by Aidan Moher
There was no justice served to my grandfather. My father was a dirty sinner, an affront to the gods. Former friends spat on his corpse. His lover was castrated and hanged in front of a jeering crowd—spared death because he was not married. There was no room for them in heaven, my grandfather said. They could wander the earth as lost spirits and ponder their sins until the sun burned the world and its people away.
I fled home after that—too ashamed to face my grandfather, too sad to watch the sun bleach my father's bones. A good man deserves to be buried, even if he does not deserve to live.
Who can you forgive, Grandfather, if not the dead?
The first of the night's snowflakes drifted down on a lazy breeze. It landed delicately atop the body but was soon covered as I shovelled dirt into the grave.
Tahir is awake, watching the stars wind their ponderous way across the heavens. He should be asleep, but rest is for the wicked—and the worthy. He is neither.
It is not easy to lead those who have lost faith, who have betrayed the idea that they still have something to fight for.
He’d never asked for this, for the lives of four other men to be placed upon his shoulders. When he left the hot plains of his homeland, hired alongside hundreds of other mercenaries to wage battle in the cold north for sums of money undreamt, he'd been green as they come, skilled with a hunting bow but unused to battle with sword or spear.
Now he is hardened. Seven kills to his name, if he remembers right. More than any of the others who sleep beside him. Except, perhaps, the bearded Northman—blood stains his hands deeply. Tahir's seven kills have made him leader.
The corpses were steaming in the snow, still freshly dead, when the other survivors first looked to him for guidance. Tahir was as scared and lost as the rest of them, but he walked with a swagger he did not feel and spoke with a confidence that sounded like a lie to his own ears. It was dark when they named him leader; perhaps they could not see his fear through the shadows that veiled his face; perhaps they only saw the light of the moon reflected in his eyes and mistook it for hope.
They are all that remain after the Massacre. His brothers are dead, nearly eighty of them. His enemies are dead also, though their number is unknowable. A meaningless battle fought on the whims of rich politicians living in opulent mansions in the safety of cities far from the battlefields—eager only for iron and gold. So, the remaining few of his once proud mercenary band flee through this labyrinthine forest, destination unknown.
He cannot tell them that they're lost. They probably know.
He misses the beautiful women back home—long of limb, skin the colour of coffee. He misses his wife and his two daughters. Are they happy? Still alive?
His son is dead. Killed in battle. Butchered with gold coin tinkling in his pocket. Life is not just, nor is death. Gold is of little use to a ghost.
"Hail, good sir!"
In the quiet of deep night, the voice is clear. The amber-skinned scout. He does not remember rising, but Tahir is already running toward the call.
The fool!
He slows, tries to make no sound.
In the clearing are three men. One dead, two whispering fiercely. They are tall and strong of arm. Men as mountains. Golden hair brushes their broad shoulders, twisted into knotted dreadlocks. One gestures to the darkness, away from Tahir's sleeping companions.
More men are hidden in the shadows.
Tahir turns and runs back to camp. When he is close, he yells an alarm to his stirring companions.
A spear stabs suddenly from the shadows, nearly gutting Tahir, but a heavy swing of his sword knocks the spear to the ground. The spear’s owner is a looming giant, now drawing an axe. Moonlight catches on the metal scales sewn to his armour. Tahir's first thought is that he is betrayed from within his own camp. But it's not Eyvindur—the Northman he has been travelling with. This one has red hair and a missing eye.
The giant swings his heavy axe. Tahir dodges, narrowly missing his death for a second time in mere seconds.
Thud! The giant grunts, curses as his axe catches in a tree. Tahir tries to think of some witty comment, but he has never been clever. Instead, he buries his sword in the helpless Northerner.
Eight kills.
A powerful blow takes Tahir in the shoulder and sends him tumbling. The cold ground catches him, momentum flips him onto his back, takes the wind from his lungs. Something snags as he slides—the sound of snapping wood, the burn of tearing skin.
