Word of the skraelingr’s flight reached Vetrúlfr by way of hunters returning from the northern streams, their breath still steaming from hard runs over ice and stone.
They spoke of camps half-abandoned, of small canoes slipping quietly out to sea under moonlight, laden with families and scant belongings.
They also spoke of lean bands of young warriors gathering in narrow ravines, planting sharpened stakes, watching the passes with hungry, desperate eyes.
Vetrúlfr sat on his carved chair of whale-bone and driftwood, one hand draped across the wolf pelt at his shoulder, the other resting on the hilt of the dark sword at his hip.
The hall was thick with the scents of salt and forge-smoke, alive with the clatter of armor as his huskarls leaned in to listen.
"Let them flee," Vetrúlfr said at last, his voice low but carrying. "The women, the children, the old; let them run across the ice, let them take their canoes to Vinland or beyond. Let them whisper in every smokehouse of their kind that Greenland belongs to wolves now."
His pale eyes swept across the faces of his men; some grim, some alight with cruel understanding.
"But know this: any who stay behind to lift spear or club, any who hide in the gullies and watch our roads; they are not farmers, they are not kin to the land. They are enemies. And we will hunt them with the same surety as we hunt seal or bear."
A hush settled over the hall, broken only by the slow rasp of axeheads being turned in calloused hands.
It was not bloodlust that filled the space, but a colder, sharper thing; the understanding that what they built here would be fed by such choices, season after season.
Ivar Half-Hand, leaning on his shield, gave a thin, wolfish smile.
Beyond the hall’s heavy doors, the fort hummed with the sounds of labor. New ships took shape upon heavy trestles.
Iron hissed and sparked beneath hammers. Spears leaned by the hundreds against racks of fresh-cut pine.
Soon these would move inland, carrying the cold law of the king from Ísland, Vestmannaeyjar, and Færeyjar; runes forged from the new order, taken from the old.
And beyond, scattered skraelingr families pushed off into uncertain seas, clutching children and hide bundles, already whispering of pale giants who built warm halls in the frost and wore the winter like a cloak.
Far to the north, beyond even the wide shoulders of Greenland, where Vetrúlfr expanded his empire; lay a sea that groaned and cracked with ancient breath.
Here the ice shifted in great plates, colliding with deep, echoing booms that sounded like the growl of sleeping beasts.
Through these drifting floes sailed two long, narrow knarrs, their hulls rimed with frost, their sails patched where storm and clawed wind had torn them.
At their helms stood men who had already braved Greenland’s wrath and found it wanting; scouts and huskarls sent by Vetrúlfr and his Jomsviking allies to seek out the whispered land called Svalbarð, the "cold edge."
It was near the tail of the short summer when they found it.
Grey cliffs rose sudden from the sea, crowned by sheets of glittering white that spilled down in slow, ancient rivers.
Birds wheeled overhead in vast, shrieking clouds, and the beaches were littered with bones; whale ribs tangled with driftwood, seals dragged up and torn open by something larger.
The Norseman stood at the prow, gripping the gunwales with raw hands. Their breath fogged around cracked lips, eyes wide with both awe and greed.
"A land unclaimed," muttered Halldórr, one of the Jomsiviking captains. His voice trembled, though whether from cold or wonder, none could say.
"No marks of other men. No burned posts, no camps, no cairns. Only stone and snow."
Árni, a man wearing the skin of an arctic wolf draped over his leather lamellar and iron mail beneath leaned forward.
He was a Varangian, one of eighty who had followed Vetrúlfr from Basil’s halls in Constantinople to the furthest edges of the world.
And now he stood as commander of expeditions into lands untouched by man, claiming them for his captain... his king.
"Then it is ours," he said simply. "The furthest north yet taken. For the konungr. For the son of Ullr!"
They made landfall on a narrow strand where clear streams cut through gravel and plunged into the grey sea.
There, beneath jagged cliffs that dripped slow rivulets from hidden summer thaw, they raised a crude pole of driftwood.
Upon it they carved the rune-marks of Vetrúlfr’s house; sharp lines that bit deep into the wood as if to anchor it to this cold ground forever.
"Let those who come after see it and know," Ármodr growled, pressing his palm to the cut runes so that blood from a shallow slice mingled with the salt.
"This place belongs to the king of Ísland and the wolves who kneel before him."
That night they camped on the beach. The aurora unfurled overhead in ghostly curtains of green and purple, dancing across the frozen peaks.
The Norse sat close to their fires, passing a skin of strong drink, listening to the distant groan of ice shifting under the weight of the world.
Somewhere in that vast dark, a low howl answered; not quite the voice of wolf nor wind, but something older still.
The men drew closer to the flames, casting wary glances over their shoulders.
Yet not one suggested turning back. For they knew what it meant to claim such a land; to push the reach of their king’s banner into places even the gods might have thought untouched.
And when they returned to Greenland, it would be with news that the Empire of the Great North now had its crown, set upon Svalbarð’s frozen brow.
And in that ghost-lit stillness beneath swirling lights, some swore they saw shapes moving atop the distant ridges; tall, broad-shouldered silhouettes that watched with patient, ancient hunger.
Perhaps it was only the wind playing tricks on tired eyes. Perhaps not.
Either way, the Norse wrapped their cloaks tighter, knowing well enough that even here, at the farthest reaches of the world, the wolves still came when called.
In the low hall of sod and driftwood, lit by a single brazier of burning whale oil, Árni sat hunched over a plank of smooth pine.
The plank was pale and clean; precious even here, for it had been carried all the way from Ísland just for this purpose.
His knife moved carefully, each stroke biting shallow grooves into the wood. The shapes were harsh to foreign eyes, neither Latin nor Greek, nor even the old, familiar Elder Futhark.
They were something new: a script Vetrúlfr had shaped in long winter nights back in Constantinople blending runes of their ancestors with fresh cuts that captured sounds of distant tongues, a script meant for kings who dreamed beyond the fjords.
"To my sworn brother, Vetrúlfr,
I write from Svalbarð, this land beyond all known marks on any monk’s map.
Since we first landed on this foreign soil, we have driven posts into frozen stone, raised sod walls and split pine to stand against the winds.
A palisade surrounds us, and our banners hang from it like hungry spirits.
By the bay, we have built a small wooden port. The ships nest there now, rocking in black water beneath ice cliffs so high the sun forgets to climb them.
There is game here enough to keep us fed; seal, bear, birds that darken the sky. Our men are hardened from conquest already. They shape this place with laughter and iron.
I say this plain: Svalbarð belongs to your house now. The gods themselves would struggle to pull it from our hands.
When spring comes again, send more men. More seed grain. More smiths. This land will bear your mark as surely as Grœnland does.
In brotherhood and blood,
When it was done, Árni set down his knife and ran a thumb across the fresh-carved runes, feeling the grooves catch against rough skin.
Not words from a bishop’s quill, but from the marrow of men who had served together in Constantinople’s gilded slaughterhouses, who had knelt to swear oaths that no pope or emperor could ever unwind.
Outside the hall, snow drifted across the new walls.
Above it all, banners cracked in the wind; proclaiming to gods, giants, or whatever listened in that lonely place that Svalbarð was now bound by oaths deeper than any crucifix could promise.