Into the East

By Michael T Ashgillian

It is one hundred years since the Fimbul winter. Danger no longer threatens the Northlands, but as a consequence, Alex has become restless and yearns for new adventure. Far from his kingdom, he finds what he seeks as he journeys into the east.

Into The East is the fourth of a series of ten fantasy adventure books by Oxfordshire writer Michael T. Ashgillian,

Known as the Northland Tales, the first book, Under The Tree, was published in 2013, the second, The Fairey Flag in 2014, as was the third, Fimbul (The Awakening of the Wolf).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Cap Publishing
• Release date: Jan 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9780993164231

Michael T Ashgillian

David P Elliot was born in Reading in the UK and, apart from 8 years in the Police Service in the 1970s, he spent almost 30 years in the IT industry before leaving to concentrate on his first love, writing. His debut novel ‘CLAN’, to which ‘The Gathering’ is a sequel, is a historical, supernatural thriller, first published in December 2008 and so far has sold in 16 countries, as well as being translated into German and can be downloaded as an audio book in MP3 or iPod formats narrated by the author. He has 3 grown up children and 3 grandchildren one of which inspired the novel. He now lives in Faringdon UK, with his partner Monika, a native of Munich. ‘Pieces of Fate’ his second book is an anthology of short stories in the ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ mode and is available in paperback or as an e-book, with the individual stories available only in e-book form. He is also working on developing ‘Clan’ as a feature film. You can find out more at www.davidpelliot.com

Book preview

PREFACE

The site of the ancient long barrow known as Waylands Smithy, set in the rolling hills of southern Oxfordshire called the ‘Downlands’, has an unusual, otherworld feeling about it.

Some people who visit the place sense that there is something quite mysterious there, and in the land around it.

That may not be too surprising. Archaeologists have dated human activity at the site to more than five thousand, seven hundred years before the present day.

In that time, no doubt, both Wayland and his Smithy have seen a great many comings and goings.

Alfred, the great ninth century Anglo-Saxon king, for example, would have been very familiar with the place. He marched his army, the Fyrd, up and down the Ridgeway past the Smithy many times during the period of his battles against the Vikings of the eastern Danelaw.

This book, Into the East, is the fourth of the ten Northland Tales.

MTA

CHAPTER 1: The Wolf’s Return to Hel

The wolf was dead, but only after a fashion.

‘Dead’ has many meanings. In body it was, but in spirit, it most certainly was not.

The spirit of a demon from the Halls of Hel could not be killed so easily, not with a simple stone axe. After some time rejuvenating itself, the wolf continued on its way back towards the four standing stones and the Smithy.

The Halder warrior, the one who had thrown the axe at the wolf, on that dark and foggy mid-winter’s night, had known that too. He had been waiting there patiently for many years, like a statue, high upon that stone plinth, in the very centre of the Market Square of a very old Oxfordshire town called Wantage.

The Halder man had taken the likeness of a human king of long ago. King Alfred had been born there, in Wantage, in the year 849AD. He had been a fair and just lawmaker and had cared very much for the welfare of his people.

Not all kings had been like that, of course.

It had also been the perfect cover for the stone warrior from the Northlands.

Had the warrior had the power to destroy the wolf, he most certainly would have done so. Instead, his true purpose in throwing that axe had been only to save the lives of three children. One, the boy, was a Northland king, the others, his sisters, were both queens of that same realm. By his action, the Halder would send the demon back into the Otherworld, from which it had come.

Once returned to its own world, the wolf would find its way back to its Mistress, the one who dwelled in the grey, unhappy shadows of the underworld kingdom of Hel.

Oblivious to the strange events of that long mid-winter’s night, through it all, humankind had slept, whilst the spirit of the demon wolf had silently made its way back towards Waylands Smithy across the deserted, snowy Chiltern Hills, along frozen, frosty, barren paths.

There, the gateway back into its own world would remain open, between four, tall, grey standing stones; but that would only last until the very last stroke of midnight. That was when mid-winter’s day would end.

Along the way, the wolf spirit stopped briefly at some marshy ground which lay at the bottom of a valley, between two steep hills.

Perhaps it needed a rest.

There, it sniffed the ground, as if searching for something. As it did so, a long lost memory of an event that had happened there, on that very spot, suddenly returned. It was something that had taken place thousands of years before, for this wolf was a very long-lived wolf indeed. Carefully, it stepped onto the surface of the half-frozen marsh and made its way towards the centre. Had it not been so cold and the marsh so firm, the wolf would have sunk into it and disappeared without a trace.

