Chapter Text
The boy was missing.
“What a beautiful day,” said Askeladd, to the man that stood next to him, smirking in satisfaction as he widened his chest with a deep breath. The pestilential miasma of death and the sweetish aroma of decay stung his nostrils, but his lips held a serene smile. “Bjorn, don’t you find the air particularly fresher and cleaner today?”
From the hill rose dozens of black columns, one for each of the pyres in which corpses had been burned since dawn. The sky was low and the smoke seemed to thicken massively over their heads, giving almost solid consistency to the water vapour that, like a heavy breath of beer, exhaled from the mouths of the numerous marshes in that southern region of Scotland.
“Well…” Bjorn stroked the braid of his beard, studying around with a vaguely dubtful air. The vast camp occupied the entire clearing, therefore dotted with tents and sheds, the remains of extinguished embers, sewage and leftovers of rotting food on which the dogs were dining.
Their gazes then met in the corner of their eyes, Bjorn’s somewhat uncertain, Askeladd’s as thin and sardonic as a sneer of ambiguous meaning. “It was a good victory” conceded Bjorn faithfully, yet a little embarrassed like someone who cannot agree more than that, “but I actually prefer the smell of the battle when blood is still fresh. After two days it stinks like worm food and rotten meat roast. It kind of sucks, if you ask me.”
Askeladd frowned slightly. It had certainly been a good victory, nothing to complain about. But that wasn’t quite why he felt so happy and peaceful. “And nothing else,” he suggested.
“Sweaty armpits?”
“And nothing else.” Askeladd repeated it in a more affirmative tone, to make it clear that it wasn’t a question… then he rolled his eyes at Bjorn’s increasingly confused expression. He was a loyal man, but a bit slow at times. “Can’t you imagine anything that smells more unpleasant?”
The wind blew on their faces the stench of gangrene, and the grimace on Bjorn’s face showed how hard he was trying to find an answer other than ‘no’.
“A rat that climbed up a horse’s asshole, died and came out with a fart falling into the vomit of a drunk who ate cabbage stew at dinner?”
Askeladd arched his eyebrows—well, he did manage to surprise him. He wouldn’t call it a sophisticated use of words, but Askeladd was a fair man and he never failed to praise the effort. “I’m impressed, Bjorn,” he gave him credit. “Personal experience?”
Bjorn scratched the back of his neck. “Sometimes I shared the tent with Torgrim and Atli...”
“Oh, I’m sorry…” He’d known Bjorn for a while now (to be honest, maybe more than it was necessary to reminish), but of all the Danes he was certainly the one he would least wish something so cruel on. (He remembered, however, what he had said to him on the rather unfortunate occasion of their first meeting. You– you are something else, ya know? Bjorn lived up to expectations). Anyway... Askeladd gave a small cough, partly because he felt his lungs saturated with smoke... “You may have noticed that for some time now there has been a persistent stench following us everywhere...”
After a long silence, during which even Askeladd, who considered himself an optimist and someone who always thought positively of others, began to lose hope... Bjorn snapped his fingers.
“Thorfinn!”
“Oh, is that his name?”
Bjorn was showing such a wide smile that Askeladd felt sorry for him. He should have warn him to be careful and not become too fond of the boy. A child of that age wasn’t going to survive more than one winter.
“It’s been a while since we’ve seen him...” Bjorn pondered, a little apprehensive.
“Now I see what it was. That must be why I feel like I’m breathing a pleasant spring breeze in a field of freshly bloomed flowers!” Askeladd cheered to himself with a relaxed expression.
It had been at least a week since he had felt Thorfinn’s gaze on him. The brat had simply done what he had asked him to do at the approach of the battle: to disappear, dissolve into the cosmos, imitate a plant so well to make himself a potential object of attention only to a grazing cow... that is, since there were no cows in the marshes, to be less interesting landscape-wise than a bush you stop to pee on.
The boy had many faults, the first of which was existing, but at least he was obedient.
(Yet he wasn’t sure it was just obedience, his tame attitude when he had remained crouched in his nest of leaves, without even looking up from the ground where he was intent on following an insect with his finger to catch it and eat it; that lost and absent look, almost surprised to see him when he had raised his chin to be told that he had understood, the opacity of his bigger eyes in his smaller face.)
He had told him to pulverise himself into nothingness until he no longer heard the sound of horns and to wait for even the last cry had long since died down. But now the battle had been over for a day...
“Go see if he’s dead. I have a bottle of excellent mead I’m saving for the occasion and a certain need to clear my throat.” Askeladd hinted a placid, sly smile, yet marred by a more grim crease that twisted his mouth suddenly. It was true, indeed, that he felt his throat sour and dry from the human ash that swirled in flakes in the air... but for a moment, as he swallowed something bitter like coal, he had the impression that scraping his throat was another kind of ash, the one he owed his name to.
