Sometimes I am strong enough to let myself think about Hervor.

I thought about her last night.

A bright night, last, full of stars. We had enough wind for sail and the rope lines hummed, singing the song of our dragon-prowed ship. I stood in the stern, alone in that cold night. Above, past the tall prow, rainbow light shimmered in the sky, the reflection of the gods' bright bridge, quaking Bifrost. Thus alone, I let myself think about Hervor, let myself remember the storm harrying Samso Island on the first night I ever saw her, the rage of wind, the sky pouring with rain.

And I remembered the thunder cracking open the sky.

There was such thunder, such a wildness of storm, on the night I first saw Hervor. She was a bondwoman, a slave in King Odd's Golden Hall...

Wild wind sped across the flats of Jutland, flung across the sea to Samso Isle where stood Odd's hall. The storm-wind wailed around the high gables like ghosts hanging themselves from the ridge beams. Snug and dry as I was, a stranger among the others and sitting far down the hall where the unknowns sat, I still shivered to hear the wind wail.

You don't hear wind like that anywhere else.

All the rest of the company only roared back at the storm-ghosts, men and women howling laughter, shouting to be heard above their own noise. This was King Odd's Gyll-Holl, his Golden Hall, built on the very ground where, in his youth, he'd won a queen by doing his greatest deed: the killing of eleven berserkers. And when the mad warriors were dead Odd single-handedly raised up a dozen burial-mounds; eleven for the berserkers, and one — so much smaller than the others that it was not easy to find — one for the man who brought those berserks to Samso. In those grim hills groaned the ghosts of the dead men imprisoned by Odd's curse, doomed to haunt their grave-mounds, never to find any life after their deaths.

At night you could see ghost-fire flickering all around those mounds.

A great bolt of lightning ripped the darkness. White light leaped in under thick doors, flinging shadows ahead. Away down the hall a woman shrieked, her brittle laughter skirling over a man's plunging growl as he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her down to the rushes. Thunder bellowed, rolling, falling, tumbling like an avalanche minded to crush us all. An old man sitting beside me on the bench flinched and then slid a shamed look around him.

With my knife I stabbed some pig's ribs from the platter on the table. When I'd finished gnawing on those I nudged the old man and told him I'd always heard that the racket of thunder is nothing but the great god Thor stamping across the skies as he goes hunting giants and dragons and any wight he can find to test his strength.

“And that's one reason,” I said, “why people stay under roof on nights like this.”

He gave me a darkly suspicious look, wondering if I mocked. Whatever he decided about that didn't stop him from snatching a jug of beer from a passing serving woman and thumping it down on the table between us. I filled up our bowls and said that I was Tal Ivarsson. The old man mumbled his own name: Nidhug Njalsson.

I told Nidhug that I came from up around Arvidfjord. “My father's lately dead, and he left four sons to divide up his little stead.”

“Rough for three of you,” Nidhug said, not much interested.

I said that it could have been rough, but Soren, who is my eldest brother, had found good luck at viking; when time came to divide our father's stead he was able to keep all the land and pay us younger sons for our shares in gold. My brothers Halvard and Yngve, seeing the kind of luck Soren had, put their inheritance together, had a fine longship built, and took to the sea-roads.

“Me,” I said to old Nidhug, “I came here to King Odd to see if he would take me on as one of his. I'm handy with weapons so he'll get a good fighting man in me. And I've always heard it that Odd likes a man who can make a good poem — which I can do. Round about Arvidfjord they've been speaking my poems since before I was man-grown.”

Nidhug yawned, and he didn't bother to ask whether this or that or the other verse was mine, as you do when someone comes boasting that he's a poet. Things were quiet between us until, suddenly, eagerly, he leaned forward to try and see down the length of the hall, squinting into the chancy light and the smoke and shadows.

“Ah now,” he said, “here he comes, here comes our famous Odd Berserkers' Bane.” He poked me in the ribs. “Might be you'll get a chance to try your word-skill tonight, boy.”

He said that with a stingy smile. My hope rose nonetheless.

King Odd and his queen entered the hall from a door at the other end. Men rose to their feet, some calling their names, some raising horns and cups in salute. They dazzled, those two, glittering with jewels and gold and silver. The king greeted many by name, his voice booming, like he was on a battlefield and must be heard above the war-storm.

If Queen Ingeborg spoke, I never heard her.

Nor did I see either of them until they came to the place, midway down the length of the hall, where the floor raised up in a platform for their high-seats. They were a handsome pair, him big and burly and thick in the neck, a strong man in his prime. Ingeborg was not older than Odd, maybe she was even younger by a year or so. She had the whitest hair I'd ever seen. All the tales tell us that the queen got her snow-mane when she was a young maid, on the night she held her dying lover in her arms, her hair sopped with his blood. On that same night Odd killed eleven berserkers.

The king and his queen took their places while the howl of revelry clashed against the roar of the storm, and Odd's slaves moved in and out of the crowd, serving food and filling bowls and horns with wine and ale and mead.

One slave did not serve the crowd. A young woman, she stood by the king's knee, bound, held, captured by a slave's rolled leather collar. All the beauty of springtime went into her making — yellow hair and green eyes and the sudden rosy flush you find speeding across a waking meadow at sunrise. She had a deep silver bowl in her two hands, and as I watched she lifted it to the king. Thin rivulets of spilled wine trickled red along the white inside of her arms. The king took the bowl, the slave dropped her hands to her sides, her gaze from her master, and went to stand behind the high-seat, ready for him when he next wanted her.

