kyrtill - A man's overtunic

Draugr - The equivalent of a Norse ghost, or zombie, or vampire, etc

Drakkar - viking ship

Five years earlier...

She often thought about the wolf. 

Wondered sometimes if it had lived despite its deep wounds. It had been right here that she'd found it. The day her mother had died. Its breathing had been stertorous as it lay on its side at the edge of the very precipice she now occupied.

At first she'd been too frightened to approach it. Perhaps if her misery had not so consumed her — had not left her so hollow, even of prudence — she'd not have done so at all; but she had done. She had paused only a brief moment before maneuvering over the jagged rocks to the creature's side. Mayhap she'd even welcomed death that day.

The wolf had been far larger than any wolf ought to have been. Its coat had been almost as black as the massif to the north, save for the grizzled tips around its head and back. Nevertheless, she had continued forward. Its eyes, she recalled, had been piercing, a glacial sort of blue, and it had fixed them to her all the while she'd moved closer.

The snake bite, for that, she'd soon discovered, was what had laid it low, had left two suppurating puncture marks in its matted fur. By and by, emboldened by the creatures stillness, for it had uttered no warning growl, Aila had set to work, eager to distract her mind and heart from their sorrow.

With celerity, she'd collected clay and herbs, mostly lavender, and had made a paste to smear over the bite mark. Still, even when she'd touched the animal, it had remained inert, seeming to sense her purpose, watching keenly as she administered the ointment.

When she'd returned the next morning it had gone. Whatever had become of it, she liked to imagine that the beast had survived. However, it had more than likely perished and fallen over the bluff into the sea.

And now, today, Death had struck again.

The sun sat low on the horizon, but, Aila knew, it would descend no further; not for many days hereafter. Whether Sol did that in deference to the grief that lay like a thick miasma over the valley, smothering the people with its gloomy wreaths, or as a consequence of the season, was of little import. The caprice of nature, and the gods that presided over all, were nevermore clarion than today. 

Their chieftain was dead.

His drakkar was now only an immolated speck over the slate waters of the Istyrr, the flames towering over the waves, the red sail long since devoured. And with him had gone all his earthly possessions, his trinkets, his horse, his weapons, and whatever other impedimenta he might require on his journey to Valhalla. Even his slave girl had willingly followed him thence, their bodies no more than scorched ash and black fumes.

Aila had taken herself to the cliffs that overlooked the settlement below and the ocean that stretched beneath the mottled, grey sky. The eye of Sol watched from the mountains behind her, the stellated rays winking across a sky slashed with indigo, red, and yellow.

She pulled her long braid over her shoulder and into her lap to study the gilt threads, the glass beads anchored amongst them, her eyes wearied by the smoke on the horizon. And what must Harald, Ragnar, and Gudrun be feeling? No doubt what she herself had felt when her mother had passed into the otherworld.

Sverre had been a fine chieftain, and his death inexplicably sudden, but it would now be Harald's turn to lead his people. No small feat, even for a man that was already the giant his sire had been, and this great duty was now settled on him despite his youth. Aila, who was younger by six summers, had not failed to notice the boy had long since become a man.

She, with her burgeoning, young feelings and tender regard, had ever cast her eyes to the elder of Sverre's two sons. And, of late, he had noticed her as well.

The sound of feet scuffling the lichen from the rock at her back had her twisting her head around to see Eydís mounting the great slabs of granite.

"Why did you not stay a little longer?" she asked, her breathing labored.

"Because the view is far better up here?" And, though they would celebrate his life tonight, the atmosphere at the waterfront had been too reminiscent of her mother's death. She considered her friend with a patient smile that held only a subtle twist of irony. "Did you venture all this way to ask me that?"

"Your grandmother was looking for you." Eydís smoothed her skirts behind her knees as she sat down beside her.

But it was not in Eydís' habit to contemplate nature overmuch. The girl soon evinced the restless spirit she was known for, sighing her boredom, the brilliancy of the vista ostensibly not inducement enough to stay a while longer. With a playful tug at Aila's hem she stood to leave, but only after Aila promised to return before her absence was noticed in the mead hall.

Death was a sad business, but the gravity, in the dale below, would be only fleeting, for every man dreamed of Valhalla and certainly every chieftain could expect to sit with Odin in his hall after his spirit passed from this realm. At the very least, he'd be permitted into Freya's Folkvang, the field of warriors.

