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Part Two - Debts of All Kinds

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11. Desperation

“You cannot choose your family. My father taught me that fact. Not by word but by deed. Brolli and Gudmund now share barely more than silence. I am more a brother to Brolli, or so he says, than is Gudmund. Grettir takes that place on the other side. We four were once fast friends but now there is a vastness between us.

As if to look or speak to one another is to conjure every horrid memory of the endless war with the goblins. As if my smiling at Grettir is not a friendly gesture but a meek apology for the early death of his loving wife. As if that mirth means the same to Gudmund. And to Brolli. Because I sit in my tavern, with Hjorvarth and Sibbe, and lord my happiness over them.

But do they know that my memory is failing? Have they seen how sickly my wife has become? Have they witnessed the sullen hatred in my boy’s eyes?

Do they know how desperate I am to cross that vastness and have friends again? To stop drinking? To be a true husband and father? To save my wife from this cruel fate of the gods?

Yet my bold actions, my plays at change, remain solely within my imagination. Every word from my lips relates to my search for the Hall of Hrothgar.

I speak with Brolli as the days pass, look him clear in the eye, and see the overwhelming sadness there. And I wonder if I am witnessing reflection.

But we smirk and laugh and haggle over prices. ‘Bad snows. Bad men. The last expedition hasn’t returned. More coin needed.’

His words are all of business and not one of us speaks the plain fact that my wife is dying. That this next expedition needs to be the last. That I am a rich man, too rich, but I am now impoverished of time.”

Gudmund stood reminded of his own soul as he leaned against the damp wood of the parapet and stared down on a desolate and windswept plain. He had seen this all before, scores of times, but now the sight left him hollowed and broken.

He had conquered this place that others thought unassailable. Horvorr’s walls rose tall, unnaturally so, and could not be climbed. The logs used were so thick that no man would ever likely breach them. So Gudmund had simply asked the goblins to open the gates.

In good faith. Faith was cruel.

Gudmund had always understood that but now the notion rarely strayed from his thoughts. He had envisioned this day, summer ending and snows falling, with his sons at either side of him. His daughter, Sybille, newly engaged to the son of a man that her father hated.

All at his bidding.

Yet he stood alone. Horvorr’s Guard, his guard, had not returned with news of an upcoming marriage. They had limped back through the enormous gate, three of every four of them slain, bringing news of an ambush on the Snake Basin Path.

That attack led by the Great Chief Ragadin. A monstrous goblin, twice the height of any man, who had once fought in the old war. Ragadin who had fled and not returned for ten winters. Only to lead an attack that ended in his own death.

To lead a war that only lasted long enough to take Gudmund’s sons and then end too soon to allow him any semblance of revenge.

Fate was cruel.

Gudmund raised his gaze from the plain that encircled dreary Horvorr. Wintry mountains rose to the north, stretching from west to east like the back of a stone dragon, separating the Midderlands and Southwestern Tymir.

He had once placed all his hopes in the caverns and trails along those mountains, wanting more than anything to find gems or metals that would make right the years and blood spent to take this region. But he hadn’t found any gold or silver, despite the men he hired to clear the mountains of goblins, rogue trolls, and wild wolves.

There was coal, important enough, but that was hard work for hardy men. The easterners and northerners that came with dreams of mining wealth only complained about the cold until they either died of frostbite or fled back to warmer regions.

Gudmund had only managed to last this long by taxing the neighboring settlements for the services of Horvorr’s Guard. The once imposing force, filled with mercenaries and veterans of the old war alike, was now membered by grey-bearded old fools. Cowards, even. Cowards who had failed to protect the sons of their leader.

The Chief of Horvorr had looked in the wrong places for wealth. He’d let the fisherman in the western mountains keep their land, without retribution, and now they made more coin selling fish and whale bones than he could ever hope to see. Fenkirk made even more coin than that, working useless wood into pointless decorations.

While Horvorr languished, walls tall and imposing, standing beside what was once worthy of the name Great Lake. But Gudmund had made a mistake there as well. Too many fishermen came and then nearly all the fish were dragged up from the water. Now only a dozen old men rowed out and made a living from the fishing.

Horvorr was dying, had been dying for a long time, but there had still been a chance that the sons of Gudmund would do better.

