Embers of fire help us get through the cold winter

Days lost their names, becoming one meal after another by the hearth. Ragnar began to vaguely perceive the passage of a "day" by the weariness of her body and the hunger of her stomach. Tora, on the other hand, invented a game of carving marks on the pillars of the longhouse, each shallow mark representing a complete patrol—from the doorway to the storeroom, and back to the hearth.

In this monotonous, repetitive silence, a figure, carrying the scent of the cold wind and sea ice outside, staggered and pushed open the heavy wooden door of the longhouse.

He was Sogir, a one-eared merchant who frequently traveled between the fjords and Broken Bay. His fur coat was half-wet and covered in ice, his cheeks were blue with cold, and most strikingly, his usual shrewd and cunning smile was gone, replaced by a barely concealed panic. The cold air he brought in seemed even more biting than usual.

Haral waved away the children who surrounded him, eager to learn about the newfangled contraption, and gestured for Olaf to bring over a large mug of steaming grog. Sogil took the wooden mug with both hands, gulped it down, and coughed, his eyes reddening from the strong liquor. Once he caught his breath, his first words were:

"Harald, your fleet... are the keels still sturdy?"

The longhouse fell silent instantly, save for the crackling of the hearth. The men stopped wiping their weapons or mending their fishing nets, and the women's spindles hung suspended in mid-air.

Harald's facial muscles remained perfectly still, only his eyebrows lowered almost imperceptibly. "Stronger than many people's spines. What about your 'Seagull'? It sounds like it hit something it shouldn't have."

Sogir swallowed hard, his voice dry. "It's ice. A damn ice floe. There's a crack in the bow, and Eric's men are patching it up with tar and hemp... but that's nothing." He raised his eyes, his gaze sweeping over Harald before quickly lowering again, staring at the swirling liquid in his glass. "The Bloodhawk family has a new master. Old Aswald didn't survive the blizzard after the winter solstice."

A low humming sound spread through the crowd.

"His son is in power now," Sogir licked his cracked lips. "Sigurd. They call him 'Golden' Sigurd."

Ragnar leaned against his mother's leg and saw his father's hand holding the wine glass, his knuckles slightly raised and pale. He didn't quite understand the full meaning of "changing masters," but he felt the sudden drop in temperature in the longhouse.

"Go on," Harald said calmly, like water deep in a fjord, undisturbed by surface waves.

Sogir took a deep breath, his speech quickening as if to unload a burden: "As soon as he took office, he replaced everyone in the ports and markets. Now, entering Broken Bay is inspected more thoroughly than gathering intelligence, and taxes have doubled. And that's not the worst of it..." He paused, his voice lowering even further, "The day before I left, his men were laughing and talking loudly in the tavern, saying... saying that once the ice melts, they'll come and see if the fjords of Leosvik really do harbor fish made of gold, just like the legends say."

With a clang, Ragnar's uncle, Brody, slammed the dagger in his hand onto the wooden block. His face flushed red, and the veins on his neck throbbed.

Harald raised his hand, stopping the angry outburst that was about to erupt. His gaze fell on Sogir's face: "That's all he said?"

Sogil hesitated for a moment, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small object, placing it on the low table between them. It was a small piece of rough amber, of ordinary quality, the kind the Fuyoldela family often used for trade. However, at this moment, the amber's surface was covered with an unsightly layer of black grime.

"This is..." Olaf asked softly.

“Sigurd,” Sogir’s voice was almost inaudible, “in his longhouse, in front of many people, he threw this piece of amber… into the center of the fire. He said… ‘The Foyoldera are like this stone, they look bright, but when burned, they’re just an eyesore of black slag. Soon, we will take over the whole beach, not just a few pebbles.’”

Dead silence.

Ragnar saw his mother's hand gently rest on her lower abdomen. He looked up and saw that his mother's jawline was taut, but her back was ramrod straight. His father, meanwhile, stared at the blackened amber, silent for a long time.

"How many days will it take to repair Sogir's ship?" Harald suddenly asked a seemingly unrelated question.

"At the earliest... it will take three or four days. We'll have to wait until the weather improves..."

"Just stay for four days," Haral interrupted him. "Use the best materials and repair it carefully. Fuyoldra will cover the cost of repairing the ship." He stood up, his tall figure casting a huge shadow in the firelight. "As for Sigurd... I heard him. Whether the fish in Leosvik are made of gold or not, we'll see when he can swim across this icy sea."

