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so I started trying to find a place to work. There was a blacksmith inmy village; I began doing odd jobs for him, sneaking out when the old man was drunk. For some reason I grew up quick and was soon doing hammer work. In my twelfth summer, I packed on some muscle, but my father didn’t notice. Then once, he came home from drinking and I was standing too close to the door, so he punched me, sent me flying across the room. Then he grabbed Mother. He was rough with her, so I stood up, told him to let her go. He laughed at me. I told him again. He said, ‘Or what?’ I said I’d make him.”
    Audun took a sip of mead. “That was one step too far. I got his attention. He went for me with his belt, tanned me, then grabbed me around the neck. He was going to strangle me, and I . . .”
    “You felt the fire,” Fjölnir said. “There was a fire inside you. Something that burned. Some kind of beast that needed to get out.”
    “Yes.”
    There was a long pause as the two men eyed each other up.
    “How did he die?” Fjölnir finally asked.
    “I knocked him to the floor and broke his face,” Audun said. “I smashed it. I couldn’t stop hitting him.”
    “And then . . . ?”
    “My mother—she put a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and the look on her face made . . . It made the fire go away.” Audun took another, deeper, swig of mead. The sweetness was cloying. “I couldn’t stay. His friends would have rounded us up and killed us. My mother pleaded with me, insisted I take all she owned, which turned out to be three pieces of silver. She cried so much that I took them. Then I broke into the forge and took a hammer. I left the silver. I have been running since.”
    Fjölnir nodded. “Thank you for telling me your story.” They sat quietly for some time until the old man rose, picked up a poker, and moved to the fire. “Look,” he said and blew on the embers. Flames danced toward the ceiling, tendrils stretching like flowers to the sun. “The flame is dangerous. It burns. But you decide how bad it gets.” He looked at Audun. “It does not own us. It does not decide who we are. We do.” He walked over to the chest by the door, pickedit up, and placed it in front of Audun. “I want you to have this,” he said. “It belonged to my son, but he has no claim to it now.”
    “I can’t take it,” Audun said. “Whatever it is.”
    “I would ask you to do it for me, as a favor. There will be a lot of trouble on your path before your journey is done, Audun Arngrimsson.”
    Grinning, the old man reached into the apparently bottomless food basket. “Now we eat till we’re fat and drink till we’re drunk, and I’ll tell you a story of what happens if you spend a night in the forest when the moon is full!”
    Audun accepted the refilled mug Fjölnir thrust at him and took another deep, long swig. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for my food. Thank you for—” His words failed him. “Thank you.”
    The old man smiled. “Shut up and drink. Now, there are many places you can go when the moon is round as a whore’s teat, but my forest is not one of them. Let me tell you a story . . .”
    The hammer blows from outside reverberated around the inside of Audun’s sore head. His mouth felt like an old sock, and his bladder was full to bursting point. He rolled out of bed and banged his knee on the chest. Muttering a curse, he stumbled to his feet and noticed that the hammering had stopped.
    Fjölnir’s voice rang out across the farmstead. “Well met, strangers! What brings riders to my end of Setr Valley?”

VALLE, WEST NORWAY
    OCTOBER, AD 996
    The air in the barn stank of moldering hay and horse sweat. Ulfar’s stomach turned. His skin was clammy, intermittently cold and hot, and he could feel the sheen of dirty sweat on his forehead under the greasy strands of long, black hair.
    She was writhing under him, trying to make a good show of it, whoever she was. “Come on,” she whispered.