They came back ragged, ice crusting their beards, eyes sunken from days of thin rations and thinner sleep.
The march had taken them far beyond any safe measure; deep into lands where the aurora itself seemed to watch, swirling green eyes across a black vault of sky.
Vetrúlfr’s boots cracked through the wind-packed drifts as he led them down the final slope toward their settlement.
Smoke from the longhouse rose ahead, dark against the late winter light. Even that thin column felt like a promise.
At his side trudged Ivar Half-Hand, face hard and dark, and Ketil who carried a small bundle of notched sticks bound with gut string.
These were men who had been by Vetrúlfr’s side since he first raised a host in Ullrsfjörðr three years prior.
Their crude map, each notch a mark for another hearth-smoke seen, another midden heap picked clean of seal bones, another track that bespoke wary movement.
They passed the outer watch fires, where younger men hailed them with quiet relief. Inside the palisade, dogs barked and sniffed at their cloaks.
Children peered around corners, eyes wide. It was said among them that the King and his handpicked scouts had walked so far into the waste that even the sun lost them.
In the hall, warmth slammed into them; the heavy reek of sweat, oil, and smoked meat.
Warriors rose from benches, thumping fists to chests. Vetrúlfr acknowledged them with a nod, pale hair slick with frost melt, then shrugged off his wolfskin and cast it near the hearth.
He called for ale, and while it was fetched, he crouched near a long trestle table where rough carvings had been scratched directly into the wood.
Ketil unbound the bundle of sticks and began laying them out, tracing lines between marks with a blackened point.
"Here," Ketil rasped, tapping a cluster of small cuts, "three settlements strung along the fjord. Tents mostly, some low stone circles. They watch the ice for seals. We saw them sending hunting canoes toward a crack in the flow."
Ivar’s finger moved eastward.
"And here, two days past; another camp. Larger. They have caribou hides, some dogs. May be tied to the same kin that struck our farms."
Vetrúlfr leaned in, eyes narrowed.
"Nothing for another day’s march. The land there is all cracked stone and black ice. They do not build where the land will not feed them."
For a moment, Vetrúlfr said nothing. Firelight danced across the runes etched on his pale hands. A
round him, the hall fell quiet. The warriors waited; some with wary eyes, others with hungry smiles.
"So. We have their shape. Like a herd drawn tight around thin grazing. Few enough to be broken piece by piece. They cannot all flee at once. Some will die where they stand. Others will scatter and carry tales; which suits us just as well."
"And the others to the west? If they hear these tales, they may strike first. Let alone the other villages who have yet to swear oaths to you."
Vetrúlfr’s teeth showed in a thin, cold grin.
"Better they come to us than we waste boots and breath chasing them. Let them come angry and clumsy. We will break them against our palisades, teach them the meaning of iron law."
The warriors around the table nodded, some eager, some uneasy. None challenged him. Outside, the wind clawed at the shutters.
Somewhere in that dark, they all imagined thin figures moving; watching, listening. Perhaps already planning desperate counsels of their own.
But here, within the stout walls of the longhouse, with the wolf of winter seated at their head, the Northmen drank and traced their bloody maps again.
They would move soon; when the days stretched longer, when the ice began to crack and the waterways opened.
And then these lands would learn that the strangers from the sea had not come merely to trade, or to fish, or even to settle.
They had come to rule. To carve their claim in the marrow of the earth itself.
Far from the frozen coasts of Greenland, across the dark seas and rolling hills of Normandy, another winter’s end found men gripped by a different sort of cold.
Outside the walls of Rouen, tents sprawled like a sickly rash across churned mud. Smoke rose in thin, miserable strands.
Horses stood ribs-bared and hollow-eyed. Men clustered around scant fires, eyes sunken, breath rattling in their chests.
They gnawed at scraps of salt pork so rank with mold it might have crawled off by itself had they not seized it first.
Richard III, Duke of Normandy, once the proud heir of his father’s iron realm, stalked through this mire with his cloak drawn tight.
His fine boots were caked in brown filth. His face was gaunt, eyes fever-bright from hunger and hate.
The nobles who remained gave him wide berth, bowing stiffly, speaking little. Too many had felt the bite of his scorn these past desperate weeks.
Inside his own pavilion, Richard raged at half-empty benches.
"Cowards and lackwits! All Normandy crumbles because you simper like handmaidens. My brother grows fat on stolen grain inside my own walls while you whimper of shortages!"
His steward bowed low, voice thin.
"My lord, there is little left to forage. The men eat roots and bark. Horses drop dead each night. If relief does not come—"
"Then we shall take relief!" Richard snarled. He slammed a mailed fist upon the table, rattling tarnished cups. "I will gut my traitor brother and string him from Rouen’s gates!"
But even as he roared, his captains exchanged looks.
And more than one thought of Gautier de Mortain, Marshal of the Realm, who had quietly slipped away in the night with nearly half their remaining knights and men-at-arms.
Within Rouen’s thick stone heart, under high banners that still bore the lilies of Normandy, Robert, stood in a torchlit hall, welcoming his new ally.
Gautier de Mortain knelt on one knee, his mail still dusted from hard riding.
Behind him stood his knights; lean, cold-eyed men, many of whom had once sworn to Richard.
Now their banners were lowered in token fealty to Robert.
Robert’s smile was thin, but warm enough to be convincing. He gestured for Gautier to rise.
"You have chosen wisely, my lord Marshal. Normandy needs a steady hand, not a tyrant’s lash. Richard’s cruelty devours even his own kin. I think in your heart you have known this for some time."
Gautier bowed his head, jaw tight.
"My duty is to Normandy. And to those who can keep her whole. I will not see her fields burned and her people starve for one man’s pride."
"No," Robert said softly. "Nor shall I. Together, we shall mend what Richard has broken. And when the spring rains come, it will be his camp that rots in the mud, not ours."
He stepped down from the dais, laying a hand on the Marshal’s shoulder; a subtle claim of fellowship, of unity. Gautier did not flinch, though there was a weary resignation in his eyes.
Around them, the Count’s household knights and squires watched with approving nods. Servants slipped through the hall with fresh wine and trenchers heavy with roasted meat.
A pointed contrast to the hollow bellies gnawing themselves raw beyond Rouen’s walls.
Outside, night fell over Normandy like a velvet knife. Fires glimmered atop Rouen’s walls, bright beacons of plenty; or of challenge.
Beyond, Richard’s camp lay black and shivering, pierced by thin cries as another horse failed in the mud.
The scales of loyalty had tipped. And whether by hunger or by fear, men would flock to the stronger hand.
Robert watched from a high window that evening, goblet in hand, and smiled a small, private smile.
"At last, brother," he murmured, as though to the cold air itself. "You begin to see how alone you truly are."