Geirmund had wisdom. He was kind and noble. He was a better man than his father. Even Agnar was a better man than his father. And now only Sybille remained.

A daughter made brotherless by fate and fatherless by spite.

Gudmund knew he wronged her, by the day and by the hour, but he could not stomach talking to his daughter. He couldn’t witness her misery and grief. Because then he might have to feel that himself. Truly. Not stand as some detached, confused observer to his own ruin.

Gudmund loathed this place, this simple town of simple people and simple houses. He hated being able to survey his entire region, a region he barely even ruled, from walls that were never even assailed.

Southwestern Tymir was long and narrow, so he could look eastways and see the desolate plain surrounding Horvorr give way to The Blackwood.

He could make out the dirt road that wound between the thick canopy of autumn leaves, reaching Fenkirk, stretching further to the path above the Snake Basin, where no man had ever been. Past that to the wider, almost arable, places where farmers tried to rear crops that came out stilted. But then that was the way of this region.

Expectations rising above reality. Outcomes dealing humility.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

There was only one true way into Southwestern Tymir. Beyond the scattered farms, the Eastern Pass weaved into the mountains that rose steadily to the stone city of Timilir. That was where Sybille should have been, spending time with her young husband. That was where Gudmund should have been heading, attendant to a marriage where he meant to murder the father of the groom. And now he had lost his sons, his courage, and would never have his revenge on Jarl Thrand.

Gudmund turned westward, towards Wymount. He was surrounded on all sides by places and people happier than him.

Dark smoke rose from the towering forests that overlooked the Great Lake of Horvorr. A lot of smoke. There were villages among the trees though, and simple folk were prone to setting their homes on fire.

Gudmund watched the column curl up into the sky like a grey snake and wondered if he shouldn’t send someone to investigate, but then remembered that Grettir had already organized an expedition.

Horvorr’s Guard, what was left, would be marching forward once more in search of any other surviving Great Chiefs.

Gudmund wished the useless cowards luck.

His sons had died defending the region, ending the war with the goblins with finality, and now these old fools wanted to go out into the mountains to chase shadows, so that they might win back some honor or respect. Though there were days when Gudmund considered leading the expedition himself, in search of his own death.

Grettir would look after Sybille. That’d be for the best.

Gudmund had only started climbing to the top of these walls on the hope that he might summon the courage to jump. He hadn’t. Not yet, perhaps not ever. He’d considered leaping into the Great Lake as well, drowning in spirited water, but he didn’t like the idea of being trapped down there. And the truth was he was still a fighter. He’d seen grey flecks in the red of his hair. He’d gotten slow. Lazy. But he wanted nothing more than to have been there with his sons. He could have died in their place. But he had stayed here, at his home, and waited. He had waited for his expectations to be met and had been answered with reality.

Faith was cruel. Fate was cruel.

The sun had barely risen in the sky. Pink and gold stained the horizon. Drifting clouds smothered most the heat and light. Horvorr had yet to waken. Those folk still grieved for the loss of husbands, brothers, and sons. Horvorr appeared insignificant from above, barely more than a hundred huddled houses bolstered by scores of storage sheds and the dozens of fishing huts that lined the embankments.

Those houses, long and curved like upturned boats, had been here all along. Each stolen. Most etched with marks in the wood from the goblins that had once lived there.

Gudmund’s Hall had been here too. He hadn’t raised the large walls or paid for the ornate carvings along the great doors. He’d just brought wolf banners to hang them from the rafters, and then thanked Joyto the Trickster for the luck of there already being a throne there worked with lupine affectations.

Gudmund had no doubt that one day all those here would be dead and some new folk would arrive to take up residence, knowing and caring nothing at all about those who came before.

That was the way of the world. Take and forget. Destroy and dismiss.

He had tried his hand at building more striking structures, and he had to credit the craftsman who had built the distant two floor home that overlooked the embankments. He’d given that to Grettir and Kata, back when she was still walking the waking life.

Her widow still lived there, using only one or two of the rooms. Proof that all gifts turned to poison. Homes, wives, children.

How Gudmund loathed the so called generosity of the gods. Eleven Elders and not one of them kind. Yet no one questioned that fact.

