The Jarl's Son, Chapter 1-1

The Road to Halvfjord, Part 1

Mar 02, 2024

Terror filled the night as fire roared across the farmstead, painting fields and homes alike in hellish orange and red as Gaiur, heart pounding in her chest and sweat beading on her brow from the overwhelming heat, stood in silence in the middle of it all. Screams, agonized and blood curdling, echoed out from houses and fields as the inferno devoured home and homesteader both, not unlike a ravenous hog consuming slop gulp by slavering gulp. These woeful cries were joined by the whoops and hollers of raiders, foul men dressed in beast furs who set this place aflame and cut short the screaming of the villagers with the thunks of clubs, the shanks of blades, or the twang of loosed arrows.

But they didn’t always cut those screams short. No, many of these poor villagers had been left to burn alive, either by the misfortune of being trapped in a blazing house or worse, because one of these berserker savages alighted them intentionally. Gaiur couldn’t say who these beastly men were, she’d never seen their ilk before. Draped in their bloodied furs, they fought and killed with a violence that was extreme even to one as battle hardened as she. They left the bodies of men and boys mangled in their wake, hacked off limbs and heads or split bellies to let the innards spill onto soil that was now stained so thickly with innocent blood that it reflected the light of the fires. Yet for as awful as the sounds of fear, the heat of the fire, and the sight of violated bodies were, it was the pungent stink of death that stood worst of all. Human and livestock alike had been slaughtered all across this village, and the nose-curling smells of their waste intermixed with the intense and oily odors of burning flesh, hair, and the tar used by these people to waterproof their homes.

Gaiur felt sick to her stomach. Death and conflict were common occurrences in Stenisian life and she was no stranger to them. These were hard lands, home to harsh winters and dangerous beasts, and they required hard people to survive them. But even amongst the most boorish of the brigands she’d dealt with in the past, she had never seen such excess of violence before. These men reveled in their brutality, drawing a savage sort of joy from the act of butchering those who were clearly helpless to defend themselves. The young woman couldn’t put a sense of reason to it. If they’d spared the farms she might at least guess they’d done it for the sake of its resources, but they burnt the crops and slaughtered the animals just as they had the people of the village. But none seemed to take more pleasure in this than the one that was their leader.

She never heard his name spoken, and she wondered if he even had one. Tall and broad shouldered, he rode upon a black steed, draped himself in the skin of a bear, and wore its skull for a cap, darkening his face beneath the shadow of its snout. Blood and ash painted his chest and his muscle corded arms, and when he spoke the other raiders deferred to him without fail. If he wished to see a house burnt, they burnt it. If he wished to have a man killed, they killed him. If he wished for a woman to be brought before him, they brought her. When the end of that long night came, she wouldn’t be able to say how many women had been brought before him. All she knew was that none of them would live to see the morning.

Gaiur opened her eyes quietly. She lay on her cloak in the midst of a grassy meadow with her gloved hands folded over each other across her belly, and stared into the dusky sky of a summery pre-dawn morning. The sun hadn’t yet crested over the mountains on the horizon, but its orange glow already began to paint the edges of the purple sky. Her heart started to race at the sight of it. It looked just like the glow of the fires in that village.

Nightmares were far from a new experience for Gaiur by this point, but recurring nightmares, as this one had been, were unusual. When she first had this dream a few weeks ago, it woke her with a violent start somewhere in the middle, around the time the first woman was brought forward. Now she slept through the entire thing, which meant she witnessed every atrocity committed within. Of course, she understood that what she was witnessing was anything but a normal nightmare. Dreams of all types had the potential to hide messages, particularly for people sensitive to them as she’d recently become. However, due to the unstable nature of dreams, even recurring ones usually played out with some details differing each time. That wasn’t the case here. As of this morning, she’d had this nightmare half a dozen times now, and it always played out the exact same way.

She rolled onto her side, stared at the slowly brightening morning light as it reflected in the dew that clung to the grasses. Varro, the greatwolf that had been her traveling companion since she left her home far to the north years prior, was curled up next to a felled log not far away. His fur looked almost black in the low light and she could see it ripple and contract with his rhythmic breathing. When the sun rose that coarse fur would appear its normal shades of mottled gray, darker along his eyes, ears, and back, and lighter at his muzzle and underside.

Just like the furs those raiders wore.

Gaiur grunted and all but threw herself over in the other direction. Memories from the nightmare still filled her mind. One in particular stood out to her as especially gruesome. The leader, that horrid brute, had a pregnant woman brought before him. As with all the others, his men had stripped her bare. This one, however, he treated with a peculiar reverence. He had his men bind her to stakes in the ground, where they then painted symbols in blood across her belly and her face. Old runes. She knew their shapes, but not their meanings. The language they were derived from was lost long before she was born. Once the runes were painted, he crouched between her splayed legs and placed a hand on her belly before he-

“Hawr!” went the familiar cry of the white raven Hunin as the sun began to crest the mountains. He fluttered down from his perch in a nearby birch tree and regarded her through his ruby red eyes with a curious tilt of his head.

