Thralls Of Skuld - Chapter 1: As The Seasons Turned The Tides

Thralls of Skuld - Chapter 1: As The Seasons Turned The Tides

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In the land of the Danir, the late summer was filled with a bustle unlike any other time of the year. The harvesting of barley and wheats and haymaking kept the hands of the farmers busy, filling the air with the husky scent of grains.

Boys arrived from the summer pastures with cattle and sheep. The livestock returned fattened enough to keep through the winter, and the boys were filled with the experiences of leaving home on their own for the first time. Those who had returned short of sheep, which had veered off on dangerous roads or fallen prey to the wolves, looked downtrodden, worried about their fathers’ disapproving gazes. The ones who returned successful stood a foot taller than when they had left, emboldened by the spirit of Thor, who was not only a God of strength and thunder, but also the kind of maturation that often happened in the transition from boyhood to manhood. The boys had no doubt felt it in those months alone in the land. Alongside the return of the herders, tradesmen left for the tradecenter in Lejre to trade off their surplus wares and acquire winter supplies.

Offerings were made across the land to Freyr, the beautiful Vanir God of bountiful harvests and fertility. Those who knew how, burned runes of Nauthiz and Wunjo for endurance and good fortune for the coming months, knowing that Jera, the rune of fertility, would no longer do them any good. Others whispered simple rites of galdr, a throaty and rhythmic song to enchant their scythes for the final harvest of the year, hoping to turn the Gods in their favor and keep their harvested grain from catching rot in their storage chambers.

The village of Eiklund, too, was abuzz with the vital preparations before a long and harsh frost grabbed the lands. It was a larger settlement, with more than a dozen longhouses scattered across the grassy and lushly forested environs. The weather was milder here, away from the harsh and windy coast of Selund, the large island where Eiklund lay.

Eira found herself dragged into the woods every day by Unn, who wanted to forage the forest floor for the gifts of the last days of summer. Berries, mushrooms and medicinal herbs were abundant in the dense forests, which was just a few hours hike from Eiklund. Unn was enthusiastic in her plans for the big bundles of angelica and yarrow they found, remembering the strengthening tinctures her grandmother used to make from the dried herbs in wintertime. Eira was more excited for the bilberries and lingonberries, which she would use for marmalade, and the hazelnuts which would taste sweet like honey once they reached the dead of winter.

The days were still mild. Rays of sun broke through the canopies throughout the day, making the task light work. The two women did not mind spending many days in only each other’s company. They were more like sisters than friends, in both good and bad ways. Still, it was clear that they were not related. Unn was blonde, tall and plump with a soft and friendly face. Eira was shorter, her body strong and her hair long and auburn. She had a chiseled face with a strong jaw and dark brows that often fell naturally into a slight frown.

One day, they had returned painfully late in the evening to Eiklund because Unn had insisted on continuing their gathering “for just one more hour”, for almost three hours. The next day, Eira showed up with supplies for camping overnight. If they were going to spend all day out there, they might as well do so without the hassle of scurrying home late in the treacherous half-dark of dusk.

They had spent that evening in a makeshift campsite, sharing stories of the inhabitants of Eiklund and draughts of freshly brewed late-summer beer. As the hours stretched into the night, their conversation had slowed to slurred confessions about life. Unn missed her grandmother terribly, who had been her last living family member. Unn’s mother and father had died after a cough took hold of them when they were still supposed to have many years left in Midgard. Unn’s brother had died in battle. The grandfather, more mercifully, died of old age, reuniting him with his children in death in Niflheim.

Unn’s grandmother had been the village herbalist and healer, and spent the last years of her life passing on her skills to Unn. When dysentery had taken the grandmother, her final gift to Unn was teaching her how to care for the dying, and after, how to prepare them for burial. Unn had not wanted to learn it, not like that. But now, over the bonfire, she admitted to Eira that she was glad their last days together were spent learning instead of fretting and grieving.

The grief never came, not truly. After her grandmother’s death, Unn had taken over her duties as a healer for the community, although she still had things to learn. But Unn was studious and hardworking, and Eira helped her as often as she could. 

