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signs well. Rune, who spent his youth training for this day. His brother, Rune, King of Gunir. Choice and risk were two things Rune would never have the luxury to exercise.
    “I am not king,” Bergen said. “I don’t have to risk.”
    “There is another way,” Rune said. “War isn’t our only option.”
    “Isn’t it?” Bergen said. “And will you be here when the Dokkalfar find their dead and come to tear down our walls? Will you stand by, idle and ready to negotiate while they carve open your back and tear out your ribs?” Bergen shook his head. “No, Brother. I will not be one who stands and fights to die. You said yourself that their weapons are too great and they have a Seidkona.”
    “The Dokkalfar will come and we will defend ourselves,” Rune said.
    “They started this!” Bergen shouted. “When they took Swann’s life from her, they took the very spirit from this city. Just like Zabbai!”
    A familiar cold plunged itself through Bergen’s rage as he realized what he had just said.
    “Bergen,” Rune said.
    Bergen’s throat clamped shut and he turned his attention to his hate and the saddle.
    “Bergen, what happened in Râ-Kedet?”
    “I’m going,” Bergen grumbled.
    “Bergen.”
    Bergen raised his eyes to his brother and shook his head. “I can’t stay here.” He pulled himself into the saddle and pulled back the reins, steering the horse from the stall. “I’m going for help.”
    “Bergen.”
    “Goodbye, Brother.” And snapping the reins, Bergen sent his horse cantering out of the stables.
    “Bergen!”
     

* * *
     
    Rune fell to the courtyard of stone.
    My sister. My mother. My father. My brother.
    His back hunched as a shadow crept in. He felt it like fingers twisting its darkness through him, cutting off his air. A cold chill, a dark pain remained in its wake like a wraith.
    Rune gasped against the pain, insurmountable pain that made it hurt to breathe.  His body shook as he battled back the shadow that threatened to take him.
    And why shouldn’t it?
    He stared at the stone. He wanted to die, to rise up and kill, to avenge.
    This shadow.
    He watched it twist its ugly darkness into his mother in a matter of moments until she succumbed to its plague, its vile filth. He watched it consume his father, who rose up and slaughtered the children. And now it took Bergen.
    “Rune?”
    Rune ignored Geirolf’s quaking voice.
    “Rune.”
    This is how it will be: the shadow and me.
    “Your Majesty.”
    The title pulled Rune’s attention back to Gunir. “What is it, Geirolf?”
    No answer.
    Rune pulled himself up from his knees while wrestling back the shadow that had beaten him down to subservience.
    “Geirolf. What is it?” Rune said and looked to Geirolf.
    As white as his hair, Geirolf stood sick with fear, his attention not on the west where Bergen had fled or on the new king beside him, but the Dokkalfar army that filled the horizon to the south.
    Eyolf.
    At the bottommost depths of Rune’s being, a fire sparked to life and he raised his eyes to the horizon. The shadow within swelled, urging him to fight, to avenge, and to spill the blood of those who killed his sister. That was what the shadow wanted.
    Rune focused all his energy on the flame that churned his insides.
    The shadow did this. The shadow did all of this.
    “Your Highness?” Geirolf asked.
    Rune looked at Geirolf and raised his head with the command taught to him by his father. “To war,” Rune said as the Dokkalfar war horn sounded.
     
     

PART TWO

 

    CHAPTER 8
     
    995 th year after Baldr
     
    Olaf listened to the sweet voice flowing down the limestone cave lit with torches. The usual stench of bat feces, ammonia, and dampness was strangely absent, just as it had been a moon ago when he had last visited the Seidkona's domicile. Nevertheless, he pulled his fur and hide coat tighter around broad shoulders made wide from three decades of swordplay. His long, blond beard protruded from the fur lapels of his