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Hekla leapt down from the wall, knees nearly buckling as they absorbed her weight. Without missing a beat, she broke into a jog, trailing a safe distance behind the mist. Four trills whistled in reply to her signal, then a fifth, but not a sixth. Hekla frowned, worry twisting in her gut.

But she could not allow herself to dwell on it.

As the V-shaped pillars marking Istré’s town square came into view, Hekla imagined Gunnar touching his torch to the pine resin they’d drizzled along the ground.

In her mind’s eye, she saw flames bursting skyward, racing along the trail of pitch and creating a fiery barrier between the mist and those wagons.

As if on cue, the mist’s rage rattled the air. Had it reached its blistering fence? Found itself trapped?

Hekla jogged down Istré’s main road, stopping before the wall of flames. Beyond it, the mist looked like a boiling storm cloud, trapped in a seamless prison of flames as high as a man is tall. She allowed herself this moment of victory, but the mist seemed to sense her presence and turned to her.

With a screech, it surged forward. But as it met the line of fire, the mist jerked back.

Hekla ignored it, pulling out the longbow she’d stashed behind a water barrel. Movement in her periphery signaled Sigrún’s arrival.

During their planning session, Sigrún had been steadfast in her assurances that she could complete this part of the task.

But as Hekla watched her feet falter—saw the pure, unbridled fear in Sigrún’s eyes—doubt crept in.

The glossy scarring along Sigrún’s neck and scalp glowed orange in the firelight, vanishing under her collar, and emerging from the cuff of her left sleeve where it covered the whole of her hand.

In all their years together, Sigrún had never spoken of her scars.

But her reaction to the flames affirmed Hekla’s long-held suspicion—they had been wrought by fire.

“Can you do it?” Hekla asked, inwardly cursing herself. But with her prosthetic hand, Hekla had never been able to grip the bow properly, and Gunnar, well, Rey had once deemed his archery skills to be “worse than a drunken child’s.”

Sigrún swallowed. Turning, she met Hekla’s gaze, eyes hard with determination. Sigrún nodded, taking the bow and quiver of arrows from Hekla.

“We’ve five minutes or less,” growled Gunnar, rushing from the shadows with four of Eyvind’s men on his heels. He placed a bucket at Sigrún’s feet filled with thick, glossy, and highly flammable pitch.

“The other barrels?” asked Hekla.

“Hidden amongst the pillars,” replied Gunnar.

Her gaze fell upon the V-shaped pillars rising from torrents of flame and smoke. Ten barrels of flammable pine pitch were nestled within the ring of fire where the mist was now trapped. A single well-placed arrow, and the entire square would go up in flames.

“Good,” she said.

But Hekla felt the air’s sudden shift, the heartbeat growing deeper as though burrowing under the soil. An ominous prickle rushed down her spine. The mist was still trapped within its fiery prison, but she felt certain that something had just happened.

“We might have less than five minutes,” said Hekla, left hand finding the hilt of her sword.

Sigrún dipped an arrow into the pitch, then edged cautiously toward the wall of flames to light it. The mist swelled and rippled around the square, testing its confinement with relentless focus. The moment a gap formed in the flames, the mist would sense it.

Sigrún shuffled another inch forward, but it was impossible not to notice the tremble of her hand.

The air was thick with smoke and dust, with the pungent char of burnt oxen meat.

Hekla threw an elbow over her mouth, in part to stifle the smell, in part to restrain herself from shouting at Sigrún to hurry.

A low, deep growl came from just beyond the stockade walls, and suddenly, Hekla understood what that strange shift had been: The mist had called upon the undead.

She held her breath as Sigrún nocked the arrow and aimed it at the dais.

The bowstring twanged, the flaming arrow arcing through the air.

But Hekla cursed under her breath as she saw it would land just wide of the dais.

The mist rattled in what Hekla perceived as an unsettling laugh, but a snarl from her left had her whirling.

Through the dust and smoke a pair of red eyes glowed. A Turned wolf prowled forward, and Eyvind’s men gasped at their first glimpse of it. The beast’s coat was matted and torn, its too-wide mouth revealing rows of glinting teeth.

“We guard Sigrún’s flank,” Hekla barked. “And remember, you must take their heads.” Unsheathing her sword and claws, a grim smile spread across Hekla’s lips. With the mist, she was out of her element. But these foes would fall to steel.

Their small group held their ground as a second pair of eyes appeared behind the first, wider and much higher up.

An enormous Turned bear ambled out of the mist on elongated limbs that twisted at the wrong angles.

Liquid dripped from overlong fangs, while its dagger-sized claws gouged the earthen road.

The third Turned creature to emerge from the smoke was a man, an iron collar banded around his throat.

She recognized him at once as the largest of the draugur men chained in the Hagensson’s barn.

Hekla did not know if the draugur himself had broken his chains or if the mist had sent another of its Turned creatures to complete the task, but she decided it didn’t matter .

“Mortals!” hissed the mist through the draugur’s mouth. “Your bright prison will not trap us for long!”

More Turned creatures crept through the smoke—wolves and bears and more freed draugur with chains dragging behind them.

Ravens with shredded wings and elongated talons emerged, followed by vampire deer with dagger-sharp antlers, frost foxes with torn and matted fur, forest walkers with three-pronged claws. ..

Hekla’s pulse thundered, but her lips formed a smile. “I’ve always loved a good challenge,” she crooned to the mist’s avatar, unsheathing her claws. Dropping her voice, she murmured to the warriors around her, “No one gets past us. Our only chance is for Sigrún to set those barrels alight.”

They grunted in acknowledgement.

The Turned wolf at the front of the pack leapt forward, and chaos fell upon them.