Description
Bjorn was hanged on a Thursday for a theft he didn't commit. When the rope broke and he woke on the frozen ground beneath the scaffold, two ravens watched from the crossbeam above. Odin's birds. They had cut him down with methodical beaks and perfect timing, and they had left something behind in his chest: a cold weight, a tone that wasn't sound, a certainty about endings. Now when Bjorn touches someone, he feels their fate. Not the small fates—the daily fortunes and misfortunes—but the final one. The moment where their thread runs out. He feels it as a note in his sternum, an amber-not-amber colour that his mind cannot properly name, and a bone-deep certainty about when and how they will die. He doesn't want this gift. He didn't ask for it. But the ravens chose him, and now he carries the weight of every fate he touches—including his own. *Gallowssong* is a Norse fantasy about fate, weight, and what you do when you can see the ending coming for everyone you love. Set in a world of jarls and völvas, fjords and longships, it explores the Norse understanding of wyrd—not as prophecy to be fulfilled or subverted, but as accumulated consequence. The Norns do not decree. They account. They weave from the material a person gives them, which means fate can change in theory, but by the time most people encounter it clearly enough to consider changing it, the weight has accumulated so thoroughly that the projection is stable. Bjorn encounters fate directly, in everyone he touches, and then has to decide what to do with that encounter. He could isolate himself, touch no one, learn nothing more about the endings waiting for his village. He could warn people, though warnings from a man who was hanged and didn't stay dead are not always welcome. He could use the knowledge—to protect, to manipulate, to prepare. Or he could carry it, the way he carries the cold in his chest and the ravens on his roof, and trust that there is a shape to what he is becoming even if he cannot see it y
About the Author
Aldric Thorne is the author of "Gallowssong" and other works.
