Valkyries Calling

The heather-clad highlands echoed with the tramp of iron-shod boots and the distant roll of war horns.

From castle to croft, men had been summoned, chieftains from the Isles, nobles from the lowlands, and spear-wielding farmers with iron in their spines.

At their head rode King Duncan, his crimson cloak billowing like a war-banner in the cold wind.

He bore no crown this day, only a polished helm capped with antlered brass, a relic of Pictish kings long buried beneath standing stones.

His sword, the ancestral blade Calad Ri, rested across his saddle, unsheathed and hungry.

Behind him stretched an army fed fat on summer harvests and highland cattle, men with sinew and pride, led not by obligation but by fury.

England had burned Dalriadan settlements along the coast. Now Duncan marched to repay the debt.

"Let them come," he growled to his thanes. "Let the sons of the whale-road try their steel on Scots soil. But we'll not give them the pleasure of our own hills to die in. We'll bring the wolf to their door."

Their warpath snaked down through Lothian and across the low country, where Gaelic gave way to Old Northumbrian, and men of mixed tongue and faith joined the column.

By the time they reached the River Tees, Duncan's force swelled with over five thousand warriors, not a horde, but a hammer.

South of York, where the old Roman roads cut through thick fen and low hills, a bannered host awaited, not united by tribe or crown, but by necessity.

Cnut's northern earls, left to hold the line, stood upon sodden fields, grim beneath iron helms.

Their forces were as patchwork as their tongues, Danes from Jorvik, Norwegians out of Cumbria, Swedes sent from the Five Boroughs, and Anglo-Saxon ceorls pressed from villages too close to the king's ire.

Their shield wall was broad but uneven.

On the left, Earl Thorkell the Red, a Dane with hair like fire and the scars of twenty winters at sea, commanded a wedge of veterans, men who had followed Cnut into Mercia and back.

Their shields were painted in black and white, rimmed in rawhide, their discipline evident in how they shifted as one.

At the center, Earl Æthelgar of Lindsey led green levies, many of whom had never held blade outside of slaughtering hogs.

Their shields were mismatched, their stances nervous, but they numbered many and filled the gaps.

The right flank held the Swedes, tall and grim, quiet beneath the watchful gaze of their captain, Björnulfr Stensson, whose wolf-embossed shield had seen blood on three continents.

Behind them, light cavalry milled restlessly, waiting for the signal to flank or flee.

Further south, King Cnut waited still, holding a second force in reserve near Nottingham, ready to spring north or west depending on which front broke first.

Crows circled overhead, eager and unashamed. The sky grew thick with cloud, and the wet scent of coming rain mingled with the stench of men, oil, and horses.

On one side, the Scots, unified by clan, blood, and insult, their spears gleaming and their war drums like thunder in the hills.

On the other, a wall of strangers, cobbled together by royal edict and survival instinct, praying that shields would hold and that pride might bridge the gap between them.

Somewhere behind the Scottish lines, a skald whispered into a horn's mouth:

"Steel will bend, men will break. But the bones of the land will remember who marched."

The English countryside burned.

Not with the fire of battlefields or marching hosts, but with quiet, seething embers that spread faster than any shield wall could stop.

The wolves had slipped past them, not as an army, but as an infection, swift, cunning, and merciless.

From the Trent to the Derwent, narrow riverways once used for grain barges now bore sleek, darkened hulls.

Knarrs and snekkjas, their sails furled, oars silent as they slid upriver like serpents.

The harbors of Alba had been a godsend: with access to the eastern coasts of Northumbria, Vetrulfr's men no longer needed to land far north or brave deep sea routes.

Dozens of ships fanned out, each one carrying ten or twenty of the fiercest warriors to ever leave Iceland's volcanic shores.

They rowed by moonlight, beached under willows and inlets, and vanished into the treeline with bow, axe, and torch.

They did not seek open combat.

They sought to cripple England's spine.

By the time the English levies realized something was amiss, villages had vanished into ash, their granaries charred, their fields salted with fire and stamped beneath hobnail boots.

Storehouses that fed entire fyrds were looted and burnt. Roads once used to ferry messages or provisions were littered with broken wagons, their guards slaughtered in ambush.

The wolves hunted in teams of eight or ten.

Mounted, with horses imported from across the sea, they galloped across back roads, through fen and field.