The wolf knew that too. This would be its only chance.

There, at the very centre, the creature quickly pushed its long snout into the bog, its jaws closing around something that lay within. The demon pulled and tugged at the object for some minutes. Then, at last, it succeeded in what it was trying to do, dragging out what had lain hidden within.

Satisfied with its find, and hoping the gift would please its Mistress, the wolf continued on its way, the object held firmly in its jaws for the remainder of its journey.

Once returned to the Northlands and the Underworld below, the wolf held up its gruesome find before its Mistress. Tseth took it from its jaws, examining the wolf’s discovery with interest.

She turned the long, slender, brown leathery object over and over again in her bony claws for some time, studying it all the while.

‘It is the arm of a human, one who has been long dead,’ She announced at last.

‘See, there is an arm cuff upon it, one that could only belong to a king.’

With that, Tseth quickly tore the simple golden band from the upper part of the withered arm, and with complete disregard, casually tossed the limb to the ground beside Her chair.

The grateful wolf bent its head to the floor and took it up in its jaws, before disappearing into the shadows of the grey halls behind Her.

Ignoring the demon, She instead turned her attention to the simple, broad, gold band.

‘This object may be of use to Me, in times to come,’ She said to Herself, almost as an afterthought. She placed the golden armband on Her lap and fell into a deep slumber.

Tseth had been right in Her analysis, for that long, brown, leathery object was indeed the remains of a human arm. It was one which had been preserved in the black, muddy ooze of that marsh.

The wolf had torn the arm from its body, a body which, even now, remained stuck fast deep within that bog. It had belonged to a king, one who had been sacrificed and cast into it, some three thousand, or more, years before.

Quite why a king had been sacrificed in such a manner, no-one, except possibly the long lived Queen of Hel Herself, could have known.

Archaeologists may yet find the body, but for the moment, there it continues to lie. They will wonder, if it is ever discovered, where the left arm went.

CHAPTER 2: Return

Mid-summer’s day, 21st June, was on a Wednesday that year. It was a school day for Rebecca, of course, but there would still be time to get to the Smithy after it ended, and for her brother and sister to accompany her too, if they wanted.

‘I need a break,’ she had complained to her parents. ‘Just for once, let me see the sun set on White Horse Hill. It’s mid-summer after all: it only happens once a year. It’s not like I’m asking that much; and I’ve done all the revision I need to do,’ she had spoken confidently, all the while her voice betraying a well-rehearsed tone of exasperation.

It had taken special pleading to get her way with her parents, but get her way she did.

That was quite normal.

Alex could go, his mother and father agreed, but it was much harder for the three children to get their parents to agree to allow Fiona to accompany them. It was harder still to convince her mother and father that all three of them should be allowed to go there alone.

Their father had quite liked the idea of seeing the sunset on mid-summer’s day. But Rebecca wouldn’t allow him to come, for obvious reasons.

‘It’s just not cool for you to come along too, dad, to be seen with us,’ she had told him. Those had been his eldest daughter’s sixteen words of banishment.

Both Alex and Fiona had agreed with Rebecca. ‘It’s just not cool!’ they had said adamantly.

So it was that, instead of accompanying them to the hill, after dropping them off at the National Trust car park beside it, their father had a choice. He could sit there, alone, in the car park, and await their return. Or he could drive back down the hill to the pub in Woolstone and sit there instead.

It hadn’t been a difficult choice. With a glass of lemonade (and a dash of lime juice in it) and a packet of crisps on the table next to it, their father waited patiently for the pick-up.

They would be back at the car park by 10.00pm, Rebecca had promised.

It was 8.30pm now.

The three children paused at the wooden latch-gate at the top of the steps which led up from the car park. From there, a long grass path meandered up towards the crest of White Horse Hill. It was from those steps they watched as their father’s car left the car park in a cloud of dust.

It was a hot, sunny evening, just as summer days should be. When they were quite sure the car was out of sight, they returned to the car park, walked across it to the opposite side and took a left turn out of it. Southward, up a tarmac road they strolled, to where the surface turned to gravel instead. After continuing along it briefly, they turned right and made their way along the footpath that led them up to Wayland’s Smithy, some fifteen minutes later.

Rebecca, Fiona and Alex smiled to each other.

It was a lovely, warm evening, so very different now from the last time they had come. Then it had been mid-winter and a bleak day indeed. They had had to wrap up warm against a bitterly cold, clammy, freezing fog.

