"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.
And all he could recall of the thing — the attack having only lasted all of a second — were the feral whites of its eyes and its dominating fangs before it had nearly excoriated the flesh from his face. He had barely registered any other detail except that it was an immense beast with a dun-colored matt of hair, almost grey.
Ívarr's startled roar had him spinning to his right. Impulse activated and guided his hand as he let fly his spear, but his weakened state was such that the lethal head glanced off the beast's shoulder. And, in so doing, he felt both relieved and guilty that he had missed. Still, it was enough that Eirik had released another arrow that had joined its compeer, the first still embedded deeply in Renic's back and the second striking his chest.
Once again the beast leapt into the umbrage afforded by the rocky dunes. This time, however, Roth had gotten a far better look at him.
It had been a barrel-chest and demoniac-looking, grey wolf with longer, muscular back legs than withers which accounted for it having the nimble, yet awkward, mobility of an anuran. That feature, together with its stumpy tail and ears — that, although elongated, were positioned far lower on the side of its head, unlike most canines — were all that might have hinted at his humanity. The rest of him resembled nothing familiar. He was part wolf in physiognomy, partly bear-like in sheer size; and then something else entirely.
"Is it a gods-cursed bear?!" Eirik's third arrow was already poised as he stood over his father.
Ívarr was still dazed, favoring his ribs, but finally stood and then he promptly examined the long scars etched in his shield with one eye as the other darted furtively between the shadows. "Not a bear," he murmured gravely.
"A giant wolf then?"
"Whatever the brute may be, tis playing with us," said Ragnar. He knocked his axe threateningly against the iron boss at the center of his shield. "Come Fenrir, you bastard!" he bellowed; but Renic stayed hidden.
Roth could feel his brother watching, the hairs standing rampant wherever that cold, hidden gaze dwelled over his flesh. His men said nothing more, no doubt feeling the same sensation, and Roth backed up carefully towards Søren so that Renic would have to get by him or Ragnar in order to take his cousin who was, clearly, the easiest target; and the likeliest of them to be taken next.
Renic did not keep them long in anticipation. The hel-born creature, for it was no longer Renic, launched itself unexpectedly at Eirik this time, its pale eyes almost white with fury as it clamped its powerful jaws around his uncle's hand — the true weapon that had twice discharged an arrow at the creature's vitals.
Roth would later reflect on how terribly he had erred and misjudged the beast's cunning, thinking Søren the next victim. Instead, he might have guessed that anything with even a modicum of intelligence would have dispatched that which posed the greatest threat.
Eirik's long bow and Ragnar's axe were its biggest enemies. Had Roth been in possession of his rightful strength, his spear would have been the most lethal.
For the time being, all that next transpired was naught but a phantasmagoric mêlée of horror and blurred activity; almost too fast for all but the most agile to perceive.
His young uncle's shooting hand came away from its root in one fell snap, and with a sickening pop, as the beast gave a violent shake of its great head. As of a morbid dream it swallowed, loudly, its bewhiskered muzzle coated with a slaughterous shade of crimson. Eirik stumbled back in shock, staring incredulously at the lifeblood squirting from his severed wrist.
Though Ívarr hurled his shield at the monster, it was too late.
Still, it found its mark, howsoever belatedly, which momentarily bemused the creature. With Eirik out of the way, Ragnar hurtled his mighty axe. It plunged therewith just below Renic's broad shoulders, causing that limb to collapse under him.
Søren, meanwhile, had begun bandaging Eirik's hand. This Roth barely noticed, for his eyes were fixed at his target; he had already raised his spear. However, he could not throw it. There had been a momentary flash of something ... human amidst the bloodlust that saturated its gaze.
"Throw it, man!" Ragnar was beside him in a matter of moments.
He grabbed the spear from Roth's blood-soaked hand, wet with wiping at his face, and fired it in the very next instant, even as the beast began to clamber away.
It struck the massive, silver back just as the shadows whelmed the creature, effectually concealing it from view. Roth's hesitation, however, had cost them the victory. Or had it? Would Renic die? Had the spear found his heart? Either way, they had wounded him enough that he would likely not assault them again. Not tonight. Perhaps not ever...
Roth fell to his knees. "Renic!" It was said with force, but quiet withal.
Ragnar's lower practically smote him as he beheld his nephew. "Why did you freeze?!"
Why indeed. It was not like Roth to hesitate, after all. When no reply was forthcoming, his uncle marched away to see to Eirik. Ragnar, undoubtably, determined that he had dealt the 'creature' a lethal blow. He could commit his attentions, for the time being, to Eirik now, whose wellbeing was presently in grave question.
His younger uncle's face was white and bloodless — unlike Roth's bloody visage — as he huddled by the fire. With a cursory look towards the edge of darkness, Ívarr plunged his sword into the embers and watched as the iron began to glow an ominous red. Deeming the metal fiery enough, he brought it over to Eirik.
"Wait!" Ragnar passed Aila's brother his horn of ale and nodded as the younger man drank off every drop.
