Malvar Bloodaxe leaned a hand on slabbed stonework as he whispered his prayer. The man-made hill rose starkly from the plain, a tribute to the defiant will of its ancient makers and in honor of the gods of the Orkney Islands. “May Gormson’s arm be strengthened, and may all my ally’s plans succeed.” Power tingled through Malvar’s palm and up his arm. There were places in the world where the primeval forces still thrived, where gods even older than the pantheon of the North yet walked unseen. This remote mound of earth on the largest island in the Orkney chain was one of them. “May my prisoner’s tongue be loosened and the path to victory made plain.” Malvar closed his eyes, letting the spirits of the place speak to him in half-heard sibilance, whispers from the disembodied souls of woad-painted warriors and fallen heroes. They reached out to him from the tall, waving grass, from the red sandstone bones of the island beneath its thin skin of dirt, from the artfully worked slabs that were used to build this sacred place in the deep past.
