Chapter 2 #2
Exhausted after a full day of rowing, Skjold gratefully settled down onto his reindeer fur bedroll and pulled a thick, Sámi woven blanket over his white bearskin cloak. Under the clear, starry night sky, he soon drifted off to sleep.
* * * *
Haldor leaned back onto a large, smooth stone and stared into the flickering flames of the campfire.
Gr?skegg, the seasoned captain of his ship, would be waiting with the Blóesmier crew in the Norse trading port of V?gan.
He grinned at the thought of seeing the grizzled old graybeard whose wrinkled skin had been weathered by more than forty winters on the frigid northern seas.
And Yrjar, the bear, with his unkempt, tangled mass of long dark hair, as wild and untamed as his spirit, his bearded face tattooed with runes that glowed like his eyes, pale as the moon, when he entered the berserkergang trance.
Bjarni, the old swordmaster who had once served King Harald and was now fiercely loyal to Haldor.
Tall, lanky, and lean, with long white hair and a deeply scarred face, Bjarni’s rare grin revealed several missing teeth, lost in countless battles and raids aboard Freyja’s Falcon.
He was looking forward to being reunited with his crew, for Haldor and Skjold had lived among the Sámi tribe for the past two summers while his acolyte learned the ways of a noaidi.
And now that Skjold’s training of eight long winters was finally complete, Haldor would deliver him home to Normandy—a Viking warrior, vitki, and noaidi as physically and magically powerful as Haldor himself.
The water Haldor had set over the fire was now boiling, rattling the metal cover on the small iron pot.
Wrapping his hand with reindeer leather for insulation, he carefully removed the pan from the fire and placed it atop a flat stone.
He removed the lid and added some dried yarrow leaves and juniper berries to steep for an herbal infusion.
After several minutes, Haldor carefully poured the steaming liquid into his wooden cup, straining the herbs and berries with the cover of the small pot.
He tossed the herbs into the fire, where they snapped and crackled, releasing a piney scent into the frosty, briny night air.
Settling back against the large rock, he savored the earthy, sharp flavor of the bitter brew which would keep him warm yet awake during his watch.
As he sipped the yarrow and juniper elixir, his thoughts of the upcoming voyage to Normandy shifted from the Blóesmier crew of his drakkar warship to the intoxicating volva who would welcome him home.
Heart, body, and soul.
Haldor’s loins throbbed painfully at the thought. Odin’s eye, how he’d missed her! He sipped his herbal brew, staring into the flames, reflecting about the only woman he’d ever loved.
And ever would.
He’d first met úlvhild in Blátonnsholl, King Harald Bluetooth’s sumptuous royal hall in T?nsberg, the Viking trade center on the Skagerrak in southern Norway.
She’d been the king’s volva—foreseeing battles, raids, and conquests with her powerful seier magic that had innately stirred his own the moment he saw her.
He’d been mesmerized by her haunting beauty. Her long, thick mane of wild, black hair. Her golden eyes that glowed like embers of a smoldering fire. Her porcelain skin and lithe body, graceful as a swan.
She’d been clad in a cloak of falcon feathers, like the goddess Freyja herself. The very goddess who had gifted Haldor the power to transform into a falcon and summon winged creatures at his command.
A necklace of carved amber with Freyja’s image had adorned úlvhild’s slender throat and sleek torso.
Seier magic had thrummed from her, seeking and probing his own.
Indeed, the vitki in Haldor had instantly recognized the volva in úlvhild as a powerful sorceress and seer, blessed by Freyja, just like himself.
But he’d also recognized in her a kindred, wounded spirit who had suffered and overcome tremendous grief. Just as Haldor had done as a boy.
He’d been orphaned at only eight winters old when Rus raiders attacked his Norse village, killing both of his parents and his baby brother as they burned huts, stole weapons, furs, and the goods that the Norsemen had planned to trade along the Baltic coast. Haldor’s desperate mother, upon seeing the attackers storming the village, had ordered him to hide in the forest, which would protect him, urging him to remain hidden until all the raiders were gone.
She told him to head north, following the winding coastline of the fjord, until he came to the village nestled between two towering cliffs.
There, the Sámi people would take him in, she’d promised, for Haldor’s father had befriended Jaskka, the noaidi spiritual leader of the Láhpi tribe.
