The Peregrine

The world from the top of that trembling wooden watchtower got bigger and smaller at the same time. Bigger, because Kjall’s view of Vaktargarðr stretched for milur in every direction—far enough to reach the northern cliffs where waves smashed themselves to foam; far enough to trace the black lines of forest hemming in the eastern and western horizons; far enough to see the patchwork of fields fading into the south. The land rolled outward like a great hide stretched taut, every ridge and hollow visible from his perch. And yet, from up here, the world also shrank. Everything flattened under his gaze: the distant fields, the people working them, visible only as figures moving at the foot of the hill that held the tower upright. Even the roofs of the keep looked like toys arranged by a child. All of it suddenly small. Manageable. Almost unreal, as though he were looking down at a carving rather than the place he had lived his whole life.

Kjall had not come up here to think. He had come up here to stop thinking about what his father had said in the great hall, with the hearthfire cracking between them and the smell of smoke heavy in the rafters, when Kjall came down from the ramparts to warm up his bones. The memory clung to him like soot.

“You were not at the training yard this morning,” the jarl said. It was not a question nor greeting. It was simply a fact dropped between them like a stone.

His father had a habit of saying things with that deep, rumbling certainty, as though his words were carved into the world the moment he spoke them. No doubts in his tone, none in the way he carried his weight or presence. The jarl’s beard was freshly oiled and plait tight, which meant he had been meeting with someone. Traders, perhaps. Or the messenger from Eirik Greyback’s holding who had arrived two days ago and whose presence no one would explain to Kjall directly. The hall had smelled of damp wool and old smoke, and the jarl’s shadow had stretched long across the map table.

Kjall shrugged, a small movement that felt larger inside his chest.

“I watched the boats come in.”

“Watching is not ruling.” His father had told him, not looking up from the map spread across the long table. His thick fingers traced coastlines as though they were scars in the land, old wounds he knew by touch. “A jarl who watches from walls while his men train becomes a jarl who watches from walls while his enemies take his land.”

“I know the drills, Father.”

“Knowing them and standing among the men who will bleed for you are different things.” The jarl turned his pale eyes on Kjall. They were not unkind, exactly, but they assessed rather than saw. And at this moment he didn’t really like what he saw. Kjall felt the weight of that gaze like a hand pressing on his sternum.

“Eirik Greyback has built three new drakkars this winter,” the jarl said. “His sons train on the water every morning before the tide turns. You understand what that means.”

Kjall understood. Everyone understood. The raid season was sharpening its edge, and Greyback’s ambitions had grown, fed by last season’s successes like a pig fattened on scraps. Rumours had drifted through the hall like smoke—Greyback’s men drilling with new shields, Greyback’s eldest boasting of a southern raid before harvest.

“The drakkars will be ready before midsummer.” The jarl’s voice carried the particular flatness he used when delivering orders disguised as mere statements.

“You will stand at the prow of the third. Not the first. Not yet. But you will be seen.”

Kjall had stood very still, the way he had learned to stand when his father spoke of duties. Back straight, chin level, hands loose at his sides. The posture of attention. The posture of someone who understood that argument was pointless.

“I would rather—”

“You would rather many things.” The jarl’s eyes had lifted then, pale and measuring beneath the heavy ridge of his brow. His braids, red as old copper, hung past his shoulders and did not swing. Nothing about the man moved unless he willed it. “What you would rather does not fill the storehouses or hold the borders. Eirik Greyback has taken two settlements north of the Skarð this season alone. Our people look to this hall. They will look to you, after me. That is not a thing you choose. It is a thing you are.”

Kjall had wanted to say something then. The words had pressed behind his teeth like a held breath, something hot and unwelcome. But two thralls had entered carrying firewood, and both dropped their eyes the instant they saw them in the great hall. One stumbled, nearly spilling his load. The other murmured something under his breath, and the moment closed like a door slammed shut.

So Kjall climbed the tower instead. It was the only place he could be alone and could scream his thoughts to the winds and birds, and those would carry it away and release it to the world like seeds. No one listened to those anyway, but the possibility that something might root somewhere was nice enough.

Now the wind pulled at his tunic and dried the sweat along his neck, and below him the keep and its outbuildings lay spread in their familiar arrangement: the great hall with its turf roof dark against the grey sky, the long building where the hirdmen slept and sharpened weapons, the smokehouse, the forge, the stables. Figures crossed the yard between them. A woman carrying a basket adjusted her step when she passed the hall’s entrance, straightening her back, lifting her chin slightly as though the walls themselves were watching. A boy leading a horse paused at the stable door and wiped his face clean of whatever expression it had held before stepping inside. Even from this height, Kjall could see the way people shifted themselves when they neared the hall—small changes, but unmistakable.

The wind came off the fjord carrying salt and the smell of seaweed, and Kjall leaned into it the way a man leans into a door that has swollen from moisture. He gripped the railing. The wood was salt-rough and splintered under his palms, familiar in its discomfort.

A shape cut across his vision. Fast, dark, angled like a blade thrown sideways, with a similar sound. Half shriek, half swish of a drawn sword. The peregrine.

It swept past the tower close enough that he heard the whisper of air parting around its wings, and then it climbed, riding an updraft from the cliffs with an ease that made his chest ache. Below, in the yard near the mews, the falconer stood with his arm raised, watching the bird with narrowed eyes and the patience of a man who understood exactly what he was looking at. The leather glove on his arm hung heavy, and his stance was as still as carved stone.

Kjall watched the falcon bank and turn above the fields. From up there, higher even than his tower, the bird saw everything he saw, and more. But the bird carried no name. No inheritance. No weight of expectation.

The shepherd would not straighten his back for a falcon. The women at the washing stones would not lower their voices. The stable boy would not hide his tears.

“She hunts the updraft off the northern face. Best winds comes from seaside both for boats and birds.”

Kjall startled. He had not heard anyone on the ladder.