Stone Circle sit with you in the trenches

He obeyed. He scarcely knew how else to act. He was still little more than a boy, one who, only yesterday, had followed the commands of his elders without question.

She bore no resemblance to the crazed crones or the beguiling mystics Àskell had seen serve as healers and shamans among the clans. She possessed something else entirely—something solemn, almost regal.

The tall youth had ducked his head to cross her threshold, imagining himself so grand he might brush the sky. Now curled in on himself like a child, the tattered remnants of his ears hanging along his cheeks, he stared intently at whatever the Silver Lady was preparing.

Àskell. Àskell Stóróflsson. The last son of Stórólfr, he said, as if presenting himself to fate. Are you the wife of Drøugr? he asked.

The contrast between Vikings and their women was often striking. As far back as he could remember, Àskell’s mother had been all delicate grace, like a flower trembling in the wind, while his father had been a weathered colossus—more bear than man.