His voice wasn't loud, but it was like a boulder thrown into still water, creating heavy ripples. The men exchanged glances, their anger slowly settling into something harder. The women resumed their work, but with more force than before, as if they were twisting their resolve as they twisted the ropes.

“There’s one more thing,” Sogir said in a low voice, “The merchants from Broken Bay say that a tribe is migrating to the eastern grasslands. A very large group.”

Harald frowned: "Where to?"

"West side."

Sogir paused. "I heard they call themselves... Khazar."

"Their west side is the wall of Markheim; they can't get through," Harald commented, not continuing the conversation. He wasn't in the mood to think about those distant stories.

The news seeped in like icy water, permeating every inch of the longhouse. The half-day seemed exceptionally long and silent. Even Tora was much quieter; she stopped running around and instead sat close to her brother by the fire, unconsciously clutching her little wooden sword, her gaze frequently drifting towards the doorway, as if wary of something that might pounce in from the darkness.

Ragnar suddenly turned to his mother beside him and asked, "Sigurd...did anyone hold him when he was a child?"

Olaf's hand paused for a moment.

She looked down at her son. The four-year-old boy had soft, light brown hair that clung to his forehead, and his eyes were a pale gray in the firelight.

"Why do you ask that?"

Ragnar thought about it for a long time.

"I don't know," he said. "I just feel... if no one hugs me, I'd really want to burn other people's things."

-----------------

Amidst this weighty wait, change quietly arrived.

A young man who had gone out to fetch ice suddenly stumbled back, forgetting to wipe the ice off the soles of his boots from the snowdrift at the door, and rushed straight into the warm interior, bringing in a gust of cold wind.

"Light!" he gasped, pointing outside the door, his eyes wide. "South! The sky in the south... it's getting light!"

People paused for a moment, then surged toward the door like a tide, crowding around the narrow doorway to look outside.

Ragnar was picked up by his mother. He looked outside and at first saw nothing but the familiar, dense, deep blue night sky. He followed the direction of people's gaze and looked beyond the fjord entrance, at the place where the sea and sky should meet.

there.

In the due south, above the horizon, where it should have been pure darkness, a very faint, hazy light seeped through. Like a huge black velvet curtain, behind which someone held up a lamp covered in thick dust, its light struggling to penetrate the fabric fibers, sparingly spilling out just a tiny bit.

It didn't last long. As if the night had only blinked briefly, that grayish-white hue receded like the tide, only to be completely covered again by the deep blue that spread from all around, leaving no trace. The sky returned to darkness.

But everyone who saw it knew it had been there.

The crowd at the entrance of the longhouse lingered, silent. They simply stood there, gazing at the vast, dark expanse to the south, their faces displaying an almost devout focus. Harald stood at the very front, snowflakes falling on his shoulders and hair; he looked like an ice sculpture.

Then, he bent down, grabbed a handful of clean, soft snow from beside his feet, and vigorously smeared it on his face and forehead. The icy stimulation made him take a deep breath, and white mist billowed from his mouth. He turned around, his gaze sweeping over every face reflecting the snow's glow.

"Light," his voice was crystal clear, chilled by the cold, "remembers the way back."

He paused, glancing at the children inside, who were trying to understand everything, illuminated by the firelight.

"We need to get ready too."

Night fell completely again, but the atmosphere in the longhouse was different. The chilling heaviness brought by the bad news was infused with a completely different kind of anticipation by that glimpse of daylight. Olaf began to more carefully count the seeds in the earthenware jars in the corner, and the sounds of the women checking the farm tools grew louder.

Late at night, Ragnar vaguely heard hushed conversations around the fire in his sleep. It was his father and mother.

"...that boy Sigurd," the father's voice was muffled by the crackling of the wood, "I watched him grow up, his ambition like an over-tempered knife, bright, but brittle."

The mother paused for a moment in her spinning voice. "Even a brittle knife can pierce a fur coat. His father at least knew that even the narrowest strait needs two shores to be called a strait."

After a long silence, his father finally responded, his voice even lower, almost as if he were talking to himself, but Ragnar caught the key words:

"...Once the first furrow cuts through the frozen soil...our soldiers must already be standing behind their oars."

The sound of the spindle rang out again.

"Well then," the mother's voice was calm as still water, "we need to think of a name before we cut the furrow."

Ragnar turned over and fell into an even deeper sleep. Outside, the cold wind in Leosvik still howled, but it seemed to carry a faint, almost imperceptible breath of life.