"It will not work," the first god said. There was a mocking tone in his voice, as he shook his head at his companion's audacity "You know it will not work; we all have a fate, and there is nothing that we can do to change it. No matter how hard you may try, or how much you may wish for it, each man and god has a future already laid out for them."

The second god looked unimpressed at this proclamation. "Or perhaps that is simply what we believe because nobody has ever challenged it. We live out our lives, with no idea of what the norns have in store for us, and so we have no choice but to accept it."

"So? If we have no choice, then we have no choice."

The second god smiled wryly. "But what if we do have a choice? What if fate can be changed?"

"If it can, it would be impossible for us to know it, because after we walk our new path, we could not be certain of our original one."

"No. But what of somebody else's? The fates of men, maybe? For some, we already know the paths laid out for them, so what if we could alter them? Surely then, it would stand to reason that if we can do that, we can change our own fate too."

The first god shrugged "It will not work, but if you think you can do it, please, feel free to try."

The second scowled, irritated at the implication that he needed permission. "Fine," he said. "I will. And you know what? I'm so certain that I can do this, that I'll let you choose the humans in question. Make it as difficult as you like."

The first god ran his fingers thoughtfully through his beard, and smiled to himself. "If that's what you want," he said. "How about them?"

The second god's eyes widened when he saw who had been selected. "Fine. What do I get if I win this bet?"

"You didn't say that it was a bet."

"It was implied."

The first god gave a long-suffering sigh. "I suppose the pride of knowing you were right would not interest you?"

"Of course it interests me a bit, but you gave me a really difficult one," the second god told him. "I feel like I should get something else as well."

"The same as last time, then? The loser has to be a servant for the winner."

The second shook his head before the first had finished speaking. "Bragging rights are fine," he said. "I still haven't forgotten what you made me do last time."

"Bragging rights, then. If you win, you get to know that you were right," said the first. "And if you lose, I get to know that you were wrong."

The second god nodded "Fine," he said. "Agreed."

"Agreed?" The first frowned. "Really? You do realise that if you are wrong, I will tell everybody about it?"

"Likewise," said the second god. "Now, come on, we should drink on this bet before I change my mind."

Something was wrong…

Sigurd shifted slightly in his bed. He was not yet ready to wake, but uncomfortable enough that some semi-conscious part of his mind accepted it was an inevitability. Still, he refused to open his eyes; if he could keep them closed, perhaps he could get a few more precious moments of unconsciousness. If he was really lucky, maybe he would even be able to fall back to sleep and wake in a few hours, fully refreshed.

He did not understand why his bed was so uncomfortable. It felt too hard, and when he reached for the furs that covered him, his hand found only air. There was something hard digging into his upper back, and his legs ached for no reason that he could find. He blamed the bed.

Vaguely, he wondered whether he had spent the night in somebody else's bed. Or perhaps they had not even reached the bed. But when he reached out with a hand, hoping to find a warm body next to him, he found himself alone.

Puzzled, but still not yet concerned enough to commit to wakefulness, he kept his eyes closed. He shifted his position, hoping to either move away from whatever was digging into him, or to throw it from the bed. Or at least he tried to shift his position, but to his confusion, but body did not respond as he had expected.

Confusion giving way to concern, but still more asleep than awake, Sigurd remained where he was for a little longer, enduring the discomfort of whatever it was that was digging into his back, because it would be too much effort to fix the situation.

Something else, he realised, was strange; he could feel a breeze on his face, and the woodsy, outdoorsy smell of pine filled his nostrils, alongside other scents that he definitely did not expect to find in his bedroom.

Eyes still closed, he explored the surface beneath him with his fingers, and was confused to find the movement in his wrists restricted slightly by something tight wrapped around his wrists and forearms. Whatever his hand was touching, whatever it was that he was laying on, was cold, damp, and gritty. And definitely not his bed.

Had he drank too much and fallen asleep outdoors?

Finally, reluctantly, he was forced to accept that he was awake, and that it was time to open his eyes and see what was happening. He found himself staring at the base of a large tree trunk. The forest smell, far stronger than it should have been, was caused by the fact that his nose was right in the dirt.

