As he strummed the nine strings of his golden lyre, alternating with lute and flute, he performedSaga of Sea Wolfand Sun Falcon,his glorious tribute to the Summer Solstice duel between Sigurd and Brynhildr on the morrow.
The crowd roared in thunderous approval.
The music resumed and the mead flowed freely, with raucous warriors boasting of oaths and victories yet to come. Sigurd leaned close, his soft whisper warm against her cheek. “When the dancing begins around the bonfire, I want to show youÚlfalkr.”
Brynhildr’s breath hitched, her pulse thrumming in her throat.
“I have asked Kveld to meet us there.” A wolfish gleam blazed in Sigurd’s intense blue eyes. “He will mark us— with falcon and wolf. And bind us to the ship and the sea.”
Legs trembling under her silk gown, Brynhildr nodded. “And when he has finished, we’ll go up to my room…”
“To seal our bond inseiðrand starlight.” Sigurd raised his elkhorn of mead and tipped it toward her.
She clinked hers against his and drank.
When Budli rose and invited the enthusiastic crowd out to dance around the bonfire, the festive hall emptied into cool, starry night.
As lively melodies from lyres and lutes mingled with pounding drums, sparks leapt skyward and couples swirled in wild, jubilant dance, Sigurd and Brynhildr slipped away like shadows between flames. Cradling her hand in his, he led her down the carved stone steps of the cliff to the pebbled shore far below.
Drawn up onto the beach where black waves lapped starlit stone,Úlfalkrrocked gently at the edge of the fjord. Moonlight silvered her falcon prow, the wolves and runes carved into the feathered wings glistening as if alive.
Amber eyes of his black wolfskin aglow in the firelight, Kveld crouched over the small flames he’d enclosed within a circle ofsmooth stones upon the rocky beach. Spread upon a swathe of white linen, his bone needles were meticulously placed beside the pot of soot and seal oil with which he would ink images into their skin.
Sigurd led Brynhildr across the rocky sand and stopped before the wolfskin-cladvitki.
Lupine eyes as amber as the black wolf’s atop his dark head, Kveld gazed up at Sigurd.
A violent shiver rippled through Brynhildr’s shaking limbs.
“You marked me as a wolf when I swore my oath,” Sigurd said to the dark Nightwolf.“Now I ask for the mark of a falcon—the sigil of mysoulboundmate.” He raised Brynhildr’s hand to his blond bearded lips and pressed a fervent kiss upon her cold fingers. Hunger blazed across his feral face.
Kveld nodded in solemn silence and motioned for Sigurd to sit upon a stone. Dipping his needle in the dark ink and piercing the skin with precise punctures, he embedded a falcon in flight on the inside of Sigurd’s shield arm.
“By this mark, your spirit shall take wing with hers,” Kveld murmured, his deep voice rough like wind over waves.
As the falcon emerged on Sigurd’s forearm, theouroborosburned above Brynhildr’s wildly fluttering heart.
When he’d finished, Kveld fixed his glowing amber gaze upon Brynhildr. “And now, I mark you.”
Sigurd rose from the stone where he’d been seated and lowered himself onto the rocky beach next to Brynhildr’s booted feet.
Kveld gestured to the empty stone seat. “I shall engrave the same falcon, but inside your sword arm— where Sigurd bears his identity as a Sea Wolf.”
With painstaking precision, the Nightwolf embedded a falcon in flight inside Brynhildr’s right arm. The sting of soot and needle drew a sharp hiss from her lips, but the scent of the seawas sweet and bracing. Each puncture of her skin enflamed theouroboros,which burned like the fire in her forearm. Once he’d completed her falcon sigil, he drew Sigurd’s wolf on the inside of her shield arm.
Kveld’s deep, haunting voice echoed from the Otherworld. “Now I shall mark you with Sigurd’s sigil. That your spirit may run with his wolf.”
Sigurd reassuringly stroked his thumb over her skin as he held her right hand while Kveld inked her left forearm with the wolf sigil.
Now we each have a trio of marks which bind us. Dragon, Falcon, and Wolf.
Kveld applied a pungent herbal ointment over the tattoos on her two forearms and the falcon he’d just inked upon Sigurd’s. “Birch resin and beeswax, to soothe the skin and seal the mark.” He wiped his needles, wrapped them in leather, and secured them in the belt at his waist. After sealing the mixture of soot and seal oil, he rose and motioned toÚlfalkr.
“Now, abindruneto join you both to the ship. Come…follow me aboard.”
The pebbled shore glistened under the silver light of the full moon, waves whispering against the dark hull ofÚlfalkr, whose falcon prow gleamed golden in the starlight. Sigurd and Brynhildr knelt beside Kveld, crouched on the deck of the ship. In his scarred, tattooed hand, the Nightwolf held the wolf bone stylus, sharpened and curved to a precise point.
“Raido,for the sea journey you will take in this fateful ship.” Kveld chiseled the first rune beneath the falcon prow. Sparks rose as the ivory bone scraped the solid oak.
