? That shoe looks like it’d fit on a ram’s arse rather than the hoof of a horse.”

Don’t even think about asking him a question to which he thinks you should know the answer, which is something Thormar does constantly.

“Can iron be made any stronger?” my annoying little brother asks.

“Does a bear shit in the woods?” the dwarf asks.

“I suppose it does. But I guess it could also shit in a cave or a river. Or maybe in the mountains,” Thormar replies.

And of course, Aldam drags his hand down his face. And without surprise, Thorkel slaps Thormar up on the backside of his head. “Do you ever shut up, brother?”

“Hey! I was just asking,” Thormar replies. I feel like we have this very same conversation three or four times a day.

“You can make steel out of iron with coal that burns hot enough. We call it coke. There’s this stuff in the air we breathe that we need in order to live. They call it oxygen and then the stuff you breathe out that these plants need is called carbon dioxide. Which is made of carbon and oxygen. The carbon part is what we need to turn iron into steel. Fires breathe it as well. To make steel, bars of wrought iron are layered with powdered charcoal in stone boxes and heated. After about 168 hours, the iron would absorb the carbon in the charcoal. Repeated heating would distribute carbon more evenly and the result, after cooling, was blister steel. Of course, this method is archaic and old. We no longer use it. Of course, we don’t really use steel much either since we have Nedraetium and can purify it.”

“We dwarves are never content. We always find a way to better things,” Aldam says, puffing out his chest. “We found that the metal could be melted in clay crucibles and refined with a special flux to remove slag that the old process left behind. That’s how we came up with cast steel. Of course, that method is pig shit compared to the new method of making steel.”

Thormar leans in as he hangs onto every word that comes out of Aldam’s mouth. “What’s the new method?”

Aldam just smiles. “Well, one of my old ancestors discovered that iron could be heated while oxygen could be blown through the molten metal by a special furnace. As oxygen passed through the molten metal, it would react with the carbon, releasing carbon dioxide and producing a purer iron. The process was fast and inexpensive, removing carbon and some other substance from iron in a matter of minutes, but suffered from being too successful. Too much carbon was removed, and too much oxygen remained in the final product.”

“So, it’s just Iron, then?” Thorkel asks, tilting his head.

Aldam nods. “However, my great uncle began testing a compound of iron, carbon, and this thing called manganese. Manganese was known to remove oxygen from molten iron, and the carbon content in the compound, if added in the right quantities, would provide the solution to the problem my ancestor had.”

“So, you were able to make the steel in minutes?” Thormar asks, rubbing his chin.

Aldam shrugs. “There was just one problem. My uncle couldn’t remove an impurity that made the steel brittle from his end product.”

I scratch my head. “So, what did he do?”

“My other great uncle, his brother, discovered that if you use a certain stone, we’ve come to call limestone, it could draw out the impurity we’ve come to call phosphorus from the pig iron into the slag. Making good quality steel. Of course, I shouldn’t be telling you this. It’s a dwarven secret we’ve kept for a long time in order to keep the price of steel up. That’s partially why our kingdom is so wealthy. That and the Nedraetium our builders use to fortify walls, since most people can’t use it for tools or weapons because it’s too heavy. Of course, not many people know that you can purify the Nedraetium and make it light as wood. That’s a little-known secret our family has kept. Of course, the process of purifying the metal is rather difficult. I don’t know why I’m telling you toads this. I guess you three have been the closest things to sons I’ve had, and I need someone to pass on my knowledge too. I’m not getting any younger…” He tugs at his beard and looks off in the distance.

Thormar scratches his head. “How do you know when it’s been 168 hours? That seems like an awfully long time.”

“We have tools for measuring time. You could use a sundial, but those are as accurate as a horse’s arse due to the difference in daylight from the seasons. Hopefully you fish brains realized that there is more daylight in the summer than in the winter. Daylight slowly increases from winter to summer and decreases from summer to winter. And in winter, especially up here in the north, there can be days without sunlight making the sundial all but useless. Fortunately, both the High Elves and us dwarves have created what is called an hourglass.”

The dwarf puts an oddly shaped device before us. It’s as if someone took the upper halves of two elven wine bottles and stuck the openings together before building a frame of wood around it. There’s sand in it, and it’s all in the bottom bottle.

