Sóknardalr was, and had been for generations, a prosperous riverside farming village.  The recent advent of the longship allowed surplus from the apple orchards to be traded all along the Sókn River estuary and beyond, and so the town had grown to house dozens of families.

Agmundr Hallvarðrsen was a local mason of considerable skill.  He lived with his wife Astrid (who, if the gods were good, would bear him a child next season) in a pleasant two room house along the main road of the village.  Agmundr was a pious man, as one of his many responsibilities was to carve tributes to the gods, that they might forestall their wrath.  He also carved the gravestones of dead men with the proper words, that they would not return to the land of the living.

There was also a man named Knútr, a fisherman of middling worth, who lived alone near the riverbank in a modest hovel.  He spent his days plying his trade along the Sókn aboard a large fishing vessel, and his nights drinking and stewing in anger at the perceived indignities of his existence.

It would be difficult to overstate the depth of the abiding hatred between Knútr and Agmundr.  A friendly rivalry from their youth had turned bitter when Astrid had caught both of their attentions.  They often quarreled, long after Agmundr proved himself the better man.

So it was that when a carving of Mjǫllnir near the center of town – an intricate piece Agmundr had taken no small amount of pride in – was found defaced with fish entrails, it was automatically assumed Knútr was to blame.  Despite his insistence on his innocence, Knútr was forced to scrub the carving clean.  This only served to deepen the rift between Knútr and Agmundr, and more than one villager remarked that they saw Knútr muttering curses under his breath as he scrubbed.

That night, a terrible storm unleashed its fury upon Sóknardalr.  The wind howled as it drove sheets of rain and hail to pummel the village.  At the height of the storm’s fury, a bolt of lightning struck a tree near the carving of Mjǫllnir, which caused it to explode.  Charred branches were hurled about, some landing at the doorstep of Agmundr’s home.

In the morning, beneath a sky still dark and rumbling with distant thunder, the village folk crept from their homes to assess the damage.  They were shocked to find the Mjǫllnir carving split asunder.  The charred remains of the tree were scattered about, and the twisted, gnarled core of the trunk still smoldered, despite the heavy rainfall that had soaked the surroundings.

The villagers trembled, for all knew well enough an ill omen when they saw one.  After some discussion amongst the village elders, it was decided that Agmundr would carve Mjǫllnir anew, this time even larger and more magnificent, in an effort to appease Thor, the god of thunder.  However, this meant that he had to halt work on another project, a tribute to the sea giant, Ægir.

With a plan to redemption set, the villagers cautiously returned to their daily lives, confident in Agmundr’s ability to stave off future retribution.  So it was that the farmers returned to their orchards, the huntsmen returned to the forests, and the fisherman returned to the river and the fjord beyond.

That day, the people of Sóknardalr saw in the skies over the fjord darken in a sudden squall.  The storm lashed the fjord until sunset.  When the fishermen failed to return on the evening tide, the lamentations of women and children could be heard echoing down the road long into the night.

Wracked by guilt, Agmundr did not go to bed with his wife, but worked through the night to finish his carving of Mjǫllnir by midday.  Once it had been installed on the site of the old carving, he returned to work on his tribute to Ægir.

That evening, the tide saw fit to return the fishermen to Sóknardalr.  All able bodied men, including Agmundr, were called to help fish them from the water.  Among the bodies Agmundr helped to retrieve was Knútr, lashed upright against a piece of flotsam by a stray rope.

So many were the dead that were pulled up to the shore that Agmundr was forced to resort to iron tools to speed the manufacture of gravestones, even as he worked through a second night to carve them all.  He offered up prayers beseeching the gods’ understanding, but a lingering unease gnawed at him long after the final body was put to rest.

Despite having spent two full nights hard at work, Agmundr found sleep hard to come by.  What little rest he got was fitful and unpleasant, and he awoke the next morning already exhausted.  He accomplished little that day, barely making progress on his stonecraft, and before he knew it the sun had set once more.

That night he awoke to find himself alone in his bed.  He looked around the room to find Astrid, but instead saw Knútr, lashed to the wall by several coils of rope, leering at him.

Knútr was in a terrible state, with half the flesh flayed from his bones and what flesh remained tinged blue by corpseblight.  He wrenched an arm free of his bindings and conjured a flagon of mead, its cloying sweetness mixing terribly with the stench of death in the room.  Knútr never broke eye contact with Agmundr as he tipped his head back, letting the mead wash over his exposed jaw and flood back out from his ribcage.  With the vessel empty, Knútr hurled it to the floor, where it shattered with a resounding crack.

Agmundr jolted awake again to the sound of a gasp from Astrid and the sound of a flagon striking the floor.

He looked about in confusion, and noticed with dismay that he was drenched with sweat.  Morning sunshine was already streaming through the entrance to their home, and there was no trace Knútr, rope or otherwise, on the far wall.  The only evidence of Knútr’s presence was the shattered flagon on the floor, which Astrid insisted she had dropped herself.  When Agmundr demanded an explanation, she told him she had been concerned by how profusely he had sweat in the night, and was bringing him a flagon of water when their child gave a particularly strong kick.  Startled, she had dropped the flagon.

