Chapter 63
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Ladies (?) and gentlemen! It has happened. I have become 'employed', as they say. It is not yet agreed when I will take up my position, but I imagine I'll be pretty darn tired for a while when I do. Which is why I've been working hard to build up safety stock. I fully intend to finish the story, as I've said before, but because I will simply have less free time to write, I will need to re-evaluate my release schedule in the near future.

I hope for your understanding and to keep enjoying Erik's journey together with me.

The sack of Sainte Denise took all day and continued deep into the night. Luckily it was ingrained into the Marauders to focus on gathering the people first so they could be secured and monitored while the rest of them began searching for loot in earnest.

Food, iron, valuables… everything was taken out and thrown onto the ever growing piles of plunder. Every Warband had their own pile, marked by a flag or warrior. Part of a Warband’s plunder had to be given to the Jarl as taxes, but with a prize like Sainte Denise this hardly mattered.

In fact, the influx of refugees had caused Sainte Denise to be so full of loot that the Frost Wolves will have to choose which items to take on board their ships and which to destroy or leave behind.

By now the noble’s quarter was thoroughly ransacked. The houses were so large and so full of plunder, that Erik and his men hadn’t managed to ransack more than a few of them before other Warbands arrived and began to claim other residences.

They didn’t mind, since there was more than enough to go around. Besides, Erik and Scaldar were promised additional rewards for taking the great risk of opening the gates from the inside. A great and enviable honour it might have been, but glory and reward were still two separate things.

Not to mention that with the severe depletion of both Warbands, the survivors just got a huge addition to their cut. Parts were of course set aside for the widows and families of their deceased brethren, but the majority was redistributed among the warriors, as was their way.

At one point the adrenaline wore off and the Marauders found it was too dark and they were too tired to continue so they drew together and fell asleep. The loot wasn’t going anywhere and they had plenty of time tomorrow to continue.

Erik too was about to fall asleep on top of a soft, feather mattress but when he was about to close his eyes, his thoughts turned to a little something he had been postponing for a long time already.

Realising it still wasn’t that late into the night, Erik carefully gathered soft quilts and cushions, tied them to a horse and quietly returned to the deserted Frost Wolf camp. It was time to end his ‘game’.

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Back in Norsca, at the Frost Wolf settlement, life was progressing as usual. Thralls performed their duties, livestock shat and ate in their pens and the womenfolk gathered together in their homes to gossip, boast and complain.

It had been around three weeks since the Frost Wolf fleet left for their first raid of the year and there was still no sign of them.

This was no cause for alarm since the older matrons were well aware that the minimum estimate of a fortnight was foolish thinking. And even though the newlyweds had grown up with their fathers and brothers leaving for these same raids, many of them couldn’t help but lament and fear for their husbands when the warriors didn’t return exactly 14 days after they left.

Sigrun too was worried and had finally decided to go visit her mother. However, she wasn’t worried about the ‘late’ return of the men, but about a far more pressing matter to her.

At first, when Kitten had gotten pregnant, she wasn’t worried. Erik slept with her first and ove ran extended period to boot. Later, when Skadi joined them, she wasn’t scared either since the oddity that was the Daemoness possessed woman would have difficulty conceiving. Sigrun convinced herself it was only a matter of time before her womb bore the fruit of her love.

She began to have doubts however, when Ri & Ra both showed up pregnant after Erik lay with them during the Feast. It could just be a coincidence, but an uncanny one nonetheless.

Her suspicions grew when Tykira, the large humanoid Minotauress, began rapidly developing a tight stomach. One of the tribe’s midwives soon confirmed that the adorable clumsy girl was pregnant with multiple offspring. Apparently it was common for powerful Beastman children to physically develop quickly in the womb before entering a regular gestation period in their mother’s enlarged stomach.

The final straw however, was when Skadi suddenly threw up during breakfast one day. Despite Erik spending at least as much time and attention on Sigrun as he did with anyone else, the supposedly half-infertile Daemoness had been seeded before her!

Sigrun might be alright with her husband gathering beauties, since it simply proved her man’s excellence, but her continued failure to be impregnated caused her to fall into depression.

She lost her appetite, began snapping at people and even had a previously well-liked servant girl beaten to death. She was just a thrall, but capable and trustworthy thralls were hard to come by.

In the end Skadi had to reach out to Helles to talk to her daughter and find some kind of solution. Helles obliged and invited Sigrun over, apparently she had been observing the situation but because she wasn’t part of Erik’s family she could not lightly meddle in their affairs.

When the mother and daughter were alone in Helles’s private quarters, Sigrun’s front as a steady matron of a family immediately collapsed as she couldn’t prevent tears from falling nor her shoulders shake as she sobbed miserably.

Hic, hic, uuuh! Mom, what is wrong with me? Hic! Literally all Erik’s other women are carrying his children but just I alone am barren and useless!”

Troubled, Helles tightly hugged her distraught daughter and began to soothe and comfort her. If Sigrun had been her quick and intelligent self, she would have seen the guilt etched on her mother’s face but she was blinded by her tears.

‘I should have expected things to develop faster than anticipated… But how could I have expected Erik to become this excellent and achieved so quickly?! Now I don’t have the required ingredients on hand and my daughter is tearing herself apart!’ – Helles internally cursed herself.

