Ullrsfjǫrðr no longer resembled a frontier outpost.
It had grown, layer by layer, wall by wall, until it began to resemble something imperial.
What once had been a meager fishing village in the Westfjords now stood encased in stone:
the original ramparts thickened, extended, and surrounded by a second bastion equally formidable.
Between them ran a corridor wide enough to move war carts and shield-walls in tandem.
Inside the gates, life bustled.
Longhouses, once scattered and crude, now stood proudly in ordered rows. Their wooden beams sat atop Roman-cut foundations; their tiled roofs curved slightly at the edges in imitation of Eastern forms.
Roads, straight, clean, and cobbled, divided the district into quarters. Smoke curled from chimneys into a sky washed blue with spring.
The clatter of discipline filled the air: boys drilled in the yards, bare-armed and snarling like wolves. Some bore spears; others axes.
More still bent the new composite bows Vetrúlfr had brought from the East.
Commands barked in Old Norse, the snap of leather against wood, the thunk of arrowheads in straw targets.
A living city. A kingdom reborn in frost and fire.
And amid it walked two women; robed in memories older than the stones beneath their feet.
One wore a gown of blue-dyed linen, embroidered with spirals of gold. A silver torc clasped her cloak at the shoulder.
Her hair, once veiled in the black cloth of the cloister, now flowed freely, braided with bone and amber.
The Queen of the North. Roisín of Connacht. Consort of the White Wolf. Archdruidess of the reborn Celtic rite.
Beside her walked a woman wrapped in modest brown, the hem of her robe damp with slush, her hands clasped in silent prayer even as she struggled to keep pace.
Eithne. Once Sister Aine of the Holy Order. Now... no title. No convent. Only a thrall in a city ruled by pagans.
"You look weary," Roisín said softly, watching a child skip across the road with a carved wooden shield. "Have you not eaten today?"
Eithne glanced away. "I fasted for Saint Brigid."
Roisín’s smile was sad. "She would not want you to starve."
"You invoke her name still?" Eithne asked, her voice tight. "Even as a druidess?"
"I do," Roisín replied. "Brigid was a goddess long before she was canonized. Flame-bringer, well-keeper. She belongs to both our worlds, whether Rome admits it or not."
They passed a small shrine, carved from Ashwood and crowned in mistletoe where a woman poured water onto stones, whispering in Old Irish.
A new cult, old as the hills.
"I remember when we would sit within the library at the priory," Eithne whispered. "We spoke in whispers when we were supposed to be silent and relective. Now I hear you call to gods that Rome says are dead."
"And yet here I walk," Roisín said, eyes alight with something not quite defiance. "Alive."
Eithne did not reply.
They walked on. Past market stalls, and smithies, and training fields where the future of the North was being forged under Vetrúlfr’s rule. Past a city that should not exist, but did.
And though they now served different altars, one chained by faith, the other crowned in it; they still walked together.
Still, in some distant way, bound.
Eithne’s steps slowed as her eyes caught the gentle swell beneath Roisín’s mantle.
"You’re heavy with child again," she said, voice soft as wind brushing the chapel stones of their youth.
Roisín paused, one hand instinctively resting upon her belly. The gesture was not dramatic, no regal display for the crowd, but intimate. Protective.
"I am," she said, smiling faintly. "He will be born at midsummer, if the stars are true."
"He," Eithne muttered, not bitterly, but not joyously either. "Another prince for the frost-king. And where is he now? Off carving his name into the bones of the earth while you grow heavy alone."
Roisín’s smile faltered. "He is building more than a kingdom. He’s building safety. For this child. And his older brother."
"You speak of safety in a city ruled by wolves and druids and the dead gods of a broken world."
"And yet I am more safe here than I ever was in Connacht," Roisín said, her tone edged now. "More cherished. More free."
Eithne’s brows furrowed. "Free? You, who once took vows of poverty, chastity, and obediencr, now wife to a warlord with a hundred blades and no mercy?"
"Mercy?" Roisín turned, eyes narrowing. "You think he has none?"
"I’ve heard the stories, and seen it with my own eyes as have you!" Eithne whispered. "The Abbey of Bobbio. The burning of Saqqaq boats. And the butchering of our home in kilmacduagh!"
Roisín narrowed her eyes with visible displeasure, her voice carrying on the wind as she moved further without allowing her thrall to keep pace.
"Your home... My prison.... And yet I live. I walk these streets freely. With you, a thrall, unbound."
Roisín’s voice was firm, but not cruel. "Vetrúlfr is not the monster they paint in Rome. He is what the world made him."
They continued walking. The boys drilling in the yards began shouting oaths in Norse and Gaelic, mimicking battle cries, their training serious but not joyless.
Some among the youngest of them had the red hair of Ériu. Others bore the thick, pale brows of Norsemen. A generation already born of conquest and blending.
"You still wear the old cross," Roisín said quietly, glancing at the faded wooden crucifix around Eithne’s neck. Its edges were worn smooth, kissed by a hundred prayers.
"It reminds me of who I was," Eithne replied. "Of who you were, once."
Roisín stopped again. This time, in front of a small fountain fed by a Roman aqueduct restored by Vetrúlfr’s engineers.
Children laughed nearby, splashing in the cold spring water. A mother scolded gently in a language older than Latin.
"I remember too," Roisín said, watching them. "I remember the hymns. The cloisters. Your voice echoing in the stone halls."
"And do you ever miss it?"
"Never... Because I also remember how they confined me in those cold quarters, as if I were some kind of demon." Roisín admitted.
Eithne couldn’t argue with this, and grew sullen. She was the only friend Roisín had after she was shipped off to the convent at a young age. She also knew how Roisín was treated by the others. A tinge of guilt etched itself onto her youthful and fair features.
"You think me a fool for still believing."
"No," Roisín said gently. "Only... stubborn. But it’s that same stubbornness that made me love you like a sister. That hasn’t changed."
Eithne’s expression softened, if only for a moment. Her fingers curled tighter around the cross.
"You will write to him, won’t you?" she asked, nodding to Roisín’s belly. "Let him know. Before he buries himself in some distant hill."
Roisín looked up to the great hall rising in the distance, its roof adorned with antlers, serpent carvings, and banners flapping like wings.
"I already have," she said.
"And if he doesn’t return in time?"
Roisín turned her gaze to the sea wind rolling in from the fjord.
"Then this child will be born into a kingdom still rising. And I will raise him with my own hands, as I did the last."
"But Vetrúlfr will return. The sea hasn’t claimed him yet; and the gods, old or new, are not done with him."
And for a moment, Eithne said nothing.
Just watched her oldest friend, once veiled in holy vows, now crowned in antlers and prophecy, Queen of Wolves, and flame-bearer of Brigid.
Still... somehow, hers.