249. The Dragon of the North Sea (3).
249. The Dragon of the North Sea (3).
"Ssssip— haaa—"
The sea wind was salty.
The slave market in the western sea abandoned by the North Sea.
When the Northmen, who had been the masters of that surprisingly vast market, vacated their place, sharks naturally began to swarm into the region where the orcas had disappeared.
Not only the Muslims, who alongside the Northmen had been the main players of the slave market, but even the Franks, whose southern lands facing the Mediterranean were being gleefully raided by those very Muslims.
The farmers in the lands ruled by the North Sea and the Fylkir, where if you roughly threw down seeds they grew on their own and for some reason pests hardly infested, had little need for slaves. But in truth, the profession of plowing fields, planting crops, and tending them required an immense amount of labor.
Since this world had vast lands and a shortage of people, the demand for slaves never ceased.
Hásteinn still could not fully understand the faith and thought patterns of those turbaned bastards or the Franks, but he knew very well that they had no qualms whatsoever about seizing those who believed in different gods and making them slaves.
Thus, the western waters off West Frankia, vacated by the North Sea, and the southern sea beyond Iberia were now in complete chaos—no.
A Great Pirate Era had opened!
Though by now he was effectively sheltering under the North Sea's wing (in truth, the Fylkir had never granted permission, but Hásteinn himself and the warriors of Nantes already regarded themselves as having submitted) and was living in hushed quiet, Hásteinn and the warriors under him had originally all been renowned great pirates of that western sea.
These men, who were more confident than anyone in sailing the seas and rivers, brawling, selling goods, and trading people, had been smacking their lips at the thrilling situation at sea. But the Muslim pirates, growing bolder in the face of West Frankia's utter helplessness on the water, had dared to attack even the Dublin brothers (who had actually been competitors)!
With the war between Breis and West Frankia settled along the line of Le Mans Castle, Hásteinn—who had been eating and sleeping at Rouen Fortress for several months already, partly out of boredom and partly from wanting to stay by his old friend's side—boarded his longship without hesitation when word came that the Fylkir was seeking Björn and himself.
Unlike himself, who could only handle one thing at a time, Björn—who before the Fylkir's appearance had been renowned as the prepared heir of Konungr Ragnar and for a wisdom as brilliant as his shining eyes—as always carried out two or three tasks at once under the simple goal of going to the Fylkir.
He informed the ally to the west, Salomon of Brittany, and the lord across the sea, Sigebryht of East Anglia, of his absence; handed over all ongoing trade and assorted affairs entirely to the cavalry commander Thorbjörn; and arranged to relieve Jarl Leofric and his scouts with new legions that had come over from Mercia—that sort of thing.
At the same time, he had the people Björn always kept around him record any issues as he personally handled the large longship, a monster capable of embarking nearly seventy heavily armored warriors, which had become an essential item for all North Sea lords ever since the Fylkir had specially ordered it.
He said he was retiring?
The sight of Björn, who had retired from retirement, was both amusing and, for Hásteinn, a relief—since Hásteinn's own head was too dull to handle such tasks.
After beating down Robert of Neustria with his own two hands, a man he had fought fiercely for so very long, Hásteinn had been spending more and more time alone with his thoughts, feeling rueful and sad as the names that had walked the world alongside him disappeared one by one. Stroking the smoothly polished surface of the longship, he repeated to himself that his time had not yet come.
Whether he died by the sword, or died in his bed, toothless and without even the strength to eat—
Odin, Hel, please wait a little longer! Hásteinn, this one, was still brimming with strength, I tell you!
[Swaaa— chulssuk!]
Had that prayer been answered? The cold seawater of the North Sea, which had come over the longship right then, thoroughly soaked Hásteinn before leisurely draining away.
"Pfoo—"
No matter how much they enlarged a longship, it seemed a longship was still a longship. Did it not, in the end, swallow seawater just like that? This world would be the same, he thought. The Fylkir had turned the Northmen into the people of the North Sea, and those who had once honored the gods by hanging living sacrifices upside down from trees were no longer to be found in the North Sea's lands. But still, we took to the sea and rode the waves, did we not?
Even if the world seemed to change endlessly, the truest parts remained the same, so there would still be a use for this Hásteinn.
