Grimdux
I. This is the direct sequel to Touch O' Luck
Touch O' Luck
II) It serves as a prologue to the Old Realms series.
It will be a superior reading experience
to start this story from the beginning
Please give it a good rating if you liked it, it will help the story reach a much bigger audience:)
Chapter specific maps of the realms
Maps of the Realms
Character portraits
‘Devious’ Dirk Curd
Death, Debts & Devious Dirk
Part II
-Neither you, nor he are gonna die there also-
Burning lava encircled in winter’s icy embrace.
Cold, sweltering pain.
Blood turned to ice and then to black bark.
Hard as stone.
Zofia looked at him, eyes bloodshot, face covered in ice under the moon’s silent light.
Come then, she said. Do it.
You fuckin’ want to.
Dirk grimaced, mouth crooking around the old cut marring it. As many cuts on his black-grey face as wrinkles. Every year counted double for him. As many scars inside, as those outside. No sin, no crime left uncommitted.
Do it, she repeated. The medicine almost as repugnant as the decease of winter.
I won’t die here.
Look at me, Dirk told her, himself half dead.
You won’t, he rustled, when she did.
Kaiser Dukes narrowed his eyes, jaw clenched under his helm so tight you could hear bones crackling. Judie Karl got her long shafted axe out, more a wood-cutting tool than a weapon. Rud, who looked young but wasn’t, took a casual step back and unsheathed his greatsword. The long blade almost the size of a small spear gleaming in the moon’s same silent light.
Same moons, a different night.
“Ah, shag it all to hell,” Dirk said and Kaiser Dukes opened his mouth wide, teeth showing and let out a mighty roar before charging at him. Dirk sidestepped, an eye on the circling leering Judie, the lead warrior’s boots thundering on the frozen mud.
TA-TA-TA
Kaiser reached him in a breath and swung at him, but Curd slapped the steel hammer away with the flat of his axe’s blade, then took another step to the side to cut on Judie’s advance. Judie snarled and raised her axe, but Kaiser attacked him again swinging on the return and got in her way. Dirk jerked back, muscles protesting and only half-awake, the nasty whistling of the spike an inch from his frozen nose. The momentum carrying his attacker sideways, after his heavy weapon.
Dirk flicked his right arm up at the same time, as if to toss his axe in the air, the shaft gliding in his gloved fingers. Dirk rode the length of it until he gripped it by its bronze knob right at the end. Downed it brutally right after and caught Kaiser below the left shoulder, as his body had turned following his own attack.
The steel bit through plate, mail sleeve and hard leather, cut through flesh and bone and stopped when it reached mail again at the armpit. Dirk turned his head aside, the blood spatter warming his hand, the sound of the severed arm dropping between them hidden under Kaiser’s groan of misery.
“Curse ye!” Judie snarled and made two quick steps to move around the flailing Dukes. The man’s blood spurted out so hot it turned to vapor. Dirk circled around him as well, an ear on the heavy boots of Rud Crypt approaching from his blind side. Kaiser groaned and grunted alike a wounded animal, his mouth bloody as if he’d bitten part of his tongue off. Dirk pushed forward towards Judie and then dived for the ground, the whistling air informing him of the great sword’s arrival.
The heavy blade buzzed over him, forehead scrapping the gritty mud in the shaggin’ tumble and Judie shoved Kaiser away in turn to get him out of the way and get into the combat. Dirk who’d learned to fight in as close quarters as one could imagine, not out of talent, or the need for glory, but out of the pure desire to barely keep himself alive, went at her the moment he jumped on his feet.
Judie saw him coming, an eye half-closed as Dirk had mud in it, the other ogling in the throes of insanity, his mouth crooked in a grimace of desperation and she gasped, bringing her long-shafted axe up. Missing Rud’s angry bellow, as he’d put his shoulder in the return upper swing of the greatsword, the warrior's eyes focused on the moving Dirk as well.
Everyone was looking at Dirk, even the flailing and bleeding-out Kaiser.
