Salazzar Slytherin and the First Wizengamot

Prologue

Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Greenland, around 940 CE

Slaethyr pulled his bearskin coat tighter around himself as leaned into the prow of his longship. To his north, across the foaming waves he could see the southern tip of Greenland slide past as his men pulled on the oars. Normally ships would pass through one of ports on the great island but Slaethyr's fleet had sailed in haste from the colonies of Vinalnd in the face of a large native army. The retreat was forcing him to abandon his new lands and return to a dangerous situation in Scotland.

Thirteen years earlier the King of Wessex had united the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria and Essex into the Kingdom of England. The Christian King, Aethelstan, held influence over more than his own Kingdom and his priests travelled the length and breadth of the Island hunting Magic Folk of all races. Slaethyr was a Norseman and Jarl of Sutherland under Jarl Thorfinn of Orkney who, though Christian, still feared the power of the Old Gods and had exiled Magic users rather than killing them as the priests of the south had done.

Taking his ships Slaethyr had sailed west to Iceland, Greenland and eventually Vinland where his folk had settled ten years earlier. Though he had abandoned his new land in the face of an attack he had planned this voyage for three months, seince news had come of Aethelstan's death.

Slaethyr Sigurdsson sailed for Britain with vengeance in his heart as he voyaged to reclaim his old lands. As English control had spread into areas settled by Danes and Norsemen many pagans had fled, east and west. Combined with the spread of Christianity in the homelands the settlements of the Atlantic had swollen with Seidr and the pagan faithful.

Eight ships carrying a score of Seidr and near four hundred warriors sailed to take advantage of the King's death.

At the front of Njord's Kraken, his flagship, Slaethyr himself cut an impressive figure. His helmet hung from a strap around his neck allowing long balck hair to stream back in the wind as he gazed westward. A tall, lean man with skin tanned by the sun and the sea-winds and a grim face, his beard's grey streaks the only sign of his hundred and ten years. Piercing green eyes gazed from under bushy black eyebrows giving him a permenantly irritated look.

Slaethyr's frown relaxed a fraction is his mind slipped from these wind-battered coasts to the ragged coat he claimed and he cast his mind back to his first journey to Britain, more than a hundred years earlier . . .