The war that had come to the Iron Islands was a greater one than these lands had ever seen. Greater, perhaps, than Fenris had ever seen.
The Sala, their old foes, led the coalition. That blood-feud would be settled here, once and for all. Ulbrandr Crowhame thought, at the sight of their blood-red banners, of Thengir impaled on that spear.
Old wounds. Ulbrandr held no spite for the Sala, not really. But the Sala did hold such spite, and had gathered a great fleet of twenty tribes to storm Asaheim. Valmar led a dozen more against them, to hold their fleet at these isles. Some had been brought under his banner peacefully, other through skirmishes, none through full-scale war because that would defeat his purpose - but all in all his intentions had become clear enough for the Sala to gather this first coalition to break apart the empire of Asaheim.
And so Ulbrandr was here, trying to patch up Jorin's wounds.
Bloodhowl was not making that easy.
"Lay still, damn you," Ulbrandr said. "I'll tell you how it's going, if you don't get yourself killed by tearing the wound open."
Jorin grunted. "So how is it going, then?"
"Well enough," Ulbrandr said. "Valmar's charging the Ascomanni ships. They're breaking, of course. Gondr is burning the Sala ships, but there's a counter-press against the Onda." Jorin, of course, tried to struggle back to his feet at that. "Stay down, damn you! Think of what Ana - "
"I'm a warrior, Ulbrandr," Jorin said.
"You're no use to Valmar dead," Ulbrandr said, and at that Jorin finally quieted down.
Like a child, really. Jorin usually had more sense than that. But, Ulbrandr thought as the longship swayed with the waves, this was hardly a usual day.
The water and ice were both red, grinding up against one another and against the ships. Below, Ulbrandr thought he saw a kraken feasting on the carrion. Across islets and between them, a battle that had started as a dance of maneuvers had degenerated, as it was always going to, into a brawl to the death.
Ulbrandr patched and salved the wounds again. "Stay here," he said. "You've got many more battles to come, but you've done enough today." Hopefully, a true healer would come along to make sure of that; for now, he had to get back to the fight, for his own bloodlust was still running hot.
This was a battle that might as well have been fought at the gates of Thengirik. This was the moment in which the fate of Valmar's sanctuary would be decided.
And despite what he had said to Jorin, Ulbrandr knew it was far from certain they would win.
Valmar was close to surrounded, his wolves clawing desperately at their foes, the einherjar scattered. Gondr and Arnir had arrows sticking out of their scales. The line around the Onda was broken. Too much to do, too much to fix -
But Ulbrandr would fight for so long as he had strength.
"For Asaheim!" he yelled as he charged across the planking. "To the king!"
The press was horrible. Valmar was surrounded by Ascomanni, like a wounded mammoth with wolves hanging off every exposed surface. Ulbrandr couldn't see either Hral or Geri, and feared the worst. But warriors, exhausted, bleeding, fell in behind him. Half of them, a part of his mind noted, were unfit to fight.
They would fight anyhow, to reach Valmar.
They flowed over the desperate Ascomanni wall, but there were too few. Limbs were hacked, everything red, something slammed into Ulbrandr's side, and then he was lying prone, struggling to his feet under the heap of bodies. He shoveled them aside, and then gasped for air, to see that his charge had faltered -
But that it had succeeded, in drawing away the Ascomanni.
Ulbrandr stumbled over to his king. Valmar was kneeling, bleeding from a dozen fatal wounds, holding two tattered bodies that Ulbrandr took a moment to realize as Hral and Geri. They were still breathing, Ulbrandr realized. Somehow, they were still breathing, though not for long. Arnir, solemn, crouched next to the Sky King.
Valmar sighed and pulled out the longest of the spears, struggling to his feet.
"My king - "
"Ulbrandr." Valmar's voice had lost none of its command, though it was thin with his loss of blood. "Keep them alive."
Ulbrandr frowned. "Geri and Hral? It's a miracle they aren't dead already," he told Valmar.
"I know," Valmar said, pulling out another spear with a gush of blood. "See to it that the miracle continues. For my part, I must win this battle."
Ulbrandr bit his tongue. He did not want to speak of retreat, but this battle seemed unwinnable. The Onda had broken, and he thought he saw Ekil fall. The Wenida still held, at least, but that seemed more like they were buying time. And even now, he saw a lucky arrow pierce Gondr's eyes and bring the drake crashing into the sea.
And for all of that, Ulbrandr said nothing as Valmar lumbered once more into battle. He only bent down, reached into his pouch, and did his best to soothe the pain of two blackmane wolves, and prayed to all the spirits and gods that dwelt above.
And then, the gods answered.
It began as a swell in the west of the straits, one Ulbrandr almost missed. But then the waves resolved themselves into pieces of what looked like icebergs, what in truth was fur.
The great bears had come.
They did not spare the Russ and their allies, not fully. But their charge took them into the back of the Sala line, and Ulbrandr winced as he saw it. To be eaten by a bear was not the best of ways to have your thread cut. The bears came, tearing ships to pieces with their weight alone, and for a time all that Ulbrandr could see of the battle, in the snippets between desperately keeping Geri and Hral alive, was a series of splashes and the occasional mangled limb tossed into the distance.
In time, the feeding frenzy stopped, the bears swimming away. But there were so few of the Sala left, really. So few of all those twenty tribes.
And Bulveye - for Ulbrandr could see the young warrior's long locks even from here - led the Russ into one final charge.
Ulbrandr saw it. A few dozen axemen, only, supported by erratic fire from archers and literal fire from a grounded Arnir. But the Sala and Ascomanni and Balaari and Ronds and Samanni - they were all stacked barely one deep. They did not break; they fought to the end, but Bulveye's wedge of the best warriors the Russ had to offer charged down the beaches and into the boats, and then suddenly there was a gap, and then Valmar came from behind a mast, still bleeding, still slow, but also still Valmar.
Hammers and axes rang, but the battle was already won.
"The wolves live," Ulbrandr said when his king found him, "but only barely. Even if they will somehow recover they will remain crippled for life."
Valmar, silently, took up the bundles of fur, which seemed so much smaller now, and turned the rudder northward.
"I will find a way," he said, "in Thengirik. They will run again."
As Valmar grimly gathered a crew healthy enough to sail back, with Arnir perched at the front of the ship - as he did so, Ulbrandr trod the decks of death. The melee had been merciless, and Ulbrandr noted the bodies of the einherjar as he passed them. Yrein, Odalett, Jara. They had been his comrades for a whole lifetime, and yet they were very nearly left to the crows. Too few remained to carry back the bodies. And the fire Arnir had started was spreading, slowly but surely, over the waves; and soon Ulbrandr watched, from an island, as in its crimson embrace all the fallen and all the traces of the Battle of the Iron Islands were consumed, mortal foes burning in the same funeral pyre.
If this was the cost to conquer the northern ocean, he wondered, just how steep would the price of all Fenris be?