Family Spear

Family Spear

 

His heavy breathing roared in his own ears. Thorvald Magnusson stared up at the mountain, where white snows and black cliffs battled for dominion. Clouds veiled the top. The mountain-side awaited him behind white hills and the long, stick-marked path before him.

He’d made it to the top of the Twain Path now. That was half the battle won�"or so he told himself. Now only the Halskarv Mountain remained. The fresh air burned cold fire down his throat and to his lungs, and Thorvald found himself, once again, taken aback by the stark beauty surrounding him. The whiteness that married sky to earth and made them indistinguishable.

Clumps of snow had crept into his boots, but had melted with the heat of his journey, his toes warm again. The journey had also helped burn away the heavy clouds of thought that had fogged his brain, pouring down an unhelpful torrent of emotions over him like cutting rain.

Leaning against his spear, runes carved in its steel point, he caught his breath. It felt odd using his family’s weapon as a traveling stick, but it was easier than carrying it on his back and have it clatter around. So his sister Nerna had said, admiring him for his ingenuity�"but that wasn’t really why he kept it in his hands. Remembering her presence soothed him a little. With her around, he wouldn’t be entirely alone in this world.

Thorvald smacked off bits of hard ice that had clumped below his wooden skis. The wax below them was starting to dry up, but he didn’t want to take them off just yet. There were more miles to be conquered. More tracks to be made. Lest the voices caught up to him and he lost his nerve. 

Thorvald adjusted the clay urn tied to his belt. Then he gave himself a mighty shove with the spear, and set off along the path, skis slapping and sliding defiantly against the snow.

 

***

 

The wind bit harder here, on the steepening side of the mountain.

It cut through his fur cloak like a knife through butter. He felt himself shudder against it, and stomped harder into the deepening snow, hoping to generate more heat with his efforts.

He was growing light-headed. Shuffling to the side, standing horizontally against the hill and settling himself, Thorvald unwrapped his fox-leather waterskin and unloosened the cork, taking a healthy swig. The water was refreshing. Clumps of ice in the water scraped against his teeth as he drank.

“Foolish, foolish, foolish,” voices in the wind whispered to him, caught up to him now that he had stopped, like cackling crows; until he found that it was his own mouth mumbling. He gave a miserable laugh at that. Then he licked his dry lips and spoke to himself on purpose.

“Foolish, maybe.” He looked up at the stone-coloured clouds and almost dared not to utter his next words. “Are you watching, old man? You better be.”

His tongue lowered and a pressure built in the back of his mouth. His eyes stung�"from the cold, maybe. He’d meant his words as a challenge, knowing they would reach the old man. They’d come out as a weak croak, and made him realize that he wanted to cry again.

Doggedly, he wiped the not yet-realized tears from his eyes and the snot from his nose and stared back up at the steep climb awaiting him. His joints ached. His legs burned. The mountain seemed to endlessly rise.

He would have to leave his skis behind soon. The backslide was becoming too much of an encumbrance. If he could just make it to the first cliffs . . . then he could take them off.

Thorvald pushed on.

 

***

 

The dark skis stuck out from the snow, marking his last stop�"their strings billowed in the wind like waving hands. His last reminder of home. Thorvald turned his back to them and resumed his climbing.

He didn’t climb far before he saw other prints left behind in the snow. They’d almost been erased by the wind, but he could clearly see the size of the paws left behind. A wolf had been here. That or a very large dog, but no accompanying human footprints. He tightened his grip around the spear.

Other thoughts came to him now, as he muscled up through the snow. Each stride swallowed half his leg. He could hear his own grunting and panting. Then the images came.

His father; tall, strong, long-limbed and steady. Red nose, like he’d always drunk too much�"though he drank probably less than his peers. Yellowed teeth that occasionally cracked into a wide smile, but had over the years become more and more of a taught line. Mother’s death had burned much of his youth away, Thorvald suspected.