Dirk reached the heavy-set woman, the long axe held with both hands pushed out to cleave him in the face and behind him the greatsword tearing at the air again wanting to split him in two. Judie snarled, white teeth showing and eyes glaring, and Dirk grunted just as loud before he ducked. The woman had a split second, first to rejoice at the sight of Dirk’s neck offered on a plate for an easy beheading and next, feel Rud’s greatsword separating her own head from her shoulders.
“Fuck!” Rud cursed, as Dirk stumbled away through a curtain of scalding gore, Judie’s falling axe smacking him on the back. He tried to find his footing, all the ice turned to mire under him and spotted Zofia watching his efforts from some distance with her mouth half-opened, more in horror than admiration.
Dirk made it out of the danger zone still breathing and only slightly maimed and turned around to glare at Rud Crypt. The warrior was staring at the still walking headless body of Jodie, faltering about and spraying blood everywhere in bewilderment.
“Ye better get Kaiser to a dottore,” Dirk rustled. The veteran warrior eyed him with newfound respect and a touch of suspicion.
“I have the longer blade,” Rud ‘Grail’ Crypt grunted, while Judie at last found a broken branch and went down with a loud thud.
“She had the longer axe and numbers,” Dirk countered, finding some of his confidence again. Truth be told, he’d fought the whole thing scared shitless.
Rud nodded seeing his point.
“I’ll have yer measure next time Dirk,” Rud warned him and Dirk snorted.
“Nah, yer just going to run back to Dukes men further up the road,” Dirk mocked him “Gather as many squids as ye can wake up and come after me like a cunt.”
Rud spat down, the insult cutting deep.
Probably because it was the plaugin’ truth!
“Ye can’t turn back,” ‘Grail’ told him in parting, while he approached Kaiser. The leader of the Dukes Warband, ashen in color and barely standing upright. “And I’ll wait ye at the stone bridge. Ye can’t get through to Rockfort as there’s an army coming this way and I have horses to warn them. Where will ye go, Devious Dirk? Yer a dead man walking.”
Into the woods, he thought.
Their trunks all white bark, hard as stone. The paths all closed and packed with solid ice, but for those left by animals.
The light coming through only in certain precious places, under the high above their heads as much as dark canopy.
Judie’s heavy longcoat –white bear fur on the inside- kept Zofia alive. Her long-shafted axe helped them both. Two weeks in, the weather changed. The first change being a thunderstorm that brought down tons of water, and the second, the sun making its reappearance signaling the coming spring.
“Ground opens up,” Zofia said tiredly, more color on her cheeks now and that fierceness back. “Oh crap, I have to piss again. Are ye fuckin’ kidding me? You should have boiled that water more, Dirk! I told you darn it. Fuck!”
“I did,” Dirk defended himself and watched her walk away slowly. The woman heavy, though it didn’t show with that coat on. “And it doesn’t open up. The trees have gotten bigger.”
“I wish for a tavern Curd. Warm ale and cold beer, a barrel of it,” Zofia groaned from behind a massive trunk, her trickle a different sound than those of the woods surrounding them. “Ye know anything near here? Where the fuck are we anyway? Tyeus helps us, what am I saying? Ye got no blasted idea!”
“Oldtrees, I reckon,” Dirk said and stood up to watch a giant Elk watching them from a sunny spot amidst another two even bigger trunks. The trees here reaching over fifty meters in height, some even a hundred. The animal raised its majestic head and snorted.
Where’s the river mate? Dirk asked him silently. I haven’t seen a star for a month.
The giant Elk snorted again and pointed his head straight back towards the west.
“Gods above yer ugly,” Zofia said coming out from behind her own tree. “Must’ve been drunk as a skunk when I fucked ye!”
“Nah, you were half-dead,” Dirk replied, not feeling insulted. Hear a lot of anything and you’ll get bored of it. Tune it out eventually.
And Dirk knew he wasn’t much to look at to begin with.
“Yeah,” Zofia agreed and felt her swollen belly. “Ye could’ve spilt yer seed outside.”
Dirk frowned. “Never done it afore.”
Zofia let out a pained sigh. “Lots of mean-looking little dicks running about in Krakenhall? Oops, sorry. I said the quiet part out loud.”
