Prologue
Alister Vesyr stared down the barrel of her rifle and zeroed in on the target ahead of her: troll. A ways to the northeast, seated on a neighboring hill, was her clanmate and personal lookout on missions like these, Dane Edda. Alister flashed her compact in Dane’s direction, that silent question between them. How many? Dane raised two fingers, and Alister nodded. Fixing her sights on their target again, she took a slow breath, knocked a round into place, curled her toes into her boots, and fired.
Her bullet found its mark with deadly accuracy, as always. Dane, noting the time it takes for her to load another round, goes for the second troll with a throwing knife between the eyes. Two down. He threw her a smirk, but his groan was near audible as he raised himself to his feet and waited for Alister.
Alister knew her friend was aching, old injuries in his leg playing on his pain tolerance again with the brewing storm ever hovering towards them, but he still met the clasp of her arm when they were within touching distance, and his eyes were bright. “Damn fine shooting,” he remarked, turning his honey-brown eyes towards their downed prey. Alister shrugged.
“Trolls ain’t much in the way of eating, but they’ll be enough to keep bellies full for about a week. Esault has a problem with it, he can take it up with me.”
As they stalked towards their kills, Dane said, “I keep tellin’ him we need to move on before the milk goes sour out here, but he’s fixed on this place. Dunno what it is--he won’t listen to reason anymore.”
“I know the feeling,” Alister mused as she hooked her fingers around the handle of the knife and handed it back to Dane. “What’s his new idea? That we’re going to ride off into the sunset, and everyone is going to get away?”
Dane grunted as he struggled to swing the carcass of the larger troll onto his shoulders. “You’re asking the wrong person there, Al. I haven’t known what he’s been planning for a long time. He quit including me in his schemes after what happened in Bodega. Now I just try to keep up.”
“That’s all we can do, I suppose.”
“Fenrir guard us, then.”
“Indeed.”
It was a silent ride back to the camp the clan had set up along the outskirts of the forest of Dimhalla. Alister’s lungs ached with the effort of breathing in the whalebone corset beneath her tunic--a piece of armor more than anything cosmetic--and her horse was tired, and they’d gotten wet in the starting of the storm, and Dane had huffed and fiddled with his leg the whole ride, and the scent of dead troll made her want to swim in the sewers just to encounter something more pleasant, and—
“Out of Helheim, you lot look,” called Esault, once Alister and Dane were well-within ear shot. Alister let Dane dismount first, if only so she could go a moment without his muttering.
“Got caught up in that storm,” groaned Dane. “Had to hunker down for a bit.” He tugged the heftier of the kill to the ground, but left the other one--pretty, he’d called it--tied to her Dall, not that the speckled mare seemed to mind, for the pair to take to a fur trader at dawn. That coin better be worth the ride--Alister was sure her boots would never be dry again after that storm. She didn’t bother meeting Esault’s expectant stare as she swung her leg over Dall’s thick neck and slid to the ground, wincing at the audible squish of the sole of her boots.
Esault, with all the passive aggression he was capable of, grabbed the pretty troll by the back of the neck, and barked out a laugh at the bullet hole Alister had left, clean through the temple. “Good enough to mount,” he mused. “This’ll get us some much-needed coin.”
She bit her tongue. Esault hadn’t truly had a word of praise for Alister on anything since—she couldn’t remember when. He’d never been outwardly spiteful or negative, but he certainly hadn’t been affectionate. So much disdain, coming from someone that had once claimed to be her father.
But that was years ago, now. Sunsets and seasons long gone by. “Would only have the one without Dane,” she snapped. The two men stilled, only for a moment, as Alister walked around Dall’s front and finally met Esault’s ever-shifting stare.
Smooth as honey and venom, Esault smiled at her, and clapped her on the shoulder, shaking her slightly. “Of course,” he said through his teeth. “You two have become my favorite team.” His nails dug into her shoulder, and she finally shook him off. It was bold of her to slam her shoulder into his as she passed to get to her cinch, but she did it. Dane, ever meek and hoping to regain Esault’s favor, stayed silent.
So it was. So it would be.
She stripped Dall’s tack and draped it over the hitching post. As she was tugging down the troll, she met Esault’s eyes again, cold and quiet, “If any of them—” She cut her eyes to the rest of the clan gathered around the campfire. “--takes it, touches it, if I even see ’em poking around my kill, I’ll skin ’em.”
There was that sickly sweet smile again as she turned Dall out with the herd. “Of course, my dear.” He clapped her on the shoulder, nodded to Dane, and left them to join the clan for dinner.
Her skin crawled. She was shaking--and she didn’t want to be. Her stomach ached, she gritted her teeth as Dane moved closer, and he stopped. When her saddle was secured on the pole, she sniffed, swallowed, and pointed at the troll. “Don’t touch my shit.”
Alister awoke to the screams of the dying. As she fumbled with her boots and guns, her eyes caught the steady orange and red outside her tent: fire. Her calloused fingers ripped aside the flap that served as a door, and found her whole camp, her clan, her family, burning to ash.