Leaning in to loose a beery belch, Nidhug told me that it wouldn't do me any good to stare at the girl and yearn. He said that she was Hervor Tofa's daughter, and she was Odd's for the taking any time he wanted her.

I said, “Do you reckon the queen has anything to say about whether the girl serves in the hall or in the bed?”

Nidhug poured more beer. “Ingeborg loathes the girl, and she doesn't seem to mind missing some nights in her man's bed if Hervor Tofa's daughter — hating it — takes her place. And Hervor hates getting bedded by the king. You see it on her in the morning.”

Beer ran frothing down his chin, fouling his scraggly white beard. Later I remembered it that his hand shook when he wiped his face. I didn't notice it then. My eyes were on Ingeborg who used her man's bed as a weapon. Or did, if Nidhug was to be believed.

“You can't mean it,” I said to the old man. “The woman was never made who'd do that — no matter how hard she hates.”

Him, he shrugged. “I guess they know all about what women will do and won't do up in Arvidfjord. Pardon an old man's ignorance, boy.”

I didn't answer his sour defense. I drank my bowl dry, and looked around for more beer. Something cold sat in the belly of me now. Over the rim of the filled bowl, I looked at the owned girl. She stood still, in the firelight and shadow as lovely as any of the god-women of the Aesir, proud and straight in brown homespun and naked feet. Nidhug had spoken no father's name for her, only her mother's: Tofa.

Light leaped from the fire pit, and just as suddenly my heart jumped. I believed that Hervor felt my eyes on her.

She tilted her head so that her hair fell a little forward, hiding not her face but sight of where she might be looking. Who watched her? Where was he watching from? But then her gaze fell away, she pulled back into herself again, for Odd needed more wine. The king's cup refilled, Hervor took her place again. She stood still as stone when, like snow drifting, silent, cool, the queen herself leaned close to her husband.

lngeborg spoke some words in the king's ear, and people later said they saw him shake his head; they said there was a weariness on him, that he sighed deeply. Ingeborg sat back in her seat. She lifted her head, she looked right at the king's bond-woman. Hervor never moved, nor even seemed to know the queen had an eye on her.

Again Ingeborg leaned close to the king, and this time those near heard Odd say, “Ay, well, then; it's your wanting I'm tending, Ingeborg.”

Now I can't swear to that last, not having heard it for myself. But I can swear to all that happened after.

Odd Berserkers' Bane stood up, and his slave came to him. Drunk, he put one hand on the girl's shoulder, one on the carved arm of his high-seat. He leaned on his slave — it must have been a bruising weight, for he was no small man — and he roared it out to the hall that he'd give arms and a place at his board to the man who could make a good telling of the death of Dog-Angantyr.

Beside me Nidhug gulped more beer, laughing into the bowl. Hollow, that laughter, like some ghost's, and when he looked at me his eyes narrowed to slits through which cold light bent.

“Here's your chance, fourth son. Everyone knows the tale of Angantyr. Even farm boys from up around Arvidfjord, ay?”

Everyone did know that tale, we of Arvidfjord as well as anyone else. It was Angantyr who'd come roaring out of icy Noreor into our own land, lusting after the princess Ingeborg, demanding her from her father, our old King Svein who is now a long time dead. Svein, he didn't see the need to send more than his two best men to answer Angantyr's demand: young Odd, and Odd's good friend Hjallmar who was beloved of Ingeborg.

“Go on,” Nidhug whispered. He wore a pinched and pale look, like a man harried by pain. That should have warned me about danger, but it didn't. Beer and youth and hope and hurry... well, I was not warned. All I heard was him saying, “Go on, boy - here's your luck come looking for you.”

Here it was indeed. With clever words I'd weave a new telling of an old tale, and I would win all that I'd come out of Arvidfjord to find.

“King!” I cried, already shaping my poem, even then linking one word to another. “King, I'll give you the best telling of the tale you'll ever hear!”

All the hall fell silent. Outside the world lighted and darkened as flash after flash of lightning ripped across the night, and the queen leaned a little forward to see who had spoken up. Nidhug slid away from me, found a seat further down the bench.

Ingeborg pointed to me. “What is your name?”

“Tal Ivarsson, from up around - ”

She cut me off with a sharp, slicing gesture. “Tal Ivarsson, come and tell how Thief-Angantyr died, like a mad dog cut down. Tell how all these years he's gone unavenged, mourned by no one. Come here!”

I went, my heart strangely calm as I made my way down the hall, though all my fortune hung on my next doings. By the time I stood before Odd and Ingeborg, I'd made my poem. And Hervor, the lovely bondmaid, was as far from my mind as ever she could be.

To the king and his snow-maned queen, I said:

Came forth an evil from cold Noreor!

Storm sent the wild kin wind the mad kin

a terror of warriors ten men and one

foaming like beasts fierce and un-sane.

One before all

brother to berserks

Noreor's prince

known wide and far

Arngrim's great son

to Samso came seeking his prey

Svein's dear daughter.

Bravest bright Hjallmar

and Odd Foeman's Bane

these heroes alone

none but they two

went out to the storm

strong friends together.

With only his hands

Odd slew each berserk.

Dauntless to the strand

daring her fate

fair Ingeborg sped.

Tonight she'd be wived

The white-handed girl

must be by her lover

good Hjallmar the Brave.

Came wickedness here

by Angantyr wielded

the cursed troll-sword

venom-edged Tyrfing.

Death-wounds and woe

he dealt to Hjallmar.

Steeped in blood

he lusted for the maid.

