Chapter 13
Foreseeing Fate
Several moons passed.
Brynhildr kept busy, training with Skogul and Kára, caring for Himingdrápa and Gyllin, casting runes and foreseeing fate with seier. Yet each day, she slipped down to the pebbled shore and watched Sigurd with a visceral longing that tore at her gut and gnawed at her bones.
After returning to Sjóborg and training his new men, he’d gone on a successful raid to the lucrative seaport of Dorestad, in the distant territory of Frisia.
From there, he and the Sea Wolves had sailed west, pillaging monasteries and Christian churches in the kingdom of West Francia, returning to Norway with warriors, weapons, and wealth.
And now, as winter clenched Midgard in its icy, unyielding grip, she watched him repair ships and sails in preparation for the spring, when he would voyage to Sweden and avenge his murdered faeir by slaying King Lyngvi of Gotaland.
Through the still waters of the Mirrored Sea, she glimpsed him on the deck of his úlfalkr ship.
The blue grey fur of his Blárúlfr wolfskin cloak shimmered in the pale winter sun.
Lapis lazuli beads were braided into his glorious blond hair and golden beard.
As she watched him with mournful yearning, the ouroboros burned as seier poured from her Sun Falcon soul into her beloved Sea Wolf.
As if he sensed her eyes upon him and her spirit flooding his, he gazed out at the western sea where the setting sun streaked the wintry sky.
Sigurd… how I long for your touch, your taste…
your body merging with mine. We are bound by breath, body, and blood, our fates eternally entwined.
And yet… if I am destined to ride as a Valkyrie, and you must avenge your faeir, how can our future be interwoven in the web of wyrd?
I pray the Norns shall reveal the path that leads me back to you.
For each day that we are apart is a torment I can no longer bear.
As she gazed into the blue depths of the Mirrored Sea, the vision of an ongoing battle unfolded before her eyes.
Black braids beaded with bones, swan cloaks unfurled like Odin’s ravens, the Kaun Triad swept down from smoke-filled skies. Amidst clashing steel and axes shattering shields, they pressed the blades of their gleaming spears to the sword arms of brutal warriors drenched in blood.
In the center of the carnage, a bearskin-clad king fell, his fiery soul engulfed in flames as the Valkyries claimed him for Odin.
The enemy king who had slain him grinned in garish triumph as the Bear King’s banner fell beside his bloodied body.
When the blond brute blew an enormous horn, his victorious army quickly stripped the dead, taking armor, armbands, shields, and swords.
The invading warriors hauled the seized treasure to their awaiting ships and departed with raucous shouts of victory.
Spears clutched in skeletal hands, shrieks piercing the twilit sky, the Kaun Triad disappeared in black feathered swan cloaks upon their black winged steeds.
On the blood-soaked battlefield strewn with mangled bodies, one of the vanquished warriors produced a bloodied crown, taken from their slain Bear King.
While others watched, desperate hope alight in their devastated eyes, the warrior reverently placed the bronze circlet upon the shaggy brown head of another bearskin-clad berserker, hunched over the fallen king.
As rallying cheers erupted among the beleaguered men, the newly crowned king rose from his knees. Upon the chest plate of his gleaming chainmail armor, a golden sunburst etched with runes and embellished with amber glinted in the gloaming.
Brynhildr’s breath hitched, her heart pounding in recognition.
The newly crowned king was Agnar—the Bear of Bjarkholm—clad in the Sólvorn armor her faeir had presented him in the final championship of the Sólhjarta Tournament.
The blood brother who had sworn the sacred oath with Sigurd beneath her private tower.
While she reeled with this astounding revelation, she glimpsed Agnar turn to a warrior at his side and bark an urgent command. The man nodded, gathered his crew, and quickly loaded supplies onto his ship.
Through seier, Brynhildr understood.
Agnar has summoned Sigurd.
She remembered their blood oath at dawn, sworn on the edge of the cliff at Hrafnfjall. “Should the Bear of Bjarkholm summon, the Sea Wolf of Sjóborg shall come.”
As she gazed into the Mirrored Sea, interpreting warfare tactics that Skogul had taught her, Brynhildr foresaw another imminent battle.
The blond king—Hjálmgunnar, her seier whispered—would soon return to conquer Bjarkholm.
And Sigurd would come to Agnar’s aid.
I must foresee the future. But to do so, I need to invoke the Norns.
Freyja had told Brynhildr that as dóttir of the Goddess of Seier, she had inherited divine knowledge which surpassed that of all the other Valkyries. Brynhildr would wield that sublime power now.
Rising from her knees at the edge of the Mirrored Sea, she brushed pebbles from the front of her gown. Falcon heart hammering in her Valkyrie breast, Brynhildr dashed up the path to her stone cottage at the top of the cliff.
