The fog clung low to the Northumbrian hills, a pale shroud that muffled sound and blurred the world into ghostly silhouettes.
Hooves crunched over frost-bitten grass, each step measured, deliberate. Vetrúlfr rode at the head, his arctic wolf-skin cloak draped over polished mail, helm crest catching what little light filtered through the mist.
To his right, Gunnarr gripped a long ash lance; to his left, Armodr of the Jomsvikings carried a round shield blackened with pitch, with a raven painted upon it.
Behind them stretched a column of horsemen, three hundred strong, each rider a veteran of past Varangian campaigns, each mount hauled across the sea in knarrs modified for the task.
The very idea of it would have seemed madness to most: horses on the whale-road. Yet here they were, snorting in the cold, their breath mingling with the fog as if the earth itself exhaled in fear.
The scouts of Cnut's northern watch were not expecting riders.
