Animals We Made [RETURNS June 7, 2024]

Years of Strange Iron | Part 6

Einar hadn't an instant to react.

The fletching grazed his cheek like a kiss.

On zipped the arrow, past him and off for whomever the boy really wanted dead.

It caught in a shield thrust up by a man Einar recognized.

Gudmund of the Fjords approached out of the noon haze—so dense it backlit him. What a colossus he was! Easily seven feet tall and lanky, he resembled the giraffes in the southern jungles. He wore a crown of bones, and three ox horns angled upward protruded out of it.

Rog, Nils, and their sister huddled together.

Ulf drew another arrow from his quiver as Einar pondered the cause of the boy's vehemence.

Gudmund kept walking, a tower in motion. His icy blue eyes shone hypnotically out of a face that was rugged and dull in contrast, smeared in ash and mud, his beard a wiry tangle. A raven flew to him. It perched on his shoulder. He groaned and hit the arrow off his shield with the dangerous end of a long, blunt, square-headed mace, and the bird flapped away as if just realizing he wasn't a corpse.

Other Vikings hurried to flank him, their chainmail jingling.

Einar understood they were raiders.

He touched his ear and gasped because it was moist, and as he fingered it he discovered the arrow had sliced its outer edge open while journeying by him.

"Yaargh!" he wailed, relieved he wasn't partially deaf.

Ulf loosed his second arrow.

Gudmund ducked and it missed him.

The boy peered into his quiver.

Only eight arrows remained.

Nearing with ten burly Vikings, Gudmund appeared reptilian and uncivilized, his gauntness under the horned crown perfecting the image. Despite his skeletal frame, he loomed over his troops, Einar, and the children.

Retreat was soon impossible.

More of Gudmund's thugs appeared over the horizon to encircle their prey.

Ulf snarled.

Einar extended his axe toward the raiders. "Have you vandals been corrupted?"

A herd of sheep migrated in a dotted white line along the plain.

Ulf nocked two arrows at once to his bow.

"Vikings!" ordered Gudmund, voice deep and rich as he pointed his mace at him. "Cut off the lad's hands, for he is a thief!"

Einar stared at Ulf's bow.

By Odin.

Gudmund's men advanced.

The child yanked the pair of arrows taut against his bowstring.

"Lad," whispered Einar. "Give the fucker back his fucking bow right fucking now."

Instead, Ulf loosed more arrows.

One Viking fell.

The second arrow hit the earth, a waste.

"Divine irony," Einar muttered. "Raiders pursuing a thief in the name of justice."

"Gudmund, come get your bow!" yapped Ulf.

Six arrows remained in his quiver.

Einar appreciated the Vikings in their musical chainmail as they sprinted at him and his orphans.