Chapter 98
And so, several years passed.
Through numerous voyages, I began to gain experience.
People called me ‘Shield-Bearer’ Thorkel, and before I knew it, I had become the oldest veteran on Gorm’s ship.
My senior, Magni, after buying enough land, devoted himself solely to farming. He, who had saved his wife and even purchased an Angle slave, would advise me whenever he saw me.
“Thorkel, you need to settle down too.”
“I enjoy voyaging. And fighting too.”
“Who said you shouldn’t fight? I’m saying have children to carry on your name, and then fight.”
I laughed.
“If I find a good woman.”
I said that, but it wasn’t that I hadn’t met any decent women. It was just that after a rough night of drunken passion, it all felt meaningless.
The heat rising from deep within a woman’s body when I thrust myself inside her felt incredibly sweet during the long nights. But come morning, the warmth entangled with mine felt cumbersome and bothersome.
It seemed I wasn’t destined to die an old man in the arms of my wife and grandchildren.
Gorm earned a good profit from each voyage and began to upgrade to larger ships.
Now, Gorm’s ship had become a large vessel capable of carrying 50 men.
That winter, too, I headed to Angleland with Gorm.
Northumbria. It now felt like my home.
My first voyage was like that of a petty thief, sneaking in and stealing like a robber before fleeing. But now, things were different.
We openly challenged the lord to a fight.
The small-scale lord negotiated with us, offering tribute, Danegeld, to make us leave, and we accepted it and headed to the neighboring territory.
And challenged them to a fight as well.
If they offered tribute, we accepted. If they offered a fight, we fought.
Either way, we roamed Northumbria until the ship’s hold was full.
The last lord offered a fight.
“…Do we really have to fight?”
“Gorm, let’s just go.”
People didn’t seem to want to fight much.
Our hold was nearly full. We wouldn’t be missing much if we just retreated.
However, Gorm, with his longsword in hand, said firmly.
“If we retreat once, every village that hears the rumor will resist. Do you want to suffer for the rest of your lives for one moment of ease?”
If Gorm fought, our job was to fight.
And my job was to fight well.
“Shield wall!”
We formed a shield wall and advanced one step at a time.
This moment, this moment of approaching the enemy, was the moment when everything was tested.
My head throbbed with the rush of blood, and my mouth was dry with thirst. I had to suppress the fear that urged me to flee like a coward, while simultaneously suppressing the fighting spirit that wanted to charge forward like a berserker.
Drenching our noses with each other’s sweat and body odor, we had to become a living wall, advancing forward, and forward again.
Even if the unfortunate souls abandoned by the gods fell, struck by arrows through the gaps in the shields, even if they charged at us with spirited shouts.
The shield wall could never loosen.
If we could just bring the well-formed shield wall to the front of the enemy lines… what unfolded afterward would be nothing but slaughter.
It was what I enjoyed most.
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The foolishness of not offering Danegeld had to be thoroughly punished.
We took as much as we could, and burned what wasn’t worth taking.
It was a shame. Just because we wouldn’t take it, burning it felt wasteful.
But punishment was punishment.
We plundered everything.
Silverware, mirrors, the jewelry of noblewomen, and so on.
The monastery was no exception to the plundering.
“Thorkel, come over here for a moment.”
While plundering everything in the monastery, a young lad discovered something curious.
It was a makeshift prison.
The prisoner was wearing a collar, handcuffs, and shackles with spikes protruding all over, but the peculiarity was that the spikes weren’t facing outwards, but inwards.
So that even the slightest movement would cause them to be pierced by the spikes.
Wearing this formidable contraption, seemingly designed to restrain even a bear, was an emaciated woman.
It was strange.
The castle had a proper prison. Why bother building a makeshift prison in the monastery, and why subject a woman confined in this makeshift prison to such a formidable restraint?
“Could she be a witch?”
One of my men, well-versed in religion, spoke.
“A witch?”
“It’s a derogatory term the Jesus worshippers use for shamans.”
“Why would those monks, who can’t even use magic, belittle shamans?”
They were truly an incomprehensible lot.
“Can we release her?”
“It’s difficult with our equipment. We’ll need to take her to a blacksmith.”
“Then let’s take her.”
“Is there really a need? The Jesus worshippers must have had a reason for capturing her…”
I said simply.
“Because I want her.”
I liked the woman’s gaze. Unlike her emaciated body, her eyes held danger and a wildness.
So I included her in the plunder.
Upon returning home, the spoils were distributed. The best went to the Jarl, and only after the Jarl was satisfied could we divide our share.
My share was a cross inlaid with gold and jewels. One of the most expensive items.
One of the reasons ‘lucky’ Gorm could succeed again and again was likely due to his fairness.
I headed to the blacksmith with the slave and asked him to break the shackles.
The blacksmith then said.
“Instead of breaking the shackles, how about making a key? There must be a reason they made these shackles…”
“What reason?”
“These aren’t the shackles the Angles typically use. These were made with a new mold. And they’re newly made, recently too.”
They made these formidable shackles because of this skinny woman?
