A Night such as This

               

A Night Such as This

 

 

By B. R. Bloor

 

           

 

 

 

 

The dark soulless sky brooded ominously over Ragnarr as he trudged through the deep snow of the hinterlands. Nightfall had quickly enveloped him before he had found a place to shelter himself from it. Gnawing at his very pith the bitter winter wind bit at his face. Howling the cry of the Valkyries it fought to stop him cold where he stood. Struggling against it as if against the will of Njord himself Ragnarr pushed forward, for that night, he decided, was not a good night to die.

            Blinded by the gale that surged through the weald the old wanderer stumbled, raking his leg against a jagged rock hidden beneath the snow; hidden where it had sat for a time unmeasured, placed there by the Norns for a night such as this.

            Throwing his hands out in front of him he caught himself as he fell, burying his arms in the frigid snow. His exhaustion suddenly overpowering, the weight of his bearskin held him against the blistering cold.

            Ragnarr was still for long moments, cursing the rock, cursing that stygian rasp that bruised him and spilled his blood. Determined to keep moving he began to stand, but stopped when his sight fell on the ruins of an ancient city laid out before him. Lost from memory generations passed it was bathed in the muted light of the compassionless moon, filtered through the thick clouds that smothered the land like a clenching fist. Stone blocks jutted from the snow like the bones of a great beast, a behemoth from the old stories his grandfather had liked to tell.

            The storm slowly tapered as he began searching the debris for a crevice to shelter himself, a quoin in the rubble to hunker and rest, an improvised inglenook to stoke a fire, and try not to think of the ghosts he knew must be watching him from the shadows, for this was their land, he knew, and he was the one who did not belong.

            Using what he had thought was the last of his strength he cleared snow away from the remnants of a foundation, scooping snow with his weary frost bitten arms and throwing it to the side. A brief smile intruded across his rough face for the short wall proved a good windbreak, and he knew that his tinderbox would be dry. Soon his strength seeped back as his small fire began to blossom before him like a living thing awakening from a bizarre sleep, warming his frozen hands that ached and stung as they thawed. Again the fleeting smile stole across his cracked lips, for again he had cheated death, death whose teeth had once again gnashed so closely at his heels.

            He looked to the trees with the thought of gathering more wood but what he saw made his blood run cold against the heat of the crackling fire whose light danced in the shadows around him. A child stood in the midst of the ruins, among the ancient foundations that spoke of the grandeur of yore and stared directly at Ragnarr.

            The old man jumped to his feet, searching the depth of the night for the others he knew must be, peering into the very murk that he had sought to avoid lest he provoke the unseen, but alas, the boy was alone.

            Rushing to help the lost child Ragnarr stopped short, suddenly unnerved by the visage of his face, the blank countenance of his expression, the antiquity of his gray cast eyes.

            The small boy slowly, deliberately, lifted his arm and pointed his tiny finger behind Ragnarr, never turning his gaze from his. With his exhaustion forgotten and his heart pounding violently in his chest the aged patriarch quickly turned to the stagnant shadows, to the ancient darkness formed of the pale light, and stared into the dead black eyes of a thing spawned of Hel herself.

            Gripped by fear his heart skipped painfully as Ragnarr bolted for the boy who had been forsaken in the snow. His mind racing and his body panicked he found the bronze hilt of his loiten blade already in his hand when he wrapped his burly arm around the child and turned toward the safety of his fire, but the thing had closed the distance between them, driven by its hunger and the lure of warm blood.

            A shriek escaped Ragnarr’s lips, a scream, a baritone cry of which he was unaware but reverberated back to him like a voice distant and lost. With hands like that of sharp talons the undead creature reached for Ragnarr’s living flesh, its gaping maw poised to strike, poised to tear with grotesque teeth bared like that of a snarling wolf.

            Lashing at the impossible fiend the northman’s cold iron blade sliced through the dead meat of its rotten body, opening a gash across its putrid chest from which blood should have poured but did not. The thing stopped, its eyes fixed on the sword as if such eyes could see at all, and backed beyond its reach. As Ragnarr moved for the fire, however, so too moved the monster, the living corpse, the vampire from the abysmal lands below Midgard, held at bay by the weapon as if by a divine relic.

            The old man backed toward the fire with the child tucked under his arm, his eyes never leaving those of the ghoul. Never looking away but staring into their depth, their impossible, endless depth. He couldn’t turn away from the cavernous blackness behind the dead man’s eyes that calmed his fear and eased the pain he felt in his chest. His sword grew heavy in his hand as his exhaustion returned and he was drawn to the restful comfort behind the monster’s eyes, until even the heft of his weapon began to fade from his grip.