He was like an oak tree. Wrinkled, solid, reliable�"life teeming in the safety of its branches and wilted leaves. A week ago, he’d seen that tree fall.

Thorvald swallowed a clump of spittle. He shouldn’t summon these images now. Not now. And yet, in the middle of all this, he still wanted to nurture his grief.

The hill had been about as steep as this one. Father had gone down it first, skis steadily swishing, carving miniscule swings as he rushed down, the pair of bloody hares in one of his gloved fist.

Suddenly, his figure had grown stiff as a plank. A second after that, he’d collapsed into the snow�"into a rolling ball of white sprays and flailing limbs. Nerna had gasped, then giggled a little, and both she and Thorvald had smiled at one another, skiing down after him.

It was rare that father fell. And when he did, he got up by himself, grinning apologetically and dusting off snow from his winter coat.

They’d expected him to do that. But he’d just kept lying there, still in the snow. Their mirth had faltered like leaves falling to the ground.

Thorvald pressed his eyes shut, now back on the cliffside, climbing up the Halskarv mountain. His foot slipped�"and his legs flew backwards, flopping him onto his stomach. The snow swallowed him in a cold embrace. A choked sob left him.

He still remembered his father’s ragged breathing. The strained, inhuman sound of it. It had haunted him every night since then. It haunted him still.

The ragged breathing.  

Another memory came to him, climbing the hill to their cottage, he’d fallen and couldn’t get up, his skis stuck in the snow. He’d cried, thinking of the warm fireplace and roasted meat that had awaited him up there. But his little legs had given up on him. He couldn’t get up.

A firm hand had taken hold of the hood of his cloak back then. He’d been pulled up. Father had came up next to him.

“Come on now, not much farther. Just a few more steps.”

He’d known it to be a lie, of course. And yet, focusing on each step, rather than the cottage so far away, hidden by drifts of snow, had helped him climb it.  

“A little more, come on. Just a few more steps.”

Now he looked up, unable to see much farther ahead in the winds whipping up around him.

It’s too far. I can’t get all the way up. My body’s weak from staying at the cottage. I should turn back.

A firm hand gripped his hood and gave him a yank. Thorvald started and shifted in the snow, staring behind him. But no one was there. Nothing but the wind.

No reason to stop there. He could almost hear the words again, whispered to him.

Just a few more steps.

He growled and got to his feet. Like Hel he would let this mountain defeat him. The top awaited him.

 

***

 

Somehow, he’d made it above the clouds. Standing between two, black cliffs, he’d reached one of the flat spots. He crept up on a stone and watched the scenery, then unpacked the salted meat and loaf of bread in his pouch.

The sun shined harshly above the sea of clouds. They billowed out in waves, a great, woollen carpet spreading out below the blue skies as far as he could see. He’d forgotten how beautiful it got up here.

He ate in a moment of serenity. It was cold to sit still, but the food did wonders for his vitality.

Snow cracked behind him. Thorvald turned on his stony seat, glancing behind him.

Something dusty-brown seemed to have melted out of the snow�"glaring at him with yellow, glistening eyes, one paw dug into a deep print before it. Its fur bristled. Thorvald stared back at the wolf, sitting quite still. He swallowed the last bit of meat in his mouth and slowly climbed atop the stone, picking up his spear . . .

One wolf he could contend with. He wore thick clothes. If he didn’t hit it with the spear, he could let its fangs clamp over his arm, then stab it. His father had taught him that that was the way to fight wolves, if they dared get close. First, however, he might as well try and scare it.

“Back!” Thorvald shouted, and raised his arms high above him, holding the spear. “GET BACK! AWAY!”

His voice echoed out over the mountain. The wolf still approached him, carefully stalking over towards him, occasionally hesitating or taking a few steps back.  

That was when the rest of the pack followed.

He caught their movements in the periphery of his vision, and immediately started shaking uncontrollably. Melting out from the snow or behind the cliffs, from one moment to the next, they were there. He almost dared not look up at them�"but as he did, he could count their full number. Six more. They counted seven in total.

