The hall roared like thunder.
Flas leapt high in the long hearth, shadows writhing across timbered walls carved with runes and sea-serpents.
The sll of roasted venison and smoked seal fat filled the air, mingled with the salt of the wind that forever crept inland from the gray Atlantic.
n crowded the benches, warriors still streaked with soot and blood, cups clashed, ad spilled, and laughter shook the rafters.
"To our High King!" cried a voice.
"To the slayer of the skrælingr! The son of Ullr! The White Wolf of the North!"
Every voice joined in the chant, pounding the tables with fists and shields until the hall itself seed to breathe.
Then ca one voice more daring than the rest, shrill with drink and devotion:
"Rán’s favored!"
The words hung in the air like a thrown spear.
Vetrulfr’s smile froze.
For a heartbeat, the din faded to a dull thrum in his ears. He lifted his horn of ad, stared into the froth as though reading runes within it, and drank without a word.
Outside, the wind howled around the eaves. He could sll the rain before it ca, it was sharp, tallic, hungry.
Rán’s favored.
He had heard that na whispered often, first in jest, then in fear. The sea-goddess who claid the drowned had spared him more tis than chance allowed.
Since the first crossing to Vinland, not a single ship of his had been lost. Storms had parted before his prows, ice had split like gates before his drakkar Fáfnirsfangr.
He set the horn down and looked toward the great doors, where the sea’s reflection flickered like molten iron through the storm shutters.
Beyond lay the black horizon and a gathering tempest that pulsed with lightning.
The revelers took no notice. They feasted as though death could never find them.
Vetrulfr’s mind drifted, not to the battle won, but to the two faces that haunted his nights.
The first had co from the deep, rising from the dark folds of the ocean itself. He felt the warmth of his touch against his freezing skin even now. Years after he had first been claid by her off the shores of Greenland.
The second had t him in the forest of the New World, blood-haired and linen-clad, her skin pale as winter moonlight and stained with crimson not her own.
Her tongue had been older than the sagas, perhaps older than even Asgard, yet he had understood every word.
"Son of Wulþuz," she had called him, "you have dredged the sea and claid Balmung for yourself. When the gods make war, I will have to fight her... or him... for you."
He did not even know her na. But her gaze had burned in his mind ever since, brighter than any fire.
Now, sitting in the hall surrounded by song and praise, he felt only the weight of those etings pressing like a mailed hand on his shoulder.
The people shouted for tales, for ons, for blessings. Vetrulfr rose slowly, his shadow stretching across the table. The noise dwindled into a hush.
He lifted his horn again and spoke, voice low but carrying through the rafters.
"Eat, drink, and sing. You have earned your fill. The gods smile on us tonight."
Cheers erupted, relief breaking the tension.
Yet he did not sit again. His gaze wandered back to the doors, to the thunder outside that answered him with a growl.
Rán’s favored.
Son of Wulþuz.
Despite never giving a vow to the Christian fla, he had been baptized twice in this life, once by salt and the other by blood.
He turned his thoughts eastward, across the endless gray expanse, to Christendom, where empires ground themselves to dust in wars of faith and crown.
He pictured the Emperor’s host trampling through Wendish bogs, their banners bright and foolish in the rain.
He pictured the Danes marching south, their longships black with pitch, raiding Saxony and Holstein.
And beyond them, Ro, fat, trembling Ro, clutching its cross while sending others to die for its peace.
He had heard the news by trader’s tongue: the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad had gone to war in the east, the Danes had turned their axes on the Empire’s flanks, and the Pope sat in his marble throne fretting about heresy while his coffers filled with silver.
Christendom was a hearth already burning.
He wondered which wind would turn it into a pyre.
Sowhere in his bones, a cold certainty whispered: Ragnarök is coming.
He did not an it as the priests did, not as the end of all things, but as the turning of ages.
The old gods stirring from sleep, the young tearing at the old. The sound of iron on iron across the sea was the prelude.
If the gods of Asgard were waking, they would need champions.
And if Rán and the blood-maiden had both chosen him, then he would not hide from fate.
A voice called his na from across the hall, Gunnar, his old comrade, flushed with drink.
"High King! You sit too still for a man with such victory! The sea brings you luck, eh? Not even Thor can drown your ships!"
The hall roared with laughter.
Vetrulfr managed a thin smile. "The sea does not grant luck," he said. "It only spares those it has yet to need."
The laughter faltered; the fire popped.
He rose again and stepped toward the open doors. Rain lashed against the wood, carried by wind that slled of salt and iron. Lightning split the horizon, revealing waves white as bone.
For a long mont he stood there, alone with the sea’s roar. His n watched in silence, feeling sothing ancient pass between their king and the storm.
Then he spoke, voice barely louder than the rain:
"The gods are restless. Christendom burns. The swords of n ring across the sea. The ti of small kings is ending."
He turned back to them, eyes cold and bright.
"Feast well tonight. We have won our peace in Vinland, but it will not last. Storms co for every shore, even this one."
A shiver passed through the crowd. So thought him drunk on prophecy; others thought him mad. Yet none could look away.
He raised his horn once more, lightning flashing behind him like the jaws of Fenrir.
"To the gods who still watch," he said. "To the dead who still listen. And to the battles yet to co."
They drank, though unease lingered like smoke in the rafters. Outside, the thunder rolled closer, shaking the very stones of the hall.
When at last the storm broke, it ca with rain like hamrs and wind like war-horns.
Vetrulfr did not move from the doorway.
He let the rain wash the soot and blood from his hands and stared toward the dark horizon where his thoughts had gone.
Sowhere beyond that endless gray sea, kings fought proxy wars for gods who had forgotten them.
But here, beneath the screaming wind, stood the one god they had not accounted for, the Wolf of the North, son of the winter-bow and the storm-sea.
And as the waves crashed against the rocks, it seed for a mont that the sea itself howled in answer.
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