Somd Irdrinjall could not shake the goat from his mind.

There had been more ill omens afoot as the year came to its close than he'd known in the last twenty, but there had not been a battle so bloody in the plains of Eidenfyar for two decades either.

And yet, the war had concluded for now. The Mosfellsk and the Esr had extinguished all their forces; sent them out into messy, needless slaughter that would stain the soil black for a lifetime. Jarl Svadifari had done himself no favours either by ordering his men to pick off anyone he thought was mocking him behind his back.

The Somd sighed into his chest. The forest and its people were in disarray. His head hung low as he perched in the crook of tangled tree roots, far away from anyone who might disturb his time of reflection. He may as well have not sought solitude so desperately – the bleating of the mother goat frayed his thoughts, and the horror she'd birthed altogether unsettled him.

It was not by chance that he'd chosen to take a walk that evening, following the line of the Fisher in the stars as it slipped out of view at the horizon. It was no accident he'd happened upon a small settlement of Mosfellsk seeking sanctuary in the forest, far from the war. That night, the clash of nations did not seem to trouble them though, and instead it was one of their goats, a heavily pregnant dam that would not live to nurse her offspring.

The Somd did not hesitate when he read the grief set on the settlers' faces. It must've been why the Fisher led him here, for the man sat in the stars with his line poised was a sign of discovering something of good fortune. Though they spoke no common tongue, the Somd asked one of the settlers to show him where they were keeping the goat.

The dam bulged sickeningly at the belly; so swollen it was a wonder how she had not yet split. The Somd did not speak her language either, but under his touch she was calm. Her short fur was rough like the bristles of a fir tree. Her stunted horns were cold and solid as he grabbed them, like its bark. No matter the shape or tongue of any being he met, they were all the temporary, walking embodiment of the forest. He ordered the gathering group of settlers away from the animal, and once out of sight, he slit her throat for her own good.

Her eyes glazed and the last of her bleating hung in the air. For the Somd there was no pleasure in taking her life, only satisfaction, as the trees would not forgive him for watching her suffer through the inevitable. When he was sure she was dead, he took his knife to her bloated belly and plucked out the kid with his hands...

Only there were two. Conjoined. Mangled. Like no creature he'd ever seen before.

Disgusted at what he'd brought into the world he put the blade through its throat too. It was the only thing to do, though with no way to communicate to the Mosfellsk settlers, to their understanding they had willingly let a stranger slaughter part of their tribe of goats and leave. The betrayal in their eyes would be something the Somd would deeply regret until the end of his days, but it was the sight of the writhing, repulsive creature that he'd lose sleep over. The Fisher had not led him to good fortune, only to another omen.

He did not know what it meant.

He closed his eyes and sank back into the knotted tree roots. He had no other to consult with and share his worry. Had he done the right by the forest in slaughtering the thing? Who could say? He had his Somdsklar, the men who had pledged their lives with blood to keep his, but they were arrogant creatures of the flesh, and not like he. To add to his concern, the voices in the forest were quieter than they should be.

He'd almost forgotten.

He reached for his belt and unhooked a small drinking horn. His men longed for ale, but it was not what the Somd carried about at his hip. He unfastened it and brought it to his lips, tasting the familiar tang of his Somdsklar's collective blood. It was an unpleasant taste, but one he'd grown used to since his youth, and once the liquid hit his empty stomach the voices began their crescendo: creaking, groaning, rasping tones that lingered on the periphery of hearing.

Any other man might describe this sensation as the tingle up his spine when something was unexplainably amiss. Others of the flesh might boast they have instinct, but it was yet another vain interpretation of a phenomenon they did not understand.

For the Somd it was his purpose to hear this language clearly, as they were the connection to the world outside of his forest: to the sky and soil he could not reach, to the water and wind he could not feel. That night nature lamented still of man's Ninth Battle, of its wounds and the dead. It resented man's fire and no longer felt at harmony with them, but these feelings were not new either. The tones were sad and full of disappointment, though nestled somewhere between the growls and deep, earthly tremors was a heartbeat.

Though barely there at first, the more the Somd listened, the harder he sensed it. It was the slightest disturbance, like the steady pulse of a moth's wings through rumbling thunder. It came from somewhere behind him; somewhere beyond the treeline where the land had staged battle.