And she raged in silence

spoke not her grief

wore Hjallmar's blood

held him and rocked

forth and back as he were

a babe in her arms.

Tonight no bride

for the king's battle-friend.

Bitter the blackness

on that grief-night.

Bitter the silence

of Ingeborg's sorrow

till Thief Angantyr

the slayer of heroes

laid hands on the girl.

She wailed her rage.

Nor yet was he dead

her dear Hjallmar

nor yet too weak

to hear the wild cry.

Now to his hand

came the famed troll-sword

now in his grip

grey-bladed Tyrfing.

With dwarf-cursed iron

he cut Angantyr.

Swift ran the venom

the poison went raving

to heart and to heart

foeman and hero.

Each on the strand

by the sea found his death.

No raven-haired bride

would Hjallmar now bed

no white-armed maid

did Angantyr find.

Snow-maned the bride

washed red in blood.

Svein gave her now

a gift to bold Odd.

Barrow and barrow

ten hills and one

rose up on the strand.

Odd raised by the sea

ten hills and one

each tall and deep.

Earth-halls he built

One more Odd made

mean and meager

hidden among others

hard now to find.

One more Odd raised

o'er shadowed by all.

A shame-hole for Tyrfing

and Dog-Angantyr.

Ten ghosts and two

Odd tied to these graves

fierce foemen bound

with biting curses:

For them no home

nor other life after.

Here till world's end

they haunt and howl.

I stood with the fire-pits behind me, my own shadow leaping out before me huge and long. No one spoke. Outside, even the night had stilled; god-Thor had gone somewhere else to fight his fights. And it seemed to me, flushed with my own poem as though the making and the telling were wine poured into me — it seemed to me that the queen and her king were all made of gold, shining and bright.

Then Ingeborg stood, and she stepped down from the high-seat. She looked at me, just once. Ice seeped into the bones of me. This queen had nothing in her of the fair young princess of my poem. This woman was built of bitterness and rotted hope. No richly woven gown, no jewel-weighted necklace, no rings of gold could hide the decay. Ingeborg walked away from me, hugging her endless grief. She went as though she were a self-murderer calmly walking to her bed, a suicide with no thought for the vessel that had held her draught of poison.

And me, I sickened to see that my word-weaving was only venom to her. All my words came undone, the poem writhing in the rushes, dying at my feet.

People began to talk, first in whispers, then muttering, then the old racket of shouting and laughter. Some cried praise for my poem, but I, shivering and miserable, hardly heard them. King Odd said nothing, I couldn't see his face. He was deep in the bowl of red wine, this thrall to his woman's sorrow.

The face I did see was one I'd forgotten in the flush of my hopes and the sweet drunkenness of word-craft. Hervor came to me with a golden bowl, finer than even the king's. That filled bowl is the poet's fee. Even we of Arvidfjord, we farmers among our herds and harvests, know how a poet should be paid. Up there, we also know that a king should offer that due with his own hand. This drunken king had sent a slave to pay me.

Hervor's fingers touched mine and for a moment we two held the gold and the wine together. Warmth spread through me at her touch. I groaned to feel it; she smiled to hear me.

“Drink,” she said. Low, her voice; deep as the thunder only lately gone away.

When I was done with the wine, Hervor handed me a sword. But I had no eyes for the blade, only for her. Like a god-woman — yes, she was like that, so very beautiful among the old hatreds and strange loathings of ill-named Gyll-Holl. She had some faded blue flowers in her hair, little dying blooms tangled in the yellow spill.

Her eyes met mine over the iron blade. They filled me up with sudden swift lightning, white and hot. In that moment of fire, King Odd said what I'd come so far to hear.

He said, “Poet, stay with us.” I heard him only distantly.

Hervor had climbed inside me with that lightning look of hers, rummaged around in the soul of me, laying it all bare to her white light. And I, shaking, shaking, was inside myself as well, scurrying around before her, trying to hide things, trying to save things, trying to keep something of myself for myself.

I saved nothing, and Hervor found what she needed. She spoke no word aloud, but words I heard, words I found, in the warmth of her fingers on mine, in the tiny blood-beat thrumming: What will you do to find the truth behind your poem, Tal Ivarsson?

She took her eyes from me, of her own she went to the king. Odd took her back, his hands prowling over her, finding his place for tonight. And I, clutching my new sword, closed my eyes against that sight. There, in the shut-eyed darkness, for one swift and burning moment I saw how it would be if I cut the hands from Odd.

In the darkness a voice whispered, No! It was Hervor's voice, low and so close she must be standing right next to me.

I opened my eyes, and I saw that she could not have whispered to me. She stood still under the king's hands, and she might have been alone for all his groping mattered, standing not in the smoky hall but under a clear sky, alone with herself.

Then a dark-haired girl came to stand beside me. She had her hands on my arm, and she had a willing smile for the man newly welcomed to the king's company. Her name was Gudny, and she whispered in my ear, saying that we two would drink the night dry from my golden bowl.

On Hervor's lips, a smile; as though she'd writ the words for Gudny to speak.

Dark-haired Gudny and I went out of the hall together, her leading me like I was blind, or mad-drunk as the rest of them there in Gyll-Holl. She led me into the clean and storm-washed night, out under a thousand stars shining down. I stopped once, looking away east to the barrow-hills. A pale and sickly shine flickered over the grave-mounds. Gudny shivered and clung closer to me. Then she gasped and started, and I turned swiftly, my hand on my new sword.

Old Nidhug stood behind me, him like a shadow in the night.

