---
Embers Beneath the Ice:
The Kindling
The snows came early the year Astrid's world ended.
She remembered the smoke first--thick plumes staining the dawn sky as raiders' torches devoured her village. Her mother shoved her into the barley cellar, hissing through the cracks: *"Don't make a sound."* For three days, Astrid huddled between sacks of grain, her father's rusted seax clutched to her chest. Its curved blade, sharp as a frozen moon, dug into her collarbone as screams outside faded into the crows' feast. When she crawled out, the world was a carcass picked clean, her breath frosting the air like a ghost's lament.
Valdis found her at the edge of the frozen lake.
The woman moved silently, wolf pelts draped over shoulders broad as a smith's anvil. Astrid tightened her grip on the seax's leather-bound hilt, its edge chipped but glinting in the pallid light. Valdis tilted her head, storm-gray eyes scraping over the girl's frostbitten hands. "You'll die by dusk," she said, voice rasping like wind through dead branches. "Or let me make a pyre of your grief. Choose."
Astrid's lips cracked as she snarled, "I don't need your pity."
Valdis laughed, cruel and warm. "Pity? No. I've a taste for vengeance, and yours reeks of promise." She tossed a slit-throat hare at Astrid's feet. "Cook this. I'll not have my new blade faint before she's sharpened."
That night, Astrid watched Valdis sharpen a dagger by firelight, the whetstone's rhythm syncing with distant wolf howls. "Why?" Astrid asked, pine logs snapping between them.
Valdis didn't look up. "Why save you?"
"Why care if I live?"
The whetstone paused. "The world breaks women like twigs. But you--" Her gaze lifted, piercing. "You're oak, girl. Splintered, but rooted."
Astrid looked away. The seax at her belt felt foreign now, a relic of a life she could no longer name.
---
Weeks bled into moons as they trekked north. Valdis rarely slept, yet always banked the fire before dawn, leaving embers where Astrid's bedroll lay. One morning, Astrid woke to Valdis's cloak draped over her--smoke and juniper clinging to the fur.
"You'll slow us," Valdis snapped when Astrid tried to return it. But when a blizzard raged that night, the woman pulled her close beneath the cloak. Astrid stiffened, unaccustomed to touch that wasn't a blow. "Breathe," Valdis muttered, arm firm around her ribs. Astrid realized she'd been holding her breath, her free hand straying to the seax's pommel.
Her heartbeat thundered where their shoulders pressed. Valdis smelled of iron and bitter herbs.
---
By the time they reached Valdis's hall--a longhouse hunched beneath a granite cliff--Astrid could march for leagues without stumbling. Valdis tossed her an axe. "Chop wood. Earn your warmth."
Astrid swung with a survivor's fury. Valdis leaned in the doorway, arms crossed. "Anger's a flame. Control it, or it chars your hands."
"You want me *tame*?" Astrid spat.
"I want you *alive*." Valdis stepped closer, calloused palm covering Astrid's on the axe handle. "The power's in the hips, not the arms." Her other hand tapped the seax. "This blade's no lumber tool. When you swing it--" She adjusted Astrid's grip, breath hot on her neck. "--it's to cleave throats."
Astrid's next strike split the wood clean. Valdis's approval hummed in her ear.
---
Winter deepened. Valdis taught her to track hares by the shiver of frost, to read storms in the ache of old scars. Nights were for stories of shieldmaidens and betrayed queens, Valdis's voice roughened by mead. Astrid memorized the curve of her jaw, the way firelight gilded the silvered scars on her throat.
One evening, Astrid reached to brush a snowflake from Valdis's braid. The woman caught her wrist. For a breath, vulnerability flickered in Valdis's gaze--then vanished. "Don't," she warned, but her thumb grazed Astrid's pulse before releasing her. The seax stayed sheathed by the hearth.
---
The thaw brought raiders.
Six men reeking of bloodlust stormed the longhouse at dawn. Astrid froze, the seax heavy in her untested grip, until Valdis roared: *"Stand* **here**!" The older woman fought like a blizzard given form, her axe biting flesh. When a raider lunged at Astrid, Valdis intercepted, taking a dagger's slash to her forearm to bury her blade in his heart.
After, she pressed Astrid against the wall, a bloodied handprint staining the girl's tunic. "Fear is a luxury," Valdis growled. "Tomorrow, you wield it." She nodded at the seax. "That blade's not a talisman. It's a tongue. Make it *speak*."
Astrid's fingers found Valdis's wound. "Let me tend this."
Valdis hesitated. Nodded.
---
By candlelight, Astrid cleaned the cut. Valdis's skin was a map of old battles, each scar a rune. "Why me?" Astrid whispered.
Valdis turned, capturing her hand. "Because I once knelt where you stand." Her thumb traced Astrid's knuckles. "The woman who raised me... she was the only kindness I didn't spit on."
"Where is she now?"
"Gone. But her fire remains." Valdis pressed Astrid's palm to the scar over her heart. "Here." Her other hand drifted to the seax, its edge nicked from survival. "Sharpen that. Tomorrow, you'll learn its true song."
---
When spring cracked the ice, Valdis led her to the training yard. "You'll bleed," she said, tossing Astrid the freshly honed seax--its edge a silver sneer in sunlight. "But mark this--" Her eyes softened, a glacier's fracture. "--I'll make you a storm."
Astrid gripped the hilt, her reflection swimming in Valdis's gaze. *This*, she realized, *is where I begin*.
Valdis struck first. Astrid parried--not with skill, but the desperate strength of one who'd found something to lose.