It did seem the case to have a drink and he hoped the boy would give him a good reason to cheer.
“If it’s not time to open it yet, let him know we’re about to set off,” he said shortly.
Bjorn was looking at him too gleefully. Oh, if only Askeladd had been a little less good at reading other people’s faces, he might still have convinced himself that his second-in-command hadn’t suddenly lost his mind: did he think he cared for the boy?
“It’d be a problem if we left him here and he fell into enemy hands. It won’t have escaped your notice that the little crab louse can be quite vindictive,” he reasoned with him, showing tolerance towards the need to even explain it.
“Shouldn’t we wait for the messenger? It’ll take at least a couple of days.”
“A couple of days is how long it takes Thorfinn to walk the distance we do in five minutes. Have mercy, Bjorn, let’s give short legs a head start!” Askeladd sneered.
The boy was stoic and determined, but the fact remained that he always fell behind. He nearly reached them when they were ready to leave again.
Bjorn finally seemed convinced and motioned with an “Alright”, but then turned back on his heels. “How do I find him?”
Askeladd proceeded to give him clear and precise instructions pointing at the edge of the field, towards the thick of the forest that surrounded the clearing: “Go a mile along that path. When you come across a beech tree with a handkerchief tied to a branch, turn right into the woods. Continue for another half mile. You’ll find four trees marked with scratches on the bark and bounded by a rope hidden in the tall grass one meter above the ground. In the center there’s a rock ledge covered by branches. That’s where the rat fart is” he concluded. “…And remember to ring the bell.”
“Affirmative, boss!”
As he watched him turning around, Askeladd got the impression that Bjorn was smiling again.
Poor fool. Thorfinn was just a bet and Askeladd simply didn’t like to lose.
—
Thorfinn was no longer the same child who had sailed with them six months before. He certainly wasn’t the brat that had jumped from behind daddy’s legs shouting a cocky insult at his armour (if possible, Askeladd would have gladly spared Thors’ head and handed over that of his son – he was a good man, his only fault was having procreated), but neither was he the arrogant fool who had challenged him to a duel even though he wasn’t half as tall as the sword he held. That brat was an insolent with a small head but a wide mouth, a mouth still smeared with milk that he loved to fill with grand words – honor, justice, avenge! – despite having recently removed the habit of the dummy. How many times had Askeladd wished to have one at hand. But it consoled him that the tip of the boot served the purpose just as well.
No, Thorfinn wasn’t that kid anymore. For a while now, he had been losing himself—who knows, maybe he was really lost and couldn’t find his way back to the camp.
By now he was living completely isolated. Apart from the first raid, it had otherwise been a busy season. There were riots in Northumbria; the English were pressing the borders of Scotland; and also the usual squabbles among the local lords that bickered to decree whether the apple that fell from a tree belonged to the owner of the tree or to the owner of the land on which it had fallen.
The promise of women, wine and gold was enough for his men to ignite with patriotic enthusiasm towards the cause of those who paid the most, so it had not been difficult to convince them to take a greater risk for a higher reward (which for him meant to make the right friends, even if he didn’t disdain wine – as for women, he did not need silver to have them). In essence, instead of raiding, they had fought battles.
Raids were one thing, wars were quite another. When two, three, four hordes of armed men charged with shields at each other, the only way a child could be of any service was to piss off and avoid tripping someone up.
Therefore, for the past six months Thorfinn had only joined his retinue on their marchers between battles; for the rest, he had confined him to the woods.
Unfortunately, Askeladd liked to take long walks in nature, early in the morning and after dark every day. It helped him clear his mind. So while his men might have forgotten Thorfinn’s existence, Askeladd couldn’t enjoy the same luck. Too often he had come across his den and he couldn’t count how many times he had destroyed it by mistake, before the boy understood that if it was enough to touch it to make it collapse, a gust of wind would have buried him there for good.
The great thing about spending so much time in remote places was that he had also rediscovered the pleasure of going hunting and enjoying fresh game for dinner. To suggest him the idea had been the sight of a rabbit hanging from a branch: whoever had killed that poor creature was so ignorant of how to preserve meat that just looking at it seemed like it could kill you, let alone eat it.
It had been a relief that, although it’d been a long since the last time, he hadn’t forgotten how to skin a beast, nor that it was crucial to cut the jugular, so as to immediately disperse fluids and heat, as well as to eviscerate the animal right away, or that, in the event of a blow to the belly, it was not enough to gut it but it had to be cleaned thoroughly with water.
He had seen no more lethal rabbits.
There was also such absolute quiet that Askeladd sometimes caught himself thinking aloud.
