You Die When You Die

by Angus Watson

  “I don’t know, I just found Fisk … all over the place. Maybe whatever ripped him apart got them, too?”

  They found Thyri’s shield leaning on her sax, which was jammed into a large chunk of torso.

  Thyri poked a severed foot with a toe then inspected a hand and the lower portion of an arm that was hanging from a tree.

  “This mess is just Fisk. I think the other two must have got—”

  Someone was running towards them.

  “Sword out, Finn. Be ready.” Thyri held her own blade aloft, hefted her shield and stood with her legs wide, bouncing on bent knees. Finnbogi drew his sword, gripped it two-handed and copied her ready stance.

  Sassa Lipchewer ran into the clearing, bow in hand, followed by Wulf and Bjarni.

  “Wow!” said Wulf. He knelt down to examine the bits that had once been Fisk. “He was killed by a bear. By the depth of the wounds and the gaps between them it was a very, very big one. Impossibly big. What happened, Treelegs?”

  “I don’t know. We heard a scream so I ran back, and found Fisk the Fish about to kill Rimilla and Potsi. We fought. I had him, but I fell. The next thing I saw was Finnbogi.”

  “Finn?” asked Wulf.

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “I’m glad we can rule you out, dude.”

  “I got here a minute before you, I found Thyri out cold and—”

  “You can track, can’t you, Finn?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Look around, tell us what happened. And be quick, the Lakchan village can’t be far.”

  Finnbogi scanned the ground. At first he was too aware of Thyri, Sassa, Wulf and Bjarni watching him, but then he spotted an odd print. Then he found a trail, then another and soon the whole pattern was clear.

  “Fisk had Thyri beaten,” he said.

  “I had him beaten. Then I fell.” Thyri was examining her felt helmet.

  “Then Fisk was killed by the biggest bear in the world and possibly the largest man.”

  “What?”

  “I’m just telling you what the footprints are saying. There was a big man with the bear. Look, this print is fresh.”

  He picked up one of Fisk’s feet, still in its leather shoe with two white bones poking up from the severed ankle, and held it against one of the prints on the ground. The print was double the area of Fisk’s foot. He looked up at Wulf with a “you see?” expression.

  “So the bear had a friend, and he was Rimilla’s friend, too.”

  “Pah,” said Thyri, “that would be—”

  “What the land is telling Finn and the best explanation we’ve got. And now we’ve got to go.”

  Wulf ran and Finnbogi followed. He turned to make sure Thyri was coming. She wasn’t. She was hunched over the largest part of Fisk’s torso, using her sax to saw out a section of his ribs.

  “What are you doing, Thyri? Come on!”

  They found the others waiting.

  “Where’s Fisk?” was Garth’s first question.

  “Killed by a bear,” said Wulf.

  “That’s convenient.”

  “You die when you die. Let’s move on.”

  Finnbogi spent the rest of the day guarding the rear with Thyri. Wulf had asked them not to talk, but even taking that into consideration she was subdued, moving with less than her usual bouncy confidence.

  At that evening’s camp the mood was like a sodden blanket smothering the group. Garth and Gurd sat on their own, glowering at Wulf. Wulf was his normal genial self, or at least doing a good impression of it, but so sullen were the rest that even Wulf’s social beacon was only as bright as a sickly firefly on a stormy night.

  Thyri told Finnbogi to train on his own. He didn’t. He sat and watched her clean Fisk’s ribs then sew them into her felt helmet.

  After a while, Wulf and Sassa stood up from a quiet conversation. Sassa picked up her bow and headed into the trees. Wulf walked up to Garth and Gurd and asked them to follow him. They did, leaving the camp. Everyone looked at each other.

  “Don’t worry,” said Gunnhild, nodding wisely, “A cowardly man thinks he will live long by avoiding war, but old age will give him no peace.”

  Finnbogi groaned at that—what in the name of Hel Loakiesdottir did it mean and how was it relevant here? But the others seemed to lap it up. Chnob the White nodded as if he were in Oaden’s hall and the chief god had made a particularly wise and worthy comment. Finnbogi noticed that Chnob’s beard was shorter. When had he done that? And why?

  A surprisingly short time later, the three men returned, all smiles, chatting away as if nothing had ever gone wrong. Finnbogi wondered what Wulf had said to them.

