Nørns of Vulvar: Vulvarian Saga, #5

J. K. Spenser

Nørns of Vulvar

Vulvarian Saga Book 5

First published by Sage Knight Press Ltd 2021

Copyright © 2021 by J. K. Spenser

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

J. K. Spenser asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

J. K. Spenser has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

1. Nørnsland

2. The City of Øvre

3. I Gain an Ally

4. Raiding Season

5. We Put to Sea

6. The Raid on Ancheta

7. The Return to Øvre

8. A Chance Encounter

9. The Aesir Peoples

10. The Captive

11. Jørv Vina

12. Sigyn Has News

13. Mølnir Speaks

14. The Muktuk Hunt

15. A Muktuk Appears

16. Home From the Sea

17. Vanirs

18. My New Colleagues

19. Settling In

20. Asgard

21. Renewing Old Acquaintances

22. Jørv’s Feast

23. The Obsidian Spheroid

24. The Agony of Failure

25. Defense of a Claim

26. Back in Gullveig

27. The Journey South

28. An Unwelcome Guest

29. The Rendezvous

About the Author

1

Nørnsland

I looked upon the grim faces of four females, warriors of the Nørn people.

Do you speak Vulvarian? I called to them. I come in peace.

It had still been nighttime when the silver ship piloted by Kayok had deposited me on a rock-strewn, frozen plain in a valley some twenty legas northwest of the Nørnsland city Øvre. The trip from the woodlands outside Thiva aboard the craft of the Goddess Queens had required less than two Vulvarian hours. From the port nearest Thiva, the same journey by ship, had one found a ship’s captain foolhardy enough to sail to Nørnsland, would have taken weeks.

Dressed in a shaggy jacket over a tunic of woven white wool and trousers of skin, I had followed a dirt vaad track southeast until mid-morning. I had a pack and my sheathed katana strapped to my back. When I rounded a bend that skirted a group of massive boulders, I ran head-on into the four warriors.

All the women were blonde, which I understood was common with the northern girls. They were all dressed similarly—quilted jackets spun from the wool of the vaad over kyrtles and knee-length tunics, also of woven wool. The jackets were fur-trimmed with fur collars. Their ankle boots were of hide and also trimmed with fur at the tops.

The women spread out to encircle me, cutting off all avenues of escape. All four carried light spears with wooden shafts between six and seven Vulvarian feet long and with twelve-inch iron tips. Each also carried a shield. The shields were of wood, round and roughly thirty inches in diameter, with the fronts painted black and red. They had rims and center bosses or umbos of hammered black iron.

From the wide leather belts of three warriors hung single-handed swords from a metal ring. The swords were broad, fuller down the length of the thirty-inch blades. The hilts had lobed or cocked hat pommels decorated with inlays. Instead of a sword, the fourth woman, the stoutest looking of the lot, had an axe with a wooden shaft hanging from an iron ring on her belt. It had a large, curved iron blade. The axe blade had points on each tip where the curve tapered off.

Do you speak Vulvarian? I asked again. I knew they spoke a dialect of Vulvarian and hoped we could understand one another. There is no standardized form of spoken Vulvarian. Most Vulvarians use the dialect common to their region in all circumstances. But there is a basic version of the language that serves as the least common denominator for all the dialects.

As we regarded each other, I recalled the little information my old teacher had passed on about the Nørn females. Amanuensis told me they were hard women, inured to the cold, accustomed to war, and the labor of the oar. Raised on isolated farms near the sea, they grew up on hard work, meat, and cereal grains. He told me that such women learned from girlhood to run, leap, swim, wield the sword and the axe, and stand steel against steel, even bloodied. Such women as these were the hardest of the hard, the swiftest, and among the finest warriors on Vulvar.

The female with the axe finally broke the uncomfortable silence. She was tall and slender, with lofty, proud iron-gray eyes.

Where is your jørv, døul? she demanded with a harsh accent.