"Ugh!" he said, and spat on the ground to clear any fragments of soil or forest detritus that might have stuck to his lips. He raised a hand, and used it to wipe compulsively at his mouth for a moment, then he sat up.

Only… he didn't.

He got about half way there before he found that he could not make the muscles of his legs respond correctly, and he ended up back on the floor, in much the same position he had woken up in.

Frustrated, and more than a little worried, he forced himself into a seated position by compensating with his arms where his legs refused to cooperate. He pushed himself up until he was sitting on the ground, and then pushed himself backward to put his back against the tree for support. That done, he took a deep breath and let out a shaky exhale before he began to assess his situation.

He was alone, or at least he could not see anybody else nearby, in a part of the woods that he did not recognise. He had been knocked unconscious, although he had no memory of being hit, and most worrying of all, there was something wrong with his legs.

They still ached, but aching he could cope with. What worried him was that when he had tried to move, he had not been able.

He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. It worked, to a certain extent. He cast his mind back, trying to remember what had happened to him before he had woken up here. The last thing he remembered up to this point was… he didn't know. He did remember the previous night, or what he assumed was the previous night. He had made plans with his brothers to go into the…

Into the woods.

They had planned to go to their usual spot to practice some fighting techniques, and later, if there was time, to go hunting for rabbits.

So that explained where he was, but not why he had been unconscious on the floor. Something had obviously happened, but what? An accident? Could one of his brothers have hit him too hard as they fought? A blow to the head would account for the fact that he had been unconscious, as well as the hazy memory.

Maybe it hadn't been an accident. Not if it had been Ivar...

He raised his hands to his head, and gently ran his fingers over the shape of his skull, checking for any obvious signs of injury; any bumps, blood, tender spots or pain. There was nothing.

Although, something was wrong. He ran his hands through his hair, combing it through with his fingers to check. His fingers slipped easily through short, unbraided strands of hair. He checked again, just to make sure, because his hair had not been so short in years, but there was no mistaking it. Somebody had cut his hair.

Anger twisted in his stomach. Somebody was going to pay for that. He was proud of his long braided locks, and now it was going to take years to grow them back. He didn't know who would have done that, either, or why. He could easily believe that Ivar had knocked him unconscious, but cutting his hair? That just wasn't his brother's style.

Focus...

He moved his hand away from his hair and tried not to think about it for a moment; he had more immediate problems to focus on. He looked down at his legs. At a glance, nothing appeared amiss. He took a deep breath to calm himself, and then tried to move one of his feet.

To his relief, it moved, after a fashion. But not enough, nor exactly in the way that he had expected. And it hurt. Not only the ankle that he had been moving, but all the way up his leg and into his lower back, ripples of pain, like a warning not to do it again, or a threat of worse to come.

Sigurd sucked in a gasp and his hand instinctively moved to his leg, as though it could somehow protect it. The pain disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, the moment that he stopped trying to move. The leg though, where he touched it, felt...wrong. He was unable to put his finger on exactly what it was, but that was not the way that his thigh was supposed to feel. He pulled back his hand for a moment, and leaned his head backward until it hit the trunk of the tree, then tried to think.

He did not seem to have any kind of a head injury, although that would have explained so much. There was a problem with that theory anyway; his brothers would not have left him there in the woods alone and unconscious. Not even Ivar, he didn't think, would do that to him. Even if they had needed to go back to town for help, they would have at least left one of them there to take care of him.

Unless of course, somebody was there. The fact that they were not sitting next to him playing nursemaid did not mean that they weren't close by. They could have gone to fetch water, or heard a sound and gone to investigate, or… something. Anything, really. There were any number of reasons why his brothers might not be right there, and it did not mean that he had been abandoned.

He cleared his throat and called out into the seemingly empty forest. "Ubbe? Hvitserk?" He hesitated. "...Ivar?"

He was answered by silence, broken only by the sound of a bird taking flight in the canopy high above him.