“A good poem,” he said, my old bench-mate. But he smiled like he knew how that poem had crumbled under Ingeborg's cold gaze. “You've got what you want, ay?”

An eager girl on my arm, her bed waiting for us, a golden bowl from the king and a good sword... I had more than I'd come looking for, but I didn't have what I wanted.

Beyond Nidhug I saw another shadow. Hervor stood at the hall's open door, a dark shape against the gold of the firelight behind her. She was like a woman making ready to climb upon a pyre, unafraid of the flames.

And me, I thought: Whatever pyre she mounts, on that one I'll find the warmth to ease the cold that's in me now.

“She had her eyes in you, didn't she?”

I swallowed once, hard. Yes, she'd had her eyes in me. Gudny clung closer. I felt no warmer for it.

“Hervor Angantyr's daughter,” Nidhug whispered. “She'll do that to you.”

Shivering, I said, “You told me she was Hervor Tofa's daughter.”

“So she is, for Tofa's the mother of her. But it was Angantyr who fathered her.” Nidhug's eyes grew sharp and clear, suddenly the drunkenness was gone from him. “No matter what they say here, that prince of Noreor is not unmourned, Tal Ivarsson.”

“Does... does the king know who she is?”

“He knows. And so does the queen. On the daughter they work their vengeance for the father's deed. They know, but none knows it better than me. Hervor's mother was Nidhug's daughter.” Nidhug licked his lips, his glance shifting. “Hervor's not right-born, only got by Angantyr on a bondwoman the night he came to Samso to fetch a princess. She served in Odd's hall, did my Tofa, and that night she was out by the sea. It was her saw the longship on the beach, her who'd been caught by Angantyr... and later sent back to the hall, naked and torn, to tell old Svein there was a man come looking for his daughter.”

“When she quickened, Tofa refused to name the father. When Hervor was born, still Tofa would give her no father's name. But comes a time when the stamp of your kin is seen on you, in your eyes, the shape of your face, the sound of your voice. Odd and Ingeborg, they should have killed Hervor when they first knew who she was. Odd was for it — but not Ingeborg. Not her. She's like a drunkard over her vengeance, that woman.”

In the old man's eyes, a grim light of laughter.

“She should have listened to her man.”

And, suddenly, he turned and left me. The old sheep herd, Tofa's father, went trotting across the muddy way to where Hervor stood in the fiery golden doorway.

“Come on,” Gudny said, and when I didn't heed she used her best enticement, untying the neck of her gown to show me the richness of what could be had if only I went with her. “Come away. They're both crazy. They're all crazy here, poet. Come with me...”

I went with her, and I loved her hard, driving myself driving her, trying to get to a place where I would forget the image of Hervor lighted by the fires in Odd's golden hall.

I forgot nothing.

At moonset I woke, feeling the shadow of Angantyr's daughter on me. I went to the window and saw her walking past. She had something long and thin over her shoulder. She wore a rough-spun cloak, and she walked with her eyes on the eleven barrow-hills and the pale ghost-light flickering.

The wind past my window whispered, Come, Tal Ivarsson!

I heeded that wind, for it spoke with Hervor's voice, low, deep, inevitable. I dressed swiftly, took up my new sword, and went out into the night, following King Odd's bondwoman down the road to the ghosty shining hills.

Hervor stood still in the starlight, her back to the sea. He'd built the barrows in the shape of a half-circle, had Odd Berserkers' Bane, and from this low place at the sea's edge the grave-mounds hid sight of Gyll-Holl. Within the arms of that high half-circle lay a wide meadow filled with white daisies and little blue flowers,

Hervor lifted a hand to beckon. I went. Called out of my sleep by the glide of her shadow over me, I could not have done otherwise. When I came near I saw a shovel on the ground beside her, behind her the darkness of a hole freshly dug. At her feet stood a wooden coffer, the lid thrown open to show a pale shift and a blood-red gown. Other things did that coffer hold, a helm and a shining mail-shirt.

The shift and gown were her mother's, the war-gear her father's; the whole her heritage, hidden away 'til this night.

Her eyes on me, Hervor lifted her hands to her throat. She curled her fingers under the leather slave-collar.

I took my knife from my belt. Careful — oh, careful! — I set to work on the collar, with the keen blade I picked out the stitches, unrolled the leather and — at last — cut her free. The skin shone pale where collar had been.

The pulse in her throat quickening, her eyes still on me, Hervor unclasped her cloak and let it fall to the ground. Naked under the stars, her golden hair a-spill down her back, she shone like a new blade only just taken from forge-fire.

With reverence, in wonder, I said, “Hervor Angantyr's daughter,” and that name rang in me like every tale I'd ever heard, every magic ever spoken.

I knelt and laid my sword at her feet, with it my heart and all of my soul.

Soft, she said: “Here is the truth your poem didn't know, Tal Ivarsson. Here is the curse Odd used to lock away the souls of my kinsmen, to hide himself from the vengeance of ghosts:”

Berserkers I barrow

Arngrim's wild sons.

High the mounds

proud the howes.

For the thief Angantyr

the hidden hole.

To Hel none fares

no soul goes free

till the thief's child calls twelve to revenge.

The night stood still. No wind blew, even the sea hushed. Into the silence Hervor whispered, “He made the curse knowing — as everyone knew — that Angantyr had no living child. But one day I learned what everyone else didn't know.”

One day, dying, her mother told Hervor the name of her father. That was the same day Odd and Ingeborg saw Angantyr in the shape of the girl's face, in her eyes, in the sound of her voice.