  “Training?” he asked Thyri when she’d finished with her helmet.

  “I told you. You’re on your own today.” She set about sharpening her sax and her axes.

  An hour later, when he climbed into the sleeping sack next to her, she was wearing her cotton undershirt. He knew she wasn’t in a good mood, so he faced away. He lay awake for an age, certain that she was awake, too. He told himself again and again to turn and put his arm around her, but he couldn’t muster the courage.

  Chapter 11

  The Path to Valhalla

  Shortly after sunrise the next morning they came to a wide expanse of grassland. The vegetation was taller than Finnbogi in places but mostly it was thigh-high and sparse and the land dipped, so he could see several deer walking around, doing whatever it was that deer were so busy with first thing.

  At the far side of the sea of swishing grass was a wooded bluff. Finnbogi knew it wasn’t a mountain like the ones from the sagas, but it was the highest rise of land he’d seen in his life. If any Scraylings happened to be up there, they’d have to be blind not to see thirteen pale-skinned people, some of whom were very large, crossing the couple of miles of open grassland.

  “Thank Tor we’ll be out of the trees for a while,” said Garth, “we’ll be able to see who’s coming.”

  “Yeah, genius, and they’ll be able to see us from miles away,” said Thyri.

  “That, my bouncy-arsed beauty, is a good point.” Garth smiled like a Niflheim troll and Thyri, to Finnbogi’s horror, winked at him.

  Finnbogi felt himself redden. As if to prove that he was an evil spirit sent to torment decent men, Garth turned to him and grinned. Finnbogi reddened all the more.

  Wulf stood at the edge of the treeline and looked pensive. Finnbogi could see his dilemma. Sticking to the treeline in one direction would take them a good mile south, back towards the Lakchan village. In the other direction they’d either have to backtrack miles or swim across a wide lake, which would expose them even more than crossing the open grassland.

  Ottar leapt about, spindly legs spread wide, and jabbed a finger to point across the grass, towards the bluff. He was wearing rabbit ears. Finnbogi guessed that Gunnhild must have made them for him. He didn’t have spider legs.

  “Ottar says we have to go across the grass,” said Freydis.

  “Whoopee fucks for him,” said Garth.

  “Uncle Poppo had a word for people like you,” said Freydis, hands on hips.

  “Oh yes, and what was that?”

  “He would have called you a cock.”

  Everybody laughed heartily, apart from Finnbogi because he was too painfully in love with Thyri for frivolity.

  “Which way to The Meadows, Ottar?” said Wulf, crouching to be eye level with the boy.

  “Jish!” Ottar pointed straight across the grassland. He was wide-eyed and red-cheeked, saliva shining from his chin. Hugin and Munin, hidden by the long grass, trilled squeakily as if to back him up.

  Wulf nodded and stood. He told everyone to stay quiet as they crossed the slice of prairie, to give a pigeon call if they saw anyone, and to be ready to drop down into the grass the moment anyone else gave a pigeon call.

  Off they set, their shadows long in front of them. Birds chirred and whirred, spider webs strung between grass stems glistened in the dew and yellow, pink an
d blue flowers shone in the green.

  Chnob the White lingered under the trees and watched them go. He knew nobody would notice, and nobody did.

  How he hated them. They all thought his sister Thyri was so great, practically worshipped her, and why? She was a woman, weak and stupid like all women. But she was a show-off who’d convinced the gullible morons to believe in her abilities as much as she believed in them.

  He was the more intelligent, and he’d beat her in a fight if ever he put his mind to it. His father Rangvald the Wise had known that. He’d treated Chnob with the respect he deserved, and he’d quite rightly treated Thyri with contempt. These other fools were all as stupid as Thyri.

  He’d show them.

  He slipped his knife from his belt, sliced off a couple of inches of beard and jammed the knot of hair into the fork of two twigs at around eye level, where anyone following them could not possibly miss it.

  Then he watched them walk away. It was so stupid to cross the open like that. He prayed to Loakie that a passing army of Scraylings would spot them.