“Look what we have here, these are wild boar root, I must be careful!”
“How clumsy of me, I was about to touch these stones without first hitting them with a stick to scare away the vipers!”
“Never drink stagnant water, Askeladd, but always from running sources! It would be a very inglorious end to die of a belly ache.”
“Oh, I almost ate some poisonous berries. You’re getting old, my friend!”
“If you meet wolves, remember to always look them in the eye aggressively and never, ever turn your back, that’s what prey would do.”
To tell the truth, the enchantment of that perfect communion with nature was too often broken, for Thorfinn came out into the open.
“Unbelievable, are you still alive?”
There was more resignation than surprise in the ritual exclamation.
It was hard to delude himself for even a moment that the kid was dead, since Thorfinn followed him everywhere… always. Even when he was at the camp, he felt his dark presence thickening among the branches at every moment, so tangible that he could point out with certainty the exact spot where he was. With every step he took, Thorfinn’s footsteps echoed. If he moved, his shadow moved with him.
If he went off to talk to someone, Thorfinn was there. If he went to groom his horse, Thorfinn was there. If he went on patrol, Thorfinn was there. If, hell, like any human being he was also subject to the call of the wild… well, many times he had to ask out loud for some privacy, damn it.
Not infrequently, a trampled leaf or a rustle just outside his tent, so close that it may had touched it, caught his attention when he was about to fall asleep or woke him up if he was already sleeping. No alarm, sometimes he didn’t even open his eyes. He knew that what had made the noise was neither a thief nor a traitor and, as much as he looked like one, not even a squirrel.
Just for fun, to provoke him, on a few occasions he had lit a candle again. Thorfinn’s silhouette, backlit behind the curtain screen, rather resembled that of a stuffed animal. Not even the tip of the knife emerged from the small shapeless mass, but then again Askeladd had never suspected an ambush.
He then noticed that those nocturnal visits happened when the howl of one or more wolves was heard in the surroundings.
Maybe the boy wasn’t too convinced he could scare them with his gaze (though he had to believe in himself more, he was so repelling that just his sight made anyone flee), but oh if it was a stupid choice to spend the night on the outside when you fear being attacked by a wolf!
Those were the nights Askeladd slept with one eye open: Thorfinn could attract wolves, but he certainly wasn’t enough to feed even one.
However, if Thorfinn was as good at hiding and not being heard by prey as he was at spying on him, then it was no wonder that he soon began to starve.
Askeladd didn’t always have time to hunt, but the diet in the camp was monotonous, so he would often leave part of his meal when he got sick of it: a piece of cheese, some dried meat, a loaf of bread. He would leave them wrapped in a handkerchief, on top of the scraps of bones and offal that were collected in a barrel after meals, so as not to attract the animals into the camp, and then buried in a pit the next day.
The contents of the handkerchief always remained intact, but if there had been shreds of meat on the bones, they were clean to the core in the morning.
Thorfinn was prideful, but his men were greedy and no ration was ever so disgusting that wine couldn’t make its taste better: what was thrown away was hardly the cartilages after having used them to remove food between their teeth.
It had only taken two months for Thorfinn to weaken to the point that rabbits were faster than him even to get to the berries. The echo behind his footsteps followed him more slowly, the shadow in the bushes stumbled ...
One day, instead of leaving the handkerchief on top of the trash, Askeladd had put its contents in a bowl and taken it with him on his usual evening walk in the woods.
They weren’t in Scotland yet, but near York, and Thorfinn had found a broken barn. The roof had blown off and the summer evenings were clearer, so Askeladd had immediately spotted that thing that could easily be mistaken for a simple pile of rags.
Even then Thorfinn was different. Beneath the matted nest of his hair, now messy and longer, indistinguishable from the strands of straw and twigs that always got caught on his head, his expression had changed. His eyes were half-closed and tired, his lids heavier and at that moment also swollen from a recent cold. He had not grown; on the contrary, he had shrunk. What had enlarged was only his ego, as ridiculous as the clothes that now fitted him too loose.
“You can choke on it!” Thorfinn said, as he saw the bowl of food Askeladd had placed on a wooden beam. More than saying it, he had snarled it, as well as the continuous: “I don’t want a thing from you! Only that you die and be gone f–forever!”
To die and be gone forever was quite redundant, but he made the point well.
“Oh, and how are you going to beat me? You could had me die laughing, but now you’re not even funny.” Askeladd gave him a long look from top to bottom, without irony, only a cold contempt that didn’t alter his face even to take the form of a sneer. Thorfinn could barely stand. He had crawled out of his straw corner almost panting for the effort, though with a gnawed “Go away, bastard!”, so ravenous that it felt like hatred and insults were the most solid thing he had chewed in days. Only pride had kept him from leaning against the walls as he staggered towards him with shaky steps.