He shouted at them more, but his voice turned shrill and hoarse. The front wolf perked up its ears, and went from a jog to a full-on charge. The other wolves came running down from the sides, their paws slapping snow aside, tongues lolling.

Thorvald had never been attacked by wolves before, he managed to reflect. Him and his own had always managed to scare them off, or get away before a pack could descend on them. The way they came towards him were almost ponderous�"normal. All the while, terrible shaking swept over him, and he could feel his whole being clench from the predicament he found himself in.

When it came close, however, he heard its snarling growl well enough as it jumped him on his rock. Thorvald swung his spear in a powerful, two-handed grip. The shaft, rather than the point, smacked the wolf on the side of its head and it yelped, hopping back. Glancing to the sides, he saw the others coming.

Just at the moment of pouncing him, he made a long leap from the rock and landed deep in the snow behind him. He hardly felt it as it soaked his clothes and the cold touched his skin beneath. Muscling out of the snow, he whirled to face his adversaries.

“Come on then!” he yelled, deciding to be defiant to the end. The wolves ran around the rock.

They circled around him. He held out his family spear, pointing it as menacingly as he could at each wolf’s head. They bared their teeth and snarled at him in turn, while others merely ducked and cocked their heads, looking for an opening.

When one finally struck, he stabbed it with the spear. The impact shook down through the shaft and his arms, the wolf writhing at the tip of it, snapping and biting. The spearhead, however, got stuck between its ribs.

The others attacked. A searing pain lanced through his leg�"and looking down, he could see one had snapped its jaws around his leg. Another jumped up on his back, its weight weighing him down, biting him in the shoulder through his thick clothes. Thorvald cried out at their onslaught, the agony burning through his skin like hot coals, and struggled and fought as well as he could. The shaft of the spear snapped and he pulled out what remained of it, smacking another wolf over its leg and body, giving a yelp from it.

The snows turned red with blood.

 

***

 

Thorvald woke up in a daze, pushing himself up. Snow caked his beard and all over his clothes. Two canine bodies lay next to him, one on its side, blood crusted over the snow, furs swaying in the wind. The other lay buried beneath him, where his knee had crushed it. This had to be a dream . . . had he won?

He was wounded. He knew that now, since the world swayed so crazily before him. But he could walk. It wasn’t too bad. The other wolves were gone.

He picked out the spearpoint from the stomach of the one wolf, and took the remains of the spear in his other hand. Then he continued upwards.

 

***

 

It was a long crawl across the part of the mountain facing the stark heavens, but he made finally made it to the lip. Grunting and huffing, his one leg dragging, he tore off the ceramic urn and found a spot between the cliffs where he could tuck it. Next to it, he stabbed the point of the spear down in the snow, like a dagger, and the remains of the shaft with it�"only to pile a bundle of rocks together that he found beneath the snow, marking a grave.

He then sat down on the black rock next to the grave, clasped his knees, and watched the setting sun ahead and the rolling clouds below, breathing in from the fresh, mountain air.

All the while, life steadily oozed out of him and painted the snows crimson beneath his feet.

Peace filled him now, tinged with melancholy. He didn’t think Nenna was likely to see him again. She would be sad�"and it would most likely haunt her the rest of her life, as well as the rest of their family. He’d done a foolish thing�"but he had finished it.

The sun set, and darkness swept over the clouds, gradually revealing a magnificent spectacle of stars above, with northern lights of green and blue woven in-between them. He watched the flickering lights until the darkness turned complete and swallowed all the light�"and beside him sat his father, hand on his knee, watching the cycle with him.

 

***

 

The human’s body lay face-down in the snow on the side of the mountain. It was rich on meat and had been strong, but seven wolves had been able to take it down. The leader of the pack was limping, barely able to move, still pierced by sharp iron. The others tore through thick leather and fabric, sniffing at the strange urn at the body’s side and the waterskin and pouches and belts.

And then, the wolves feasted.