Ay, there would be more laughter than tears this eventide, if any tears were spent at all, as the people lionized their celebrated leader. There was no doubt that the heat of Sverre's fire would cauterize their heartache so much so that there would be only mirth and feasting in the hall tonight. 

The sudden, soft tocsin of loose rocks scattered by walking feet therewith swiftly drew her notice with a persevering smile. Thinking it to be the work of Eydís, come to summon her home again, she turned and was surprised, and wholly unsettled, to see that no one was there. It was all the more bizarre for there was no wind to displace them. With another disconcerted look around, and failing to see aught that might explain the phenomenon, Aila bent her eyes back towards the sea.

But eventually she did leave her perch on the cliff and made her way down the little-used path that would take her to the mead hall to make merry with her clan.

As she passed a copse of apple trees she betook herself towards the tallest one, perhaps as tall as her father's hall itself, and raised her eyes to the vertex. Most of the apples had dropped from the lower branches to rot on the ground, but there was one particular fruit of considerable size, a vivid shade of carmine, that almost beckoned her forward to scale its height.

Without a second thought, she planted her boot on one of the lower boughs and hoisted herself into the tree, clambering up to that topmost tier with every intention of plucking her boon from its fetter. This she did readily enough and rested herself on a stable limb as she bit into the succulent fare, the sapid juice dribbling onto her chin all the tastier for the effort she'd expended to take it.

When a movement at the base of the trunk caught her eye, she dipped her head to watch as a large man passed beneath her tree. She was instantly beset with dread, her soft intake of breath almost inaudible, and fortunately so, for she did not recognize him at all and would not have drawn his attention for all the world. He was anomalous; and immense; and looked like no man she'd ever seen before.

His hair had been so unearthly black that she had, very briefly, mistaken it for the hood of the melanistic, shaggy pelt that dighted most of his mantle. The stranger's locks were long and as black as nightshade berries, and his face, what little she'd seen, was as pale as snow. The contrast struck her as singular — like a rook with its dark plumage and naked, white face.

And then he was gone. She waited a good while in that tree, as inert as the leaves that concealed her, undisturbed by any breeze, and then quietly began lowering herself along the bole. All the while she darted her eyes through the foliage, half frightened and half curious as to what his presence meant; and who he might be.

She was so busy looking for him that she misjudged a bough, her foot slipping as the feeble branch broke beneath her slight weight. Before her cries had even left her mouth, as she plummeted forthwith, she was cradled suddenly in a pair of sturdy arms, her terrified gaze affixed to the stranger's piercing, blue eyes.

"Are you an elf or a tree guardian?" said the man, his lips slightly curved in amusement, but his eyes by far too formidable-looking to affect the same expression.

"I-I am n-neither, lord." He was doubtless a highborn thane of some kind, she thought, for his raiments were of the finest quality, his hair was combed into a smooth mass, and his skin was unsoiled.

He set her down and inclined his head to the side as he studied her. By Thor, but he was a towering man, both broad and tall of frame. Although she must have seemed gauche to him doing so, she allowed her widened eyes to travel from his sturdy, tapered boots all the way back up to those peculiar, glacial blue eyes.

His long kyrtill, like his fleecy mantle, was made of black wool and trimmed with gold thread at the keyhole neckline. This overtunic terminated mid-thigh, a leather belt secured about his waist and the surplus length tied into an elaborate knot where his sword was fastened at his hip, the iron cross-guard visible above the scabbard and decorated with exquisite runes. His trousers too were dark and baggy, the excess gathered into the leg-wrappings that covered him below the knees to his boots.

She had seen twelve summers come and go, but she had never seen the likes of him; not even Harald engendered this much awe with his height, and he was the tallest man she knew. But no longer.

"Who are you?" she asked him, remarking his symmetrical beauty. His age, however, was of an equivocal nature that she could not fathom.

That he was anywhere between a score and two score in years was certain, but where exactly remained unclear, for, although his face was unlined and devoid of furrows, and his midnight hair without a strand of silver, his eyes were ... not those of a young man. They bespoke of time; of having seen what no man had. They were oddly beautiful in a timeless way.

"A watcher," said he, his head tilting fractionally to the side. "Like you."

"And what are you watching?"

His grin was edged with a tenebrous quality that inspired her heart to pause uncertainly. "Not what, but whom."

Had he come from a neighboring clan to witness the fiery valediction? The committal of their chieftain to the ocean was really the only purpose that could have brought him here, surely. "I see," she said, albeit skeptically, assuming he meant to watch the chieftain on his floating pyre.

"Do you?" His lips twitched. "Hmm, I think not, little one."