She didn’t look sorry at all.
“Yer tongue hasn’t improved at all milady,” Dirk grunted. “If I hadn’t known better, I could’ve mistaken ye for a tavern harlot.”
“Nice dodge Dirk, but ye don’t deserve better,” Zofia retorted. “And me tongue was always sharp.”
“I bet the old Jarl loves that, a daughter that won’t blush,” Dirk commented with the hint of a smile.
“The Jarl will have you killed and I’m not sure about me, especially if the kid comes out some funny color.”
“What color?”
“Grey?” Zofia replied and stared at his red curls hopefully. “White.”
The man who ambushed them two weeks later was all black. Not because of his skin, but because he was covered in dark mud. Barrel size chest naked, the cold not bothering him. Eyes a washed-out blue, almost white. He had three spears on him, the tip crude but sharp and pointy enough to pierce a bear’s hide.
“Just looking for the river,” Dirk rustled hefting Judie’s old axe. He’d given his to Zofia. “Not a fight.”
Someone sneaking up on them from the right, beyond the wet scrubs.
“What is an Issir doing with a Northern lass?” The first man asked him, in the old Nord Tongue, much different than common and rarely spoken in the cities.
“I’m half o’ that,” Dirk explained eyeing the newcomer appearing, carrying a long spear as well. Also covered in black mud alike the first.
“What’s the other half?” A third man said, this one much bigger than the other two and fierce looking, grey and red beard reaching his belly. Rough hide pants worn underneath over his legs. He carried a cleaver looking weapon. A custom blade long alike a sword’s and heavy.
“A Nord like you,” Dirk replied and glanced at Zofia nervously, his eyes begging her to keep silent.
The man paused and then threw his head back and laughed hard. An ancient sound that reverberated among the Oldtrees and the mostly quiet woods.
“Boy,” The aged warrior said, when he sated himself. “You’re standing under the Oldtrees worried. You’re no Nord. Else you’d have known blood can’t be spilt here. Fear not, for we keep the old words. Name’s Ulf Willard,” he finished and eyed him one last time. “If you seek to find yer way out of the woods, you better follow us. Bring yer pregnant woman with you and keep her near. She attracts predators.”
It is said, there’s a place somewhere in the ancient Whitebark Woods near the banks of Umlen River, the name meaning ‘Tiny Stream’ in the Old Nord Tongue. The river being anything but tiny. A man named Willard discovered a spot near it at some time in the very distant past, after following an Oldtree around. The tale fanciful. The man himself a giant according to accounts, though his descendants never reached his height.
The clan he founded there took his name and kept living isolated in that small village on the flat rock he’d stood upon to gaze at the waters. What he preached was never written down, but his people followed it and stayed clear of the Northmen first and the Issirs that came after them.
Eventually, people stopped coming into the woods.
Curd stayed with them for months, until Zofia delivered her baby boy, before the next winter. The child’s skin a dark grey, his hair white as snow unlike his father’s and the eyes that rare green and blue of his famed mother.
“Get that tail half-Nord!” Big Svan yelled and pulled the large hammerhead fish out of the river. Almost two meters long and with gnarly teeth covering its mouth, it was a nightmare to control from its tail and too slippery with his fingers frozen from keeping them in the icy water.
“It might bite my darn hand off!” Dirk protested heaving the fat fish on the frost-covered bank.
“Aye. Your hand,” Svan guffawed, his sense of humor bucolic. “Haha! Grab the tail!”
“For fuck’s sake,” Dirk grunted and reaching got his axe out, started hacking at the damn thing furiously. The stench coming out awful. Rotten. “What is this shaggin’ shite?” He asked a grimacing Svan.
“We need to cut the tail,” Svan Willard explained. “Else it’ll ruin the meat on purpose. Aye, grab some mud and use on yer face and body. Yer wearing too much clothes to get any work done. Then, we must catch another one.”
“It’s the fuckin’ winter!” Dirk protested, not wanting to get back inside the river again.