Now Hervor raised me up. She took my face in her two hands and drew me close to her. And she, freed of the slave-collar, had never lain so naked in Odd's bed as she stood then in my arms. There lay the blue wool of my shirt between us, but I felt her breasts against me like I was standing naked as she. She kissed me. In me, blood changed to fire.

“Dress me,” Hervor said, her breath passing her lips, passing mine, into me. “For I am going to war.”

I saw King Odd's death in her eyes. Only hours ago I'd come here to Samso to win that king's favor. Now nothing mattered but that his death was what she craved.

Magic, you are thinking; the girl is a witch!

Yes; magic. But it wasn't magic made me love her. It was her courage did that, her wild heart rising high now though it had so long been kept caged and trapped in the slavery of a vengeance she had never earned.

I dressed Hervor in white linen and red wool, in the gleaming mail-shirt. I braided her golden hair and arranged the braids so that her father's helm sat well on her head. Only once did I think of Odd Berserkers' Bane, the king who'd become a slave to his queen's sorrow, but I saw nothing alike between us.

Hervor stepped over my sword, like it was a threshold. When she didn't take it up, I did.

“Come with me, Tal Ivarsson,” she said. “We will go together into the truth behind your poem."

There might be a poet who could say no to that, but I am not him.

Angantyr's daughter walked into the flowered meadow, right into the embracing arms of the shining barrow-hills. I went with her, but I must force myself to take each step, must keep my eyes always on her. She went calling names, shouting to the barrow hills: “Hervard! Hjorvard and Hrani! Bild and Bui! Barri and Toki! You two Haddings! Tind and Tyr!”

With each name called, a ghost came to stand at the door of his barrow, silent and wary, 'til all stood under the stars. All these ghosts, these wild sons of Arngrim were Hervor's uncles. I, cold-sweating, used all my will to keep beside her now.

Beast men, I'd named those berserkers, wild kin, mad kin. They were none of that. Not then. Pale men with the starlight shining through them, they stood in their grave-clothes, weapons girded on, helmed and mailed. And they were hung with gold, rings and chains and collars, for as Odd had given them good barrows so did he let them go with their riches into their graves. But that was a stingy grace. Not one of those captured souls had been able break the trap of Odd's curse, none of those princes of Noreor had made the journey we all must make along the grey road to Hel's hall, there to sleep and dream his next life until — the dream all dreamed — his soul is ready to be born again into the living world.

Each ghost, waked, greeted Hervor sternly, simply nodding to acknowledge. Only the last, Tyr who was the tallest, the fiercest, the wildest of eye, only that one cried out:

“Who comes here shouting our names?”

Cold, his voice; and dry as old ashes. Hervor lifted her head, stood straight and proud. “See, uncle, who has come. Look, and see the shape of your brother's face in mine.”

A shiver of sound went among the eleven wraiths, low moaning, and then one, ghost-Tyr, threw his head back and howled: ”Free us, kinswoman!”

My heart ached as if a hand squeezed it. Here was a terrible plea, hollow and aching, and I say this now to you, because I heard the cry, because I know: The greatest act of courage Tyr Arngrimsson had ever done in his wild life was to seize the hope offered by this stranger who looked like kin of his.

Tears stood in Hervor's eyes, and one, like a pearl, slid down her cheek. She, who granted herself no tears, spared this one for her trapped kinsmen. The tear fallen, she walked away to the center of the meadow where blue flowers crowded thickly. There the ground rose up in a little mound, hardly seen until I stood near. The mound was not longer than a tall man, not wider. Stars gave light enough to show me how the grasses and flowers covering it were pressed down, like some creature had got in the habit of sleeping there.

That creature stood before me now, and here was the bed she laid herself down on each night Odd Berserkers' Bane didn't force her to serve in his. Here was Angantyr's grave, and his daughter said to me, “I need a sword, Tal Ivarsson.”

I offered mine on my two hands. She did not take it.

“Only one sword will do,” Hervor whispered, her voice raw as that of a woman who'd been screaming and screaming. “I want the sword Odd buried, the one he hid with my father.”

She wanted Tyrfing, that blade legend loves to sing of, made long ago by dwarfs for a king in far Rus, in battle taken by King Arngrim of Noreor, given to Angantyr. And she had such a look on her — white and drawn and her blue eyes blazing — that I would have walked right to Hel's hall for that sword if that's what must be.

“Hervor, call up your father's ghost and we will tell him that his sword is needed.”

Hervor stood at her father's grave, her arms raised up, in her eyes all her need and want. And I, beside her, felt a gale mounting. The pressure and pull of the force of words not yet spoken whirled around us like leaves torn from trees in storm-rage. Then, lightning flashing, Hervor's call and challenge:

“I have come, Angantyr!”

Only silence answered. Hervor was not daunted. She walked once round the grave. I stayed where I stood. She did not say, Be my anchor. My heart pounding with the sudden joy of daring, I took that on myself. I closed my eyes and in that self-imposed darkness — as once I'd heard her — I saw her.

I did not see her woman-shaped, I saw her as light moving, all the strength and power of her radiating like a torch in the blackness. In darkness I watched as hands reached to touch the light, stroking it, caressing.

Thrilling, I knew those hands for mine though the flesh and bone hands of me never moved from my side. I was in her magic, of it; and the delight, the danger, the dread were all one; a glorious storm of power. Came on me the idea that I could give shape to Hervor's radiance with my shining spirit-hands. To realize was to do, and now Hervor walked feeling my hands on her, giving the unformed light of her the shape of a sword-maiden, helmed and mailed.

