Born a Monster

[Goal Accomplished: Slay Svein Bjornson, worth 5 quest points, complete quest to receive award.]

I looked up to see Kismet and Madonna share a look.

No, no this was too easy. I looked around, and realized I was the only one worried at the current time. I returned to sawing a post for a bedframe.

The injured had exceeded the two beds we had, and there was discussion being circulated about building another long house in the town for a hospital, complete with a shrine to Eir.

Eir was handmaiden to Frigg, and was goddess of healing. She had few adherents, although her underlings must be happy with the increased number of prayers she was getting.

Actually, how did that work? How did sacrifices work? How many prayers did it take to provide the energy for a healing spell?

I’d imagine quite a few, or else people would pray more often. Or maybe I was just among those with an impeded faith? My Charisma stat still lurked at a solitary level one.

I was about to get back to using hammer and chisel to make a groove in the bedpost when a scream of rage resounded throughout the work area.

.....

“Enough! I have had ENOUGH of this! All warriors, ALL OF YOU! WE GO TO TOWN NOW!”

Nudged by one of the huscarl, I realized that somehow that included me. I stopped by the armory. We hadn’t gotten back many of the loans from the armory; many people considered them “gifts”, and had taken them home. I hoped they were treasured and taken care of properly, but I had no doubt many of them were in dusty trunks, never to see the light of day until the next war.

Which, apparently, was today.

“What happened?” I asked, strapping a tiny shield decorated with a crudely painted duck onto my arm.

“Must be Svein, it’s his day to run justice in the town.”

“What? That makes no sense. What must he be doing, to get the jarl trying to kill him?” I asked.

I got smacked on the back of the head by another soldier. “Idiot. Svein probably needs help.”

“Either he’ll hold out,” said the first, “or else we’ll avenge him.”

I shrugged. The choice of weapons wasn’t great. Maybe I needed to learn to make weapons?

I ended up with a small mace, a simple affair, a ball of copper at the end of a short haft. The area just above the grip had been flattened, as though for a runic name, but none had been inscribed.

Curious. Who ARE you, primitive mace?

But there was time to grab my pack, and then we were force marching south, parallel to the still upturned earth from when the muster came this way.

We arrived shortly after dusk to closed gates. It amazed me how quickly they got those gates open again when Sigmund (the jarl) began bellowing about it. He made his way to the meeting hall, walls and floor still sticky with blood.

Someone had lost half a hand, lying listlessly in the corner. The rest of the bodies were missing.

“Find them.” He commanded. “Find me the ones responsible for this, or suffer for it yourselves!”

#

The bodies had been laid out in the town square, between the homesteads and the port.

There are those who reduce things to math; one champion is worth five soldiers, each soldier worth two peasant levy. By that reckoning, there should have been around sixteen bodies around him and his huscarl. There were over two dozen, spilling up the road to the east, toward where there was a wood almost up to the wall.

I was well away from the Jarl, yet I could hear his teeth grind. I could see his darkened face, could almost imagine the shade of dark crimson it was becoming. “Wake. The. People. Find out what happened, and who is responsible. No man sleeps until this is settled.”

It was under two minutes when a brown-haired woman was walked to the jarl.

“That longhouse, the Uthvens. That is where you’ll find most of them, barricaded and waiting for you.”

“A longhouse?” asked one of the huscarl.

“Impossible. Bring the woman. We’ll behead her if she lies.”

As they approached the house, though, a window flew open, and twin archers sent arrows down into shields. Neither of them had an arrow in them when they shuttered the window again.

The jarl snorted. “Gather all the firewood you can. Stack it five apples high, and no less than five wide. Cover any entrance other than the front. We’ll kill them as they exit.”

And this was done. Men, women, children, and even two of the three dogs that emerged, smoking patches in their fur.

“Well,” Victor said. “That is a thing that we just did.”

“We are not done doing things.” Sigmund said. “Not until we round up and execute the last of the traitors. Half of us on guard here. Half asleep in the meeting hall, save those on watch.”

“Brother, the losses already, on both sides...”

The jarl let his hand rest on the head of his axe, through its loop on his belt. “There will be more tomorrow. And then... then, maybe we’ll be done with this nonsense, and the plebians will just OBEY.”

The jarl might not have wanted to do the math, but I did so. Before all of this ruckus, maybe a hundred sixty families. Average of five people per family. Roughly eight hundred people. Even minus the sixty or eighty or so, that was an awful lot of people.

At the start, hadn’t someone bragged that there were three hundred warriors? Hadn’t we just mustered a little more than two hundred?

Even if each of the ones lying dead around Svein and his men were warriors, there were still a hundred fifty or so, even after the losses and wounded against the herdsfolk.

But they did not attack during my watch, or even that night.

#

In the morning, I was grabbed from breakfast, and nearly carried by my shoulder to the left of the jarl’s chair.

“Our rosters have gone missing. Recount for me all the names of those you remember being on them and not showing up.” His eyes had the distant look of someone who was focusing on their System rather than the real world.

I recounted the names that I could remember. “There were others, but I do not recall their names just now.”

With casual malevolence, he reached down, grabbed my upper jaw, and began bending my skull backward, my nose upward.

“Tell me their names! All of them!”

“I don’t remember!” I screamed. He continued flexing my head into increasingly uncomfortable angles.

“Truthspeaker!” I screamed. “I literally CANNOT lie to you! It is my memory at fault, not a lack of desire to provide answers!”

Something in my jaw popped just then; it would later be swollen and painful.

Slowly, he released my jaw. “Very well, return to breakfast. Wait. Are you loyal to me, little slave?”

“I shall remain by your side, enemies permitting, until this is all over.”

He waved me away.

Good gods! If he’d noticed my answer, asked other questions... But he hadn’t. He seemed to be too busy fabricating enemies to notice that I was among them.

“You! Get back to cooking, there’s another set of men to serve breakfast to.”

I bowed, as was expected of my station. “I’ll get to it immediately.”

I needed to scrub the pans clean, but there were enough eggs and flour. I made flatbreads and scrambled eggs, and was still in the middle of that when Victor Findseth, Tomas Istre, and their men filed in.

Tomas came right up to me. “Scrambled. I prefer them cooked with whole yolks.”

“There are eggs enough, lord. I’ll get on that as soon as I have time to wash the plates and make the initial serving.”

“Good. I’ve told Frieda she is not to take lessons while we’re stationed in town. You will send her back immediately when she comes to you anyway.”

I nodded. “She will survive you if the town rises up to slay us all.”

He stroked his beard, just the once. “Good, at least you understand the situation.”

I blinked. “Is it truly that bad, then?”

“Every able-bodied man or woman is chopping wood for the funeral pyres. Rumor is that the Jarl himself is going to be beheading people afterward.”

“Including all the harlots from the public pleasure house. Wonder what the matron ever did to upset him.” Victor said, wandering over. “Did those bastards serving my brother leave us any bacon?”

“I can cut thin strips off this ham, here.”

“It’s not the same, but do it.”

“It shall be done.”

Crap. Crap.

So he was executing the daughters of his earlier enemies. That...

“Lord Victor, you know your brother oversteps...”

His face went from hungry to severe, just like that. His hand rested near his knife, a better weapon than his sword for such close quarters.

“You will say nothing more.”

“Yes, I agree.”

“To anyone.”

I nodded. He turned away.

“That was immensely stupid.” Tomas told me. “Two eggs, intact and uncooked yolks.”

#

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