That done, he gave Eirik a leather thong to bite down on and then stepped back as Roth's grandsire applied the smoldering iron, before Eirik even had a chance to brace himself. He was leaning back against's Søren as his stertorous breathing and guttural cries rent the eerie peace. It was an awful sound, mingled with the smell of burnt flesh and the coppery tang of gore — both Eirik's and Roth's.
There was no palliative for this type of pain, but death. At least not until they were home once more. Epona could thence tend to his wound.
And what would they find on the morrow? Would Renic's cold and stiffened body meet them when dawn light revealed his brother's whereabouts, shoulder rived and body riddled with arrows? The killing spear still jutting from his lifeless heart?
Roth pushed his bleeding, tattered face into the black rocks, his tears stinging the gaping wounds in his jaw. "Brother," he whispered, licking the blood and tears from his lips. Do not let them take him from me, Loki!
Day break eventually came, but none of them had slept. Ívarr, who had long ago learned enough of healing from Elfa, had, by then, bandaged his own broken ribs, cauterized his son's gaping wound, and then pulled the flesh over the exposed joint to close the ragged edges with needle and silk.
As to Roth's face, and no doubt as a result of the poison, the deep lacerations would not close as they might have done had he been ... himself. Once his grandsire had flushed the blood out of the way with cold, sea water, he examined the injury and said, "Well, you'll live, but you shan't be as pretty as your brother."
At the casual mention of Renic, Ívarr grew shamefaced and quiet. He too was, obviously, as convinced of Renic's death, as Ragnar was. Certain, too, that he would not reach Valhalla, seeing as he had not died in battle. It was torturous summations all around.
Thus it was, and with silent concentration, that he plied his already bloodied needle and silk to Roth's clenched jaw. It was there, he'd said, that the worst of the damage was wrought. When he was done, he examined his efforts proudly.
"You pretty nearly lost an eye, my boy," said Ívarr. With Roth's blood still coating his fingers, he painted five lines from the top of his left temple diagonally across his own brow, lip, jaw and neck.
By this grim pastiche, he now afforded Roth a clear idea of what he had sustained. It was far clearer than any reflection might have been; and far more lurid. A macabre sort of mirror. The innermost line bisected his left brow, the side of his nose, and, finally, his lips. It was the worst of the five scars he would likely always wear.
Still and all, he had not lost an eye. Not like Odin had. And his would not have been a noble loss either, for he was not even sure he'd saved his brother.
He cleared his throat, searching their campsite. "Where is Ragnar?"
"He and Søren followed the blood trail that lead up the mountain."
"Without me?!" His uncle had not left him behind in consideration of his wounds either. Fatal blows were nothing to warriors — even Eirik would have continued fighting regardless of his amputation had not Ragnar already felled the ... felled Renic.
It was because he had hesitated. Ragnar would have seen that as weakness.
Ívarr shrugged, but shortly glanced up as Ragnar and his son reappeared with the missing arrows and Roth's spear. "There was no sign of it's body," said he.
"We failed to kill it?" Roth could not forbear the hopeful inflection, and it was not lost on Ragnar.
"See for yourself!" Ragnar dropped the spear onto his nephew's lap and watched as Roth raised the tip for closer inspection, dabbing at the dried blood with his questing tongue.
"Organ blood." No!
"Yes. If it lives, it will not live much longer." Ragnar knelt beside him and regarded his scars before fixing his eyes to Roth's. "Why did you call out Renic's name? You failed to kill it when you had the chance; and you called out for your brother. Why?"
Roth, undaunted by Ragnar's suspicion, brought his face closer to his uncle's. "Because that creature," he said, nodding in the direction whence the thing had disappeared only a few hours ago, "devoured my brother." And, truly, it was no word of a lie. Renic had been consumed, in a manner.
"Perhaps." Was all Ragnar said, his gaze softening only slightly.
"We must leave now," said Ívarr, watching as Roth pushed himself to standing. "We cannot spare the time to search for it."
The smallest movements still required such effort, and it still enraged Roth no end that he had barely the strength of an old woman, let alone that of a man. Far better that he had been the Fenris Wolf and bound himself somehow, somewhere, than that he'd taken that foul bane as his brother had exhorted him to do. Nevermore would he do so hence.
The gods, curse you, Brenna! I won't touch your wolfsbane again!
Yet he would to Odin that Renic had done so. Or, better yet, had not succumbed to the rockslide! Renic. His other half. Whereas Roth favored his left hand, Renic favored his right; so, in truth, they really were, and always had been, the perfect, mirror images of one another.
But no more.
Now they would forever be distinguishable. If indeed his brother still lived. He was not sure if it was the wolfsbane or ... something more sinister, but he could no longer feel Renic's presence inside himself. It was as though whatever root that had anchored them at birth had finally been severed.
No more than an hour later, the wind was once again filling his large, square sail. They were finally returning, and with considerable losses to each of them.
"If Renic lives," said his grandsire, joining him at the stern as he stared off at the fading beach, "then he will find his way home. Mayhap even before the blizzards come."
Roth nodded, his manner distrait. "Mayhap."
But Renic did not arrive that winter. And nor was he home by the next.
🌟Hmm, penny for your thoughts?🌟