CHAPTER 100: WHEN THE WOLF RETURNED

The ships came up the coast at dusk, sails dark against the orange wash of the sinking sun. Gull cries wheeled overhead as the long prows cut through the gentle surf, wolf heads snarling at the waves.

Along the cliffs above, men blew horns; low, thunderous notes that rolled across the water and sent fishermen running to haul nets aside.

In the center of the harbor, Brynhildr stood waiting, her wolf-skin cloak wrapped tight against the salt breeze.

Beside her was Roisín, hair as red as fire lifted by the wind, holding their young son against her shoulder.

The boy squirmed and giggled, fat fists clutching at her braid. Nearby stood the nameless skraelingr woman, Brynhildr’s long-serving thrall, her dark eyes watchful and unreadable.

At her side waited Eithne, Roisín’s former sister in Christ, once defiant, now quiet, her hands folded with a calm that seemed to surprise even herself.

When Vetrúlfr stepped down from the ship, sea spray darkening his boots, he was still clad in half-armor, the wolf pelt at his shoulders streaked with salt and old blood.

His pale eyes swept across them all, pausing just an instant longer on Eithne.

There was no more fear in her gaze, only a patient acceptance; as if she had settled into this fate and chosen to wear it with a fragile dignity.

Roisín moved first, meeting him at the waterline, her face splitting into a grin despite the grim iron smell that clung to him.

She pressed their son into his arms. The boy laughed, gripping at the leather straps across Vetrúlfr’s chest, trying to gnaw on the cold buckles.

"You see?" Roisín breathed, her voice catching as she leaned into him. "He still knows you, even with all that distance and war between."

Vetrúlfr kissed her hair in answer, then looked down at his son; wide blue eyes, stubborn jaw, already too large for Roisín’s slender arms.

A future king. A future wolf.

Behind them, the nameless skraelingr thrall watched with a small, knowing smirk.

Her gaze dropped to the dried flecks of blood at the edge of Vetrúlfr’s sword belt; the color of her own kin’s veins, though she seemed wholly untroubled.

Her people’s gods were older than grief, and she had long since surrendered her past for the safety of this hall.

Brynhildr stepped forward last. Her eyes were sharp and bright under the thick crown of silver-shot hair.

"Greenland is yours now, as I knew it would be," she said simply, no question in her voice, only the quiet certainty that always made even Vetrúlfr pause.

"And further still. Svalbarð bends to our banners."

Brynhildr’s smile was thin, almost amused.

"Good. Then when the sea calls again, it will not be to devour you, but to bear you onward. That is the difference between a drowned fool and a son of gods, my heart."

They turned together toward the path that wound up to the great hall. Roisín’s hand found his.

Their son giggled again, twisting in his arms. Even Eithne walked close behind, head bowed slightly, her steps unforced.

Above them, two black ravens wheeled on the updraft; the same that had followed his fleet from Greenland’s ice, or so it seemed.

Watching. Approving. Or merely waiting for the last feast that all men must offer.

But for now, there was only the soft crunch of sand, the distant thunder of surf, and the warmth of family against the cold edge of the world he still intended to conquer.

---

While Vetrúlfr had returned to Ullrsfjörðr, and his family who long waited there for his journey home.

The ships of his fleet came to Svalbarð in long lines across a sea still broken with drifting ice.

Above them, cliffs soared white and cold into a sky lit by sharp sunlight, the kind that did not warm so much as it revealed.

This time, the ships carried not just shield racks and barrels of salted fish.

They brought cradles and spinning wheels, iron plows lashed tight beneath hides, goats bleating nervously on the decks.

Horses stomped in the holds, rolling dark eyes at the salt smell and slap of water.

Crates of grain were stacked alongside casks of fresh tools: broad axes, adzes, shovels, tongs, nails by the thousand.

On the shore, Árni watched with arms folded over his wolf-fur cloak.

His men, the original eighty settlers, had already staked out long rows of new turf walls, the beginnings of houses that would face the wind with quiet defiance.

But now more hands would build. More feet would tread these stony paths until they were worn smooth.

The settlers spilled down the gangplanks; broad-shouldered farmers from Ísland, bright-haired children who clutched scraps of runework cloth, women with their hair wrapped tight and eyes wide at the vast, unsheltered distances.

"We will run lines here for cattle," Árni said, pointing out over the low flats that dipped toward the grey sea.

"Barley will stand there, beneath the lee of the ridge. Stone from the cliff will build a hall bigger than any sod roof we have yet raised."

Behind him, the Varangian veterans nodded, already envisioning how forges would burn here by next spring, how smiths would laugh over glowing iron and boys would race with wooden swords between piles of drying fish.

By nightfall, fires flickered along the beach, sheltered by crude windbreaks. The smell of roasting seal mingled with fresh-cut wood.

Children’s voices rose in small, amazed shrieks as they chased each other through mounds of kelp.

Women unrolled bolts of woven cloth, shaking out the salt, marking off small places that would soon be gardens.

Men set posts deep, not just to hang meat or skins, but to stand as the first gate-timbers of new homesteads.

Iron rang as they drove them in, each blow echoing off the ice with a hollow certainty.

Above them all, the cliffs watched, indifferent. This was a place no god or king had truly ruled before.

But now, under banners and runes of Vetrúlfr’s own making, it began to learn the weight of human footsteps.

Soon there would be small fields, low stone walls, goats bleating in narrow pens.

A hall where skalds might sing of how the wolves of the sea had come even here, and taught the frost to bear their names.

And under that cold sky, Svalbarð. which had always been silent, at last began to whisper back.