“No, you’re not funny anymore. You’re just pathetic, but believe me, sorrow doesn’t rob me neither of sleep nor appetite.” Askeladd pushed the bowl towards him with a rude blow, as it’s done with a dog tied to a rope that cannot reach its food. “Take it.”
“Leave it there for the flies! I don’t need your pity!”
Thorfinn had said those words with his mouth dough with drool (and Askeladd had felt its acidity as if it were his own saliva, the bite of hunger that, when it has already devoured your body, devours your mind too), but he had spat out that last, pity, like someone who spits out a crust of bread because it’s burnt.
Askeladd had eaten so many burnt crusts that he didn’t care that someone had spat them out. If anything, they tasted better when you were lucky enough to still find a trace of what had been eaten with the rest of the bread.
“It’s not pity, it’s food. Maybe I should let you starve a few more days, then you’ll stop turning your nose up like it smells of shit. Stupid spoiled brat,” he twisted his mouth, “what did your parents feed you, nectar of the gods?”
“Shut up!” Thorfinn had yelled, but with just a thread of voice, so that the cry had been more like a gasp, a moan shot out of his belly as if he’d been punched. Your parents. Askeladd smiled. Thorfinn tightened his lips to keep them from trembling, suppressing the end of the cry—a sob, which was choked in his throat as he tried to swallow it. Askeladd saw him struggling to hold his breath, to keep it from breaking with the next inhale... but there are battles you win only after you have lost many, he wanted to tell him.
Thorfinn sniffled angrily. “A—as far as I know, it’s poisoned.”
“Oh boy, if I cared enough about you to want you dead, I’d only have to wait a week to find your carcass eaten by flies,” Askeladd told him, still with that grimace which only experience had perfected into a smile: it was a matter of practice, he had learned to tighten his lips better.
Askeladd took the steak from the bowl and, with an explanatory gesture like the nod of a toast, brought it to his mouth to give it a bite. See? It wasn’t poisoned.
When he finished chewing, however, it was without smiling, because whatever he ate it still tasted the same. “Only flies wouldn’t feel disgusted by looking at you, and you know why? Because they don’t give a shit if shit is good or bad, as long as it’s shit.”
As long as it’s food.
Askeladd scowled. That kid infuriated him, something not many could. He didn’t need to hear the cramps or read them on his dirty face, twisted in the effort to resist like his stomach foaming with bile and anger. He could feel them in his guts, deep below his navel, in a never-satisfied place of his insides. But Thorfinn kept refusing the bowl from the hand that held it out to him.
Askeladd had accepted many similar bowls, from those who threw him a leftover intended for dogs or pigs, in order to get rid of the boy who begged at their doorstep and so stank up the street. He had accepted it from his father too, damn, and had swallowed it all, a generous portion of rancour, vengeance and contempt served on a silver platter... and he had waited, to return it cold with iron.
You may bite my hand one day, but, for now, accept it.
They gazed at each other, the ice in Askeladd’s eyes, the fire in Thorfinn’s eyes, as if it were a duel to determine whether fire would melt the ice or ice would extinguish the fire. As if there was a doubt.
Askeladd resumed nibbling from the bowl. These were not leftovers stolen from pigs. He had brought him a fresh steak, not desalted, some slices of bread, cheese, vegetables and even some blessed sweet pancakes!
Good for him, who in fact continued to eat making appreciative noises and chewing ostentatiously.
“I hate you,” Thorfinn quivered, growling from the pit of his stomach.
“Do they taste good?” asked Askeladd, in the middle of chewing, hinting towards him with a distracted gesture of the hand which was holding the steak again. “The words. Hate. Avenge. Honor. Justice. Must be a true delicacy if you can’t get them out of your mouth.” He sniffed the meat in his hand, then, twisting his wrist, looked at it from all sides as if to study it carefully. Finally he licked the tip of one greasy thumb. “Don’t know, kid, I still prefer this steak.”
“I—I’d rather it was you than the steak!”
Uh-oh, Thorfinn could talk big, for a snot-nosed baby who until yesterday couldn’t even talk! Who posed as a man, but still trembled on his legs like a child who wants to be picked up when he’s tired, who called himself a warrior but couldn’t even win against his tears (another lost battle, another furious gesture to wipe away the traces of defeat by rubbing a sleeve over his cheeks), and who aimed high but would have to stretch on his toes even to get to the bowl on the beam.
Askeladd snorted a laugh, to which Thorfinn responded by curling his lips over his gums where a few baby teeth were missing, to put on the best aggressive expression he could make with his flushed nose and quivering chin (to be honest, he wouldn’t have scared a woodchuck, let alone a wolf).