            Stirring against him the child threatened to squirm loose from the graybeard’s relenting grasp. Ragnarr’s body flinched as he caught the boy, staggering as if suddenly jarred awake from a macabre, frightful dream. Overcome with panic he quickly tightened his hold around the boy and kicked the horror square in the chest, pulling the blade of this sword free from its terrible hands. Ragnarr turned and ran, bounding through the snow, determined to get the small boy to the warmth of the fire and out of harms way before dispatching the fiend back to the Hall of Elvidner from whence it had come.

            Setting the child down in the clearing that he himself had made he turned back toward the living remnant of death itself. With steam billowing into the air from his heaving chest he searched the night for the thing that had attacked him, for the vampire who even then stalked him like prey, but the vale was still. Naught moved save for the flickering firelight that played on the weathered blocks of chiseled stone that surrounded him, those shattered remains of lives lived but that spoke to him only of ancient death.

            Pulling a burning branch from the fire Ragnarr stormed into the pall that surround him, burning away the shadows, dispelling the illusions created of the night, casting light on that which the dark held secret, but finding his own tracks the only disturbance in the pristine pathos of the forest. He looked out into the woods around him, into the trees that stood at the borders of the ancient city. They enveloped the ruins, overhanging them but never trespassing. Nothing grew among the stones, no sapling had sprung from the decaying foundations. The Vanir had not sought to reclaim the land but hide it, remove it from the world like a leprous thing lest its infection spread to the kingdoms of Midgard. Ragnarr would that they had done better.

            The crackling of the burgeoning fire brought the northman’s attention back to the young boy whose fate the Norns had left in his hands. The child stood where Ragnarr had put him, never stepping closer to the fire to warm himself, not protecting himself from the cold gnashing teeth of the biting wind, but stared at the old man with the same blank stare as before. Ragnarr hurried to him, stabbing his sword into the ground to quickly free both hands so he could wrap the boy with his own bearskin. The boy was smothered by the cape that easily weighed as much as he, but Ragnarr did not care, his lips were already blue and his skin had taken an unnatural pallor. He moved the lad closer to the fire and stoked the flame with more wood. Ragnarr began to feel safer as the circle of light grew wider around him, as the heat from the flames began to sink through his clothes. But as the light grew brighter, so too, did the shadows grow darker.

            As the storm’s eye passed over the lowlands the woods became still and quiet, no wolf howled nor owl sounded, and the light of the fire cast into the night as though onto a canvas. Ragnarr was silent, his mind again racing, trying to understand all that had happened, all that he had seen. It would be easy for him to run, leave the ruins, brave the cold and survive the night, but the child, he knew, could not.

            Trapped by his own convictions, doomed to die on his own terms, the old warrior deemed that that night perhaps was a good night to die after all. He had lived a long life, he decided, he would do his best to see that the small lad had a chance to do the same.

            As the night had worn on the light from the fire had kept the shadows at a distance, but Ragnarr knew that their wood supply would not hold out. Soon, before the storm returned, he would have to venture into the dark, where he knew the dead would be waiting for him.

            Taking a few minutes longer to rest and gather his strength the old swordsman stood and grabbed the last remaining stick from the pile of wood he had gathered. Wrapping the end of the long heavy branch with a swath of cloth he set it alight. Holding the flame high he took another moment to rally his courage. Finally, his resolve set, he pulled his sword from the frozen earth.

            Stepping from the fire’s protection, the flame’s shroud of torrid light, the aging mercenary was met by the night’s bitter chill that rushed to meet him, rushed to embrace him, rushed to wrap around him and feed on the heat he carried with him, leaching it through his clothes, from his very skin, until he was left cold and starving for warmth. The flame he carried did little to stave the night’s malicious assault, its rape of his person, but the shadows that dwelt within scurried and hid themselves from it.

            He walked slowly, stepping cautiously, keeping his weight balanced with each stride as he advanced through the darkness cast of Nidhogge, that great wyrm that sleeps below the depth of the seas, that is the very depths, and dreams the nightmares lived by men on nights such as this.

            Ragnarr passed through the bleached remains of lives lost, the stone blocks of the city that had fallen ages past, the foundation stones with muted tongues that held their secrets, their stories of the people who had lived and died and yielded them not. At length he reached the trees, the ancient oaks that seamed to glower down upon him.

