The blood eagle — is a ritualized method of execution in which the victim (always a member of a royal family) was placed prone, the ribs severed from the vertebral column with a sharp implement and the lungs pulled through the opening to create a pair of "wings".

When Heida arose from her pallet the next morning, she was struck by an odd sense of cloying presentiment that she could not rid herself of no matter how she tried to escape the feeling. Lying on her blankets had only aggravated the prickling sensation, and despite that it was yet too early to start the day, she did so anyway.

She was ofttimes the first to rise, and having a natural affinity for the sun which always made it impossible to continue sleeping once Sól had risen to carve her way through the heavens meant very little sleep in the summer time — when Nótt was wont to stay away.

Upon leaving Aila's tent, she cast her eyes first to where Roth had fallen asleep, but seeing the space empty she poked her head into their hut; and immediately wrenched her head back. Her nose puckered with the stifling fetor of stale flatulence, musty ale, and the malodorous stench of unwashed male bodies all amalgamated into an astringent perfume.

By the gods! She pinched her nostrils shut and backed away. 'Twas no wonder that Roth and Renic mostly slept outside!

Váli seemed to be the only creature about at this time of the morning. He lifted his large head from his black paws and considered her curiously as she passed him.

"Where do you keep disappearing off to?" She stuck her tongue out at the beast and left him where he lay almost camouflaged beneath the shade of a spruce, his ghostly eyes following her as she left the camp site.

Where his masters had got off to she could only guess at, for she had seen neither of the brothers within their smelly barracks, a fact which thence spurred her off towards the brook where she thought they might be swimming. Why the wolf was not with them, she did not know. He was an odd thing, either trailing Roth or Renic like a faithful shadow or off on some solitary excursion.

However, when she reached the babbling stream she was surprised to see that there was no one about, and so took the opportunity to hike up her skirts and wade in the cool water. Would that they could leave today and be home in two days! She was not only anxious to see Brenna, but also to have herself a decent bath, seeing as privacy was hard come by in this populated valley of Tingdal.

She allowed the pebbles to massage her soles the while she slogged through the shallows, her shift and outer garment bunched at her thighs, letting her mind drift as she watched the ripples expanding wherever she moved. She should have been a fish or water fowl, since she loved the element so much. But I must go back lest I give Eirik cause to berate me again. He might even now be looking for them. And I promised not to go off alone.

With a lorn sigh she turned around and made her way back to the bank, faltering suddenly when she saw three pairs of eyes watching her from the shore. Arnar and his brother Gisli were snickering amongst themselves as Søren flicked his eyes uneasily between his childhood playmate and his impressive new friends.

Despite her distance, and their low whispers, she heard them as easily as though she were an owl, and was thus prepared for trouble when she gained dry land.

"What say you to a little fun, brother?" Arnar was the eldest, perhaps eighteen years, and the largest of the three. His girth had not quite reached that of his hefty father, Thorgny, but it was easily assumed, just by looking at the lad, that he would surpass even his sire in brawn and bulk.

"What of young Søren? He looks a little milky in the face. Do not you think he will object?" said Gisli, the younger, casting a furtive gaze at Ragnar's son.

"Nay, I can swat him like a gnat should he try."

When Heida was clear of the water, she dropped her skirts and sat down to pull her shoes back on, watching the trio suspiciously. If it were only one of them she might well overpower the brute, but all three united would likely ensure that she was easily overcome. Although, Søren was by nature not aggressive, notwithstanding his big mouth, so she did not really deem him a menace.

That is if they decided to make good on their whispered threats. But she would ignore them for the nonce; hopefully they would think better of their dastardly intentions and let her pass unmolested.

"Ho there, little bastard girl. What brings you here so early?" Arnar jeered as he approached her. "Meeting your lover?"

"Have not you heard, brother," said Gisli, the bulbous-nosed one, "she is as wanton as the whore who whelped her."

"And who whelped her, Søren?" Though it had been Arnar who posed the question, both boys looked to the younger of the three for confirmation of Heida's low birth.

He shrugged, visibly agitated by what was playing out before him. "I do not know. No one does."

Whilst the profligate Redtooth boys were cackling licentiously, Heida stood up and proceeded to pass them, but Arnar halted her instantly by blocking her path with his wide frame.

"Do you think," said she, "that because you are nearly as fat as your sire that you will defeat me in a test of strength?" Her eyes narrowed into furious slits as she sneered at him, uncaring of whether or not her slur provoked him. "Think again!" She tried once more to circumvent him, but this time he sent her to the ground with a vicious shove.

