The Hall of the Jotunn Queen (Skadi's Saga Book 1) by Phil Tucker

Author:Phil Tucker [Tucker, Phil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

Jarl Kvedulf and his three dragon ships left Kráka on a fine and blustery morning three days later. The occasion was marked by Ásfríðr descending from her temple to bless the venture, and a grand speech by the jarl that Skadi mostly ignored. Instead, she gazed hungrily at the three ships, freshly painted, long-planked, with shields along the racks and men in their finest war gear sitting on war chests.

She marked Marbjörn on the jarl’s own ship, the Sea Wolf, and the other great heroes of the hird with him: Hwideberg, massive and bald, ancient and perilous, his north bear cape stowed in his chest, no doubt; Auðun, the blond warrior with a blue tattoo about his left temple, intricate lines curling and intertwining about his eye; Nǫkkvi, whose reputation for brutal killings had earned him an aura of fear and respect, the tattoo down the center of his brow being the mark of his eternal revenge against the world.

Here and there, threads of fate burst forth from chests, but none so thickly as those four men, and they paled beside Kvedulf, whose glory was such that Skadi simply couldn’t count them all. Forty threads, at least, all spinning and twisting as if attached to some great, ever-shifting loom.

Finally, the jarl finished his speech. A great cry of approval went up from all those gathered along the shore, and the ships pushed off, ropes were tossed on deck, oar plugs removed so that oars could slide free, and a rhythm began to sound from the Sea Wolf, struck with a knotted rope on a barrel, every oar dipping in time to its beat.

The cheers continued as the ships pulled out into the fjord.

Then the strangest thing happened. The golden threads that arced out from her uncle to drop amongst the buildings and streets of Kráka tore free. They pulled away from the village, and rose to spear out into the sky.

The crowd subsided to watch the ships dwindle and disappear around the curvature of mountain.

What did it mean for his threads to have been pulled away from the village? That his destiny was no longer tied with Kráka?

She couldn’t fathom the meaning.

There was silence as the last ship slipped from view, then a heavy beat of nothing, then a sigh as the crowd began to break up, turning into conversational knots, people returning to their business, their lives for the summer.

Skadi stood with her crew.

She should have been on one of those ships. Should be pulling even now on an oar, seated on a chest filled with war gear, ready for glory, ready for battle.

Instead, she had several months to look forward to in the now half-empty Kráka, in the company of the warriors too old to earn a spot on a ship, with boys trying desperately to convince everybody, including themselves, that they were men.

Her own ship was inverted to one side of the docks, being recaulked and fixed by carpenters and ship wrights. She’d heard how the

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