“That’s what women say!” Svan guffawed and started chuckling again while slowly stepping inside the freezing waters.
Dirk groaned and stared at the dark clouds above them, already missing the summer.
Zofia raised her red head, when she heard him return, stinking of fish guts and something other even more awful. She smelled of baby and warm milk. Her breasts full of it, caught his attention, as much as the little guy that was sucking on them. Dirk envied him for that, but he kept it to himself.
“Gods, I’m not even going to ask,” she hissed, always warm and cuddly when he approached her.
“Was by the river, helping Svan bring food woman!” He grunted, the matter bothering him lately. Living with the Willard’s Clan had made him nervous. Lack of sleep had played its role there and fear the little guy might not make it.
“Eh, I hate fish, Dirk. Must I hunt myself to have some proper food here?” Zofia complained and removed the fat nipple from the baby’s mouth, milk spilling down her pale breast mesmerizing. “Dirk,” Zofia said, snapping him out of his reverie. “I mean it. I can’t support the baby like this.”
“Ulf is particular with hunting in the winter,” Dirk explained, watching her covering herself up. “Creatures of the forest were here afore us, he says. So we must be respectful.”
Zofia groaned and shook the baby to sleep. The little guy chuckled pulling at her long curls hard. Dirk grimaced, but she didn’t seem to mind and cooed at him affectionately. It was a wonderful sight to watch.
Ah, damnation.
“Ulf wants us gone,” Zofia said and Dirk raised his head surprised. He hadn’t gotten anything like that from the old Clan leader.
“Why?”
“I told him who I was,” Zofia explained and blushed seeing his glare. “What? You don’t expect to keep me here in the middle of nowhere forever Dirk!”
“I ain’t keeping you,” Dirk retorted. “That plan died a long time ago.”
“What plan? Giving me to Vanzon for a hut and a field to grow potatoes?” Zofia hissed, disturbing the baby. She groaned and started rocking him again in her hands.
“That was then,” Dirk said, looking at his boots. He wasn’t prepared to deal with this kind of trouble. “Ah, damnation. You shouldn’t have said anything. I had a good thing going here.”
“Nothing that would work in the long run Dirk. Your view of things is very limited,” Zofia said patiently. “Yes, they helped us and gave us a place to live for a while, but this is our problem to fix. We made this. Gods spared us for a reason, now it’s our turn. We must bring our son home.”
“You bring him anywhere near your father and he’ll throw the little guy in Lud River. I may not make it past the welcoming party and you well, are you gonna fight the Jarl for it?”
Zofia blew her curl off her face and stood up.
“If the Jarl touches him, I’ll make him pay.”
Dirk snorted, most of it despair.
“How?”
“Sam will back me up,” Zofia said. “He always listened to me.”
Nah, he won’t princess.
Not this time.
“Sam is the heir. Gangly is dead,” Dirk said with a grimace. Zofia reeled back shocked and he moved to take the baby from her.
“But… how? When?” She croaked.
“The Crulls cornered him at Stag’s Doab last winter. It was a big battle and the Jarl lost,” he said looking at the small creature in his large hands.
“How do you know?”
“Svan told me a couple of months back,” Dirk explained. “He had traveled in the summer as you remember. Learned it from hunters. I didn’t want to tell you.”
Zofia had gone into labor that week.
He looked away to not see her crying. “Sam won’t help against the Jarl,” Dirk said finally, forcing himself to get it out. “But if you want to go back to yer people, I’ll take ye there.”
“You will?” Zofia asked him and he sighed, crooked his mouth and the baby woke up and stared at him with large eyes full of wonder.
“Aye,” Dirk Curd replied, trying to smile for the little guy, realizing halfway through he didn’t remember how to do it.
“What if it doesn’t work out?” Zofia asked and he closed his mouth, the baby looking shocked at his teeth not understanding what he was doing. Dirk turned to look at the mother of his child.
There was worry there, fear for the little guy and curiosity.
That was all.
Men like him didn’t get much more than that.
“Then I’ll get ye both out of there,” he had told her. “It won’t be pretty, I reckon. But neither you, nor he are gonna die there also.”
