The journey was perilous, but stable. The great blót committed at the Abbey in Italy had done its job and Njörðr was appeased. Because of this, after a long trek northward with several small stops along the way to replenish supplies, Vetrulfr and his men safely landed upon the isle of ice.
The centuries had not been kind to the pagan peoples of Europe. For nearly a millennium, the Christians had marched against them, taking up sword and cross alike in the name of holy war.
Now, Iceland was among the last of the old realms to be tainted by this foreign deity and his refusal to coexist with the other gods of man. While the majority of the island was Christian, in the far reaches of the Westfjords, where Vetrulfr had been born, the old gods still whispered to their dwindling cadre of loyal followers.
When Vetrulfr stepped off the ship and onto the mossy shore of the fjord, he breathed deep the cold air. Two ravens sat perched on the mast of the Frostrtönn, their black feathers slick with ocean spray. They gazed silently at the warriors who had not set foot on home soil in over a decade, then took flight, disappearing inland toward the village.
As Gunnar and the others tied off the longship, Vetrulfr laughed like a younger man, pointing toward the sky.
"Look there, boys! Odin greets us! At long last we are home."
Gunnar shook his head, saying nothing. He had long accepted that his captain saw the gods in everything. Two birds were enough to send him into divine reflection. Gunnar gave Vetrulfr a pat on the shoulder.
"I'm sure he does, but come. We must pay respects to the local Goði—before he mistakes us for raiders."
Vetrulfr had left Iceland as a young man, and now returned after a lifetime in the East, almost forgetting the political fragility of these northern lands. A foreign warship with unfamiliar sails could easily be seen as an invading force.
Sure enough, as they pressed further into the village, a local band of armed men approached. A húskarl or two stood at the center, but most wore little more than wool shirts and hastily cobbled shields. One or two had iron helms. They looked nothing like the mail-clad, battle-hardened Varangians they confronted.
One of the húskarlar stepped forward, drawing his sword and leveling it at Vetrulfr, who towered over him.
Not a step further, outsiders… Or we shall consider you a raiding party from the mainland!"
Vetrulfr said nothing. He lowered the wolfskin hood from his head and lifted his helm, revealing his pale Nordic features. He opened his mouth to speak but a voice rang out behind the guards.
"Out of my way, you lumbering oafs! I said OUT of my way, or so help the gods!"
A woman parted the crowd like a storm parting the sea.
She looked no more than thirty winters, tall, lean, eyes like glacier glass. But the air around her carried the weight of centuries. Her cloak of dark fur rippled behind her like wings. Her voice, when it came again, held the same ageless quality as the mountains that loomed over Ullrsfjörðr.
The villagers knew her. All of them. Yet none had dared speak her name in years.
She crossed the space in a breath, stopped before the towering warrior, and without hesitation, wrapped her arms around him.
"My son… you have finally returned to me."
Silence. Stunned, sacred silence.
One of the older warriors whispered beneath his breath as if the sound itself could call down gods:
"Brynhildr…"
Even the húskarlar faltered. One instinctively traced the sign of the cross across his chest—then lowered his eyes in shame. Another bowed, not to her, but as if seeking forgiveness from a god he no longer dared name.
Only the lead húskarl remained standing—eyes wide, jaw clenched in dread. He turned to a younger man beside him and hissed:
"Go to the Goði's hall. Now. Tell him that Vetrulfr has returned… and so has Brynhildr."
While the messenger ran, the húskarl sheathed his blade and stepped forward, wearing a forced smile.
"I almost didn't recognize you. You've grown… tall. Strong. Still wearing that old mangy mutt's cloak, I see?"
The insult was a jab at Vetrulfr's sacred úlfhéðinn wolfskin and was tolerated only because of the húskarl's station. However, those more spiritually inclined gazed at him with quiet scorn. Naturally, Vetrulfr responded to the man's taunts in kind.
"Of course. But you, Halfdan, you haven't grown a hair since I last saw you. Or rather, perhaps you've lost a few? Tell me, is it normal for a man to begin balding at your age? You look older than your father…"
He stepped closer, the grin fading into sharpness.
