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, pulling none of her blows.
They were training on the packed earth behind their little thatched-roof house, wedged between the building and the woodpile. Not ideal. Good enough. Thyra always said that a fighter who needed space had yet to learn what a bad place truly was.
The clan called her the valkyrie; it was difficult to imagine a greater honor than being compared to Odin’s warrior women. A true force of nature, she never bowed her head, not even the day she slit her own husband’s throat because he’d had the audacity to try to discipline her. The blood of skjaldmös ran thicker than the bonds of marriage.
Aasa feinted right and tried a low attack. Her aunt swept it aside with insulting ease before driving an elbow into her ribs. The valkyrie sneered without smiling—an expression perfected over decades—and raised her guard again.
One day, I’ll make her choke on that little sneer!
The only education she’d ever given Aasa was built on strength. Being able to beat any opponent spared you a great many problems. Weakness was forbidden. And the young woman was grateful for it. Ever since the day she’d defeated an overly persistent warrior by smashing his teeth in, the respect men showed her had changed in nature.
“You know what I learned the day Olaf thought it wise 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 no one comes to defend you when they know you can do it yourself. They just stand there and watch, and you find something interesting in their eyes.”
“Respect?”
“Fear. Which is even better.”
Thyra had never claimed to be gentle, nor had she played the grieving widow after Olaf’s death. She had simply taken his weapons, sharpened them, and carried on with her life.
The warriors broke apart and let their breathing settle. The morning sun barely skimmed the line of rooftops, distant enough that they could faintly hear the inhabitants without making them out. The advantage of living on the outskirts was seeing trouble coming before it landed on your doorstep.
Aasa slipped her hand free of her shield strap.
“Your father was the first to unite the jarls. Your mother dispensed justice. You raid monasteries in Northumbria,” the valkyrie said.
“We raided them. You were there.”
“To keep an eye on you. And I didn’t mind the loot, I’ll admit.”
The memory of the raid remained vivid: the taste of salt, the crash of waves against the longships, and that feeling of absolute freedom far from the threat in the sky.
When they returned, they were surprised to learn 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 a Saxon slave no one cared about.”
Her attention drifted toward the town’s rooftops for a moment. The woman brought back that same day—the one who had been taken six years earlier—hadn’t survived for long. Her husband had rejected her, and their children had refused to look at her. People whispered that she’d returned changed, broken, without the offspring she had carried. No one had wanted to hear her distress or her silences, and by the end of winter, she was found hanging in a stable. Ever since, the young woman had been unable to see returning as a blessing.
As for Gunnar, he was the new king, as well as one of her father’s former warriors. In the great hall her father had built, the vultures hadn’t taken long to gather. Nothing had changed since his unexpected rise to power except his title and his arrogance. She was learning him; his alliances and his fears, his debts and his grudges, the way he smiled more at the men he feared.
He understood that killing the former king’s daughter would cost him more than it would gain him. She knew he held that position only because the warriors capable of challenging him had died alongside her father, where she herself should have been. They tolerated each other... and the skjaldmö did not yet feel confident enough to challenge him. She was working on that, aware that perhaps the thought of becoming queen frightened her more than the thought of trying.
“They’ll never stop, Aasa.”
“I don’t understand why they don’t fight back! If they chose me, I’d slit their throats before they touched my shield!”
“And you’d die before you could try. You were too young to remember, but when your father stood against the Álfes, it was nothing like a battle. No honor. No one went to Valhalla that day. It was a slaughterhouse.”
Aasa had barely been four years old when the Dökkálfar first appeared. An age from which few clear memories remained. What she retained instead were vague sensations, the smell of something burning without being able to name it. What she remembered distinctly was the bewildered silence that followed the passage of that immense metal vessel overhead as they were plunged into its shadow. Absolute stillness, as though Midgard had held its breath for a moment before its final transformation.
The following week, a cold, vertical light resembling the Bifröst had split the sky. Her father—prepared for anything—had first watched it with keen curiosity, hoping to divine Heimdall’s purpose. But the figures that emerged from it, tall, dark, and alien to the gods of Asgard, had immediately hardened his expression. To him, there was no doubt: these Álfes had come from Svartálfheim to bring war to them.
His order had come down, simple and absolute: they would fight. Alas, the enemy wielded an unknown magic, so terrible that it ensured them a crushing victory. The skalds had embroidered upon the tale ever since... with the usual generosity reserved for the dead, who could no longer correct their embellishments.
“You’re not actually suggesting we just let them do it?! Not you!” she spat.
“Death is preferable, my girl. They seek fertile wombs in which to sow their seed,” the valkyrie replied with fierce bitterness. “If they ever choose you, don’t throw your life away without accomplishing anything. Be clever and patient, so you can take as many of them with you as possible. Make sure your hatred is the only legacy you leave them.”
