FANTASY | FICTION | VIKINGS

Legend of the Storm Maiden

Chapter 1 — The journey begins

Dear reader. Welcome to this sneak peek into the novel I started during the last NaNoWriMo. Special thanks go to Lorna Dolan for her extensive and insightful review of the first story featuring my heroine Ylva. I loved Lorna’s moniker “Storm Maiden” and adapted it here. Thank you!

The ice had finally retreated, and the sun cast warm light on Stolthavn to celebrate its victory over the winter. The grass on the ground and the longhouses’ roofs turned a vivid green as the light and warmth arrived. Soon the vegetation would explode into shades of green until blossoms in all colours of the rainbow would dot the landscape. Even the sea seemed contemplative on this peaceful spring day, its waves gently washing up the quay wall. Almost everyone in Stolthavn knew that trouble was brewing without high winds and waves.

Ylva leaned back on her chair, her long, muscular legs resting on a small table. Like spring, the young shieldmaiden with the athletic appearance of a swimmer bristled with energy. Although her bright blue eyes glistened like the fjord’s crystal-clear water, her porcelain face had a wintry expression today. Her expression was sincere and as hard, relentless and pale as the frozen wasteland in the North. On gloomy days, her friend Davynn called her an icy queen. It was the bravery of a man known to outrun every fight.

Ylva threw a flat stone and watched it skip on the water’s surface a few times. She enjoyed the sunlight’s reflections on the rippling water, wondering what to do on such a dull day. She missed the rough winds and high waves, being tossed around according to Father Water’s will. Balancing on two chair legs wasn’t the same if no wind threatened to tip her over. Today, there wasn’t even a slight breeze ruffling her plain grey shirt. It felt like Mother Wind had forgotten to get up that day.

Despite her boredom, she enjoyed her favourite spot on the inn’s terrace, one of the few multi-storey stone buildings only found close to the harbour. Her table wasn’t the biggest. Quite to the contrary, it offered barely enough space for a second person to squeeze between the table and a wall. She liked it that way. Besides the promise of solitude, the table was closest to the water and offered the same fantastic view of the ragged, rocky fjord as the inn’s best. But there was something even more significant about her piece of the inn. Her foster parents had pulled her out of the water at this spot.

Whenever Ylva had time, she sat here to look out at sea, hoping for answers about who she was and where she came from. She could hardly remember the day her foster parents, Fjell and Lifa, had found her and nothing that came before it. All her attempts to learn about her heritage had failed. The frustration had fuelled her volatile temper and contributed to her isolation from the community. The townsfolk had learned that strange things happened when Ylva got angry.

Absentmindedly, Ylva caressed the silver bracelet around her left wrist. A tiny engraved silver plate read the word “Ylva”. Lifa and Fjell had known how to call her thanks to this priceless treasure. She was grateful for everything they had done for her, especially keeping her bracelet despite a challenging and hungry winter.

“Old hag, bring Björn and his men more mead!” a brusque voice shouted, ripping Ylva out of her thought.

Slowly, Ylva turned her head to look at a group of brutes sitting near her at the best table in the inn. The warriors had probably arrived with one of the ships that rowed into the harbour because of the calm. By the looks, they had been raiding faraway lands during the winter. Although all five men wore their armour and the typical rough clothing, they had adorned it with foreign objects. Those treasures, mostly pretty and expensive trinkets, decorated their clothes, armour and beards. One man had even wrapped a smooth silk scarf around his neck. Although it gave the short, stout man a comic appearance, it signified a rich booty.

The colossal brute who had just spoken had bracelets of gold and silver hanging around his tattooed wrists. He had the demeanour of a leader but not the humble kind. However, their generous spending didn’t hide/mask the fact that they were rude drunkards. The one called Björn added insult to injury when he shoved the waitress in the direction of the bar so that the older woman nearly fell on the ground. A storm rose inside Ylva’s chest. Nobody treated her mother like that without consequence.

