The Saga of Thule, Book III — The Exiles of the Sea-Wolf
“In the north beyond the whales’ road, where the sea smokes and the sun forgets to set, there lies the island of the Black City. There the stones remember what men were not meant to know.”
The Age of Discovery
A score of winters past, Harald Olvirson was blown off his course while steering for Hibernia. His ships struck the fog-bound isle that men would name Thule, and in its ruins he found gold shaped like triangles, gems that shone with cold fire, and crystals that sang when struck.
He returned rich and envied, built a harbor camp, and claimed lordship of Thule. Many followed him. Most never returned.
The Rise of the Sea-Wolf
Among the later voyagers came Sigurd the Daring, captain of the Sea-Wolf out of the Isle of Mann. His crew of freemen and oath-brothers delved the Black City’s frost-sealed streets and the Grey catacombs below. They returned with relics and silver enough to feast a kingdom.
In the summer of A.D. 833 they held the Feast of the Four-Hundred and Forty Pounds, when the air itself shimmered with heat from their fires. There Sigurd met Helga the Seid-Wife, companion once to Red-Hrolf the Axe-Lord of Jutland. Before all gathered she turned from Hrolf and chose Sigurd, saying:
“Wyrd bends for the daring; a lord you shall be, though your throne stand upon ice.”
That night Sigurd’s men swore him Jarl beneath the aurora. The sea froze in the bay and shattered like glass, and the Blue Obelisk flared upon the horizon.
The Fall into Exile
Red-Hrolf’s wrath made the Isle of Mann a knife’s edge. Helga’s choice and Sigurd’s new title turned kin against kin. By the next thaw the Sea-Wolf sailed north again—exiles by choice and by wyrd, bound for the ruins where their fortunes were first won.
The Camp of Trade Town
On the shore where Harald’s old harbor rotted, Sigurd raised a hall of driftwood and black stone. There, amid ice and whale-bone palisades, stands Trade Town—half fortress, half market, ruled by the exiled Jarl and his witch-queen. With them dwells Shafat al-Mustafa, the Arab wizard, whose Tower of Glass rises from the ice like a spear of light.
Shafat serves as Sigurd’s counselor and keeper of forbidden lore, trading the secrets of Grey relics for iron, amber, and blood. Under his guidance the camp endures: fires burn by his art, and the harbor stays free of pack-ice when he wills it.
The Present Year — A.D. 839
Now each year, when the sea loosens its grip for six to eight short weeks, the exiles’ harbor fills with ships: treasure-hunters, raiders, thralls, and dreamers all seeking the luck of Sigurd the Daring. Each thaw brings new oaths, new quarrels, and new graves when the frost returns.
Thus begins the third season of the saga — when the ice cracks, the sea-king’s banner rises again, and the exiles of the Sea-Wolf return to the Black City beneath the burning lights of the north.
