Chapter 2 #3
As they’d shared otherworldly passion in the cave before the fire, the Norse goddess had endowed him with divine magic, marking his body with the shimmering falcon feathers which emblazoned his entire torso, across his chest and broad back.
Her gift—Freyja’s Mark —enabled him to transform at will into a falcon.
And imbued him with the ability to summon and command all winged creatures, a power which had led him to victory in countless battles ever since.
When he’d returned to the Láhpi tribe, Haldor’s final test to become a noaidi had been to venture into the spirit world as a falcon. Before the astonished eyes of the entire tribe, Haldor had shifted for the first time.
Into a peregrine falcon, like the goddess who had imbued her magic into him.
After becoming a noaidi, Haldor had spent two winters studying seier magic with Rúnbjorn, a hermit who lived in a hut on a tiny islet near the Láhpi village, nestled among the pine and birch trees along the craggy coast of the sacred fjord.
Since Jaskka knew Rúnbjorn from trading herbs and talismans in the nearby Norse village of V?gan—the village where Haldor and Skjold would soon meet his Blóesmier crew for the voyage to Normandy—the reclusive rune master had accepted Haldor as his acolyte, completing Haldor’s training as a Viking vitki.
And when Haldor was twenty winters old, he’d been summoned by King Harald Bluetooth to come to his royal hall in T?nsberg.
As a fierce Viking warrior, Sámi noaidi, and shapeshifting vitki, Haldor would lead King Harald’s fleet of drakkar warships on a raid to conquer the Faroe Islands across the Vestrhaf, the treacherous Western Sea.
It was in King Harald’s sumptuous royal hall where Haldor met úlvhild for the first time.
They became lovers, their passion transcending the human realm, their spirits and souls mingling as they shared bodies and magic in an otherworldly joining.
All winter, while King Harald prepared for the upcoming raid in the spring, Haldor and úlvhild reveled in months of exquisite passion and pleasure.
When Haldor had set sail with a fleet of twenty royal warships in the spring, he’d invoked his avian magic for the first time.
Summoning ravens, hawks, and falcons to swoop down from the skies, he and his Viking warriors had stormed the rocky shores.
They’d easily conquered the scarcely populated islands, and Haldor had established a stronghold in Tórshavn, on the island of Streymoy, where he’d built his royal hall, Fálkholl, on a rocky outcrop overlooking the fjord of the Western Sea.
With a thousand men, he’d built stone halls for the chieftains and turf huts for the warriors, establishing villages throughout the largest islands.
At the end of the summer, he’d left the majority of his men behind to guard their newly established strongholds while he returned triumphant to Blátonnsholl, Harald’s royal hall in Norway.
There, amidst the months of feasting and blots, he’d immersed himself completely in úlvhild.
They’d shared spells, spirits, and souls, learning that she could summon him with seidr magic, through an otherworldly connection which joined them in the realm between worlds. As autumn evolved into winter, he knew he’d never love another.
During the Yuletide festival, he’d asked her to wed him.
And she’d adamantly refused.
It was then that Haldor learned about her painful past. The three babes she had lost, born too small and too soon.
How her husband had divorced her as barren, marrying the concubine who carried his child, whose comfort he had sought when a shattered Ulvhild had withdrawn into herself.
Humiliated, rejected, and broken, Ulvhild had left the village and had immersed herself in the study of seidr magic, becoming King Harald’s volva in the royal hall of Norway.
Ulvhild had explained to Haldor that she would never marry, for she could never bear a living child. She’d refused his offer of marriage. But not his body, his soul, or his love.
So Haldor had loved his volva on her terms—with wild abandon and transcendent passion that filled him in every conceivable way. Despite her rejection, he still harbored the fragile hope that one day, she might change her mind.
He’d returned to the Faroe Islands the following spring, and learned that King Harald had sent Ulvhild to the Pays de Caux—the white chalk cliffs of northwestern Francia—for her to serve as volva to Harald’s political ally, Richard the Fearless, the Viking Duke of Normandy.
There, úlvhild had summoned Haldor to aid Jarl Rikard and Skjold’s father, Sk?rde the Scourge, the Dragon of Denmark, in the bloody Battle of Fécamp.
When Haldor had been critically injured in falcon form—an arrow having pierced his wing— úlvhild had invoked Freyja, her beloved goddess of seier magic, to heal Haldor with Freyja’s Kiss.
Haldor and úlvhild had spent another winter together, living in her hut in the village, reviving the intense passion and pleasure as they shared bodies, spirits, and spells. Once again, during the Nordic Yule, he’d asked her to wed him. And once again, she’d refused.
Her rejection had wounded him more than the arrow through the wing, but he understood the cause of her pain and her reason for refusal.
