The Jarl's Son, Chapter 2-1

Meeting the Jarl, Part 1

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The main road that cut through Halvfjord banked gradually up a shallow slope. Smaller roads and alleys branched off from it like capillaries and veins connected to a central artery, sprawling between every house, shop, workshop, and stall all the way to the palisade walls. About three quarters of the way up the road, they entered the city’s primary market, a wide circular plaza home to more than two dozen merchant stalls and as well as what she assumed would be the shops of the city’s finest craftsmen. These were the exact sorts of people she’d hoped to meet and trade with, the entire reason she traveled to Halvfjord to begin with. Yet even as she followed Marten through this place of import, she didn’t cast so much as a single glance to any of the stalls, nor did she react when people exclaimed their shock at the sight of Hunin’s bone-white feathers or Varro’s impressive size.

Gaiur had been largely silent on the trek up, and the look of grim disquiet upon her face hinted as to why. When Marten told her what she was to do for Jarl Ostock, she felt no sense of surprise. It was obvious from the situation at hand that the Jarl was looking for anyone who might be able to cure whatever illness ailed his son. After first entering the city Marten confirmed for her that they’d tried just about every traditional method for treating the boy that they knew; fragrant poultices, herbal incense, bathing him in hot and cold waters, even the application of foreign alchemies. That, he admitted, was the entire reason Jerrin was allowed into the city a couple weeks earlier.

“Jarl Ostock hoped his medicinal tinctures might rouse young Erik from his fitful and feverish sleep, but they had no effect.”

Marten had said those words in a heavy and rueful tone. Taken with the sigh he gave when he told her of the Jarl’s wishes, it wasn’t hard for Gaiur to figure out why this weighed so heavily on the handsome warrior. Little did he know he wasn’t the only one. Gaiur had pressed her lips into a thin line, a vain attempt to hide her own unease when he spoke the boy’s name. The name of her own son, now eight years lost. Just hearing it was enough to twist her stomach into tight knots, but she wouldn’t let that stop her from at least hearing the Jarl out. Dryly, she cleared her throat and readied to ask Marten the question which lingered on her mind. However, when she tried to speak the boy’s name for herself, she found she couldn’t.

“The boy’s your brother, isn’t he?” she soon managed.

Marten gave her a grim chuckle in response. “I make it that obvious, do I?”

“It’s not hard to figure out,” she replied.

Marten shrugged. “I suppose not. I know I should better maintain my composure, but I can’t help worrying after him. The boy’s only eight years old. No boy should die that young.”

From then on, Marten’s words were as wind to Gaiur’s ears, all but incomprehensible. Her expression darkened and as they walked up the road and through the market plaza toward Jarl Ostock’s large home along the fjord’s cliffside, moody depression swiftly clouded her mind. What a cruel comedy the fates weaved about her, placing in her destined path a boy of the same name and age that her own son would be had he not been savagely killed when he was but a babe. What next? Would an eligible man that shared her dead husband’s name, manner, and mien be sent to hate her now? No, even that wicked slap across the face still wouldn’t compare to the fact young Erik not only shared the name and what should’ve been the age of her own son, but that he lay upon a deathbed as well, sick with the seemingly incurable. Traditional medicines, foreign tinctures, and even Völvic ritual had already failed him. Now fate decreed his life would fall into her hands, those of a Night Hunter, a final and desperate hope that was far from guaranteed.

“Wolfmother?”

Gaiur blinked and her vision focused on Marten. He had an eyebrow cocked and looked puzzled at her. “You seemed so far off as to be lost in the South,” he said, a chuckle doing a poor job of masking the touch of concern in his voice.

“Forgive me,” she muttered with a quick shake of her head. Her thick locks of blue-black hair rustled against her cloak and she had to brush some of them out of her face. “I was just… considering causes for the boy’s condition.”

Marten hummed and nodded. “I see. I appreciate your diligence,” he said, turning to face the door to the Jarl’s house. However, as he reached for the handle, he paused and looked back to her again. “I feel a damned fool for waiting so long to say anything, but I’ll need to announce you as more than just ‘Wolfmother’ to my father.”

“You can call me Gaiur,” she said.

“Gaiur?” He lifted his eyebrows as he repeated the name, his expression giving away his thoughts well before he uttered them. “Rather an unusual name.”

