Chapter 118: Sisters
Ullrsfjǫrðr no longer resembled a frontier outpost.
It had grown, layer by layer, wall by wall, until it began to resemble something imperial.
What once had been a meager fishing village in the Westfjords now stood encased in stone:
the original ramparts thickened, extended, and surrounded by a second bastion equally formidable.
Between them ran a corridor wide enough to move war carts and shield-walls in tandem.
Inside the gates, life bustled.
Longhouses, once scattered and crude, now stood proudly in ordered rows. Their wooden beams sat atop Roman-cut foundations; their tiled roofs curved slightly at the edges in imitation of Eastern forms.
Roads, straight, clean, and cobbled, divided the district into quarters. Smoke curled from chimneys into a sky washed blue with spring.
The clatter of discipline filled the air: boys drilled in the yards, bare-armed and snarling like wolves. Some bore spears; others axes.
More still bent the new composite bows Vetrúlfr had brought from the East.
Commands barked in Old Norse, the snap of leather against wood, the thunk of arrowheads in straw targets.
A living city. A kingdom reborn in frost and fire.