Grimdux
I. This is the direct sequel to Touch O' Luck
Touch O' Luck
II) It serves as a prologue to the Old Realms series.
It will be a superior reading experience
to start this story from the beginning
Please give it a good rating if you liked it, it will help the story reach a much bigger audience:)
Chapter specific maps of the realms
Maps of the Realms
Character portraits
‘Devious’ Dirk Curd
Death, Debts & Devious Dirk
Part II
-Neither you, nor he are gonna die there also-
Burning lava encircled in winter’s icy embrace.
Cold, sweltering pain.
Blood turned to ice and then to black bark.
Hard as stone.
Zofia looked at him, eyes bloodshot, face covered in ice under the moon’s silent light.
Come then, she said. Do it.
You fuckin’ want to.
Dirk grimaced, mouth crooking around the old cut marring it. As many cuts on his black-grey face as wrinkles. Every year counted double for him. As many scars inside, as those outside. No sin, no crime left uncommitted.
Do it, she repeated. The medicine almost as repugnant as the decease of winter.
I won’t die here.
Look at me, Dirk told her, himself half dead.
You won’t, he rustled, when she did.
Kaiser Dukes narrowed his eyes, jaw clenched under his helm so tight you could hear bones crackling. Judie Karl got her long shafted axe out, more a wood-cutting tool than a weapon. Rud, who looked young but wasn’t, took a casual step back and unsheathed his greatsword. The long blade almost the size of a small spear gleaming in the moon’s same silent light.
Same moons, a different night.
“Ah, shag it all to hell,” Dirk said and Kaiser Dukes opened his mouth wide, teeth showing and let out a mighty roar before charging at him. Dirk sidestepped, an eye on the circling leering Judie, the lead warrior’s boots thundering on the frozen mud.
TA-TA-TA
Kaiser reached him in a breath and swung at him, but Curd slapped the steel hammer away with the flat of his axe’s blade, then took another step to the side to cut on Judie’s advance. Judie snarled and raised her axe, but Kaiser attacked him again swinging on the return and got in her way. Dirk jerked back, muscles protesting and only half-awake, the nasty whistling of the spike an inch from his frozen nose. The momentum carrying his attacker sideways, after his heavy weapon.
Dirk flicked his right arm up at the same time, as if to toss his axe in the air, the shaft gliding in his gloved fingers. Dirk rode the length of it until he gripped it by its bronze knob right at the end. Downed it brutally right after and caught Kaiser below the left shoulder, as his body had turned following his own attack.
The steel bit through plate, mail sleeve and hard leather, cut through flesh and bone and stopped when it reached mail again at the armpit. Dirk turned his head aside, the blood spatter warming his hand, the sound of the severed arm dropping between them hidden under Kaiser’s groan of misery.
“Curse ye!” Judie snarled and made two quick steps to move around the flailing Dukes. The man’s blood spurted out so hot it turned to vapor. Dirk circled around him as well, an ear on the heavy boots of Rud Crypt approaching from his blind side. Kaiser groaned and grunted alike a wounded animal, his mouth bloody as if he’d bitten part of his tongue off. Dirk pushed forward towards Judie and then dived for the ground, the whistling air informing him of the great sword’s arrival.
The heavy blade buzzed over him, forehead scrapping the gritty mud in the shaggin’ tumble and Judie shoved Kaiser away in turn to get him out of the way and get into the combat. Dirk who’d learned to fight in as close quarters as one could imagine, not out of talent, or the need for glory, but out of the pure desire to barely keep himself alive, went at her the moment he jumped on his feet.
Judie saw him coming, an eye half-closed as Dirk had mud in it, the other ogling in the throes of insanity, his mouth crooked in a grimace of desperation and she gasped, bringing her long-shafted axe up. Missing Rud’s angry bellow, as he’d put his shoulder in the return upper swing of the greatsword, the warrior's eyes focused on the moving Dirk as well.
Everyone was looking at Dirk, even the flailing and bleeding-out Kaiser.
