Valkyries Calling-Chapter 61: A Tithe to the Sea

The River Clarin glowed with the memory of fire. Ash floated upon it like drifting souls, swirling in dark eddies as if reluctant to journey to sea.

Fáfnirsfangr cut through this haunted water, her black hull rippling with the reflection of Athenry’s ruin

Flames still licked the horizon behind them, silhouetting the once-proud fortress as little more than a carcass picked clean.

On deck, Máel knelt with his wife and two grown sons. Chains of riveted iron bit deep into their wrists.

Their faces were streaked with soot and tears; their eyes hollow from sleepless nights, from the sight of kin crushed beneath stones or swallowed by flame.

Above them loomed Vetrúlfr and his chosen. The Úlfhéðnar stood ringed around the captives, cloaked in the pelts of wolves, helms shadowing eyes that gleamed with cold, patient hunger.

They spoke little, yet the scrape of axe against mail, the slow curl of knuckles upon weapon grips, spoke for them.

Máel shivered despite the salt breeze. His wife clutched his arm. One of his sons attempted to rise, only for a clenched fist to slam him back down, cracking teeth. He whimpered through blood.

Vetrúlfr stood at the prow, hand resting upon the dragon’s iron head. The sea wind toyed with his cloak, whipping it about like a mourning banner. When he turned, it was as if winter itself had stepped closer.

Slowly, deliberately, he descended toward them. Each plank groaned beneath his boots. When he stopped, the hush was so complete that even the gulls dared not cry.

He crouched before Máel, seax in hand, its blade dark with old blood dried to rust-veins.

"Do you know this river?" Vetrúlfr asked, voice low, almost tender, his breath ghosting in the space between them.

Máel swallowed. His tongue struggled against a throat tight as a snare. "It... it feeds my lands. Gives life to the fields."

"Aye." Vetrúlfr tilted his head, pale hair catching the moonlight like frost. "And soon it feeds the sea. And the sea..."

He gestured out toward the open water, where green-gray waves heaved under a waning moon.

"That belongs to Rán. Do you know her name?"

Máel only stared, lips quivering.

"Rán takes what men lose. Ships. Gold. Souls. She craves them. Hungers for them."Vetrúlfr leaned closer still. His eyes were shards of frozen sapphire, glittering with something like mirth. I wonder what she would give for a king. Or his sons."

Máel’s wife bit down on a scream. One son spat a Gaelic curse. The other simply wept, shoulders shaking.

Vetrúlfr rose again, taller now, a shadow wreathed in wolf fur. He paced a slow circle around them, dragging the tip of his seax along the deck, scoring it with shallow scars.

"Tell me," he said at last, stopping behind Máel’s wife. The blade hovered near her throat, close enough that she whimpered.

"Why did you come to my hall? Why seek my bride? What schemes slithered through your priest-worm councils that you sent whispers across the sea for her blood?"

Máel’s mouth opened. Closed. His tongue floundered like a fish cast on hot stones. Tears spilled, falling to stain the salt-slick planks.

Vetrúlfr waited. But patience was not infinite.

He flicked two fingers, and at once, two Úlfhéðnar seized Máel’s eldest son. They dragged him bodily to the railing, iron boots scraping across timber.

The boy fought, kicking, breath tearing in frantic gasps.

Below, the sea yawned wide and merciless. A swell struck Fáfnirsfangr’s hull, spraying cold brine across them all.

Máel lurched forward, nearly strangled by the chain.

"No! Wait! I beg you! Please!"

Vetrúlfr lifted his hand. The warriors paused. The son dangled half over the edge, feet scrambling for purchase.

"Speak," Vetrúlfr breathed, soft as snow. "Or I feed your bloodline to the waves. One by one. Let Rán judge your worth."

Máel crumbled. He sank fully to his knees, tears and snot slicking his face.

"She..." His throat seized again. The Úlfhéðnar pushed the boy further out, his boots now kicking open air.

Máel found his voice in a raw scream.

"She is of kings! The last blood of Connacht’s high kings! I meant to bind her line to mine, through my son, to raise our house above all others! Her father refused... so we... we ended him. Sent her to the convent, to wait until she ripened, then we’d wed her. Make new kings from her womb."