An arrow juts from his shoulder, its haft broken in by the fall. No blood trickles from the wound. Numbness spreads down his arm. He stands and faces the darkness, lifts his blade with his good arm. His shield is back with his bedroll, a hard pillow—useless now. The confused yells of his roused companions fill the night.
A shadow cuts through the dark. Another arrow. As in a dream, time seems to crawl, but still Tahir is too slow to move from the arrow's path. It buries itself in his other shoulder. He does not hit the ground this time, but his sword falls, dropped from his numb hand.
He has failed. What good is a leader who leads his followers to death at the hands of raiders in the night?
He can hear someone crashing through the forest. A battle cry, loud as a roaring lion. One of the barbarians gestures wildly to the forest behind Tahir.
A third arrow. Right into his gut. He falls. Pain and numbness somehow together.
He never wanted to lead. He should have said no. But if not him, who? Who was left?
A tall man appears from the shadows, one of the golden-haired barbarians. He holds a bloody blade. Quiet anger pulses in his eyes. For a moment, Tahir wonders what thoughts run behind those eyes, what compulsions and lusts fuel this warrior in the dead of night.
He is lost, Tahir knows. His eyes show panic hidden under bravado. Fear beneath a slick smile. He's as lost as we are. Without a leader. Without a purpose.
He kills because the man who filled his purse told him to kill. It's not personal. He kills because it is what he excels at.
Just like me, Tahir thinks. Hell will welcome us both with open arms.
Tahir dies on the blade, a final thrust through his heart.
3
Snow fell—heaven wept frozen tears for my fallen friends.
I had laughed at heaven with them once as we tipped back mugs of warm ale. We roared raucously at the thought of an afterlife, at the idea that there was more to our existence than fighting, than killing those weaker and more cowardly than ourselves.
We all laughed, but I think we all secretly believed, too, in our own way. My father's spirit hid in the shadows of every pub in every foreign land. He watched me with sallow eyes as I stuffed that pain deep into the darkest corners of myself, drowned it in liquor and melancholic laughter.
They were my friends. I realized this as I buried them. I would not have said so before, when I was the whipping boy in the small crew of mercenaries. I wanted to kill them, to see the look of terror in their eyes as my blade slid through their heart. I dreamed of them scattered about the forest, as they were now, paying penance for embarrassing me, for making me the butt of a joke, even in the shadow of the Massacre.
But camaraderie has a funny way of rearing its head. I thought I hated them—I thought they hated me—but they were my only family now, my only friends in the wide expanse of the world. And they were dead, buried one by one at the hands of the ridiculed squire.
Then there was the Northman; what to do with him?
He was a friend like the others, though it seemed queer to think of him in such terms. We shared no language but still had formed a bond, a kinship shaped by shared hardship.
He saved my life when my countrymen couldn't. I had tried desperately to return the favour but was too slow and lacked the necessary killer instinct. Useless, guilty of hesitating, I was scared—and now his blood stained my hands as surely as the man who had put his blade through Eyvindur’s heart.
I will not lie—I agonized about him, about burying one from t
he north, preparing his body in the way of my people. Where would he go now? Would his soul be trapped within the grave I dug, unable to find its way to whatever afterlife these Northmen expected? Would he feast among my people, rewarded for his valiance? Or would he rot, nothing more than compost in the ground?
In the end, I honoured him as I would any friend. I dug a grave, larger than the rest, my chipped and broken blade tearing at the ground. The snow a never-ending reminder that the world went on, ignorant of what happened in one small clearing among many in this vast forest. Ignorant or uncaring. What is the difference?
I rolled the Northman into the grave. He slumped at the bottom, staring with open eyes. I'd seen drunkards like that, nearly dead in the alleys of Chard. Snowflakes soon settled on him, covering his bloodstained chest. One landed on his unblinking eye. There was no life left there, but the dead can speak through their eyes. His eyes whispered of weary resignation and sorrow.
The first clump of dirt landed on his chest, covering the thin layer of snow. The second covered his face and so on until he was buried under dirt and stone.