Gaiur didn’t look at him, even as he cawed again in expectation of food. She simply stared at the dewy grasses, watching without watching as the sunrise was reflected in them, her hand clenched at her belly. It was only when she felt Varro’s warm, wet tongue lap at her cheek that she finally moved again. Wincing away from the moist lick, she grumbled and pushed herself to sit upright.

“Fine, fine,” she said.

She reached past Hunin for a leather sack that lay beside the ashy remnants of last night’s fire. It had burned out sometime while she was sleeping, leaving nothing more than a cold ring of stones surrounding gray ash and charred wood. Yet again, Gaiur found herself fighting back the images that tried to invade her mind. She placed her focus on the bag instead, untying the leather thong that bound it shut. Dried meats were kept inside, a mix of elk and venison and aurochs. She removed a couple strips for Hunin, then let Varro have at the rest of the bag. He was already the size of a grown elk and still had growing to do. That bag would barely be enough to fill his belly, though that unfortunately also meant she’d be left wanting.

It was just as well. She didn’t feel particularly hungry anyway and Halvfjord wasn’t more than a morning’s walk away. If she left once the animals finished eating they could reasonably reach the small city sometime around midday. Then she could finally put her hacksilver to good use and trade for some better supplies and equipment. Her cloak could do with being replaced, for one thing. The tawny wool garment was still warm, but it had become ratty and damaged over the years since leaving Valdun. Holes and splits had formed within it and there were segments that had become thready and stretched thin. At best she might get a few more weeks out of it before it fell apart, and by then she’d be in the middle of the cold autumn months. Better to replace it now, before it became a problem.

But that wasn’t the only problem Gaiur faced. Halvfjord was a large settlement. Built atop the largest bend of Ostock Fjord, a winding inlet that reached from the Outer Sea deep into Western Stenise, Halvfjord was named many generations back, when it used to be a fishing town that, appropriately, only took up half of that cliffside bend. Nowadays that once small town sprawled inland for a full league and was thought to house nearly eight thousand people. Little surprise, considering Halvfjord was made the seat of power for the Ostock Jarldom over a century ago.

As she checked for and packed her few belongings - knife, cookpot, waterskin, and her black bladed axe - Gaiur was thankful to the handful of traveling vendors and tradesmen she’d met along her journey. Those folks were always willing to wag their tongues to a stranger who would listen, provided they could get over their initial fright at the sight of Varro. A wolf almost as big as a horse was an easy source of fear, but most calmed when they saw how well tamed he’d become. Still, that fact would do her little good within the confines of city walls. The people of Halvfjord likely wouldn’t tolerate Varro’s presence, and Gaiur couldn’t really fault them for that. She knew too well how dangerous his kind were, both for the times she turned his fangs against her enemies, and for what she lost to one of his ilk already.

A fluttering knotted the insides of her belly. Once more she placed her hand upon it, looking down at it through her dirt stained flax tunic. It was flat and muscled. She could feel the firmness of her abdominals even through the supple leather of her glove, but as she rubbed it back and forth, she remembered it feeling very different. It had bulged once, years ago, round and smooth as her son grew inside of her. His name was Erik, and his father was the man for whom her canine companion was named, the southern adventurer Varro. If all hadn’t happened as it did, Erik would turn eight in just a couple weeks, while his father would’ve turned thirty a little over a month ago. Unfortunately, neither lived to see these days come.

Strange pain, like the sharp buzz of electricity, zipped across Gaiur’s brow. Wincing, she stumbled forward and caught herself on her left hand. The dampness from the dewy grass slowly seeped into the cracked and softened leather of the old glove, but she hardly noticed it. Scenes from the nightmare had come back to her. The pregnant woman, her face and swollen belly painted with those bloody runes. The bear skin warrior, one hand pressing firm into her swell while the other reached between her legs. She screamed out and Gaiur hissed through clenched teeth, doubling over as sharp pain lanced through her insides! What had that fiend done to her? It was the one thing she still hadn’t been able to see in that darksome dream.

Whimpering reached her ears, followed soon by the moist nuzzles of Varro’s nose against her cheek. The pain faded as quickly as it came on and with a heavy breath, Gaiur sat upright again. “I’m alright,” she assured him, reinforcing that with a scratch behind his ears as she brushed her thick mane of blue-black hair out of her face. Then she stood and, with a sharp whistle to get Hunin to perch on her shoulder, they made for the city.

Thank you for reading.
The Jarl’s Son sees Gaiur the Valdunite return to embark on a new adventure and acts as the follow-up to my dark fantasy mystery tale, In the Giant’s Shadow. The previous story isn’t required reading to understand and enjoy this tale, but doing so will enhance the experience.

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