Unn often thanked Eira wholeheartedly for her help, believing that Eira did it simply from the goodness of her heart and the sisterly bond they shared. In truth, Eira had a keen interest in the skills and magick of healing and herbalism. Being a warrior herself, she saw the difference those skills made on the battlefield. 

Evoking Eira’s namesake, the Goddess of healing and mercy, Eir, was something no commoner knew how to do. Healing magick was reserved for the noble Jarl’s, their family, advisors and favoured fighters. A highborne warrior who knew how to incite healing galdr on the battlefield often saved wounded warriors from bleeding out before they could be attended to. For warriors of Eira’s station, all they could hope was to be able to carry the surviving injured back to the closest healer after the battle ended, before the cold fever of rot took hold. Then, the healers would work the kind of simpler herbalism that Unn was now foraging to prepare for.

The timely preparation of the healing ingredients was vital this late summer. Unn had been nervous since Jarl Ingmar’s men had brought news to Eiklund of an impending war. The Jarl, whose jarldom reached from the northern coast of Selund and into the countryside where Eiklund laid, had recently sent his men around the jarldom to raise their banners and swear their fealty, announcing that Jarl Ingmar had finally bent his knee to King Gorm.

In just a few years, the ambitious Gorm had consolidated the independent jarldoms across the land of the Danir into one united country. Jarl Ingmar was one of the last jarls to be convinced of the King’s vision of a united kingdom. Deeply entrenched in his own decade-old bloodfeud with the neighbouring Jarl Thorstein, Ingmar had seen the unison of the jarldoms as an admission of defeat. Yet, with a wrath and force that could only be explained as godly intervention, Gorm had managed to break every single jarl into either loyalty or submission.

After waging internal battles to solidify his rule over the Danir Jarls, Gorm has turned his eye towards the land of the Sviar. He was now calling upon the forces of his jarls to raise their banners under him and campaign into Svidland. Effectively, King Gorm had freed the people of Eiklund from one blood stained doom, only to bind them into another.

Unn had fretted, knowing she would be without her grandmother to care for the casualties.

Eira, on the other hand, had been excited. She had remarked herself as an exceptional shieldmaiden under Jarl Ingmar’s constitution. In the last few years of territorial warring between Ingmar and his neighbour Jarl Thorstein, Ingmar’s land had become famed for breeding a strong and stubborn kind of people, suitable for warfare. That was why their villages were first to be visited when it came to calling for axes.

Eira, coming from modest roots and destined for nothing great, had seen her natural skills as a fighter as an equal curse and blessing. She told Unn as much that night in the forest, where they had shared admissions over beer and bonfire. “Fighting feels like grabbing fate by its balls, escaping the grip of the Norns for just a moment. As if I can control the outcome of my life, instead of being left to the whims and mercies of Jarls or the Gods, as we are in every other aspect of life.”

“Do you really feel that you have no control over your own destiny?”

“Do you not?” Eira was both curious and provoking. “The Jarls decide when we fight, the Gods decide when we die. All we get to decide is what to put in our mouths, given the Gods have blessed us with a bountiful harvest enough to fill our bellies.” 

Unn shrugged, and began thoughtfully: “When my parents died, I felt like that. Like my life had been decided by something out of my control, knowing only the Norns hold the power to do that.” She weighed her words for a moment before continuing “But most of the time I believe that I can influence the outcome. That’s why I wanted to be a healer like my grandmother.”

That makes two of us, thought Eira, but she did not speak it. She yearned to be in charge of both life and death, believing that if she wielded the same authority to make decisions as the Jarls and Kings, many innocent lives might have been spared. It was probably naïve, thinking that might and lordship would not corrupt her, the same way it did to those who were born into it.

“Beer makes you think too much of fate and power,” Unn poked at her. It was true. “Let us rest, tomorrow you can take control of someone’s life by collecting enough yarrow to save your brethren’s lives in the months to come.”

As Eira laid to rest on the ground, still warm from the abundance of sun they had been blessed with that day, she thought of the many injustices borne to her community from the will of the Gods. When she thought of that injustice, which she did often, she thought especially of her shield-brother Geir.

