After another hour of walking through the woods, they finally reached the edge of the great valley.

The massive timber gates were standing wide open, just as the rebel army had left them when they charged out.

As Erik led the soldiers toward the gates, the scale of what they had just conquered became painfully clear.

Standing just inside the wooden walls, huddling together in terror, were thousands of women. There were old men leaning on wooden canes. There were countless young children clinging to their mothers’ legs, their faces dirty with soot and tears.

When they saw the musketeers marching their defeated fathers and husbands into the city at gunpoint, a collective, heartbreaking wail rose up from the crowd.

"Silence!" Torstein roared, firing a single musket shot straight up into the gray sky.

The sharp thunder of the gun instantly silenced the crying crowd. The women pulled their children closer, staring at Erik with eyes full of pure hatred and deep fear.

Erik lowered his mace, walking slowly through the streets of the city.

"Torstein..." Erik ordered, "Take 500 men and secure the perimeter. Put our shooters up in those wooden watchtowers. Disarm every single prisoner and lock them in the large meeting halls. Treat the women and children fairly, but do not let anyone leave the city walls."

"Yes, King Erik!" Torstein saluted, quickly shouting orders to his battalion leaders to spread the men out.

"This is a lot of people..." Halig whispered, "I thought there were only a few thousand exiles. But looking at these families... there must be at least 6,000 women and children here. Plus the 5,000 men we just captured."

"We can handle them." Erik said, brushing some ash off his shoulder.

Halig pointed a finger at the shattered ice. "The lake is completely broken, Erik. The fish are gone, or they are trapped under the dead bodies. The Danish ships we blew up on the beach? That was probably where my uncle was hiding their winter food reserves."

1,400 Iron Kingdom soldiers. 5,000 prisoners of war. 6,000 women and children... Nearly 12,500 people trapped inside a wooden wall at the base of an exploding volcano.

Erik slowly turned to Halig, his voice dropping into a nervous whisper.

"...when we did the fake retreat on the beach this morning... how much of our salted pork and hard bread did the quartermasters manage to pack?"

Halig stared back at his King, his own face draining of blood.

"None, Erik." Halig swallowed hard. "You told us to leave the crates in the snow to make it look like a panicked retreat. The shockwave blew all our food into the fucking ocean.... I am already dying, my belly feels like it is eating my own ribs. If we don’t find some meat by tomorrow, I might actually try to bite Torstein’s leg"

Torstein, who was busy organizing patrol maps on the table, didn’t even look up. "If you try to bite me, I will shoot you in the knee. Keep your teeth to yourself."

Though Erik usually loved their constant bickering, his mind was entirely focused on the numbers.

"We can’t just sit here and wait for Ragnar’s rescue fleet to arrive." Erik said firmly, "If a raven flies out today, it takes three days to reach England. It takes Ragnar two days to load new ships, and another week to sail here. That is almost two weeks of waiting. We will be eating leather boots and tree bark by day four."

As such, a deep silence filled the longhouse.

You couldn’t shoot hunger with a musket, and you couldn’t forge bread in a blast furnace.

"Torstein." Erik suddenly stopped pacing. "When your men locked the prisoners in the meeting halls, did you notice who was in charge of the food supplies? I need to talk to the village hunting leader. Bring him to me right now."

"Yes, King Erik." Torstein nodded, grabbing his musket and heading back out into the streets.

Afterward, it didn’t take long for Torstein to return. The doors pushed open, letting in a cold gust of volcanic wind and a flurry of gray ash.

Two musketeers marched into the room, dragging a tall, incredibly rugged man between them.

He had a wild black beard, a jagged scar across his right eye, and he was wearing a coat made entirely of white wolf pelts. .

"King Erik." Torstein said, shoving the man to his knees in front of the fire pit. "This is Kjetil. Halfdan’s men say he was the master of the hunts."

"So, you are Kjetil..." Erik said softly. "I will get straight to the point. My men are hungry. Your people are hungry. The food is completely gone. I brought you here to ask you a very simple question. How can we solve this food problem?"

After hearing such words, Kjetil let out a mocking laugh. He looked up at Erik with his one good eye.

"You want me to help you feed your army of murderers?" Kjetil spat, struggling, "You killed us all, you arrogant boy! We are just waiting for the bodies to drop!"

"Listen to me!" Halig suddenly roared, jumping out of his chair and drawing his hunting knife.

He stepped right up to Kjetil, grabbing a handful of his black beard. "We didn’t force your people to ally with the Danes! We didn’t ask you to shoot arrows at us in the woods! We won the battle. Now, you can either help us find meat, or I can start by roasting your fucking leg over this fire!"

"Halig, enough..." Erik ordered calmly, raising his hand.

Halig grumbled, releasing the hunter’s beard and stepping backward, but he kept his sharp knife drawn.

"Kjetil... I understand why you hate me. I really do. But let me be entirely clear. If we run out of food, my musketeers are not going to be the first ones to starve. Your women will starve. Your children will starve. My men have the guns, which means they eat last..."

Kjetil’s jaw tightened. The army always eats before the prisoners...

"There has to be another hunting ground." Erik pushed gently, recognizing the shift in the hunter’s demeanor. "You know this island better than anyone. Where is the meat, Kjetil? Tell me, and I swear that your women and children will get the first full rations."

Kjetil stared at the dirt floor for a long moment. He listened to the distant, deep rumble of the angry volcano outside. He closed his one good eye, taking a deep breath.

"There is a place..." Kjetil finally whispered, "But it is not a hunting ground. It is a graveyard."

"I don’t care if it’s the underworld itself." Erik smiled, standing back up. "Where is it?"

"Two days march to the north." Kjetil explained, looking up at the young King. "There is a massive coastal canyon we call the Black Jaws. Every winter, huge herds of giant sea-beasts drag themselves out of the freezing ocean to mate and die on the black sand. We call them the ivory-tusks. Some of them weigh as much as three full-grown horses. The meat from just ten of those beasts could feed this entire city for a month."

"Walruses!" Halig cheered, his eyes lighting up with joy as he quickly put his knife away. "You mean walruses! Huge, fat, slow sea-cows! We can just walk up to them and shoot them in the head! We are saved!"

Torstein nodded in agreement, "A two-day march is difficult in this ash, but it is doable. If we take 300 men, we can harvest the meat and drag it back on wooden sleds."

As Erik looked back down at the bound hunter, he noticed that Kjetil wasn’t smiling. The rugged man actually looked paler than before.

"Why did you never hunt these beasts yourself, Kjetil?" Erik asked, "If they are that massive, and that close, why risk fishing on a dangerous frozen lake when you have a canyon full of meat just sitting there?"

Kjetil looked deeply into Erik’s eyes.

"Because the ivory-tusks are not the only things that go to the Black Jaws in the winter," Kjetil whispered, "The smell of all that dying meat attracts something else. Something that comes down from the highest glaciers. We tried to hunt there three years ago... I took forty of our best spearmen."

Kjetil raised his bound hands, pointing a finger at his own ruined eye.

_________

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