"How is the Goði, by the way? I see he made you a húskarl. An honor… if one earns it."
Halfdan's smile cracked. His pride flared, but before he could retort, Vetrulfr's mother stepped in.
"My son… you've been gone a long time. Do not provoke Halfdan. His father is… more powerful now than he was when he sent you away."
Vetrulfr chuckled.
"Mother, I've fought beside emperors and slain kings. The Goði does not frighten me."
He turned to Halfdan, voice raised.
"I have come to call the Goði ergi and challenge him to holmgang. A debt is owed for what he did to me and I will see it paid in blood... Fetch your father, boy. I'll be waiting for him at a time and place of his choosing."
Halfdan reached for his sword, but another húskarl stepped in, this one older, clad in a bearskin, his gaze steady and stern.
"No, Halfdan. He has invoked the rite. Your father must answer. You cannot interfere, at least not until the duel is done.
You would be wise to run to your father. Tell him the son of Ullr stands waiting. There is no glory in a duel he was never meant to survive."
The older húskarl pushed Halfdan toward the Goði's hall. Once he was gone, he turned back to Vetrulfr.
"I must say… you are not the feral pup I once knew. You're a wolf now, tempered by war, shaped by fire. I think it's time for change around here. Perhaps you're the one to bring it. Don't disappoint me."
With that, the town guard dispersed. The challenge had been made and the old gods demanded a response.
The Goði sat on his carved seat, surrounded by his household and men. The hearth's fire flickered, but his hands trembled as if he felt no warmth at all.
A foot tapped nervously on the bearskin beneath him. His teeth ground silently, but the room heard it all the same.
Vetrulfr. The name alone turned his blood cold.
The son of that witch-woman. The ghost he exiled years ago, sent away before his strange birth and pale eyes could rattle the balance of power. But exile had not ended him. No, it had forged him into something far worse.
A Varangian. A killer of kings. A living myth.
The Goði knew holmgang had been outlawed under Christian law. But the old ways still lingered in the Westfjords. Reykjavík's laws held no sway out here. And more dangerously, the Althing did.
If he refused the duel, he might be protected by Christian law. But the Althing and the villagers could rule otherwise. Should they deem Vetrulfr the aggrieved party, and the Goði failed to appear, he would forfeit by default.
However, if they ruled the Goði to be insulted by Vetrulfr's words and he still refused to fight, then he would be declared níðingr; stripped of all rights and become a man outside the law.
The challenge had been perfectly crafted. He could not run. He could not win. And yet he could not afford to lose. With a voice hoarse and low, he turned to his son.
"Halfdan… you will fight him. As my champion. It is your duty."
The hall fell silent. No one moved. No one breathed. Finally a meager voice cast a whisper, yet it resounded as if spoken with the power of thunder.
""So... I'm the shield you'll break to save your crown?"
Nothing more was said… For everyone knew Halfdan's words were true, and yet the Goði's choice, dishonorable as it was, had been made.
---
The duel was set for dawn the next day, in the hills overlooking the fjord and the village below. But for the evening, Vetrulfr and his men celebrated their return.
All of his men were Norsemen who still followed the old gods, but few among them hailed from Iceland. Yet the bonds forged in foreign wars, and the visions Vetrulfr shared during their service to the Bulgar Slayer, had filled them with loyalty deep enough to follow him home and to see his ambitions through.
But tonight was not for war. Tonight was for tales, for songs, for the fire-lit glory of what had been. Vetrulfr stood at the center of the mead hall, not as a chieftain, but as something older. A warrior returned from the far reaches of the world. A legend born in an age where myths were dying.
A horn of mead in hand, he raised it high, voice ringing like a war cry turned into song.
"I've meant to say this since our last day in Constantinople, but I reserved it for a night like this; a night not of hardship, but of honor. I dedicate this toast to Basil the Bulgar Slayer. A Christian, yes. A man of illness in the end. But I say this now: he drinks in Valhalla beside Odin, the Valkyries, and the Einherjar!"
