Curse Of Blood: Gods & Monsters

Chapter XXXIX - Roth

"What is it?" Søren halted at Roth's side. His voice was alert, but hushed withal.

"Nothing good." Because nothing good hunted men in the small hours of predawn when the world was at its darkest. "Where is Eirik?"

"Loading the ship, but-"

"Have him take up his bow and keep an arrow nocked at the ready," Roth instructed quietly. 

Eirik was the best bowman of all Roth's warriors, and they had need of the best tonight. His eyes flickered across the obfuscated landscape, already befogged with cold.

He could not remember ever feeling so much dread. Not even the first time he'd begun to ... whatever it was that became of him during his lunar throes. There was always too much pain to feel much of anything else. Too much rage. And now he felt spent; weakened; and affrighted. He was human now.

"And tell Ívarr to light torches around the perimeter of the camp," he went on, his muscles still enfeebled, atrophied with the poison in his blood. "We will need whatever light we can get." Afore his cousin turned to leave, now thoroughly disquieted, Roth pulled his thick cloak from Søren's shoulders, the one he'd loaned him only hours before, and then nodded for him to go.

Every sound in the stillness echoed like the bellowing of a horn as he shred his cloak with his seax and hurriedly wrapped a long piece around each of his forearms so that his makeshift vambraces protected him like a pelt might do for a fighting bear.

He took up his spear again and waited. Where are you, Renic?

With a swift look behind him, he saw that Eirik was indeed poised to shoot his arrow and was shifting his gaze about the gloom. Ragnar too was ready, his shield raised and his axe steady in his meaty fist. Søren and Ívarr had placed the last of the torches in a wide, protective arc, but they would need to take up their own arms directly. 

Things were far too quiet to bode well. His harsh breathing obtruded the silence. His cousin and grandsire were taking far too long!

"Hurry! Your shield, Sør-" The air was slammed abruptly, and viciously, from his chest, arresting his command. 

The rest of his words evaporated with a grunt of pain as his feet were knocked from under him and his head slammed down into the black ice with an obliterating force.

He'd only barely raised his left arm in time to preclude the fangs that had lunged at his neck. As its teeth mauled noisily, a brutal paw struck his temple, the claws ripping at his face. The shouting of his kin became mute and muffled in the face of gnashing teeth and snapping jaws.

His spear was useless where it lay just out of reach. He struggled and groped for his seax the while the monster crushed his chest with its colossal weight. And then, with a sudden, piercing roar, it leapt back into the shadows as the blood from Roth's wounds wept into his eyes, blurring them further.

He scrambled to his feet, as best he could with what wasted brawn he possessed, and swiftly reclaimed his spear; lest the creature — nay, his brother — return to finish them off. He blinked the bloody tears away and wiped at the wetness oozing from his dissevered flesh.

"Roth?!" Eirik shouted, nocking another arrow, the first one having found its mark.

"I'm fine!" was Roth's crisp, almost breathless, reply. What in Loki's name had Renic become. There was nothing of the man in him. "Keep your eyes open!" He shuddered, for it had pretty nearly swiped the sight from his left eye altogether. "It's not finished with us yet."

His heart was still sluggish, the adrenaline notwithstanding, but he steeled himself and tightened his fists over his spear and seax. The creature, such as it was, had also left deep gashes in his vambraces — a sobering reminder of how close it had come to killing him. How close Renic had come to killing him.