Julianna 
c. 895 AD: Sigurd challenges Máelbrigte to a peace meeting
There are places where the ground remembers people, such as Sigurd the Mighty. Where blood was spilt and treachery happened. Now silent, but the memory remains deep in the soil.
The moorland south of Orkney is one of them. People walk across it now with boots and backpacks, but beneath the soil, something older waits. The story of Sigurd Eysteinsson and Máelbrigte.
The earth drank heavily on the day Earl Sigurd Eysteinsson betrayed Máelbrigte. Blood, rain, and the last breath of forty men sank into the peat and stayed there.
Sigurd ruled Orkney in the late ninth century, an Orkney Viking lord whose authority rested on his reputation. Few crossed him and survived.
He demanded allegiance no matter the cost. His rival, Máelbrigte, refused to submit. He, too, was a fierce nobleman. That defiance gnawed at Sigurd like an infection before infection ever reached him.
Máelbrigte was a Pictish leader from the northern mainland, part of the early population that lived in the land that would later become Scotland.
At this time, Orkney was not part of Scotland but a Norse stronghold, and Sigurd ruled its islands and the northern fringe of Scotland as a Viking earl under the Norwegian crown.
But Sigurd wanted more than Orkney. He wanted the mainland to turn into Viking Scotland as well, and that put him directly against Máelbrigte, the Pictish leader who refused to yield. Their rivalry sat between them like a drawn blade, unspoken but unmistakable.
A Peace Meeting That Was Never Meant to Be
Sigurd sent a message. A meeting of peace. Forty men each. A day to settle matters without needless death.
But Sigurd prepared eighty.
It was a cold-hearted ambush of a man who had trusted that the two could be peaceful.
When the Scots arrived and saw the growing mass of riders on the horizon, something inside them must have turned cold. They had walked into a lie. But retreating would have meant shame, and shame was worse than death. So they stood their ground.
As brave men do. Knowing they were outnumbered 2:1, they were willing to stake their place.
Blood on the Moor
The battle tore open the morning.
Viking blades split skulls and shoulders as if they were splitting wood. Horses reared through screaming men.
The Scots hacked back with a fury born of betrayal. They dragged Sigurd’s riders from their saddles and opened them from collarbone to hip. The moor was soon coated in steam from torn throats. One Pictish fighter was cut so deeply his spine gleamed for an instant before collapse swallowed him.
Máelbrigte died fighting. His blood leaked into the heather, turning it dark.
The Severed Head
When the last of the Scots fell, the Vikings did what Vikings often did. They went to work on the bodies. Heads were taken quickly while the flesh was still warm. Some mouths were frozen open in their final scream.
Sigurd claimed Máelbrigte’s head for himself. He lifted it by the hair and inspected the face. The dead man’s eyes were half closed, the jaw hanging slack, teeth exposed. A last expression of defiance, even in death.
Sigurd tied the head to his saddle. It thumped against the flank of his horse, dribbling blood onto the leather. Then he turned for home.
This is where the story shifts from brutal to uncanny.
The head swung with each step, a grotesque companion knocking against the earl’s thigh. Wind dried the skin. The jaw flung open and jiggled loosely. Teeth clicked together like a snapping animal. Sigurd barely noticed he was too filled with the soothing dopamine of his win. He had crushed his enemy unfairly and taken his trophy. Life was hard, he was harder, and he had won.
And then it happened.
The Tooth That Struck Back
A tooth, sharp and protruding, scraped along Sigurd’s leg as the head swung. A tiny sound. A small cut. Hardly anything. The kind of injury a warrior ignores because the world is full of bigger wounds.
But whatever lived on that battlefield entered Sigurd through that cut.
By nightfall, his leg burned. The flesh puffed around the wound. A red line crept upwards like something crawling beneath his skin. Fever took him quickly. His breath grew shallow.
The Cost of Treachery
His skin went grey. The great warrior who had slaughtered men without blinking began to rot alive from a scrape inflicted by the enemy he had already killed.
The sagas do not embellish. They simply say Sigurd died from Máelbrigte’s tooth.
A Story the Land Refuses to Forget
The battle was his victory. The infection was the dead man’s revenge.
He was buried in the mound now called Sigurd’s Howe. It is still there, sealed, silent, untouched.
Sometimes the dead are patient.
Sometimes the earth keeps score.
And sometimes a man who thinks he owns the world, who lies and cannot tell the truth, loses everything to a man who is already dead.
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