Jerry Autieri - Fate's Needle

“For what?” Orm snapped.

“For stealing Ulfrik’s sword and breaking it. I am sorry.”

Ulfrik had never heard a more insincere apology. He immediately regretted not taking sterner action, but he merely nodded his acceptance.

“And to make sure you remember your words, you will take three lashes across your back. You’ll get them from me,” Orm said.

Grim’s flush faded to white fear. Even Ulfrik wanted to protest, but the words caught in his throat. Ulfrik had seen his father lash men who had broken the law. He had even seen his father hang a man for something terrible; he could still remember the wails of the man’s family.

“Take him outside!” Orm ordered one of the warriors.

Grim struggled, but the man jerked him around with a curse and dragged him to the exit.

“I’ll not forget this, Ulfrik.” Grim grabbed the door and scowled back at his elder brother. “Neither will you! None of you!”

Orm shook his head as Grim was dragged away. Turning back to Ulfrik, the scowl still in place, he asked, “Do you think mercy will make things easier?”

“I couldn’t think what to do, Father.” Ulfrik winced at his own childish words.

“Your mercy,” Orm said, spitting out the words like they were foul in his mouth, “will only make men despise you, take you for a weakling and fool. Your brother would love you better had you broken his hands.”

Ulfrik recoiled from Orm’s anger. How could his father be right? If the situation were reversed, he would’ve wanted mercy.

“Orm, you know that’s not always the case.” Auden intervened. “Grim is his brother; leniency is understandable.”

Orm gazed over Ulfrik’s head at Auden. Neither spoke for an uncomfortable length of time. When Orm found his words, he spoke evenly. “Get me a lash, Auden. Leniency is intolerable.”

His father and uncle turned away from each other, leaving Ulfrik caught in the draft between them. Eventually, Orm fetched the lash himself.

Grim whimpered as the first lash struck his bare back. On the final two, he screamed like a babe in front of everyone, including all of their cousins. When it was done, he lay face down, rivulets of blood staining the grass beneath him.

Throwing the lash away, Orm then stormed off.

Unable to look any more, Ulfrik turned away. He wanted to vomit; when he was alone, he almost did.

***

Grim sobbed alone at the edge of the trees where the track ran south toward Grenner, his home. He cried for the throbbing, convulsing pain in his back, but he cried more for his desperate confusion and loneliness. He had spent all day in the woods, alone, and no one even cared that he had gone.

Finally mastering his tears, as the last drops streamed down his cheeks he scrubbed the snot from his nose and tried to stand tall. He wanted to appear dignified when he strode from the woods and into his uncle’s hall, wanted to seem as if nothing had happened.

Grim dreaded facing his father and brother again. Ulfrik would try to make things better, but Orm would just find something else wrong with him. They both hated him-Grim had always known that. He worked as hard as he could to change it, but it never worked. It had been Grim who had killed Orm’s wife, and his and Ulfrik’s own mother, in childbirth. Grim tried to imagine the mother he had never met, but even that nearly set him crying again as he arrived outside the hall.

Passersby him gave concerned looks, as if a foreigner had wandered into their midst. One woman, carrying a load of firewood, gave him a weak smile. Unable to match it, Grim kept walking until he stood before the guard outside the main hall.

“Is my father inside?”

The guard nodded soberly.

Grim placed his hand on the door and heaved a sigh before pushing it open.

Inside, the hall yawned black while Grim’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. Servant girls were clustered in a corner and his father was stooped over a mug at the end of the high table. He became of aware of the girls’ chatter only once it stopped. They backed away as he passed them, and then fled, like rabbits before a hound, out of his sight. His father didn’t move. Orm remained a dark lump, hunkered over his mead, black hair hiding his face like a cowl.

Grim cleared his throat. “I’ve returned, Father…” His voice trailed off. He had not thought of what else to say.

Orm stretched out his arm and beckoned his son closer. The boy wavered, hoping to find someone willing to intercede for him, but the hazy, smoke-filled hall was otherwise empty. Grim warily stepped toward Orm’s outstretched hand. His father’s arms were as thick as Grim’s legs, maybe thicker. Beneath the gold bands that encircled Orm’s biceps, white scars snaked over the muscles. Grim stepped up the short rise to the high table, and stopped … just out of reach. His father let his arm drop to his lap, but did not raise his head, or even look at Grim. The scent of mead hung over the jarl as he sat in silence. Finally, he drained his mug and threw it across the hall before speaking.

“How is your back healing?”

“Like nothing ever happened.” Grim tried to infuse his voice with power and dignity, but even to his own ears he sounded like a child.

“Like nothing happened,” Orm repeated, then returned to his silence.

Orm sprang up, his arm shooting out like a thrown spear. The chair skittered away from him as he leaped from the table and seized his youngest son by the throat, shoving him against the wall. Grim grabbed his father’s arm, flailing against its iron grasp. Agony exploded across his back, and sharp pain shot through his ears and neck.

“Like nothing happened!” Orm roared into his face, following with a sour belch of mead. “Maybe I need to repeat the lesson until you notice something happened?”

“N-no,” Grim managed.

His father’s bloodshot eyes bulged with rage as he thrust Grim against the wall.

“Something is always happening with you, Boy. Do you know that? Ill luck follows you like a lost dog-from the day you were born! Do you think I want that in my army, in my hall? With you at my side I can’t fail to lose, can I?”

Orm’s grip tightened on his throat, and Grim’s vision hazed brown. He kicked and grunted, his eyes rolling back in his head. Then his father released him. Grim slumped against the wall and gasped, his hands reflexively clutching his wounded neck.

His father stood over him, heaving as if he were the one nearly strangled. Grim glared up at him, as defiantly as he could manage, but Orm just pushed his hair from his face and walked back to his fallen chair.

“I married your mother in this hall, on a day like today, sixteen years ago. Not a finer woman in the whole circle of the world. Until you pulled out her guts, killed her. Why did the gods trade her life for yours?”

Grim staggered to his feet, unable to contain his tears. Wanting to be manly, he tried, at least, to suppress the largest sobs, yet even they escaped. “It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t ask to be born!” he cried, like the child he was.

“I’d lash you to ribbons if it would bring her back.” Orm picked up his chair, but kept his back to his son. Drunken anger still quavered in his voice. “Just get away from me! Go find your brother. He’ll deal with you now that he’s a man.”

Grim fled, all pretence of dignity and manliness choked from him. He exploded out the front door, wailing like a baby, and nearly careened directly into Auden and Ulfrik. Not daring to look at them, he threw his arm over his face and ran blindly, wishing the gods had killed him instead of his mother. His life was a torment to everyone, including himself.

***

They remained at Auden’s hall after the attack to ensure no other raiders followed. None came. Ulfrik mingled with the men, enjoying being treated as an equal. Snorri trained him to throw axes and shoot arrows.