Her words did little to assuage him – the flagon had broken in the exact spot Knútr had thrown his flagon at the ground, after all – but he did not want to unduly worry his wife, and so he kept silent.  He climbed out of bed and helped clean up the mess, washed his face in the basin, and started once more on his work.

As the day wore on, Agmundr felt a weakness overcome him, sapping the strength from his limbs.  It required concentrated effort to even lift his tools, let alone strike with the precision his work required.  Rather than render a week’s work ruined by an errant strike, he set his tools aside early and, with Astrid’s aid, sought out the local healer, a wizened crone named Gudrun.

Immediately upon entering Gudrun’s home she bade Agmundr sit on a stack of furs while she examined him.  She remarked upon the paleness of his skin, and upon touching his forehead pronounced he had a fever.  Agmundr told her about his difficulty sleeping, though he left unsaid his dream about Knútr – again, to avoid unduly worrying his wife.

Gudrun nodded at this and set to work with her mortar and pestle.  After a few minutes work, she gave him a draught in a drinking horn, and said that it would put him to sleep for a night and a day, and he would awaken refreshed and full of vigor.  She sternly warned them both that it was imperative that he stay in bed for the full duration, or Agmundr would only further weaken.  Agmundr nodded his assent, while Astrid joked that she would chain him to their bed if she had to.  Gudrun laughed and praised her for her will to see her husband well, while Agmundr gave a weak smile, fighting back the memory of Knútr lashed to the wall.

Once the sun had set, Agmundr quaffed the potion and bade his wife goodnight and farewell.  Astrid teased that she would need to pick up his tools herself to make up for his indolence, and they shared a laugh, even as his eyelids became too heavy to keep open.  The last thing he felt in the waking world was the touch of Astrid’s kiss upon his forehead.

Darkness came, and Agmundr felt adrift, as though floating on his back down the Sókn, as he had on the occasional lazy days of his youth, though his eyes found no purchase amid the darkness.  At length, the sky lightened with stars and twisting bands of color, and he thought it was good, that the men who had died at sea were being called home to Valhalla.

A twinge entered his mind at this, as he had been taught that men who die at sea could not be found by the Valkyries.  Perhaps they had died fighting some monstrous beast?  But no, the sky faded to a more even gray color, and he felt his back come to rest against a sandy shore as the water receded beneath him, though he could scarcely tell the shore from the sky.

Then, without warning, Knútr appeared and planted a heavy boot upon his chest.

Agmundr gagged, in part from the sudden weight, in part due to the stench, and partly due to the sheer sight of him.  This close Knútr was even more horrid, with his skin hung in blue tatters from his bloated frame, his flesh stripped away from most of his face and chest, and with loose ropes soaked in black blood draped about him.  It was one of these ropes that Knútr stuffed into Agmundr’s mouth, and the foul taste of corruption overwhelmed him.

Knútr threw back his head with such force that his jaw dislocated, and he howled with laughter.  He increased in size, such that his boot covered all of Agmundr’s chest, then his entire body, and he was pressed deeper and deeper into the sand by the increased weight.  Knútr howled until sand filled Agmundr’s ears and eyes and he could no longer sense anything except the unrelenting pressure upon his chest and the black blood within his mouth.

Agmundr awoke with a jolt and promptly vomited black bile over the edge of the bed.  The weight in his chest was still there, rattling with every breath he took, and fits of coughing resulted in more fluid spewing forth.

Astrid awoke and tried to ease him back to bed, but Agmundr would have none of it.  He knew the tales of the elders well; he knew he had to find Knútr’s grave, cut off his head, burn him, and scatter his ashes in the river if he was to have any hope of finding peace.  He rose unsteadily to his feet, grabbed his weapon belt from the wall, and staggered out into the street, forgetting his boots in his haste.

Astrid followed in his wake, beseeching him to come back to bed, as it was not yet dawn, and he had to remain in bed until dusk if they were to heed Gudrun’s words.  Again, Agmundr refused her and pushed her away.  Pink phlegm bubbled at his lips as he strode up the road towards the barrow mounds outside of town.

A third time Astrid begged him to return to bed and stay this madness.  She placed herself in his path and told him that she was truly frightened, and wanted nothing more than to feel the warmth of his embrace once he had returned to health.

It was then that Agmundr saw it – the bluish tinge to her skin, a stark contrast to the goldening morning light in the sky behind her.  Agmundr felt his heart pound in his chest, even as the last of his strength seeped from his muscles.

He staggered back as he fumbled at his sword belt.  He drew his weapon in a wide swipe to keep her at bay, even as he felt his ankle turn beneath him.  He threw his arms outward to catch his fall, and in so doing turned his blade upon himself.

Agmundr never felt the blade pierce his chest.  He only felt the numbing cold slowly spread through his body, heard a distant scream fade away, and saw darkness descend upon him like a shroud.



[hr]



Astrid, exhausted from the ordeal of burying her husband and shooing away her well-meaning relatives, set about the task of changing their bedding.

Her bedding, she corrected herself, even as her tears welled anew.  She paused a moment to fight back down her grief, and said a silent prayer to the gods to ask for some relief, some clue as to the source of her husband’s madness.

There was only silence, and with a sigh, Astrid returned to her work.  As she moved aside her husband’s pillow, she saw something she didn’t recognize.  She picked it up and held it to the light, and her breath caught in her throat when she realized what it was – a short length of frayed, bloodied rope.