He waited for a moment, still hopeful that someone would appear from among the trees and tell him what was happening. The longer he waited, the more the sense of unease that had settled around him the moment he had woken intensified. Perhaps he was wrong and it hadn't been a training accident. What if they had been attacked? There may have been skogarmaors in the woods. Drawn to the sound of their voices, they could have descended upon them unexpectedly. The brothers would have fought back, of course, but they may have been overpowered.

What if his brothers were…

No. He daren't even think it.

"Ubbe?" he tried again. He could hear an edge of hysteria creeping into his voice now, and he did not bother to try to hide it. "Hvitserk?"

Again, nothing. High above him, the wind whistled through the trees, but otherwise the world around him was silent and still.

He needed to get up and leave. He needed to look for them, or if he could not find them, he needed to get home and tell people, gather a search party. He stared down in frustration at his legs, which still felt no better, and sent up a silent plea to Eir that they would heal; that whatever had happened to him would not be permanent. He did not think he could cope with the humiliation; he imagined the things that Ivar would say, and how much his younger brother would enjoy it.

If, of course, Ivar was even still alive…

He shook his head and took a deep breath in an effort to stop his thoughts from spiralling further. If there were enemies in the woods, screaming his brothers' names might bring the wrong people to him. He looked at his legs again, with determination this time. He could feel them, and he could move them, somewhat. Even if it was painful, if he could get himself to his feet, perhaps he would be able to walk.

It was only then that he noticed something else, something that made no sense at all. His legs were bound together by a thick piece of leather, fastened on with three straps. He had seen it before; Ivar wore it to bind his legs together and make it easier for him to move around.

But it would make no sense for Sigurd to have it. He reached for it, meaning to unbuckle and remove it. As he did, his hand touched his leg for a second time, lower down this time, and he froze in shock. The leg felt too thin, wasted from disuse. He probed further with his fingertips. Beneath the fabric of his pants and underneath the skin, the leg felt wrong, as though the bones had broken and not healed correctly.

It felt exactly like Ivar's legs looked.

No. That was impossible. Something like that could not happen in less than a day as a result of an injury. Last night he had been absolutely fine. The only possible explanation was that he was wrong; that he was delirious, or hallucinating. Either he had been drugged by something, or he was back to the head injury.

He pulled his hand back, and looked at it. The first thing that he saw was the leather wrist support that he was wearing on each wrist. He had noticed it when he had first woken and realised that something was restricting his movement in his wrists, but he had not realised what it was until now. "No," he whispered under his breath. It was impossible.

He turned his… the… hand in the air before his face, examining it from all angles with a growing sense of horror. It was not his hand. He knew his hand, and just as it was not his leg, this was not his hand.

Or his hair. He remembered the feel of the short hair, and his anger at the thought that somebody might have cut it. He wished that was the case now.

Slowly, gingerly, he raised his hands to his face and began to explore. It was not his face. He knew his own face. He recognised the shape of his features, the rough feel of the short hairs on his chin from the beard that he one day intended to grow fully.

It was not his face.

He could not identify by touch whose it was, but he did not need to. There was only one person that he could possibly be. His head shook compulsively from side to side as a wave of horror watched over him. "No," he said again. "No!" and now that he was aware of it, he could hear that he was not speaking with his own voice. His voice grew louder as he began to panic, and he didn't know how to even begin to calm himself now. "Ubbe? Hvitserk? Help! Where are you?"

"I notice you did not call for me" said a voice from somewhere behind him. "What's the matter, hm? Do you think your little brother would be no help in a crisis?"

Sigurd twisted around to look at the speaker, and as he saw his face, a wave of disorientation washed over him. Sitting on the ground, directly behind him, wearing a smirk that was completely Ivar was… himself.

The impossibility of the situation hit him like a punch to the gut, and he couldn't breathe. He gasped for air, struggling to pull enough into his lungs to remain conscious.

It was impossible. Something like this could not happen. He forced himself to look away, to look at anything but his own self and shook his head again as though by denying what was happening he could make it not true. It did not work. "I don't und…" he began, then stopped. "You can't… how…?" He broke off and gave up. There was nothing that he could ask, and nothing that Ivar could say that would make this make any sense.

Instead, he closed his eyes against another wave of disorientation, and hoped that when he opened them again, the world would be back to normal.