He eased himself up from the roots' embrace and turned in the direction of the lone heartbeat. His nostrils met the scent of blood; of horse, of smoke, of burning flesh ...

He let loose a scream as his right hand burst aflame.

***

It was some time before the fallen warrior woke again. His name was Ashyem and he bore no patronym.

He was an ally of the Warrior Queen Nsymdra from the far south, though of one thing his allies had been wrong: Ashyem was no tar-brained criminal from vulcan soil.

He lay in the dark for hours, floating in and out of conscious thought. What universe he existed in in between was the half-mad beliefs of a dying man.

It was pleasantly horrific cycle: abstract moments of bliss making up children's games with his brother, Crown Prince Jassan, or hiking to the mountain peaks with his father before he lost his leg ... and the next, the burn of fever, the night's cold bite, the head-swimming, stomach churning excruciation of being trapped inside this bruised and broken husk.

Now and again he would rouse only to wish it would be the last time, but his body had not given up yet. He couldn't understand it; he had no will to survive now that he'd finally tasted defeat. Stronger men than he had fallen in battle from fewer wounds, and towards the end, when Ashyem had fallen too, he had welcomed the silence of eternity. He passed out from blood loss without so much as entertaining any fool's hopes of lasting the night, and yet, something cruel bound him to his bones.

With little time to spare before daybreak, Somd Irdrinjall emerged from the treeline. Over the horizon the sky bled orange and the colours stung his eyes, yet the heartbeat was louder now and he couldn't resist its pull. He reached behind his head and pulled up the heavy fur hood of his cloak, obscuring most of his face and vision.

In a field of dismembered bodies, ash and smoking embers, finding the source of the heartbeat using sight would be no help. The sound would have to guide him, but he didn't have much time.

He avoided stepping over the remains of the fallen. It was disrespectful to enter their space, and so instead he weaved between their corpses, careful not to trail his cloak through blood. He moved quick as a spectre in parallel to the rising sun; its rays glinted off the warriors' shiny armour, bathing the whole field in embers that shifted with each step. There came the crunch of frost from under his boots now that the forest was no longer here to ward off the mountains' chill.

Through his fever and the numbness of his extremities, Ashyem barely felt the cold anymore. He hardly even felt the Somd's fingers press against his neck as he searched for a pulse, only dull pressure against the burning wound at his throat. The first indication of another presence besides his own was the dark shadow as the Somd knelt, blotting out the intensifying sunlight.

The stranger brushed the frost off Ashyem's face and he opened his eyes a fraction. Was it another delusion?

"You're not from around here, friend," the Somd muttered as he caught a glimpse of the warrior's unusual yellow eyes. "No man of vulcan soil and certainly no man of the forest."

Ashyem didn't understand the man's northern tongue, but the mildness in his tenor offered him comfort unlike the angry squabble between the Mosfellsk who'd dragged him into the pyre.

"I'm still alive," Ashyem said in his own language. "Alive, I think, but I'm hurt. I can't feel –"

"Save your strength," the Somd responded. The meaning in the warrior's words were lost on him too, though he hoped it hadn't been a threat. He knew not the name of his language either. To his ears it was disjunct and the man hit hard on the consonants.

"They call me Somd Irdrinjall," the Somd continued. "I'll help you, but only because an omen led me your way. Now, can you stand?" He gestured to Ashyem's legs. "Walk? Do you understand walk?"

Ashyem didn't know the word the Somd wanted him to, but he knew another. "Uuin es she, es Somd ke-ahl? Somd?"

"Yes, Somd Irdrinjall. Do you think you can get up?"

"Or neh sve ruun. Ne var, lea see ohn, es Somd ke-ahl uuin es she."

"Walk," the Somd sighed. For what reason had he heard the distant thrum of this man's heartbeat if he could do nothing to communicate with him? His wounds were already too severe, too inflamed and infected, and most likely the man was crippled.

Perhaps he was wrong and nature had drawn him here not to rescue him, but to free the man of his suffering. He deliberated it for a while, though normally would not have hesitated so long on taking his life if it hadn't already been for that mother goat.

When he killed her he should have left and saved himself from what followed – he knew that now.

He saw what remained of Ashyem's burnt right hand, thought better of touching it and grabbed his left instead. He placed the warrior's hand on his own shoulder and said, "I'm sorry." And again, firmer: "I'm sorry."

