The Stag and the Boar

The dawn breaks across the frost covered plain, sending a shaft of sunlight like Aegir’s fire across the sawdust strewn floor of my home. Whilst it banishes the darkness in all but the furthest corners of the room, it does little to lift the thick blanket of sorrow that has settled on my heart during the night. This sorrow is a great raven roosting in my soul, thatching it’s nest with thick slivers of a broken love. This bird seeks to unman me, to turn my love into a weakness that will forsake me my entry to Valhalla. It seeks to shame me in front of my father and my father’s father, to deny me the right to stand with them on the plains of Vigrid at the end of all things.

It does not know that those shards of love with which it furnishes it’s home are the ice-fire that will send me out across the valley in less than an hour, that the pain it feels broiling within me will not send me to timidity, but to temerity, to glory.
For twenty-four of my years I have loved Havard, my battle-brother, my friend.

My earliest memory is of splashing in the shallows of the great Fjord ten leagues west of our stead, Havard daring the icy cold to chase herring, our fathers watching, laughing whilst they observed our foolishness and  fished from the shore. We did not fear the cold or the depths, the lengths of our lives and dates of our deaths were already fated, our acceptance of this coupled with our childish belief in our own invulnerability.

Havard, so quick witted and bright. Smaller than me, but blessed of spirit and character, with a tongue like a great sea wyrm – merciless and sharp with any who displeased him. Hair a burning red and eyes a deep rich brown like a stag’s summer coat. 
We grew together into men, he and I, and were inseparable – quick, clever and capricious Havard; solemn, strong and bull-like Esben. Where I would sit for an evening and say less than a dozen words, troubling no one but myself and my honey-beer with my thoughts, my friend could not keep his mouth closed for more than a handful of seconds before he felt the need to spout some witticism, or treat the hall to one of his famous stories – as fantastical as they were true.

Every chore was a pleasure to be enjoyed for Havard, every moment and instance of life in Midguard was one to be savoured and captured to memory. Where I endured, considered and thought ahead, Havard jumped in and enjoyed and thought only of the present.
I remember hunting with him through the great northern forest when we were around eighteen years old. For four hours we had followed the trail and had finally been rewarded by the sight of the boar. It was dusk and the creature was foraging for food, having slumbered during the short daylight hours.

It was a magnificent animal. I am a big man, but this creature dwarfed me in sheer mass. It was pure compacted muscle, easily weighing one and a half of me, clad in bristle, bone and earth. Many of you will perhaps have hunted boar before and will therefore know the temperament of such creatures. They are angry and vicious beasts with a capacity for fury akin to the All-Father himself.

I have seen a boar face off against an ice bear once (I cannot do that story justice, though it was one that Havard was particularly fond of telling, as was his way), a sow defending its piglets from the ravenous appetite of one of those great killers. The bear went hungry that day, slinking off to find easier prey than a vicious snapping female pig with the heart of an Aesir – Havard swore that the sow had a Valkyrie’s soul.

This time, however, the animal was a male, the biggest example of its kind I had ever seen.  I brought my spear up to my shoulder, a nine-foot shaft of ash tipped with a steel head fifty centimetres long (Havard frequently made light of this weapon, claiming it’s size was a compensator for the smallness of my manhood), bracing the corded muscles of my shoulder and readying my throw. A split second prior to release the boar looked up, it’s eyes meeting mine, and I felt a calloused hand on my shoulder;

“Let him be, my friend, he is too fine a fellow to spit with your Hoggspjot this evening.” Said Havard, meeting my eyes with a certainty that could not be refused. He smiled a smile that was uncharacteristically solemn, and continued, “Such a handsome beast is not meant for such an inglorious end.”

I dropped the spear back to my side and smiled, the hog snorting its contempt into the air and then disappearing into the underbrush.  As I turned to retrace our path back to the camp Havard nudged me in the ribs, a thick grin on his face;

“Besides, his craggy, warty visage reminded me of yours, though he smelled a great deal better!”

I will remember that day later this afternoon when I slide Havard’s sword into the soul who cheated him of a glorious death. I will remember his hair as red as Muspell and his smile as bright as the moon as I butcher every last one of Erod’s men. I will be a winter storm as harsh as the very fury of the Gods, and Erod will know every inch of my pain as I exercise it from myself into him. He will wish it was me who died, throat slit in that muddy field as I look into face and watch the fire die from his eyes.
I am not Havard, I never will be, but Erod will know what my friend meant to me when I send him to the plains of Hel.