Valkyries Calling-Chapter 88: The Shape of Their Fear

Snow lay heavy across the low hills, muffling the world in patient silence.

In the hollow of the coast, skin tents and stone rings clustered close, dark mouths yawning where smoke rose to meet the pale sky.

Women scraped hides along the water’s edge. Hunters returned with seal and small bear, dragging the carcasses across packed snow.

Children played among the drifted dunes, their laughter bright, unaware.

Then the runners came.

Two men, faces torn by frost and horror, stumbled from between the low birch stands at the edge of the settlement.

They fell to their knees, clawing the air, voices cracking with breathless ululations. Their words came like broken ice; urgent, terrified, spilling out in ragged bursts.

At once, the small folk gathered, clutching furs to their chests, eyes wide. Old men leaned on carven staves, blinking into the swirl of cold wind, listening.

"From the night... they came from the night!" the first man wailed, his eyes rolling white. "White as bone, tall as bears, cloaked in shadow. They walked without sound until the blood ran hot across the ice!"

His companion struck his own chest with clenched fists, tears freezing in his lashes.

"We tried to flee. They fell upon us like hunting spirits. No mercy, no words; only bright iron and eyes like frozen stars. They howled as wolves and tore the camp apart."

A child whimpered. One woman pulled her son behind her, as if the telling alone might summon those demons to the edge of their hearth.

"Did you not call on the spirits to hide you?" croaked an elder, breath fogging. His face was a weathered map of wind and grief.

"We did; we burned the black moss, we sang the old wards... but it was as if the night itself had turned against us. The spirits fled. Only the cold remained. And them."

The small crowd fell silent. Somewhere nearby, a child began to sob, shattering the hush. The old men exchanged heavy glances.

At last, one of them spoke, voice thin and bitter as ice-scraped stone.

"These are not men from across the sea. They are the dark that hunts when we stray too far from our fires. They wear the shape of wolves. They walk in the shape of giants. They will come again."

At this, several heads bent low. A woman began to keen softly, a sound that threaded through the camp like smoke.

The children drew close to their mothers, eyes wide, peeking over shoulders into the dark rim of the forest.

Already the myth was taking shape; spreading like frost along the edges of thought. From the night they had come, and from the night they would come again.

The land itself seemed to shiver, haunted by the echo of axes in the dark.

---

The elders gathered within the largest shelter of the camp; a broad, low dome of stretched hides layered over a frame of whale ribs and driftwood.

A thin line of smoke threaded through a vent at the top, pooling in the gloom. The air was thick with the pungent scent of oil lamps and seal-fat soot.

They sat in a loose circle on pelts, old bones creaking as they shifted.

Firelight flickered across their worn faces, throwing deep lines into deeper shadow. In the corner, a pair of younger hunters crouched, silent, heads bowed.

For a time, no one spoke. The only sound was the brittle hiss of resin as someone fed the small hearth. Outside, the wind scraped at the walls, making them sigh like something alive.

At last, an elder woman, skin dark and creased like aged leather, eyes milky with age, broke the silence.

"Is this the price we pay for the hunts last winter? When the coast people took too many of the seal? Or when they stole wives from beyond the ice fields?"

Another shook his head slowly.

"No. These came from the south, where the strangers dwell. Where their great houses stand on the water’s edge. It is said they build fences from earth and stone, carve great scars across the hills to drive beasts. Perhaps... perhaps this was their anger, sent upon us by dark men in iron skins."

A third elder, thin as a reed, rasped out a nervous breath.

"Or perhaps not anger. Perhaps it is simply what they are. Beasts themselves. Pale wolves that walk upright, hungry for more than meat. Who knows what their gods command?"

For a long moment, the fire cracked and settled. A loose ember flared, then dimmed.

"If it was anger," the elder woman said slowly, her voice a dry whisper, "then perhaps it was not for us. Perhaps others, those further west, brought this upon us. Took something sacred, or shed blood too near their dens. And so these wolves come, following the scent."

A younger man near the doorway clenched his fists.

"Then what do we do? Flee further inland? Abandon the sea, the seals, the rivers? We cannot live only on the old snows."

No one answered. Because they all knew there was nowhere left untouched. The strangers in the south were growing, spreading like meltwater across hard ground.

If they struck once, they might strike again; for hides, for slaves, for fear alone.

Finally, the oldest among them, his hair like wisps of the long winter fog, drew in a thin breath.

"We watch. We wait. We send quiet feet along the coast to learn more. If the strangers hunt only some, perhaps we may hide in their shadow. If they hunt all, then the land will bleed until they have eaten their fill. And then the land will remember."

No one dared challenge it. Not because they all agreed, but because there was nothing else to offer. Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the frame, making the whole world seem fragile.

They leaned in closer to the small flame, as though it alone could hold back the dark that stalked beyond the leather walls; a dark now wearing new faces, bearing axes and eyes of cold, distant fire.

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