Chapter 57: The Winds of War
Gunnarr gazed upon the letter in his hand. Even without reading its words, he knew others had been sent across the realm.
For nearly two years, his charge had been to fortify Heimaey, raise a fleet of his own, and gather the men to row its prows.
And Gunnarr had fulfilled that task with excellence. Like every other thegn and jarl under Vetrúlfr’s reign, he had been inspected regularly by agents of his king; each visit a judgment of loyalty, progress, and strength.
Now, as the sea winds howled against the timber walls of his hall, Gunnarr lowered the vellum to the table and lifted his drinking horn.
He took a long draught; the mead washing down like fire through his chest.
“The time has come… Show us the way, son of Ullr.”
He turned to the young page standing at the threshold.
“Sound the drums of war! Gather my host and prepare the longships. Our King calls… and we shall answer!”
The boy saluted and fled, boots thudding across stone and ice.
Gunnarr, already rising, fastened his brynja and tightened his lamellar over his shoulders.
The sword at his hip rang faintly in its sheath, as if eager for blood. Like every other chieftain Vetrúlfr had raised, he was a man forged for war.
Vetrúlfr stood alone, strapping the worn leather belt and gilded baldric around his torso. The lamellar and its fresh coat of oil shimmered in the candlelight.
But the sword at his side was not the one forged in Damascus; that one, famed and terrible, now rested in silence.
Instead, the blade he now bore was older; primal. Etched with runes that pulsed like waves in his veins, it carried the cold memory of the sea.
Its name was unknown, but its weight felt as though it remembered Ragnarök. Or perhaps the birth of the sea.
His hand found its pommel as the other reached for his helm; iron-crested, with a mail aventail that flowed down like a river of steel. Over it, he threw the hide of the white wolf he had slain in his youth, a symbol of the Úlfhéðnar.
He tightened the final strap at his wrist and reached for his shield. Outside, the drums of departure echoed across the fort. Yet before he stepped into that cold wind, a voice called to him.
“You go to war so soon after your son’s birth?”
Vetrúlfr turned. The flickering hearth light9 painted his smirk with shadows — more beast than man.
“I will welcome my son with blood and fire. Athenry will burn for daring to touch what is mine. And I will make its king speak before I send him to Hel. Give Róisín my love. Tell her I shall return swifter than the wind.”
He turned, but his mother’s voice lingered.
“Beware the sea… Rán still stirs in your blood. Do not tempt her storm.”
Vetrulfr lingered in the doorway for just a breath longer, recalling the warmth of Róisín’s cheek against his chest the night their son was born.
Her fingers, soft and trembling, had clutched his wrist as if to anchor him to the world.
He remembered how she whispered, ‘Don’t let the frost take you too.’ And now, that frost called him once more.
Vetrúlfr paid no mind to his mother’s warning.
The fleet cut through the waves like ashwood blades through silk.
Beneath the moon’s pale eye, the sea parted like old linen; tattered, salt-bitten, and frayed by time.
Some among the crew swore they saw a figure walking upon the waves: a woman of bone-white skin, her hair like trailing kelp, her eyes aglow with the light of drowned stars.
Others whispered Ran’s name, marking their brows with charms and muttered prayers. The drums beat louder; not to repel the omen, but to drown it.
Yet Fáfnirsfangr, the drakkar bearing Vetrúlfr’s banner, surged ahead with eerie grace.
He stood at the prow, one hand upon the dragon’s snarling figurehead, the other resting upon the sea-forged sword’s pommel, unmoved by omen or god.
He did not look back.
The sky had wept earlier that day, but the storm parted for them now; not in surrender, but in wary respect. The sea groaned beneath the weight of their purpose.
Dozens of longships followed behind, forming a spear upon the water.
Fifty vessels bearing two thousand warriors; not thralls, nor desperate men turned raiders, but a host trained in the arts of war from Miklagarðr to the Vinland shores.
Their armor gleamed with eastern lamellar and northern steel. Their shields bore the Vegvísir, ochre upon earth-tone linen, the mark of their King.
This was no mere raid. This was the waking of the world-serpent.
“Let the waves carry us swiftly as Sleipnir’s gallop, and the winds howl with our battle cries. The North does not sleep when summoned.”
Richard III had begun his journey southward, his retinue snaking across the frost-kissed roads of Burgundy. Rome awaited; but it did not beckon with warmth.
The Eternal City called not with promise, but with pressure. A weight had begun to settle in his chest, as though beneath Saint Peter’s dome lay not blessing, but reckoning.
Behind him, in the heart of Normandy, his brother Robert entertained guests in the great hall.
Fine goblets of wine, honeyed fruit, and words like poison.
“Richard may be the eldest,” Robert said with a placid sip, “and by law, our father’s heir. But he bows his head to Rome like a gelded pilgrim. I say it is not loyalty that guides him; it is fear.”
The Marshal, seated among other knights and lords, said nothing. But his silence was not loyal.
Robert leaned forward, his voice a whisper of rot.
“He hides the truth. The Norse have returned. Not as scattered wolves; but as a pack. And when they come for our shores, what do you think Richard will do? Pray? Or beg?”
The knights exchanged glances. For two years, rumors had stirred; whispers of raiders clad in the hides of beasts, bearing torches and pagan fury. Most dismissed them as echoes of old fears. But now…
Robert saw what he needed. He raised his cup.
“To King Richard and his continued health. Long may he reign.”
The men drank. Few smiled. And none echoed the toast.
That was all the confirmation Robert needed.
Even as he raised his goblet, Robert’s mind was elsewhere.
In the quiet of the night, when his brother’s piety grated his ears like a monk’s chant, he would often envision Normandy aflame; and himself atop the ashes.
Not out of hatred, no… merely necessity. The North was stirring, and only the ruthless would survive its awakening.