Ragnar’s Expedition to Find Belshezan

Ragnar’s Expedition to Find Belshezan turns a fortress’s apparent dead end into a dangerous route toward possible aid. After learning that the attackers are Wights and discovering that the people inside cannot simply wait out the siege, Ragnar accepts Dvar’s lead to the sorcerer; the journey then tests both the limits of Ragnar’s strength and the possibility that help can arrive from beyond the besieged walls.

The Decision and the Hidden Route

The expedition grows out of two discoveries. Earlier, Ragnar found a silver amulet among the remains of Heimval, whose death in the wilderness led him to resolve to avenge the man and aid the settlers who had sheltered him through winter. Later, when the fortress was surrounded, the luminous eyes and the creatures’ connection to the barrows helped identify the attackers as Wights. Their presence transformed the danger from a threat on the road into a siege: Ragnar could not reach help by simply riding out, and he judged a direct attempt through their numbers likely to end in death without saving anyone.

Seeking another possibility, Ragnar found the old man outside one of the larger huts and asked whether there was any way to get past the encircling creatures. The man led him beyond the huts to the rampart and explained that the site had begun as an old tribal fortification, with an outer ditch and an earthen wall. As a child, he had explored the grounds and discovered a concealed tunnel running from inside the fortress to a place among the trees. It might not carry Ragnar beyond the Wights, but it offered a hidden exit—and, as Ragnar immediately recognized, a possible entrance for the enemy if they found it.

Ragnar opened the tunnel’s timber cover, exposing a dark passage that ran too low for him to walk upright. The old man warned that he would have to crouch, but that the passage would take him a good distance beyond the walls without being seen from outside. Ragnar’s first response was frustration: even if he escaped the ring, settlements lay many days away on horseback, there was no horse to take through the tunnel, and the fortress’s people could not hold out that long. The old man insisted that the tunnel was only part of what he knew, then handed Ragnar a small bronze amulet from beneath his fur cloak.

The old man identified himself as Dvar and gave Ragnar the next link in the route: a broad stream lay to the east; by following it north, Ragnar could reach the cave of Belshezan in no more than a day’s modest walk. Dvar said the sorcerer would remember him. Ragnar chose to set out, informed Jarl Thryggvi and several others, filled two small pouches with food, and made a final circuit of the wall-walk to urge the sentries to remain vigilant. He then returned to the tunnel, where Dvar was still waiting, and descended into the narrow passage.

Crossing the Wight Ring

Ragnar lowered himself into the hidden passage and found it just wide enough for his broad shoulders, though its low ceiling forced him to hunch as he pressed onward in darkness. He kept one hand before his face, brushing aside cobwebs and debris. The tunnel ran a considerable distance beneath the fortress’s defenses, but he could not know whether it carried him beyond the Wights until he reached its end.

After emerging, Ragnar replaced the timber cover and concealed the entrance beneath brush and snow. He set out east through light flurries, with biting wind against his face and the Wights’ cries fading behind him. He had begun to think he had passed the encircling creatures when a shriek sounded nearby. Two Wights came loping through the trees. Knowing he could not outrun them, Ragnar held Raven Caller in both hands and waited; the gap between the attackers gave him the chance to face them one at a time.

The first Wight’s attack failed to reach him, and Ragnar answered with a rapid series of heavy axe blows that hacked the creature apart. The silence that followed did not last. Farther along the route, a scraping sound and a puff of snow gave him only a moment’s warning before another Wight hurtled down from above. It slammed him to the ground, and he grappled with it, pinning its narrow arms. When its elongated neck brought its jaws within reach of his face, he had to release his hold. The struggle ended with the Wight’s teeth tearing through his tunic and into his flesh.

Ragnar cleaned the wound with snow and cut a strip from his cloak to bind it. Looking back, he saw the Wight’s tracks running beside his own: it had followed him all the way to the stream. He knew the consequence of the bite from the other victims—everyone bitten by a Wight had died in less than half a day. The expedition now carried its own deadline. As dusk gathered, he pressed on despite sweat, dizziness, and the growing sickness, trying to remain alert as his strength of attention waned.

