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was saying, mostly because it was making her doubt herself. Why had she run at the man with her sword instead ofcalling for the guards? Then she remembered. “He had a poisoned dagger. He was going to stab Arinbjörn.”
    Her uncle flicked an eye toward a guard, who detached himself from the group and jogged from the hall, his head bent low. To find the Bronding’s dagger, Hild understood, to check it for poison.
    “And because he had a poisoned dagger, you decided it was up to you to kill him?”
    “I didn’t decide.”
    Her uncle narrowed his eyes and cocked his head, as if he was puzzled. “What do you mean, Hild?”
    “I—” She fumbled for words, trying to explain. “I knew more about those men than I did about myself. As soon as I knew they were going to murder Arinbjörn, it was like it wasn’t even me anymore.”
    “Go on.”
    “I was so angry I couldn’t see. I didn’t know what I was doing—I don’t remember doing anything. And then he was dead.”
    Behind her she heard her mother’s sharp intake of breath.
    The men around the king began to murmur, their voices growing louder, although Hild couldn’t distinguish their words. Bragi leaned forward to whisper into the king’s ear, but his eyes were on Hild.
    “Mother?” Hild asked.
    Her uncle’s voice cut through the noise. “Has ithappened before? Or is this the first time you have been possessed?”
    Possessed?
    Guards stepped to her sides. She could feel that one of them was Garwulf. But she could feel nothing else.

SEVEN
    T HE KING ’ S EXPRESSION WAS TERRIFYING . I N HER UNCLE ’ S face, Hild saw a stranger, someone who felt no tenderness for her.
    Her knees locked so tight that if the guard standing beside her had given her the slightest push, she would have toppled.
    Bragi stepped forward. His eyes were on the king but his voice was pitched for everyone in the hall to hear. “The choosers of the slain,” he said, and Hild heard murmuring from someone near her. “The spirit women who decide men’s fates …” He paused.
    Hild stood rigid, listening.
    “They make their choices during battle, not on the practice field. The choosers of the slain are spirits, not living women.” Bragi looked from the king to Hild and shestared back at him, unable to move. “They do not inhabit the bodies of living women. Only a malign force could possess a person with anger this way, taking control of her body, making her do its will.”
    At the word
malign
, the king moved his fingers, and more guards stepped close to Hild, metal rasping as they drew their weapons, until she was caged by a bristling fence of spear points, daggers, and swords. When cold iron touched the back of her neck, she flinched.
    There was a movement in the crowd around the king, and for a moment, Hild saw Arinbjörn’s face. Then people shifted again, and Ari Frothi, who had been supplanted by Bragi even before his voice had lost its strength, waved his arm for attention, making her lose sight of her cousin. She watched as the king motioned the old skald forward, and Ari Frothi, leaning on his little grandson’s shoulder as if it were a cane, shuffled out of the crowd. Age had dimmed his eyes, and Hild wasn’t sure whether he could see her, or whether he was deliberately avoiding looking at her. When she was young, Ari Frothi had always had time for her and Beyla and Arinbjörn, to tell them stories of heroes and heroines or test their wits with riddles. She didn’t think she could bear to hear the awful things he would say about her, and she tried to look away but found herself stiff, as if she were carved from wood.
    Ari Frothi’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. He cleared his throat, then cleared it again. People leanedforward to hear him. “Evil spirits may possess a person, as Bragi has told us,” he said, his voice hoarse. “But the gods may do so, too.”
    Men standing near the dais turned to each other and Hild heard snatches of their whispers. Someone