The world between the clans was a place of ghosts and whispers. It was not a land of its own, but a negative space, a buffer of rugged highlands, treacherous passes, and forests so deep and old they seemed to swallow sound itself. This was where the exiled, the outcast, and the desperate found refuge, a liminal space where the names Stórbrodir and Svartfjell held less power than a sharp axe or a well-set snare.
It was here that Astrid forged a new existence, a life pared down to its barest essentials. She found a deserted hunter’s shelter, little more than a lean-to against a granite outcrop, and made it her own. Her days were a silent cycle of survival: setting traps for hares, gathering roots and late-season berries, mending her worn clothes, and purifying water from a nearby stream. The fierce independence that had defined her in the coft was now a stark necessity.
At night, the silence was absolute, broken only by the howl of a distant wolf or the crackle of her meager fire. It was in this silence that the ghosts came. Not the ghosts of the dead, though they were there too—Gunnar’s accusing stare, the nameless faces of the men she had failed to save in the infirmary. No, the most persistent ghost was Eirik.
She would see him kneeling in the hall, his blood pooling on the stone. She would feel the phantom touch of his hand on her cheek in the frozen wood. She would hear the ragged catch in his breath as he tried to speak her name. Was he alive? Had the wound festered? Had he succumbed to the fever that so often followed such injuries? The not-knowing was a constant, gnawing pain, a question mark etched into her soul.
She unrolled the bloodstained tapestry. In the firelight, the beautiful patterns of fjord and forest were marred by the rusty brown splashes, a permanent record of the day everything shattered. She did not see it as a thing defiled, but as a truth. This was their legacy, their love, forever intertwined with violence and loss. She began the painstaking work of cleaning it, not to erase the stains, but to preserve them, to weave the memory of that day into the very fabric of the cloth.
In the Stórbrodir hall, Eirik drifted in a world of fire and shadow. The wound in his leg, a cruel mirror of the one Astrid had healed, had indeed festered. A red heat spread up his thigh, and the poison coursed through his veins, pulling him down into a delirium of nightmares. He was back in the Wolf’s Den, but instead of Gunnar, it was Astrid who stood over him, her eyes full of sorrow as she raised an axe. He was in the croft, but the walls were made of ice, and she was on the other side, fading away as he pounded his fists against the frozen barrier.
The clan’s healer, an old woman with hands gnarled like tree roots, did what she could. She applied poultices of bread mold and honey, sang runes of healing, and bled him to balance the humors. But the fever did not break. Eirik was fading, his body losing its fight against the infection.
Bjorn watched it all, his own heart heavy. He saw the vacant look in his jarl’s eyes, a look that was less grief and more calculation. Halfdan was already measuring the strength of his other, lesser nephews, contemplating a future without the son who had once been his pride.
“It is the same wound,” Bjorn said to the healer one evening, as Eirik thrashed on his sweat-soaked pallet. “The one the Svartfjell woman healed. She used different herbs. A different salve. It worked.”
The old healer sniffed. “Svartfjell witchery. Their cures are as poisoned as their hearts.”
“He is dying,” Bjorn stated, his voice flat. “Your cures are not working.”
There was no arguing with the truth. The healer looked away, shamed.
Bjorn made a decision then, one that could see him branded a traitor. He waited for the deepest part of the night, when the hall was sunk in drunken stupor or anxious sleep. He wrapped a few precious things in an oilskin—a silver arm-ring, a handful of hack-silver, a small, finely made dagger—and stole away from the settlement.
He did not know where to find her. He only knew she was not in her croft; scouts had confirmed it was empty. So he went to the only place he could think of: the Greywood. He went to the lightning-blasted oak and found the hollow. It was empty. His heart sank. He placed the river stone in the pre-arranged spot, a signal of desperate need, though he held little hope.
For two days, he waited, a lone, aging warrior in the vast, silent forest, risking everything on a fool’s errand. He was about to give up, to return and face the death of his leader’s son, when a shadow fell over him.
Astrid stood there. She was thinner, her face all sharp angles and shadows, her eyes holding a depth of sorrow that made him flinch. But she was alive. And in her gaze, he saw the same fierce will that had faced down a hall full of warriors.
“Bjorn,” she said, her voice husky from disuse. “Is he dead?”
“Not yet,” the old warrior replied, his own voice rough with emotion. “But he is close. The wound… it is like the last one. The fever will not break. Our healer… she cannot…” He trailed off, unable to finish the admission of failure.
He held out the oilskin bundle. “Payment. For your skills. I risk my head for this.”
Astrid looked at the offering, then back at Bjorn’s weary, desperate face. She did not take the bundle. “I do not need your silver, Bjorn Stórbrodir.”
“Then why did you come?”
She looked away, towards the direction of the Stórbrodir lands. “Because the ghost will not let me be.”
They traveled swiftly and in silence, two figures moving like wraiths through the borderlands. Astrid led him to her shelter, where she gathered her things—a pouch of dried herbs, a pot for boiling water, a roll of clean linen. She worked with a focused intensity, her movements sure and economical.
As they prepared to leave, Bjorn gestured to the blood-stained tapestry, partially cleaned and laid out with care. “You bring that?”
“Yes,” she said, rolling it tightly. “It is part of the cure.”
He did not understand, but he did not question. He was beyond the clan’s politics now, beyond the feud. He was a man fighting for one life, the life of the boy he had helped raise into a man. He was leading the enemy into the heart of his own home, and he knew that if they were caught, the little peace that existed would be utterly destroyed. They were stepping out of the liminal space and back into the world of war, armed not with swords, but with a desperate, forbidden hope.