The high tide of departure, once a distant hope, now loomed like a specter in the croft. With the path clear and the Sea-Wolf nearly seaworthy, the fragile ecosystem of their enforced coexistence began to fracture. The unspoken tension condensed into a palpable weight, measured in the dwindling number of meals, the final checks of bandages, and the increasingly long silences that stretched between scraps of necessary conversation.
Eirik practiced walking. It was no longer a triumphant act of defiance, but a grim rehearsal for the life awaiting him. He would pace the length of the croft, from his pallet to the door and back, his jaw clenched against the persistent ache. Each step was a step away from this place, from her. Astrid watched his progress with a healer’s critical eye, her praise limited to a curt, “Your gait is less lopsided,” or, “The swelling has not returned.” The professional distance she had re-established was a wall between them, and he felt its chill more sharply than the air from the open door.
Bjorn and Leif spent most of their days at the shore, their returns each evening marked by louder voices, broader gestures, and the scent of salt and pine tar clinging to their clothes. They were men ready to put this strange interlude behind them. Their world was simple: they had a duty, it had been interrupted, and now they were fulfilling it again. They did not see the silent drama playing out in the spaces between their words.
On the eve of their intended departure, a different kind of storm gathered. The weather had turned again, not to a gale, but to a fine, relentless drizzle that froze on contact, sheathing the world in a brittle, transparent coat of ice. It made the path to the ship treacherous and any launch impossible.
“A day’s delay. No more,” Bjorn grumbled, staring out at the glazed landscape, his frustration a physical heat in the small space. “The gods test us.”
“Or protect us from our own haste,” Astrid said from her place at the loom. She was nearing the end of her work, the complex tapestry of fjord and forest almost complete.
Bjorn shot her a dark look. “We have overstayed our welcome. And our safety.”
“Your safety was always conditional on the weather and my silence,” she replied, not looking up from her shuttle. “The conditions have not changed.”
The exchange was a spark on tinder. Eirik, feeling the friction, sought to deflect it. “Another day of rest will strengthen my leg for the journey. There is no profit in breaking it again on the ice.”
The men relented, but the atmosphere remained charged. Trapped once more by the elements, the unspoken things in the room began to demand voice.
It was Leif, in his youthful, uncomplicated way, who inadvertently broke the dam. He was examining one of the small, carved wooden figures on the high shelf—a bear, standing on its hind legs, its mouth open in a silent roar. The craftsmanship was exquisite, the wood polished to a soft gleam.
“This is fine work,” Leif said, his voice full of genuine admiration. “The detail… it’s like it could breathe. Did you carve this?”
Astrid paused her weaving. “I did.”
Bjorn, intrigued despite himself, came to look. He grunted, a sound of concession. “It has spirit. My wife has a trinket, a fox, bought from a trader from the south. It is not so… alive.”
Eirik watched from his pallet, seeing a new side of her revealed. The carvings were not just decorations; they were pieces of her soul, rendered in wood.
“My mother taught me,” Astrid said, her voice softer now. “She said the wood holds a story. The carver’s job is not to create the beast, but to find it, to let it out.”
“A fine sentiment,” Bjorn said, but the old suspicion crept back into his tone. “Though I’ve found Svartfjell stories often have sharp teeth.”
The room went still. The shuttle in Astrid’s hand froze. Leif carefully put the bear back on the shelf as if it had burned him.
Eirik saw the flash of pain in Astrid’s eyes before she shuttered it. “And Stórbrodir stories are written in the blood of others,” she said, her voice dangerously quiet. “Shall we trade barbs, Bjorn? I know a few. I know the one about the Stórbrodir raiders who burned a farmstead during the harvest feast, not for plunder, but for the sport of hearing the children scream. Is that a story you know? My aunt was in that farmstead.”
Bjorn’s face darkened, his hands curling into fists. “A lie! That was a renegade band, outcasts! We hunted them down ourselves for breaking truce!”
“And the story of the Svartfjell who poisoned a well?” Astrid’s gaze was like flint now. “Another lie. The spring failed naturally. But the lie served its purpose, did it not? It gave you a reason to raid our northern pastures the following spring and take a dozen head of our best cattle.”
“By Odin’s eye, woman, you twist everything!” Bjorn roared, taking a step forward.
“Enough!”
Eirik’s voice cracked through the croft like a whip. He had pushed himself to his feet, his body trembling with more than just the effort of standing. He stood between them, his gaze sweeping from the enraged huscarl to the defiant woman. “This! This is the beast! The one she spoke of! And you are both feeding it!”
He turned to Bjorn, his voice low and fierce. “The story of the farmstead… I have heard it told in my father’s hall as a tale of our strength. I never questioned it.” He then looked at Astrid. “And the poisoned well… I was taught it as proof of your clan’s treachery. I never questioned that, either.”
He took a limping step, his pain forgotten in the face of a greater anguish. “We have been living on a diet of lies, and we have grown fat on hatred. We have been trading in a currency of dead men’s bones and old grievances, and we call it honour!”
The croft was silent, save for the sputter of the fire and the faint ping of freezing rain on the roof. Bjorn stared at Eirik, his rage replaced by a stunned confusion. Leif looked at the floor, ashamed.
Astrid was watching Eirik, her chest rising and falling rapidly. The mask of stoicism had fallen away, revealing the raw, weary woman beneath.
“You asked why I live here alone,” she said, her voice barely a whisper, directed at Eirik. “This is why. To get away from the stories. The ones they tell about you, and the ones we tell about ourselves. Here, there is only the wind, the snow, the wood… and the truth of my own two hands.” She gestured to her loom, her carvings, her herbs. “This is my truth. It does not hunt. It does not feast. It just… is.”
Eirik held her gaze, and in that moment, he understood her completely. She was not hiding from the world. She was building a new one, a single, honest stone at a time.
Bjorn let out a long, weary breath. He looked from Eirik’s tormented face to Astrid’s defiant one, and then to the finely carved bear on the shelf. The fight seemed to go out of him, replaced by a deep, bewildered exhaustion.
“The rain will stop by morning,” he said, his voice rough. “We leave at first light.”
He turned and walked to the door, pulling on his cloak and stepping out into the freezing drizzle, needing to be away from the uncomfortable truths that now crowded the warm room.
Leif, after an awkward moment, muttered something about checking the supplies and followed.
Once more, Eirik and Astrid were alone. The air was thick with everything that had been said, and everything that had not. The currency of words had been spent, and all that remained was the stark, simple truth of their situation. They were from different worlds, and tomorrow, those worlds would reclaim them. The temporary bridge they had built was crumbling, and the chasm beneath had never seemed wider, or deeper.