CHAPTER 177: THE NORTH GROWS

Moonlight silvered the harbor at Ullrsfjordr, laying a pale road across the water to the long stone mole.

Fires banked along the quay where the night-guard paced.

Beyond them rose the city: terraces cut into the hill, roofs tight against the wind, smoke from the hearths rising in thin white ribbons.

Hammers still rang faintly from the forges even at this late hour, iron voices promising strength for winters yet to come.

At the summit, the high keep crowned the mound like a helm on a brow.

Vetrúlfr stood on the balcony with the sea at his back.

Lanterns bobbed below at the shipyard, where new hulls waited on their stocks. His city. Their city.

He heard her steps.

Róisín came to his side, a cloak over her linen, hair braided simply. No crown, but the city had obeyed her as if she wore three.

"They have added a third slip," he said, nodding.

"We cut the channel in midsummer," she answered. "The Jǫfurr planned it, the thralls carried stone. It will hold the thaw."

"And the beacons?"

"Six along the headland now. If Rán throws fog, the fires will answer."

He smiled. "You have kept peace between wolves and lambs?"

"As much as one can. We kept them busy, fields first."

She walked him through her work as easily as if she carried the ledger in her head.

Rye planted on the slopes, fen drained for grazing, island meadows fenced, timber cut in rotation, granaries dug deep.

Merchants taxed at the passes, their howls ignored.

Even the southern women found place: tending children, weaving, singing in strange tongues that now lulled babes to sleep.

"You made a law?" he asked.

"For winter-lending. Tokens in a chest. Grain borrowed in frost, repaid in spring, or worked off on the roads. No one starves, and the seed-corn is kept."

He nodded slowly. "Good law."

Her mouth quirked. "Brynhildr bullied the elders, Nokomis keeps the tokens straight, Eithne teaches the children knots. I only hold the thread."

He turned to her fully, reading the steadiness in her eyes, the weight written in her jaw. He touched a strand of hair back behind her ear.

"You have done more than keep," he said. "You have built."

"I only did what I could," she murmured.

"There were days I thought the wind would tear the roofs away, days the nets came back empty, days the new women sat by the gate because their feet remembered England. But then the snow would fall quiet. Or Nokomis would laugh, or Eithne would sing, and I thought... perhaps it is enough if the bread rises and the lamps burn."

"It is enough," he said. "It is everything."

They left the balcony and walked through the quiet hall. Hounds twitched in dreams by the fire.

Shields hung from the rafters, dark with age, trophies of raids now serving as watchful guardians over the hearth.

Passing the hypocaust’s flues, warm as breath, they stepped into the winter garden. Bare hedges stood black against the frost, and in the center a shallow basin caught the stars.

He looked into the basin and saw their faces side by side.

Weather had broadened his, but hers carried something new, an authority she had not worn before.

He bent his head to her temple.

"You are the best thing that ever happened to me," he said. "Not Gramr, not glory. You."

She tried to deflect. "I am only a convent girl who keeps ledgers and scolds elders. There are better songs for a skald."

He held her shoulders.

"I have sailed to the world’s edge, bargained with kings and monsters. None of it holds me like you. You chose to stay, to build. Because you chose it, the rest could live."

Her eyes blurred, then steadied. She pressed her forehead to his chest.

"Then I am glad I chose."

They lingered at the wall-walk where arrow-slits looked over the harbor mouth.

The new gatehouse loomed on the spur.

"They call it the Wolf’s Tooth," she said. "We can seal the harbor with a chain."

"Let Christ break upon it," he muttered, then softened. "I am glad you have teeth when I am gone."

"You are often gone," she said evenly. "So we sharpened them."

The watch-bell tolled, changing the guard.

The harbor darkened as the last tar-pots were capped.

He paused. "Do you see it?" he asked, gesturing to the city, the mole, the beacon-line.

"What?"

"The thing we are making."

She pressed his arm close.

"A place where our sons will not kneel."

He kissed her then, long, quiet, steady as tide.

When they returned to the hall, lamps flared and the heat of the hypocaust breathed around them.

Somewhere deeper, a child turned in sleep. Outside, the watch changed and the bells agreed.

Inside, husband and wife sat together at their own table and shared bread.

They would then retire when night fell upon the sky, and engage in the intimacy that they had long since yearned for.

By the time the dawn rose on the next day, Vetrúlfr would sit on his high seat once more.

Ruling the lands his wife had kept stable during a time of war.

The Christians would fight among themselves, for the ruins he left behind.

But the North would grow stronger still.

In time new armies would be raised, new keeps would be built, new cities erected from timber and stone, new fields sown.

And new fleets shaped from the forests planted.

The world was changing, and the winds of frost carried the name of the man who ushered in the new era.

Already the skalds whispered it in the halls, children traced it in frost upon the windows, and the thralls who bent their backs in the fields knew it as surely as the sea knew the tide.

Where Christendom trembled, the North hardened; where kings cursed, the wolf’s dominion endured.

And in the long winters yet to come, men would remember that here, at Ullrsfjordr, the age of the White Wolf had begun.