Wrapped in a heavy cloak, Eyvindur fights desperately to keep the cold at bay. He cannot sleep. Not since his band was massacred by the dark-skinned warriors from the south—the same warriors who now sleep next to him, the only companions he has left. He hates them though they'd saved his life, proved good friends. Trust was hard to find in this frozen land, but death stalks the lonely.
What else could he have done? He had little choice but to throw his stones in with those he'd called his enemy just days before. He could have ignored the boy on the outskirts of the Massacre, continued his wounded sojourn through the wreckage. He could have played dead among the other warriors, whose souls rested now in Valhöll. Instead, he had reached out to the dark-skinned youth. He is not stupid; he knew of the need for companions in his harsh homeland, no matter the colour of their skin. If they killed him, well, better that than a slow death from freezing.
He does not want to die with them. What happens upon death, without the proper rituals to send his body to Valhöll? The warriors who died on the battlefield were drinking now—the nectar of the gods warm and sweet on their lips. What awaits him if he dies alongside dark-skinned heathens? He is terrified to find out. He is also afraid to let go of this world, no matter what promises the holy men make of the afterlife.
He is a coward, a disgrace to his family, to shun death and glory so.
He had opened himself on the battlefield, thrown himself with vigour and vehemence at the black army and had slain many men. Despite his abandon, he lives when so many other warriors are dead—cold, sober corpses on the ground but warm, drunk spirits in Valhöll.
Perhaps, he thinks, I was not meant to die there. The gods in Valhöll, they have some plan, a higher purpose for me than to die as one among many.
He thinks of the boy. He should have died, a child in a battle of men. He knows so little of living, even less of killing. Yet he lives, too. What justice is there—that a young heathen was spared when the great warriors of Valhöll were not?
The gods are unjust or blind.
Which is it? And how can he know?
A yell rings hollowly through the trees, like the keening call of a banshee. The words are unintelligible, but the meaning is clear, a warning of a death descending.
Eyvindur is on his feet faster than thought, fuelled by instinct and fear. The wooden handle of his axe is smooth in his callused hand. He does not remember picking it up. It is nearly a part of him, always within easy reach. The dark blood of heathens stains its notched blade. He grips the axe with white knuckles and scans the darkness for the source of the cry.
The others are awake. Two of the heathens are missing—the weak one, skinny as a girl, and the tall one that the others look to as their leader. Beside him is the gruff one, his own blade drawn. He looks at Eyvindur with all the hate and distrust of an orphan forced to take food from a hand that's as likely to beat him bloody. The boy looks terrified.
The boy and the gruff man yell at each other. Eyvindur cannot understand them. They don't know where the sound came from, either; that much he can tell.
A heavy thump sounds in the distance followed by a fleeting moment of silence.
The gruff one yells at Eyvindur, gesturing wildly into the darkness. Why are they just standing there? They are not warriors—afraid of the dark as much as death. Eyvindur runs toward the sound.
Another thud, then a cry of pain and the gurgle of a slit throat.
Eyvindur can hear the southerner behind him, crashing heavily through the trees. He makes enough noise to wake a bear. The cover afforded them by the darkness is blown. Eyvindur lifts his axe above his head and releases all the anger and fear within him in one savage cry.
He bursts into a clearing and pulls up short, startled, the blush of battle suddenly draining. The dark-skinned leader of his band of misfits is impaled on the end of a sword. Arrows jut from his body like extra limbs akimbo. But he still lives, holding weakly to what life he has left until seconds later, when his head is lopped from his body.
Two men stand by the body, both tall and blonde, one holding a ridiculous jewelled sword with a blood-spotted blade. He picks up the head. There's an air of wealth and arrogance to him, a casual disregard for the danger surrounding him. He's a man of Eyvindur's blood, one of Valhöll's warriors. Relief floods Eyvindur. He is saved—though the others are as good as dead. His gods are not blind and unjust, after all. But the Northman with the jewelled-sword does not open his arms in greeting. Instead, he tosses the head at Eyvindur. It hits him in the chest and drops to the ground.