            He looked back to the small boy, now some distance away, still sitting where he had left him, staring into the fire whose warm glow beckoned him return. Ragnarr turned his back and sheathed his sword, he had seen nothing in the dark except his own imaginings. His eyes wide against the night the old man quickly gathered deadfall, as much as he could carry with one hand, and began to drag the dry wood back to his small camp. He looked again to the child, to the boy of six or seven, who still had not yet moved. Facing the burning conflagration of sticks and dead branches he cast a long shadow behind him that swayed with the rhythm of the fire, writhed with the dance of the flame, thrashed against the light as a snake fighting against the current of a stream. Ragnarr dropped the wood and for a moment stood aghast, sure that his eyes deceived him, sure that the play of light and shadow must be playing tricks, for the deformed thing that contorted and wrenched to reach the boy could never have been human.

             With his exasperated cry resounding through the still silence the burly warrior, long past his prime, ran as fast as his tired muscles and aching joints would allow, his torch sending tendrils of light twisting through the darkness and bestirring the restless shadows. Steam pouring from his mouth and his face screwed up in a grimace Ragnarr bore down on the cowering thing, the vampire that yielded to his advance, cringing away from the tormenting fire, backing itself into the cold blackness of night, yet righting itself against his attack.

            The old man was too slow, his muscles were too tired, and his exhaustion was onerous, but he hit the dead thing with enough force to bury his sword to the hilt. But as the sword plunged into the dead man’s body, as the blade of forged iron stabbed through dead flesh, the vampire’s mouth dropped open impossibly wide, unhinging like a venomous snake, baring teeth like those of a monstrous serpent that stabbed deep into Ragnarr as it struck.

            Howling in pain as vile fangs drove through his chest Ragnarr pounded the dead thing with his fist. Trying to pull it away from himself its hair came out in his hand. As panic washed over him Ragnarr lifted the thing into the air by its neck and slammed it into the snow, throwing it into the frozen earth and backing away as steaming blood throbbed from his gaping wounds. Again his heart pained him, pounding, fluttering, skipping beats. His head began to swoon but he denied it, refusing to be robbed of wit and reason he fought to retain control of mind and body, but then the thing began to stand. It did not stand as a man would have stood, but as a thing.

            Contorting cruelly, unnaturally, the thing began to rise; its body twisting and deforming it started to right itself. The horror that gripped Ragnarr as the thing rose before him made him forget about his pain for a moment and he stood aghast, afraid, terrified for he did not know how to fight this. Forgetting about even his own sword that still stuck through the thing’s dead body he backed toward his fire, toward the protection that the flame seemed to provide.

            Standing erect the dead man followed him, shadowing his steps, pacing him as a predator toying with its prey, stopping where the firelight spilled across its features, and watched the wounded man embrace the safety of a fire that even then was consuming its last. Soon it would begin to starve. The dead would be waiting.

            Shivering despite the warmth of the burning wood Ragnarr stood quiet as the vampire pulled the sword from its body and back slowly into the blackness of the shadows, disappearing into the firmament of the corporeal darkness. Somewhere in the night he heard the blade hit the snow, somewhere in the black world where the dead dwell.

            The boy was standing, staring at the elder man with eyes gray and hollow, staring at his blood that steamed into the frigid air, drawing his attention back to the pain, back to his weariness, back to his fatigue. He pressed his hand to his wounded chest and sat down on a stone, his head swimming and his knees suddenly weak. Stabbing the torch into the snow, extinguishing it, his anger boiled inside of him, anger at his helplessness, anger at his failure, anger at his aging body that failed him this night. He felt naked out in the open, vulnerable sitting in the light of the fire when he should be hiding, stupid sitting in this man made clearing like the arrogant fool he had been in his youth. He envied the man he had once been, the man who would be even now yelling his challenge into the night, and his anger grew even more.

            Snow began to fall. Soon, he knew, the windstorm would return. Stirring along the drifts like an ethereal snake a lone wisp caught his nervous attention, then another, harbingers of the winds. Already he could hear a breeze blowing through the tops of the trees, disturbing the great oaks whose branches rustled ever louder until finally the arctic air welled up against the land and flooded over it like great torrents of water. Trapped by the darkness that seemed to swirl and eddy just beyond the threshold of firelight Ragnarr’s tired body slumped close to the flames, the front of his weathered coat of woven fleece quickly staining with dark red blood. Despondent, exhausted, his body aching with fatigue, he was unaware that he was listing into sleep, unaware that his eyelids had grown too heavy, unaware that his body was again betraying him, until he felt something brush his cheek.

