The entrance to the Wolf's Den was a mouth of darkness, a gaping maw in the rock face from which the sounds of battle within echoed with a hollow, deadly resonance. Eirik, his breath ragged in his chest, his sword arm heavy with fatigue, led the final push through the breached outer defenses. The air, once thick with the open-skied chaos of the courtyard, now condensed into a claustrophobic pressure within the stone throat of the passage.
His men, the core of his father's huscarls, were hardened veterans, but even they felt the dread of this place. This was the heart of the enemy, the lair of the Old Wolf himself. They advanced in a tight shield wall, the splintering of wood and the crunch of bone a grim percussion to their steps.
Eirik's mind was a battlefield of its own. The image of Astrid, standing pale and stricken amidst the carnage, was seared behind his eyes. The torment in her gaze had been a wound more painful than any blade. He had seen her not as an enemy, but as the woman whose quiet strength had saved him, whose truth had unmade him, and whose world he was now systematically destroying. Every Svartfjell warrior he cut down felt like a betrayal of her. Every step deeper into the mountain was a step further from the man he had been in her croft.
They burst from the narrow passage into the vast, interconnected cavern of the great hall. It was a scene from an ancient saga. Torches flickered, casting dancing, monstrous shadows on the rough-hewn walls. At the far end, on his stone throne, sat Jarl Kveldulf. He was not cowering. He was waiting, flanked by his most loyal and ferocious warriors, a circle of grey wolves with bared teeth. Among them, Eirik saw Gunnar, his face contorted in a snarl of pure hatred.
The two forces sized each other up across the smoky expanse. There was no more strategy, no more tactics. This was the final, brutal simplification of their feud. It would be decided here, in the heart of the mountain, by strength of arms and will.
"Stórbrodir!" Kveldulf's voice, though not loud, carried through the hall with cutting clarity. "You defile my hall with your presence. Your father was too much a coward to come himself, so he sends his whelp to die in his place."
Eirik stepped forward, his boots scuffing on the stone floor. "I am Eirik, son of Halfdan. And I am here to end this."
"This can never end," Kveldulf replied, his grey eyes pitiless. "It can only consume. You will learn that, boy, in your final moments." He raised a hand. "Gunnar. Show our guest the price of arrogance."
With a roar that was more animal than human, Gunnar broke from the line, his great axe held high. He charged directly for Eirik, a force of pure, unbridled fury.
The fight was immediate and savage. There was no finesse, only raw, destructive power. Gunnar's axe swept down in a killing arc, and Eirik met it with his sword, the impact jarring his teeth. Sparks flew where steel met steel. Gunnar was stronger, fueled by a lifetime of hatred, but Eirik was faster, his movements honed by a deeper, more complex torment. He fought not with rage, but with a desperate, weary determination.
He parried another brutal swing, the force of it numbing his arm to the shoulder. He ducked under a backhanded swipe that would have taken his head, and lunged, his sword point scraping against Gunnar's chainmail. They circled, breathing heavily, their personal war a microcosm of the greater conflict.
"You think she will love you for this?" Gunnar spat, his eyes wild. "You think sparing her life will make her forget you are butchering her family? You are a fool, Stórbrodir! Your mercy is a weakness, and I will carve it from your corpse!"
The words were meant to distract, but they held a terrible truth. Eirik saw Astrid's face again, the pain in her eyes. In that moment of hesitation, Gunnar saw his opening. He feinted high and swung low, the axe blade biting deep into Eirik's thigh, just above the knee.
A white-hot agony, a sickening echo of the injury Astrid had once healed, exploded through Eirik's leg. He cried out, stumbling back, his leg buckling beneath him. Gunnar loomed over him, victory blazing in his eyes, his axe rising for the final blow.
"This is for Egil!" Gunnar bellowed.
Time seemed to slow. Eirik, on one knee, looked up at his death. He saw the triumph on Gunnar's face, the grim acceptance on the faces of his own men, the cold satisfaction on Kveldulf's. This was how it ended. Not in a quiet croft, but in a hall of stone, slain by the cousin of the woman he loved.
But the death blow never fell.
From the entrance of the hall, a voice rang out, sharp and clear, cutting through the din of the ongoing battle between the huscarls.
"STOP!"
All eyes turned. Astrid stood there, her chest heaving, her dress stained with the blood of Svartfjell and Stórbrodir alike. In her hands, she held not a weapon, but the finished tapestry from her loom, the beautiful, intricate pattern of fjord and forest held before her like a shield.
Gunnar froze, his axe held high, his head whipping around toward her. "Astrid! Get back!"
"No, Gunnar!" she shouted, her voice trembling but unwavering. She took a step into the hall, her eyes fixed not on her cousin, but on her father on his throne. "This ends now. Look at this! Look at what we are doing! This hall was built by our ancestors to shelter their people, not to become a tomb for them! This tapestry… it shows the land we share. The beauty that exists beyond this hatred. Is this," she gestured at the carnage around her, the wounded and the dead, "is this what we are? Is this our legacy?"
Kveldulf's face was a mask of stone. "You disgrace yourself, daughter. You side with the enemy."
"I side with life!" she cried, her voice breaking. "I side with the truth that this cycle of violence only creates more widows and more orphans! It does not bring back Egil! It does not prove our strength! It only proves that we are slaves to a story written in blood!"
Her gaze then fell upon Eirik, kneeling and bleeding at Gunnar's feet. The pain in her eyes was a physical thing. "And you," she said to him, her voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carried through the entire hall. "Is this the man you are? The man I…" She could not finish, but the unspoken word—loved—hung in the air, more powerful than any war cry.
In that moment, the spell of the feud was broken. The simplistic narrative of us-versus-them shattered under the weight of her courage and her compassion. The warriors, both Stórbrodir and Svartfjell, watched, their weapons lowering slightly, captivated by the woman who dared to speak a different truth in the heart of their war.
Gunnar, however, was too far gone. With a roar of pure fury, he ignored her, his focus returning to Eirik, his muscles coiling to deliver the killing stroke.
"NO!"
The shout came from the throne. Kveldulf was on his feet. His grey eyes, for the first time, held not cold strategy, but a dawning, horrified realization as he looked from his defiant daughter to the wounded enemy heir, and the tapestry she held—a symbol of a peace he had forgotten could exist.
But his command came too late.
As Gunnar's axe began its descent, Eirik, driven by a final, desperate surge of will, pushed himself up from his knee. He didn't try to parry. Instead, he lunged forward, inside the arc of the axe, and drove his sword upward, under Gunnar's guard.
The blade slid between Gunnar's ribs with a soft, sickening crunch.
Gunnar's eyes widened in shock, his axe falling from his nerveless fingers to clatter on the stone floor. He looked down at the sword in his chest, then at Eirik's face, a foot from his own. A gurgle of blood escaped his lips. He slumped forward, his dead weight pulling Eirik down with him.
Silence.
Absolute, profound silence fell upon the Wolf's Den. The only sound was the ragged, pained breathing of Eirik, lying pinned beneath the body of the man he had just killed—the cousin of the woman he loved.
Astrid stood frozen, the tapestry falling from her hands into the blood-soaked dirt. Her intervention had stopped the battle, but it had not stopped the death. It had only ensured it was a death that would forever haunt them both.
The breaking was complete. Not just of the siege, but of Eirik and Astrid. They had faced each other in the hall of kings, and in trying to stop the war, they had created a personal loss that would forever stand between them, a chasm deeper and darker than any fjord.