The fortress rose like a scar of black stone and pale timber against the Greenland coast.
Its ramparts were rimmed with sharpened stakes, born of stone and mortar, cunningly laid, stout enough to turn aside a warband's fury.
Within, long halls of driftwood and whalebone ribs clustered close, smoke coiling up from their high vents.
It was here on this frozen strand far from the crowded fjords of Iceland, that Vetrúlfr had carved his seat away from home.
Through the bitter months of winter, his men had worked the earth and rock, building walls, digging fire pits, driving the posts deep into the frost-hard ground.
Now spring cracked the ice along the shallows, and ships came; low-slung knarrs and slender fishing boats nosing into the small harbor.
Some bore furs and dried fish to trade. Others brought curious settlers from scattered homesteads along Greenland's fjords, drawn by rumor like crows to a battlefield.
They spoke quietly as they gathered outside the fortress gates.
