L'Ultima Notte
—ж—
"…The very ground you stand on will be ripped from beneath you… As you slowly lose everything, you will wonder why you weren't enough. You will reach a point where you will wish darkness could fill the void. And you will wonder why, in the end, you couldn't save them. You will realize that you are only human, and to be human is to have one foot already in the grave…"
- The Forsaken
—ж—
He found her sprawled out on the dirty floor of his forge.
Her skull had been smashed apart like a broken jar of mead. His coat had fallen in a pool from her shoulders and her shirt was drenched with something black that gleamed like streaks of molasses through her pale yellow hair. Standing over her, with the uninterested expression of a hunter who'd taken down a wounded fowl, was a stocky youth, wispily bearded and half a head shorter than he. He was wrapped in heavy furs and chainmail, and the insignia of the Langerhans Vikings was forged into his belt buckle and broach. By his side, he held a thick, short sword, clotted with the molasses-like substance and strands of her beautiful hair. When the youth took his gaze away from the murdered young woman, his eyes were dead as stones. His roving gaze held Hiccup for no more time than he spent on the anvil and the tools. He grunted a question in an alien tongue.
Hiccup stood stranded in the forge's heat, though his insides had gone as cold and icy as the Baltic waters. Emptied of breath. Emptied of will. Gone was each and every feeling he had formerly known. He turned and glanced at the blade he had been crafting earlier in the day, still resting cruelly in the smoldering flames. A fiery bronze crept across the bevels and towards the dark blue spine. The final temper was slipping from his grasp, as was the life of the young woman splayed at his feet, and with it all the magic he had spun into it, and too, his father's pride when he saw what he had almost created. It was these things that he could not let stand. Clamping the tongs fast on the weapon, he pulled the blade clear of the hot coals and turned.
The boy-murderer had begun advancing towards him; his face betrayed no alarm until he saw what Hiccup now carried. The bolt of fear that pierced him now betrayed is youth, but even still it earned him no mercy from the other Viking. And, as if of its' own volition, the dagger lunged forward with Hiccup attached, the hot air shimmering in the force of the attack. Hiccup lunged through the first pace with heavy feet, and through the second pace with a rage that choked every inch of him. By the third pace, raw hatred drove the point of the dagger and the man. An alien cry sprang from the boy-murderer, and Hiccup ran the blade through the boy's gut. Flesh sizzled on the steel as he ran the boy back against the wall; the stench of burning wool and fat filled his throat and burned his nostrils as the stony eyes in the twisted face bulged in horror and pain. The murderer screamed and dropped his sword and grabbed and screamed and screamed again as the red hot tangs stripped his palms down to sinew and bone. Hiccup clamped his left hand across the screaming lips. He leaned into the tongs until their jaws met the heaving belly and the tip of the dagger began to grate against bone.
The youth's stomach convulsed violently, and the boy vomited blood through Hiccup's fingers. Hiccup squeezed his hand tighter. Blood streaked from the boy's nostrils, and the now skinless hands continued to claw at the tongs and the stocky chest of the boy continued to convulse in futile spasms. Hiccup watched, motionless, as the light in the stony eyes faded, and he completed his shameless prayer to Freya. Hiccup pulled the dagger free and starred at the blade; it had become black as sin down to the small guard. The boy's body folded to the ground, but Hiccup did not even offer a final, fleeting glance. Now, in the quite of the forge, Hiccup heard the coarse shouting of the Langerhans Tribe, and the cries of chaos erupting from the village below. Astrid lay in the doorway, bloodied and still. Like the boy, something had passed from her that was no longer there.
Hiccup squeezed the hilt in his hand. The dagger's final quench had not been the purest dew but a murderer's blood, and if its destiny and purpose were now other than he had planned, so too were his own. He searched for a prayer on his still tongue, but found none. Something had been torn too, from within him, and not even Odin could restore it. Grabbing his coat, Hiccup once again covered her stilled body. Stepping out into the cold, a thick steam rose from the blackened dagger in his fist, as if the forge contained a shift bored up from Helheim and he were a demon warrior newly ascended. The small worker's courtyard was empty. The heavens at the mountain's edge were cast in a sickening vermillion cloud. Thunder rolled loud in the distance. He hastily walked across the cobbles, sick with fear. Fear of whatever vileness afflicted his village. Fear of shame. Of cowardice. Of the knowledge that he couldn't save her. Of the darkness that had now housed itself inside his spirit. Yet the darkness spoke with a feral, sweet-tasting power that brooked neither refusal nor hesitation.
Plunge in, the darkness whispered, sweet and sickening to his hurting soul.
Hiccup turned and looked back at the forge. For the first time, he saw not a place of wonder and mystery, but rather a drab stone hut. A drab stone hut with the corpse of his lover, and the corpse of a man he had killed, inside.
Like the blade in the quench.
Plunge in.
Hiccup made his way down towards the village center, now ripe with death, and fire and screaming children and the bodies of slaughtered men. Familiar faces starred back at him in horror: Greta the sheep herder, Vyadek the shipbuilder, all had expressions of horror and pain; of lives stricken to early, and of words left unsaid and deeds undone. Hiccup prayed for every one as he searched for his friends, his family, anyone. Hiccup held back the tears he hadn't earned. He'd failed his lover. He'd failed his father. His step-mother's corpse lay violated by beasts. He alone was left standing, dispossessed and powerless and lost and angry.
His pain was clean and true and vivid as it cleared his mind. His step-mother had denied them when they'd wanted even more than her flesh: her surrender and humiliation. The laying down of her Viking pride. Hiccup clutched the blade against his arm where it would not be seen. Without haste – for if the blade was still warm, his blood now ran cold – he waded into atrocity to claim his share.
The first creature shuddered and whooped in bestial spasm and his companions cheered, and he rose to his feet and stumbled backwards with his breeches around his knees. A second beast knelt to penetrate his step-mother and the other three groped her thighs and breasts to arouse themselves for their turn. All but the occupied beast looked to Hiccup and the fire raging behind emerald eyes. To them, he was nothing more than a wretched, misbegotten boy, another victim in their violent conquests of foreign land. A cry in their alien tongue from another group seemed to concern them more than the boy with the knife and the feral grin. The cry did nothing to deter Hiccup. The darkness rose within him and he felt free at last.
He plunged in.