A roar of horns followed. The men shouted and drank deeply, none dared challenge the sentiment.
Truth be told, there was little left to celebrate in the village these days. But the boasting and battle tales that leapt from the mouths of Varangians: of wars waged, kings slain, and gods remembered. It brought warmth to hearts colder than the fjord winds. Even the oldest villagers could recall no such night since their youth.
Their weathered faces brightened with memories, and a whisper seemed to pass through the hall: Perhaps the gods had not abandoned Iceland after all.
One old man approached Vetrulfr with a horn in hand, raising it high.
"To Vetrulfr Ullrsson! The Son of Winter, and the last true Vikingr!"
Cheers erupted from the gathered crowd. No one contradicted him. For that night, in that hall, no truer words had ever been spoken.
But the celebration did not last long.
A voice cut through the warmth of the hearth it was feminine, cold as a blizzard sweeping down from the northern peaks.
"My son is not the last of the Vikingr…"
Gasps rippled across the room. The voice belonged to a woman draped in wolf-pelt and runed cloth, her presence sending a chill through even the flame-lit air.
"He was not birthed in the winter solstice from the seed of Ullr to be a mere henchman to Christian kings in the far East! No. The gods still whisper, in the winds, in the snow, and in the rain… And they have not forgotten."
She turned to her son.
"You spilled blood in distant lands. You offered a great sacrifice to Njörðr in exchange for safe passage. Did you not, my son?"
The hall fell silent. The villagers watched with reverence. Many had once called her mad, a Seiðkona, touched by spirits. But none could deny she had never once broken her story.
Twelve years ago, the Goði had tried to force her to recant. To say her child was no god-born warrior, but a bastard born of sin. She refused. Again and again. Even under threat. Even when they exiled her son.
And now, her defiance was bearing fruit. Vetrulfr looked at her, eyes flickering with something colder than the fjord waters. And then, without hesitation, he spoke.
"Of course I did. That land was tainted by Charlemagne's patronage. I cleansed it with the blood of the monks who lived there. It was the first drop in a debt two centuries unpaid."
The room leaned forward. These were not educated men, and certainly not of history. The name Charlemagne was foreign to them, but they could tell by the pitch in his voice that the debt which Vetrulfr spoke of was very real.
"Many of you may not know this, but two hundred years ago, Charlemagne, the Frankish King of Christendom, declared war on our Saxon brothers. Men who worshipped Odin, Thor, Njörðr. Men like us. They refused to kneel. So he baptized them in blood. And not just the warriors, but their women and Children. Their throats slit, before being drowned in the name of his God."
His voice grew deeper.
"And yet the Christians call him merciful. Graceful. Just!"
He raised the horn.
"Since that day, they've waged endless war against our gods. Even here in Iceland. Where cowardly men kneel before a dead god's broken image."
He stepped forward.
"But I will not kneel. The greatest Christian king of this era, Emperor Basil II, could not make me bend the knee no matter how hard he tried! What will the heirs of Charlemagne do, when I take their daughters, burn their churches, and silence their prayers with blood?"
He turned, voice thundering.
"This war is not over. Not until I say it is. And that day will never come—until every Christian man begs the gods they betrayed for forgiveness!"
He raised the horn again.
"Skål!"
Seventy-nine voices joined him.
"Skål!"
Then more, first the men, then the women, and finally even children. And somewhere in the crowd, a voice, high, small, but filled with fire, rose through the chant.
"Is it true?"
A young boy stepped forward, eyes wide.
"Are you really Ullr's son?"
Vetrulfr looked down at him. The fire crackled. The room fell silent.
He smiled, not kindly, but with a grim pride.
"I was born in stillness. In frost. In silence. And when I cried, the ice cracked. If I am not Ullr's son, what else can I be?"
The boy's eyes blazed with wonder. And in that moment, all could see it, another spark had caught flame. The age of the gods might be ending. But not yet. And not without fire.
The Seiðkona looked on, smiling; not with joy, but with certainty. Her prophecy had walked into the hall. And now it walked into history.