58. Aftermath

“It seems grossly unfair for Gudmund to have fought so hard for this region only to be left with the title of Chief, and ownership of a small town. Jarl Thrand has assumed stewardship of Southwestern Tymir, in exchange for dismissing the unwieldy debts that Gudmund had owed for the men, weapons, and supplies provided by Timilir.

Gahr’rul’s clan of Great Chiefs was not so much defeated as it was scattered. The Trapper arrived in Horvorr the other day asking for more help to track down Braguk Moonbear. It is almost as if nothing has changed, and yet I feel the loss all around me. I hope that Sibbe and Hjorvarth will be here soon. Once I find the Hall of Hrothgar, I can leave this place and it will become yet another piece of my troubled history.

I must admit, there is a part of me that doesn’t want to leave. Did I not swear service to Gudmund? Should I not help him take revenge against his enemies? And what of Brolli, do I leave him out here to die? Of all of us, only Grettir seems to have gotten the ending he deserves.

Never have I seen a man and woman so happy or suited to one another. They are soon to have a child. I pray to the Midwife that is the first of many to come.”

A thousand goblins were burned in great piles, or left to rot on the plains, bringing in flocks of carrion, enticing wandering trolls with a fetid stench that carried for miles.

Four hundred men, women, and children had been laid out on great pyres constructed from the wood of war works that offered little avail to the folk who burned.

Dalpho lay dead and decaying outside the walls of Horvorr. Birds pecked at his back. Maggots festered in his skin. The gathered folk had no fuel to burn him, and not the will to cut him up and carry him off. There were those that believed he was not a goblin at all, but some odd monster that had hated goblins and so sought to destroy them.

Gunnar recognised the Great Chief of the East and considered it an awful irony that the elephantine goblin had waited so long for revenge only to die a worse death than he ever could have found at The Blackwood. He lamented it as a great shame as well, both that he had died and that Braguk Moonbear had fled with his life.

He worried for the day when the shaman would return, but part of him almost believed the tale that Sam the Spearslayer had struck the goblin in the head, which had wounded the prodigious goblin badly enough that he died after his flight.

Sam himself had not stayed for the mass funerals.

He had stood with Hjorvarth as they burned Isleif, but had not been able to stand the son’s silence. He had considered staying, and even managed to get the deed for his tavern back from Gudmund without any complain at all, which he thought a peculiar oddity.

In the end though, Sam couldn’t suffer his old home, so led a group of over a hundred folk towards Timilir in the hopes that they would cross the Eastern Pass before full winter. He might have been misled about the urgent need to save his son, but the truth was that he did want to find Dan, and Mardis, as well.

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Hjorvarth had been called to audience and honors by Gudmund, by Roaldr, by the men of Redstone who offered to make him an honorary member of their village and install him as their Representative. He had not answered the summons and instead sat at the newly-filled embankments of Horvorr’s Great Lake.

He waited for the last raft to sink and for there to be no trace left of the war, beyond scratch marks on the walls and doors of vacant homes. Engli had visited him often, as had Sybille, but never had they gone together. Hjorvarth spoke no words to either of them, and only nodded to acknowledge the visits.

Engli had answered his own summons, but found himself overshadowed by the rumors of the huge and brooding hero, and of the barkeeper who had survived and slew countless goblins despite risk to his own life.

As the goblins had, folk had begun to attribute Sam with the acts of Hakon, who was a name soon forgotten and rarely spoken, beyond when it came from Sam’s own mouth to explain that those deeds, and the defense of Fenkirk, were all the work and efforts of the scarred man, or the Trapper, or anyone else.

Engli forwent his floral-wrought armour, which meant few folk recognised him as the man who helped to save Fenkirk; Ingrid was too wounded to do much but grieve and return to her people; and Gunnar managed to make any honest commendation of Engli sound like biting sarcasm. So Sam, Ragi, the Trapper, and even his brother Abbi, took most of the honour for rallying the Militia of Fenkirk to fight for Horvorr.

Of the Salt Sage’s quest, none thought to question how one man had ended up at Fenkirk and how the other had come down from the mountains, or to even attribute the Sage’s words with the outcome of the battle, most knowing that if Tomlok were truly looking down on them then he would have done more than spare three score people.

The Ritual House had become forever busy with the fallen, or those grieving their dead, which caused trouble for the hunch-backed Godi, who was never mentioned or questioned about his stalwart defense of those he sheltered.

The stories told of Sybille were muddled, whether she had rode alone to Wymount to ask for their help, whether Fromund of Wymount had died before she ever arrived, or whether he had fallen from the sea cliffs, or been strangled in his sleep.

It was bad luck to speak of a man who died such an auspicious death; none touched him or even witnessed his funeral beyond his own son, because it was feared that his body and his very spirit had been corrupted.

With the news of Gorm’s death, and of Bragi’s, worse still of Grettir’s, it became clear that good men were dying wherever the daughter of Gudmund went. But in the end the Chief of Horvorr ordered the tale told so that Grettir had never left Horvorr. Rather that five men had been sent to kill Gudmund in the night and burn his hall to the ground; Grettir had fought heroically and held them all off, but suffered grievous wounds, so both Gudmund and Eirik had, had to carry him to the Ritual House where he soon died.

Balluk the Burnt, had he heard the tale, would have been sorely upset, but he was busy telling any goblin he could find that he had slain the One Swing, which not was not a story that spread because he would almost always kill and eat those who stopped to listen, who were few indeed with his wounds festering and his temper worsening.

A dozen men from Redstone and Kollkleif had each volunteered to stay on Horvorr’s Guard. Gudmund had decided to disband the force though, keeping only Arfast and Ralf in his household.

Most those from Wymount, Salvik, and Longhook made the return journey to the mountainous fishing villages, leaving only a small group of the fisherfolk, led by Roaldr and Aerindis, to attend a feast that Chief Gudmund had planned for Landing Day.