She closed the shutters on her window and tossed another log onto the fire. With an iron poker, she stoked the banked embers, coaxing them into flames. From the clusters of herbs on her cluttered shelves, she retrieved three juniper berries and tossed them into the hearth.
They snapped and crackled, releasing a crisp piney scent that flooded her with fond memories of Yrsa. As she envisioned the beloved blue face of her mentor, tears welled in her eyes. You would be proud of me, Yrsa. My seier has become incredibly strong.
Amongst the brightly colored vials and stoppered jars, she selected three sparkling gemstones, one to represent each of the three Valkyrie Triads.
Amber, for the firesight of Kaun. Emerald, for the forest-seeing herbs of Algiz. And lapis lazuli, for Laguz visions through the Mirrored Sea.
Brynhildr set the glittering gems in a triangle on the wooden floor in front of her fragrant stone hearth. She lit three candles and arranged them around the triad of glittering stones.
A trio of herbs to invoke the three Norns. Henbane, its potent poison enabling firesight. Mugwort, for the herbal protection of Algiz. And Angelica, for the spirit journey of Laguz.
She placed the three herbs—one tiny black henbane seed, one white blossom of angelica, and one green leaf of dried mugwort—into a silver chalice of mead. The runes and gems of her sacred goblet glistened in the incandescent light.
Three gemstones. Three candles. Three herbs. The sacred number nine for the Norns. And now, to bind the visions to me, three drops of my Valkyrie blood.
The ornate hilt of her ritual dagger was carved with a trio of runes. Sowilo, for her identity as the Sun Falcon Shieldmaiden. Perthro, for hidden knowledge of fate. And Laguz, for her triad as a Valkyrie—and Sigurd’s spirit stone as a Sea Wolf.
Set into the silver pommel of her sacred blade was a glowing amber teardrop, like the gems in her móeir’s Brisingamen necklace. With a quick prick of the sharp tip, Brynhildr pierced her thumb and let three droplets of blood fall into the herbal mead.
As the blood dripped into the golden brew, and the coppery tang of iron blended with the sweet honeyed scent of mead, she chanted a varelokkur—a melodic invocation—to summon the three Norns.
“Urd, Verdandi, and Skúld I call.
Reveal the threads of fate unseen
Norns of past, present, and yet to be,
Unveil the future… that I may see.”
Brynhildr drank three swallows of the herbal, blood-soaked mead.
Continuing her varelokkur chant, she reverently placed the silver chalice in the center of the triangle of glittering gems and burning candles.
Inhaling the sweet smoke from the stone hearth, she sat upon her carved oak chair and watched the dancing flames.
As her head spun and she swooned in the seat, her spirit left her body behind. White swan wings spread wide, she soared through the sky, toward a storm of blades in Midgard.
She hovered overhead, watching the carnage unfold.
In full berserker rage, Agnar tore through the clashing steel, his thick brown bearskin soaked with blood, the bronze sunburst on his chainmail brynja glinting in the bright sun. As she watched in horror, thick tendrils of black smoke curled around him, clearly marking Agnar for Odin.
The deafening roar of an invading army drew her attention toward the western shore.
Ten drakkar longships, each bearing a green sail emblazoned with a great black tusked boar, lined the beleaguered beach. Hundreds of men swarmed the shore and stormed up the grassy banks toward Agnar’s besieged fortress.
And there—his chainmail armor splattered with blood and gore, a garish grin on his scarred, bearded face—stood the blond brute Hjálmgunnar, the ruthless king who had slain Agnar’s faeir, leading the merciless attack.
In his upraised hand, he clutched an ominous sword which sent a surge of seier through the ouroboros above Brynhildr’s thundering heart.
úlfsbani, her seier whispered from within. Forged by Odin himself. To shatter Sigurd’s sword and ensure Agnar’s defeat.
With bated breath, she watched Sigurd slash, dodge, and strike. Each deadly thrust pierced armor and found flesh as enemy warriors fell beneath his unerring blade.
But when Sigurd lunged to shield Agnar, blocking Hjálmgunnar’s killing blow with úlfblóer —forged in the blood of Blárúlfr,, the great blue wolf whose spirit infused Sigurd with Sea Wolf strength—his magnificent sword shattered like shards of a frozen fjord.
As the seier vision unfolded with stark, startling clarity, and Agnar was encircled by swirls of smoke like slithering snakes, Brynhildr saw herself press the blade of her Valkjósleier spear against King Hjálmgunnar’s sword arm.
Selecting the blond brute for Valhalla instead of Agnar.
Her seier sight shifted again.