"Look, Gisli, the little bastard girl thinks to reprimand her betters. So you want to wrestle do you, little bastard girl." Arnar's eyes had nearly started from his head when Heida had not cowered as he had thought she would. She could see that he was irked by her gumption despite that his tone was yet deceptively soft. "Very well, I will even let you have the first strike."

"I warn you for the last time! Let me pass!"

Their answers were naught but a hearty guffaw from the elder and another round of snickering from the younger.

"Warn me?!" Arnar's face was at once livid and tickled by her temerity. "Did your whore mother drop you on your head as a child, you stupid cow?" With that he swiftly caught her hair up in his cruel grasp and yanked it to and fro as he continued speaking. "I should give that wicked mouth better occupation!" To emphasize his threat he grasped his crotch suggestively before shaking her again.

"Put that near my mouth and I shall bite that little prick from its root!" If looks could burn, Heida would have seared a hole directly through his head by now.

"Then I'll break your teeth first!" As the spittle flew the while he bellowed, she dug her nails deeper into his iron hands, yet he would not release her for all she drew blood.

Her rage seethed from her in violent whelms as she restrained herself from lopping his head off with his own knife — the same one he had left unguarded, sheathed in his leather girdle. Stupid Pig. She could easily impale him with it if she were not still in control of herself. Without warning she threw her fist full force into his midriff and then embedded her knee deep into his groin while he was still doubled over from her first attack.

Strangely, this only elicited another hoot of laughter from Gisli, his delight now wholly at his brother's expense. "Thor's teeth, you nearly let the witch knock your manhood straight into your gullet, brother!"

"What manhood," Heida retorted as she shoved Arnar out of her way.

"Grab...her...you...half-faced...wretch!" Arnar squeaked his venom the way a rat might upbraid its tormentor. The whole scenario would have indeed been worthy of her humor were she not still filled with wrath.

But Gisli, waxing serious now that his brother's fulmination was aimed at him, finally subdued himself enough to see to Arnar's command, which only earned him a bloody nose in the process. He rushed Heida again, but she deflected his blows and rammed her elbow into his face a second time.

"Did you not learn the first time, piglet!" Having barely uttered the taunt, she whirled around upon hearing Arnar's thundering hooves coming at her, and caught his wrist before using his own momentum to bend it awkwardly behind his back with a strength that visibly unsettled and enraged them both.

He howled in pain and made to kick her, but she avoided it easily, snapping three of his fingers in the process which only augmented his ferocious bawling. Shoving him away from her a second time, she twisted around and elbowed Gisli yet again, contacting him in exactly the same spot she had impaled him when he'd made his first two attempts at bludgeoning her. "Now your snout will look like a donkey's arse forever!"

Unfortunately, Heida had had to turn her back to Arnar to mete out justice to his younger brother's already swollen nose, thinking the elder dispatched. It was an oversight that soon cost her a ringing ear and a meaty fist to her spleen.

Once she was on her knees, thanks to Arnar's cowardly assault from the rear, Gisli redressed her insolence by slamming his knuckles into her face and the side of her head while she was still buckled over. As she lay on the ground catching her breath and fingering a bruised rib, she heard Gisli shrieking at Søren.

"Where are you going, coward!"

She watched, through heavy eyelids, as Søren backed away warily. "I cannot be a part of this." With that said, he took off sans a backward glance.

"Let him go," Arnar said, having by now regained his manly tone, and having presumably pushed his testicles back to where they belonged, instead of in his throat where she had ruthlessly misaligned them. "We need not bother ourselves with Søren the Boneless."

Though she now lay supine, glaring at the pair of them with her cracked lip and seeping eye, she could feel the terror mounting. And the more her dread surged the more that nature responded: the clouds rolled in abruptly, with eldritch fleetness and disturbing intensity, where before the sky was clear. Even the two lads halted their kicking to raise their brows as the dark billows blotted the sun. But all three pairs of eyes were wrenched the next instant to a nearby tree as an incredibly large raven began to caw malevolently from the barren limb of a dead larch.

"I do not like this, Arnar," said Gisli as the crow's strange chatter amplified and became one long, awful cry. "Let's go, she's bloody enough."

"Not till after I've taught her a lesson!" He began to yank at his trousers, but stopped when the crow's screeching became too much, maddening him enough that he took up a rock and hurled it at the thing. "Shut that Hel-cursed bird up!"