The clearer her form, the stronger her radiance. I have never felt such wonder. It was, grandly, kin to the shaping of poems and the loving of women.

As she walked, my Hervor left a glowing trail. She paced a light-woven circle to close in the grave and me and her. When the dead are being waked, care must be taken that none comes who isn't invited. Beside me again, her circle complete, Hervor shouted: “Wake, Angantyr! Your daughter calls you! Tofa's child calls you, Angantyr!”

A low, hungry moaning wound through the night. Like the north wind moving, the weirds of Angantyr's brothers drifted across the meadow, smelling the chance, at last, of the release they'd so long craved. They could not come nearer their brother's grave than Hervor's warding circle would let them. This they did not like. Growling and wailing and gnashing their teeth in rage, the eleven dead berserks prowled outside the circle like wolves kept at bay by a campfire's light.

Hervor never granted those eleven a glance.

“Father, come out,” cried Angantyr's daughter. “Come out from this hovel and bring cursed Tyrfing!”

The ground trembled within our circle, shuddered like a man waking from nightmare. Came a groaning sigh from under my feet.

Hervor heeded no ghost's moan, she had no pity for the man who would not come out of his grave. She wailed like a wild wind.

“May you rot in your grave if you keep that sword, Angantyr! Ghosts have no need of weapons!”

Ah, now the grave-mound writhed, as though the ground itself were in agony. A voice rose up, howling and hoar. The blood ran like snow-melt in me.

Ghost-Angantyr stood naked on his grave, with not even a shroud to cover him; he had not a flake of gold on him, no silver, not a jewel. Odd had despoiled Angantyr's body and flung it stripped into this shameful hole. Hervor sobbed to see him, and she went down on her knees before him. She clasped her trembling hands together, trying to hold herself steady. I shut my eyes tight, saw her radiance flickering at the edges, small shards of light peeling off like sparks flying away from the heart of fire.

I went to shaping again, gathering the light. Loving her, loving the magic-craft, I held the shining shield-maiden between my two pale spirit-hands, heartening her. My hands were the dimmer of the lights I saw in my darkness. When I came back to the waking night, weakness fluttered in my belly.

Not once did Hervor look at me.

“Father,” she said, still on her knees. “I have a hard need on me. Angantyr, where is the sword Tyrfing?”

He spoke slowly, that naked ghost, his words coming like the creaking of crows.

“Hear me, girl. No loving father made this mean grave for me. The foeman who scraped this grave stole the troll-sword. Go ask Odd for it. Tyrfing is not here!”

He didn't speak the truth. The ghosts outside our circle knew it, them howling against the lie, and Hervor said: “You do wrong to deceive me, father.”

Oh, to hear the pain of the father's answer — the memory of it sits like scars on me.

“Listen to me, Hervor! You say, 'Give me cursed Tyrfing!' and I say that you don't know what curse has been put on that sword or you'd run from here screaming.”

The ghosts around us stilled. Tyr — it must have been him, the brave heart who still hoped — Tyr sobbed, once, the sound torn from his trapped soul.

“Maiden,” said Angantyr, who must have known his daughter had been no maiden since Odd's mad queen laid eyes on the flowering of her and fell to craving a revenge deeper than she'd already got. “Puny Odd has given you no sons, but I who am dead can see what the living cannot. You will have sons one day. If you put faith in Tyrfing, you will doom them. Hear the curse the dwarf-smiths laid on Tyrfing when the old King of Rus trapped them and forced them to the smithy: This sword will travel, from hand to hand, and anyone who wields Tyrfing will get his death by Tyrfing. So did that Rus king when in battle my father seized the blade from him and killed him with it.”

“My Hervor,” whispered the ghost of her father, his pleading naked before us all. “My daughter, so did I get my death from this cursed blade. So will you, and any son who has it from you. Leave the sword alone and go from here, girl. Leave me to my fate and go from here!” He went down into his grave again, the naked ghost sank down into the meager hovel that would keep his soul trapped forever.

Past the circle of light I saw eleven wraiths, proud men standing together as they had always done; brothers following their brother, as they had always done. One by one, ten walked away — Hervard, Hjorvard and Hrani, Bild and Bui, Barri and Toki, the two Haddings and Tind — back to the shining barrow hills. Only ghost-Tyr stayed, outside the circle, watching.

And Hervor, she would not accept defeat. My shining sword-maiden would not be kept from what she needed.

“Help me, Tal Ivarsson,” she whispered. My skin burned where her fingers gripped. “I will drag my father out of his grave, but you must lend me strength. My poet, help me!”

I swiftly shut my eyes to see the light of her shivering, her radiance dwindling. I reached for her with the shining hands of magic, once more I held her. Only now the holding was different, for the light of her spilled through my fingers. Strength is not boundless, wells go dry. But I was her poet. I would give her everything I had.

I didn't give as much as I wanted to give, and she took everything she needed, drawing on me — strength and will — until I fell to my knees, fell to the ground, right at the foot of her father's open grave. Hervor stopped taking only when she had all she needed.

Ghost-Tyr howled, once, long and low, a wolf calling to his pack. The pack heard, the berserks came, prowling around the circle again, snarling and growling for a way in. And me, I lay stunned, hearing, seeing, and unable to move, as Hervor flung herself on Angantyr's broken grave. With two hands she reached into the hole, into the darkest dark, and she dragged ghost Angantyr out under the light of stars.

“Hear me, Angantyr! My sons must worry about their own fates. Give me the sword. Odd's bed-slave demands it!”