Little one? She was almost a woman full grown and it was primarily she that had undertaken to care for her siblings since their mother's death. It did not sit well with her that this stunning creature should think her merely a girl. He was certainly daunting to behold, but, nevertheless, she could not forbear tracing her eyes over his visage with feminal interest.

"You are too young still to understand." Though he spoke her language without accent or fault, she detected something ... foreign in his speech, something exotic, that was so obscure as to bemuse her exceedingly.

And his meaning was no less clear to her either. "I am not so young." She noted the dearth of lines on his face and subjoined, "Not much younger than you."

"You think me callow, do you?" He seemed thoroughly diverted by the idea, his preternatural eyes becoming somewhat more animated. "Would that that were true, but the verities of my nature will, for the nonce, remain unfathomed."

"I hardly understand you at all, lord?"

"You have time, Aila..." His lineaments thereat arranged themselves into an inscrutable repose. "Do try not to fall from anymore trees."

"I shall." She blinked curiously at him, yet distracted by his compelling demeanor. "That is ... I shall not fall again," she assured him.

"Tell me, do you always sit up there alone?" He pointed up to the escarpment.

"Sometimes." But should she be telling him that, she wondered.

"And that prospect up yonder," he said, looking towards the cliff, "stirs you particularly." It was not a question. "You are very staid for one so young." He briefly scanned the dramatic scene that was visible even from this lower elevation. "But I see why you like it."

"Whatever time I can spare I spend it up there." Her eyes became unfocused as she beheld the view again in her mind's eye.

There was such a hush of peace to be found at that high, craggy scarp that she sought the spot whenever she was in need of reviving her spirit. Her mother had often brought her here before Eirik had been born.

"Why?"

"Because it is up there that the wind carries the whispers of the gods. It is there I hear the heartbeat of the mountains and can see the other side of the world. The ocean smells the sweeter on my cliff and the air tastes of freedom." 

She didn't know why she was telling him all this, but when she blinked herself back to the present and looked up at him he was watching her so keenly that she blushed anew.

"Perhaps it is silly..."

"It is not," he averred. He then leaned down ever so slightly as though imparting a great secret. "And I shall tell you this for nothing: the gods hear your whispers too."

She gaped at him in wonder, and would have stood up there talking to him for hours, but his head cocked imperceptibly as though a sound had piqued his interest.

"They are looking for you," he said, nodding whither she'd been headed afore climbing the apple tree.

"Who?" She turned to glance over her shoulder, but when she brought her gaze back to him, he'd gone.

It was with no small amount of shock that she whirled around in a full circle, lest he had somehow outmaneuvered her, but he was well and truly gone as though he'd melted into the very earth.

"Aila!" Eydís came bounding up the hill again, her voice having reached Aila only seconds before her head materialized over the rise. "Tis getting late, will you come at last?" her friend repined. "Ívarr commands you home."

"Ay, I will come." She certainly would not stay longer here where she'd just been visited by a wight with such a corporeal form that he'd managed to save her from splitting her skull on the ground when she'd fallen.

However, she might not have fallen in the first place if not for noticing him. Aila threaded her arm into Eydís' as they perambulated down the sloping terrain, but when she halted abruptly, her hand flying to her mouth as she gasped, Eydís beheld her with a quizzical frown and asked after the matter.

"He knew my name!" How had he guessed it? She had never met him before today and yet he'd somehow known who she was.

"You have time, Aila..." he'd said.

"Who did?" Eydís was becoming impatient, no doubt anxious to get back to the folkstead — the sooner they arrived the sooner she could doubtless continue fawning over Ragnar.

"I ... have no idea." She relented to Eydís' urging and began walking again. "I met a man just now and he said he was a watcher?"

"Well, where did he go?" The younger girl turned a skeptical eye to glance over her shoulder. "I see no one."

"He vanished when you appeared. Vanished like a draugr."

"Peradventure you were merely day sleeping for a moment and 'twas all a dream?" Eydís gave a noncommittal lift of her little shoulders, evidently unconcerned by, and disbelieving of, Aila's tale.

"Perhaps you're right," she allowed. She resolved to speak of the watcher no more, but that did not mean she discounted his existence.

Her hands were still sticky from the apple juice and she could still feel the pressure of his fingers in her back from when he'd caught her. No, he'd been as real as any man; howbeit, perchance not quite just a man...

🌟Welcome to Curse of Blood! I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I love spending time with these perfectly fallible characters. Much love 💕 Jeanine💕🌟