The Viking

There was no clear landscape, only vague shapes and patterns in a dizzy spin. Dirt or sand kicked up around his feet as he stumbled trying to make his way somewhere or away from something. He wasn’t sure. His head ached and he held his head with his hands and could feel it was wet but, he wasn’t conscious enough to understand or signalize in his mind. Is it blood, sweat or just wet from water?. The sky bobbed and faded into earth then back again. His thoughts were nothing but, grunts and shots of lighting pain. . He was no more than a wounded animal fleeing from trauma, by instinct with no understanding of why.

Smoke and ash floated in the air. It rained dust. And splintered air tore into his wounds. A rotted cacophony of death rattled in his sick bleeding brain.

A child ran up a hill side. His heart pounding in his chest. His eyes, gaping from horror, violence and flesh, carnage and war. The barbarians had invaded, his people had fought. The battlefield was a graveyard now. His village a burned out hole in a wintry forest. His family lost to death, still fresh their ghost crying out hovering and swelling above the charred landscape. His eyes had watched it all, and now he was fleeing.

Death now came alive, on the simmering battlefield. The wounded, dying, mangled, still breathing only death breaths, wheezing, spewing blood, and calling out in agony. Bodies mangled, in desperation, lunging for life, regressed to infants, involuntary fits and seizures as they fell under the clutches of deaths mayhem. The living dead waded in a pool of searing pain. The clouds of ash blacked out the sky and blood ran in the snow.

The forest sparkled as the sun ran its cold light through the snow-covered trees. A calm covered the dying landscape like a funeral shroud. All the ghost lost dimensions as shadow upon shadow were dispersed by the crisp rays of the afternoon sun.

The boy remained hidden as he watched the Viking stumble randomly, lost and in circles. A curiosity touched the fear inside the boy. He wiped his dirty face and rubbed his glassy, bloodshot eyes and watched the wounded man.

The boy shivered as the temperature dropped. He followed the wounded warrior, keeping cautiously stealthy and at a distance. They walked in circles through the looming forest trees and snow capped terrain for hours. The Viking, under deaths twilight, lurched and swayed unhinged from the living world that held him, falling more into the blackness, a spector that covers all with a void.

The boy watched from afar the limp, fallen body, as it laid sunken, face first into the snow.

For what seemed like years he sat huddled against the frigid air staring at the still body, waiting for some sign of life or assurance of death. He finally made his way down to the body and carefully examined the corpse. He dug into the snow and strained and slipped until he was able to turn the hefty warrior over. Then he could see the Viking, very clearly breathing, faintly.

Dusk turned the sky gray and the boy gathered kindling and dry wood and built a fire. He melted snow and poured it into the dying mans mouth. The boy combed through the Vikings processions and found small portions of beef and breads. He ate and fed small bits to the Viking, who remained alive, but unconscious. The boy dressed the gashed bleeding wounds the best he could and tried to place the Viking in a more comfortable position near the fire. The boy sat and watched the man. His little fingers hard and numb, his breath shallow, he shivered and shook in the freezing night. He got closer and closer to the fire but, still the cold sliced through his body.

He became more and more numb, cold, numb,

The End