“You see, there’s just enough sand in it so when you flip it, the sand will trickle down into the bottom half and what is called an hour will pass by the time all the sand sifts to the bottom half. There has been much debate about how many hours are in a full day. Some say thirty-four, others say thirty-eight. Most agree that thirty-six is correct. One of them high-elven wizards has used some kind of magic to keep count and make the thing flip automatically when all the sand reaches one end. He counted thirty-six times in one full day and night. Of course, it’s hard to get a good count when the sun won’t make up its mind on how long it wants to stay in the sky. But with magic, you can get the most accurate count.” Aldam pauses a minute to scratch his beard as he considers something before, he continues. “Of course, there’s been much debate about why the length of daylight changes between seasons. Many dwarven philosophers believe that the sun stays still and that our world, which is believed to be a big giant ball, spins like a top and circles around the sun. They believe the reason for the change in daylight is because our world is tilted to some degree to the side, so it spins more like a top at an angle. So, during winter, we’re at an angle where we wouldn’t get as much sunlight compared to summer on the opposite side of the sun since they believe our world revolves around it. But Nothing has been proven just yet.”

“That sounds like pig shit to me,” Thorkel says with his usual stubbornness. “Everyone knows the world is flat, and the sun starts at the east and arcs over the land to the west and resets every day.”

“I don’t know,” Thormar says as he scratches his chin. “It sorta makes sense. Haven’t you noticed that the sky changes throughout the night? It’s as if the world is spinning and we get to see different stars. I’ve also noticed that the stars are different in summer than they are in winter. That would certainly give credence to the dwarven philosophers’ claims. If we revolved around the sun, then we’d see different stars at different points in our revolution and even our rotation. Of course, what are stars, anyway?”

“Ahh, for asking a lot of annoying questions, you are an observant one. Some of my kin believe the stars are far away suns and our world is one of many. Some High Elves believe this too,” the dwarf says.

“I thought the dwarves and the elves didn’t like each other,” Thormar says.

“We don’t. But the High Elves are much more tolerable than those bloody bastard Wood Elves. Bunch of tree huggers, if you ask me. You try to cut down just one of their blasted trees and they’ll stick you full of arrows. I guess they’re the only ones allowed to cut down those trees, for how else do they get their arrows? Bunch of hypocrites, if you ask me. Can’t stand them. At least the High Elves don’t have sticks up their arses!” The dwarf barks and makes himself laugh at his own joke. “Now back to work, you lazy lot. We ain’t got all day and there’s plenty of tools to be made for the townsfolk.”

When we’re not spending our time with the dwarf, learning other crafts, and sharpening our fighting skills, we do get time to have fun. And Thorkel always knows how to have the most fun, even when it usually gets us into trouble. And of course, Thormar is always the one to tell on us to our mother. That is why we always leave him behind. He spoils everything, and he hates being left behind. Especially since our only other siblings are too young. Our sister, Svala, may only be a cycle younger than Thormar, but she’s a girl and most girls are boring, and our younger brother Bodvar, only a cycle behind her, is young enough to be boring as well.

Like always, Thorkel and I sneak out, evading Thormar’s eyes. We meet up with the sisters, Asfrid and Arngunn Hrutdottir, whose parents raid with our father’s crew, and our close friends Solmund Sividson, who’s my age, and his older brother Griotgard, who’s a little younger than Thorkel. And of course, Skardi, who doesn’t have a father or a mother but stays with Varin, father of Sivid, who is father to Solmund and Griotgard along with their older sisters Hallgerd and Jofrid. Hallgerd married our cousin Veleif, and everyone thinks Jofrid will marry his younger brother, Gilli, since the two are always together. They also have a younger brother, Hosvir, and a younger sister Vigdis. Hosvir is Thormar’s good friend.

We think Skardi is the same age as Solmund and me, but no one really knows. He can be strange, but there’s no fun to be had without him. Sometimes our cousins Gilli and Tyrkir come, they are the younger brothers of Veleif, Svafar, and Saxi, who are all brothers to Frida, Greiland, Asfrid, Asgerd, and the youngest of their family, Yngvild. All sons and daughters of Koll Alriksson and his three wives, one being my mother’s younger sister, Ingithora. The other two are Svanhild Arnthordottir, Ingithora’s closest friend and lover, which is no secret, along with Arnora Saksisdottir, another close friend. The three of them grew up together, and all fell in love with Koll, my father’s closest friend.