I became intrigued.
“Break them. Let’s see what this woman can do.”
“I warned you.”
The blacksmith broke the slave’s shackles.
I returned home with the slave.
It was the last mistake of my life.
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You probably realize it by now, but the slave was a werewolf. The contraption was a safety measure to pierce and kill her if she transformed into a werewolf.
I learned this fact when a giant werewolf pounced on me that night.
I fought back desperately, but the werewolf’s strength and agility were beyond human.
It was luck that I survived.
It was because the rampaging slave saw the Bible, the gold cross, the souvenir from my first voyage, and the yet-to-be-sold plunder from this voyage, all placed on the table.
“…”
The slave, seemingly a Jesus worshipper, hesitated at the sight of them and fled.
But luck wasn’t the only thing following me.
“Thorkel? What’s going on?”
It was my senior, Magni, who had come to celebrate the success of the voyage.
“No! Senior! Run away!”
The werewolf, while hesitant to harm me, showed no such hesitation towards Magni.
“Gah!”
Magni was slaughtered like a dog.
Without even grasping a weapon.
The werewolf, drunk on blood, howled long and hard before disappearing into the forest.
That was the last day of my human life and the first day of my life as a werewolf.
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One freeman was dead. The other was covered in blood.
Naturally, a moot had to be convened, and a trial held.
I told the truth, the whole truth.
“The slave I brought was a werewolf, and she attacked Magni and me.”
No one believed me.
Because the Jarl and everyone else were rational and reasonable people.
“The wounds are solely from the claws and teeth of a beast. Judging by the wolf howls heard last night, it’s clear a wolf that came down from the forest attacked the two drunken men.”
“No! D*mn it! It was a werewolf! My slave was a werewolf!”
“And the slave clearly took advantage of the chaos to escape.”
“Believe me!”
No one believed me.
The only fortunate thing was that no one suspected I had harmed Magni.
I was close friends with Magni, and the wounds on his body were ones only a beast could inflict.
However, there was no way to overcome their reasonable doubts.
“D*mn it.”
It took a full month for the wounds to heal. I sought out a shaman and asked for a prophecy.
“How can I track down the werewolf that harmed Magni?”
Even the shaman didn’t believe in werewolves.
But he performed a bone reading for me.
“There is a large wolf in the north. Head north.”
The shaman added, as if an afterthought.
“You are destined to freeze to death. Dress warmly in furs.”
I dressed warmly in furs, and packed my spear and shield, sword and axe. And I packed plenty of dried meat and mead.
I would avenge my friend or die like a beast.
With firm resolve, I began to roam the mountains.
Even in summer, camping was tiring. Winter camping was madness.
Shivering in the cold carried by the mountain winds, barely managing to close my eyes in a cave, I would be startled awake by wolves or foxes seeking shelter from the wind.
Days of neither eating nor sleeping properly.
Days continued where I couldn’t tell day from night, dream from reality.
But the most agonizing thing was not knowing if I was truly tracking the werewolf.
I could recognize wolf tracks. I could recognize human tracks. But what kind of tracks did a werewolf leave? Was I just wandering aimlessly?
In anxiety and confusion, I prayed aloud.
“Mighty Thor, show me the way!”
Amidst the chaos where I couldn’t distinguish up from down, front from back, heat from cold, a bolt of lightning struck.
Perhaps it was just a hallucination of seeing a bolt of lightning.
But I stumbled, following the lightning.
And finally, I found her.
Magni’s enemy.
“Slave…”
The werewolf snarled ferociously at me. A warning to back off.
But I had no intention of retreating.
As long as my hand held a shield, I had no intention of dying either.
I fought.
Block with the shield, strike with the axe.
As long as I could stick to this simple principle, I was invincible.
But what meaning did human martial arts hold against an opponent whose shield shattered when blocked, and whose axe handle broke when struck?
I thrust my spear, swung my sword, and fought and fought again.
If it hadn’t been for the thick fur clothing, I would have died ten times over in that fight.
In the final moment, when I plunged my sword into the werewolf’s heart, it wasn’t due to any plan or martial skill. It was merely a coincidence, caused by the werewolf losing its footing.
But whether coincidence or not, it didn’t matter.
I beheaded the werewolf.
Then, the werewolf’s corpse instantly transformed into the corpse of an emaciated woman.
“…”
As if everything I had experienced was just a long dream…
I stumbled into a nearby cave.
To recover enough strength to descend the mountain.
It seemed to be the werewolf’s cave as well.
Amidst the clutter, a cross made of woven bones caught my eye.
A large cross, seemingly woven from the thigh bones of a bear or a wolf.
“…”
She had been imprisoned in the monastery. The formidable shackles she wore meant the monks saw her as a monster.
What did it feel like to be abandoned by the god you sought salvation from?
What could have been the reason for clinging to that god once more, even after being abandoned?
I didn’t know.
After all, I was blessed with the favor of the mighty Thor.
Exhausted, I fell asleep.
And when I awoke, I realized I had become the very being I had defeated.
A werewolf.
