Story - The Storm King's Daughter

This is something I came up with a few years back, showed to a few friends and then forgot about.
Please let me know what you think.

The Storm King’s Daughter
 
Macon Nir Amm  came home on the spring tide.  He returned without the riches he had sworn to claim, without a single one of the thirty young men that had believed his boasts and of his beautiful longship there was nothing left but a broken steering oar, to which he was bound with scraps of old rope.
 He was found sprawled in a heap of broken wood and torn seaweed by a farmer gathering sea coal. Thinking him dead, the man reached for his knife so as to hack off his beringed fingers. At that moment Macon opened his eyes and croaked. “Am I home?” in the unmistakeable accents of the Grey Islands.
  The Nir Amm name was a powerful one in the Islands. This saved Macon from a slit throat. Before the day was out, his kin had been summoned and the newly returned traveller had been laid in a warm bed with hot soup and good ale in his belly. 
 While he slept, friends, family and the merely curious gathered in the great hall eager to hear what had caused him to come back to the Islands in such wretched fashion. As a day and a night  went by the throng grew thicker, word having spread rapidly across the island.
  On the morning of the second day after his return Macon opened his eyes and called for his family. His father and mother and sisters trooped in through the narrow door to fall upon him with much weeping and praising of local gods.
  Then the old matriarch of the Nir Wath clan came to his bedside and calmly asked him one simple question. “My grandson Luth, that went to be your first mate, is he still living?”
  Eyes full of reborn pain, Macon slowly shook his head. “Luth fell in battle a year ago and we raised his cairn on an isle far to the south of here.” A shudder of horror ran through him then and he wrenched himself half out of the bed to grasp at his fathers arm. “Tell me, there were thirteen men left on my ship when the storm smashed it. I have been found, what of the other twelve?”
  They told him that he was the first and last man to have been found and he lay back and wept. From the great hall below came the sound of the womenfolk howling their grief as the old woman told them their brothers and sons were dead and the sound tortured Macon Nir Amm like a thousand nails driving into his head.

  Two days later, he told his tale.

“You saw us when we set out in our new-built longship. We were young and proud as lions. The riches of  the world would fall into our hands and we would come home to build palaces.
  After three months some already wanted to turn for home.  The coast villages of Mathlam had put up stockades against the likes of us and every move we made was reported by beacon and rider. The only booty we had gathered was a dozen lobsters we bullied out of a boy in a skiff.
  I decided to head south for lands that had never seen a Grey Isles ship before. Of course this meant all our maps were useless …
  After another month or so we found rich pickings at last. “
And here Nacom sighed loudly at the thought of his lost wealth.
“We took at least a dozen traders, burned five or so villas and ate so much stolen beef that I can taste it still.”
 “Then we fell into the path of  a great storm, the foullest there has ever been, I would wager. It swept us up and dragged us across the ocean like a broom takes dust to the doorway. For a full week we bailed and patched and bailed again, battling with all our might and skill simply to keep our boat atop the waves. Then it grew bored with us and left us behind, lost and thirsty, for our water was now all spoiled by salt.
  We had lost three men overboard and lost another man on the first island we found, stung by a viper and dead  before he knew what was happening.
 Luth met his end on the next island when the native folk took exception to our raiding of their flocks.  We gave their whole village to the flames in revenge, but it could not take the arrow back from his heart and so we buried him and went on our way with sinking hearts.
  Finally we came to the island of white cliffs and it was all that we needed and more. Fat deer, sweet water and tall, strong trees, enough to repair a thousand longships.
  When the moon rose she came to me. A beautiful maiden with skin white as foam and eyes like shining sapphires. When she bid me come join her I rose up from my blanket and trailed after, totally spellbound and my men in my wake.
  She was a goddess. Or so she claimed, daughter to the Storm King. It had been his power that had brought us to these parts, so his beloved child should have a husband and men to keep her handmaids entertained.
  Naturally I believed not a word, but she was beautiful and loving and her palace by the shore was a place of great wonders, built of shining green jade and red coral.”
  He smiled, remembered joy tinted with the bitterness of things lost. “I think I loved her, at least for a while.”
“But then I grew tired of her palace of jade and coral and her blue eyes lost their spell on me and I began to pine for the  feel of a ship under me, a sword in my hand. Most of all, I wanted to come home to the Grey Islands and talk with my kin over jugs of ale, long into the winter nights.
  I put my ship to rights, gathered up such of my men as wanted to leave their sea brides, a dozen in all and left on the next high tide. To my shame I did not leave empty handed . There was a chest of  gold and jewellery in my hold that I stole from my lover’s bedchamber  that I thought ample payment for services rendered.
   By luck and good winds we found ourselves back among civilised realms and set our prow towards the Islands.
  Two days ago, we found ourselves belaboured by storms again but this time we fought our way northward, running from one sheltered inlet to the next .  I wonder now whether the Storm King was not just a young maid’s whimsy because the waves that brought and end to my ship seemed to have a malice and a power to them that mere winds cannot explain.”
  His father snorted loudly at this “Not so powerful, this Storm King, for here you are after all.” he declared. “And come the summer we shall build you another boat, if you so wish it, and you may seek your fortune again.”
  And it came as a genuine shock to the elder  Nir Amm when his son went pale and began shuddering in fear. “No.” he cried “I shall not walk into his grasp again.”
   They gave him strong mead until his terror eased and he drifted into sleep, then his kin gathered downstairs to discuss his tale. Madness surely?

 That night stormclouds flared again over the Grey Isles and the sea hurled itself at the shore with a primal hatred . Ships drawn far up on the beach were pounded into shards,  a hundred precious trees were ripped up and left to lie sadly upon the sodden ground, even the belltower was cast down into the street in a thunderous crash of bricks, the bell clanging and clattering down the hill.
  Speak of that storm to any who witnessed it and they will shudder and drink deep of their ale and tell you it was no natural thing that struck the islands that day.  Some will tell you they saw riders making their way through the fury of the wind and the rain, heedless as if it were high summer.    Then they will tell you of Macon Nir Amm.  And how he was found in his bed, a long knife driven into his chest.
 With a hilt inlaid in green jade and red coral.