A terrified Haldor had obeyed his mother, hiding amongst the dense foliage of the forest until the screaming had stopped, the raiders had departed in their swift ships, and silence had stretched across the smoldering ruins of what had always been his home.
Limbs shaking, tears streaming down his trembling cheeks, he’d instinctively searched the ice blue sky, where he spotted a falcon, its magnificent wings unfurled, floating over the frosty fjord.
While Haldor had watched in awe, the bird had released a sharp, keening cry as it swooped down to land just above his head upon a branch of the sacred rowan tree where he’d sought shelter. The falcon’s dark eyes, framed in gold like glowing amber, had glinted in the pale morning sun.
As he’d held the raptor’s compelling gaze, a power had pulsed through him, as if the falcon’s spirit had spoken wordlessly to his own. Haldor intuitively understood that the falcon had been sent by the gods to guide him.
He’d followed the bird north along the shore, until they’d come to the seaside village on the fjord centered between the two tall, craggy cliffs.
Set back away from the shoreline, at the edge of the forest, Haldor had seen the clusters of cone-shaped lávvu tents covered in reindeer hide and the turf-covered birch huts, the goahti, which belonged to the Láhpi tribe.
As his mother had promised, the Sámi villagers had welcomed him, claiming that Haldor was the Child of the Falcon and that the bird was his sacred spirit animal.
Jaskka, the tribal leader, and his wife Máret had adopted Haldor as their own, for they were childless and believed that his fortuitous arrival had been a blessed gift from the generous gods.
Haldor had lived among the Láhpi tribe for ten winters, learning the Sámi ways as Jaskka’s son and acolyte.
But he’d also trained with the hardened warriors of the tribe, learning to wield weapons as he honed his hulking body, becoming as skilled with bow, arrow, and axe as with the Viking sword that Jaskka had obtained for him from Harald Bluetooth, King of Denmark and Norway, with whom he had a good trade relationship.
Haldor sipped from his wooden cup and gazed at his sheathed sword, Seiervingr, which leaned against the rock where he now sat before the crackling fire. The amber eyes of the elaborately carved silver falcon in the glistening pommel sparkled in the starlight.
Its eyes were as glowing and golden as úlvhild’s.
Haldor smiled wistfully, swallowing another gulp of the bitter yarrow brew.
He stretched his legs out, adjusting the reindeer fur draped over his shoulders to ward off the chill.
He gazed at the detailed carving in the elaborate hilt of his sword, admiring the skilled craftsmanship of Bluetooth’s royal blacksmith.
The exquisitely detailed silver falcon represented not only the guardian bird who had guided him to the Sámi village as a young boy.
It also symbolized the incomparable power that Freyja had gifted him.
When she visited him a second time as a young man.
As the flames danced in the stone enclosed hearth, Haldor relived that memorable night.
He’d been eighteen winters old, the same age as Skjold, who now snored softly on the nearby bedroll, when he’d scaled the icy cliff of Drekafjall—Dragon’s Leap— in his arduous quest to become a noaidi.
On the spring equinox—time of equal balance between light and dark, when the veil between worlds is thinnest— he’d set out from the Láhpi village with few supplies and only a knife for defense, to surrender to the spirits and test his endurance.
He’d crossed snowdrifts, icy terrain, and frozen rocks, arriving at the base of the mountain where the ísstjarna waterfall cascaded like icy stars from the jagged clifftop above.
Haldor had snared and sacrificed a white hare, pouring its blood into the pure snow as an offering to the spirits for permission to climb to the top of the cliff.
He’d anointed his forehead with the blood of the hare and had ascended the treacherous, rocky path marked with ancient runes.
At the summit of the jagged ledge, under the spectacular array of northern lights, he’d discovered a hidden, secluded cave.
Inside, he'd started a fire with kindling from his pack, warming himself over the welcome flames, chanting a galdr invocation of seier magic to summon the falcon who had guided him.
With a whoosh of wings and a keening cry, the raptor had flown into the cave.
And, in a glimmer of gold and violet light, the falcon had transformed into Freyja.
His spirit had recognized her instantly. She’d been the falcon who had come to him in the forest and guided him to the Láhpi tribe. And there, in the clifftop Drekafjall cave, she’d assumed human form.
And taken Haldor as her lover.