“Who are you calling a hag?” Ylva asked the brute.

“Surely, not you,” the hairy warrior said, licking his lower lip, “You are a sweetheart! Why don’t you come over?”

Slowly, Ylva swung her legs from the small table and tipped the chair on all four legs. She looked at him intensely while she rose and picked up her tankard. Hiding her anger and disgust with a feigned smile, she walked casually toward him. The colossal warrior grinned and slapped a massive, scarred hand on his thigh.

With a triumphant smile, he looked at his compatriots, who awarded their approval in the form of guttural sounds and featherbrained looks. Björn leaned back and flexed his muscle to impress Ylva, who smiled at him and gently touched his right cheek. Björn’s men approved with another row of guttural sounds but fell silent when Ylva grabbed Björn’s ear and pulled hard. The brute gnarled in pain.

“Are you as deaf as you are dumb?” Ylva asked, a sudden wind ruffling her clothes, “I asked who you call a hag?”

Ylva released the raider, stepped back, and sipped from her tankard while watching the brute’s face change from shock to anger. Wide-eyed, the brute tipped his chair over while jumping to his feet. Although Ylva was tall and strong, he seemed to tower over her like a Viking longship over a rowing boat. He glared at her, flexing his muscles to intimidate her. To his confusion and humiliation, the young, blonde woman smiled ecstatically.

“Here are your drinks, gentlemen. On the house,” Ylva’s mother said, who had hurried over quickly with a tray loaded with drinks, “Please, do not pick fights with Ylva!”

The brute pushed Lifa aside rudely. This time, the kind-faced, podgy woman couldn’t keep her feet, stumbled and hit the hard wooden floor with a pained groan. Her tray and the tankards went airborne, spilling mead on the woman and the nearby tables.

“No one tells me what to do, crone!”

Everybody, except the brute and his four companions, seemed to grab their drinks and duck under their tables. Waves hit the quay wall loudly, splashing water on the inn’s terrace. If Ylva’s expression had seemed hard before, now she truly lived up to Davynn’s moniker. Her anger made her blue eyes look like the winter’s ice had returned, and a matching cold wind rose around Ylva as if Mother Wind herself was angered. Ylva’s posture was calm, almost tranquil, like the eye of a storm. Then, the storm broke out.

“And no one touches my mother!”

Ylva’s sudden outburst startled the brutes, and Björn reluctantly stepped back. His surprise cost him valuable seconds to defend himself against Ylva’s attack. She swung the tankard in her hand and smashed it against his right temple so hard that it burst and covered him in clay and mead. Björn staggered to his left, holding fast to the table to keep his balance. His men jumped from their chairs, unsure how to react. The stiff breeze pulled at the shorter warrior’s silken scarf and violently ripped it from his neck.

“Ylva, no!”

Lifa scrambled to her feet and slowly walked back toward the bar, looking intently at her daughter and the wind whipping her long, thick braid back and forth. But her daughter wouldn’t listen, like so often, when her temper took the better of her.

“You should be careful when you cause waves, woman!” Björn shouted to be heard over the wind.

“You want waves?!” Ylva cheered.

As if summoned by her laughter, a huge wave swept over the quay wall, throwing Björn, his men, and Ylva from their feet. Shakily, the brute got on his feet and was greeted by a wooden chair that landed hard in his chest. While he tottered backwards into the table, Ylva appeared in front of him, grinning as if she had kept a joke to herself.

“No one attacks Björn without conse….”

The wind was so intense now it threw chairs over. As if flung by an invisible hand, the chair smashed into Björn’s face and stopped his sentence short. He grimaced in agony, exposing his yellow, crooked teeth. The first thing he saw when he looked up again was Ylva, with a leg pulled back, ready for a kick. He held his hands desperately, attempting to block the kick that sent him flying. His golden and silver bracelets jingled wildly until he fell into the fjord’s icy water, and silence returned.

“And no one attacks my mother without consequences.”

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Read the original stories and Lorna’s review here:

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