Dirk reached the heavy-set woman, the long axe held with both hands pushed out to cleave him in the face and behind him the greatsword tearing at the air again wanting to split him in two. Judie snarled, white teeth showing and eyes glaring, and Dirk grunted just as loud before he ducked. The woman had a split second, first to rejoice at the sight of Dirk’s neck offered on a plate for an easy beheading and next, feel Rud’s greatsword separating her own head from her shoulders.
“Fuck!” Rud cursed, as Dirk stumbled away through a curtain of scalding gore, Judie’s falling axe smacking him on the back. He tried to find his footing, all the ice turned to mire under him and spotted Zofia watching his efforts from some distance with her mouth half-opened, more in horror than admiration.
Dirk made it out of the danger zone still breathing and only slightly maimed and turned around to glare at Rud Crypt. The warrior was staring at the still walking headless body of Jodie, faltering about and spraying blood everywhere in bewilderment.
“Ye better get Kaiser to a dottore,” Dirk rustled. The veteran warrior eyed him with newfound respect and a touch of suspicion.
“I have the longer blade,” Rud ‘Grail’ Crypt grunted, while Judie at last found a broken branch and went down with a loud thud.
“She had the longer axe and numbers,” Dirk countered, finding some of his confidence again. Truth be told, he’d fought the whole thing scared shitless.
Rud nodded seeing his point.
“I’ll have yer measure next time Dirk,” Rud warned him and Dirk snorted.
“Nah, yer just going to run back to Dukes men further up the road,” Dirk mocked him “Gather as many squids as ye can wake up and come after me like a cunt.”
Rud spat down, the insult cutting deep.
Probably because it was the plaugin’ truth!
“Ye can’t turn back,” ‘Grail’ told him in parting, while he approached Kaiser. The leader of the Dukes Warband, ashen in color and barely standing upright. “And I’ll wait ye at the stone bridge. Ye can’t get through to Rockfort as there’s an army coming this way and I have horses to warn them. Where will ye go, Devious Dirk? Yer a dead man walking.”
Into the woods, he thought.
Their trunks all white bark, hard as stone. The paths all closed and packed with solid ice, but for those left by animals.
The light coming through only in certain precious places, under the high above their heads as much as dark canopy.
Judie’s heavy longcoat –white bear fur on the inside- kept Zofia alive. Her long-shafted axe helped them both. Two weeks in, the weather changed. The first change being a thunderstorm that brought down tons of water, and the second, the sun making its reappearance signaling the coming spring.
“Ground opens up,” Zofia said tiredly, more color on her cheeks now and that fierceness back. “Oh crap, I have to piss again. Are ye fuckin’ kidding me? You should have boiled that water more, Dirk! I told you darn it. Fuck!”
“I did,” Dirk defended himself and watched her walk away slowly. The woman heavy, though it didn’t show with that coat on. “And it doesn’t open up. The trees have gotten bigger.”
“I wish for a tavern Curd. Warm ale and cold beer, a barrel of it,” Zofia groaned from behind a massive trunk, her trickle a different sound than those of the woods surrounding them. “Ye know anything near here? Where the fuck are we anyway? Tyeus helps us, what am I saying? Ye got no blasted idea!”
“Oldtrees, I reckon,” Dirk said and stood up to watch a giant Elk watching them from a sunny spot amidst another two even bigger trunks. The trees here reaching over fifty meters in height, some even a hundred. The animal raised its majestic head and snorted.
Where’s the river mate? Dirk asked him silently. I haven’t seen a star for a month.
The giant Elk snorted again and pointed his head straight back towards the west.
“Gods above yer ugly,” Zofia said coming out from behind her own tree. “Must’ve been drunk as a skunk when I fucked ye!”
“Nah, you were half-dead,” Dirk replied, not feeling insulted. Hear a lot of anything and you’ll get bored of it. Tune it out eventually.
And Dirk knew he wasn’t much to look at to begin with.
“Yeah,” Zofia agreed and felt her swollen belly. “Ye could’ve spilt yer seed outside.”
Dirk frowned. “Never done it afore.”
Zofia let out a pained sigh. “Lots of mean-looking little dicks running about in Krakenhall? Oops, sorry. I said the quiet part out loud.”
