Chapter 59: The West Burns
The charred ruins of ships still floated like bones upon the sea, their masts twisted and blackened as if struck by the hand of Surtr himself.
Smoke clung to the tide like mourning cloth, casting a veil over the blood-red horizon. Gull-cries pierced the silence, circling above the scorched fjord where once King Olaf’s fleet had rested; now reduced to cinders and cinders only.
Jarl Ármóðr stood atop the blackened battlements of Jomsborg, wind teasing the timber watchtower overhead, the scent of salt and smoke thick in his nostrils.
His hand rested on the railing, knuckles still red from gripping torch and axe the night before. Beneath him, the water steamed where fire had kissed it; proof that what had been done was no mere act of war, but a judgment.
Surtr’s Flames. That was what they called it.
A gift from Vetrúlfr himself, concocted in secret, inspired by lessons learned in Constantinople, Vetrúlfr had commissioned the enchanted flames that burned even the sea en masse following his coronation.
It was why he had forbade the trade of whale oil, which was a primary ingredient in its brewing. Crafted by his alchemists and blessed by Brynhildr, the fire was unquenchable when lit aflame.
It burned upon water, clung to flesh, screamed as it consumed. Greek fire reborn in the north; but darker, thicker, and possessed of a will.
Olaf had been its first true victim. Yes, the flames had licked the hovels in Færeyjar; but none had grasped their full horror until today.
The King of Norway had brought eighty ships to bring an end to the legendary order of the Jomsvikings. Now there were none. Not even the sea would take them.
Ármóðr’s lips curled into a grim smile.
“So falls the White Pretender,” he muttered, his voice nearly lost to the wind. “May the Allfather refuse his bones’ passage to Valhöll.”
Behind him, his men stood ready aboard their remaining vessels; fifteen in total, their hulls painted black and rimmed with sharpened iron.
Each vessel bore a wolf-etched shield upon its sides, and the sails had been dyed with soot and ash until they resembled storm clouds. These were no longer just ships. They were omens.
Jomsborg had answered Vetrúlfr’s call not with messengers or oaths; but with fire and steel. And now they sailed to meet him in conquest.
The open sea stretched endlessly to the west, and with it rode the vengeance of the north.
Ármóðr stood at the helm as the fleet tore across the wind-slicked waves. The black sails snapped above them like war banners, and the men aboard the ships sharpened their blades in silence.
They had not sung since the burning. There was no joy in what they had done; only clarity.
For years the sea-kings had languished in their halls, their names rusting with time. But now, beneath the shadow of Vetrúlfr’s ascension, the old ways were reborn.
It was not revenge that drove them. It was memory.
The world had forgotten what it meant to fear the wolves of the north. Soon, it would remember.
Ármóðr glanced down at the scroll sealed with wax and marked with the runic glyph of the Vegvísir. Vetrúlfr’s letter had been short.
“Strike from the western sea, where their eyes do not look. Take the coast and join me in flame. Let the kings of Ériu drown in their own prophecy.”
Beneath those words had been the sigil of Ullr; the hunter’s bow bent over ice. A sign that the time for games had ended.
By the fourth day, the mists broke, and the green slopes of western Ériu appeared on the horizon.
Not far inland, the thatched roofs of villages dotted the coastal hills, unaware of the ruin approaching.
Ármóðr raised his hand, and the helmsman steered starboard to a sheltered bay just north of Muintir Murchadha’s lands; territory known for its isolation and weak coastal patrols. It was a perfect landing site.
The longships slid into the inlet, oars rising silently from the water as the hulls kissed stone. No horns were sounded. No banners raised.
Only the hiss of rope and the splash of boots striking the shallows announced their arrival.
The Jomsvikings moved like shadows; disciplined, quiet, terrifying. They did not burn the villages; not yet.
They did not chant, nor howl, nor boast. This was not a raid. It was a reckoning, measured not in gold seized but in fear sown.
First, they surrounded the villages. Then the gates were opened not by force; but by the trembling hands of men too frightened to resist.
Those who surrendered were spared. Those who reached for weapons were cut down in silence.
Ármóðr’s orders had been clear.
“Make them understand. But do not destroy them. We are not here to plunder. We are here to mark what is ours.”
By the sixth village, word had begun to spread. Smoke did rise; but only as a signal, a warning to the inland kings.
And by the time scouts rode north to Athenry, to warn Maél Sechnaill and his kin, it was already too late. The wolves were in the fold.
Ármóðr’s camp rose like a black thorn from the coastline.
Spiked palisades were raised in hours. Watch fires were built atop the cliffs. Warriors stood in rotating shifts, shields in hand, always watching the treeline for riders, arrows, or messengers.
Inside the largest tent, dyed black with soot and marked with iron runes, Ármóðr unfurled a map of the region.
Before him stood his captains: old warriors with broken noses, missing ears, and eyes sharp as flint.
“We press inland tomorrow,” Ármóðr said, voice low but unflinching. “We do not wait for Vetrúlfr’s banner to fly over Athenry. We bleed the land now, so that when he arrives, the land itself will beg for his mercy.”
One of the younger warriors, a blonde brute named Hrafnkel, raised a brow.
“And if they come with horsemen? If the high king rides west?”
Ármóðr looked up, the ghost of a smile on his lips.
“Then we will burn their steeds beneath them. Surtr’s Flame is not yet spent.”
A quiet murmur passed through the tent. Not of fear; but of reverence.
That night, Ármóðr stood atop the cliffs, staring eastward, watching for the signal fire promised by Vetrúlfr’s scouts. A pillar of black smoke rising over the lands of Connacht.
He remembered the words Vetrúlfr had once spoken, on the eve of their pact:
“We do not sow roots in foreign soil, only fear. Let the green lands remember us like a storm remembered by the earth.”
The air was colder here, despite the summer. The sea breeze carried with it the scent of ash, even though the fires had long since died down.
He pulled his cloak tighter and whispered beneath his breath.
“My father, see what I have built. We have come home.”
Somewhere inland, priests began to pray.
Somewhere inland, kings began to gather.
And above it all, the sky darkened; clouds massing not with rain, but with omen.
This was no conquest. This was reminder.
From west and east, the north had risen.