Like Björn, like Ivar. He would be able to leave the four letters of the name Hásteinn upon this world's history.
With such thoughts, beside Björn who was lost in some deep thought of his own, Hásteinn spent several days swaying about and entertaining the same notions only old men would have.
He glanced once at the Proof of the Fylkir next to Uppsala, where faith and reverence for Hel and the Fylkir always swelled, and for a moment his heart raced at the thought of heading straight into Árós, which, aside from Miklagard, was probably the greatest city in this world. That moment was brief.
Unexpectedly, Björn instead steered the ship toward the domain he had received from Konungr Ragnar—Munsö Island—and Hásteinn, disappointed, could not help but ask.
"Munsö Island? Hey, Björn! That tiny thing is pretty and cute, but I'd rather see Árós than some island."
"Munsö Island is a decent place in its own right. It's at the entrance to Árós, so it can be used as a fortress, and also as a place for ships coming and going to wait. If you really want to see Árós, why not go on your own?"
"Damn it, what fun is it if I go alone?"
Just look at that workaholic. He was a man who likely would never have married if it weren't for Hásteinn's own matchmaking. A single-minded blockhead who only wanted to do what pleased him. Like father, like son—darling Refil already showed signs of it. Björn's refusal to head straight to Árós was probably because he dreaded meeting Drottning Áslaug.
Unlike Björn, Ivar, Refil, or Baldr, who were utterly indifferent to such things, Áslaug understood very well the importance of marriage.
As for the Fylkir, who had out of nowhere married a Sámi chieftain's daughter in the far north—frankly, to speak plainly, did the Fylkir even need other alliances? Did he need the strength of some great and renowned such-and-such family? If you combed through every Konungr in history, all the way back to the very first Konungr Odin, there would be none who had accomplished feats equal to the Fylkir's.
So now, the Fylkir's house could simply be considered to have risen to the same rank as the Aesir tribe of gods, and the Fylkir's descendants would probably choose whoever they wished and enjoy a happy married life without any restrictions.
'A happy marriage...? Heh heh heh, if such a thing truly exists...'
When a divine being decides to marry, what did it matter who the partner was, and who could possibly say anything about it?
Of course, Hásteinn himself had been blessed with a wife far too fine for him, and had even been granted a precious late-born son, but if someone asked whether his marriage had been nothing but blissful... well, perhaps not. Though he could not go to Árós, he could have answered that this moment, heading to the island of Munsö with Björn, was truly happy.
In any case, while one could set aside the matter of the Fylkir's family, who had departed to the distant stars beyond the sky, the North Sea nobles beneath them had perhaps no choice but to grow even more cautious about marriage alliances than before.
Even if the overall influx of silver had increased, Hásteinn knew all too well that humans were ultimately creatures more sensitive to relative numbers than absolute ones.
After all, what was the reason Hásteinn himself did not simply retire comfortably? Was it not the desire for honor, the wish not to fall behind his peers Björn and Ivar? Worries about making a living had all been resolved the moment he had come under the Fylkir's vast wings (and once again, the Fylkir had never consented).
What had driven the Norseman ancestors to venture across the cold and treacherous sea in the first place? It was because they simply could not see any way to scrape a living from that accursedly frozen landmass of Scandinavia. It was a place so terrible that losing a whole village, an entire kin group, in a single passing of winter was considered fortunate.
"With your own sons and daughters freezing and starving to death, who could spare a thought for the circumstances of those across the sea?"
Yet the Fylkir had swept away all those problems as if they were a joke, in a span of less than five years.
That was why the Fylkir was a demigod, and Hel was the greatest goddess of the North Sea.
Therein lay the reason why, even if you were to take every Konungr, every Jarl, every renowned house in the North Sea, bind them into one, and multiply their power tenfold or a hundredfold, they still could not properly lift their heads before the Fylkir.
No matter how exalted a royal or a noble might be, under the ancient laws of the Norsemen, they could lose their heads at any time by the decision of a Thing. But the Fylkir was not subject to such things.
For any nobility or royalty to exist, there must fundamentally be people beneath them. Did the Fylkir truly need the people of the North Sea?
It was the people of the North Sea who had to cling to his trouser leg.
