Hallmundr is a warrior of Hammerfel, second-in-command of Gunvald's crew, and one of the three men at the centre of the Unification of Leifthasir. The son of a Völva priestess and a warrior who had served the village Karl, he joined Gunvald and Thorhalli in their fifteenth year and became indispensable — his sharp eyes and tactical instincts forming the scout mind that balanced Gunvald's command and Thorhalli's force. He loved Thorhalli for sixteen years, quietly and then completely, held back by the expectations his bloodline carried and the mother who taught him duty came before desire. When Hammerfel burned he separated from the company to find his cousin Glyrna, the last surviving member of their Völva line, tracking her across half of Leifthasir on little more than broken branches and the faint marks of boot prints in frost. He found her. He watched Thorhalli die on the battlefield. He stood at the pyre beside Gunvald and spoke of what sixteen years had held — the cruelty of the beginning, the patience Thorhalli gave back, the house in the clearing they would never build. He stayed on to serve the kingdom they had built — because Gunvald needed him, and because going home to Hammerfel meant carrying Thorhalli's ashes to the ruins of a village and a future that would never be built now.

Character & Appearance

Hallmundr is tall, broad-shouldered, and bearded, with black hair that falls to his shoulders. His posture is steady even through exhaustion — head turning to scan terrain for threats whether he is riding into a war camp or arriving home from a solo pursuit across half the country. He moves with a commanding physical presence that silences rooms without requiring him to raise his voice. His cloak hangs heavy with the damp of weather he has ridden through rather than avoided. He rides a black stallion.

He is all sharp edges in his determination — the kind of composure that does not break under pressure but is clearly costing something to maintain. Balti, seeing him clearly by firelight for the first time, thought him entirely made of hard lines and resolve. What Glyrna understood — and what took Balti longer — was that the sharpness was not coldness. Hallmundr laughed easily with Thorhalli, grinned at reunions, made dry remarks at exactly the right moment. The sharp edges were what he showed the world when the softer things needed protecting.

His tactical instincts were the defining professional quality his companions relied on — Gunvald the commander, Thorhalli the sword, Hallmundr the eyes. He spotted the wrong quality of smoke over Hammerfel from the sea before anyone else had registered anything unusual. He read the information a dying man at a refugee camp could offer and extracted it cleanly. He tracked Glyrna across half of Leifthasir alone on minimal clues and arrived in time. Strategy was not something he applied intermittently — it was the way he inhabited the world at all times.

Origins & Lineage

Hallmundr was the son of a Völva priestess of Hammerfel and a warrior who had served the village Karl. His mother's line was the same line as Glyrna's mother — sisters, both Völva, both priestesses of the village. The Völva calling ran deep in his family: his mother expected her son to honour the lineage by eventually marrying a Völva woman and producing daughters to carry the line forward. This expectation sat over his entire adult life as a weight he neither fully accepted nor could entirely put down.

His father's warrior training gave him advantages beyond Gunvald and Thorhalli's self-taught skills — cleaner steel, more disciplined technique. Thorhalli, who bristled at what he saw as unearned privilege when they first met, was not entirely wrong that Hallmundr had been given more than the village sons raised by fishermen and farmers. What Thorhalli eventually understood was that Hallmundr had also been given more to carry.

Joining Gunvald's Company

Hallmundr joined Gunvald and Thorhalli's circle in their fifteenth year. He first proved himself on their initial Viking voyage, when his quick thinking turned a fight that Gunvald was losing against a much larger opponent. The display impressed Gunvald immediately and irritated Thorhalli just as immediately — the tension between them a friction that was already something other than simple dislike.

His natural role in the group established itself quickly. Gunvald was leadership — practical, focused, increasingly the gravity that held them in formation. Thorhalli was force — first into a fight, loudest voice in the hall, the one who made every room feel warmer. Hallmundr was precision — the scout's eye, the strategist's instinct, the man reading the terrain while everyone else was still reading the faces. The three were inseparable through the years that followed: winters hunting in the wood, summers at sea Viking.

Hallmundr & Thorhalli

Sixteen Years

Hallmundr loved Thorhalli for sixteen years before he said so at the pyre. For most of those years Thorhalli did not notice — not in the way Hallmundr saw him. When Thorhalli finally did, Hallmundr was cruel in his response: he toyed with the man's emotions for longer than he had any right to, held back by the same expectations that made him break off an earlier courtship before it could require a commitment. Thorhalli was patient through all of it, in the way he was patient about almost everything that mattered to him — steady, constant, entirely sure of what he wanted and willing to wait.