The locals called them ghosts, some said demons. Others whispered the name of their king like a curse:

"Vetrulfr. The white wolf. The son of Ullr."

It was not just terror they brought, it was precision.

The scouts from Vinland, native Skraelingr who moved with uncanny speed and silence, had mapped the English interior like they had once mapped the woods of their homeland.

Vetrulfr had taken the best of them south, and they now led the raiders through ancient deer trails, across hidden fordings, even into monastic cellars used for storing grain and wine,

One such raiding band led by Gormr now rode along a ridgeline overlooking a smoke-choked valley.

Below, another Anglo-Saxon hamlet burned, its villagers fleeing, its men too slow or too proud to surrender.

"They won't eat come winter," Gormr muttered, wiping soot from his beard. "And the king's men still think we're waiting in the north."

Another laughed, a Skraelingr scout, bare-chested, face painted in blue and white, a bow slung over his shoulder. He spoke in thick Norse, now learned from years under the wolf-flag:

"They chase the storm and miss the flood."

Gormr nodded.

Far to the south, Cnut still held his army, watching Duncan and the Scots, waiting for a hammer that would never fall.

The axe had already landed, deep behind him, gutting his kingdom from within.

---

The northern wind screamed through the heather-covered ridges, carrying the scent of blood, wet iron, and peat.

Rain had soaked the fields days before, and now the ground squelched beneath boots, horses, and the dead alike.

The marshland had narrowed the battlefield, just wide enough for two armies to face each other in a line of shields and defiance.

Upon one side stood the army of King Duncan of Alba.

Clad in layered tartan and boiled leather, reinforced with iron ring and steel plates gifted by the Wolf King himself, the Highlanders had never marched so well-armed.

Towering Norse-styled axes hung from their backs, and the front ranks bore round shields painted with the emblem of the the Red Boar of Moray.

Duncan rode ahead of them, his crimson cloak soaked but defiant, his sword raised high. His voice rang like thunder:

"Sons of the north! These men call you savages. These men burnt your ancestors, stole your grain, and called it peace. Now we bring fire to their door. Shield to shield, blade to belly, make them remember who we are!"

The cry of the Scots rose like the howling of wolves.

Opposing them stood the levy hosts of Cnut's northern earls, men pulled from York, Mercia, Northumbria, and the Danelaw.

Their shieldwall was tall, wide… and uneven. Some men bore fine mail and crested helms from Danish smiths.

Others held rough wooden shields and dull iron swords dulled by time and poor upkeep.

They were a patchwork, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, Saxons, and the occasional reluctant Briton, forged together more by Cnut's iron will than brotherhood.

Earl Eadric of York, one of the younger commanders, stared out across the field, nervously adjusting his helm.

"They look well-fed," he muttered.

His father, old Earl Hrothgar of Lincoln, spat into the mud.

"They're Highlanders. They drink oats and eat wind. But the axes are new. That white wolf bastard has armed them."

Another man to the left, a grizzled Dane with a half-shaved scalp and a war-hammer, growled:

"We fight wolves now… let's see if they bleed."

The clash came not with trumpets or banners, but with a thundering charge of wet boots and curses.

Duncan's forces surged forward in a disciplined wedge, smashing into the English center with precision, the tip led by his house guard, all armored in Norse mail, their blades forged in Iceland's fire.

The English line wavered.

The Scots' advance was not reckless, it was exact, hammering at the weakest levy points, driving them back step by step.

The mixed English forces struggled to anchor, each earl commanding in different dialects, shouting overlapping orders.

Axes bit through shields. Long spears thrust past mailed ribs. Screams were muffled by storm winds and the clashing din of steel on steel.

Then the Scots' flanks broke into the sides of the English line, curling around them like waves crashing against a breakwall weakened by rot.

By dusk, half the English line had collapsed, Earl Eadric wounded and carried away on a cart.

Earl Hrothgar and the hardiest Danes still held a southern knoll, rallying for a final stand.

Duncan, bloodied but alive, stood upon the field of the fallen. His sword was notched, his mail torn. But his eyes burned.

"We've broken the top of the spear," he muttered to his general, "but the shaft still waits."

He looked southward, toward London, where Cnut himself waited. Duncan knew the next move wasn't his.

It belonged to the wolves now.