Autumn had come to Ullrsfjörðr like a painted breath, gilding the birch leaves in gold and umber before the snows would claim them.
Smoke curled gently from longhouse chimneys, carrying the scent of pine resin, roasting meats, and the sharp tang of sea salt.
Within Vetrúlfr’s hall, life moved with an almost reverent quiet. Brynhildr, who seemed to age backward with each passing season, sat by the hearth spinning fine red wool.
Her pale blonde hair fell unbound down her back, unmarked by even a single thread of silver.
When the firelight caught her eyes, they gleamed with a cold, otherworldly glint that made some whisper she was more than mortal.
Perhaps still the valkyrie-queen of legend whom she appeared named after, lingering out of love or unfinished doom.
Beside her played little Branúlfr, Vetrúlfr’s son by Roisin.
The boy was sturdy already, with a shock of ruddy hair of flame and eyes like frost-rimmed steel.
When he laughed, the hall seemed to warm despite the lengthening nights.
Eithne watched him with a careful fondness.
Where once she had flinched from every loud voice, every shadow in a doorway, she now moved freely through the hall, secure in a peace born not only of time but of certainty.
Here, no man dared cast lecherous eyes upon her; not as Vetrúlfr’s thrall.
In this cold pagan stronghold, she found a dignity that had been denied her even in her priory; softer beds, fuller bowls, and a quiet in her spirit that still bewildered her.
The more she adapted, and the more loyalty she displayed, the more her conditions improved.
From rough cots and gruel, to eiderdown bedding, and a full meal fit for a king of Connacht, not a mere slave like herself.
Sometimes, she would catch her reflection in the polished bronze of the water basin and see a woman reborn. Stronger. Not unscarred, but no longer trembling.
Róisín spent her day’s half here and half across the sea, on Ynys Rós.
Once a mere rocky outcrop, now reborn under her hand as the fortress-shrine of the Celtic revival.
The druids there called her their Anam-Rí, their soul-queen, and gathered to hear her chant the old lays beneath sacred oaks they themselves had planted.
When she returned to Ullrsfjörðr, the hall seemed to brighten, and Branúlfr would squeal in delight, wrapping his tiny fists in the bright green folds of her woolen kirtle.
Often Eithne, Brynhildr, Róisín, and even the quiet skraelingr thrall, whose true name none could quite pronounce; could be found together in the high seat, weaving garlands, sharing stories, or minding the boy as he toddled from lap to lap.
It was a peculiar kind of motherhood they practiced, shared between pagan seeress, Christian captive, foreign servant, and resurgent Celtic queen.
Yet it worked. The hall rang with gentle laughter and Branúlfr grew up cradled by many hands.
Sometimes in the quiet hours of dusk, Eithne would look at Brynhildr and shiver; not from fear, but from an uncanny awe.
The seiðkona would hum low songs in a tongue older than the sagas, her fingers threading runes into the child’s little tunics, her eyes reflecting flames like two chips of ice.
Was it true what some whispered? That Brynhildr was not merely Vetrúlfr’s mother.
But his maker in a deeper, stranger sense; a chooser of the slain who had laid down sword and wing for reasons only the gods might guess?
But then Branúlfr would shriek with delight, chasing a stray puppy across the rushes, and Brynhildr would laugh.
Soft and bright, nothing at all like doom. The moment would pass, leaving only the hearth’s glow and the comfortable clatter of the loom.
And so Ullrsfjörðr settled into winter’s edge, its great hall echoing with tales of distant conquest, warm with the life of children and women who had each, in their own way, survived the world’s cruelties to find something like peace.
Even if in the marrow of their bones they all knew this was only a season.
For one day, the snows would melt, the fjord would clear, and the longships of Ullr’s son would set forth again.
In Grænland, the nights had grown long beyond reckoning.
The fjords lay buried beneath thick ice, the seas themselves groaning under weight like an old ship’s timbers. Even the stars seemed brittle in the vault of sky.
Vetrúlfr stood alone on a rocky height above his settlement, the wind tearing at his wolf-pelt cloak.
Below him, torchlight winked through drifting snow, marking where his men huddled in halls of stone and timber.
Fires crackled behind shuttered windows. Somewhere, laughter rose; rough, wary laughter born of mead and defiance against a world that would freeze them where they stood.
But Vetrúlfr did not laugh. His breath smoked in the air, harsh and quick.
Tonight was the solstice.
The night Ullr’s son should have spent feasting with his kin, lifting Branúlfr to the sky in offering to the gods, binding their line more tightly with sacred words and bright steel.
Instead, he was here at the far edge of all known lands, driving men to carve outholds from frostbitten rock, to raise walls against ghosts and storms.
All to fulfill the long revenge etched into the marrow of his bones. For the screams of Saxons under Frankish steel still echoed across the centuries, and the laughter of Rome’s bishops still rang in the ears of his ancestors.
The Norns had spun his thread with blood and ice, and left him little else.
He had held his son but a handful of days; pressed his palm to Branúlfr’s soft hair, marveled at the grip of tiny fingers around his own.
Then the longships had called again, the omens were cast, and Greenland needed iron hands more than the boy needed a father. Or so he told himself.
Now the year turned anew, the old sun dying and the new sun yet a frail babe on the horizon. Vetrúlfr felt the weight of it like a spear through the breast.
"A kingdom beyond any priest’s reach," he whispered to the black sky. "A realm of wolf and winter. That is what I promised you, old father. That is what I must give him; or nothing at all."
His words vanished on the wind, snatched away by the same dark gusts that keened through the valleys. Perhaps Ullr heard.
Perhaps only the Norns did, their cold fingers ever weaving.
Far below, a horn sounded, muffled by snow. Another watch changed, another circle in the long grind toward spring.
Vetrúlfr stayed a while longer, letting the frozen wind scour tears from his eyes before he returned to the hall.
There would be no joy tonight. Only meat, mead, and plans; always plans.
The wolf did not lay down his hunt, even for love.