Neither the term jørv nor døul was familiar to me. But given my knowledge of Vulvar’s female-ruled culture, I assumed that the woman considered me a slave and perhaps døul was the equivalent term in their dialect. If so, then jørv must be their term for master. I supposed she had asked where mine was. In other words, what was I, a slave, doing abroad alone without supervision?

I have none, I said. I am a free man, a warrior, and an emissary of the Goddess Queens.

All the females burst into laughter.

Lying, feruin, hissed the axe wielder. Feruins are large, aggressive aquatic reptiles that inhabit the coastal areas of the seas surrounding Nørnsland. I presumed the woman had insulted me by addressing me as such.

You, a warrior? scoffed the female to my right, a large-breasted blonde beauty with green eyes. You are male. Males are døuls, never warriors.

Perhaps, I said, I am the first male warrior you have encountered.

He stole the sword he carries, said another. Her hair was blond and straight. She was scrawny, but not unattractive, with blue eyes.

This one needs a jørv, chuckled the buxom beauty.

Yes, he appears strong and virile, said the axe wielder. I think I will add him to my coffle of bond males.

The Jørv might take issue with that, Sigyn, teased the scrawny blonde.

Leave that to me, Freyja, the one named Sigyn said.

Shackle him, Gefjun, Sigyn said to the large-breasted warrior.

The woman called Gefjun started toward me, pulling a pair of black iron shackles from her belt. I turned to her and held out my hands, palms outward.

Stop! I exclaimed. Do not approach me if you wish to live. As I said, I am an emissary of the Goddess Queens and under their protection. If you touch me, they will slay you.

As I held forth my hands, I looked at the strange gold ring on the ring finger of my left hand. Kayok, leader of the Goddess Queens, had given it to me. The ring, imbued with peculiar powers, protected me by generating a force field of some sort about me when I wore it. If anything, human, animal, or otherwise, approached within a few feet of me, the field utterly destroyed it as long as I wore the ring.

The warrior stopped at my words, shackles in hand, with a look of uncertainty in her green eyes. The skinny one laughed.

Do you fear his lies, Gefjun? she asked.

I speak the truth, I said to Gefjun. I only wish to spare your life.

We do not worship your Goddess Queens, snarled Sigyn. What do they have to do with us? We worship Oudrid, chief of all deities.

Nonetheless, the powers of the Goddess Queens are great, I said. They sting like a serpent.

Let us test this døul’s lies! Freyja, the scrawny girl, cried. She lifted her spear and drew back her arm to cast it.

Cast the spear, I said confidently. You cannot harm me.

With an Vulvarian oath, Freyja cast her spear at my chest. Suddenly, she and Gefjun, the two I faced, sprang back in fright so quickly they both lost their footing and fell to the stony ground on their backsides with eyes widened in shock. I smiled. I had seen nothing, yet I had once seen the effects from their perspectives in the halls of the Goddess Queens when I had myself hurled a spear at someone protected by such a field. So, I knew the women had seen a brilliant burst of white light and felt a flash of heat. Looking down, I saw a little ash and a blob of red hot melted iron on the ground a few feet in front of me. I turned to the one called Sigyn.

If the one called Jørv be chief among you, I would speak with her, I said evenly.

He is a wizard of some sort! exclaimed Freyja, still seated on the ground. He must die!

Sigyn had dropped her spear and held the mighty axe in her hand.

Perhaps we should give the axe a try? said Sigyn hesitantly.

If you do so, I said, I recommend you throw the axe. If you attempt to strike me with it, you and the axe will share the fate of Freyja’s spear.

Sigyn appeared indecisive. Then she put away her axe angrily. I had not wished to reveal the power of the ring so soon, though the warriors had left me little choice. But perhaps I had been naïve. What had I expected entering this land where I understood the people kill strangers on sight? Had I expected to go alone to the Nørn peoples to say, in greeting, I am Tobias Hart of Thiva. I bring no credentials and no proof, but I come from the Goddess Queens, deities you do not recognize or worship. I would like to have the object that belongs to them which was brought to you. They would now like to have it back. Thank you, farewell."