Anyway, Askeladd turned serious again. He had to be careful, the kid. All that arrogance would have made him fall, but he was going to stay down on his ass for a long time if he expected to be picked up.
“Do you know what you should taste? Humility.” Askeladd handed him the bowl again. Thorfinn said no with his eyes... his belly said otherwise, but his clenched fists, empty as his stomach and just as full only with pride, fought against hunger by refusing to take it. “No? You don’t like it? Then go on swelling your chest, if honor satisfies your appetite better. I hope you won’t be offended if I fill my belly instead—"
The tip of a shoe hit Askeladd on a shin as he was about to bring a pancake to his mouth... and his lips, ready to bite, rose instead at the corners. Very funny. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had deliberately kicked him to shut him up.
Thorfinn had put all the sincerest intentions and genuine determination of a serious offensive into that punitive action, but his frustrated face showed that even for him the actual outcome had been demeaning. Truth be told, the little bastard had managed to hurt him more than he ever had with his knife... He should have cut off his head, but the test of courage had been quite touching (and, as for touching him, he had undoubtedly succeeded). Askeladd wanted to reward him with a noble act of indulgence, that was what he was telling him by arching his ironic eyebrows in a refreshingly amused way.
“Is that how you were taught to ask please?”
Any feelings of condescension, however, faded within a moment.
“I don’t want any favors from you, j–just go f–fuck yourself!”
Thorfinn had hit the bowl with the back of his hand. The food had scattered on the ground.
Askeladd’s gaze turned to stone instantly, as hard as the slap he would have given him with the same hand from which he had made him drop the bowl... if only he had wanted to be kind.
Instead he took a step forward—Thorfinn recoiled, all bravado vanished from his now pale and terrified face (good, fear is what he must feel), as if he had in fact expected a slap, but he tripped over his feets and fell backwards. With is ass on the ground. Where it deserved to be.
Askeladd didn’t feel inclined to be kind to those who had no respect for food.
He moved toward him, making sure to step on what Thorfinn had thrown with his boots. Then he grabbed him by the hair—it had been useless to try to escape him by crawling, or to kick to free himself from his grip—and pushed his face into the mush of food and mud.
“You like it better now?” He pressed his mouth down deeper, but stopped when the boy gave up.
Askeladd let go of his hair and his hand moved a little lower, from the nape of his neck to the spot between his shoulder blades. There, on his back shaken by sobs, it remained still. Too little sweet for a caress, less hard than a slap, just with the severity of a reprimand.
“Pity doesn’t taste good, but it feeds you more than pride,” he told him—and if there was anything cruel in his voice it was only the hidden harshness of the dust after having eaten too much of it, which sticks to the tongue, scratches the palate, bites the throat and won’t wash away even if you swallow it down with tears. He knew it.
There was a custom among the rich. Sometimes, instead of water or handkerchiefs, thin flat bread were served at the table so that guests could use them to clean their hands, blow their noses, wipe their mouths before, during and after meals. The bread was then thrown to the poor.
You were indeed lucky if someone had spat out some food.
“Come back and tell me you don’t need my pity when you’ve eaten enough shit that even saying thanks you won’t make you sick.”
That had happened many months before. Since then, the food Askeladd left wrapped in the handkerchief on top of the scraps was no longer there in the morning. In its place, he found medicinal plants (“Oh, look what we have here, Askeladd, this is elderberry. Useful for relieving colds and flu, always good to have a supply!”, “And this one? Catnip! It works miracles on wounds!”). Thorfinn never took anything for nothing.
Askeladd had also learned the brat didn’t like carrots. Once, he had left them untouched in the handkerchief, eating meat and cheese instead. Can you believe it? He was even being picky now! The next day Askeladd had made him find only carrots. Thorfinn had retaliated with poisonous berries, to explicit his feelings towards vegetables (but he had eaten the carrots).
The walks in the woods had become more frequent. So had the hunting trips. Askeladd had discovered an unusual passion for small game. Everyone in the camp was happy, though they wouldn’t have disdained a deer.
He also wanted to make sure he was still good at building traps. He was. The next day he would always find some unfortunate prey hanging upside down from its legs or fallen into the net... but he would also find other traps, always close to his own, as if someone had tried hard to imitate them, someone who however needed to keep an eye on the example to reproduce the same knots. The result was depressing. (It seemed that six-year-olds had just enough manual skills to pick their noses. How sad.)
“Who would ever think of catching anything with this crap?” Askeladd had vocalized aloud once, poking the trap with his foot just to clearly confirm its ineffectiveness. “Even the dumbest rabbit would be offended.”
Thorfinn had burst out of the bushes, so stung in his pride that he couldn’t resist the urge to come out. “It’s not crap!”