Vetrúlfr’s lips curled into something between a smile and a snarl. He crouched low, meeting Máel’s eyes with the savage clarity of a hunting beast.

"So you hid your crime beneath priests’ robes. Waited to carve a kingdom from her belly. Only I came first."

Máel’s wife wept behind bound hands. His younger son trembled with silent fury.The guilt, the fear, the confession all laid bare upon the deck.

Vetrúlfr only nodded once. That was enough.

"And so you thought to steal from me what is mine. My hearth. My seed. My honor."

Máel lifted desperate eyes. "Mercy... if not for me, then for them."

Vetrúlfr sheathed his seax with a whisper of steel on leather.

"Mercy?" His voice was almost gentle. "No. Not mercy. But memory."

He turned to his wolves.

"Chain them in the aft cabin. Feed them. Let them watch the villages burn behind us, let them choke on the wails of their people. And when they have truly known despair... then we offer them to Rán."

Máel and his kin were dragged up roughly. As they passed beneath the dragon’s head, Máel twisted for one last plea.

"They will come for you... for this. A crusade will scour every fjord and isle that harbors your name!"

Vetrúlfr did not turn.

"Aye," he murmured. "I’m counting on it."

The sails caught the night wind, pulling Fáfnirsfangr northward toward Ármóðr’s waiting host, leaving Athenry to smolder in its ruin.

And on that blood-slick deck, shackled and silent, Máel learned what it meant to fear the sea.

---

Far to the north, where the fjords carved their way into the heart of Iceland, the mead hall of Ullrsfjörðr stood like a carved jewel atop its motte. Timber walls blackened by tar and wind, banners of ochre and earthen brown hanging limp in the salt-heavy air.

Róisín stood upon the gallery that ringed the highest floor, a woven shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders. In her arms slept Branúlfr, small and warm, his breath soft as down against her collarbone.

Below, the town sprawled like a nest of flickering hearths. Lanterns swung from poles, chasing away the twilight that crept ever earlier with each passing day. Beyond that, the dark sea stretched endlessly, bruised purple beneath the first winking stars.

She could not see Connacht from here. Not even in her dreams. But she looked anyway.

Her lips moved in a quiet litany; words half Gaelic, half old Norse, slipping from her mouth like woven strands of two long-divided songs.

"Brigid, lady of hearth and flame... keep him. Watch the fire that warms his bones, though he stands upon cold shores."

Then, switching tongues, she whispered rough syllables learned by the fireside from Brynhildr, taught from girlhood to honor the gods of her husband.

"Freyr, Ullr, Óðinn... guard your son. Let him come home to us."

A tear slid down her cheek. It vanished into Branúlfr’s fine hair. She pressed her lips to his brow and rocked him gently, though he did not wake.

Below, in the courtyard, thralls carried torches to light the path for the night watches. Somewhere a skald played a low, mournful air on his lyre, a tune meant to calm children but which only deepened the hollow ache in Róisín’s chest.

"Is this all we wives are," she murmured into the dusk, "waiting upon tides and omens, counting the nights by how long our hearts can bear their absence?"

She leaned against the carved rail; the chill biting her forearms. Her gaze fixed on the horizon where she imagined longships sailing under heavy skies, wolf-prows crowned with salt. Where she imagined her husband’s breath misting in cold prayer before battle.

"Bring him home to me. Bring them all home, gods old and gods new. I care not which of you hears me... only that he returns."

She closed her eyes, letting the wind comb through her hair, tasting of sea-brine and pine-smoke.

A hymn stirred in her memory, a song her mother once sang by candlelight in Connacht’s green hills. Now it rose on her breath, a fragile plea carried out over the waves.

Far below, the hall doors opened, spilling laughter and torchlight onto the dark yard. But up here, all was still. Just a mother, a child, and the gods; all listening.

And so she sang, softly, voice raw with salt and hope.

Her words were carried beyond their natural range by the wind, lifted into the harbor, and heard by that which lurked in the skies and the seas alike.

The gulls grew silent as they wheeled overhead, as if pausing mid-cry to listen. Far below, in the dark mirror of the water, shapes turned just out of sight; long, sinuous, older than any mortal tongue could name.

This chapter is updated by freew(e)bnovel.(c)om