Chapter One
Týr
Stillness blanketed the landscape. Bodies lay strewn about, and the scent of blood clung to the air I breathed. My feet carried me across this former battlefield, the muted cries of active fighting in the distance.
Voices whispered in my ear—berserkers chanting vows and battle cries in my name, warriors praying for strength to spill the blood of their enemies. Some I acknowledged, pushing a touch of power toward my followers. And some I didn’t. I had my reasons for both, but they weren’t easily put into words.
My body hummed with power, strengthened by their worship and their craving for battle.
And yet, my feet carried me away from it, toward the prayer of a far more quiet voice—a woman. I strained my senses to block out everything but her.
Her voice, while quaking in fear, held impressive strength. She pleaded for justice, not strength. A wrong had been committed against her family. I may be a god of war, but I am also a god of order and justice. And I felt the conviction in her prayer. This was not a feeling that could be faked. She truly believed an injustice was being done, and it called to me.
I didn’t regularly interact with mortals beyond the times I participated in war. Their lives were so fleeting, it didn’t make much sense to me. But today would be different.
I will hand out justice for this.
I’d teleport to her location if I could, but my ability wasn’t so precise. I could arrive at a battle in a blink, but to choose any location I desired, like the goddess Freyja or her twin Freyr, that was beyond my capabilities.
This battle had brought me close to this woman’s prayer, and now I strode through the forest with purpose. The pungent scent of the surrounding pines smothered the smells of battle, and soon I found myself facing the wooden palisade of a village settled on the river.
A few loose chickens clucked and scratched at the ground, and two dogs crossed my path, but they were the only life to greet me. The village was of a decent size compared to others I’d graced, which made the lifelessness of this area unusual. If I didn’t know for sure that a prayer came from here, I’d assume this place was abandoned. Am I too late?
No, I could still hear her, though she wasn’t praying anymore. I’d tapped into her presence enough to know she was screaming profanities at someone. She certainly knew which words to use, emasculating whomever was the focus of her wrath. It made me smirk. This woman sounded feisty.
My walk into town through timber homes and fence-lined streets brought me to the center, where I found the people I sought. They clustered around a commotion—some cheering while others cried out in protest. The injustice in the air was palpable. It drew me closer.
Gravel crunched under my feet, alerting those in the back of the crowd of my approach. Eyes wide, these mortals were quick to clear a path, bowing and reveling at my feet. With their worship and our physical presence in their lives, it wasn’t often that the mortal Norse people didn’t recognize us immediately.
I didn’t pass them a single glance, my attention focused on the commotion in the center of the gathering.
Three figures, two men and a woman, were held captive by several other townsfolk, though they struggled against their captors, not willing to submit. The older of the two men, maybe his early thirties, had a sturdy frame, well-kept fair hair, and rather nice clothing adorned his body. Scars littered his light skin. A man who has seen battle.
His vibrant blue eyes bore into one man of dark hair who loomed over him.
The younger man, I guessed him to be fifteen or sixteen winters, had a similar build and long, braided fair hair shaved on either side of his head. There were enough similarities between the two, I suspected he was the other man’s son. And the woman…
I stilled, my gaze unable to look away from the fierce beauty before me. Skin as pale as the moon, with freckles splattering her like stars in the sky, and hair vibrant like wildfire. Piercing green eyes blazed, and a long scar that cut across her face from her eyebrow, over her nose, and down her opposite cheek, only added to her stunning, ferocious visage.
She had to be about a few winters older than the other young man, seventeen or eighteen at the oldest. While lacking identical features of the two men, she was no doubt the older man’s daughter.
Their captors froze, as did the older man. However, his two children hadn’t noticed my presence, and instead, took advantage of their captor’s distracted states and fought back harder.
The woman slammed her head into the jaw of her captor. He yelped and released her, stumbling back. Blood trailed down his lip. Her brother broke free of his captor’s grip and drew a short blade he hadn’t been relieved of, and smashed the hilt into the man’s face.
Instead of going further and drawing more blood, he snagged his sister by the arm and yanked her behind him, shielding her. “Astrid, stay with me.”
Her name hummed in my veins. A divine beauty she was.
Astrid gave her brother a withering glare, but without a weapon of her own, she understood her brother was better equipped to defend them. If I weren’t there to distract everyone, that is.
And that’s when they also noticed me.
The son’s eyes popped wide, and his mouth hung open as he gawked witlessly.
Astrid gasped. “Týr…”
“Have you come to witness justice, mighty Týr?” the dark-haired man standing over the father asked. It was then I noticed the axe in his hand.