“Ah, is this engineering masterpiece your creation? So tell me, why did the rabbit fall into my trap, but not yours which was right here?”
Askeladd had gone into detailed mockery to describe exactly what was wrong with his trap. Thorfinn had made it clear how little he cared about his opinion—nothing is truly more adorable than kids being kids: for example, when they cover their ears yelling “La la la! I can’t hear you!”. Thorfinn made him more sure every day that he would never regret not having children.
However, Thorfinn had gotten quite better at it. From time to time he would nab a squirrel, which may have had its fill of acorns and, more than the trap, fell victim to heavy digestion.
(Speaking of which, it only occurred to him now that he hadn’t warned Bjorn about the traps. The ones dotted around Thorfinn’s little fort were a bit more sophisticated – he had made them. Oh man... Askeladd felt deeply sorry. He could only hope that at least Bjorn wouldn’t get caught in the iron teeth one.)
Thorfinn, though, was no longer that child. He had already noticed a progressive change in him, like a weakening that didn’t just have to do with his body. He spoke less and less. He had started by reducing the number of words to the bare minimum to convey the message: “Die.” Not that he particularly missed his more articulate ways of wishing him to fall into a pit and stay there forever. But it had to be admitted that thinking aloud in the woods was beginning to make him doubt himself, now that it was only his conscience, and not a petulant echo four or five metres away, that commented how he had already aged to the point of talking to himself.
If he communicated at all, it was mainly with growls and hisses, which he had basically perfected into a no less complex language. Even his movements had taken on something more akin to the animals he spent more time with than humans. He was faster, nimbler, lighter. He climbed like a squirrel, jumped like a rabbit, moved quickly on all fours like a fox.
He no longer trampled the leaves. And his shadow didn’t walk, let alone stumble—it glided, as if he had no weight (which had some truth to it, since he was nevertheless thinning by the day. Hell, why were people so eager to have children if they were half the height of a man but needed to eat three times as much? It was a poor economic investment, especially since kids too often died for no reason before they could be of any use).
Most of all, Thorfinn’s obsession with him had turned into an even more morbid feeling. Not that the visceral attachment he showed him on a daily basis, stalking him everywhere as if listening to his breath up close was more necessary than breathing himself, had anything to do with affection. At first, the variation had been a minimal, but not purely semantic shift: he didn’t want to kill him, he lived to kill him.
If he bit into life as one bites into a bone to suck out the marrow, without taste, since there’s no meat, only out of hunger, it was for that sole purpose. (How flattering, knowing that someone does nothing but think about you, even while shitting and pissing!)
At times, tho, he had the impression that something in Thorfinn’s mind was fading. The reason he followed him, or rather the reason itself. The hatred was always there, deep in his dilated pupils, as if it was spreading to invade the brown of his eyes when he stared at him without even blinking.
He was his guiding star... but like a sailor who, exhausted by sun and thirst for having long lost himself on the high seas, has forgotten where he sailed from, why and where he was headed, Thorfinn followed that North as if he had no other point of reference, no other direction than the one he was pointing to him.
Like that sailor, on the day he had found him half dead his lips were dry and dehydrated. He was slumped on the ground, looking as a kitten that had ended up under the wheels of a wagon.
Askeladd had been away for five days, with a small escort, to have a private meeting with the king of that region of Scotland. He had not thought to warn him: not even his men, apart from Bjorn, were generally informed about what he was doing, he selected them on the basic requirement that they were smart and opportunistic enough not to ask and not to bother to know, as long as they made a profit. Askeladd didn’t intend to come to terms with a brat who threw a tantrum at the slightest sign of being forgotten and left to rot alone in the woods. So needy.
If that pathetic performance as a puppy abandoned on the side of a road in the rain and then, as said, run over by a wagon meant to make him feel sorry, it wouldn’t have succeeded.
Thorfinn had strong opinions and was keen to express them clearly. In this particular case, if on the second day of his absence he had marched to the camp, sneaked into his tent, poured all his supplies of precious mead on the ground and also wet his bed (not with mead), it was to notify him as frankly as possible what he thought of him taking the liberty of leaving without informing him well in advance.
Then, apparently, he had retreated to his den and practiced to take on the look he would have once he was dead—though, according to the fact that he was still breathing, he wasn’t even good at dying.
“Hey, little fucker.” Askeladd prodded his side with the toe of his boot, almost cautiously, expecting the boy to pounce on his ankle with his teeth. Nothing. “Are you still with us?” He tried again, this time nudging his arm, but still getting no reaction. “No? About time, you’ve taken far too long.”
He stared at him critically from above. Thorfinn’s eyes were open, but whatever he saw was not the man he proclaimed he wanted to kill. He didn’t even seem to recognize him... and Askeladd didn’t like to be greeted without due respects.
