At thirty-six, Bilal was a mountain of a man. His dark curly hair was tied back, and the first few threads of silver had appeared in his thick beard, a testament to sixteen years of constant vigilance.
But his body was unbreakable, functioning at the absolute peak of human performance. Yet, he knew his wooden palisades were not.
"Wood rots. Wood burns," Bilal thought, staring at the fortress walls. "If Cnut the Emperor or a massive coalition of Jarls ever march on this valley, they will bring fire. I need the secret of Rome. I need the dust of volcanoes."
But the Giant of Axiomra could not simply leave. If the rival Jarls knew he was on a ship bound for the Mediterranean, they would attack the valley the moment he was out of sight, assuming the women and orphans were easy prey.
He had to give them a ghost story. He had to die.
He chose three of his most elite, tight-lipped veterans. They loaded a wagon with furs and a hidden payload of pitch, sulfur, and animal fat—the ingredients of his Greek Fire.
They rode to the far eastern edge of his territory, near a jagged ravine.
"When the fire starts," Bilal told his men, his voice heavy with dread, "do not look back. We walk to the coast and board the merchant ships."
He took off his iconic Green Tunic, the symbol of his rule. He sliced his own arm, letting his blood soak into the fabric. He pinned the bloody cloth beneath a heavy rock near the edge of the ravine.
Then, he ignited the wagon.
The chemical fire was spectacular and terrifying. It burned with a blinding, unnatural heat, melting the iron rims of the wagon wheels and turning the surrounding timber to pure white ash.
To any scout finding the wreckage, it would look as though the Giant had been ambushed and utterly incinerated by his own volatile weapons, leaving nothing but a bloody piece of cloth behind.
Bilal looked back at the smoke rising into the Norwegian sky. His chest tightened so painfully he could barely breathe. "Runa... Astrid... forgive me."
He turned his back on his empire and vanished into the shadows of the trade routes.
Two days later, a scout brought the bloody, scorched piece of the Green Tunic into the Great Hall of Axiomra.
When Astrid saw it, the bronze keys dropped from her hand, hitting the stone floor with a hollow, echoing clang. She was thirty-one, a Queen in her prime.
She stared at the cloth, her mind refusing to process the math of death. He survived plagues. He survived kings. He cannot burn.
She fell to her knees, her hands covering her mouth, a silent, suffocating scream trapped in her throat.
But Runa did not fall.
At twenty-three, Runa was tall, broad-shouldered, and striking. She stepped forward and picked up the bloody fabric. Her blue eyes, usually bright with calculating intelligence, turned as hard and cold as winter ice.
The Hall erupted into panic. The orphans wept. The seventy soldiers muttered in fear. "The Shield is broken. The Giant is dead."
"Silence!" Runa's voice cracked like a whip.
She turned to face the terrified crowd. She did not shed a single tear. She couldn't. If she broke, the city would fall.
"My Father built this city on logic, not magic!" she roared, holding the tunic high. "You think the stone will crumble because his heart stopped? You think the crossbows will not fire?"
"If any man in this room sheds another tear while the walls are unguarded, I will throw him out into the mud myself!"
A young soldier named Leif watched her from the ranks, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and absolute awe. She was not a grieving daughter; she was the Iron Queen.
Runa strapped her heavy steel crossbow to her back.
"Double the watch. Light the beacons. If the Jarls think we are weak, we will let them taste the steel the Giant left behind."