Indeed, when it had become obvious Erik and Sigrun would become a thing Helles had prepared a special concoction to prevent Sigrun from conceiving prematurely. Sadly, what Sigrun thought was a drug meant to prevent conception once or for a small time, was actually something that completely stopped her from releasing ovum! She just never noticed because her menstrual cycle continued uninterrupted despite the ovum’s absence.

And why did Helles do such a thing? One reason was to protect her daughter from a potentially short lived romance with long reaching consequences. But the main reasons were still Helles ambitions and machinations.

Jarl Ingolf stole her away from her tribe when they were still young and now her brother was the King of the entire Sarl Confederacy! Ingolf was powerful, yes, but that was mostly personal prowess. He was too strong to be a bondsman to the Skaeling King and thus took over as Jarl of the Frost Wolves.

But Helles still desired more. She was mostly satisfied with her own lot but her family had a long-standing tradition of worshipping the God of Change and He sent her dreams. Dreams that transmitted both a prophecy and a command: Her daughter’s spouse would be extraordinary and she had to aid in growing his power.

That was why she took precautions in case Erik died before proving his worth. By now she had been convinced by Erik’s astronomical rise to prominence and had been speaking often with Skadi on certain matters, always carefully wording their words and sounding each other out.

Yet ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ is an apt saying. Helles’s actions and current inability to undo them caused her daughter grief and injustice.

‘I can never tell her about this…’ – Helles thought as she tried to rapidly come up with a solution.

She had of course been aware this problem could arise, but managing the entire Frost Wolf tribe had taken up most of her time and exhausted her.

‘The herbs I need are not necessarily rare, just unobtainable in our own lands. I suppose the best solution would be to show Sigrun’s devastation to Erik and have him run a little errant across the water? I could even ask him to bring certain other items as well, if he’s answering foreign ports anyway…’

Finished with her deliberations, Helles began to earnestly soothe and comfort Sigrun, offering a way out of her predicament without showing Helles’s own involvement.

“Dear daughter, I understand your pain! And I want to help, I am sure I know of multiple ways to make your problem go away but I simply don’t have the materials…

Say, Erik has won a large hoard of silver, right? Why not have him pay a visit to the markets of the Southerners to obtain a list of herbs and other items? And I’m sure there are things you and your ‘sisters’ want or need, right?

High quality fabrics, well-crafted jewels, expertly sown & fashionable clothes and thrall-artisans to work on your day to day necessities like tableware, furniture or baby clothes?”

Again, if Sigrun had had her wits about her she would have noticed the oddity of her mother immediately knowing which herbs to use to cure her condition. Why would those herbs specifically work? There could be any number of reasons to explain Sigrun’s infertility but Helles immediately assumed a solution through medicine…

Still, Sigrun gradually calmed down and as she listened to her mother’s words, she steadily grew excited. The prospect of having to wait just a mere few weeks longer before achieving her goal quickly reenergised her as she began to think of all the things she’d want or need for her future child.

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Isabeau, having been dragged along by Erik to the Frost Wolves siege camp, had been fully awake for a few hours now. The sky had long since darkened and the cries of Sainte Denise had mostly died down for hours already. Erik had given her a larger than usual dose of intoxicating medicine to last her through the day while Erik was away, but he hadn’t come back yet.

In fact she was woken up by the cheers and howling of the Frost Wolves as they streamed out of the camp to enter into Sainte Denise. Awoken from her pink, lust filled delusions starring herself and Erik in multiple compromising positions she would never have imagined herself if it weren’t for Erik’s gleeful talks.

Of course, she was safely secured to a heavy wooden post drive into the ground by a light but strong metal chain. The choker on her neck sat a little tight, but in her clearheaded state Isabeau found the restriction… pleasant.

Blushing, she remembered how in a majority of her dreams she found herself tied up or otherwise helpless as Erik loomed over her. Dominating, masculine and irresistible.

She quickly chastised herself for her wantonness and clasped her hands in front of her in prayer. She prayed for forgiveness of her own wrongdoing in lusting after her captor and prayed for the wellbeing of the people of Sainte Denise. She got halfway through the prayer before she paused.

‘Who am I praying to? The Lady has forsaken me and the knights of Brettonia she protects are nothing but treacherous swine…’

She suddenly felt a terrifying emptiness engulf her as she desperately sought for something, anything to fill the void of her beliefs.

*clip-clop clip-clop clip-clop

From the darkness, the sound of iron shod hoofs entered Isabeau’s ears. And when she turned around, she saw Erik gallantly approach.

By chance, the steed Erik rode was a large, pitch black stallion. His armour and weapons were black too and in the light of the waving torch, Erik truly looked like a black knight out of a story book.

‘Ah,’ – Isabeau thought. ‘White knights in shining armour are nothing but self-important puppets of the treacherous Lady. It seems… fitting. Fitting that I would thus be swayed by this true example of a black knight…’

And when Erik dismounted and purposely approached her, Isabeau felt deep inside that, just maybe, giving in to her fantasies just a little bit wouldn’t be so bad…

Erik, with his package of soft quilts and cushions forgotten on the horse, walked up close to Isabeau and looked deep into her glistening eyes filled with expectation.

Smiling, the tall Champion then took the petite Comtesse in his arms and engaged in a deep kiss before heading deeper into the dark tent.

‘I had my doubts, but this game has proven worthwhile after all…’

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