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it tucked into the crook of her arm—it would tell the goddess of her coming. Her metal bracelets adorned her wrists, and in one hand Rune placed her comb, the one he had carved for her from whalebone last winter. Two of the teeth had broken while he was making it, but he remembered how proud he’d felt when the cat decoration he’d added had turned out so well. Amma had hardly said a word about it, but Rune had seen the way she looked at it, the way she held it in her palm when she didn’t think he was looking.
    He swallowed hard. Then, kneeling, he put his fist to his chest and lowered his head. “I will avenge you,” he said. “By Thor’s hammer, I swear I will find the dragon and kill it. I promise.”
    He had thought laying Amma in the grave would be the hardest thing he’d ever done, but he was wrong. Showering earth down on her body was even harder. As the blanket in which he had wrapped her disappeared, his anger transformed to grief again and tears coursed down his face, mingling with his sweat.
    Finally, the grave filled, he covered it with flat stones from the stream. He stood beside it, panting, wondering what to do next. No holly grew near here that he could burn on the graves. Nor was there a woman to sing the song of mourning.
    A sound from the hut made him turn in alarm. He smiled through his tears. Ollie stood by the rain barrel, watching him. A patch of wool had been singed from her flank—the work of the dragon.
    Rune went inside and fetched a handful of grain for her. When she came forward to get it, he wrapped his arm around her neck, giving the little goat a hug. She shook herself free and nosed at the grain.
    Then, exhausted and shivering as a chill breeze blew over his sweat-soaked tunic, Rune returned to the hut, threw himself down on his pallet, and slept as if he, too, were dead.

SIX
    RUNE STIRRED, THEN ROLLED OVER, LONG STRANDS OF HIS dark hair falling into his face. Insects rustled in the thatch. Through closed lids, he could detect light. He squinted one eye open just enough to see through the smoke hole. Blue sky. It would be a fair day.
    He pulled the scratchy goat-hair blanket over his head again and fell back into a doze, waiting for the sound of the fire snapping and the smell of bread baking in the ashes. Any minute now, Amma would start one of her low chanting prayers to Freyja.
    Amma.
    Rune’s eyes snapped open. It hadn’t been a dream. She was dead. And he was alone.
    He couldn’t get his breath. A terrible weight pressed against his chest, and he thought he might be sick. Unableto think, unable to move, he lay rigid on his pallet, battling the burden that threatened to drown him. The heaviness turned to helplessness, the knowledge that he had chosen wrong.
I could have saved her. I could have warned her
. Beyond all desire, he wished he had come home instead of going to the king. He saw himself standing on the crag, deciding what to do—and making the wrong choice.
    Again he saw the dragon soaring through the twilit sky, belching flames at field and farm, thatched roofs lighting like torches, people running in terror—and then falling as dragonflame enveloped them. The anger he had felt while he was digging the graves still lay smoldering in his belly. Now it kindled into rage, pushing away the terrible weight of his grief.
    He sat up, groaning at the ache in his shoulders, the dirt-encrusted blisters on his hands. He’d been too worn-out to even think of washing last night after he had buried Amma.
    He looked around the hut he’d shared with her all these years, at the fire pit in the middle, cold and black in the dim morning light, at the altars to Thor and Freyja, the stone image of the goddess no longer in its place beside the carving of the god’s wagon. Amma’s loom leaned against the thick earthen wall that protected them from the north wind, stones dangling from the warp threads, a pattern just beginning to emerge in the weft. On the eastern wall hung a