ᚠ ᛈʜᴀᚹᴛᴇᚱ 1
𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑺𝑯𝑰𝑬𝑳𝑫 slammed into Aasa’s forearm with a dull thud that traveled all the way up to her shoulder. The warrior absorbed the blow, her arm muscles aching beneath the impact of her aunt’s strike.
“Faster, Aasa! If you hesitate, you’re already a shade in Valhalla,” Thyra thundered.
The valkyrie never held back. She was a true force of nature, a woman who never bowed her head—not even on the day she slit her own husband’s throat because he’d had the audacity to try to put her in her place. The blood of the skjaldmös ran thicker than the bonds of marriage.
The only lesson Thyra had ever taught her was strength. If you could beat any opponent, most problems solved themselves. Weakness was forbidden. And Aasa was grateful for it. One day, she’d knocked the teeth out of a warrior who couldn’t take a hint. From then on, the respect men showed her carried a different edge.
Aasa feinted right and launched a low attack. Her aunt swept her aside with insulting ease and drove an elbow into her ribs. The valkyrie chuckled without smiling—a look perfected over decades—and resumed her stance.
They trained on the packed earth behind the house, in the narrow space between the wall and the woodpile. Not ideal. Good enough. Thyra always said that a fighter who needed room to fight had never been in the wrong places.
“Do you know what I learned the day Olaf thought it was a good idea to raise a hand against me?”
The question came out of nowhere. It often did with her. Aasa adjusted her grip on her shield without looking up.
“That your arm was faster than his.”
“That nobody comes to defend you when you can do it yourself. They just stand there watching, and you notice something interesting in their eyes.”
“Respect?”
“Fear. Which is even better.”
Thyra had never pretended to be gentle, nor had she played the grieving widow when Olaf died. She’d simply taken his weapons, sharpened them, and gone on with her life.
The two warriors stepped apart and let their breathing settle. The morning sun barely skimmed the rooftops, far enough along that people could hear them without seeing them clearly. That was one advantage of living on the outskirts. You saw trouble coming before it landed on your doorstep.
Aasa slipped her hand from the shield strap.
“Your father was the first to unite the jarls. Your mother dispensed justice. And you raid monasteries in Northumbria,” the valkyrie said.
“We raided. You were there.”
“I was there to keep an eye on you. Though I’ll admit, I didn’t dislike the loot.”
The raid felt as close as yesterday: salt on her tongue, waves crashing against the longship, freedom of being far from the celestial threat.
When they returned, they learned with surprise that the Dökkálfar had never come.
“Gunnar thinks they’re not coming back,” Aasa spat between breaths, vapor escaping her lips. “It’s been four years. The sky stayed empty two years ago. And the last time, they only took some Saxon slave nobody cared about.”
Her attention shifted toward the town’s rooftops. The woman brought back that same day—the one taken six years earlier—had not survived long afterward. Her husband rejected her. Her children refused to look at her. People whispered that she had returned changed, broken, without the child she had carried. Nobody wanted to hear her anguish or her silences. At the end of winter, they found her hanging in a stable. Since then, Aasa had never managed to see a return as a blessing.
As for Gunnar, he was the new king and one of her father’s former warriors. The vultures had arrived quickly in the great hall her father had built. Nothing had changed since Gunnar took power except his title and his arrogance. She was learning to know him. His alliances and fears. His debts and grudges. The way he smiled more readily at the men he feared. He understood that killing the former king’s daughter would cost him more than it would gain him. Aasa knew he sat on that throne only because the warriors capable of challenging him had died beside her father—where Gunnar himself should have been.
They tolerated each other. And the skjaldmö did not yet feel confident enough to challenge him. Not yet. She was working on that. Fully aware that the idea of becoming queen frightened her more than attempting it.
“They’ll never give up, Aasa.”
“I don’t understand why the women don’t fight back! If they picked me, I’d slit their throats before they ever touched my shield!”
“And you’d die before you even tried. You’re too young to remember, but when your father stood against the Álfes, it wasn’t a battle. There was no honor in it. Nobody joined Valhalla that day. It was a slaughterhouse.”
Aasa had barely been four years old when the Dökkálfar first appeared. An age when memories rarely remained clear. What she remembered were sensations instead—the smell of something burning without being able to name it. What she recalled distinctly was the confused silence that followed the flyover of that immense metal vessel when its shadow engulfed them. A perfect stillness. As if Midgard itself held its breath for a moment before its final transformation.
The following week, a cold vertical light, like the Bifröst, split the evening sky. Her father—prepared for anything—had first watched it with cautious curiosity, hoping to understand Heimdall’s purpose. But the figures that emerged from it, tall, dark, and foreign to the gods of Asgard, hardened his expression at once. To him, there was no doubt. These Álfes had come from Svartálfheim to bring war to them.
His order came swiftly, simple and unquestionable: they would fight. Alas, the enemy wielded an unknown magic so terrible that it secured them an overwhelming victory. The skalds had embroidered the tale ever since, with the usual generosity reserved for the dead who could no longer correct the embellishments.
What Aasa knew—what she had pieced together fragment by fragment through the seasons—was that the Dökkálfar did not fall like men. Perhaps they did not die at all.
“You’re not actually suggesting we let them do as they please, are you? You of all people!” she snapped.