“Thanks to you I no longer have my special occasion bottle.” Actually, he never had one, he just liked being dramatic. After all, not even the finest of liquors would have tasted better than his laughter, if he had lived long enough to see the day when all the Vikings would disappear from the face of the earth—himself included, for that he would die laughing. “Do you really want to croak like this? Without even a toast to celebrate that you finally succeeded in the one thing that was expected of you?”
Perhaps the boy was so dehydrated that what little primordial broth he had in his head had evaporated too. Askeladd uncorked his canteen and poured water over his face. At least, Thorfinn showed that there still was something like a small breath of life in him, since he licked his lips.
Askeladd certainly had no natural inclination to care for the well-being of those subhuman creatures who couldn’t be classified as anything more than weird animated objects until they grew at least some pubic hair. There was no satisfaction even in killing them. Before leaving, however, he had absent-mindedly noticed that hanging on a branch there were enough supplies to ensure the survival of a child for three days. As for the other two, he trusted that even if he couldn’t hunt anything, a short fast would nourish his spirit.
Thorfinn hadn’t touched the supplies. Hatred was what kept him alive more than food... but Askeladd had foolishly deluded himself into thinking that Thorfinn had already matured beyond that stage when, if you hide something behind your back, children are convinced it’s gone forever and despair accordingly just because they can’t see it. Tragic age, childhood.
“Well?” This time he placed the entire sole of his shoe on the kid’s hip and shook him harder. “What a disappointment. By the way, if you leave me another souvenir on my bed I’ll make you piss stones for the rest of your days.”
When even giving him a kick that turned him over on his back hadn’t the desired effect, Askeladd sighed. Since Thorfinn didn’t like carrots, he had to go with the stick.
“Did your old man ever teach you some manners? I bet he let you get away with everything. Let me guess, only child? No. If so, you should have helped around the house, but look at those little skinny arms you got instead! You were the little one, weren’t you? Coddled and waited-on while your older brothers and sisters broke their backs. No one ever gave you a proper smacking, huh, Daddy’s boy?”
Askeladd began to regain hope. At the mention of his father and his family, Thorfinn’s fingers had twitched a little. He wasn’t keen on insulting the man, it was a shame he let himself get killed... but this was the last favour he was going to do him.
“I’m sure you weren’t even supposed to be on that ship,” Askeladd told him in the tone of a quiet remark, as if chatting about the weather, but a welcoming sneer crept onto his lips as Thorfinn began to focus again. Anger was rising from the remote depths of his gaze. Akeladd waited, to see if it was really necessary to reiterate the point – he was not tender enough to feel sorry, but neither was he bored enough to push the boot deeper for no reason.
Unfortunately, that patina of emptiness and lack of responsiveness had flattened again, and what had vibrated beneath the surface now pulsed more weakly. If it was encouragement, what he needed…
“You disobeyed and sneaked on it, like you did with us. Your father wouldn’t have died if it wasn’t for you, you know that, right?”
Indeed, a sting of pain pierced the absence in Thorfinn’s eyes, and what was simmering within them came pouring out of that gash, brimming over into the tears that were already burning at the corners. His face was rapidly regaining the colour of a furious expression. Even in his numb limbs, which jerked with the effort of moving, blood began to flow again.
Good boy.
“Is it out of guilt that you want to avenge him?” Thorfinn tried to vocalise something, but only a guttural and undoubtedly painful groan slipped out of his dry lips. His throat must have been so raw that even his voice seemed to scratch it. He smiled. “Looks like you didn’t care that much, if you’ve already lost the urge, huh? Poor wretch, only a few months and his own son forgot about him! He was worth little as a man, but even less as a father, after all. Let me tell you, dying like an idiot must run in your family—”
Thorfinn had unsheathed his beloved knife and managed to make a faint arc with his arm, grazing his boot with the tip of the blade. The effort had been heroic, the result pathetic. Askeladd had not even moved his foot, certain that with that little sick bird-like physical strength Thorfinn would have barely scraped his shoe.
“Oh, you’re still alive, then” he said, crouching on his calves in front of him after kicking the knife. With his relaxed arms resting on his knees, as his lips parted in vague amusement, he enjoyed observing Thorfinn’s efforts. The brat was trying to crawl up to him on his elbows, while he kept making those hoarse noises that he was sure were not words meant to express his joy at seeing him again. Although, in their own way, they were. “Correction, your father was at least a skilled swordsman, you couldn’t slice a carrot.”
Thorfinn had managed to get to his hands and knees and now he leapt to throw his nails at him... but he seemed to faint in the attempt, so the hand he meant to hit him with caught hold of his arm instead to keep him from falling face-first.