Their relationship was kept quiet — not hidden exactly, but moved carefully around the edges of what their world would require of both of them. They shared their lives as partners in battle and in affection. Gunvald saw the way Hallmundr's hand lingered on Thorhalli's shoulder after a hard day, the way Thorhalli's teasing softened when it was directed at Hallmundr. He did not require an explanation and did not offer one. To him it was as natural as the seasons.

The Weight of Expectations

Hallmundr's mother had never hated Thorhalli. In her own way she had even tolerated their relationship — but always with the quiet understanding that it would not last, that Hallmundr would eventually see sense and fulfil his obligations to the Völva line. Her approval was a weight he could not put down, and the weight shaped every choice he made about what he permitted himself to want.

Thorhalli had described the home he wanted to build. A clearing surrounded by elms that would turn gold in autumn and green again in spring. Strong walls, a sturdy roof. Not big — just enough space for two. He described every detail as if it were already built. Hallmundr had laughed and called it foolish. He told Gunvald at the pyre: "I laughed at him because I was afraid I'd choose it." His mother's voice had been a chain. When she died in the burning of Hammerfel, the chain remained — heavier, now, for having nothing left to answer to.

The Völva from Bjornholm

Before he and Thorhalli had committed fully to one another, Hallmundr had courted a young woman in training to become a Völva from a coastal village the crew stopped at during raids between Leifthasir and Rus. He saw her in port calls deliberately, partly to satisfy the expectation of his bloodline and partly, by his own implicit admission, to stoke Thorhalli's reaction. When word reached his mother and she made the five-day trek to meet the girl — who was decidedly in love with the heroic voyager — Hallmundr understood the gravity of what he had been doing. He called off the courtship immediately. It was not long afterward that he and Thorhalli settled into their commitment to one another.

The Burning of Hammerfel

Hallmundr spotted the smoke from the sea before anyone else registered it as wrong — too thick, wrong quality, too many columns for the number of chimneys in Hammerfel. He called all hands to the oars before Gunvald had finished assessing it. He was the one who ran desperately through the centre of Hammerfel when they beached — searching the ruin not for signs of Gida or any named person but for survivors, for signs of life, for Glyrna.

He lost his mother, his father, and his aunt that day — all of them gone, soot-streaked rubble where the Völva sisters had lived and worked. He told Gunvald at the refugee camp, his voice raw and steady and controlled in the way of someone who had not yet allowed themselves to fully feel it: his cousin Glyrna had been taken. She was the last of the line. They needed to find her. Gunvald looked at the haunted stiffness in how Hallmundr carried himself and understood immediately. He agreed without deliberation.

The Solo Search for Glyrna

When the company split — Gunvald and Thorhalli heading north to warn the villages, Hallmundr going after Glyrna — it was the first time the three of them had separated since the raiding years. The parting was terse. The anger between Hallmundr and Gunvald for dividing them was real and expressed, and then they went their different ways anyway, because neither of them had any choice. Thorhalli gripped the back of Hallmundr's tunic in their farewell as if he could hold him safe a moment longer. Hallmundr told him he couldn't promise to be careful. He mounted his horse and rode.

He tracked Glyrna across the country on evidence that would have been inadequate for most trackers: whispers from farmers and townsfolk on the road, broken branches, scuffed patches of earth, faint depressions in frost where someone had slept. The trail led north to the cliffs above the Great Fjord. He found a Wexian soldier clinging to the rocks at the clifftop — broken leg, exposure setting in — and extracted the confirmation he needed with his seax at the man's throat before ending it cleanly. Then he climbed.

He killed two Wexian archers who were closing in on Glyrna and her companion from above — moving in silence until he was close enough, then fast enough that the second man had barely registered the first falling before Hallmundr was already on him. He called Glyrna's name in the dark. She ran to him and he caught her, falling backward into the grass on the muddy stones, holding her while she wept against his neck.

"It's alright. I'm here now." — Hallmundr to Glyrna, A Tale of Scorched Ash and Elm

Reunion & Return

Hallmundr returned to the war camp with Glyrna and Balti — the half-elf he had not expected and was not sure about. His reunion with Thorhalli was immediate and public: he spread his arms wide announcing friendly intentions and Thorhalli ran to him, closing the distance in a few strides and enveloping him in a fierce embrace. Before he could stop himself, Thorhalli kissed him — brief and fervent — in front of the assembled warriors. A few cheers broke the tension. Hallmundr laughed and kissed him back, gripping his arms, pulling him closer. Gunvald stepped forward and clasped his forearm: "It's good to see you alive."