Gilli and Tyrkir are around our age, as Veleif, Svafar, and Saxi are all much older than us. Well, not much, but they all have wives and kids. Their sons and daughters are as old as Thormar, Bodvar, and Svala.

Part of me wants three wives, but then I see how my father and mother argue and clash and it makes me second guess that. I know my mother and father love each other, but there are times when it seems like they want to kill each other. Everyone in town knows of my father’s bravery and courage, but I know the truth. If there is one thing he fears more than anything else, it’s our mother. We all share that fear. The woman can be a force of nature.

Anyway, today our cousins aren’t with us. Sometimes the oldest son of Koll’s brother, Einar, joins us on our adventures. His name is Vog. His first sister Thorgunna sometimes joins us, but never his second sister Gudfrid, she’s Svala’s friend. Nor does his little brother Eystein. He rarely ever comes out of the house and prefers the company of books over people. He’s odd. And then there’s the runt, Trandil, who faints at the sight of blood. He’ll never be a Viking. He lives with them, but he’s the son of Koll, Einar, and Skuf’s sister. I don’t remember her name because she died many cycles ago. Koll, Einar, and Skuf had another brother, but I know little about him.

Anyway, the seven of us love to sneak out of our town through a little side gate and explore the mountains just north of our town. The dark rocky mountains reach above the inky clouds that forever shroud the sky around the range of peaks far beyond sight. They say Chillshore, a once great Northerner city that was taken by the Southern Tyrants and turned into their fortress, lies somewhere within the mountains cloaked in clouds. It was rumored to be the first great Northerner city, or Norsemen city as we used to call ourselves when we came to these lands. It is written that we came from lands from a different realm. I don’t know about that, but I know this is our home.

Of course, these mountains are dangerous, but it wouldn’t be fun if it was safe. We’re not really allowed up here without Aldam, but no one listens. Today, like every day, we find ourselves at the same cave entrance we were at yesterday. It’s a secret hidden cave Thorkel found. The mouth of the cave sits beyond a little-known path hidden behind a small passageway that is nearly invisible to the eye. I do not know how Thorkel found it. Just like yesterday, we’re still trying to convince someone to go inside.

“There could be a bear in there, or worse. What if there was a giant in there? Didn’t you hear about the giants who live in the clan in these mountains? They say they’re as tall as trees and they come from Jotunheim to the lands north of the Dead Sea,” Arngunn says as she brushes her messy blonde hair out of her face.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Griotgard says as he puffs out his chest. “I bet they’re lying. No way someone can be that tall.”

“If there was a bear in there, it’d probably smell us already and come out,” Skardi says as he obsessively looks at a rock he found. His dark brown hair is always in a mess, sticking out like spikes. “Everyone knows bears have great noses. They smell everything.”

“Screw it. I’m going in,” Thorkel says.

“Wait!” Asfrid and I say at the same time.

He doesn’t listen and walks in without hesitating. He disappears into the darkness. We all stand there, shifting uncomfortably, trading nervous glances as we wait for him to run back. Instead, we hear a gasp echo out.

“Thorkel! Are you okay?” I ask as I take a step forward.

“You guys won’t believe this. You have to see it for yourself. Come in here!” His voice echoes out and we all look at each other. Finally, Skardi pockets the rock and heads inside. Reluctantly, everyone heads in one at a time until I’m standing there by myself. I look around, take a deep breath, and head in after them.

At first, I’m blinded by darkness and panic. I feel my way around, tripping over rocks and getting a face full of dirt. My knees scrape against the hard surface. I crawl and pick myself up off the ground and dust off the dirt. The wet, mossy scent fills my nose. Slowly, as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I follow the cave as the path veers to the right. A gasp escapes my lips as light appears in the distance.

I follow it until I’m led into a large, long cavern filled with those glowing rocks and mushrooms Aldam mentioned. They light up the water, which has a misty loom to it. Skardi picks a mushroom and sniffs it. He sticks his tongue out and licks it.

“You’re seriously not going to eat that, are you?” Asfrid asks, her face contorting into disgust.

Skardi shrugs and bites into it.

“Eww gross! That could be poisonous. If you die, I’m telling everyone it was your own fault.” Asfrid crosses her arms against her chest and sticks her nose up away from him.

“It doesn’t taste half bad,” Skardi says as he stuffs the whole mushroom into his mouth.

“Aldam, the dwarf said it’s not poisonous. It just turns your skin dark among other things,” I say.