            He jumped, startled, breathless, reaching for a sword that he no longer had, searching the violent tempestuous night for he knew not what, finding only the boy settling back where he had been, blood now smeared across the heavy pelt Ragnarr had wrapped him in.

            The old man tried to calm himself, tried to ease the pain in his chest, tried to quell the throbbing in his temples, but the pounding of his heart could not be quieted. It pounded in his ears as if echoing from afar, sounding through the storm like a distant drum, hurt as if it meant to kill him.

            He sat back down, light-headed and weak, trying to warm himself against the ebbing fire. Burning bright red the coals cast their dim hue into the encroaching shadows, into the living night that constricted around them like a thing spawned in the primal world for a night such as this.

            Though his body rebelled at being awake Ragnarr cursed himself for having slept. Wrestling with the haze of fatigue he struggled to stay alert, fought to stay vigilant, strove to keep his eyes open against the waves of weariness that battered against him like the waves of the sea. Forcing himself to stay aware of all that surrounded him his gaze fell on the boy.

            Bathed in the red glow of the dying fire the child seemed so very small with the large fur cape pulled so tightly around him. He was about the same age, Ragnarr guessed, that his own son had been when he had been lost to him all those years ago, taken by a storm on a dark winter’s eve, slain by the cold on a night such as this. The somber glow of the fire played across features that for a moment seemed familiar.

             Ragnarr’s eyebrows furled together as he sat forward and pulled the bear skin open. He was struck by the boy’s pallor, even in the poor light he could see that his color had not returned. Grabbing the boy’s arm and feeling his cheek his concern grew, for the child was as cold as the night. He wondered aloud about his parents, about from where he had come, but the glow of the coals held fast to the child’s attention.  He stared into it, into its hypnotic depth, with eyes that had seen things that Ragnarr could only imagine. Shaking his head and pulling the cape closed around the boy he knew that there would be time for questions later. There was a more pressing matter at hand.

            Pulling his torch from the snow he wrapped a dry piece of cloth around the tip and caught the flame of the embers. The short wall provided little protection from the wind, but still Ragnarr was reluctant to leave it. Turning his back to the warmth he filled his lungs with freezing air and cried out into the night, with a booming voice he reminded Odin who he was, whose blood he carried in his veins lest he had forgotten him, and left the safety of the dwindling fire.  

            The stinging wind whipped through Ragnarr’s long hoary hair and threatened to kill the torch’s wavering flame, but the old man pressed on, squinting against the wind to find the wood he had dropped, the deadfall that he needed to save the fire and the poor boy who would surely die without it. With watering eyes he strained to see through the blowing snow, with trembling light he tried to search the shadows, with fallible strength he fought the storm, decrying naught but his own fate.

            The old man’s weathered body collapsed to the ground, his tired legs could carry him no farther. His aching muscles had been pushed past their limits and his shaking arms could not lift him from the freezing snow. His heart pounded loudly in his ears, violently, painfully as if threatening to rip itself apart, and he knew that death was upon him. He knew that death’s devouring maw would be opening for him, its cavernous bliss a welcomed end to his torment, an end to the cold, an end to his pain. Then he remembered the boy, alone and frightened as his son must have been, and the bringer of death that loomed over him seemed no longer like a Valkyrior of Valfodr but like the detestable servant of Hel, a servant unworthy to slay a man such as he.

            With forced strength begotten of will alone Ragnarr sat bolt upright. With the face of his father clearly in his mind he defied death, slamming the back of his fist into the very face of the dead he swore an oath to earn his place beside him in the Halls of Valhalla.

            The dead thing recoiled, pausing as if hurt, but it could not have hurt, could not have thought, could not have raged, and yet it did. It seethed with a hatred Ragnarr had never encountered, knew hate with an acumen he could never comprehend, and felt pain he that could never understand while alive. It slowly turned back to Ragnarr, its quarry, its prey, and its tormenter; it hated the life that pounded in his chest and coursed through his veins, yet hungered for it. A quiet hiss escaped its teeth.

            Without warning it lashed at Ragnarr. With the furry and visage of a ravenous timber wolf it attacked him, and something deep inside the old man welcomed it. He felt the vampire’s skull crack under the force of his fist, fracturing against the powerful blow and stopping it cold. Another punch landed square against the side of its jaw as he climbed to his feet, but the thing may never have noticed. It hit Ragnarr with the back of its hand and sent him sprawling in the snow.