He’d remained with her throughout the winter, and in the spring— when Sk?rde’s wife Ylva gave birth to their prophesied son Skjold— Ulvhild had been the midwife to welcome the foretold babe.
She’d also delivered the healthy son of her Irish friend and acolyte, Maeve, who had married one of Sk?rde’s warriors, a Viking redbeard named Gunni.
Haldor had glimpsed the grief in úlvhild’s golden eyes and felt the emptiness in her wounded soul through the endless bond which entwined their spirits together.
He sensed her despair at being unable to bear the child she so desperately wanted to give him.
And he grieved for her unrelenting, unbearable pain.
She’d insisted that he should marry to produce an heir. That he had no choice but to accept King Harald’s offer to wed him with Svanhild, daughter of the Jarl of Orkneyjar— the chain of islands between Haldor’s stronghold in Tórshavn and Bluetooth’s kingdoms of Denmark and Norway.
Haldor had been able to successfully evade King Harald’s discussions of marriage, claiming that Bluetooth’s grandson Skjold had not yet completed the training to become a Viking warrior and Sámi spirit walker.
But now that Skjold’s eight winters of apprenticeship had come to an end, and Sweyn Forkbeard was the new king of Denmark and Norway, it would be impossible for Haldor to delay any longer.
Sweyn was intent on consolidating power and acquiring kingdoms through political alliances and arranged marriages.
Like the proposed wedding between Haldor and Svanhild.
The crackling fire interrupted his reverie, drawing Haldor’s attention back to the present.
It had been eight long winters since he’d had last seen úlvhild.
He and Skjold would soon meet the Blódsmier in the village of V?gan and sail home to Normandy, before the seas became too icy and stormy for the voyage.
On the alabaster coast of the Pays de Caux, Skjold would soon be reunited with his parents and his younger sister Vivi, who would be on the cusp of womanhood now at the age of twelve winters. The Blódsmidr would enjoy the comparatively mild Norman winter of the upcoming Yuletide season.
And Haldor would spend six glorious months with úlvhild.
Odin’s eye, how he’d missed her! His body throbbed at the thought of her long limbs wrapped around him, welcoming him home as he plunged into her warm, willing depths.
He adjusted his breeches and gulped the rest of his bitter brew.
Although his Blóesmier crew took concubines in every port they visited, Haldor never did.
His limitless love for úlvhild— both physical and spiritual—was as sacred as the seier magic which enlaced their shared souls.
This Yuletide season, Haldor planned to ask úlvhild to wed him once again.
She would refuse, insisting that he needed to marry Svanhild, a young wife who could bear him children and provide his heirs.
But this time, Haldor had a plan. An idea which would convince her to say yes.
But first, he needed to speak to Jarl Rikard and Count Skarde.
With their approval, there’d be no way for úlvhild to refuse.
The thought of making her truly his had Haldor’s heart soaring among the noreljós northern lights in the midnight sky.
Skjold groaned as he stretched in his bedroll, sat upright, and rubbed the sleep from his swollen eyes. Rising to his feet, he reached his arms overhead and arched his back. As he adjusted his white bearskin cloak, he nodded to Haldor’s cup of yarrow brew. “Is there any left?”
“Nei, but I’ll set more water to boil.” Haldor rose, stretched out his aching limbs, and fetched the waterskin, filling the small iron pot and setting it on the trio of stones in the hearth. He added more driftwood to the fire and stoked the flames.
“I can finish that. You need to sleep.” Skjold fetched the yarrow leaves and juniper berries from their supply of herbs, settling down against the rock where Haldor had been keeping watch.
He glanced up at the starry sky, deeply inhaling the salty, frosty night air.
He glanced at Haldor, firelight flickering in his intense gaze.
“You think we’ll find the dwarf’s cave tomorrow?
” Anticipation and trepidation warred in his deep voice.
Haldor reclined on his bedroll, smoothing his padded gambeson.
His leather armor—which he’d oiled with reindeer fat while sipping his herbal brew—lay on the blanket at his side, next to his sword, Seiervingr, whose polished steel and etched runes glistened in the firelight.
The golden glow of the silver falcon’s watchful eyes reminded him again of úlvhild.
“I do indeed,” he said, dispelling persistent thoughts of her and answering Skjold’s question, while the young noaidi added herbs to steep in the iron pot.
“The snow-capped mountain is on an island just up ahead. We’ll reach it by midmorning. ”
Skjold carefully strained the herbs and berries, tossing them into the fire, as Haldor had done.
The sizzle and snap released another burst of woodsy, piney scent into the brackish night air.
He sipped the herbal elixir, eyeing Haldor over the steaming wooden cup.
“I hope we arrive in time to warn the dwarf.”
Haldor pulled the blankets up over his shoulder as an icy chill shivered down his spine. He nestled into the warm reindeer fur of his bedroll, dispelling doubts with a forceful sigh. “So do I.”