The snow was thick that morning.
Too thick.
It muffled the crunch of boots, the creak of sinew-drawn bows, the whisper of stone-tipped spears being raised behind ridgelines blanketed in frost.
The Dorset warband trudged along the narrow fjord path in silence, heads low against the biting wind.
Their breath fogged the air in ragged plumes, mouths chapped and eyes half-shut from exhaustion and hunger.
Behind them, a dozen Saqqaq hunters walked with equal weariness, carrying the wounded, the last of their supplies, and the last flickers of hope.
They had not seen Vetrúlfr's longships in over a week. That alone should have been cause for relief.
But it wasn't.
The forest felt… wrong. The ravens were quiet. The hares had fled. Even the wind, once a trusted companion in these northern marches, now moaned with something like warning.
Then it came.
Not the roar of Nordic war horns.
But a shrill whistle, high and avian. Then another. A third, echoing across the birch-lined slopes.
