Brothers Günnar and Sigurd Osmund became the talk of the village of Stjarnheim when they boasted that they would answer their king’s call to war. It was the twenty second year of the reign of King Harald the Loud, a long reign for a Fjall king, and he did not wish to be remembered for losing Brulla to the Paravs. He had sent runners on Omensday to all corners of the realm, calling all klaensmen and fremen to Ostrgardr to join his fleet and he declared that any warrior who stood idle would be unwelcome in the Hall of Halhanr.
Calls to war were proclaimed often in the lands of the Fjall, and most Fjall who could wield a blade heeded at least one in their life. But Stjarnheim was located in a remote valley in the hinterlands of Erunjal, half a world away from the fatherland, far removed from the ambitions and vanities of kings. The valley folk were generally content to let distant nations inflict violence upon one another without them, whether it displeased Halhanr or not.
But not the brothers Osmund. When the edict of war finally reached Stjarnheim, the brothers got it in their thick, mead-soaked, heads to go fight across the sea. It was pointed out to Sigurd Günnar that the king’s fleet had likely already left Ostrgardr by this time, but they were determined to find glory, and with the ashes of their parents long in the wind, there was no one who could persuade them otherwise.
Each brother claimed the idea was his own, for they could agree on little except their desire to go. Sigurd, just eighteen, was slight with dark curls and brooding green eyes. He was pensive and soft spoken, more likely to reserve judgment than to cast it. Günnar, two years older, was tall and thick, with fair hair and a fiery manner, more typically Fjall than his brother. Differences aside, they shared a deep restlessness. They longed to see the fatherland, to taste battle and earn their place in Halhanr.
Fjall needed little excuse for revelry and the night before the brothers departed there was a rousing feast. Everybody agreed that they were foolish, but even so, the Ceorl’s hall was packed with well-wishers. There was roasted venison and boar, good kegs were tapped, and skalds traded sagas through the night. Several young women braided the brothers’ hair in the fashion of warriors and took steps to ensure they would not soon forget the comforts of home. Sigurd and Günnar would remember little of these activities, so much did they drink.
The brothers left Stjarnheim the next day long after they’d intended, barely able to stand, their packs slung wearily over slumped shoulders. They were pointed in the right direction by amused seer-offers before staggering down the path. Two days later they crested the rim of the Vagga. It was the first time for either of them. The Skorgr stretched before them, innumerable green firs stretching to north and east. They were winded from the steep ascent, and the sight took the rest of their breath away. ‘Look, brother!’ said Sigurd, pointing to the blue ribbon which he knew from his crude map to be the river Parja, shimmering in the midday suns. ‘There is the path that will lead us to Nyrstadr. We need only follow it to the sea.’ They had never seen the sea, but they felt they could already taste it as they left the valley. They say that the sea runs in the veins of all Fjall.
The brothers Osmund were not the only Erunjali to heed the king’s call. Far from it. They met others along the river from the Vagga and elsewhere, many carrying family swords and shields that had sat idle on walls for generations. Most of them were young like them, but some were old and world-weary, wishing to die in battle instead of their beds. There were women and twiceborn among them, for when it came to making war, Fjall discriminated only between courage and cowardice. In the evenings they shared stories of their homes, and sparred with unnotched blades they barely knew how to hold.
In Nyrstadr they joined with the might of the Jarl and the other great klaens of Erunjal. There were named warriors among them—they could not refuse the call to war—but there were far more like themselves, unblooded folk from hinterland villages, leaving their homes to find glory in a land they knew only from verse, fighting for a king who could not speak their tongue.
At the first light of dawn on the twenty third day of Tlomandr in the twenty-second year of the reign of King Harald the Loud, sons and daughters of Erunjal crowded onto ships bound for Brulla to join with the armies of the King and the great Jarls against those of Parav.
Few who dipped oars in the fjord that grey morning in Nyrstadr would ever return to Erunjal. Many would drown in Rorse’s deep during one of three storms that wracked the fleet. Most however would meet their end in battle and all the glory that came with it, their souls perhaps finding a seat at Halhanr’s table, their bodies feeding Brullan pigs. By the end of the next winter, the war was lost.
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Survivors of the campaign made their way back to Korvaard as the ice of the Norsea parted. Fever and death clotted the holds of the undermanned ships which slunk back to the Fatherland beneath tattered sails. Landward observers took solemn notice that returning vessels had their prow ornaments cleft in shame.
Across the sea again in Erunjal, folk in the Vagga wondered about Sigurd and Gunnar, but they did not return. Long years passed and the forest slowly entombed their cottage. It became a reminder for village folk that glory is for the foolish.
