It was three days after the slaughter outside Rouen. Snowmelt trickled through the gutters, carrying with it thin rivulets of mud and darker stains.
Within the keep, Robert held court beneath high arched beams, the banners of Normandy draped fresh and bright above his chair.
Around him clustered knights and nobles, many still bearing the rents and bandages of the battle.
Some had been Robert’s from the start. Others now stood with bowed heads, swords laid at his feet, having bent knee rather than perish with Richard.
Richard himself knelt there too; a gaunt, hollow figure, wrists still bruised from bonds. His fine clothes were muddied and torn.
Yet his chin remained high, blue eyes snapping with that same dangerous pride. Robert regarded him for a long while. Then he spoke, his voice measured, almost gentle.
"Brother. Normandy bleeds from these months of strife. The fields will yield poorly come harvest, the burghers mutter of ruin. I cannot set all this right while still watching for a dagger in the dark. So, I will not heap more corpses atop the winter’s toll. I will show mercy."
A ripple passed through the assembled lords. Some exhaled relief. Others frowned, wary of what price such ’mercy’ might bear.
Robert’s pale hands rested lightly on the arms of his chair.
"All here who rode under Richard’s banner shall keep their lives and the honor of ransom, as is right by feudal law. You shall pay the price due for your defiance, then return to your halls."
Murmurs rose; cautious hope. But Robert raised a finger, and silence dropped again.
"But first, each of you shall kneel and swear fealty anew to me, and to Normandy united under my rule. And more: you shall foreswear all claims that might stir fresh quarrels. Your heirs shall take no titles by your hand. Your wives shall be returned to their fathers, or enter holy vows."
A stunned hush. Faces paled. A knight beside Richard swallowed hard, clutching at the small cross on his chest.
"Your lines that stood against me," Robert continued, voice soft as falling ash, "will end with you. Lands loyal to Richard shall pass to men I name; those who held fast, or proved themselves in this cause. Thus shall Normandy be whole again, and no more torn by brother’s wars."
Richard barked a hollow laugh, rough with fatigue.
"So you spare me; only to smother my house, scatter my blood, and grind my name beneath your heel. Is this your mercy, Robert?"
Robert’s gaze was steady, almost mournful.
"It is the only way this land heals, brother. I give you a choice still: the cowl or the sword. A monastery’s quiet, or a traitor’s death. And if you were to remember correctly, I gave you that choice at the start of this petty war of yours. You chose the blade, do not make me regret this offer a second time. There won’t be a third...."
For a moment, it seemed Richard might lunge for him, thin hands curling into claws. Then the fight bled out of him. His shoulders slumped, and his eyes grew distant.
"Then have your monastery. May God damn you for a coward’s victor. I would rather your blade; but I see you lack the stomach for clean endings."
"No," Robert said softly. "I simply have the stomach for lasting ones."
So it was done. One by one, the defeated lords and knights knelt, swore hollow oaths, and watched their futures stripped away.
Documents were drawn up under ecclesiastical seal, marriages annulled on grounds of civil discord and betrayal, heirs disinherited by solemn declaration.
Richard was led from the hall under quiet guard, bound not for a dungeon, but for a cloister far inland, where the bell towers rose cold against the wind.
He would live and pray, and watch his line wither to dust.
Meanwhile, Robert stood by the long table as each new grant of land and title was signed, placing loyal men in the manors and keeps that once bristled with Richard’s banners.
"Thus Normandy is made whole," he murmured, voice low enough that only Gautier beside him heard. "Not by iron alone, but by patient cutting. Like pruning rot from the root."
When the last seal was pressed, Robert dismissed his council. Servants moved through the hall gathering up discarded goblets and half-spilled wax.
Outside, the streets of Rouen bustled again; wary but relieved. War was over. For now.
Robert remained by the empty hearth, hand resting lightly on the carved chair. His breath clouded faintly in the chill.
Normandy was his at last. Yet the silence of the hall seemed vast, echoing with the ghosts of what it had cost.
And what was worse, while his realm bled in civil war, the wolves of the far north grew stronger. He knew it deep in his gut.
It was a haunting thought. He had gained power, but if he did not use it wisely, all that he had strived for would be lost in a generation. He could not allow this.
Night fell swiftly across Greenland’s fjords, swallowing the low hills and ice-choked streams in a blue-black hush. Even in spring, the land clung to its cold, the air brittle and sharp with salt.
Along a narrow coastline dotted with seal-fat lamps, a skraelingr camp huddled close to the shore.
Hide tents rose in clusters, smoke venting through crude holes, the scent of boiled fish thick on the air.
Children chased one another over the hard-packed snow, their laughter thin and uncertain. Women worked hides with bone scrapers, eyes flicking constantly toward the dark treeline.
They had heard the tales.
Whispers of pale demons come from across the sea, who struck without warning and left only blood and silence.
Some said they were not men at all, but the winter itself given claws and iron.
The first dog’s bark cut through the hush; sharp, fearful. Then another. The skraelingr hunters looked up, hands tightening on bone knives.
And from the shadows beyond the camp, the wolves came.
Not beasts of four legs, but tall figures cloaked in wolfskins, faces daubed with dark paint, eyes gleaming in the torchlight like cold fire.
Steel flashed; axes and swords, the long cruel curve of Nordic blades catching the brief gleam before plunging down.
Vetrúlfr led them, a towering specter, his breath ghosting from a snarling mouth. He struck a hunter who tried to raise a spear, splitting the man from shoulder to breast.
Another skraelingr charged him with a crude club; Vetrúlfr caught it on his shield, smashed it aside, and buried his sword in the man’s neck.
Its beating heart drank of the lifeblood gifted to it in sacrifice. And somewhere deep in the back of his mind, Vetrúlfr could see its true master’s smile.
All around, his Norsemen moved with grim certainty. They did not shout. They did not revel. They killed quickly, methodically, the snow underfoot soon slick and dark.
By the time the last tent burned, the surviving skraelingr had fled into the hills, carrying with them only the horror of what they had seen.
Vetrúlfr stood amid the ruin, breath still heavy, watching flames twist into the night sky.
Around him his warriors sifted through the camp’s scant stores, gathering seal pelts and dried meat, pulling down crude idols of driftwood and antler.
"They will run far now," said Ivar Half-Hand, wiping blood from his axe.
"Aye," Vetrúlfr answered, voice low. "And wherever they run, they will carry us with them. In their bones. In their dreams."
A cruel wind rose off the water, stirring his wolf cloak, making it snap like the banner of some dark god.
The Norse would not build halls here yet. They would not sow fields. This was still the season of the hunt; not for game, but for fear itself.
Each raid sent new ripples across the land, driving the skraelingr before them like startled herds.
And in the long nights to come, every crack of ice, every breath of wind through the birch, would sound to these people like the footfall of iron-shod men with wolf-eyes.