She didn’t look sorry at all.
“Yer tongue hasn’t improved at all milady,” Dirk grunted. “If I hadn’t known better, I could’ve mistaken ye for a tavern harlot.”
“Nice dodge Dirk, but ye don’t deserve better,” Zofia retorted. “And me tongue was always sharp.”
“I bet the old Jarl loves that, a daughter that won’t blush,” Dirk commented with the hint of a smile.
“The Jarl will have you killed and I’m not sure about me, especially if the kid comes out some funny color.”
“What color?”
“Grey?” Zofia replied and stared at his red curls hopefully. “White.”
The man who ambushed them two weeks later was all black. Not because of his skin, but because he was covered in dark mud. Barrel size chest naked, the cold not bothering him. Eyes a washed-out blue, almost white. He had three spears on him, the tip crude but sharp and pointy enough to pierce a bear’s hide.
“Just looking for the river,” Dirk rustled hefting Judie’s old axe. He’d given his to Zofia. “Not a fight.”
Someone sneaking up on them from the right, beyond the wet scrubs.
“What is an Issir doing with a Northern lass?” The first man asked him, in the old Nord Tongue, much different than common and rarely spoken in the cities.
“I’m half o’ that,” Dirk explained eyeing the newcomer appearing, carrying a long spear as well. Also covered in black mud alike the first.
“What’s the other half?” A third man said, this one much bigger than the other two and fierce looking, grey and red beard reaching his belly. Rough hide pants worn underneath over his legs. He carried a cleaver looking weapon. A custom blade long alike a sword’s and heavy.
“A Nord like you,” Dirk replied and glanced at Zofia nervously, his eyes begging her to keep silent.
The man paused and then threw his head back and laughed hard. An ancient sound that reverberated among the Oldtrees and the mostly quiet woods.
“Boy,” The aged warrior said, when he sated himself. “You’re standing under the Oldtrees worried. You’re no Nord. Else you’d have known blood can’t be spilt here. Fear not, for we keep the old words. Name’s Ulf Willard,” he finished and eyed him one last time. “If you seek to find yer way out of the woods, you better follow us. Bring yer pregnant woman with you and keep her near. She attracts predators.”
It is said, there’s a place somewhere in the ancient Whitebark Woods near the banks of Umlen River, the name meaning ‘Tiny Stream’ in the Old Nord Tongue. The river being anything but tiny. A man named Willard discovered a spot near it at some time in the very distant past, after following an Oldtree around. The tale fanciful. The man himself a giant according to accounts, though his descendants never reached his height.
The clan he founded there took his name and kept living isolated in that small village on the flat rock he’d stood upon to gaze at the waters. What he preached was never written down, but his people followed it and stayed clear of the Northmen first and the Issirs that came after them.
Eventually, people stopped coming into the woods.
Curd stayed with them for months, until Zofia delivered her baby boy, before the next winter. The child’s skin a dark grey, his hair white as snow unlike his father’s and the eyes that rare green and blue of his famed mother.
“Get that tail half-Nord!” Big Svan yelled and pulled the large hammerhead fish out of the river. Almost two meters long and with gnarly teeth covering its mouth, it was a nightmare to control from its tail and too slippery with his fingers frozen from keeping them in the icy water.
“It might bite my darn hand off!” Dirk protested heaving the fat fish on the frost-covered bank.
“Aye. Your hand,” Svan guffawed, his sense of humor bucolic. “Haha! Grab the tail!”
“For fuck’s sake,” Dirk grunted and reaching got his axe out, started hacking at the damn thing furiously. The stench coming out awful. Rotten. “What is this shaggin’ shite?” He asked a grimacing Svan.
“We need to cut the tail,” Svan Willard explained. “Else it’ll ruin the meat on purpose. Aye, grab some mud and use on yer face and body. Yer wearing too much clothes to get any work done. Then, we must catch another one.”
“It’s the fuckin’ winter!” Dirk protested, not wanting to get back inside the river again.