            With strength wrought from fear Ragnarr tried to get to his feet, tried to defend himself, tried to stand in the face of death, but again he was struck, blindsided, knocked through the air as blood sprayed from his torn flesh. Hitting the ground hard he lay stunned, winded, unable to move but knowing that he had to. He felt something beneath him, beneath the snow and reached for it, hoping against hope that it was a weapon, but he only had time to take hold of it. As his hand closed around the metal shaft, so too did the vampire’s grotesque hand close around his throat. Fighting to breathe he was hauled to his feet, fighting to summon his strength he watched the long vulgar fangs opening before him, staring down the throat of death he bided his time.

            With all his gathered strength he stabbed the vampire with the shaft he had pulled from the snow, thrusting the tip of the bronze spear through the cadaverous flesh of the undead thing before him. The fiend staggered back as the wind whipped and swirled around them, clawing at the haft that Ragnarr had stuck below its ribs.

            Still holding the ancient spear Ragnarr kicked the monster in the chest and pulled the weapon from its rotting body. Stepping forward the Norseman lifted the spear over his head and stabbed the point down through the creature’s body and into the frozen earth. Still clawing at the shaft the horror tried to free itself, tried to pull itself up its length, but Ragnarr stamped down on its legs, then its chest, beating the thing to the ground with the maniacal frenzy of a berserk.

            Defying his exhaustion, ignoring his burning muscles, he pried a stone block from the ice. With the cold wind wrapping around him, stealing his heat and freezing his blood as it flowed from his wounds, he lifted the stone into the air and let it drop on the thing that clawed up at him from the ground, smashing its vile skull.

            The creature’s movement ceased. Its ghoulish body lay still on the ground as the old warrior dropped to his knees beside it. His illusory strength draining from his body the old man again collapsed into the icy snow.

            When again Ragnarr opened his eyes much time had passed and the boy was standing between him and the smoldering fire, silhouetted against its dull red glow. A wave of exhaustion washed over him and he laid his head back into the snow to rest for a moment longer, and more time passed.

            Clear skies greeted him when again he opened his eyes, and he saw that a hint of blue betrayed itself above the horizon. The boy stood closer to him, staring at him with dead gray eyes. He could see that color had never returned to his frostbitten skin and his black mouth hung open as if frozen in a silent scream. His sight growing dim and the boy fading from view he was powerless against the fatigue that swept over him like a vast sea he and listed back into sleep.

            He became aware of the boy hovering over him, staring down at him with black hollow eyes that contained a depth that he had thought impossible before that night. The depth hidden behind the child’s arcane eyes calmed him, quelling the pain in his chest. The presence he found within them seamed familiar, like a presence he had known long ago, a presence that he yearned to trust, and again he slept.

            With a gasp Ragnarr jerked awake, squinting against the bright sun. Finding his bear skin cape in a heap beside him Ragnarr climbed quickly to his feet and called for the boy, searching the ruins for the poor lost soul, but he was alone amongst the blocks of chiseled granite, and the storm had left only his own tracks to follow. The ruins struck him as somehow different in the light of the sun, as if the night before had been a different world than this.  Donning his heavy cape he turned to the body of the vampire, finding only the bronze spear stuck into the earth, the fresh white snow betraying nothing.

                With the warmth of his thick pelt secured around him and the spear in hand the old man wasted no time leaving the cursed ruins of the ancient city. An odd smile stole across his cracked lips as he continued on his journey south across the hinterlands, for again he had cheated death, death whose teeth had once again gnashed so closely at his heels.

Reviews

[LaurieAnn]

A nightmare night for sure. And a great story for those long cold winter nights.
What I refer to as a "Deadtime Story" a frightening one at that.

[RachelleB]

Hi so i finally got to read one of your stories and liked this very much...very descriptive; chilling and vivid phrasing...I felt pulled into this story...

Rachel(from CC)

[Cold Coffee Magazine]

I have goosbumps reading this. Very descriptive scenes both for the landscape but also the action you describe taking place within. Very nice read...I enjoyed it.

DAve

[Legion]

An interesting piece. Love the nordic flavor of it. Feels like you could write even more to this to continue his story. Good work.

[a Messenger]

Beautifully done. I love stories of the supernatural and historical fiction. You beautifully blended the two.
Welcome to the cafe and I look forward to more of your work.

[♥ Courtney &hear..]

Oh my gosh, that was amazing. You paint a picture so well, i feel as if im IN the story. Well done!!! Oh and welcome to writerscafe :)