Chapter 19 – “Spoils of Chaos”

Smoke still clung to the earth like a ghost that refused to leave. The battlefield was quiet now—crows picked apart what the men left behind, and the snow no longer ran red. In the days following Sigmund's death, something strange gripped the northern coast: silence, waiting, and the smell of opportunity.

Tanya stood at the edge of a bluff overlooking the valley below. Three villages—each with smoldering hearths and empty watchtowers—waited for what came next. They had seen the sky burn when she struck Sigmund down. They had watched Jarl Arnar kneel in the bloodied snow.

She didn't need to lift a finger to make them submit.

"I take it the scouts returned?" Tanya asked, hands behind her back.

Arnar, freshly shaven and now wearing the black-cloaked mantle she'd given him—a gesture of loyalty and ownership—nodded stiffly. "Aye. The village of Vangr's already sent a cart of smoked fish and a cask of ale. They've seen sense. The other two—Fryst and Keld—still hide behind their gates, but they'll bend the knee once they realize no help's coming."

Tanya offered a faint smile. "Fear is an efficient courier."

Arnar scratched at his beard. "Never thought I'd see it. That mad dog Sigmund, gutted like a pig and left for the birds. And now villages bend knee to a—" He caught himself. "To a woman they call the Fire Valkyrie."

Tanya turned, her boots crisp on frozen ground. "Words are weapons, Arnar. Let them think I am whatever their minds can grasp. A demon. A goddess. A curse. Belief moves people more reliably than orders."

He nodded, looking somewhere between awed and unsettled. "You speak like no jarl I've known."

"I'm not a jarl," Tanya said coldly. "I am an occupying force. This isn't about honor or conquest. It's control."

From the rear came a soft hum, then the slow hiss of hydraulics. Mayuri's newest abomination trundled into view on spider-like legs—part deer skeleton, part metal, part something that may have once been human throat tissue. It carried a basket of scrolls and glistening organs, loosely covered in burlap.

Mayuri himself followed, arms folded behind his back, grinning like a child who had broken all his toys and still wanted more.

"I must say," he crooned, "mass hysteria is delightful when observed from a high vantage point. The villagers of Vangr, in particular, have… impressive vocal ranges when panicked."

Arnar glared at him. "That thing of yours screams at night. Men can't sleep. One pissed himself clear through his furs."

Tanya raised a hand. "It's a psychological tool. Fraying nerves makes the mind easier to bend. Keep it up."

"Of course, Commander." Mayuri bowed low, mockingly. "Though I do worry… the last batch of villagers weren't as—resilient—as I had hoped. One woman died merely from the smell of the dissecting hall. Quite fragile, these people."

"You're not to waste resources," Tanya said sharply. "The ones who surrender are mine. The ones who resist are yours."

Mayuri clapped his hands together. "Oh! What a clean system. So very tidy. I shall hang a sign at the edge of the woods—'Obey and live. Resist and… contribute to science.'"

Arnar looked sick.

Tanya turned her attention back to the valley. Fires were being lit in Fryst now—signal fires, perhaps. Not of war, but of desperation. They'd seen the unnatural shadows moving at night, the shrieking instruments, the pulsing lights from Mayuri's pit.

Tanya didn't need to siege them. Not when fear did the work for her.

"Ride out to Keld at dawn," she ordered Arnar. "Take only thirty. Don't threaten. Don't boast. Just say my name, and wait. Then send word if they kneel."

Arnar nodded. "Aye. They will."

She didn't doubt it.

As he turned to go, Tanya caught a glint of something in the distance—metal? Movement? No, just a shimmer of wind curling smoke.

But her instincts tensed. There would be new threats soon—distant jarldoms, southern kings, or worse, holy men with sharpened tongues and books. This was only the first circle. The real fire was still ahead.

Still, the foundation had been laid. With Arnar's loyalty, three villages already under her thumb, and Mayuri's terror-machines growing more sophisticated by the hour, Tanya had achieved in two weeks what warlords failed to build in years: fear-born obedience.

And obedience was the first brick in an empire.