“Death is preferable, girl. They seek fertile wombs to plant their seed,” the valkyrie replied with fierce bitterness. “If they ever choose you, don’t throw your life away accomplishing nothing. Be clever. Be patient. Take as many of them with you as you can. Make sure your hatred is the only legacy you leave them.”
Aasa clicked her tongue, but she understood her aunt was right. If even her father—as strong as everyone claimed, backed by every jarl—had failed to kill a single one, what could she accomplish by acting on impulse? Besides, she didn’t believe for a second that she could be chosen. Their lands were full of women, from jarls’ daughters to the humblest households, not to mention the slaves. The Harvest always claimed strangers. Why would the Álfes set their sights on her rather than one of the thousands of others?
Thyra studied her for a moment, as though reading her thoughts.
“I know what you’re thinking, Aasa. And you’re not wrong.”
Her features hardened.
“There was a time when I thought the same thing. Yet during the second harvest, they chose me.”
“What?” the young woman blurted in surprise. “What...? How is that possible?”
“They don’t choose at random. The women they take are always between eighteen and thirty-five. Never older. Rarely younger. And without meaning to boast, they’re always the prettiest.”
Her face closed off.
“That day, one of them held an instrument of metal and light against my stomach. Then they spoke among themselves... before rejecting me and choosing someone else.”
She had spoken without any particular inflection, as if recounting a bad trade deal. Then a laugh escaped her, brief and bitter.
“As though I were useless,” she concluded. “At the time, I didn’t understand what he’d done. But in their eyes, I was worth nothing. And the years with Olaf later confirmed what they already knew. No child ever came. I hate them for many reasons, Aasa... but that one above all.”
Aasa dared not answer. She could think of nothing that wouldn’t be too much.
Thyra broke the silence and stepped toward her. Her hands, calloused and hard as bark, rose to her niece’s cheeks with unusual slowness. The gesture was so foreign to their everyday life of iron and sweat that Aasa froze, breath caught in her throat.
“You look more and more like your mother.”
Aasa stared into her eyes, speechless. The valkyrie held her gaze without blinking, with an intensity that carried the hint of a warning.
“You look too much like her,” she corrected softly.
Her hand moved briefly and awkwardly to the back of Aasa’s neck—the gesture of someone unaccustomed to such things. She withdrew it almost immediately.
“My sister never went unnoticed. Straight-backed. Taller than most... Anyone who looked at her noticed her beauty, but she never cared about it. That was one of the things I admired about her. And by the gods, your father wasn’t lacking in charisma either. What a perfect combination they made.”
Her aunt walked away to retrieve her shield and resume the training.
Like so many things, Aasa remembered little of her parents.
People often called queens beautiful to grant them virtues. Her mother had a reputation for beauty, yes. But above all, for fairness—a compliment rarely given to women. The jarls brought their disputes to her. Not to her father. To her. Because she judged without favor or resentment, and because her word could not be bought.
Of her father, Aasa remembered only a braided blond beard, a deep laugh, and enormous hands lifting her in the great hall. Everything else was stories. The stories of elders, of Thyra, and of drunkards who still spoke of the king who had brought them a golden age before he fell. The warrior who discovered new lands to raid and bent proud chieftains to his will. The man who became king through the strength of his blade and his determination.
“If the Dökkálfar seek the finest among us, they won’t look at a slave during the next harvest. You’re a wolf among sheep. Your strength is your armor, but your beauty is your curse.”
Aasa had never thought of it that way. To her, beauty belonged to women who waited on thresholds for someone else to decide their lives. She had never needed it. She frowned and opened her mouth.
“I’m not saying this to frighten you,” Thyra cut in. “I’m saying it so you stay alert, just in case. Because being strong won’t be enough to discourage those men.”
She picked up her axe without further ceremony and pointed it toward her.
“Again. On the left side, you still drop your elbow too much.”
Aasa growled, pivoted, and attacked with ferocity.
This time, she forced the valkyrie to give ground. A brief smile split the older woman’s hard face.
“There. Strike with your anger. Not with your memories.”
Anger? She never let it go. They had killed her parents by denying them Valhalla. They took women. Wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, slaves—it made no difference to them, so long as they were beautiful and fertile. Aasa hated them with every part of her being.
𝑰𝑵 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑫𝑨𝒀𝑺 that followed, the villagers worked harder than ever preparing for the sowing season. People almost stopped watching the sky, too busy cursing the stubborn earth.
Aasa followed her usual routine. Training with Thyra at dawn. Chopping wood. Maintaining weapons—those of the household and those of other warriors. People regularly brought them blades to sharpen, straighten, or oil; hafts to repair; straps to replace. Barter, combined with their share of the spoils, was enough to sustain their household between raids. Which was why they found themselves at the market so often. Like today.
Her aunt was fiercely haggling over a bear pelt with a merchant who had clearly underestimated her. The drawn-out voices of traders drifted all around them amid neighbors’ arguments and the rhythmic hammering of blacksmiths.
Nearby, the skjaldmö was inspecting a blade on a stall when she caught the gaze of two of Gunnar’s men watching her. The king must have been growing increasingly uneasy to resort to that. She stared back with undisguised contempt until they were the first to look away.
Satisfied, she returned the weapon to the display. Then birds burst from the rooftops in a chaotic cloud. The voices fell silent one by one. And then came the vibration. A hum so deep that Aasa felt it first through the soles of her feet before it climbed her spine and set her teeth trembling. The midday sun was suddenly swallowed. She looked up. A vast, slow shadow slid across the rooftops.
They had returned.
