Among the many whispered myths that echoed in Skelene, it was said that twins share a fixed measure of both luck and love. For some, it meant a balanced partition between the two. For others, it destined one beloved, one fate-favored. For an auspicious—and inauspicious—few, one twin hoarded both love and luck. Rarest still, it was this morning that a young shepherdess prayed for neither. As it was her twin brother, Dax, who needed fortune, and she had no use for love.

Deya Bjornsdottir, first-born and second-loved, watched the sky with careworn eyes from the cool embrace of spring grass. In those misted mornings where the earth was still, save for wind song and the soft bleating of sheep, she nearly convinced herself that the world was safe.

Even so, the uncomfortable practicality of her hardened heart could not be ignored, and she waited for dark smoke to stain the horizon. It would come before the sound of drums could reach the mountainside. All the women tending their flocks, scattered across the rough terrain, watched the distant sky with her. Such was the problem with war: it made itself so comfortable among daily routine, that it became as expected as each new sunrise.

"They will not come," she whispered to a dirty ram that wandered close. The creature only turned its mournful eye towards her and bleated before returning to graze. Her flock's shaggy winter coats were thinning with the breathy promise of spring and, as certain as snowmelt, the return of warmer mornings and sunlit evenings would bring the chieftain's men to their village.

And when they came, Dax Bjornsson would die.

Though born of mighty men—Bjorn son of Harald, son of Igen, son of Olf—Dax was no warrior. A sharp tongue when he willed it, to be sure, but her twin was as flighty as sparrow song, as wistful as summer sky. Outside of battle, it served him well. Whether for the dimple in his smile, or the sincerity of his laughter, it was impossible to not love Dax. Not even their legendary father, Bjorn Haraldsson, could manage it. Although he sorrowed for having a son unversed in the ways of warfare, disappointment alone could not prevent him from returning to battle in his son's stead. From dying in his place, so fierce was that love.

Deya frowned. The pang of jealousy and guilt felt foreign after years of callused grief. As first-born, even if only by moments, she should have been a mighty son, a warrior to carry her father's legacy. Instead, she was another mouth to feed, a daughter from a family too poor to muster a proper dowry, always compared to a beloved son who tempted smiles on the darkest of days. She did not blame her father, or her mother, for loving her less than Dax. She loved him more than life itself. And now the world in which the same war had claimed their father's life, and their mother's through it, might also steal him from her.

For he would die. She knew it like she knew the sunrise. His dreams, as lovely as they were, had not kept them fed or warm through the bite of winter. They would not save him from the lament of battle horns.

Dax was a dreamer, and dreamers had no place in war.

"Dearest sister, they cannot slay one as charming as me," he had promised her with his usual winsome smile. "One glimpse of my face and, surely, they will drop their blades."

Over their bleak dinner of half-forgotten pickled carrots and endives that Dax had charmed from their neighbors, she had smiled back. It was impossible not to catch his grin. "Drop their blades from surprise, I'm sure," she'd teased, "at the sight of something so hideous."

Dax had pulled her into a tight embrace and smothered her in affectionate, sloppy kisses. "Do not forget, sweet Deya," he'd countered in wry return, "that we have the same face." Alone in a draft-bitten house, too large for just two, their howling laughter burned brighter than the embers in their meager hearth.

That same face was but one of many gifts from their shared womb. Gray eyes from their mother, who loved the winter sea. Their father's legendary long nose—Deya's a touch crooked—and his legendary height. To Dax's dismay, they owned the same sinewy frame, and to Deya's, the same hard angles in their jaw. They shared sun-licked hair and mirrored lines that crinkled in their smiles. Those crinkled smiles that made her cheeks sore and her dreams warm.

In that bright cringe of morning that followed, however, the humor had not joined her trek into the mountainside.

"They will not come," she repeated, splitting a blade of grass against her thumb. Wind nipped through her homespun shirt and her thick woolen shawl. It played at the edges of her tight-wound braid. Surely it was still too cold to resume the fighting. It must be. "Not today."