‘What a difference six months makes!’ exclaimed Alex.

His sisters nodded in agreement.

‘I’m glad we have seasons,’ added Fiona. ‘Imagine what it would be like without any summer and winter.’

‘Or spring and autumn,’ agreed Rebecca. ‘That’s what it would be like living on the Equator. There aren’t any seasons there.’

They made their way between the four standing stones and stepped up to the entrance of the long barrow. There, they crouched down low, ducking their heads below the stone lintel, and continued onward into the darkness.

Soon, they were back in the Northlands once more, just as they had known they would be. There was no hurry, for time now stood virtually still in their own world, so they made a leisurely way from the Northland forest. Across the foothills and down onto the plains they continued. From there, they continued on eastwards, all the way to the Hill of Dragonwhyte, where they were met and welcomed with open arms by Anna once more.

In all, it had taken nine days to get there. Along the way, they had found plenty of fruits and nuts to sustain them, for mid-summer in the Northlands was a time of plenty.

Several days after that, they returned to the Winter Palace where each took their rightful place once more upon their thrones, in the great hall within. It was there, as word of their return spread, that the thirty knights, and a great many amongst the loyal Northlanders nearby, came and again pledged their allegiance to their king and two queens.

It was to be a time of peace, tranquillity and contentment, just as Rebecca had foreseen.

That had all happened on mid-summer four years before.

In their Northland lives, Fiona was now thirteen and a half years old, Alex sixteen, and Rebecca nineteen.

It was on this, the third mid-summer’s day of their new reign, that once more, each with their Vardogyl, Shemara, Lu and Eek, they had come and knelt within the Stone Circle, in the shade of Yggdrasil. It was their custom to do so on that day, to renew their royal vows before Anna, guardian of the Great Tree.

That was the one event none of them ever chose to miss.

‘En ole parempi, enkä erikoisempia kuin kukaan tai mikään muu,’ they had all repeated before Anna – ‘I am no better, nor am I more special than anyone or anything else.

‘Nor I am more important than anyone or anything, nor am I cleverer, nor more deserving than any other.’

These few words were a gentle reminder to all who had been chosen by Valhalla to sit upon one of the three Northland thrones, lest they forget that they were chosen in order to serve their kingdom and its subjects, rather than for it to serve them.

Anna had smiled as she looked down upon them.

‘The Northlands is always a better place when a king and two queens sit upon their Northland thrones,’ she had declared, as she often did.

‘Indeed it is,’ grunted Trollhammer, seated as he was upon a wooden chair beside them. Despite his great age now, it was the one event he would never even think of missing either, for that moment of the year was a very special time, not only to him, but to all Northlanders.

It was just as he said this that an unannounced shadow slowly cast itself over the sun and the light began to fade from the sky, as if night had fallen before its time. The darkness lasted for only a minute or so, before the sun emerged once more.

The Northland king and queens looked up at Anna and saw the sudden expression of concern upon her face.

It was at this time, just after that particular mid-summer’s day, that the fourth of our ten Northland Tales begins.

CHAPTER 3: The Realisation of Tseth

Tseth did not have any rules, or laws for that matter, other than Her own. She was the law in Her kingdom of the underworld. Whatever She said was the law.

It made for a very unhappy place, a kingdom of injustice and fear; but then, that was the point of Hel; it was a place of punishment, until the end of the world itself.

For some time now, for more than one hundred years, Tseth had begun to think of Herself rather like the reaper in a field. She imagined Herself standing in a meadow full of summer flowers, with a long, sharp scythe.

As She swung the long blade this way and that, to Her great frustration, as soon as Her back was turned, the place She had only just cut and cleared quickly began to thrive once more.

She realised, at that point, that all She had managed to do was create an opportunity for yet more flowers to emerge in the place of those She had destroyed.

Yet, despite all the destruction and sadness She had visited upon the place, like those imagined flowers in the meadow, the creatures of the Northlands had always sprung back to life.

Despite all Her great efforts, in time, peace and contentment was always restored to those who dwelled within the Northlands.

Since the beginning of that last century, since the day of Ragnarok, She had seen Her empty halls slowly begin to fill once more with the spirits of the wicked; but it had all happened very slowly, far too slowly for Tseth. It seemed that there were few in the Northlands with any appetite for wrongdoing any more.

Many of those who had entered Her afterlife realm in that time, most in fact, had been the spirits of Avars. They were creatures from a race of ruthless, nomadic hunters; a people who lived deep within the dark shadows of the Scythian forest. It bounded the Eastern Cursus, the easternmost limit, and boundary, of the Northlands.