Then, suddenly, her rage cooled. She, who'd not wept for herself in all the bitter, loveless years of her life, did not weep now. But the ghost did, her dead father wept for the daughter who'd paid dearly for his doings. His tears shone like dew on his white, white face.

“Father,” Hervor said, soft. “Give me this one thing where you have given me nothing but torment and the heart to endure it.”

Angantyr kept silent.

Hervor reached for me, grasped my hand and shoulder, like I was a tool. Then her hands fell away, there was no strength in me worth taking. I lay like a drunkard, spilled onto the ground among the ghosts and worms and the sour smell of death. Too weak to know what was real, or right, or even possible, I pushed myself up to sitting — it was all I could do — and I came as close to meeting the eyes of ghost-Angantyr as I dared.

“Angantyr,” I said. I had to stop to swallow, and even so my voice grated, harsh as an old man's. “Hear me: You must give your daughter your sword or send her back into Odd's hall and the pawing hands of decay. Which will you do?”

His was a cold stare, and I knew that he found in me every word of the poem I'd made about Dog-Angantyr. Those words shamed me. His reply — though he spoke weeping now for what would be — did not shame him. To his daughter he said:

“Hjallmar's Bane has lain under my back all these years. Take it."

Hervor kissed that wraith like he was a living man. Then, with no word, she reached past him, right into the darkness of her father's grave. Out from that grave came Tyrfing, the cursed sword, the doom of the princes of Noreor. The fate of Hervor's sons yet unborn. It came out white and shining — like her! — and the grip was golden, the hilts studded with every wonderful jewel. No less a weapon would a dwarf-smith make and still keep his head high. The cursed edges of that wonder-sword dripped poison.

Hervor raised up the weapon.

“I have walked between the worlds!”

Angantyr's daughter swung his ancient sword wide in a circle.

“I have seen the grave-fires, and I have stood among my dead!”

Weary, weary, I closed my eyes. In darkness I saw our lighted circle vanish. When I found strength to open my eyes again, I saw Hervor standing with her father's ghost at her side. The wraiths of her wild uncles howled all around them.

“Now I will go my way,” she said to those ghosts. “You may come with me or you may stay and wait for Hel to call you.” She leveled Tyrfing and looked at the crowd of those dead men along the poisoned edges of the blade. “I swear it now, my kinsmen: Hel will call, for Odd's curse will die in the moment he does.”

Not one of those ghosts would stay behind, and none had a weapon. Hervor saw that. Once again she raised Tyrfing high above her head.

“Hel, hear me! Lady of the Dead, help me arm these wraiths!”

And Hel must have answered, for with all her strength, Hervor brought Tyrfing down hard on the earth and fire leaped up from the ground. Each ghost reached into that fire, and each pulled from the fey blaze a sword made of flame.

Hervor walked past me, never once looked at me. Not one of those dead princes but fell in behind her, an army of a dozen ghosts. And not one of them — not even Angantyr himself — failed to stop near me, each for a moment in silent respect.

My poem was forgiven.

I watched them go walking up the road, and it was a long time before I thought I could get up. Even then I must use my sword as no man should, like a crutch to crawl up to my feet, like a staff to help me walk. I followed the ghosts and my white shining Hervor.

Where else can a poet go but to the end of his tale?

In Odd's Gyll-Holl the dead went among the living like wolves among sheep. They went raging, howling, and the ghostly weapons they carried were all edged with flame. Who didn't die of dread, died on the fire-blades. Who didn't die of those, lived to tell the kind of tales no one ever believes.

They were not liars, those who survived the rage of Angantyr's kin. I will vouch for them, for I saw Gyll-Holl burning, the corpses in the courtyard, the rage of dead berserkers, blood-lusty wraiths wreaking death, reaping vengeance. And it doesn't take much for oak to burn, not much for gables to fire. Angantyr and his mad brothers went roaring through the hall, with their blades killing, with their blades burning. By the time I'd got up the hill, most of the dying was done.

The first corpse I saw was Ingeborg's, the queen flung dead from her hall. Like a crow at the feast, a small wizened figure bent over her, plundering her gold and her jewels. Nidhug Njalsson went scurrying away with his booty when he saw me. They say Ingeborg was the first to die, and they say she wasn't so unhappy about that, after all. They say ghost-Angantyr had her life from her, and I believe it. She died burnt.

All the while Angantyr's daughter stood well aside from the fighting, trusting her father when he swore to save her the one death she craved. When I came off the road and into the courtyard I saw her standing still as stone, her eyes on burning Gyll-Holl. She stood with her sword grounded, her hands on the grips. Shining and clean, cursed Tyrfing. He'd tasted no blood in twenty years, he'd tasted none yet.

Hervor never looked over her shoulder, but she knew who'd come behind her.

“Watch now, Tal Ivarsson,” she whispered. “For here is the true end of your poem."

From out the burning hall came twelve ghosts, wraiths grey as smoke and brandishing fiery blades. They had with them one living man, the wolves herding the last sheep before them. Odd cried for mercy, as no king should. He cursed and he howled, and he walked over the corpse of his wife, the queen who had mastered him, like she was refuse on the road.

I saw the shame of him, but only out the corner of my eye. My best attention was for Tyrfing. In the burning night the blade shone red, like foreknowing. But Hervor had not used the sword, she had not doomed herself to death by it, nor fated her sons to the burden of it.

Not yet.

Her father saw me watching, ghost-Angantyr saw me standing quiet a little behind his daughter. I felt his look on me, and now I found the courage to meet his cold eyes. He read me, like a rune-master reads the stones, and he gave silent blessing.