Gaiur crossed her arms and eyed him sternly. “Stranger than ‘Wolfmother’?” she quipped, and Marten grinned awkwardly.

“I take your meaning,” he said, turning once more to push the doors open. However, he paused once again to look over his shoulder at her. “You’ll likely have to leave your wolf outside. Will he remain docile without you?”

Gaiur nodded. “He’ll do as I tell him,” she said. After giving Varro the order to wait outside for her and having Hunin wait with him, Marten finally opened the doors.

Iron hinges spotted with rust creaked as they stepped through the threshold of Jarl Ostock’s house. As would be expected of a ruling lord’s home, the Jarl’s was the largest and most ostentatious in the city of Halvfjord. In actuality, that didn’t mean as much as one might think. The building was separated into three wings - one to the north, one to the south, and the central chambers which Marten led Gaiur into. The front door opened into the largest of these chambers, revealing a large fire pit and the Jarl’s throne on the opposite side, situated against the wall. Compared to her husband’s likely exaggerated stories of thrones from the south made of gold and velvet and fine rare woods, Jarl Ostock’s was quite simple, built of pine with deer hide cushions and a crest of stag antlers crowning the back. Similar trophies lined the walls, too, from massive aurochs horns to a stuffed brown bear’s head to animal pelts hung as tapestries or used as rugs upon the floor. Cases and racks featuring jewelry, exotic arms and armor, and other foreign trophies like bejeweled goblets and decorative daggers dotted the edges of this chamber along the walls, along which hung three green banners with the Jarldom’s sigil, a whalebone fish hook piercing the head of a pike, one each above the entrances to the north and south wings, and one behind the Jarl’s throne.

Jarl Ostock himself paced impatiently in front of his throne, surrounded by a small cadre of advisors and local petitioners. These were men and women of various ages and means. Some showed their wealth in the colorful finery of their clothing, which they further accentuated with rings, bracelets, and amulets. Others wore simpler attire worn by age and labor. Some were armored, and Gaiur could see the ornamentation of the city’s guard emblazoned onto the large shield shaped badges attached to their left breasts, just below the shoulder. The guards whom Marten commanded on the parapets, as well as those who manned the gate itself, wore those same emblems.

The Jarl stood out as distinct from the rest of them. A tall and imposing man, he was dressed in a woolen tunic of pale blue with red trimming and green breeches so dark that they were almost black. Over this he wore a stagskin cloak which nearly draped to the floor and fur-lined boots to match. Like Marten, he had an aquiline nose and a strong jaw, though the hard lines of age showed around his eyes and on his brow. His red-blonde hair had paled with shades of gray and a short, curly beard partly hid his jawline, though it couldn’t hide the displeasure on his face. Strangely, he wore no circlet to mark him as leader in this house and city, but Gaiur was swift to notice that it had been left to hang on the end of his throne’s right hand armrest.

“Jarl, the woman skulks about our city in the company of a wolf as big as an elk!” came the low spoken reedy voice of a man in the crowd as Gaiur’s attention shifted to the conversation being had. Her brow knitted into a furrow and she curled her lip in distaste as he continued to speak, describing her as little more than a wantonly murderous savage not unlike those men she saw in her dream.

“And what of the people Marten let through the east gate?” came another, a woman with a distinctly southern accent this time. “They can’t be permitted to stay, my Jarl! Marten’s actions were a flagrant violation of your commands!”

“So you’ve all told me many times over, as if I don’t recall my own words!” Jarl Ostock barked. His voice was strong and sonorous and it was clear his patience had already been drawn thin. He paced away from them, a scowl now set into his bearded features as his right hand clutched his cloak from the inside.

Marten stepped forward as the Jarl broke away from his swarming pack. “My Jarl,” he began, clearly intent on continuing, but Jarl Ostock interrupted him.

“Marten!” the older man exclaimed. Then he frowned and glared at Marten. “You owe me an explanation, boy. My advisors have harped on me for no less than ten minutes about you disobeying my command to seal off the city! They say you allowed an entire mob through the eastern gate!”

The younger man stood tall, but bowed his head respectfully as he answered. “It’s true, my Jarl. I did permit those people to enter, but with good reason.”

“Good reason,” Jarl Ostock scoffed, throwing his arms in the air in frustration. Gaiur wondered if they argued like this frequently. “Good reason, he says! Were my words unclear to you, boy? I told you that no one was to enter this city unless they came bearing a cure for your brother!”