By nature, the giantess Tseth was impatient. She had little desire to wait until Her Halls were full once more, before She could again resume Her battle against the world of the living.

That would take far too long for Her liking.

So instead, She devised yet another cunning and devious plan, by which She might regain the lands of the living, lands which had once been Hers, by right, so very long ago.

After many years of deep thinking about how She might finally achieve Her one great ambition, an idea began to form in Her mind.

‘Why not use humans, those who still live, to do My bidding instead?’ she asked Herself. ‘Why wait until those Avars have passed into My realm before they fulfil My wishes?’

If She didn’t have to wait for them to die, why should She?

It was then Tseth allowed Herself a brief smile and at once set Her mind to work on this idea.

Because of their evil ways, Tseth soon learned that She could control the minds of the Avars, even whilst they continued to live their earthly lives.

Thus, through Her cunning, She began to corrupt their minds. So successful in doing so was She, that Tseth soon became their Goddess, not only worshipped by those in the afterlife of Hel, but even by those upon the earth above.

It had been easy.

The uncivilised and warlike Avars, dwelling as they did in complete isolation from the rest of mankind in those dark, impenetrable, sinister forests, willingly accepted Her as their Mistress, and bowed unquestioningly to Her will.

Now, in those days, there were only two powers of any real consequence within the world of the living. One was the Kingdom of the North. The other was the Empire of the Illyrians, most of whose people lived securely within the great, invincible walls that bound the great city of Astuethera.

Tseth had found, many times to Her cost, that the Northland peoples, that is the elven, the humans and other creatures which lived there, could not be so easily corrupted, defeated, or bent to Her will. She had cast Her vast legions of ghouls and demons against them many times now, but each time, Her careful plans had all been undone and laid to waste.

They were the flowers of Her imagined meadow.

Much of the reason for those failures had been due to the watchful eye of the elven Woodland Queen, Anna Yggdrasil, guardian of The Great Tree, and her powerful elven magic. The rest of the Hel Queen’s woes could be laid at the feet of a Northland king called Zander and those two queens, Iona and Beccar. It had been on account of their bravery, and then by the laws which they had given to its people, that their kingdom was so strong and resistant to Her will.

Likewise, the peoples of the proud Empire of Illyria would no longer bow before Her; that much Tseth also knew. If She wanted to see the downfall of either, She would have to confront them: meet them head on. Only then might She break them, or so She thought.

It was then, as She sat in the gloomy light of Her unhappy, cold, dim halls that She turned Her mind back once more to the image of those meadow flowers in a summer field; the ones which always grew back, despite all Her best efforts to destroy them.

She mulled over this picture for many a long year, until, at last, another clever new idea entered Her mind.

It was this.

If She could not stop those flowers from growing, why not plant a thistle amongst them instead? A thistle, in the right conditions, would grow quickly and become taller than those flowers around it. Then it would cast its long, sharp-pointed leaves over the ground about it in a broad circle, creating a permanent darkness over the soil below. That would prevent the other, gentler plants from growing there.

She would, of course, cut away any flowers thereabouts with Her scythe - any flowers which did somehow find a way to grow around Her thistle. In that way, She would protect and nurture it, allowing it to grow stronger and larger than any other plants in that meadow.

But who, or what, would be Her thistle? What creature might She find that She could use to sew unhappiness within that meadow, casting its own long shadows across that field of summer flowers?

CHAPTER 4: The Slave

Tseth cast Her dull yellow eyes about Her halls and then up towards the world of the living, far above Her.

It was as She did so, that deep within the forests of Scythia, Tseth spied a desperately unhappy and frightened little boy. He was an Illyrian, a lonely child slave of no more than ten years old, one who had been torn from a happy life and two loving parents. He had been taken from his home in a raid almost three years before, and held captive by those fearsome Avars.

Tseth could sense there was a degree of intelligence within the young boy’s mind. He had to be clever simply to have survived for so long amongst Her Avars.

Had She found Her thistle, She wondered to Herself. Tseth allowed Herself a smile. Perhaps She had.

Yes: that single, frightened, little boy might perhaps be the one.

‘But where will be that meadow of flowers that I so often think about?’ She asked Herself.

‘It will be the great empire of Astuethera, that lies far to the east of the Northlands,’ She had replied.

Tseth’s legions of demons had suffered three heavy defeats in three hundred years. Few now therefore remained at Her disposal within Her halls, all having been finally lost in Her great gamble that had been the disaster of Ragnarok.

