SNAFU: Hunters

Ulfvir, the leader of the enemy, the one who’d said he wanted to talk, wore the shaggy yellow-brown pelt of a dire-hound for a cape. Its forepaws were knotted at his neck and its head, still with skull and jawbone and muzzle of snarling teeth, jounced on his shoulder as if snapping to bite. He, like Thrunn, carried an ax. Unlike Thrunn, he did not throw it, but brought it down in a furious slash that cleaved Atli’s shield into kindling – and Atli’s arm at the elbow.

Atli screamed even as he thrust his sword at the dog-pelted man’s face, but missed, and stumbled to a knee with his stump gouting crimson and the fingers on the severed portion twitching and clenching convulsively in the grass. Ulfvir again lifted his ax, meaning to take Atli’s head, but Egil bashed his shield’s boss into the man’s chest, making him stagger.

A younger man, lean and lithe and quick, darted around his companions, perhaps thinking to get past Valhild and Anbjorn, and strike from behind. But Valhild, for all her size, was almost as quick as him. She side-kicked, shattering his kneecap, tripping him. He went sprawling near Hreyth, who gripped her seax two-handed and seated it hilt-deep in the small of his back, the blade’s edge grating against his spine.

“You were right,” Valhild said with a grin. “It does get the job done.”

“We haven’t time for this,” Hreyth told her. “We’ll disturb the stanvaettir, and end up stones ourselves!”

“You’re the rune-witch!” Whirling, Valhild swung in another great slicing arc, shearing mail and leather like thin cloth, opening a foe’s torso from shoulder to hip so that his entrails bulged obscenely from the gore-purple cut. “Think of something!”

The chaos and clangor filled the world. Sounds rang, echoing strangely in the gathering mist. War-cries and death-cries trembled the air. Osig fell with his thigh slashed to the bone, the blood a torrent. Anbjorn dodged a sword-thrust then went reeling from a helm-cracking blow to the head.

Think of something. She was the rune-witch; she must think of something.

Inglar had somehow gotten to his feet, despite his right arm still arrow-pinned to his body. He’d shed his shield and picked up a spear in his left hand, and now ran at their enemies, shrieking like a berserk out of legend. He ran at Ulfvir, the dog-pelted leader, who’d retreated already from Egil’s relentless defense of the stricken Atli; Ulfvir scrambled back further, his courage deserting him in the face of Inglar’s ferocity.

Another of Gunnleif’s men moved to meet Inglar’s charge. The spear-point rammed through yellow-and-black painted wood, splintering both shield and shaft with loud cracks, fouling them entangled and useless. Still like a berserk, Inglar ignored the man’s desperate sword-strokes. With another enraged shriek, he flung himself full on his foe. As they crashed together to the ground, Inglar tore free his arrow-pinned arm from his chest – the dark jet of heart’s-blood leaped in a fountain – and buried the arrowhead in the other man’s throat.

The mist roiled, the mist churned.

Hreyth ducked the wild swing of a black-bearded man’s blade. She heard Egil shouting, and Valhild’s war-cry as the big woman’s great sword claimed another quick kill. Hreyth heard screams and insults, and Ulfvir demanding their deaths. She saw bodies writhing in pain amid motionless corpses.

She saw the mist, a thick fog now, not rolling in from the sea or river but issuing like cold smoke creeping and seething across the earth. Wisps flowed down from fissures in the rugged rock-ridges, and a billowing undulation from the broken boulder’s wide rough-edged cleft.

Stanvaettir, she had thought, but she had been wrong.

A black-bearded man swung again, hilt-first for her temple as if meaning to stun her senseless. Hreyth caught the blow with her left forearm – she felt the snap reverberate all the way to her toes – and Rook-Talon’s sharp, sturdy blade stabbed up through the man’s beard and chin-underside, scraping teeth, cleaving tongue, to impale his brain through the roof of his mouth.

He collapsed in a violent, blood-vomiting gurgle. Hreyth wrenched Rook-Talon loose, the seax dripping. She tried to raise her left hand to swipe the scarlet mess from her face but it would not obey her. She blinked, shaking her head frantically, clearing her eyes.

With one, that of blue, she saw only what anyone would – the fog, wafting thick to surround them.

With the other, that of gold, she saw more.

Things moved in the mist, shapes and forms, lines and symbols, dancing like wyrm-work embroidery, a glow of strange colors pulsating the way embers waxed and waned through a coating of ash.

Not stanvaettir, no.

Something else. Something bigger, something more.

And it was coming, coming for them. Caring nothing for which lord, king, or earl they might serve.

The others, friend and foe alike, did not notice. Their sole concern was the battle, fiercely fought and costly on both sides.