  Clinging clouds of dawn mist dissolved in the pristine air. The female deer and fawns skipped away. The big bucks held their broad-antlered heads high and sauntered lazily from the path of the advancing Hardworkers, as if they were heading that way anyway and they certainly weren’t scared of humans, or anything else for that matter.

  Finnbogi caught a glimpse of a brightly coloured bird through the grass and was trying to work out where it had gone when Wulf cooed like a pigeon.

  Finnbogi dropped.

  He looked up. Bodil was still standing, turning around with a “where did everybody go?” look on her face.

  “Get down!” Finnbogi whispered through gritted teeth.

  “Why?”

  For the love of Loakie … “Just do it! Now!”

  She rolled her eyes as if he were the idiot and crouched down next to him, her head still above the level of the grass.

  Finnbogi grabbed her squirrel-skin jerkin and pulled her down. She squeaked, then lay facing him, her face inches from his. She smiled. Her breath was warm and sweet. She was actually not bad looking, just a shame she was so—

  She put a hand on his hip, smiled wider, and slipped her hand round onto his arse. Finnbogi’s stomach lurched and he found himself pushing his hips towards her as she pulled him in. Her head leant towards his. Her brown eyes were bright and intense. Her lips parted. Finnbogi closed his own eyes and let his mouth fall open.

  “Everybody up!” cried Wulf. Finnbogi shook his head and stood. Bodil sprang up next to him. She looked at the bulge in his trousers and winked.

  Tor’s balls! thought Finnbogi, commanding his off-message erection to subside. Why is everything so weird?

  “That was a test,” Wulf continued. “Everyone well done, although it shouldn’t have been that tricky—unless you’re Bodil. What happened, Bodil?”

  “Finnbogi pulled me down into the grass!” she tittered. A few others, Sassa included, laughed and Finnbogi reddened and wished that someone would pull him down into the grass and hold him there for ever.

  “Well done him. But why didn’t you drop when you heard the pigeon noise?’

  “Was that what it was? It sounded more like an owl.”

  “I see. From now on, if you hear anyone make any bird noise, or you think they might be trying to make a bird noise, drop so that you’re hidden in the grass. Got it?”

  “But why would they make a bird noise?”

  “A pigeon call is the sign if we see a Scrayling.”

  “Oh! I see. Coo coo!”

  “Yes, like that, although a pigeon is more of a cu-cu-caroo! Cu-cu-caroo!”

  “Cu-cu-caroo! Cu-cu-caroo!” Bodil spread her arms and flapped her hands.

  “Good, but only do it again if you see a Scrayling.”

  “Cu-cu-caroo! Cu-cu-caroo!”

  “Bodil, only if you—”

  Bodil pointed to the south, where a good fifty Scraylings were walking towards them through the long grass, all carrying strung bows, rabbit ears bobbing. They were a hundred paces away. They must have run in, thought Finnbogi, while they were all hiding in the grass. Clever of the Lakchans. Not so clever of the Hardworkers.

  He turned to the north. Two dozen more rabbit-eared Lakchans were wading through the long grass towards them.

  They were trapped and outnumbered five to one. And that was including Ottar and Freydis as two of their ones.

  “Cu-cu-caroo!” said Wulf.

  They all dropped.

  Sassa Lipchewer slipped her bow from her back and crouched next to her husband.

  “Knob in a robin,” she whispered.

  “Yup,” said Wulf the Fat, then stood and said, “Good morning!” to the Lakchans.

  Sassa peeked over the grass. Several arrows zipped in their direction. Both of them dropped again.

  “Tor’s helmet,” he said.

  “Rear a deer,” she agreed.

  There was a ruckus and a muffled crash. Keef the Berserker barrelled into the grass next to them as a small flock of arrows swished overhead. “Too many,” he panted. “We’re screwed,” he added.

  “Thanks, Keef,” said Wulf.

  “If we attack, we’ll get maybe two or three of them. But that’s only if they’re really shit with those bows. They’re probably not.”

  “They probably hunt with them every day.”

  “They probably do.”

  Sassa tried to think. What to do? They were trapped by people who were going to kill them. Despite Keef’s gloomy assessment, their only option was to fight. She strung her bow, pulled an arrow from her quiver, slotted it and stood, intending to thin the enemy’s number by one. Before she’d picked a target something punched her arm, hard. Her bow fell from her hand. She thumped down into a sitting position. There was an arrow in her arm.