"You forsake our people. You betray Valhöll," he says, spitting the words in a tongue native to the cold north.
The severed head stares at Eyvindur, taunting him. It speaks no answers to the questions buzzing in his head.
"I am no traitor," Eyvindur snarls. The other warrior is lost in the shadows, circling around behind Eyvindur. He is exposed in the forest clearing and has no choice but to let the man flank him.
"Thrown in with heathens and bandits. What is your life worth now? Little. Nothing. Less than these shit-coloured demons."
He expected friends among these Northmen but finds enemies. "I did what I must to survive! My band was slaughtered. I had no choice."
"And who killed them? These black-souled demons did not deserve your mercy. Your blade is not slick with their blood."
"My hands have killed more heathens than you can imagine. Our gods touched the battlefield with fiery fists—no one survived. I thought the world had ended."
The other man kicks Eyvindur hard in the back of the knees and they buckle. A blade presses against his back, a dull pressure against his leather armour. "The gods will take no pity on you, should you make it to Valhöll," says the Northman with the jewelled-sword. "Traitors are not welcomed in the lap of the gods. Drop your axe."
Eyvindur doesn't move, just stares defiantly at his countryman. What other choice had he? Now or after the Massacre? Was a life so easy to throw away, so unworthy of saving? He had banded with heathens when the gods had forsaken all. Was that wrong?
"Look what I've found," calls a new voice.
A weaselly man emerges from the shadows. He is as tall as the rest of them, but more slender at the shoulders. He has the boy with him, holding him by a fistful of hair to prevent escape. "Should be a nice little prize for Fjalar. He likes 'em before they got hair on their balls."
"Fjalar's dead," says the Northman with the jewelled-sword.
"He's dead?" says the rat-faced one. "Well, fuck. Kill 'im, then, I suppose. Kill 'em all."
A flurry of sound erupts from behind Eyvindur. The blade is moved from his back. The boy is flung to the ground, alive, and the rat-faced man starts running, sword held wildly before him. Eyvindur wastes no time, doesn't even turn to see the fight breaking out behind him. The southerner can handle himself.
The fight between Eyvindur and the rat-f
aced man is quick and bloody. His opponent swings his sword too close and Eyvindur steps inside its reach. Swinging his axe in a wide arc, he severs the rat-faced man's head from his body.
I should throw the fucking thing at him, Eyvindur has time to think during that minuscule moment in battle when time stops—when the maelstrom is given time to catch up. He stoops to pick it up.
Just as quickly, the gruff southerner wins his battle. The Northman leader is the only one left. Two against one now. Eyvindur likes these odds.
But the gruff southerner is staggering, clutching his left shoulder where it meets his neck. His hand moves and blood pours from the wound. He looks around then falls to the ground. His lifeblood pools around him, soaking the forest floor.
"Well, that was a mess," says the other man. Eyvindur begins to stand, knuckles entwined in the rat-faced man’s greasy hair. "No, no. Stay on your knees. Don't make this difficult."
"We call a truce," says Eyvindur. "We are both lost without friends in this forest."
The Northman laughs. "A truce. After you killed my men?"
"You will die out here all alone."
The Northman laughs again.
"Fight me," says Eyvindur. "Single combat. Give me that. Let me prove myself to Valhöll."
The other man laughs. "Why would I do that? You're dead already, just waiting for my blade to prove it. Why wait longer?"
The Northman raises his jewelled-sword, likely stolen from some rich nobleman who rots now among true men on some forgotten battlefield.
Will the gods forsake me? Eyvindur wonders. He prays they will not.
What lies on the other end of that sword, beyond the grasp of the living?
He will soon have an answer.
The man lunges and stabs his blade into Eyvindur. A single thrust to the heart, and the warm grip of the gods wraps around the cold forest.
As death steals him to bring him before the gods for judgment and atonement, a new shadow falls from the canopy above his killer. Through dimming eyes and ragged breaths, Eyvindur sees the Northman tackled to the ground.