Aasa clicked her tongue in response, but she knew her aunt was right. If even her father—as strong as the stories claimed, and with the support of every jarl—had failed to defeat a single one of them, what could she accomplish by acting on impulse? Among the things she had pieced together fragment by fragment over the seasons, she knew that Dökkálfar did not fall like men. Perhaps they didn’t die at all.
In any case, she didn’t believe for a moment that she could ever be chosen. Their lands teemed with women, from the households of jarls to the humblest homes, not to mention the slaves. The harvest always struck 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. And yet, during the second harvest, they chose me.”
“What?” the young woman reacted in surprise. “What...? How is that possible?”
“They don’t choose at random. The women they select are all between eighteen and thirty-five, never older, rarely younger. And not to boast, but they’re always the prettiest.”
She paused briefly.
“That day, one of them held an instrument of metal and light near my belly. Then they spoke among themselves... before rejecting me and choosing another.”
She spoke without any particular inflection, as though recounting a bad bargain. Then a laugh escaped her, as brief as it was bitter.
“As though I were useless,” she concluded. “At the time, I didn’t understand what he’d just done. But in their eyes, I was good for nothing. I hate them for many reasons, Aasa... but for that one in particular. The years with Olaf later confirmed what they already knew: no child ever came.”
Aasa didn’t dare reply. She could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t have been too much.
Thyra broke the silence by stepping toward her. Her hands, calloused and hard as bark, rose with uncharacteristic slowness to cup her niece’s cheeks. The gesture was so foreign to their daily life of iron and sweat that the warrior froze.
“You look more like your mother every day.”
Aasa stared into her eyes, taken aback. The valkyrie held her gaze without blinking, with an intensity that carried a hint of warning.
“You look too much like her,” she corrected in a low voice.
Her hand moved to the back of Aasa’s neck in a gesture as brief as it was awkward, the gesture of someone unaccustomed to such things... She withdrew it almost immediately.
“My sister never went unnoticed. Upright. Taller than most... Everyone who laid eyes on her noticed her beauty, but she paid it no mind. It was one of the things I admired about her. And truth be told, your father wasn’t lacking in charisma either. What a perfect blend they made.”
Her aunt moved away to retrieve her shield and signal that training was to resume.
Like so many other things, Aasa had few memories of her parents.
Queens were often said to be beautiful simply to bestow virtues upon them. Her mother had indeed been renowned for her beauty... but above all for being just: praise rarely reserved for women. The jarls brought their disputes to her. Not her father. Her. Because she judged without favoritism or resentment, and her word could not be bought.
Of her father, all she remembered was a braided blond beard, a deep laugh, and enormous hands lifting her into the air in the great hall. The rest was nothing but stories. Those told by the elders, by Thyra, and by the drunkards who still spoke of the king who had brought them a golden age before dying. The warrior who discovered new lands to raid and brought all those proud chieftains to heel. The man who became king through the strength of his blade and his will.
“If the Dökkálfar seek out the finest among us, they won’t be looking 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 was the concern of women who waited on thresholds for someone else to decide their fate. She had never needed it. She frowned and opened her mouth.
“I’m not saying this to frighten you,” Thyra cut her off. “I’m saying it so you’ll stay on your guard, just in case. Because being strong won’t be enough to deter those men.”
Without further ceremony, she picked up her axe and pointed it at her.
“Again. On your left, you always drop your elbow too low.”
Aasa growled, pivoted, and attacked fiercely.
This time, she forced the valkyrie to retreat. A brief smile split the latter’s hard face.
“That’s it. Strike with your anger. Not your memories.”
Anger? It never left her. They abducted women and had killed her parents, denying them Valhalla. Wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, or slaves: they made no distinction, so long as they were beautiful and fertile. Aasa hated them with every fiber 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. Wood to split. Weapons to maintain: those of their household and those of other warriors. Every day, people brought them blades to sharpen, straighten, or oil, handles to repair, and straps to replace. Bartering, combined with their share of the spoils, was enough to sustain their household between raids. And so they regularly found themselves at the market, as they did today.
Her aunt was fiercely haggling over a bearskin with a seller who had clearly underestimated her. All around them rose the merchants’ drawn-out voices, mingling with quarrels between neighbors and the hammering of blacksmiths.
The skjaldmö, meanwhile, was examining a blade at a stall when she caught sight of two of Gunnar’s men watching her. The man must be growing increasingly uneasy to resort to this. She stared at them with undisguised contempt until they were the first to look away.
Satisfied, she returned the weapon to the display just as birds burst from the rooftops in a chaotic cloud. Voices fell silent one by one. And then came the vibration. A hum so deep that Aasa first felt it through the soles of her feet before it climbed her spine and set her teeth vibrating. The midday sun was abruptly devoured. She looked up. A vast, slow-moving shadow glided across the rooftops.
They had returned.