I hear a crash and turn to find Solmund laying on the ground.

“What are you doing?” Arngunn asks as she crouches down to look at Solmund.

“I was trying to take one of these glowing rocks back to our town. They won’t believe us otherwise,” he says as he dusts himself off and tries again. “But… they’re… too… heavy…”

He finally relents and gives up. “I can’t lift even this small one.”

“Aldam said they were too heavy. He said only experts mine those,” I say.

“Where’s Thorkel?” Asfrid asks. We all look around and Griotgard spots him all the way at the end of the cavern, staring at something. As we walk up to him, it becomes clear what he’s looking at.

“What a strange thing to find in a cave,” Skardi says.

“Who do you think left it here?” Asfrid asks. Everyone shrugs.

“I don’t care. It’s mine now,” Thorkel says as he steps up to one of the biggest hammers I’ve ever seen. It’s no ordinary hammer. It’s taller than Arngunn, which may not seem like much since she’s the shortest one here, but it’s saying a lot for a hammer. Of course, I’m not much taller than Arni. My father is tall, and I want to be taller than him and Thorkel. It’s made out of a metal I’ve never seen before. A dark crimson metal with a golden trim around it. The handle is all gold. For some reason, I keep imagining wielding a hammer like this. It’s hard to push the thought out of my head.

“With this hammer, I’ll be the strongest warrior there is and no one will be able to defeat me. I’ll be able to kill all of those Southerners.” Thorkel steps up and wraps his hands around the long golden hilt. A loud grunt comes out of his mouth as he tries to lift the hammer. The thing doesn’t even budge. He tries to change up his stance and his grip. He heaves and pulls, but the hammer doesn’t move a finger’s length. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t move the hammer even a sliver.

Griotgard steps up. “Let me try. I’m stronger. I want to be the strongest warrior and kill as many Southerners as I can.”

Thorkel steps aside and glares at Griotgard. However, Griotgard can’t get it to move any more than Thorkel could.

“If neither of them can move it, then none of us can,” I say.

“There’s some kind of writing on it,” Skardi says as he walks up to get a better look at it.

“What does it say?” Asfrid asks.

“How would I know? I can’t read,” Skardi says.

“Move aside, I can read,” she says as she pushes past Skardi. She leans down to get a better look, but her face contorts in confusion. “I have never seen runes like these before. If you can call them that. I have no idea what it is.”

“Maybe we should go,” Arngunn says as she steps closer to me, looking around unsteadily.

“Oooh, don’t be a frightened little cat, Arni,” Griotgard says as he tries to imitate her voice.

“Don’t say that to her,” I say as I step up to him.

“And what are you going to do about it?” Griotgard asks as steps up to me.

“Be careful, Griotgard. I consider you a close friend, but Bothvar is my brother,” Thorkel says nonchalantly as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.

“She’s right, though. What if the person who put the hammer there comes back for it? Do you honestly think someone would just leave a hammer like that here in a place like this? And whoever left it there must be strong. Do you think any of us would be able to fight him?” Skardi asks, then he snaps around and stares into the wall of the cavern. “Did you hear that?”

Everyone looks around quickly. Skardi walks up to the wall and pushes his ear up to it. Then he giggles.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have eaten those mushrooms,” Asfrid says, shaking her head.

Skardi just laughs at her and starts picking more of those strange, glowing mushrooms. “No way. I feel fantastic right now. They make me… happy.”

“Well, I’m done here anyway. I’m hungry. Let’s go back and see if we can sneak into Thyri’s and find anything to eat. I wouldn’t mind some fresh baked bread, especially with that tazzle berry jam she makes,” Thorkel says. That is one of many things Thorkel and I have in common, a love for anything with tazzle berries, especially pie. The fruit is rare; a delicacy only found in the land of the dwarves. Same with tingle fruit, which I’ve been told only grows in the blue-eyed elven land. Or maybe it was the green eyes. I can’t remember. If it weren’t for their eyes, I wouldn’t be able to tell one from the other. But either way, those two fruits are my favorite. While tazzle berries are nice and sweet and tingle fruit is rather tart, they both fizzle in your mouth. Tingle fruit makes for the best wine while tazzle berries make for an amazing pie.

Arngunn grabs my hand and I follow her out.

We make our way down the mountain before we realize Skardi isn’t with us. With groans, we turn back and find him picking at rocks and sniffing them. Thorkel grabs him and practically drags him back.