Will you accompany us to the hall of the Jørv? said Sigyn through gritted teeth. I think we will defer the decision about you to her.

Lead on, I said, smiling.

I fell in behind Sigyn on the dirt track. Two warriors walked by my side, though careful to give me a wide berth. Now without a spear, Freyja brought up the rear, and she too maintained a respectable distance from me.

2

The City of Øvre

Nørnsland seemed a bleak, frozen wasteland, a cruel, harsh, rocky land. The fields, strewn with boulders, had green, short grass.

We passed flocks of bleating vaad and small patchy fields of arable soil on the path to the city. It seemed here the farms were small. Male slaves worked the fields with hoes in their hands. Others tended the flocks. Here and there, I saw females supervising their work.

Øvre sat at the head of a fjord in a flat river valley extending north of the fjord. The fjord appeared as a long, deep, narrow body of water that reached far inland, with rocky cliffs on either side. It times past, glaciation had carved the deep valley. Clinging to the rocky cliffs were lichens, small bushes, and stunted trees. I saw a long dock of rough-hewn logs covered with coarse boards. Moored at the dock, there were a half dozen long narrow shaped ships with shallow drafts, the infamous Nørn longships.

The ships were clinker built, made of planks of rough timber, overlapped and nailed together. A tall single mast rose from each ship, and oar holes ran the lengths of both sides. Carvings of serpent heads decorated the prows.

After we passed through the open gates of the palisade of pointed rough timbers surrounding the city, I saw Øvre seemed a more rural settlement than a city. It was unlike any of the cities of Vulvar with which I was familiar. The roads were dirt, and the buildings were a collection of squat hovels and sheds. Near the settlement’s center, we stopped before the most impressive structure in view, a long, low house of the same rough timbers as the palisade with a sod roof.

Our party halted in front of the log house, where Sigyn beat upon the heavy wooden door with her spear. I presumed we had arrived at the hall of the Jørv. After opening the door, a giant of incredible stature appeared, his muscles knotted and bulging. He bowed low to pass his enormous head, covered with shaggy hair, below the top of the door frame. He wore a short tunic that fell only to his waist. Between his legs, I observed a shiny metal tube with which I had some acquaintance. Sigyn advanced and spoke to the male in hushed tones. With his head, he gestured for her to enter the house. Then, after casting a glance at me, he followed her inside, shutting the door behind him.

After several minutes, Sigyn opened the door and exited the house, followed by the giant and another female with green eyes, luscious lips that seemed made for kissing, a subtle olive complexion, and thick, long, sable hair. The male, now wearing breeches, approached me. Stopping some five feet away from me, he turned to the dark-haired female. She nodded, and the massive man again started toward me.

Stop! I shouted when he lifted his arms as if to seize me, but I was too late. I felt a small vibration in the ground beneath my feet, and suddenly the giant disappeared, leaving behind only the distinctive odor of burned flesh. A female behind me screamed. Sigyn appeared as though she would faint. Here and there on the ground, several feet in front of me, were tiny bits of smoldering cloth and a pile of gray ash. What had happened was precisely what I had wished to avoid.

The dark-haired female stood with her hands on her shapely hips, displaying no emotion. Then she dropped her hand to her sides and walked to me, stopping a conservative distance away. It seemed not all northern females were blond.

Who are you, stranger? growled the woman in the same harsh accent as Sigyn’s speech.

Tobias Hart of Thiva, I replied. I come in peace as an emissary from the Goddess Queens.

Annoyance flashed across the woman’s attractive features.

You come in peace? she asked. You just destroyed my valuable breeder.

Not I, I said. The Goddess Queens protect me, and that was their handiwork. I had no part in it. I tried to warm him, but he moved too abruptly. Besides, I warned your warriors. If you are chief among them, I presume Sigyn also warned you. The man should not have approached me.

"Why have