The Price

Pushed from behind, Grimketill fell forward into the hard, ice crusted snow of the frozen north, throwing his shackled hands out in a vain attempt to catch himself. The ice ripped through his arms like serrated glass and they bled into the snow as he was pulled violently to his feet by the two men at his sides. Pushed again he stumbled, but caught himself before he fell. Then he saw where he was being taken.
        "What is this?" he bellowed into the night, staring at the iron ring staked to the top of a stump at the edge of the forest. His baritone voice echoed through the still air as he turned to face his captors. With his broad shoulders and barrel chest he was a formidable man, but so, too, were the men who stood before him.
        "I am Jarl Grimketill," he yelled, "I will not be treated like a common prisoner!"
One of the men stepped forward and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. "You are a murdering dog!" he yelled back in his face. "I would rather send your head back to Lochlann myself, but tonight we have a better use for you," he gestured to the stump.
        "As a sacrifice?" Grimketill was sure that he already knew the answer.
        "Fenrir has been hungry these past few months," the man answered with a smirk.
        Grimketill threw his head back and laughed. "You superstitious fools," he said simply. "The gods themselves leashed that b*****d mutt 'til the day Ragnarok is upon us!"
        Without warning the man buried his fist below Grimketill's ribs, sending an explosion of pain through his stomach that doubled him over. Easily overpowering him the two Saxon men dragged the Northman to the stump and strung his shackles through the iron ring, then tightened them back on his wrists.
        "Fools," Grimketill said weakly.
        "The Great Wolf grows strong with hunger," the man said to the bound Northman. "And when the moon is full he breaks his tether and hunts in our villages. Tonight, he will feast on your vile flesh." He grabbed the Jarl's long blond hair and wrenched his head back. "And the more of your kind who raid our shores, the more of your kind we will feed to him!" He pushed his head to the side and turned his back on the condemned man.
        "Fools," the Jarl repeated. "My king will hear of this, and the sons of Lochlann will descend on your shores." The men walked away, seemingly ignoring him. The full moon had already risen above the horizon and he could see that the village was deserted save for the two men who were leaving him stranded in the cold, the people had taken to their homes and barred their doors.
        "Your towns will be razed!" he yelled after them. "Your men will be killed and your woman will be taken!" He pulled hard against his chains, but the shackles dug into his wrists. "You will rue this day, Saxons!" He was answered by naught but the quiet of the night.
        With no furs to cover his body the cold air bit deep into him, and he knew that he would not last the night. The sky was clear and he was washed with the pale light of the moon, bright against the dark flesh of Night as she was drawn across the heavens. Shivering, he pleaded with the great giantess above the sky for help, to simply reach down and break the chains that held him, but she remained muted as ever, indifferent to the world of men. He cursed her as his unwelcome tears froze to his thick beard.
        "Hear me Odin!" he demanded of the sky, knowing that his voice would carry to the land of the Aesir. "If I am to die tonight let it be in glorious battle that I may sit with my father and forefathers in your hall!" The answer he received made him forget about his cold skin, for the growling from the trees gave him a different chill, a worse chill. Barely audible, the low guttural sound seemed to come from everywhere, and nowhere. Every sound, every snap of a twig, made the man start, made him breathless. The piercing eyes of a predator found him, stared at him from the snow covered thickets of the forest, ominously reflecting the light of Moon.
        Trying to free himself the Jarl's wrists bled against the iron shackles, but for naught for the teeth of the wolf stabbed into his chest, its jaws crushing his ribs, ripping his body open with a powerful jerk of its head.
        Hiding within the safety of their homes, secured behind locked doors, the villagers heard his agonizing screams and knew that the Great Wolf had found his sacrifice, and they knew that the pain of his tearing flesh would be the last thing that the Northman who had raided their shores would ever know.

        The bright mane of Skinfaxi lit the land and sky as it began to pull Day toward his zenith overhead, burning away the shadows and uncovering the remains of the Northman, buried deep within the darkness of night. Although his bones had been gnawed upon and his entrails had been pulled viciously from his body his skull smiled morbidly into the sky, as if death had been a thankful relief. The prints that led away from the body, however, were not the paw-prints of a wolf, but the footprints of a man. Where the prints ended the man stood, naked and cold, vomiting gore against the base of an oak tree that rose proud above the surrounding evergreens.
        Shivering and sick Willem leaned heavily against the oak, spiting the last of the blood from his mouth. Then his gut heaved again and he fell to the ground from the pain and effort, but there was nothing left to expel. Still, his gut tried all the same.
        The freezing snow bit harshly into him as he wiped his bloody mouth on his bare arm. Shivering from the cold and shaking from exertion Willem regained his feet, trying to gain his bearings, knowing that he would freeze to death if he did not find warmth. The path he followed was newly worn, winding between the ancient pines toward an old shack. The shack had been abandoned years before, but it was abandoned no longer.
        Eight months before, eight moons to the day, Willem had been the proud captain of a free company of mercenaries, bound to nothing but the highest bid. His word had been law and people had reacted to their name as if the names of gods had been invoked. Now he hurried along a little path in the woods, nude and frostbitten, toward the warmth of a shack that he hoped had not yet collapsed in on itself. He would rather that he had died from his wounds all those months ago. But his wounds had mended, as they had always mended while the people around him seemed to die so easily. But the wounds had brought with them a curse, an evil wrought from the very heart of the night and cast in the shadow of the moon. It was the price he paid for cheating death, a price he paid to the banished gods who walk this earth no more.