All honor to Brikorhaan the Shield Brother but no questions as to what happened to the brother he was supposed to be shielding. Though he no doubt ended his days like every other fool that put his faith in the god. Dead. Killed in battle like both of Gudmund’s sons.

And then were that not enough they had to face the judgment of Muradoon, The Spirit Talker, revered for his gift of talking to corpses. Yet if that very same man walked the waking life he would be cut down as a charlatan or cursed as a shadowed fool.

Joyto saved them all from the World Worm. Ouro the Devourer. The World Eater. He had tricked the serpent into eating its own tail.

But maybe that was the mistake. Maybe the serpent was the only one with a right mind. Maybe he’d come to destroy everything because everything needed to be destroyed.

Gudmund shakily sighed. He sat down on the edge of the wall walk, legs dangling over a fatal drop to a row of broken homes. Sam’s Tavern lay opposite that, the only man who had chosen to live close to the Ritual House of Muradoon. Gudmund wondered if he’d even realised. He lamented the irony that only he knew of. Sam was a man who truly was—and long had been—living in the shadow of death.

That tavern had been made by the same men that built Grettir’s home. For an old bard who’d got lost in the snow.

So had Horvorr’s Armoury, rising to two storeys near the eastern gate, but the walls had been so thin that they’d piled mud around the lower floor. That left Brolli’s, as tall as the armoury, standing directly opposite Gudmund’s Hall.

There was even a road leading straight from one place to the other. Yet in the past ten winters Gudmund had never followed the path to visit his younger brother. And he had no mind to break that habit.

The most ominous building of all had always been here: the Ritual House of Muradoon was lived in by a single Godi, Lovrin, who Gudmund had begun to visit far too much, paying coin for soothing tinctures. But then they helped keep away any true pain or suffering, which was worth more than most other things.

The Ritual House had black walls and a dozen red roofs, despite there being only a single floor. Carved crows, paint still unfaded, perched in pairs atop each gable. The lack of folk in Horvorr had allowed the Godi to knock down the nearby structures and extend a fenced yard, which ended not far from the oxen pen.

Those hairy, mindless beasts were the last thing of worth belonging to Gudmund. But then the herd and the coin and the relics and the trinkets and the title and the honor and the reputation all stood as nothing next to the endless expanse that was his loss.

The numbing grief that inspired a sense of utter insignificance.

Gudmund pressed his calloused hands against the rough wood of the wall walk. He only needed to push. Or just lean too far forward.

He then noticed a bare chested man running along the dirt roads. Hard to miss for most. Harder than that for Gudmund.

Hjorvarth was the biggest man in Horvorr. Broader than Grettir even before he got old and lost an arm. He was the brute they either praised for slaying Ragadin on the Snake Basin Path or cursed for nearly beating another man to death.

He was also the foster son of Brolli. Or he used to be, at least.

Gudmund didn’t pay much attention to the life of his young brother, because he knew that too much scrutiny might lead him to exile his own blood. He did hate Brolli, but he would never betray him. Not at any cost or for any reward. Not even for the head of Jarl Thrand.

Hjorvarth would run, as he had the days past, around the settlement. Over and over. He would run for no reason that Gudmund could see. Guilt, maybe. A sense of failure. Or simply an old routine.

Gudmund couldn’t entirely blame him for the deaths of Agnar and Geirmund. He understood that Horvorr’s Guard had been outnumbered and that they were lucky to survive with one man let alone a dozen. But that didn’t stop the anger. He didn’t seethe any less.

Hjorvarth had possessed the strength and skill needed to save a dozen men and he had chosen the wrong damned dozen. He should have just saved the two. Leave those old bastards to their belated deaths.

That was the best they could have ever hoped for.

Grey men making red snow.

Gudmund had said as much to his brother, speaking with Brolli for the first time in a long time on the bank of Horvorr’s Great Lake. He repeated the answer given under his breath, “’Or maybe you should’ve been with your boys when they were screaming for help, brother.’”

Despite the cold and the tincture numbing his heart, Gudmund felt like weeping. But then his father hadn’t raised any women. And he didn’t want to begin what might never end.

The Chief of Horvorr’s drive to die had abandoned him. So he simply rose to his feet and wandered home, no longer noticing the dark smoke to the west or the fledgling columns newly rising from the east.

He dismissed the distant war horns with the ringing of his own ears.