Then one summer, many years later, Günnar Osmund returned, scarred and greying, with a tired mule pulling his rickety cart. He’d left his sword arm across the sea.
Günnar had a child with him. It was his brother’s son, he said. From what the villagers could remember—particularly the young women (now in their middle years) who had known Sigurd intimately—the child looked every bit his father. He had the same soft, black hair, the same emerald eyes. Günnar did not have to explain that the boy’s father was dead.
The boy was called Æthan Osmund.
Günnar and Æthan Osmund were not the only curious arrivals in Stjarnheim that year.
The defeat in Brulla heralded a time of great change in Korvaard. The Fjall were accustomed to living off the spoils of other nations, but as the southron men grew harder, so too did reaving, and the Fjall were forced to stretch the dwindling resources of the fatherland ever thinner. The klaens bickered amongst themselves, tensions soon erupting to violence. Fjall spilled more Fjall blood than they did of Athyrites.
Of all the changes that happened in those days, the most significant was the germination of Athyrism in the lands of the Fjall. The Godhand of Holy Tortos was keen to expand his influence, especially among his foes. The Citadel had been sending men in robes to proselytize to their aggressors in Korvaard for centuries. Often only parts of these men were returned. Fjall snickered at their futility, but in many ways they were no different than Fjall reavers bellowing for Halhanr as they died in battle. But King Harald sensed that the world was changing. Ill winds had carried the broken fleet home, all Fjall felt them. The time of the Fjall was ending.
Tortos promised the king restored glory, and more importantly, favourable trade. The godhand asked for little in return. The king only needed to worship Athyr alone, and send ten reavers to the Citadel. What do I owe our gods? he thought. Where have they gone?
He became known as Harald the Penitent amongst the Athyrites, and he hated the name, especially when it became evident that his conversion would not change his fortune. The Fjall met increasingly formidable defenders when they raided, and Rorse seemed to grow ever more cruel. The larders and coffers of Korvaard emptied. It wasn’t long after he donned Athyr’s symbol before King Harald the Penitent was murdered in his own hall. This was, unfortunately, a common thing for kings swept up by winds of change.
Little could Harald the Loud have known that the reavers he sent to the godhand, quite possibly to their death, would all outlive him.
This was not the first time the godhand had converted a people. He knew that might is what the Fjall worshipped most of all, and so the ten who had been sent to Tortos were sent back to Korvaarde as anointed paladins of Athry. They returned to their klaens at war, and were welcomed, as the godhand knew they would be, because Fjall worship might. Through these ten Stallar the worship of the new god took root among the Fjall deeper than the symbolic conversion of their recreant king could ever have hoped to reach.
In the beginning most Fjall remained scornful and suspicious of Athyrites. Clerics of Athyr sent to treat with thegns and jarls in the more barbaric reaches of Korvaard were still routinely dismembered. But the godhand offered salvation and coin to any Fjall who would serve a year at the Citadel. The offer had been made before by countless robed men who had joined their god at the edge of Fjall blades, but in those days after Brulla the fatherland offered little to its people except misery and bloodshed. Many nations welcomed refugees, but few welcomed the Fjall who had been their tormentors for generations. Totos did, and so many Fjall walked the Path.
Skorid Raske was one such Fjall. Born to poor parents of an ancient klaen that had long since fallen to ruin, he left the highlands of Korvaard as a young man with nothing but a rusted family sword. The Path to Holy Tortos appeared before him and he followed it. He stood a year at the great walls of the Citadel, faced the demon hordes of Gji. He learned to worship the new god, and he earned good coin.
After returning to Korvaard Skorid trained as a Stallar with Olaf Bjurn, one of the ten. After taking the Rites he took a wife (or she took him) and they made a son and a daughter. They planned to build anew in his family’s ancestral seat, but Korvaard was increasingly savage and Skorid in his full manhood was just as prudent as the brothers Osmund had been restless in their youth. As conditions in the fatherland worsened, Skorid realized that a man without a strong klaen, Stallar or not, would soon become either a mercenary or victim. He grew to fear for his family. They had the means to leave, and they did.
They went to Erunjal across the sea, a place Skorid had never been, but the only place he knew of in the world where Fjall still lived in peace. They followed a great river inland from Nyrstadr to a Valley populated by quiet Fjall fremen who had long since given up swords for spades, for whom the god Athyr was but a rumor.
Skorid and his family arrived in Stjarnheim only days after Günnar and Æthan. The villagers were taken with Skorid’s gleaming mail and white surcoat bearing the golden hand of Athyr. His wife Ferra was one of the most beautiful woman in the village, but she was kind enough that the other women did not begrudge her this. The son was named Aghi Raske, he was the same age as Æthan Osmund. The daughter was named Shalya Raske.