“The Wuxx will tend.

The Wuxx will heal.

The Wuxx named Fend

Will share your meal—

Woman, he shall not offend.”

-Reverent Arbor

The crack of his neck bones and the snapping of his nose sounded like a broken branch. A raven caw came from above, and the lowering of some sunning wings reflected the sun into his eyes as his head flew back, hitting Reverent Chandler’s shoulder, and Fend’s body followed, the weight of the reverent on his back pulling him back to all-drinking earth.

Est snarled the “better not fail” snarl, and Fend staggered back and back, fighting to stay upright, striving to keep the reverent from falling under him. Finally, an axe cast from them man who had smashed his face in, Fend gained his balance, and stood, blood and snot running down his face, pouring through his slight baby beard, into the cupped hands of Reverent Chandler, who croaked loudly to Est, The Wolf’s head, Slayer, bring it.”

Est sheared the head off of Fend’s one-time companion, the loyal companion to Reverent Arbor for these last five winters, and brought the frozen effigy of ferocity to them Est, his beard red from a hundred foes’ blood over the past ten years as the Broodhome Sword-bearer [1] held the wolf’s head facing Fend, in silent judgment, while Reverent Chandler painted the gray face with Fend’s blood and said the things reverent:

“A Wuxx no more,

No longer Frigia’s whore,

But a warrior sure—

To plague the Mud hordes sore.”

Fend, his mind swimming in his aching skull, walked over toward the slung form of Reverent Arbor, ropes attached to ankle and wrist. Est preceded him, placing the blood-painted wolf head on the reverent’s chest, and then hauled on the four ends of the ropes, that were lopped over the tree limbs above and attached to the man who had kept this tree for fifty long winters.

With each haul on the rasping ropes the ravens cawed their greeting and the vultures watched in their farseeing way.

Finally, as the body of Reverent Arbor was raised to the level of the first heavy branches, the rope ends were staked, and Reverent Chandler made his raven caw, to which signal the many birds great and small descended on the corpse of Reverent Arbor.

The sacred feast was viewed by Fend as Est hurried off to take care of something or other, and Reverent Chandler spoke the auguries:

“Look, see, the chief of ravens has taken his right eye and flies across the river—Reverent Arbor’s soul is on its way to the Nightlands.

“Look, Fend, the hag of crows speeds south with his left eye—danger comes, she says, warns us on Frigia’s behalf.

“Yes, yes—look, see, Fend, the two greatest vultures make for the snowy heights of the Snow Giant’s toe—we must follow, for they bear the head of your wolf. Farseer has long ago chosen you to bear the Codex of the Nords. Hurry now, take up The Codex and let us follow, up the icy way, where the shield maidens and Reverent Arbor once played.”

Something fresh was burning—Est was lighting with brands from the smoldering lodges the oil-soaked and tinder-piled feet of the maidens where their enemies lay twisted and dead.

Fend’s eyes raised to regard the ramp trail of packed snow up which Reverent Arbor , chief of his tiny four man order, had ascended to the glacial fields above on every day that the moon had risen on the night before.

The reverent on his back was rocking impatiently, encouraging Fend with pushes to start striding into that direction, and he did, barely noticing the added weight of the Codex.

He did notice that Est had selected two sets of snowshoes and was throwing the rest on the pyre, and also that he had taken the Bow of the Nords down from its place on the Mud altar, where the enemy was sacrificed beneath the tree, had strung it—which was beyond the means of normal Nords—and picked up the great bundle of iron-tipped oak-shaft arrows from its base, and slung it, before fitting his snow shoes at the edge of tiny Broodhome, where the stone-frozen mud stopped and the virgin snow fallen the night before, piled in its soft layers over the snowfall of the previous weeks.

The Oak Unbent, resisted the licking flames as the bodies at its base went up in a whoosh of crackling flame, the death birds departing on the wing, taking news to Farseer that the Nords were no more, but that their song remained, and that their memory came.

1. Other than chiefs, the only Nords permitted to carry a sword were those who had slain an adult male snow bear with an axe or knife in single combat. Such swords were forged among the mudcombs, of their ancient metal bones.