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and Grettir were in the hall beyond her bedchamber, so close that surely they would hear her squeal. Her mother was complaining that the door to one of the window shutters was warped and wouldn’t close, and Hrolf was saying, “Let me shut it for you,” his voice a study in dutiful solemnity.
    Hallgerd made a noise through her nose. Her mother seemed to hear something, stopping midsentence.
    Sigrid was listening, her attention a palpable presence. And then she started talking again.
    Hallgerd snorted, wrestling, trapped in the arms that held her.
    She struggled hard, kicking over a stool, striking the clothes chest as she swung her foot, digging her elbows sharply into her captor’s sturdy body. As strong arms grappled with her, the sounds of swords clashing came from the darkness beyond, at the village edge.
    Her wrists were bound together, and a gag was thrust into her mouth. A cloth sack was flung over Hallgerd’s head. Even as she struggled, kicking, crying out against the salt-cured leather between her teeth, she was lifted like a bundle and handed out through the window.
    She made as much noise as she could, stifled cries that must have been audible to any neighbor paying the smallest bit of attention. She dug the point of her chin, muffled within its sack, into the muscular back that bore her. The man grunted, but neither cursed her nor made any attempt to hurt her, aside from increasing his grip around her ankles.
    You will eat my father’s sword .
    The man kept a steady loping stride, running with little sound over the soft pasture.
    Ravens will prick your eyes .
    She prayed to Odin the Cunning. She prayed to Thor, friend to plowman and woodgatherer. She prayed to her dead ancestors, the legendary Inga Alfsdottir, who invented the loom, and Ketill, who discovered the hot springs above Midwife Mountain. She prayed to gods of field and water, cursing this stranger.
    Whoever carried her was traveling ever faster now, his shoulder forcing the breath from her body as she hung, head down, wrestling and wrenching from side to side. Blind within her wool sack, trying to guess the direction they were traveling, she was certain that at any moment her mother would cry out—or perhaps Hrolf, who had always been vain regarding his own watchfulness, would sound a warning.
    Certainly her father would see what was happening, or a neighbor. And people did notice—she could hear the startled voices, but too late, too far behind—Grettir’s cry, and Hrolf’s, “She’s gone!”
    She could make out Rognvald’s voice, “Men and women to their swords!”
    Danish accents surrounded her, men panting, leather armor creaking, while far behind, and in another direction, swords rang against shields. Her father would scatter these invaders like unweaned pups!
    Sheep made their low, startled noises as her captors made their way through the flock. The sharp, familiar odor of the livestock rose around them, and then receded as the heavily breathing men made rapid progress up-slope.
    If any neighbor was going to spy her captors it would have to be now, before they reached the great, lichen-splashed boulders at the foot of the mountains, the paths she knew so well from the long summer twilights, climbing with Lidsmod up to their favorite, secret place, an elf cave just big enough for two people.
    But there was nothing—no cry, and even the sound of battle was muted, was gone. She arched her body, freeing one leg.
    She kicked.
    Her captor struggled to seize her foot, grabbing and missing. She jacked her deerskin shoe hard into his manhood.
    The stranger threw her down into the wet sheep-grass, with a deliberate, even movement. Two hard hands roughly cradled her head, and a voice hissed, “Do that again, beautiful prize, and I’ll break every bone in your skin.”
    She grunted a retort through her gag. To her surprise her captor simply laughed and gave her a gentle pat