Valkyries Calling

Three days after the massacre the doors of the great hall crashed open like thunder on the highland wind.

King Duncan I of Alba stood by the hearth, cloaked in sable furs, his breath visible in the cold stone air.

Around him, thanes and messengers pressed in, their voices sharp, their faces pale.

The firelight cast jagged shadows over the walls as another frantic scout was shoved into the center of the room.

"They've gone, Your Majesty," the man gasped, dripping with snowmelt and blood. "Crossed back over the southern border before dawn. Horses half-dead. They left the village smoldering."

The king's jaw clenched. "And the dead?"

"Two score, at least. Women. Children. My brother among them."

A silence fell, thick and choking. Duncan turned, slow and deliberate, toward his council. His voice, when it came, was low, not quiet, but sharpened to a blade's edge.

"Was it Norse?"

The scout shook his head.

"Anglo-Saxon," another voice confirmed. "Cnut's men. Pursuing the wolves. Butchering our folk in the process."

The logs cracked in the fire.

Duncan's fists curled at his sides. His gaze fell on the charred letter from Rome, still resting atop the iron cresset. Aid England, the Pope had written.

He kicked the brazier over with a snarl.

"England burns our villages and expects our allegiance? The Christ-king thinks himself righteous while his lapdogs spill Highland blood?"

Gillecolm, the Lord of Moray, stepped forward. "Shall I ready the riders?"

Duncan looked to him, a smoldering fire behind his eyes. "No. Not yet."

He walked to the center of the hall slowly, boots echoing against the flagstones.

"We will not send raiders to match their chaos. We will march with order. With discipline. And when the banners rise…"

His voice rose with it. "It will not be in some border skirmish. It will be at the head of an army, beneath the Lion of Alba."

The hall broke into shouts of assent.

"They wanted war?" Duncan growled. "Then they'll learn what war means in the North."

A hush fell as the king turned to one of his scribes.

"Send word to the other clans. Stir the isles. Sharpen every spear and draw from every granary. We march south, not tomorrow, not today. But when we do, we will not stop at the border."

"And the Norse?" asked one of his thanes. "The wolf-king waits, smiling in the woods. Is he friend… or foe?"

Duncan's lips twisted. "That remains to be seen. But if he wishes to bury Cnut, I will not stay his hand."

---

York, Winter's Twilight, In the Throne Hall of the Dane-King.

The fire crackled low in the long hall, casting wavering shadows over the weary faces of England's war council.

The heavy scent of damp wool, pine smoke, and cold iron filled the air.

Outside, the frost clung to the bones of the city, the streets eerily silent, save for the footsteps of tired soldiers and the weeping of those who'd lost kin to fire and sword.

King Cnut sat upon his throne, shoulders hunched, the mantle of kingship heavier now than ever before.

He had not spoken in some time.

The messenger from the northern frontier still knelt before him, shivering from the chill and from the news he bore.

"The Scots are stirring, Your Majesty,"

The man whispered, voice cracking with exhaustion. "They've summoned their levies. Duncan prepares for war."

"And why?" asked Cnut, though he already knew the answer. His voice was hoarse.

The messenger swallowed hard. "Our men... mistook Alba villages for Norse strongholds. The border towns were burned. Civilians slaughtered. They say the highlanders buried their children yesterday."

The silence that followed was like a tomb.

Cnut said nothing. He merely nodded, as if the final stone had been laid atop a grave, not of a man, but of an entire kingdom.

Earl Leofric stepped forward. "Your Grace, we were misled. These phantom attacks, the scorched fields, no enemy to be seen, only rumors and ash. They tricked us. This Vetrulfr—"

"Stop." Cnut's voice was barely a breath. He raised his hand slowly, fingers trembling not from fear, but from weariness beyond reckoning.

Then, he leaned forward.

And buried his face in his hands.

The fire hissed as a log cracked and fell. In the flickering light, the King of England, conqueror of Norway, master of Denmark, once called the North Sea Emperor, looked not like a monarch, but a man crushed beneath the weight of inevitability.

"We're not dealing with a barbarian," he said quietly, voice muffled by his palms. "Not even a Varangian drilled in Byzantine cruelty…"

His fingers slowly pulled back, revealing haunted eyes.

"…We're dealing with Hannibal… and he is at the gates of Rome..."

No one dared respond.

Cnut exhaled sharply, sitting back in his throne. His crown weighed heavier now. The grandeur of conquest, of England, of Denmark, of Norway, meant nothing against this creeping tide of frost and fury.

He looked to the map laid out on the table before him.

England's rivers, hills, roads, all lines and ink now twisted by fire, raiders, and ghosts. Vetrulfr had redrawn the battlefield in ash and fear.

"They bled us in the fields," he said, eyes still fixed on the map. "Now they'll bleed us in the soul. And we handed them the knife."

---

The wind howled through the pines beyond the camp, but within the clearing, the Norse fires roared louder.

Iron cauldrons bubbled with meat stew and boiled roots.

Skewers of fish crackled over flames. Barrels of mead and ale, plundered from Saxon storehouses, had been cracked open and passed around freely.

Drunken laughter mingled with the clamor of horns and the low growl of old war songs.

Vetrulfr sat atop a felled log, one boot resting on a broken Anglo-Saxon helmet, the plume charred and stiff with frozen blood.

His snow-white hair glistened in the firelight like frost under moonlight.

A carved drinking horn was pressed into his hand by Gunnarr, who grinned as he dropped beside him.

"To Alba!" Gunnarr shouted, raising his own horn.

"Our foolish foes have drawn the Scots into our war, and now, the English will have a shieldwall of Highlanders and clansmen between them and us!"

The warriors roared with laughter and pounded their fists against shields, helmets, the earth, anything to let the fury out.

Armodr, leaning against a pine with an axe across his chest, barked a low chuckle. "A shield we never asked for... and one they cannot tear down."

Vetrulfr smirked and stood.

The crowd silenced.

He raised his horn high, letting the firelight reflect in his ice-blue eyes.

"They believed us animals," he called, voice rising over the wind. "Barbarians from the ice-wastes, little more than beasts with blades."

A chorus of laughter and jeers.

"They chased ghosts through the snow… burned innocent farms thinking they were warriors. And now Alba bleeds, not by our hands… but by theirs."

He took a long drink, letting it spill down his chin, then hurled the empty horn into the fire.

"It was not a war they wanted," he said, tone sharpening.

"But now they have one they can no longer control. Let Cnut weep into his crown. Let the Anglo-Saxons build their walls and cower behind Highland steel. We will burn their fields, steal their sons, and sail their rivers like wolves among lambs."

Another cheer, louder this time, erupted like thunder. Men banged swords on bucklers, some breaking into drunken chants, others howling like beasts into the night.

"We are not ghosts," Gunnarr bellowed, his arm thrown around Armodr's shoulder.

"No," Vetrulfr said with a grin. "We are winter."

A gust of wind blew through the trees as if answering his words.

Snow flurried from the high branches. Somewhere beyond the firelight, real wolves howled in the distance, not tamed, not ridden, but kin in spirit. They hunted as he did. Without mercy. Without borders.

Tonight, the war was theirs.

And the dance of fire, mead, and ash had only just begun.