Even through the fabric, however, he could feel the will in Thorfinn’s grip, all the determination he was capable of at the end of his strenght—the desperate gesture of the shipwrecked man who, with the last scrap of life remaining to him, clings to the oars to continue rowing towards that one light that still points him a destination. The North Star, a reason not to give up.
The boy was blowing his panting breath within an inch from his face, his teeth clenched and his cheeks a vivid red with fatigue. “I’m sorry, what’d you say? Did you miss me?” Askeladd teased him, blocking with a lazy gesture the slower one of Thorfinn who had tried to scratch him with his other hand.
Then, grabbing him by the hairline to pull his head back, so to avoid being bitten, he took the opportunity to check his forehead. In fact, he was hot.
Hell, kids really were some sort of a nature mistake. Always getting sick, Askeladd snorted to himself as he ignored his protests and loaded him under his arm like a sack.
“You have to make my bed. I’ll give you this back once you’ve replaced the straw and changed the blankets,” he admonished him, waving the knife in front of his growling face.
He would make an exception and take him to the camp for the night. Thorfinn knew how to constantly give himself fevers, colds, infections and other ills never previously observed by medicine of all times. Making sure he didn’t die was becoming Bjorn’s full-time job.
Speaking of Bjorn… it had already been over an hour since he sent him to check the boy wasn’t already a distant memory. The graves were there, you didn’t even have to dig one for him.
Not that he had thought about that all the time. He wondered if the messenger was already on his way back to bring the answer he was already sure of. He calculated their next move. The approaching autumn looked promising, the war season might even extend into October. And he had heard rumours about an uprising... perhaps because some of those rumours had been spread by himself.
Still, it was true that the day following a battle offered little distraction. The dead were dead. The seriously wounded were close to be too. The others, the living, were so drunk they looked just as dead.
So Askeladd had sat down on a bench at the edge of the camp, and there he had waited, trying not to pay too much attention to the ruins that victory always left in a field where wine had been spilled instead of blood. Bacchus kills more than Mars, the Romans said.
He didn’t have to wait much longer before he heard approaching footsteps and shortly afterwards spotted the figure of his second-in-command emerging from the path.
“Hey, Bjorn!” Askeladd waved at him, wearing the most seraphic of his friendly expressions. Bjorn was limping slightly, and the cause was a calf injury visible from the tear in his trousers. So he had experienced first-hand one of the inventions he was most proud of in his youth.
“Did you forget to tell me something?” grunted Bjorn, coming closer with the heavy tread of a defeated one.
Askeladd raised his palms in candid apology. “I’m a man of many talents, but I don’t like to brag.”
Bjorn slumped beside him on the bench, moaning. “The kid bit me.” He showed him his latest battle decorum, which was the vivid sign of Thorfinn’s dental arches standing out against the triangle of skin between forefinger and thumb.
“So he’s alive and in good spirits, too!” Askeladd cheered as if delighted by the news. Bjorn’s face darkened with a sullen expression. Askeladd rolled his eyes – one child was enough... “Is it possible that you forgot to ring the bell?”
Tied to the rope that bounded his small fort there was indeed a bell, whose primary function was to warn Thorfinn if something, man or animal, had approached or crossed the border. As for the fact that it had to be rang if you were visiting...
“So what! Isn’t it enough to say ‘Hello, I’m Bjorn’?”
Here you are. Six-year-olds, no matter how hard life has been on them, are capable of developing odd quirks. For Thorfinn, it was the bell. You can defeat armies, but no reason or force can win a child’s stubbornness.
The bell was a serious business. In other words, it was the closest thing to a toy he had, but it wasn’t wise to point it out to him.
“Now, now, big boy, don’t get upset.” Askeladd offered him a few comforting pats on the back.“You know he has quite a temper! I’m sure it was nothing personal, he’s always so enthusiastic towards everyone” he sighed good-naturedly, but turning serious again. “So? Did you give him the message?”
“Yes, and I think this was his answer. You should go see him” he said, a little apprehensive.
“Me? Why me?” Askeladd feigned puzzlement, but Bjorn gave him an eloquent look, a look that meant don’t be an asshole. If he knew him well, and yes, he knew him well, Bjorn felt a little guilty about the boy’s fate. For them it had been just a trivial job, but that didn’t stop him from being sorry. The boy’s condition genuinely concerned him.
How this should also involve Askeladd was what disturbed him. It’s not like he and the boy got along that well.
Bjorn kept pressuring him with his gaze.
“Oh I see. So he’s having one of his murderous tantrums” Askeladd sighed, slapping his palms on his thighs as he stood up. “Children! They’re so lively these days!”
Damn Bjorn. Damn brat. What a nuisance.
At least Askeladd didn’t mind taking long walks in the woods.