“That’s what women say!” Svan guffawed and started chuckling again while slowly stepping inside the freezing waters.
Dirk groaned and stared at the dark clouds above them, already missing the summer.
Zofia raised her red head, when she heard him return, stinking of fish guts and something other even more awful. She smelled of baby and warm milk. Her breasts full of it, caught his attention, as much as the little guy that was sucking on them. Dirk envied him for that, but he kept it to himself.
“Gods, I’m not even going to ask,” she hissed, always warm and cuddly when he approached her.
“Was by the river, helping Svan bring food woman!” He grunted, the matter bothering him lately. Living with the Willard’s Clan had made him nervous. Lack of sleep had played its role there and fear the little guy might not make it.
“Eh, I hate fish, Dirk. Must I hunt myself to have some proper food here?” Zofia complained and removed the fat nipple from the baby’s mouth, milk spilling down her pale breast mesmerizing. “Dirk,” Zofia said, snapping him out of his reverie. “I mean it. I can’t support the baby like this.”
“Ulf is particular with hunting in the winter,” Dirk explained, watching her covering herself up. “Creatures of the forest were here afore us, he says. So we must be respectful.”
Zofia groaned and shook the baby to sleep. The little guy chuckled pulling at her long curls hard. Dirk grimaced, but she didn’t seem to mind and cooed at him affectionately. It was a wonderful sight to watch.
Ah, damnation.
“Ulf wants us gone,” Zofia said and Dirk raised his head surprised. He hadn’t gotten anything like that from the old Clan leader.
“Why?”
“I told him who I was,” Zofia explained and blushed seeing his glare. “What? You don’t expect to keep me here in the middle of nowhere forever Dirk!”
“I ain’t keeping you,” Dirk retorted. “That plan died a long time ago.”
“What plan? Giving me to Vanzon for a hut and a field to grow potatoes?” Zofia hissed, disturbing the baby. She groaned and started rocking him again in her hands.
“That was then,” Dirk said, looking at his boots. He wasn’t prepared to deal with this kind of trouble. “Ah, damnation. You shouldn’t have said anything. I had a good thing going here.”
“Nothing that would work in the long run Dirk. Your view of things is very limited,” Zofia said patiently. “Yes, they helped us and gave us a place to live for a while, but this is our problem to fix. We made this. Gods spared us for a reason, now it’s our turn. We must bring our son home.”
“You bring him anywhere near your father and he’ll throw the little guy in Lud River. I may not make it past the welcoming party and you well, are you gonna fight the Jarl for it?”
Zofia blew her curl off her face and stood up.
“If the Jarl touches him, I’ll make him pay.”
Dirk snorted, most of it despair.
“How?”
“Sam will back me up,” Zofia said. “He always listened to me.”
Nah, he won’t princess.
Not this time.
“Sam is the heir. Gangly is dead,” Dirk said with a grimace. Zofia reeled back shocked and he moved to take the baby from her.
“But… how? When?” She croaked.
“The Crulls cornered him at Stag’s Doab last winter. It was a big battle and the Jarl lost,” he said looking at the small creature in his large hands.
“How do you know?”
“Svan told me a couple of months back,” Dirk explained. “He had traveled in the summer as you remember. Learned it from hunters. I didn’t want to tell you.”
Zofia had gone into labor that week.
He looked away to not see her crying. “Sam won’t help against the Jarl,” Dirk said finally, forcing himself to get it out. “But if you want to go back to yer people, I’ll take ye there.”
“You will?” Zofia asked him and he sighed, crooked his mouth and the baby woke up and stared at him with large eyes full of wonder.
“Aye,” Dirk Curd replied, trying to smile for the little guy, realizing halfway through he didn’t remember how to do it.
“What if it doesn’t work out?” Zofia asked and he closed his mouth, the baby looking shocked at his teeth not understanding what he was doing. Dirk turned to look at the mother of his child.
There was worry there, fear for the little guy and curiosity.
That was all.
Men like him didn’t get much more than that.
“Then I’ll get ye both out of there,” he had told her. “It won’t be pretty, I reckon. But neither you, nor he are gonna die there also.”