  Wulf pulled her head down as another arrow zipped over.

  “Jab it in a rabbit,” she gasped. The pain was extraordinary.

  “This is what we get for following the advice of a moron,” said Garth Anvilchin, crawling over to join them. Even in her agony Sassa was about to leap onto him and kill him, when she realised he meant Ottar, not Wulf. It was still a hateful comment, but what with the situation and the arrow in her arm, she’d let it slide for now.

  Wulf took her shoulders and turned her gently to look at the wound. His wide-eyed concern morphed into a face of stone and he stood, grabbing his shield from his back as he did so. Sassa knelt to watch him.

  “I’d like!” he shouted, taking a step towards the Lakchans. Two arrows thunked into his shield.

  “You to imagine!” He pivoted his shoulders and an arrow fizzed past.

  “That this hammer!” he held Thunderbolt aloft, jinking his head to let an arrow fly by.

  “Is a white feather.” The white feather was the Goachica symbol of peace, so, Sassa hoped, should work for the Lakchans too.

  “Hold, you cunts!” shouted one of the Scraylings, “Let’s hear what this fucker has to say!” His voice was rough, as if he had a throat disease. Sassa quite liked his swearing, though.

  “Stay down, you lot.” Wulf walked towards the Scraylings, swinging his hammer.

  He came back a short time later. “Stand up, everyone.”

  Finnbogi watched Sassa rise slowly, one hand holding the flesh around the protruding arrow. Her face was grim but tough. She looked fantastic. He looked about for Thyri. She was over to the right, next to Garth.

  “He’s actually not a bad fellow, the Lakchan chief,” Wulf continued. “His name’s Kobosh.”

  “Is Kobosh going to let us go?” asked Gunnhild.

  “Actually no, sorry. They’re going to kill us. They don’t have a choice. It’s like Frossa said. The empress of the Calnians has prophesied that people with pale skins like us are going to destroy the world. I pointed out that there weren’t many of us and we had no intention to destroy anything. Kobosh admitted that he wasn’t convinced by the prophecy,
but, if they let us go, the Calnians will slaughter all of them and eat them. Like the Goachica, they believe that if someone eats them after death, it kills their spirits and that’s it—no afterlife, no reincarnation, no anything. So you can see their point. They have to kill us. They’re not going to eat us, though.”

  “Thoughtful of them,” said Keef.

  “They could just let us go and not tell anybody,” suggested Bjarni.

  “Yeah, I tried that but Kobosh said the Calnians would probably find out and he couldn’t take that risk. Like I said, he’s a nice guy, but he’s got to put the hundreds of people in his tribe before us and he’s not going to change his mind. What he will do is let us die in battle. We have five minutes to say our farewells, then we charge. They will shoot us down, but we’ll die fighting and meet in Valhalla in time for lunch. Kobosh has sworn to finish off any injured as painlessly as possible and burn our bodies.”

  “Will he spare the children?” asked Gunnhild.

  “I did suggest that, but he won’t. Sorry.”

  “But it’s a stupid prophecy. There are thousands more like us in the lands that Olaf Worldfinder left behind! If anyone is going to destroy the world, it’s them, not us. Never smite a wasp lest its brethren swarm behind you.” Gunnhild was a lover of Krist, Finnbogi reminded himself, so didn’t have quite as certain an afterlife as the rest of them. He wasn’t looking forward to being struck by arrows and then maybe head-whacked with an axe himself, but it seemed a small price to pay for an eternity with Thyri in the awesome drinking hall of Valhalla.

  “Yes, but the Calnians only know about us and they’ve decreed that we have to die. Buck up, we’ll be together again before we know it. You die when you die.”

  Indeed, thought Finnbogi, heading for Thyri. The time had come to declare his love.

  Chnob the White had seen the Scraylings before the rest of them, dropped before any has seen him and crawled back to the treeline. Now he watched from the shadows, a smile twitching on his face. This delay was a little annoying, but surely the Scraylings were going to kill them all, as the Calnians had commanded? This was Oaden’s reward to them for not realising Chnob’s greatness, for promoting his idiot sister ahead of him and for being silly, self-obsessed wastes of life.