Milleniums of Jorth
Hafgurd's Axe
Strength is all.
Styrkason hefted the axe he grasped in his sweat-slippery palms, his
tired arms aching with every move.
“Too slow
grizzled one!” roared Hafgurd as he leaped forward, his cheeks red from his
exertions. Hafgurd’s blade chopped down but bit only empty air as Strykason
slipped his leather-clad leg back out of its swing.
Strength is
all. His huge opponent slowed and bent low, recovering from his failed swing.
Strykason’s chance had come at last. He both exulted at the opening his
opponent had left him and despaired at the chance of missing it. With a
desperate grunt he slung his axe in a sideways arc, arms buckling as the blade
found it’s target in Hafgurd’s torso. The leather allowed by the rules of
combat took some of the blow’s sting but still Hafgurd screamed in pain,
dropped to the ground and cursed as he lay contorted on the arena’s floor.
“Strength
is all”, Strykason panted at the loser, “but there is more to strength than
brawny arms and a big belly”. He too now slid to the floor, gasping for breath.
Despite some small, bloody wounds he was relatively unhurt, though this never
stopped the welling up of an awful nausea in him after a fight. This had been a
fight that had gone on for far longer than usual. His forty-three years
beginning to demand their toll no doubt.
Hafgurd’s life-force was now pooling red on the cold paving stones of
the arena. Three physicians ran past Strykason to attend his enemy and, heeding
them only a little, the victor struggled to his feet and limped to the door.
Two and
then three figures appeared in the doorway before him. He recognised one as a
scribe in the service of the Royal Journal of Vinlandia, a blonde woman
who’s writings were often blade sharp.
The others were unknown to him but seemingly of similar occupation. His
heart dropped. He wanted little more now than to find himself on a mead-bench
somewhere, slackening his thirst in the company of the other warriors of the
Freelanders Guild.
“Strength
is all”, he reminded himself. How often had that pledge of the Guild carried
him through conflicts of all kinds? How many times had he used it to bolster
his courage to the edge of insanity? Sighing almost inaudibly, he readied
himself to face the scribes. The presence of one from the Royal Journal did
bring with it the chance of additional honour after all, he comforted himself,
as it was an official body receiving the patronage of the King of Vinlandia.
People all over the kingdom and even other parts of the Confederacy of Northmen
relied on it to keep abreast of events.
“Congratulations
to you Vigfus Styrkason”, the gold-haired woman proclaimed at him, her voice
flat and formal. “You have bested
Hafgurd, the greatest warrior of Danirgald.
How do you feel on winning against a man who once slew three Anglish
earl’s in a single, royal tournament?”
“He was a
worthy adversary and the honour of my victory is only increased by his skill
and wide repute”, Strykason answered, equally formally. “But I was surprised by his style. Those
from Danirgald or Angland for that matter normally fight with more guile. Hafgurd just wanted to bash me into the flag
stones. Odin’s grace, may the All-Father be honoured, and my horde of war-lore
proved rich enough to buy his defeat.”
“Vigfus,”
one of the two male scribes interrupted, “you were once a warrior in the King’s
army. But now you’re a poorly fed
mercenary on the border with the Aztecan Empire, spending your time looking for
demons and avoiding capture for sacrifice.
Are you looking for your old job back?”, he asked, his bald head
seemingly glowing in the orange illumination from the torches lighting the
passage leading away from the arena’s floor.
“Though I
remember my time in service to King Wilgrim with pride and fondness, my duties
now are still fulfilling and challenging. I have many friends amongst the
Apache and Pima Skraeling nations. I’m looking forward to returning there after
I received my award.” His years in the
King’s service had also taught him something of the diplomat’s skills as well
as finessing him as a warrior, but all the same he could feel the bile rising
at the taste of this questioning. Or perhaps he still felt sick from the fight.
“Yes, but
what about the ceremonial armour, the portraits, the flights in the wyvern
cavalry? Surely desert life can’t live up to that?”
“There are
other things that a man may seek as reward for his life-battle. Now, I must retire so I am ready to speak at
the King’s ceremony of champions.”
Strykason marched away, his face grim, glad that for once he had been
able to avoid any questions about elven mistresses or walking the silver
pathway to Trollheim.
Some hours
later, the ceremony completed, Strykason sat in a tavern, brooding. King Wilgrim, whom Strykason had met only
once before, was a good man. He had a fine head of silver hair, a face as
beautiful as Baldr, most beloved of all the gods, and he wore his exquisite
golden chain mail armour like a second skin.
Vinlandia had indeed been blessed by the All-Father with such a great
ruler. The King had presented Strykason
with his award, a miniature silver version of the iron hammer wielded by Thor
the thundergod. It had been whispered beforehand that Thor himself would be
present at the ceremony, but apparently the storm god had learned of an
avalanche in the homeland of Norsica and had flown there to help.
