Kevin Hearne - Hammered

In that time I was a courier and peddler. I circuited the island in the summers, delivering messages and doing a little trade out of my pack, sharing news and providing some isolated farmers the sense that they were not alone in the world. Often they were just as glad to see me as I was to see them. I got free room and board for the gossip in my head, and they had the opportunity to reconnect with friends and relatives by entrusting me with a letter for a small bit of coin or provisions for my horse.

The visit I made to Hnappavellir farm that summer changed my life. Most of the household was out in the field; the only person at the farmhouse was a girl named Rannveig Ragnarsdóttir, nineteen years old and disaffected with rural existence. She had hair like summer wheat and a soft blush to her cheeks when she smiled. When I arrived, she was wrestling with a ball of dough in the kitchen, flour on her dress and completely unprepared for company. My presence flustered her as she tried to remember manners she’d learned long ago but had never practiced until now. I thought her completely lovely, and once we were seated with drinks and talking across a table, she thought my humble existence was somehow romantic and adventurous. The way she looked at me began to change after a few minutes; she became flirtatious, and I admit that I encouraged her. I had not known a woman’s touch in weeks. Before long, she was suggesting a short excursion to look for lost sheep. She packed some dried strips of meat and some biscuits along with a blanket, then selected a mare from the stables and led me to what is now Skaftafell National Park. There was a special place there, she said, that I should see. It was a waterfall called Svartifoss that tumbled over black columns of volcanic basalt, which had slowly cooled and crystallized into hexagonal shapes. It was a place of dark, musical beauty, and after the sun went down she said she wanted to have me there. I let her.

There were few escapes to be had in Rannveig’s life. Twenty people lived at Hnappavellir, most of them related, and there was nothing for a young girl to do in such a situation except be obedient. I was supposed to be a happy interlude, quickly enjoyed and long savored afterward, and I understood that and was grateful for it.

She was ravenous in her lovemaking, and I remember that she told me she wanted to do more than merely dwell on the earth; she wished that she could truly live. She and I interpreted this to mean that a nice shag under the light of a full moon sure beat the hell out of snoring through the night and then scrambling all day to bake the bread and keep the hearth fire burning. But that particular comment of hers was overheard and interpreted much differently.

The wolf who savaged us called himself Úlfur Dalsgaard. While we were locked in each other’s embrace, he bit deeply into my hamstrings and then tore at Rannveig’s calves. Utterly crippled and unable to flee or fight effectively, we thought we were finished. We half expected an entire pack to descend upon us, but soon enough we realized that there was only one wolf—a huge wolf, to be sure—and he’d backed off to watch us bleed.

I couldn’t believe my eyes at first: There had never been any wolves in Iceland, but of course I had heard tales of them. This one didn’t act like the wolves in stories. I didn’t understand the behavior. We were wounded, bleeding, and scared, and that should have been more than enough encouragement for him to kill us, but he wanted us to stay there, nothing more. If we tried to drag ourselves away or call for help, he growled and lunged at us. We were being saved for something special.

“What does he want?” Rannveig asked me.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “But I don’t think we have any choice but to wait.”

“You think he’s eaten our horses?” We’d heard nothing from them since we’d staked them perhaps a mile away and left them to graze—but that was not surprising, considering how close we were to the waterfall and the distance between us.

“No idea,” I replied. There was nothing to do but wait and wonder if we’d perish from blood loss or from jaws at our throat.

Our answers came at dawn. When the sun outshone the pale glow of the moon, the wolf writhed and howled on the ground, suddenly overcome by a series of snapping bones and popping tendons and shifting, sliding skin. During this grisly metamorphosis, he could not pursue us, and Rannveig thought it a good opportunity to flee. She gathered her clothes, rose to her feet, and said, “Come on, I’m well enough to run,” and I saw that her calves had healed very well in the hours before dawn. I looked down and realized my hamstrings were likewise remarkably restored, and this, coupled with the evidence of the transformation in front of me, explained the wolf’s odd behavior.

“He’s a werewolf!” I cried. “And he bit us during a full moon!” The stories of werewolves today vary greatly in their details, but at that time it was clear that they could add to their numbers only by biting someone during a full moon. The evidence pointed to a horrifying conclusion, but Rannveig had yet to realize it.

“Come on, Gunnar! Let’s go now!” Rannveig said, already yards away.

“No, look, do you not see? He is a man!” I pointed at the twitching form on the ground, now clearly recognizable as human. He was a bit shorter than me but thicker and more muscled. His blond hair was cropped closely around his skull, but his beard was full. The twitching stopped even as I spoke and he stood before us, naked and unashamed.

“You said you wanted to truly live,” he called to Rannveig in a mocking baritone. “So now I’ve given you the opportunity. Tonight, the moon will not be completely full, but it will be more than enough to trigger the transformation. You will become werewolves like me or die in the attempt. We will be Pack, and together we will live in the worlds of men and of nature.”

“But I don’t want to be a wolf!” Rannveig protested.

The man scoffed at this objection. “It’s necessary only once a month after you establish control. Think of it as a menstruation, except you won’t be the one bleeding.”

“Why didn’t you ask us first?” I said. “This is not a life I would choose.”

“It’s a life that chooses you,” he corrected me. “I could hardly ask you while in wolf form. And you cannot appreciate what you’re refusing until you’ve tried it. You will like being a wolf. Trust me.”

“Why should I trust you?” Rannveig demanded. “You bloody bit me!”

“And you’re welcome,” Úlfur replied. “I know you’ll get around to thanking me later.”

“Thank you? For what? Turning me into a monster? For condemning me to hell?”

“You are concerned about hell?” He waved a hand at me and laughed. “This man is not your husband, am I right?”

Rannveig’s face turned red. “God forgives weakness. He does not forgive … abomination!” She shouted the last word and then hurriedly began to dress herself. I should probably pause to explain at this point that Rannveig was a Lutheran—as was I, at the time, along with most of the rest of Iceland. But throughout Scandinavia, the Old Norse religion persisted among some individuals, as I believe it still does today. Úlfur, a Danish transplant, was one of those who still followed the old gods. (We had a steady trickle of Danish immigrants because Iceland was under Danish rule then, but Frederik IV largely ignored us, occupied as he was in the Great Northern War with Sweden.)

“It all depends on which god you’re talking about,” Úlfur said. “The Æsir are perfectly content with dual natures.”