“Did you see that?” Skardi asks as we finally get back to the town walls. “It was in the water. I swear I saw something out there.”

We all look out onto the water, but nothing is there.

“Probably those mushrooms,” Asfrid says.

“What are you lot doing outside the walls?”

We stop dead as we turn to find Gorm Thorgilsson, a tall skinny boy, with his younger brother Moldof and their friends, Hring, Geitirgest, Sigmund, Ulfjot, and Gunnstein, waiting at the side gate.

“Nothing you need to worry your little head about, Grom,” Thorkel says, purposely butchering his name.

“It’s Gorm! You may be the Earl’s son, but that doesn’t mean you’re better than me. Besides, your father’s days as Earl might be numbered the way he led us to defeat under the dead king.”

Arngunn’s hand grips mine as she steps up close to me. I step up between them and her, but I’m more than afraid. They far outnumber us. And Gunnstein and Ulfjot are the biggest boys in the village. Thorkel forms a fist and steps up to Gorm. “Better watch your tongue and keep my father’s name off it or I’ll cut it out.”

Gorm’s friends step up between him and Thorkel. He only grins. “I’d like to see you try.”

“Oh, aren’t you a brave warrior, hiding behind your friends,” Asfrid says.

“Watch your tongue, you stupid nissy twat!” Gorm shouts.

“Don’t talk to her like that!” Thorkel shouts as he charges them, slamming his fist against Hring, sending him to the ground. Gunnstein and Ulfjot tackle him. Solmund and Griotgard hurl themselves at them.

Griotgard kicks Ulfjot right in the mouth, knocking teeth out. “Get off my best friend!”

Skardi stands there laughing hysterically. I just stand there frozen with Arngunn’s hand in my trembling fingers as my brother and our friends’ fight. Even Asfrid runs in kicking and screaming.

“What’s going on here?” Everyone stops what they’re doing as they look up to find our mother, Thorkatla, with our aunt, Sigvor, the wise one, along with several guards. My mom practically tugs at her long black hair. That’s when you know she’s really mad. Her eyes are as sharp as daggers. Her tall, thin frame towers over us. Our Aunt Sigvor is a lot like her in appearance, with the same beautiful, agile face, but with an auburn tinge to her hair. What they share in appearance is offset by how different their personalities are. Where my mother is hot-tempered, her sister is calm. I suppose their other sister, Ingithora, splits the difference, sharing their physical looks, but a personality just as hot as it is cold.

“Nothing. We were just having a little fun, that’s all,” my brother says as he pushes himself off Gunnstein, giving him a good kick as he gets up.

Ulfjot tries to push him, but one of the guards steps in. “That’s enough!”

Reluctantly, everyone breaks apart. Our mother steps up. “Now all of you go home before I tan your hide. All of you except you two.”

She points at Thorkel and me. We both look at each other as the others make their way into town. Both Asfrid and Arngunn look back at us before they head beyond the gate. Mother steps up and growls at us. “What in the name of all the gods were you two doing outside the walls?”

“We were just…” Thorkel goes to say, but mother doesn’t give him a chance.

“Do you not understand that the Southerners could attack us at any time?” Her glare is colder than a winter freeze.

“But mot…”

“But nothing. You’ll be lucky I don’t hang you up by your ankles. Maybe then you’ll have enough blood in your head to think properly.”

Thorkel goes pure white. Both of us know not to tempt our mother. Her wrath can be far harsher than father’s.

Her icy glare turns on me. “I expected this out of Thorkel, but with you I thought better.”

My eyes fall to the ground. Her disappointment hurts worse than any punishment. “I’m sorry, mother.”

“You should be. Now both of you, come. You both will have enough work to do to keep you busy and out of trouble for the next few cycles of the seasons.”

We reluctantly follow our mother and aunt into town. As we get to our house, Thormar’s waiting with Svala, Bothvar, and the slaves. He snickers at us. Thorkel brings his thumb to his throat, making a slicing motion. Thormar’s face goes white as snow.

“I saw that!” Mother snaps and the color in Thorkel’s drains, matching Thormar’s. I can’t help but feel ashamed of myself. Not only did we anger our mother, but I have proven that I am a coward. What kind of Viking doesn’t fight to protect his father’s honor and have his brother’s back? Even Thormar would have fought. But I stayed back and watched. What is wrong with me?

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