Though he was a bit dull-witted compared to Björn, the shallow wisdom Hásteinn had gained from wandering the world for long years had opened his vision to the heart of the matter.
Ultimately, what Drottning Áslaug was worried about was whether the generation after the Fylkir's brothers, Björn and Ivar, could truly handle the Jarls of Britain and Rus who would be aggressively climbing their way up.
And to that end, she was arranging matches for Refil and Baldr with houses in Scandinavia, seeking to form a sort of faction. But in Hásteinn's view, a world had already unfolded where one's own ability was the most crucial thing for gaining prestige beneath the house of a demigod.
Just look at the roster of the 17 who had received the Meteor Sword from the Fylkir.
Björn, Ivar, Halfdan, Sigurdeu, Ubba. The Fylkir's five brothers.
Konungr Bagsecg, Olaf, Halfdan, Rurik. Four who held the rank of Konungr in the North Sea.
Jarl Refil, Seutorolpeu, Leofric, Guthrum, Uhtred, Sigebryht, Thorbjörn, Oleg. Eight who had fought alongside the Fylkir and were now the most renowned warriors in the North Sea.
The bards called them the [North Sea 17 Swords].
Each of them held a seat at the great Round Table on Fylkir's Hill; they were the powers of the present North Sea.
The Fylkir had reclaimed their lands under his own administration in exchange for those swords, but in truth, that was a given, swords or no swords. If one disliked obeying the law that everything in the North Sea belonged to the Fylkir, then death was the simple answer. Was it even remotely reasonable to stand against a man who shattered rocks with his bare fists?
Fortunately, the North Sea 17 Swords and the Jarls of every region still wished to live, and thus, nominally, all the lands of the North Sea had reverted to the Fylkir.
What was important here were names like Seutorolpeu, Leofric, Guthrum, Uhtred, Sigebryht, Thorbjörn, and Oleg on that very roster.
To put it somewhat bluntly, Seutorolpeu's father had been nothing more than a Huskarl who had fought under Konungr Ragnar, and Guthrum had been nothing more than a Huskarl who had fought under Ivar. And Uhtred and Sigebryht might have come from renowned houses in Britain, but what did that matter in the North Sea? Even Leofric and Thorbjörn were names so obscure that one had truly never heard them in one's life.
Of course, Hásteinn, who had fought alongside all of them in Britain and West Frankia, supported these capable warriors more than anyone, overtly or subtly, but viewed coldly, their families were, at best, merely ordinary.
Were there not politics within a warrior society, no matter how much the Norsemen claimed otherwise? In the old days, there had even been an adage going around: if you went to Uppsala, you must never let your guard down. But now? People were probably slowly beginning to realize that, to the Fylkir, a renowned house was not a matter of any consideration whatsoever.
And there was no way that Björn, of all people, did not know what Hásteinn himself had realized. He had likely known this fact before anyone else. The man who had possessed the legitimacy and power to sit on Uppsala's throne with none daring to protest, yet had handed that seat over to his half-brother youngest sibling without a shred of lingering attachment, would not fail to know.
Björn had always been a man who moved one step ahead of Hásteinn, and this time seemed no different.
"Come quickly. Brother, Jarl Hásteinn. I meant to escort you to Árós, but my stubborn brother insisted on bringing you here to Munsö Island. Still, it's not so bad. Isn't that so?"
[Clap!]
"I behold the Fylkir."
"Fylkir Helgi Ragnarsson. Hásteinn of Nantes offers his greeting."
That damned Björn. Strolling about with his usual expressionless face, and why was the Fylkir here of all places...!
When Hásteinn had first seen him, he was startled by his enormous frame. The next time, he was startled by eyes heavier than his frame. Now, seeing him again, he was crushed by a presence that reduced all the complex political dynamics of the North Sea he had been pondering on the way into dust.
"No, why are my brother and Jarl Hásteinn doing this? Get up, quickly. Since when have we been the sort to kneel to one another?"
A majesty that made one kneel naturally, without knowing it.
Shuddering before that formless power that could only rightly be called an overwhelming spirit, Hásteinn could not help but recall the nickname for the Fylkir that was being spoken in the western seas.
'The Static Dragon of the North Sea.'