The fjords of Grænland loomed ahead like vast gray jaws, their granite teeth slick with meltwater. Ice cracked and drifted in a slow, reluctant dance across the narrow sound.
Above, clouds gathered low and heavy, brooding over the peaks that still wore winter’s white shroud.
Fáfnirsfangr slid between the stone walls under a tense hush. The longship’s dragon prow cut the frigid water, its carved eyes seeming to glare defiantly at the icy cliffs.
Behind it, the other ships followed close in a disciplined line, their sails half-furled to catch the uncertain winds.
Vetrúlfr stood at the prow, one hand braced on the snarling draconic figurehead. His wolfskin mantle flared behind him in the chill breeze.
Beneath it, the mail shirt he wore felt strangely heavy, as if the iron itself remembered the last time he had brought it to this cursed land.
The freshly waxed Leather lamellar had been repaired in areas chipped, or cut by spear. sword, and arrow thrust into its slick embrace during the campaign in Connacht.
His pale gaze swept over the curling fog and the dark waters.
Somewhere beneath the surface, though he could not see it, he felt certain she watched him still.
Rán, the sea-goddess who had once tried to pull the breath from his lungs and claim him for her drowned hall.
He drew in a lungful of salt and brine, eyes narrowing.
In the hush of the fjord, the memories crept in sharp and cold: the night he staggered ashore alone, half-dead, frost riming his beard, the blood of the bear he had slain still steaming on the snow.
The woman on the tide line, her salt drenched fingers cold as carved bone as she touched his chest; and the way his own heartbeat faltered under that ghostly caress.
He had given something up then, though he still did not know precisely what. A sliver of his soul, perhaps. Or simply his fear of death.
Now he returned not as a half-frozen devotee seeking to appease the gods, but as a king. A king who meant to bind these fjords to his growing empire.
Yet even that thought tasted like gall on his tongue.
A grove would have to be raised here, he decided grimly.
Stones and spears for Rán, sacrifices of black goats and red throats, anything to keep her jealous hands from the hulls of his ships.
She tempted him every time he set sail, seizing the smallest of his vessels, and those with the greenest of men.
As if to remind him she was there, watching, waiting for the day he became hers once more. Yet no longer....
Ahead, the fjord curved sharply, and beyond its bend lay a splash of settlement. Smoke curled from longhouses roofed in sod and timber.
Boats bobbed at small piers, nets strung out to dry. A cluster of smaller outbuildings clung to the stony beach like wary children to a mother’s skirts.
This was part of Eystribyggð, Erik the Red’s Eastern Settlement, though the old outlaw himself had long since gone to feast with Óðin.
The folk here were tough, weathered, their skin seamed by wind and sea glare.
Vetrúlfr could see them already, gathering along the shore to watch the approach of these towering ships.
As Fáfnirsfangr nosed in toward the shallows, oars raised dripping from the water, Vetrúlfr’s warriors crowded the rail.
Their cloaks were bright with dyed stripes, wolf and bear pelts slung over shoulders, helms gleaming with brass rivets.
Axes and broad swords hung from every belt, shields painted with snarling beasts.
These were not the ragged raiders of sagas past.
These were Ulfhéðinn, men who had spilled blood from Ériu to the Baltic, veterans of slaughter whose boots knew the taste of distant mud.
Their discipline was that of Varangians; their eyes held the hard spark of men who would kill without pause and laugh at the doing.
When the hull grounded with a final heavy sigh of timber on sand and stone, Vetrúlfr stepped down into the cold surf.
Water leapt up around his calves, icy enough to sting even through the leather of his boots.
He strode up onto the rocky beach as if it were a jarl’s hall floor, shoulders squared, wolfskin heavy at his back.
Behind him came his húskarlar, shields slung, axes over shoulders, scanning every face on the shore.
The settlers parted before them like grass before a wind.
Hard-eyed Greenlanders in seal-skin tunics, broad-shouldered men and sharp-browed women, gaped openly at the massive drakkar and the Skeid which flanked its side.
One was Frostrtönn, the other named in honor of the late Emperor Basil; Kongsbani.
Kongsbani, or the King Slayer, was as mighty as a Skeid class longship could be. And was the younger sister of Frostrtönn.
Identical in size, scale, and lean predator grace, serving together as the eternal escort of their master; Fáfnirsfangr.
All three ships bore fresh coats of waterproof lacquer, tinted in earthen brown mixed with stipes of ochre.
Even mighty Fáfnirsfangr, the lead drakkar of the trio, wore this new war skin.
Their hulls gleamed like wet bark under the low Arctic sun, the ochre catching light in narrow veins that seemed almost to pulse.
Their sails matched this earthen standard, wide fields of brown stamped with an ochre Vegvísir.
The ancient mark Brynhildr claimed had cracked forth from the ice on the night of Vetrúlfr’s birth.
A banner for winter’s children, carried now not just on canvas, but etched into every rib and plank of these longships, binding wood, blood, and destiny into one.
These ships combined carried three hundred of Vetrúlfr’s most elite and loyal warriors.
One berserkr per every nine Ulfhéðinn. Each armed to a greater standard than even Basil’s Palace Varangians.
When these men followed their king ashore Children peered out from behind skirts or the corners of timber sheds.
An older man came forward, gray-bearded and stoop-shouldered, but with hands still callused from net and line.
His eyes flicked from the bright ring Vetrúlfr wore to the keen edge of the seax at his belt.
"You are no mere sea-king come seeking Danegeld," the elder said, voice pitched to carry across the stunned crowd.
"Nor some lost jarl of Iceland come calling cousins. That ship... that war-host... you wear the look of a man who means to take more than silver."
Vetrúlfr’s pale eyes pinned him, and for an instant the older man actually flinched. Then the White Wolf’s mouth curved in a humorless echo of a smile.
"I take what is owed, I am the son of Ullr..." he said simply. "And I give in turn. Grain, iron, fresh timber for your roof-beams. Laws that will keep your children fed. Ships to keep the Danes off your whaling grounds. But also oaths. To me. To Ullr. To the old blood."
He stepped closer. The sea wind tugged at his wolfskin, the salt tang rising sharply around them.
"Your sons will row in my fleets, your fields will pay tithe to my stores. Your hall pillars will stand beneath the same sagas as mine, telling how Grænland bent knee to Vetrúlfr Úllarson."
The elder’s throat bobbed, but he managed a nod.
Around them, the settlers watched in wary silence, weighing this king who wore more scars than gold, whose men stood like an iron wall behind him.
Far above on the ship, the carved dragon prow stared down, mouth gaping in silent, toothy laughter.
For the first time since the fjord’s mouth, Vetrúlfr allowed himself a breath that did not taste of fear.
Here was a people that understood ice, understood hard choices and harder men. Here, perhaps, was a place that would kneel without breaking.
He turned and gestured for his steersman to begin unloading. Barrels splashed into the surf, ropes snaked after them.
Warriors moved off in twos and threes to stake out camp, to barter for lambs and beer, to learn what these folk might know of Svalbarði and the further icy reaches.
And as he watched them go, the northern wind rose, tugging at his cloak like a lover’s hand.
Somewhere far beneath the gray-green water, he fancied he could feel Rán’s gaze once more.
Vetrúlfr only bared his teeth to the cold.
Let the sea-witch watch. He was not the single man who had once staggered onto these shores, seeking to submit to the gods, clutching at the scraps of his soul.
He had returned with an army, one capable of challenging Asgard itself. And this land, like all the rest, would learn his name.