When Thorhalli later asked his assessment of Balti, Hallmundr was precise: capable, reckless, loyal to a degree that made the recklessness almost forgivable. He didn't trust Balti directly. He trusted Glyrna, and Glyrna trusted Balti — which would have to be enough. It turned out to be more than enough.

The Campaign

Vouching for Balti

When the young vikes of Hammerfel saw Balti's pointed ears and reached for their sword hilts, it was Hallmundr who settled the matter with a single sentence delivered in the tone of a seasoned leader who had no patience for small thinking: "You all act as if this is your first summer at sea. He's a warrior same as any of you. I've seen him face Wexian scouts without flinching. You'll show him the same respect you'd show any man here who holds a sword." The young men backed off. The wariness did not entirely fade, but the hands left the hilts.

The Cenric Interrogation

During the final battle, when the Wexian general Cenric was brought in as a prisoner, it was Hallmundr who conducted the interrogation — calm, low-voiced, dangerous in the way of someone who had no need to perform threat because the threat was simply present. When Cenric looked past him at Glyrna weaving seidr at the camp's centre and murmured "She's supposed to be dead," Hallmundr grabbed his tunic and hauled him close: "Like all the other Völva you killed?" When Cenric implied the Leifthasir people didn't know how to use their witches, Hallmundr slammed a fist into his stomach and ended the conversation. He turned to the nearest warrior: "If he speaks again, break his jaw."

He then turned back to check on Glyrna the moment she faltered — and when her vision broke into a battle-trance and delivered its intelligence, he was already mounted and calling the riders before she had finished speaking.

Thorhalli's Death & the Pyre

Thorhalli died in the final dragon battle. The text does not dwell on the moment of death itself — what it preserves is Hallmundr kneeling beside the body afterward: face pale and hollow, lips moving without sound. Gunvald approached slowly and said only that Thorhalli had deserved better. Hallmundr did not respond. His shoulders shook with silent grief.

At the pyre, which neither of them could bring themselves to light for a long time, Hallmundr spoke the full truth of what sixteen years had held. He had loved Thorhalli for sixteen years — and at first, he told Gunvald, Thorhalli had not noticed him in that way. When Thorhalli finally did, Hallmundr had been cruel in return: he toyed with the man's emotions, kept him at a distance, laughed at what Thorhalli wanted. Thorhalli had been patient through all of it. And then the house in the clearing surrounded by elms — the one Thorhalli had described in careful detail, the one Hallmundr had laughed at when Thorhalli proposed they build it together. Strong walls. A sturdy roof. Not big — just enough space for two. He said: "I laughed at him because I was afraid I'd choose it."

His mother had called it duty. Carry on the line. In the end she was dead and Thorhalli was dead and the weight of the expectations she had placed on him sat heavier than ever, because there was nothing left to justify having carried them. Gunvald placed his hand on Hallmundr's shoulder and told him Thorhalli had had him — that was all he had wanted. Hallmundr's own tears finally fell. Gunvald lit the pyre.

Hallmundr stood closer to the fire than anyone else. He did not flinch at the heat. He stood with his arms crossed tightly and his jaw barely controlled, watching the flames take what remained of the life they had been going to build.

"Sixteen years. I loved him for sixteen years, and at first, he didn't even notice me. Not in the way I saw him... I laughed at him because I was afraid I'd choose it." — Hallmundr at Thorhalli's pyre, A Tale of Scorched Ash and Elm

After the War

At the beach before Glyrna and Balti sailed for Alfheim, Hallmundr stood with his arms crossed and his towering frame blocking the morning sun. He had had his reservations about Balti through the whole campaign. Watching the two of them together, he let them go. He pulled Glyrna into a fierce hug and told her to take care of herself. She told him she would.

When she asked whether he would return to Hammerfel, he shrugged: someday, but Gunvald needed all the help he could get. She understood what he didn't say — that going back to Hammerfel meant carrying Thorhalli's ashes to the ruins of the village, and he was not ready for that yet. He would serve. He would stay. And someday, when it was time, he would go home to put Thorhalli to rest in the only place that had ever felt like it belonged to both of them.

In the epilogue at Fjord's Hold, Hallmundr stands among the assembled warriors at Gunvald's victory speech — his towering presence named as a reminder of Hammerfel's unyielding strength. Gunvald's gaze flickers to him when he speaks of carrying the memories of the lost. That is where Hallmundr is at the end of the story: still standing, still present, the grief absorbed into the posture of a man who has decided that endurance is the form his loyalty takes.

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