“I remember, my Jarl,” Marten said.

“So what, then? Am I to believe this crowd of farmers and frontiersmen bore one among them capable of conjuring such a cure?” Jarl Ostock demanded as he wheeled on his soon, coming so close that their faces nearly touched. It was only then that he noticed Gaiur standing by the door. “And who’s this? The woman these fools claim leads an elk-sized wolf through Halvfjord?”

“The very same,” Marten said without so much as a hint of irony in his tone. Turning, he held his hand out toward Gaiur, presenting her to Jarl Ostock. “This woman’s name is Gaiur, Father. She’s the one the Oasyrian spoke of, the Wolfmother.”

Behind them, some among the gaggle of gathered advisors began to protest. Jarl Ostock silenced them with a growl and forceful wave of his hand, one which sent his heavy cloak fluttering open. “I will determine the truth of my son’s claims myself,” he said, narrowing his gaze as he looked Gaiur over.

Gaiur didn’t flinch beneath his appraising looks. She looked right back at the older man, and it wasn’t long at all before his gaze of steel blue met hers of russet and iron. They locked and, after a moment, the Jarl’s eyes narrowed. Curiosity had stricken him.

“She does look as the Oasyrian described,” Jarl Ostock said, never once taking his eyes off her. “Gaiur, was it?”

She answered with a slight nod.

“Can you prove you’re the one they call Wolfmother?” he asked.

She pointed over her shoulder at the door with her thumb. “See for yourself,” she said flatly. “Varro and Hunin wait outside.”

“Show me,” he said, and she did.

Turning around, she pulled both doors open wide, much to the shock and chagrin of the gasping advisors. “Come Varro, Hunin,” she commanded, not bothering to wait for permission to do so. Both animals were quick to obey. Hunin fluttered down from a beam underneath the jutting awning that covered the main entrance and hopped inside with a hawr! Varro, on the other hand, stretched his hind legs as he rose and stalked inside with his head held low, appraising this new crowd with his yellow canine eyes.

The Jarl, for his part, was speechless until Martin placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Shelyn may finally be favoring us, Father, by leading the Wolfmother to our gate,” he said.

“Even seeing you I find it hard to believe,” Jarl Ostock said, this time in a far softer and more measured tone. For a long moment he paused, watching Gaiur keep her wolf calm with a gentle hand placed against his neck while her white raven fluttered up to her shoulder. When he did speak again, she could hear the twinge of desperation in his voice.

“See them out, Marten,” he said, motioning in the direction of his cadre of advisors and petitioners. “I wish to speak to the Wolfmother directly.”

The cadre made no arguments. They wouldn’t dare risk it, not with Varro the greatwolf staring them down as he was. The sight of their unease brought the shadow of a smile to Gaiur’s lips, even as Marten led them out through one of the doors into the north wing, where Gaiur assumed there must’ve been a second entrance leading outside. Once he closed the door behind him, Jarl Ostock’s shoulders slumped and he made his way back into his throne, where he all but fell into the seat. Resting his forehead against the knuckles of his left hand, he let out a weary sigh.

“You’ll forgive me if I continue to remain suspicious,” he said as Gaiur approached. “Has Marten told you aught of what ails my youngest?”

“A fevered sleep that neither local nor southern medicine could rouse him from,” she said.

The Jarl shook his head. “A woefully simplistic account, but ultimately true,” he said. “And what of the trader, that Oasyrian?”

“Jerrin,” Gaiur said.

“So you know him after all,” the Jarl replied.

“We’ve met, but I don’t know him,” Gaiur said.

The Jarl waved the distinction away with a limp flick of his wrist. “That’s not important. The man claimed you were able to help him with his own ailment. Is this so?”

She nodded, and the Jarl leaned forward in his throne.

“How?” he asked.

Gaiur considered for a moment how best to explain. Words likely wouldn’t be enough, so she reached back and drew her axe from where it was slung across her back. She held its braided haft firm in both hands then, with naught more than a mental push of will, commanded its head of blackened steel to ignite. Flames wreathed the broad blade and spike alike, and the elegantly curving lines and swirls that glinted like polished steel before now glowed yellow and orange like the hottest of coals. Upon seeing this, Jarl Ostock gripped the ends of his armrests and leaned forward with amazement in his eyes.

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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