Ari had sent me to do reconnaissance on the village. However, even though I had done my best to report everything he still sent a second scouting party to verify the validity of my statements. It seemed that his trust in me wasn’t complete. And although that was fair, it made me remember that even though I had rowed with these men for more than a month they weren’t brothers. Especially since it seemed that Ari had to defend me each and every day against the worries of the Vikings.
Well, acceptance and trust weren’t things to be gained in a few weeks. Anyhow, why would I get attached to Vikings? Weren’t they raiders and pillagers? Men who committed the worst of sins. Well, who knows, they hadn’t done anything of the sort yet. However, I did fear that my emotional state was too fragile and volatile. Much like that of a child. Memories weren’t strong enough to control hormones and the like.
The winds pushed my bullet-like body back and forth as I hung from a tree a few metres away from the village. Men in red tunics walked around with baskets filled with bread, women walked down to the river where they cleaned old clothes, and kids ran around the village centre.
That’s when the realization of what would happen struck me. The village was poor, lacked any form of defence, and instead of parading me as a proof of civility and humanity the Vikings told me to hide and watch from afar. My heartbeat jumped up and my tiny bat throat tightened up. The echoes in the surrounding suddenly jumped at me from all sides and made me swing all the more. How could I simply wait in a tree, watch from afar as death grips little boys and girls? I know I drank enough blood to flood a village; however, I struggled to do so, I had to do so. I was a vampire, they were not. Ari was a human, Gustave was a human, they were all the same kind. Were we not supposed to support our own? Not only in a moral sense but also biological. How could men call each other mortal enemies one century and in the next brothers bonded through blood? After all weren’t these Vikings going to form the Kievan Rus. Were they not going to become the same people? Weren’t they already the same people, weren’t they all humans?
I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t understand myself. The paranoia which had disappeared fourteen years ago had sprouted once again.
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The boats arrived when the winds picked up and the kids decided to go play inside. One boat, two boats, three, five, and finally nine boats glided ashore. The villagers, who didn’t even have wooden walls to hide behind, didn’t have an ounce of hope. Struck by fear they froze a few hundred metres from the banks of the river. They would all sink into that little frozen pond they called death. Their shouts and screams of fear reached even my tiny pebble-like ears. A few men picked up old sickles, rusted spears, and other farm tools. Women hid indoors, no doubt clinging to their kids, and some older ones ran into the surrounding woods.
The first boat to unload, the first man to land on shore, the first one to swing his axe, it was Ari. The leader of this horde of animals who refused to see themselves as such. The animals who couldn’t bare but call each other uncivilized. The ones who couldn’t accept their own savageness. The ones who forgot their own sins a few days after the act, who could turn around and accuse another of this very act the next day. With its second swing, it killed the second villager. And then the second it joined the fray. Soon fifty were ashore. After another minute the number grew to one hundred. There were twice as many vikings than villagers.
Blood leaked from the corners of the land, and iron penetrated deep within the womb of the village. Guts and members wrung about the ground. I closed my eyes; however, screaming women and children stuck their slimy red fingers under my eyelids, fingernails scratching at my eyeballs and forced my eyes open.
If I did not act here, I know what would happen. There hasn’t been anything more obvious in this life of mine. I know, I know; however, my wings couldn’t move, the wind couldn’t carry me away. And if it would, how could I kill five hundred armed men? They would no doubt come for my neck. I am nothing. I couldn’t look. I couldn’t stay here.
An ear-splitting scream refocused my blurry vision onto reality. Gustave pulled a woman out of a hut by her hair. In her arms a small child. Another Viking grabbed the boy and plunged a knife into his stomach. Blood covered the woman, now deadly silent. Gustave kicked her towards the…
I couldn’t stay here, I couldn’t stay here, I couldn’t look at this. Who the fuck had I travelled with? What did I think of them before? This is madness, its insanity, I can’t, I can’t. The wind pushed stronger than before, and my claws lost all their strength. I let my body fall; I couldn’t believe I participated in such an event. What I believed in before today, my ideals, and my beliefs. I threw them all away by not acting. Yes, I failed God’s judgment.
Ancestors spit on my soul. Hell bound I am.