Geir was one of the most famed living fighters of his station in the land of the Danir. While Geir was not of a bloodline important enough to sit at the high table of wartime decision-making, he was often chosen as warband leader to lead scores of warriors on the battlefield. He was almost impossibly strong, resembling Thor himself, exceptionally large and fiery-haired with thundering eyes. More importantly he was smarter than any other person on the battlefield. Where other warband leaders fought with a fierceful belief in sheer strength, Geir saw holes in their defence and patterns in their attacks, guiding the shield walls this way and that. He was quick to make decisions, almost always anticipating correctly, each and every time overpowering the enemy through wit as well as skill.

Geir’s wife, Siv, had bore him four sons, but only one had survived. A quiet boy of five summers, born in the shadow of the death of his kin before him and after him, Geir revered that boy like a gift from the Goddess Freyja herself. Once, a neighbour had jested that Geir, the best warrior on all of Selund, had taken all the strength for himself and left nothing for his kin to survive on this earth. Eira had found the jest cruel, and with a biting look silenced anyone who might think to laugh. She knew that perhaps the cruellest part was the hint of truth, knowing that the Gods indeed enacted these cruel ironies in Midgard, seemingly intent to not let anyone receiving their favor live a life too easy.

The last time Siv had been pregnant was two winters ago. In the cold dead of night, she had woken bloodied and birthed a still child. The wails of that night had woken the neighbours, and Eira knew that they were not only from Siv. The bereavement had settled on Geir’s face like curdled milk for more than a year.

Siv, a quietly resolute woman, had gone to Unn the next day, requesting a tincture to keep her bleeding at bay, and prayed to Freyja to still her womb. Unn, a helpless gossip with access to too much information from her occupation, had told Eira, but also rushed that she must not tell anyone, especially not Geir. Eira knew that Siv could not take another heartbreak, and forgave her for never telling her husband. At the same time, Eira knew that the only reason the scorned mask had lifted from Geir’s face, returning a booming laughter to his lips and life to his eyes, was the belief that he would yet father another child.

Such were the many fates of the people Eira called her neighbours, friends, shield brethren and sisters. Some took staunch devotion to the Gods, believing they might turn the tide of their fates with reverence. Others, under no illusion that they might have control or influence over the Gods, settled to just live their life on earth, accepting all of the occasional cruelty and glory it entailed. Eira thought those latter people were the true thralls of whichever fate Skuld, the Norn weaver of the future, had decided for them.

Jarl Ingmar’s bloodfeud with Jarl Thorstein had spun the destiny of many. The politics of bloodlines and the ruling class ranged far beyond their mundane concerns - it was not born from the will of the commoner. But as it spilled from the halls of nobility into animosity in the settlements of the commoners over the last decades, so had the bloodshed. Some had emerged victorious, like Geir and even Eira. The fierce battlefield between the two jarls had been a place for warriors to prove themselves and gain the favor of the Gods, the Jarl and the people. Others had died, screaming and writhing in agony, entire settlements engulfed by magickal fires set by humans birthed from evil spirits.

Eira had often marvelled at how the Jarl’s most favored men would not dirty their hands on the battlefield like true warriors. Born to nobility, they learned from a young age the ways of complex magick, wisdom that was forbidden to the commoners. Yet, instead of fighting on the battlefield, the highborns wielded their magick in cruel and unforgivable ways, stealing from both themselves and their victims the chance to live forever in Valhalla or Folkvangr. That glorious afterlife was only given to those who died on the battlefield. The highborne left the commoners to fight out their petty wars on the battlefield with rudimentary magick. The commoners hoped, often futilely, that a simple weapon incantation or rune casting might turn the battle in their favor, knowing full well that either Jarl and their mages could end the feud in a duel of magick, if they only dared face each other.Musings over the impunity of Gods and men alike often consumed her when she closed her eyes at night. This evening, the beer had laid a soft blanket over her mind, lulling her to sleep before the anger took hold of her and catapulted her into sleeplessness. She embraced Nótt’s cloak as the night enveloped her.