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ONE
Istré
H ekla silently cursed herself as she peeled away from the warm firm body wrapped around hers.
There was an art to extracting oneself from a bed companion—an art Hekla had never needed to learn.
She had rules for dealing with her paramours, after all: No soft sentiments and no spending the night.
But above all else, Hekla never allowed a man to have power over her.
Now, she’d pay the price for breaking her rules.
Hekla refused to consider how this man had convinced her to spend the night, not while contorting her body to slide out from under his heavy arm.
Her bare feet hit the floor, and Hekla’s chest swelled with victory.
But the incoherent mutterings coming from the bed made panic spiral inside her.
There was movement behind her, and Hekla braced herself for the man to awaken.
But he simply rolled onto his back and stilled.
Releasing a long exhale, she slunk from the bed.
Her first thought was that she was utterly naked and without her prosthetic arm.
Her second, was that brigands must have broken into the room.
Bleary- eyed, she blinked at the chaos before her.
A chair overturned near the hearth, fur rugs bunched and jumbled about.
The grandeur of her paramour’s chambers was startling in the light of day.
Between the twin hearths on either end of the room and the enormity of the bed in which her companion currently snored, she wondered how much such lodgings had cost him.
But Hekla gave herself a mental shake and began the painstaking process of fishing her tunic and breeches from the detritus in the room.
Where in the gods’ sacred ashes had her arm gone?
Pulling her tunic over her head, Hekla tried to piece last night’s events together.
It had been the first of the Winter Nights, a celebration honoring the end of the harvest season, and the whole of Istré had gathered in the mead hall.
Hekla had been in a sour mood. Her reasons were two-fold: Firstly, Istré’s local chieftain had gone forward with the celebrations despite the threat of a murderous mist. And secondly, the blockhead had refused her participation in the festival’s fighting games.
Instead, Hekla had watched Istré’s locals stumble around the ring, knowing she could best them all while blindfolded. It had been a frustrating night indeed; that was, until she’d found an outlet for said frustrations.
Hekla glanced over her shoulder at the sleeping man.
An assortment of shining black braids spilled across his angular cheekbones and jaw, his full lips buried in a neatly trimmed beard.
A memory flashed in her mind of those lips pressing kisses up her sternum.
She whipped away from him with a shaky breath and resumed searching for her missing arm.
She’d been reckless to lose track of it.
A sharp sound split the air, and Hekla’s hand went instinctively to her dagger. It took her a moment to realize it was only the man’s snores. He rolled once more, but she sensed he’d soon awaken.
Where was her gods-damned arm? She considered leaving without it. She could write to Axe Eyes. Have him arrange the production of a new one. The Tailor still had her measurements. Hekla could continue this job one-armed until a replacement was found.
It was at this moment that a gleam caught her eye—her arm, buried beneath a rug near the hearth. And with that, another unwelcome memory surged back. An expanse of golden skin as the man lay on that rug, clutching her hips while Hekla rode him...
She forced the thought aside and snatched her prosthesis before edging toward the door. Hand on the doorlatch, Hekla couldn’t resist one last look toward the bed. But as she glanced his way, her companion’s dark eyelashes fluttered.
With serpent-quick speed, Hekla dashed through the door.
She didn’t dare breathe until she reached her own chambers.
“Open up, Fire Fist!” Hekla bellowed, pounding her left fist against Gunnar’s door. “The crew from Kopa is here and we’re to meet them this morning!” She paused, waiting for any sign of life in the room beyond. As expected, only silence met her ears.
With a sigh, Hekla rested her forehead against the door, sorrow and worry mingling within her.
Ever since Ilías’s death, Gunnar had been a shadow of himself, preferring to stay enclosed in his rooms. Hekla had done what she could to help him through his grief—had brought him food, drawn him baths, and even urged him to speak of his sorrows.
And while she’d been content to pick up the slack so Gunnar could grieve in peace, today was different.
Hekla had returned to her chambers to find a note beneath her door.
It seemed Eyvind bloody Hakonsson had arrived in Istré to take over the job with the mist, and he was three days early.
Had Hekla known she’d be expected at the arse crack of dawn, she wouldn’t have partaken in such late-night activities.
“Come on, Gunnar,” Hekla pleaded, thunking her head against the door. “Let us go down for the daymeal. Meet Hakonsson and his men. Then you can return to your chambers. ”
A floorboard groaned, and the door cracked open, revealing Gunnar’s tall, broad frame, clad in a rumpled tunic. His skin, normally a vibrant, deep brown, was ashen. New lines were carved beneath his eyes and into his brow. He looked, to put it mildly, like he’d aged a decade since Ilías’s death.
Hekla schooled her face to hide her reaction.
“Let us get through this,” said Gunnar blandly, closing the door behind him and pushing past Hekla.
With a relieved exhale, Hekla trailed behind him.
She wished she could find the right thing to say to Gunnar—to bring back the jovial Fire Fist who loved puns and pocketing everyone’s sólas at games of dice.
But everything had changed since that day on the Road of Bones.
They’d lost No Beard that day, the Wolf, and Axe Eyes soon after.
Never in a hundred years would Hekla have guessed she’d be holding the Bloodaxe Crew together in the absence of Axe Eyes.
For the hundredth time, she thought of the birch bark missive nailed to Istré’s gates—the one with Rey and Silla’s likeness etched upon it.
Slátrari , it said, beneath Rey’s face. Hekla had laughed it off at first. But as the days stretched on without Rey’s arrival in Istré, she considered the facts.
On the Road of Bones, Rey had shielded Silla from having to reveal the reason the Klaernar sought her.