It took great strength to look away from the desperation in the warrior's eyes. It was the second time that night that nature had sent him to those in need and been faced with the task of execution instead. The first time had been a lesson to him, not an omen, and if the horror he'd faced after taking the goat's life had taught him anything, it was that not everything should be saved.

He peeked from beneath the hood of his cloak over at the glowing horizon and the skin on his chin began to crack.

He couldn't help the man with daylight so near, not without expending himself in the process.

"Don't go," Ashyem pleaded. He gripped the stranger's shoulder with his good hand in a final attempt to reach through to him. It was a cruel twist in his fate to now beg aid from a native after slaughtering as many as he could.

"Help. Please." He shook the cloaked man's shoulder. "I heard them speak of Somd. I heard a man say it!"

The urgency in Ashyem's grasp was enough to unhinge the Somd. The man beneath him was still strong, even half-dead and half-burned, and it was even more unnerving that he kept repeating his own name in whatever bastard tongue spilled from his bloodied lips.

The sun finally broke the horizon and painted the land with gold. The remaining frost on Ashyem's face hastily retreated as the light hit. Somd Irdrinjall's chest tightened in panic and in a hurry he tried to rip Ashyem's grip from his shoulder.

"Let go," he growled. "Let go!"

Ashyem held on, pleading still. He had to make the man understand him; make him understand that he'd survived for a reason and that he knew of Somd. He'd tell him anything he wanted to know about whatever the word meant, even if he had to be creative in ways to communicate it. He'd lie if he had to, even make something up, and then leave the stranger when he was well enough to walk – if he could ever walk. He'd find a way.

"Somd ke-ahl uuin es she," he murmured repeatedly into the fur of the stranger's cloak. "Uuin, lea see ohn... Somd ke-ahl..."

The Somd's palms began to sweat and he grew more frightened than he would've been had the two-headed foetus not spooked him already. He struggled against the warrior's relentless, desperate hold. He tried to block out his raspy words, the sound of his name emitting from the severed throat of a corpse; tried to forget the phantom pain when the warrior's hand had burnt, and the sight of the eerie black slits in the man's eyes, watching him.

It was all a nightmare.

It was all unnatural.

In a flash of black and silver the Somd drove his knife into the man's chest. Ashyem's eyes widened not from the bolt of agony that might've seared through his flesh, but from the suddenness of what had occured. His breastplate had been no match for the Somd's steel and it cut through his armour as if made of butter.

For the first time Ashyem caught a glimpse of the Somd's terrified face, and in his final conscious thoughts, was surprised by how young the man was – no older than thirty summers.

His dark beard was thick and his face was filthy, and a wide scar cleaved his left eyebrow in two, just like his own.

The knife took the breath from his lungs. He felt for the blade's shaft protruding from his chest and his fingers came away dry. "What... What have you done?" he spluttered. "Wh- ... Why?"

"Because I had to," the Somd replied in the same tongue. It was only now that he understood the dying man's words as if they were his own. "I have no choice, and you ... well, some things should not be saved."

The Somd placed Ashyem's hands over his breastplate and combed his soiled hair off his face. If there was one last thing he could do for the man it was to let him die with some dignity after his hours of torment.

As soon as he removed the knife from Ashyem's lung it would fill with blood and his heart would seep until it stopped. Until then Ashyem would stay alive on adrenaline, if only barely.

Somd Irdrinjall bent over the dying man and, with genuine sadness, muttered, "Let go," in his ear. He yanked his blade from Ashyem's flesh, but did not linger long enough to watch the man sputter and die, not now that day had broken.

When the Somd finally reached the darkest depths of the forest, he was weak. Alone, he threw back his head, exhaled and slumped to the ground before a gentle brook, letting his weary knees sink into the mud.

He bent closer and brought a little water to his new face. First to his scarred brow, letting the coolness of it trickle down his broken nose, and then soothed the rest of his burning skin.

He let his hands drop again into his lap, though recoiled when they came away trembling and covered in dirt and blood that was not his own.

His muscles were drained, as if he'd been on the run for days, and there was a growing ache in his lung. He pulled his cloak around him more tightly and wept, inches from the brook's gently tumbling surface.

The sooner the fallen warrior died, the shorter the Somd would suffer his death alongside him. It would soon subside if he waited it out – it did every year – but he was not a young being anymore and one winter, exactly like this one, could well be his last.

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