The air was thick with rot and the acrid sting of alchemical residue. Smoke rose over the ridges like funeral veils, drifting toward the gods who had long since stopped watching.
In the wake of the failed raid on Jarl Eirik's settlement, whispers of the dead rising had become screams. Warriors who once laughed around fire pits now looked over their shoulders in silence, clutching their weapons even as they slept. No one knew what the invaders had used—some said it was dark magic, others claimed the corpses had been puppeted by vengeful spirits. But those who had seen it with their own eyes all agreed: the dead had walked.
What they didn't know—what they couldn't know—was that it had been Mayuri's gas, a volatile blend of reanimating agents and neural twitch accelerants released into the lungs of the freshly slain. The grotesque dance that followed was not divine punishment, but scientific triumph. Mayuri had been giddy for hours.
Tanya had watched it all unfold from a nearby rise, cloaked in her usual calm. She'd let the raiding party fall—just expendable fodder from a small, loyalist village. Their deaths were a necessary variable in the experiment. And now, as panic coursed through the veins of every jarl's hall, Tanya knew the time for open war had come.
War without banners. War where no one truly knew the enemy.
---
"Ivar," she said, her voice cutting clean through the crackling of fire in the longhouse. The young warrior stood quickly, kneeling as if she were a god and he, a supplicant. "What do they whisper?"
"They think Eirik cursed the dead," Ivar replied. "That he's summoned the draugr to guard his holdfast. Others say Gudleik used forbidden rites and was punished. There's talk of abandoning the old gods altogether."
Tanya smirked. "Good. Confusion is the iron in the blood of fear. Feed it."
Ivar nodded. "Shall I spread more rumors?"
"No need," she said, walking to the war map pinned against the timbered wall. "They're already unraveling. Eirik thinks Gudleik struck first. Gudleik thinks Eirik planted saboteurs. And both wonder which god has abandoned them."
She marked two points on the map with oil-black stones.
"Position our men here," she said, pointing to a valley between the jarldoms. "When they move, we'll be ready to scavenge the remains. Let them destroy each other. We'll pick through the ash."
---
Meanwhile, Mayuri's lab churned with heat and steam. The doctor was in a state of euphoria, floating inches from the floor in a zero-gravity harness of his own making, body twisting as he scribbled equations onto the stone walls with blood-colored chalk.
"They twitched! They fought the restraints!" he shrieked, eyes wide behind his mask. "One sang! The vocal cords still remembered the rhythm of war!"
"Fascinating," Tanya said flatly, stepping over a twitching corpse as she entered. "But tell me—can you control them?"
Mayuri paused mid-spin, then frowned. "Control? No, no, that's for the weak-minded. We must allow chaos to—"
Tanya raised a hand. "Refine the gas. I want a second test. This time on a larger scale."
The smile returned instantly. "Ah! A festival of limbs! Yes, yes, I will refine it. Fewer variables. Maybe... maybe if I implant a conductor node into their frontal lobes…"
She was already walking out before he could finish. There was no time to dwell in the madness. She needed precision.
The war was beginning.
---
The first battle erupted three nights later—neither side had claimed responsibility for the previous raid, yet both blamed the other. Their warbands clashed at dawn in a frozen glade, blood painting the snow crimson.
Tanya observed from the treeline, dressed in dark furs, face impassive. Beside her, Ivar grinned savagely, his knuckles white around the hilt of his axe.
"They'll kill each other like animals," he said.
"They are animals," Tanya replied. "But animals can be herded."
As screams echoed through the forest, she raised a small rune-etched cylinder. Aether surged through it. From the trees behind, Mayuri's newly reanimated corpses began their grotesque march—jerking, twitching, moaning in inhuman tones.
They moved into the field like a second wave, falling upon the wounded and the unaware. Both sides screamed in terror.
What was meant to be a skirmish turned into a massacre. When it was over, only the snow remained to witness the horror.
---
The next morning, a scout returned from Gudleik's camp.
"They say Eirik conjured the dead," he said breathlessly. "That he sold his soul to Hel herself. His own men now suspect him."
"And Eirik?" Tanya asked.
"He blames Gudleik for unleashing cursed relics. His men executed two skalds for 'witchcraft.' The jarldom burns with panic."
Tanya leaned back against her seat in the war lodge, sipping hot broth. The firelight danced across her eyes, but her expression remained cold.
"So be it," she said. "We'll wait another day. Then we strike."
---
By week's end, Gudleik's hall had been raided in retaliation, and Eirik's village granaries had mysteriously gone up in flames. Tanya's agents, dressed in mismatched armor and cloaked in lies, had ensured both events occurred without either jarl realizing who truly pulled the strings.
It was beautiful.
No banners flew. No heralds declared allegiance. And yet, Vinland bled.
Tanya stood on a ridge above a burning village, Mayuri beside her, giddy at the samples he'd recovered. Ivar waited behind them, eyes narrowed, as if already seeing the Iron Kingdom that would rise from this ash.
"A war without banners," Tanya whispered.
"A war where only corpses tell the truth," Mayuri added.
Tanya smiled.
"And the dead always serve the living. Especially when the living command them."