For a man who valued honesty above all else, it had seemed puzzling at the time.
But now that Hekla considered it, wouldn’t this out-of-character behavior make sense if Rey, too, were Galdra?
Galdra, perhaps, but the Slátrari ? The murderer prowling the Road of Bones, burning people alive?
That was entirely another matter. She wanted to look into his eyes and demand answers.
But the knowing place inside Hekla told her to trust in his character.
The Rey she knew was calculating. Strategic.
And though he was gruff and cold on the surface, below that, Hekla knew he cared deeply for others.
There was not a chance he’d murdered those people for fun; if he was, in fact, the Slátrari, there would be a good reason for the killings.
She sighed. The facts were what they were.
Hekla had stepped in to fill Axe Eyes’s role, and in the early days, she’d felt a sort of exhilaration.
As a woman in a mercenary crew, she’d never thought such doors might be open to her.
Though the circumstances were grim, she’d been eager to fill the role of leader of the Bloodaxe Crew.
That was until it became clear that Istré’s chieftain had no interest in working with her.
Loftur the All-Wise had brushed aside her every suggestion.
In fact, the loathsome man barely tolerated her presence.
It had been a shocking discovery for Hekla, who’d grown used to Rey’s mindful consideration.
He’d always allowed each member of the Bloodaxe Crew to voice their opinions.
Now, Rey’s friend from Kopa would arrive with his retinue to take control of the job, and Hekla found her eagerness rushing back.
Perhaps this was the change they needed to convince Istré’s hard-headed chieftain of what needed to be done.
As Hekla and Gunnar descended the inn’s stairs, she felt like a weary warrior, bolstered by an ally sweeping onto the battlefield at the last hour.
They passed through a short corridor into the adjacent mead hall.
The Hungry Blade was quiet at this hour, candles flickering serenely in iron chandeliers, while morning light crept beneath the window coverings.
But remnants of the previous night’s celebrations were clear with the stale mead and sweat hanging in the air.
The chaotic state of the room was a match to the chambers Hekla had recently vacated.
She passed the slumped form of Onund Ale Drinker and winked at the exhausted-looking barkeep, Halldora, who hauled a kettle of róa across the room.
Sigrún seemed to materialize from thin air, touching Hekla’s elbow gently. Light caught the scarred flesh climbing from beneath Sigrún’s collar and across the side of her skull, her ash-blonde hair flipped to the opposite side of her head, displaying the burns without shame.
Another memory jostled forth. Sigrún had been with her the night before, though only briefly.
A group of strangers had entered the mead hall, and Sigrún had vanished into the shadows, not to be seen for the rest of the night.
Flighty did not begin to describe Sigrún’s behavior since Ilías’s death.
The petite warrior was as skittish as a squirrel.
“Are you well?” Hekla asked, signing the words as she spoke them.
Fine, Sigrún signed back, her gaze hard as she stared across the room.
Hekla followed her line of sight, gaze settling on the group of warriors seated at the far end of a long table.
Their heads were bowed in quiet conversation, and Hekla felt a moment of apprehension.
But she pushed it aside, reminding herself that these men were the reinforcements they badly needed.
Shoulders back, she strode across the hall to greet them.
One voice lifted above the others, and Hekla’s blood flamed hot in recognition.
Loftur the so-called “All-Wise”, village chieftain and official pain in her arse.
Tall, with gray streaks in his blond beard, Hekla guessed the man had seen near fifty winters.
Loftur lounged in the high chair like a king on his throne.
Hekla’s smile turned brittle as she took in the warriors gathered around Loftur. All this time, she’d thought she could not get through to the man because she was not an Istré local. But as she watched him speak amiably with the warriors from Kopa, she suddenly understood.
Not a single pair of tits amongst them.
Feigning a casual air that she most certainly did not feel, Hekla strode across the mead hall, Gunnar and Sigrún flanking her.
“Ahh.” Loftur’s steely brown eyes met hers. “Here comes the Bloodaxe Crew now.”
The warriors surrounding him shifted, watching her in silence.
Which one was Eyvind Hakonsson, trusted friend of Axe Eyes and a much-needed ally in her plight with Loftur? Hekla waited for one of the men to stand and introduce himself. But as they turned back to their róa in a less-than-warm welcome, Hekla scowled.
She knew nothing of this Eyvind, save that he was second heir to House Hakon.
While everyone knew of Jarl Hakon, and his heir, Atli Hakonsson, Eyvind himself remained a mystery.
She folded her arms over her chest, trying to quell her rising irritation.
But then Hekla thought of Rey’s letter—of how he’d vouched for Eyvind as a competent leader.
She opened her mouth to ask which of these men was Eyvind, but the mead hall doors banged open.
The men at the long table shot to their feet, and Hekla turned to find two men striding into the hall.
Squinting at the figures backlit by the intense morning light, Hekla’s eyes fell first upon the stout man with an impressive, grizzled beard.
He was dressed in the finest armor Hekla had ever seen, emblazoned with the dragon sigil belonging to House Hakon.
But as her gaze flitted to the taller figure, a crimson cloak streaming behind him, her heart lurched.
She knew that cloak.
“Ah, you’re all here!”
She knew that voice.
The figures approached, and Hekla felt the strangest sort of detachment—as though this was not happening before her very eyes.
But then, the inevitable happened: Their gazes locked. The man’s hazel eyes widened only a fraction. Soft lips—lips she’d tried to forget—parted. He passed a hand along the intricate warrior braids woven along the sides of his skull—braids which Hekla had caressed the night before.
Her paramour recovered before she did. “Well met.” He thrust a large hand out. “I’m Eyvind Hakonsson.”