But it was
not the absence of the Thundergod at his moment of new victory that saddened
the veteran. Though he would never,
ever recount this to another, the champion secretly thought that some of the
mortal men he had met and fought alongside were more worthy warriors than
Thor. He could barely think this to
himself, as heretical as it was. Only once
had Strykason seen the god in combat and that was during the third Skraeling
War a dozen years previously. Then, to
him, it had seemed Thor was given to moments of hesitation and self-doubt,
something unworthy in a deity said to have battled all manner of giants and
trolls in his youth before the Mythification that had bought Midgard and Asgard
together.
Nevertheless,
a gloom did indeed seem cast over Strykason, it’s dark cloak spread around him
whichever way he turned. The scribe’s earlier words came back to him, an old
sore that had never healed completely.
It was true that the border with the Aztecan Empire was now
uneventful. When he had first arrived,
the Aztecan warriors atop their flying demons were a common sighting. Now they
were a rarity. The worshippers of
Heimdall, the secret, Royal cult who were said to see and hear all things, had
reported to the King that the Aztecans were now at war with their southern
enemy and paid little heed to events to the north.
Likewise,
relations with the Skraeling nations had become peaceful. The worst of the
hatred between their people and the Northmen had been burnt out by the
barbarity of the three Skraeling Wars. The first had been fought over eight
hundred years ago, a century and a half after the discovery of Vinlandia and
the Mythification which had allowed the gods to rule on earth as they did in
heaven. This war was due to the
Northemen’s penetration into the traditional Skraeling lands on the west side
of Vinlandia and had dealt the natives a bloody defeat.
The second
was fought almost exactly five hundred years later and this time was started
deliberately by the Northmen, led in devastating fashion by Thor. In those times, shortly after his rebirth on
Jorth, Thor had loved the carnage and spectacle of war like a baby loves his mother. It finished almost as soon as it had started
and it too was a humiliation of the Skraelings.
A score of
years ago came the last war. This was a
more protracted conflict with long periods of inactivity. It had lead to a
stalemate. The Skraelings for the first
time had relied on much magical weaponry.
Not only did their shamans cast spells to embolden the braves and
sharpen their arrows but also ghostly bears and phantom wolves struck down many
Northmen warriors. It had been thought
that the Aztecan Empire had assisted them with their sophisticated sorcerous
arts. Eventually, after nearly a decade
of intermittent bloodshed, a peace was made and now many Northmen and
Skraelings thought of themselves as brothers.
Lost in
this haze of historical speculation, Strykason paid no attention as a female
figure sat at a stool two yards from him. Why then, he pondered, was he
downcast, like a warrior who wins the battle only to find he has lost his
war-bretheren in the struggle? But he knew the answer. It was his wyrd,
the inevitable sense of foreboding and doom that all mortal men felt as a chill
breath on their souls. A man could
fight and win all his life but one day the end would come all the same.
Death to a
warrior meant his spirit would be taken to Valhalla across the Rainbow Bridge, there
to feast all night and fight all day in the company of the gods. Yet even the
gods were prisoners to the Fates and their own wyrd. One day the end
would come to even them. He gazed into
the remaining inch of ale at the bottom of his glass that he was just about to
finish. There was end to all things.
“Is this a
private wake or can I join in too”, a woman’s voice asked beside him, straining
to sound humorous. Turning, he recognised the Royal Journal’s scribe
again.
“Please sit
and talk. I’d love the company”. The earnestness of his reply surprised
Strykason. He felt as if the
combination of her golden beauty and sparkling happiness would blind him in the
darkness of the deep well in which he sat.
“Well,
that’s a different tale from this afternoon”, she mused, ordering a glass of
mead for herself. They talked
pleasantly but politely about the fight with Hafgurd, the ceremony and the
King. Strykason, supping easily on the ale the scribe bought, felt he was being
softened up for something, a poor swordsman being toyed with by a master, but
he was enjoying the first feminine companionship for months and did not care.
“So what do
your duties at the Royal Journal keep you busy with?” he enquired,
trying to turn back the conversation to her, hoping this would throw her off
whatever it was she sought. Her easy, casual manner of speech told him that she
did not spend as much time in temple as she should.
“A really
disturbing story as it happens. Men and
women up and down the eastern coast, being killed. And not just your normal local murders or Freyadarg mayhem after
the mead-shop shuts either.” Her
story-telling seemed to catch him in her web.
“Their minds or their souls, being eaten from inside out. Like a worm eating an apple from the core
outwards. They look as healthy as you
or I on the outside, but inside? Well, it, whatever it is, turns normal folk
into slavering, crazy berserkers. And it’s only getting worse.”