The smell of smoke still clung to Tanya's cloak as she stepped into Jarl Sigmund's longhouse.
The hall was dim, heat bleeding out through the rafters, torchlight flaring against thick wooden beams like flares in a siege. Silence reigned—not peace, but anticipation. The kind that hangs before steel is drawn. The kind Tanya had learned to provoke with care.
Men sat in tight clusters, hands never straying far from their weapons. There were no drinking songs tonight, no boasts of strength. Only the murmur of doubt and the brittle edge of fear.
Tanya took her seat near the edge of the firepit, neither deferential nor overtly defiant. She wore the mask of a "guest," but it was paper-thin. Everyone in the hall understood her presence was strategic, not social.
At the far end of the room, Jarl Sigmund sat hunched on his carved throne, thick fingers curling around the armrests. His stare burned like a man watching wolves circle his livestock.
"They say Arnar's men were seen near my eastern ridge," he said at last, his voice cutting through the silence like a whetted blade. "Too close for coincidence. Too silent for a patrol."
A ripple moved through the thanes. Some muttered, others glanced at Tanya.
"They're gathering stores," Sigmund continued. "Dry meat. Iron. Flint. I know what that means. You all do."
He paused. Let it hang.
"They're preparing for winter—or preparing to bring it."
An older warrior rose, heavy and scarred. "Strike first. Don't wait for the wolf to cross your threshold."
But another, younger, dressed in finer furs, spoke up. "And if it's misdirection? If Arnar waits for us to lash out, so he can claim the right of vengeance?"
The room split instantly. Thane against thane, logic against paranoia. Words became louder. Cruder.
Tanya said nothing. She didn't need to—not yet. Every argument played into her hand.
When Sigmund finally turned to her, his voice was more amused than accusatory.
"You. Witch-child. You've seen his camp. Sat at his table. Tell me—are we looking at smoke, or fire?"
Tanya stood.
Her gaze swept the room once, deliberate, clinical. She let the quiet return before she spoke.
"What you're looking at," she said, voice measured, "is uncertainty. That is more dangerous than either."
A few brows furrowed. Tanya took a step forward, the flames casting sharp angles across her face.
"You think this is about truth? Whether Arnar will attack? That's the wrong question. The only thing that matters now is whether you believe he might—and whether your men believe it, too."
The thanes shifted again, but more than discomfort, Tanya saw tension now. Directed. Shaping itself.
"Arnar doesn't need to move an inch," she continued. "You've already begun to shift your weight. Doubt is a lever. If he forces you to react to shadows, he's already winning."
Sigmund was quiet for a long moment.
Then a dry chuckle escaped him. "You sound like someone who's caused a war or two."
"I've prevented more than I've started," Tanya replied flatly. "But war has its uses."
Sigmund studied her. "And if I wait? If I call no banners, raise no blades?"
Tanya's expression didn't shift. "Then Arnar controls the tempo. You'll be responding until your back is against the wall—and by then, someone else will have written your obituary."
The fire popped sharply, as if punctuating her point.
Sigmund nodded slowly. "You speak like a tactician."
"I speak like a survivor," Tanya corrected, then returned to her seat.
The decision was made before another word passed. It didn't need to be shouted. Tanya saw it in the way the men straightened, how they gripped their axes just a little tighter. Sigmund wouldn't wait. And Arnar wouldn't forgive.
That night, the first scouts were sent. Border camps reinforced. And Tanya slipped away quietly, just before midnight.
---
Across the valley, Arnar's hall was less composed.
The corpse of the food taster still twitched near the threshold of the jarl's chamber, eyes rolled back and foam crusted on his lips. The boy who had served the meal—a stablehand, or something close enough—had vanished. The dagger found on his body was curved and painted with herbs too exotic for local hands.
Arnar's fury was swift. Not loud. Just final. He declared it a covert attack and began mustering his huscarls before the poison had fully dried.
Tanya watched the chaos from a distance, high on the hill where her dark-cloaked horse stood tethered beneath pine.
She hadn't needed to confirm the blade's design. She'd seen the sigil burned beneath the boy's collar. A subtle twist in the flesh. Mayuri's work. Not crude, but designed to appear so.
Controlled variables. Delivered chaos.
---
By the time Tanya returned to her own fortress, Mayuri was elbow-deep in a dissected pig.
The beast was still alive—technically. Its vocal cords had been modified, twitching with strange pulses as it moaned in a grotesque approximation of human speech. It begged in broken Norse.
Mayuri looked up from the mess, eyes gleaming with childlike curiosity.
"They're fighting already?" he asked, though he already knew.
Tanya didn't answer immediately. She stripped off her gloves, stepped past the moaning thing on the table, and walked to the window.
Outside, the forest was black with movement—refugees, deserters, frightened herders taking to the roads with their lives on their backs.
"The spark's caught," she said simply. "They'll do the rest."
Mayuri hummed. "Funny, isn't it? All it takes is a dead man and a lie."
"No," Tanya replied. "It takes ambition. The rest is gravity."
There was no pleasure in her tone. No triumph. Just an analyst's certainty.
The machine was in motion now. Two jarls—once restrained by fragile peace—were sliding toward war. The valley would soon flood with fire and screams.
And in the center of it, Tanya would remain untouched. Watching. Calculating.
Because war, like winter, was inevitable. And she'd already chosen to build her empire on scorched earth.