Ghost-Anganty'r thrust the craven king down to his knees before Hervor, all the dead berserks came crowding around. Freedom rested in the blade of Hervor's sword, and they fell silent to await its coming.

In the hall fire raged and thundered, the screams of the dying had stilled. The fleeing had fled. And Hervor — the sword-maiden shining like gold in the light of burning Gyll-Holl — she swung her father's sword high above King Odd's bowed neck. Firelight ran like spilled wine on the white insides of her arms.

Before the blade reached the height of his arc there were four hands gripping the weapon, her two and mine.

I fought for the weapon, fought her hard like she was my most deadly foe. I would never let her carry the curse forward, would never let her pay for her kinsmen's freedom in the coin of Tyrfing's doom. That doom would be mine, for I'd do the killing, lop the head from the pale-hearted king who yet mewed for mercy among the dead berserkers.

Haven't I said to you that I loved her?

Hervor fought me wildly, shrieking, kicking, biting. She fought me with all the wild heart of her. And we two, fighting, must keep ourselves from the poisoned edges of cursed Tyrfing. When once her foot slipped on blood, her grip shifted and I took full advantage, breaking it easily. I flung the sword from us. Like death knells ringing, the sound of Tyrfing clattering to the stone. Now neither of us had the weapon, and we two stood breast to breast, each gripping the other's hands, each holding the other from the sword. She must kill with that sword, and I must stop her. We were matched in will, we were matched in need.

We were not matched in strength. Hervor had got the good part of mine down in the meadow where the barrows were. Twisting against my hold, she finally broke free.

I felt her go from me. I wailed after her like she'd flung herself from a cliff.

Hervor swooped down on the sword and heaved it, swung it high. Silver the arc of that blade, and the fire in Hervor's eyes was the fire of rage. I didn't know whether mine would be the head Tyrfing took before he claimed sniveling Odd's.

She spun on her heel, spun with the arc. Someone gripped my arm — cold the hand, freezing me to the bone! — and ghost-Angantyr pulled me to my feet and away. In terrible silence, Hervor brought the blade down. In awful silence, she took her revenge.

King Odd's blood spattered me, and the ghost who gripped me sighed, soft, once, like the wind sighing over a meadow filled up with summer's flowers.

I went to my knees, sick and heaving up all the food and beer I'd got from King Odd. High up in the sky ravens circled, looking for a feast.

And at the head of the road leading down to the sea, like fog moving, a grayness of ghosts, eleven and one, Hervor's kinsmen went, walking back to their barrows. The fire was gone from their Hel-given blades. The berserkers went in silence, ten and one, those wild warriors behind their brother, Angantyr who was once a prince in Noreor. They marched silently to Hel, all of them eager now for her waiting arms, eager for rest and the dreams only the Lady of the Dead can grant.

I staggered to my feet, looking all around me. Nidhug Njalsson had come creeping out of the darkness of shadows to stand beside his daughter's daughter. Silent, he watched her cleaning red Tyrfing on the skirt of her blood-red gown. He had nothing to say to me, I nothing to say to him.

Hervor finished her work, and she laid the sword down. Nidhug had found an unburnt bucket, and he'd filled it with water. Hervor washed her hands in that water, then she came to stand before me. I trembled to feel her so near, and it didn't shame me to weep when she took my face in her two hands. She'd exchanged torment for doom, and that should be wept over.

“My poet,” she said, her voice low, like thunder. “Never think I don't know what you wanted to do.”

I tried to speak. She stilled me with a kiss. No longer like fire, her kiss. Now the touch of her lips was like the touch of snowflakes drifting down.

“I couldn't let you do it,” she said. “The deed was mine, the fate is mine.”

“No,” I said. “No, Hervor. Your fate is mine, whatever will follow I must share with you. I've earned that.”

“You've earned better. If you come with me, Tal Ivarsson, years won't pass before you become like Odd, a slave to your woman's sorrow. I can't let that happen to the best and the brightest thing I will ever have in my life.”

There in the bloody courtyard of the burning hall my hope rose up in me. Hervor loved me. She admitted that, and I would find a way to convince her that I must never let her go.

She killed hope with her cold, cold kiss.

“No, my poet. I will never be yours, never lie with you, never get a son from you.” Now tears ran on her cheeks, but she didn't weep for herself. She never did. “How could I hand over a child of ours to Tyrfing's curse?” She took her hands from me. “Go from here, my Tal, and tell the story of me rightly. Go, and I will always know that you, my dearest poet, are untouched by curses, safe from this darkest doom. You have given me so much, all in this one night. If you love me, give me this one more thing and I will never be hopeless.”

I loved her.

The last I saw of Hervor Angantyr's daughter was the dark shape of her beside her old grandfather as they went walking down the road to the barrow hills, out to the sea and away north where there could be found passage away from Samso Isle.

I heard it that they found their way to Noreor, and that they were made welcome there by the kin of Angantyr. But I heard that much later.

That night of the burning I took a south-going road and found my passage alone. I went searching for my two brothers, Yngve and Halvard, and when I found them they told me they wanted me to join them in viking. Yngve said they could always use another good fighter, and Halvard said he wouldn't mind having a poet aboard to help them while away the nights. They got the fighter, but the poet? Ah well...

Sometimes I am strong enough to let myself think about Hervor. All this time later, I am still her poet. If you ask me for a song, I will give you the Song of Hervor. Never will I sing another.

I, Tal Heart-Reft, say this now.

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