At last Ragnar sighted a cave. He approached cautiously, leaving Raven Caller looped at his belt rather than presenting himself as an attacker. A fur-clad figure emerged from the entrance; despite his strange appearance, Ragnar recognized a man beneath the skins. Weary and increasingly ill, he gave his name as Ragnar, son of Eirik, and explained that Dvar had sent him to find Belshezan in an hour of need. The stranger identified himself as Belshezan and invited Ragnar closer, turning the dangerous, uncertain journey into a face-to-face appeal for aid.

The Beast Summoning and Return

Belshezan’s treatment began to reverse the bite’s effects while the journey continued. The dizziness and feverish heat that had afflicted Ragnar Stormbringer gradually faded, and the wound stopped throbbing, settling instead into a dull ache. The reprieve came as signs of a larger response sounded across the woods: a wolfish chorus gave way to scattered roars, some bear-like and others unfamiliar. Belshezan, in his bear form, growled and started across the clearing, looking back to make sure Ragnar Stormbringer followed. Ragnar Stormbringer understood the summons and kept pace a short distance behind him.

Night had fallen by the time they crossed the lower ground between a series of hills. The shrieks and cries of Wights had been riding the wind for some time, and Ragnar Stormbringer knew the creatures had drawn near the fortress. He followed Belshezan up a small hill and looked down at the stronghold from the north. Through the sparse flurries he could make out sentries patrolling the wall-walk and fires burning among the huts and roofed storage pits. The sight reassured him that the defenses remained manned and the fortress was still in order, even as the sounds of the approaching threat carried through the night.

Below, the conflict became a battle not only between Wights and people but among the forest’s creatures. Ragnar Stormbringer saw a Mayak charge to the aid of a hard-pressed wolf, striking one Wight while the wolf seized another by its extended neck. They bounded away together, leaving two headless bodies in the snow. A snow tiger then broke a brown bear free from the attack of three Wights, and the two predators turned on their assailants, tearing them apart. The animals’ cooperation astonished Ragnar Stormbringer: predators that might otherwise have been enemies had joined against the dead that threatened their lands.

The battle also clarified Belshezan’s earlier caution. Every two-legged figure in the trees was a potential enemy to the attacking beasts, and in the speed and confusion of the fighting Ragnar Stormbringer could have been caught between animals and Wights. The Wights, for their part, did not retreat as their numbers dwindled; they fought on with bites and claws until the woods fell silent of their cries. Belshezan’s response had thus brought the forest’s predators into a common struggle, while the Wight threat that had made the expedition necessary was met beyond the fortress walls.

The Earlier Debt Behind the Expedition

The mission’s roots lay in an earlier death in the wilderness. Ragnar found Heimval’s remains among the snow, with so little flesh left that the Mayak appeared to have fed thoroughly. From the condition of the body, Ragnar judged that the killing had happened recently, perhaps that very morning. Beneath the ruined neck he discovered a silver amulet fashioned as the rune of Tireya, the northern god; after wiping away the blood, he showed it to Cnut, who had described the amulet before.

Cnut’s grief gave the discovery a human cost beyond the dead man himself. Heimval had left a wife and two healthy children, and Cnut lamented that he had not waited until others could have accompanied him. Ragnar admired the courage that had made Heimval act when others hesitated, but also judged the decision reckless: the settlers were not experienced warriors, and the dangers of the surrounding wilderness made a solitary undertaking perilous, especially for a man responsible for a family. Respect and regret therefore marked Ragnar’s response together. His resolve to avenge Heimval and aid the settlers was not an abstract pledge; it joined the fate of a particular household to the community that had sheltered him through the harshest part of winter.

That obligation also explains why Ragnar remained at the fortress rather than beginning a southward journey in the depths of winter. Jarl Thryggvi had once been driven from his lands after a conflict with a northern king, then traveled east with his family, servants, loyal warriors, and their families. They settled among the remnants of a forest-dwelling tribe battered by war and hardship. The tribe welcomed the newcomers, and, with its consent, the jarl came to rule there. The fortress under siege was thus a refuge shaped by earlier displacement and a shared effort to endure; Ragnar’s search for Belshezan extended his commitment to the people who had taken him in. The silver amulet at the beginning of that commitment and the small bronze amulet Dvar later entrusted to him were distinct objects, but both marked moments when the danger of the wilderness became a charge Ragnar chose to carry.