The air was knife-cold despite the season. In Greenland, spring was a cruel liarl; the ice merely shifted, cracked, and sighed beneath its own weight, whispering of thaw, yet never yielding.
Vetrúlfr moved at the head of the small column, wolfskin cloak drawn tight over his shoulders.
Beside him, the pale mane of the beast still clung to old blood, wind-matted and stiff. His breath billowed in slow, controlled clouds. He savored the burn in his lungs.
Six men trailed behind him, hardened Northmen whose beards still clutched frost like graveyard lichen.
They carried their shields slung, axes and spears in hand, eyes sweeping the low ridges and hollowed drifts with wary patience.
It had been three days since they left the hall, following the winding fjord northward, then cutting inland through scattered birch and stunted willow.
Tracks in the melting crust, delicate depressions edged by refrozen ice, had guided them like runes scratched into the earth.
These were not the heavy, straightforward footprints of Norse farmers or woodsmen.
They were lighter, more careful, weaving across the terrain in hunting arcs. Skraelingr.
The word carried like a curse through the men’s muttered talk. Wild men, or worse; ghosts of the land itself.
Ahead, Vetrúlfr raised a hand, stopping the line. He crouched, leather creaking, and touched the snow.
His rune-marked fingers hovered over a spatter of brown, half-melted into the crust. A drop of old blood. Another a few paces beyond.
"Fresh two days ago," he rasped, almost to himself. His ice-blue eyes scanned the rising ground. "They passed here with meat. Maybe from the farm."
Ivar Half-Hand spat into the drift. "Pox on these shadow-chasers. Could be they’re leading us, drawing us away from the homesteads?"
"Or," Vetrúlfr replied, his voice low as the growl of a wolf, "we’re already in their nest."
He stood, shoulders rolling back. A slow, cold smile crept across his mouth.
"Keep your shields high. No calls, no horns. If they watch us; let them. I want their hearts full of fear before their bodies meet the axe."
They pressed on, threading between low ridges of stone crowned by scraggly moss. The land here smelled of salt and old ice, haunted by gull cries and the distant cracks of shifting glaciers.
At a rise, Vetrúlfr paused again. He sank to one knee and peered beyond. In the shallow basin below, a thin line of smoke curled up from a hidden hollow.
Not the stout hearth smoke of Norse homes; this was a low, smoldering reek. Seal fat or whale blubber, poorly vented.
The jarl’s eyes hardened. His hand closed around the haft of his axe where it lay at his belt.
"Skraelingr hearth. Small," he murmured, the words tasting like iron. "Perhaps half a dozen families. This is where the carrion trail leads."
He turned to his men, expression cold and eager.
"We wait for dusk. Then we cut out the rot by its root."
Night in Greenland was a yawning abyss, swallowing even the glow of the moon behind roving banks of cloud.
In that blackness, the world seemed closer, tighter, as though it crouched around the men in hiding, whispering its cold counsel.
Vetrúlfr and his warriors lay in a hollow of ice-cracked stone above the skraelingr camp.
From here, they watched the dim coals guttering in shallow pits below; faint pulses of orange that did little to drive back into the dark.
Shadows flitted across them: small figures tending to hides, a pair of hunters shaping bone points by the glow.
None looked outward. None expected that from the black fjords and ghost-haunted snows, something worse than winter might come.
Vetrúlfr’s teeth flashed in a brief, wolfish grin. He drew his seax across his palm, a shallow cut.
Blood welled hot and red. He pressed it to the wolf pelt on his shoulder, feeding the spirit that clung there.
"On me," he breathed, little more than a wind’s sigh.
The Northmen rose like wraiths from the ground. They descended the slope without a cry, shields held close, axes and spears ready.
Snow muffled their approach. Even their breath seemed strangled, swallowed by the cold.
When the first dog barked, it was already too late.
A spear whistled through the gloom; then the yelp cut off sharp, wood cracking bone. T
he skraelingr camp erupted in chaos: women screamed, children bolted into the dark, and the two hunters staggered to their feet, clutching stone knives.
Vetrúlfr was already among them. His axe rose and fell, carving a hunter nearly in half.
The man’s blood steamed where it struck the snow.
Another leapt at him, desperate, stabbing with a jagged bone blade; but Vetrúlfr caught his wrist, twisted until it broke, and drove his seax into the man’s neck.
The others were no less ruthless. Bjǫrn swung his axe with grim purpose, cutting down fleeing shadows. A fire pit overturned, sending embers scattering like fleeing spirits.
All around, the night seemed alive with shrieks.
The skraelingr stumbled into each other, trying to escape the slaughter, but the Norse came from every side, lantern eyes gleaming, teeth bared, breath streaming like the exhalations of Hel’s own hounds.
This was no raid for silver or slaves. It was a terror-strike, a lesson written in blood and fire.
When it was done, the camp lay in ruin; hide tents cut down, fire pits smothered, bodies strewn like broken dolls.
Those few who escaped fled screaming into the night, carrying with them the horror of white-skinned giants with wolf-cloaked shoulders and rune-etched flesh, come from the dark with iron and fire.
Vetrúlfr stood over the wreck, wiping his blade on a shredded tunic. His breath slowed, calmed.
Around him, his warriors moved like shades, turning over carcasses, taking small trophies. They spoke little. They did not gloat.
Because this was Greenland, where the night watched, and the wind carried stories.
Soon, across these snows, the skraelingr would whisper of pale demons who walked unseen until their axes fell.
And in the long dark of coming winters, mothers would hush their children with warnings of the wolf-men who came from across the sea, who wore the dark itself like a cloak.