Where Dax dreamed, Deya labored. Where he loved, she survived. The fresh sunrise on the sloping grasses kissed her with a warmth that broke her heart, and so, out of the habit of dreaming, Deya prayed. She prayed to the gods and goddesses who protected soldiers and dreamers, who watched over shepherds and orphaned children. And she prayed to the mighty All-Father, whose single eye saw all things.

I beg you. Do not let my brother die.

Each cluster of wildflowers that pushed their way towards the heavens mocked her quiet prayers. Full of bitterness, she willed for a late spell of frost to wilt their petals and listened for the gods' answer.

Silence echoed.

Gone was the melody of birds, the humming of insects.

Deya's heart thundered in her chest as she shot to her feet. Staff in hand, she searched the rocky slopes for the source of such dangerous quiet. Meters ahead, dressed in the shadows of the trees, a lean creature circled.

Before thought, before reason, Deya called to her animals with piercing insistence. The other women tending their animals turned, repeated the cry that echoed across the mountainside. The haunting luringsong. Bells and bleats rang in discordant harmony as the flocks turned toward their owners in practiced obedience.

But she could not wait for help, not for a breath, not for a moment. Her shawl abandoned, Deya's feet moved before the memory of her song died. Gaining momentum over loose earth and stones, she followed them towards the dark creature with no courage, no fear, no thought. Losing a single lamb would mean one more night spent hungry, one more night spent cold. Even as the ragged-coated wolf turned towards her, snarling with yellow fangs, too sickly and desperate to flee, Deya shrieked in fury and swung her staff at the beast.

The wolf yelped with the impact, but did not falter, did not run. He circled her, lips curled in vicious promise. In the strange still moment where she locked eyes with death, Deya unsheathed the small dagger she carried. Blade dull from peeling birch bark and cutting kindling, hilt hewed of worn bone, it did not feel mighty in her unsteady hand. Mouth dripping, the wolf growled as he watched with a single golden eye, the other scarred and blind.

It gave her pause. Her fingers loosed around the dagger's hilt. The All-Father, the very god to whom she begged, had sacrificed his eye so that he might see all things. Surely she could not slay a beast marked by the gods.

The wolf lunged.

Half-starved and half-mad, he collided with her hip, the wooden staff, and sent them tumbling into mountain bramble. The dagger flew from her hand. Fangs snapped at her face. Thorns and branches tore at her arms. Coarse fur thrashed against her. Empty and desperate, her fingers searched for the weapon, and in a moment of strange clarity, Deya wondered if she might die, and if that her prayers might have been better spent on herself. The beast's sour breath was hot against her face. His gaping maw eclipsed the sun. She closed her eyes.

Her flailing hand met smooth bone.

A sharp cry bore into the center of her chest, and Deya realized it was not her own voice that keened. She blinked. With unknown strength, she had thrust the blade into the wolf's throat. Her fingers were icy against fresh blood.

The bright eye dimmed in death.

For scattered heartbeats, too stunned to breathe, she was frozen. But with a strangled sob, Deya pushed its corpse from her, the weight of it suddenly heavy against her trembling arms. Her breaths tore through her chest. Her pulse hammered in her throat. She smothered her tears with her fist, and the coppery scent of blood sent bile to her mouth.

It was over. In an instant, it was over.

The other women had pushed their way into the underbrush after her. Worry bloomed into relief. Smiling and thanking the gods for their mercy, they pulled her from the briars and nettles, fretted over the cuts and bruises she could not yet feel.

Surveying her injuries with a critical eye, Ingrid Arensdottir whispered, "Lucky girl!"

Katla Freyrsdottir wrapped her retrieved shawl—bright sunny yellow—around her shoulders. And Turid Ivarssdottir cleaned the dagger's edge on wet moss and gave thanks for its faithfulness. They admired her bravery, her swiftness, her strength.

Their praises fell on unhearing ears as the wind threatened to freeze the trail of spent tears on her cheeks. It pricked her nose with a familiar scent. Smoke and ashes. Deya's stomach twisted into knots and tangles as her eyes met the horizon.

A plume of death rose above the treeline.

Prayers forgotten, Deya trembled. If she had found good fortune, then certainly her brother had not. 

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