"What say I make you eat that foul tongue of yours instead?" Renic moved stealthily into the clearing, his brother and a vengeful-looking Søren right behind him. Seeing the three of them through her matted, bloody skeins, and one good eye, she relaxed her shoulders with relief.

"The little one looks hungry too." Roth's smirk was positively feral as his eyes fixed on Gisli. "Not satisfied with the curds from your nose, eh?" he asked the boy who only stammered his inarticulate response. "No matter, you shall soon taste my boot! I too will feed you well."

Heida's features had thus far been concealed from her foster brothers by her dense hair, but when Renic helped her up and pushed the strands aside, his menacing growl alerted his brother who then turned to see what had cause the dreadful sound.

Beholding the proof of Arnar and Gisli's disgusting handiwork, Roth's eyes — like his brother's — turned an eerie shade of pale blue that glowed with a sinister wrath that had even Heida's hands shaking. Theirs were so like Váli's eyes, but for the draugr-like iridescence.

"That one's mine," said Roth, nodding his head towards Arnar, his lethal words slowly forced through his clenched teeth. Renic made no answer except to fix the younger Redtooth with his cold, hollow stare.

She had never seen them look so otherworldly and...ominous. Neither of them had yet moved, their stillness in and of itself wholly disquieting, and rendering their audience, Heida included, frozen with fright. But the impasse lasted not even a moment, for Gisli could take the suspense no longer and made to bolt into the same direction Søren had run earlier.

He achieved no more than one foot's length in retreat before Renic pounced, nearly splitting the boy's head with a sharp blow. The lad made to rain his own half-delirious jabs onto his attacker, but Renic quickly took each of his fists and began crushing them in his own while his victim screamed. Heida turned her head therewith, unwilling to see her friend engaged in such unnatural savagery. That was not Renic she was watching! Those were not his eyes. It was one thing to defend her honor, but quite another to savor the violence as he was doing, Gisli's wailing seeming to fall on apathetic ears.

Nevertheless, it would have been better had she kept her eyes on Renic, for Arnar's fate was far worse; and she could neither voice an objection to Roth's brutality nor turn her head. She was in a morbid sort of trance and unable to look away. Her good eye was peeled wide in shock as she stared, disbelieving what she had just seen Roth do.

The blood pounded in her ears for what felt like hours as she surveyed the grisly scene through haunted eyes, but finally Søren's yelling pierced both her temporary deafness and apparently Renic's, for he rushed to his brother despite that he was too late to do anything to stem Roth's derangement.

Roth still held the larger male up against the same dead tree from which the raven yet perched and cried clamorously. Its shrill warbling finally diminuendoed as Arnar was released to slumped to the ground the moment Renic ripped his brother's hand from the dead boy's throat, his neck open and spraying life-blood over the twins like a sacrificial pig.

"You mauled him?!" Søren stood staring aghast at his cousins, sinking to his knees in terror as Roth stared, as one detached from the scene, with sightless intensity.

There was indeed a large chunk of flesh missing from Arnar's throat and his neck was at an impossible angle as he lay lifeless and crumpled in the dirt. Gisli, however, still keening with the agony of his mangled hands, had not yet noticed his brother's horrific demise.

"They will carve a blood eagle on your back for this, Roth!" Søren seemed now more afeared of what might befall his cousin than the macabre outcome of Roth's demoniacal outburst and pulsing eyes.

It was the sound of his cousin's prognosticating that ultimately calmed the lurid, murderous gleam from Roth's stare and, as he came back to himself, he backed away in horror, effectively cured of his bloodlust.

"I did this?" His voice was no more than a hoarse suspire. "Renic?" He turned to gaze pleadingly at his brother when no one responded the first time. "Answer me! Did I do this?"

"Yes," said Heida numbly, but when she expectorated painfully, coughing up a glob of blood, his eyes becalmed themselves anew.

He regarded Heida's face again with a rekindled animus that chilled her heart and had her almost flinching when he kneeled beside her to take her face gently in his hands, running his fingers carefully over her beaten flesh. His knuckles too were bloodied, split and worsted where he'd cut his flesh on Arnar's broken teeth.

Her eyesight was dimmed as she watched him pull his hands away to examine, with a thoughtful glare, where her blood, still flowing freely, covered his wounds.

"You killed him," she murmured through the pain.

"Good," murmured, his voice as steely as his eyes.

⭐️That Heid is a badåss! And what's with the freaky weather and the raven?!⭐️