In London’s great hall, under a hammerbeam roof darkened by years of smoke and feasting, King Cnut listened in cold silence.
Before him knelt a half-dozen of his personal messengers — men who had sailed the breadth of the north seas and walked the streets of Rome, who wore small golden crucifixes on chains, now clutched like talismans.
The eldest of them held a rolled skin tight in both hands, knuckles white.
"Your Grace, we have seen it ourselves. It is no mere fisher’s brag or trembling monk’s tale. The Faroese and Westman Isles are walled with stone now. Iceland boasts roads paved broad as any market square in York, lined with runes and wolf heads instead of crosses."
Another cut in, voice low.
"No crucifix stands in their temples. Only Thor’s hammer, Freyr’s mark, dark wooden poles with serpent coils. Christians are forced to register with local bailiffs, tied to inns under watch. Given strict days to trade their wine, their cloth, and then they must leave; or risk being driven into the sea."
Cnut’s jaw worked, but he said nothing. His eyes once warm and laughing in halls ; now glinted like cold iron. The men went on.
"We saw their horse-breeding fields. Great animals from Constantinople, Normandy, even Cordoba; thick-shouldered, meant for war, armored in layered hides. Their riders wear lamellar over mail, carry lances and composite bows like Turks. Even their watchtowers hold archers clad in wolf skins, with bows that snap shafts through iron kettle hats at a hundred paces."
Another messenger swallowed hard.
"Their infantry drill in the yards as if still under Basil’s eagles; heavy shields, close ranks, spears that move like one creature. They build gatehouses finer than some Frankish keeps, carve roads through ice to haul timber and ore. They have steel, they have grain; somehow more than their frozen lands should ever yield. It is as if the frost itself obeys them."
For a long moment, the only sound was the wind rattling through narrow windows.
At last Cnut leaned back in his chair, fingers drumming slowly along the carved armrest. His eyes were distant, the weight of old raids and crown-won lands suddenly fragile in his thoughts.
"I thought them a half-wild curiosity," he said, voice low. "Pagans, aye; but bound to break upon the world’s cold edge. I see now they have not broken. They have sharpened there. Tempered themselves where no bishop’s hand or Frankish levy would ever follow."
He let out a breath, slow and rough.
"This is the third year since the first rumors. First, they massacred the monks in Bobbio, then they raided Connacht’s shores in Galway, and finally they butchered the Petty Kings at Dún Ailline. Each time, stronger, greater in number, and with more ships to ferry them across the sea. They will come again... When spring gives way to summer, the wolves of the far north will return to Christendom..."
Outside the hall, the London streets bustled in ignorant safety. But within, his huscarls exchanged dark looks.
They all understood. When the sun turned again, it might be wolf-ships on the horizon; more numerous, more disciplined, more monstrous than anything the Danes themselves had once sent forth.
In Rouen, the banners of Normandy fluttered high above freshly mortared walls.
The city still bore scars from Richard’s war. Blackened timbers, pitted stone from mangonels; but it also hummed with new life.
Masons worked day and night restoring towers. Smiths poured steel into barrels, forging spearheads, stirrup plates, and horseshoes in an unending din.
Within the keep’s solar, Robert sat at a heavy table, sunlight slanting across stacks of parchment and narrow, wax-sealed scrolls.
A dozen messengers and scribes waited at attention around him, heads bowed, the faint smell of wax and ink mixing with cold drafts off the stone.
Robert rubbed at the back of his neck, muscles tight from months spent hunched over charters, levies, and newly minted knight-lists.
Normandy was recovering, yes; eight hard months had seen charred villages rebuilt, new crop rotations laid down to pull double harvests from battered fields, rivers dredged and lined with fresh timber pilings to float grain and iron toward Rouen.
Yet it was not France, or the fractious German counts, or even the simmering ambitions of England that bent Robert’s thoughts most nights.
It was the north. Always the north.
A steward approached, laying down a scroll bearing a trader’s seal from Ribe. Robert broke it open and scanned the neat script.
Which conveyed much the same sentiment as Cnut received in London.
Robert exhaled slowly. His fingers tapped the parchment with a thoughtful rhythm.
Unlike Cnut or Conrad; Both of which whom were preoccupied with their own fractious realms, or the Pope in Rome who still laughed off such "sailor’s tales"; Robert had believed every report since he first received them.
"The wolves of the sea are not idle," he murmured to no one in particular. "They are patient. They sharpen themselves in ice and frost, build keeps where only seals once lay. And when the sun returns at its height..."
He did not finish. He simply pushed the scroll aside, and beckoned for his marshal.
"Double the watch along our coast. Levy each parish for another company of archers by Michaelmas. Tell the smiths their quotas will rise again. And see to it our scouts keep their eyes upon the northern lanes; I would rather waste coin on cautious men than see Rouen’s gates burned by northern longships bearing motifs of dragons and wolves."
As his men bowed and scurried to obey, Robert stood by the high window, gazing out over the bustling streets.
Merchants barked in the squares. Carts rattled over new-laid stone. Knights drilled in fresh tilting yards, their armor bright under the autumn sun.
"Let them laugh in Rome," Robert whispered, eyes narrowing toward the cold horizon beyond even the Channel. "But Normandy will be ready when the wolves come to feast."
Even with these words spoken, he gazed down at the vellum in his hands a second time, as if comparing what was written to his own fortifications.
Which, despite his own best efforts, somehow seemed nothing short of lacking.