To fill them once more, She knew, would take some time.

Yes, there had been new recruits of course, for evil men and women were always to be found in the world of the living. With time, She was able to see clearly the nature and spirit of humankind as it was, the Avars especially. She had decided that She would focus all Her efforts on corrupting that race. They would be Her foot soldiers instead of the demons and ghouls, at least until Her own Halls were once more replenished.

CHAPTER 5: King Zander

Fiona was far away, somewhere in the Northlands, visiting children and passing her time telling them of her past adventures. It was something she very much enjoyed doing.

As for Alex, King Zander, what did he do to occupy his time?

He too enjoyed travelling throughout his kingdom, observing the great beauty of that land and meeting the people and creatures within; but in truth, he was also a little sad; for with the coming of the new world after Ragnarok, he sensed much of the old magic of the world had been lost, perhaps forever.

Giants no longer roamed the western mountains. The forests and the lakes no longer seemed to hold quite the same mystical, magic secrets as they once did. Yes, elves were still to be encountered occasionally in the more distant woodlands, just as the Mer could also sometimes be seen in the rivers and lakes.

Despite this, however, much of the old sense of awe and magic that was held once within the water, the earth, and the air seemed to have left the Northlands.

This saddened Alex greatly. He had secretly wondered whether this loss of magic was perhaps more to do with his growing up. He was no longer a child anymore, and perhaps, on account of that, he was less able to feel, or sense, the mysticism of that place. Or was it perhaps his familiarity with the Northlands that had simply dulled his senses?

But deep down in his heart, he didn’t think it was either of those things.

Whatever the reason, Alex was no longer a boy, but instead a young man, and he now craved a chance of adventure which the Northlands no longer seemed able to give him.

He noticed that his sisters, on the other hand, were now content with their lot, happy with their lives here. Their lives were increasingly spent in or around the new palace, within the streets and shops of Zandrium, or even just visiting schools, as Fiona was doing right now. It was there in Zandrium that Rebecca, especially, preferred to be, socialising, attending parties and receptions, all the while making new friends.

But for Alex, a life spent in such a way was not enough. He might as well be at home, in his own birth-world doing that, he decided. Unlike his two sisters, he yearned for adventure, just as there had been in the Northlands in the past.

Because of his restless nature, Alex would often gallop off alone on his fine horse, out across the Plains of Dragonwhyte to the Hill, on which stood the Great Tree.

There he would sit quietly and wait, until Anna appeared from the shadow of her tree and came to sit down beside him. With their two Vardogyl, Penelope and Eek, they would spend many hours, as long as Alex wanted to be there. They would happily recount stories of their many past adventures to each other, which had all now happened long ago.

It was for almost four years then, in his current reign, that Alex travelled through his kingdom, often secretly, but always in search of adventure and magic.

He travelled to the Land of the Giants by himself, to the Stone Gates in the valleys of the Halder people, and even to the beautiful lakes which lay before the tall Northern Mountains.

But in the Land of Giants, he found no giants. The few remaining there were now far too afraid of humankind to show themselves to him. Seeing Alex close by, they did not dare move so much as an inch, even at night, when they were able to, for of this particular human, they were particularly afraid. Alex had gained quite a reputation amongst their kind as a fierce giant-slayer.

At the valley beyond the Stone Gates, the Halder people did not appear to him either. He gently ran his hands across the smooth rock sides of the cliffs, as he has seen Anna once do, but they had not emerged.

At the lake of the rainbow’s source, below which the Norns dwelled, no rainbow formed before him.

Where had all the magic gone that had existed before Ragnarok? Did no-one else care about its loss except him? Only the wolf’s skull still served as a reminder of those bygone times.

He did not enter the Land of Mists however, for that was a place perhaps too dangerous, even for Alex, to venture into again. Only fools went in there, he knew. Alex had no desire whatsoever to encounter the Mylinger or the Kludde, both races of demons he knew to be exceedingly dangerous in their actions and treacherous in temperament. He had entered it once, in his very first adventure with Fiona. It was a dark, unhappy place and not one he would ever willingly return to.

From the northern lakes, he headed first south and then west, to the two highest mountains of the Northlands, the Kristeltind and Kristeltindkilda. From their bases, he looked up in awe at the open jaws of the skull of Stor Varg which still hung there, wedged high between the peaks of those two neighbouring mountains.

Then he climbed up the barren, grey, steep, rocky slopes of the Kristeltind, the very slightly higher of the two. All that afternoon he continued to climb, until he was at last level with the wolf’s huge skull.

