Summer blurred to Autumn. Where once only seabirds wheeled, now knarrs dotted the fjord like drifting leaves, each one heavy with men, timber, iron, goats, and grain.
Every tide brought more shipments from Ísland, from Ullrsfjörðr, from Færeyjar and even traders of curious Slavic cut.
Vetrúlfr stood upon a rocky spur above the growing settlement, watching as his men raised the first rough palisades.
Timber hauled from ships was sunk into frost-hardened earth, their tops carved into biting teeth.
Stone followed: scavenged from nearby scree, set with cunning mortar the Byzantines had once taught him to mix with lime and crushed bone.
The Grænlanders watched, wariness in their eyes slowly yielding to something else; awe, perhaps, or relief.
Here was a king who did not simply drink their ale and take their daughters.
He drove posts deep to shape new fields. He brought thralls skilled in the use of foreign seed and dung, men who could coax life from grudging soil.
Yet word came from the northwest, from the edges of hunters’ range.
Men of foreign lands and gods had been spotted, dark silhouettes gliding silently across mirror seas.
They watched from their ice, these men in furs and bone-helmets, eyes narrow with measured suspicion.
"They will not trouble us," Bjǫrn scoffed when he heard. "They have no halls to burn. What could they do against shields and swords?"
Vetrúlfr only stared northward, jaw set. "Every land has teeth," he said. "Even if hidden beneath white fur and soft snow."
By the second month, longhouses stood where once there was only moss.
Built upon roman foundations, including hypocaust channels to bring heat in the winter, and cold in the summer.
Aqueducts ensured water flowed freely into each home, the springs beneath the earth itself fed warmth and life like the locals had never seen before.
Though fewer and further between than in Ísland. Vetrúlfr and his laborers quickly adapted to ensure the same quality of life was being built in Grænland as the rest of his empire.
Paths of fitted stone began to snake through the low hills. Children ran barefoot over them, chasing one another with shrill laughter.
Old Jarnulf; the gray-bearded fisherman who first faced Vetrúlfr on the shore; watched it all with a pained sort of wonder.
He knew well what the coming of kings meant. In Norway, it was taxes and tithes. In Ísland, it was blood feuds over pasture rights.
Here it would be the same; but sharper, for the cold made everything dearer.
Yet as he watched Norse masons measure out the skeleton of a new bridge, heard the clash of forge hammers shaping plowshares, he felt some part of his hard old heart unclench.
"Better the law of a wolf than the chaos of carrion crows," he muttered. "At least wolves keep other beasts at bay."
Nearby, a hulking berserkr leaned on his axe, watching Grænlander youths struggle under loads of cut peat. His breath fogged in the cold, nostrils flaring.
"They’d have died by the dozen if they’d marched with us in Ériu," he said to a younger ulfheðinn, his voice almost fond. "But give ’em a season at our fires, let them see what it means to wear wolfskin, they’ll learn."
The younger warrior nodded, eyes bright. "By next spring, they’ll be raiding with us. Or feeding the crows, either way."
At the edge of the new hall site, Vetrúlfr knelt and pressed a hand to the black, freshly turned earth.
It was cold still, reluctant; but it would yield. Just as the people here would yield. Just as the further valleys would, and the ghost-haunted ice beyond.
His mind already worked through the needs of next season: more stone, more seed, more smiths.
And then, once Grænland lay under his hand as surely as Ullrsfjörðr did; the hunts for Svalbarði would begin in earnest.
Not for gold. Not even for glory. But to build a kingdom so far-flung and cold that no pope’s writ could reach it, no Frankish spear could pierce it.
A kingdom whose halls would echo with tales of Ullr’s son long after Rome itself lay in ruin.
Autumn’s chill crept over the Norman fields, withering the last green from the hedges and laying a grey hand on Richard’s camp.
Once, his tents had been crowded with knights and squires, bright with banners and eager boasts of victory.
Now they sagged like weary men themselves, half-empty, muddied, smelling of rot and smoke.
Richard sat before a guttering brazier, clutching its scant heat, his cloak hanging loose over sunken shoulders.
His face, once hale and ruddy, had grown sallow and tight over the bones. The faintest breeze set him shivering.
They had come to starve Robert out. To ring Rouen like a noose until his brother’s ambition strangled on hunger.
But the city’s stores had proven far deeper than rumor suggested.
Reports suggested that Robert’s men feasted on salted pork, drew red wine from casks, and even amused themselves by loosing arrows at Richard’s sentries through the night.
Their mocking laughter carried on the cold air, leaving Richard’s men haggard with sleeplessness.
Richard’s own larders dwindled to scraps and coarse black bread. When that failed, the butchery of horses began; first the wounded, then the weaker mounts.
The smell of boiled flesh and singed hair filled the camp. Some knights wept as they cut down beasts they had raised from foals.
Worse still, no banners came over the horizon. Richard had sent letters months before, urging every remaining loyal lord to rally to him.
Yet the roads were Robert’s domain now. Most messengers never reached their targets, cut down by skirmishers or hung from trees as grisly signposts.
Those who did were often shadowed by false riders bearing forged seals and treacherous letters.
Even Richard’s trusted marshal, a man of iron-willed pragmatism who had long balanced on a blade’s edge between brothers, now kept to his own tent, speaking in guarded tones with his captains.
More than once Richard glimpsed them casting uneasy glances toward Rouen’s walls, where Robert’s standards flew proud and bright.
Bitter rage twisted inside the duke’s hollow stomach.
One morning, finding a loyal knight questioning the wisdom of another week’s wait, Richard struck him across the face so hard his signet ring left a cut that wept blood down the man’s cheek.
"By God, would you have me bend the knee to that oath-breaking whelp?" Richard snarled, his voice cracking from thirst and disuse. "Would you see Normandy sold for the price of a hog’s belly? I will not vacate my birthright and live as a monk for the rest of my life! Go then, traitor, crawl to Robert’s feet if you must. But do not stand here and poison my camp."
The knight bowed stiffly, hand to his face, and withdrew without another word.
Richard slumped onto a stool, trembling, head bowed. His anger drained as swiftly as it rose, leaving only cold fear in its place.
Night came again, and with it the cruel sport of Robert’s archers.
The arrows struck tents and cooking pots, skittering across the ground, some tipped with scraps of burning cloth that set the canvas smoldering.
Each hiss and crackle jolted the starving men awake, their nerves frayed to the point of madness.
In the dark, Richard whispered desperate prayers, not knowing if he still believed.
His god seemed distant now, a cold monarch beyond even Robert’s reach, unmoved by hunger or tears.
And all around him, Normandy waited, silent and watchful, to see which brother’s shadow would swallow it whole.