He carefully leaned out from the high rocky ledge on which he stood, holding on to a piece of weathered rock set within the cliff, in order to keep his balance as he did so. He looked quickly down, for only a moment, observing just how high up the mountain he had climbed. With one careless step, one slip, he knew he could fall and surely die on the jagged rocks far below.

Then he glanced across and into the right eye socket of the smooth, bleached bone of the wolf’s skull. As he did so, despite the heat of that summer’s day, he suddenly shivered, imagining that there within it still remained the lingering presence of a great evil.

And perhaps he wasn’t imagining it either, for it was in that very moment he thought he heard a whisper upon the wind echo all around within the wolf’s skull. It sounded like the low, deep groan of an ancient, vengeful giantess. It was a moan full of threat, a sound which at once filled his heart with a sense of emptiness and great despair.

It was then he remembered the time that he had last seen this severed wolf’s head. Then it had had eyes within its sockets and there had been flesh and fur upon its skull bone. That had been when he had stood in front of it with Rebecca, Fiona and Anna, during the darkness of the night of Ragnarok.

Fiona had told them that she had sensed Tseth was still watching them, through the wolf’s eyes, even though the monster was quite dead. Later that same night, there had been much to suggest she had been right to think so.

Yet even now, one hundred and four Northland years after that fateful day, Alex still sensed a lingering threat within the vast skull of that wolf, now just a few feet away from him.

He stood there for some time, and as he did so, the unease within him continued to grow all the while. Seeing that the shadows of sunset would be soon upon those mountains, he began to descend the mountain once more, imagining all the while that two invisible, dark eyes were looking down upon him from within the skull above.

‘It is as if Tseth’s essence still lingers on in there, looking out from the wolf’s head, or into it,’ he thought to himself as he slipped and stumbled down the mountainside. ‘She is either looking out to the east, towards the hill of Dragonwhyte and Yggdrasil, or is looking out, at me,’ he decided.

Continuing on down the mountain, Alex began to think that it might be a good idea to have the skull removed from the mountain and buried somewhere; or even just dropped deep into the Western ocean beyond the western mountains. Anywhere would be better than where it was now, if Tseth could look out from it, over the Northlands.

He liked his idea, but that was the easy part, of course; for it was only then he began to think about how such an immense feat could be undertaken. It had taken the strength of an immense and powerful wave, the like of which had never been seen before, to lift the wolf’s head high over those mountains and to place it there, between those two great mountain peaks. What would it therefore take to move it back down again?

After leaving the Western Mountains, Alex decided to make his way to the southern coast. There, on a sandy beach a week later, he sat alone once more. He gazed out over the Northern Sea towards the southern horizon, beyond which lay the deserted lands of the ancient Illyrians.

From there he headed westward along the coast to the western corner of the kingdom. There, a breeze buffeted the long grass upon a low cliff as he sat upon it and watched the dolphins and whales swim lazily by upon a gentle swell. He noticed how it rolled first one way, and then the other, between the Northern Sea and the Western Ocean, where the two met.

Next, he headed northwards, always following the western coast. Long, sandy beaches began to give way to cliffs and bays as the land gently rose.

It was some days later he came across the first of the many fishing villages of the Vestmanner folk. There he was greeted fondly by its inhabitants.

From one such village, he set sail upon a longship which took him all the way to the Vestmann Islands, far out to sea to the south west. On his return, a week or so later, he continued his wanderings northward, this time into the villages of the Vikings, who, like the Vestmanner, had come to the Northlands some two hundred years before.

Whilst both Vikings and Vestmanner were first and foremost Northlanders, both communities still kept many of the old traditions from their original homelands.

They maintained both their character and their temperament as well. Alex smiled to himself. He could tell the difference between a Vestmanner and a Viking from two hundred paces away. Viking people were often fair haired and fair skinned. The Vestmanner instead had jet black hair, and deep tans.

There were plenty of exceptions to this general rule, of course, and there was one appearance which both peoples shared. That was the man, or the woman, with waves of fiery red hair. It usually came with a fiery temperament as well. Perhaps this was a sign of a common heritage for both peoples, he thought.

An involuntary grin spread across his face. That too, he thought, was his sister, Fiona, in a nutshell. She too was red haired and fiery, quick to offer a smile and share a joke, yet equally quick to show her anger at any affront, imagined or otherwise.

It had been the basis of their relationship ever since Alex could remember.

From the Viking villages, he sailed out