Yule walked for some distance, perhaps a league, past some lonely solitary figures—beggars no doubt—waiting for the gates before the great houses to open in the morning, so that they might ply their plaintive trade.

At length he came to a great lighted crossroads where a rude though colorful merchant town had grown up on the outskirts of the city. The appearance of the buildings was as if tents had been overlaid with parchment-thin painted wood and brightly lit from the interior. Most of the shops and guild houses were closed. There was, however, one particular merchant house beneath a double arch of sunny gold—the foremost guild among these shifty shopkeepers no doubt—where a few lowly carriages were lined up, lantern lights blazing, the pilots conducting trades with the shopkeeper’s slaves who were locked within the deserted shop and made to communicate through a speaking horn.

This is fascinating. Yes, they seem to be dispensing food.

Yule, though a god, and Rightful Lord over Men, did not like to rule with a heavy hand. The meaty fist of oppression was reserved for battle and punishments. So, being socially humble, unlike his shameless brother, he got in line behind a carriage carrying an artisan and his family on their way home from some revel. The children delighted at his appearance and waved and stared. The mother, obviously jealous of the looks cast upon him by her daughter, who must have recently bled her first as she was just out of childhood, became angry and insisted that her husband confront Yule. The husband wisely declined to face the First Warrior of Heaven in naked war. So the mother contented herself with scolding and slapping the children, one of which—a mischievous little girl—was pointing a small magical device at him and then looking at it. After some time waiting behind this carriage they pulled off and waved goodnight.

This has become a mystical realm to be sure. Why even the children of tradesmen ply magic devices at will, for mere amusement!

He was now standing in the lantern light of a dingy little cart, occupied by three youths and a dog, obviously goatherds in from the hills for a night of revelry. These scoundrels smoked a pungent weed and laughed at him a great deal even as they teased their big-headed fighting dog.

Then the voice of a young unseen slave-girl addressed him through the horn, “Hello, welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order?”

So a Scottish clansmen set up this greasy hovel at this crossroads? Where was his reverence? A targe and claymore should serve as his sigil. I think I might toss his sons’ heads at the base of my first victory mound!

“Yes, certainly, I would like a horn of water and a rack of lamb.”

“That’s one McRib and a bottled water?”

“Yes.”

No worry, you will grow used to their dialect.

“Your total is four-twenty-four. Pull around please.”

He walked around the bend to the next window and stood before the enclosed slave-girl. She withheld the food and demanded payment first.

These damned shopkeepers. It is so much simpler to run them down in the streets and take what is needed. Yes, they have adapted to noble war on their class by fortifying their shops in this manner. Well, they are clever. I must barter.

Another slave-girl was at the window laughing at him, thinking him some pauper.

He undid his purple scarf from around his loins and offered it in trade. “Here, girl, I was given this by a woman I loved this very night. It is easily worth a meal. It is the best I can do as I have no coin.”

The girls examined the scarf through their protective glass panel as he held it up, now bathed in the light of the goatherds’ cart once again. This helped show off the fine weave and sequins, and the slave-girl agreed to the trade. He now tucked DJ Jervis’ coat-of-arms behind his ear and walked a short way to enjoy his curious little meal—not bad, though it is boar rather than lamb. They have thought to remove the bones and even provide a cloth for wiping my mouth and hands in the absence of a serving wench and wooly table hound. They are inventive. Think of the siege weapons they could contrive!

His culinary musings were cut short by the rude bleating of the goatherds’ cart and the making of offensive hand gestures on their part. He might be humble, but he was Yule, First Warrior of Heaven! He walked up to the shrill little cart with the intoxicating fumes seeping from the side ports, and returned the predominant hand gesture, which was done with the longest finger and seemed to suggest anal copulation.

Not taking kindly to this gesture, the goatherd in the back of the carriage opened a port and set his stalwart little war-hound upon Yule. Yule offered the beast his left arm, and when the mindless thing latched on with impressive bite force Yule raised it off the ground so that it dangled, and then crashed his iron-thewed forearms together, crushing the vertebrae in the hound’s neck between his own divinely wrought and battle-hardened bones. One of the goatherds gave a cry of surprise and loss even as Yule stepped around to the side of the carriage and heaved the limp beast through the glass panel above the port behind which the pilot sat. The dog’s body knocked the pilot unconscious when it struck him in the head.

Then, as the other two goatherds attempted to exit the carriage with cries of haste, Yule crashed into the rickety little cart with all of his considerable might and heaved it over on its side, and then over onto its top.

He then stepped away and retrieved the balance of his bread-covered boned ribs and washed it down with the stale tasting water while he reveled in the whimpers of those who had offended him, even as they moaned in agony beneath the weight of their own cart, now pinning their scrawny limbs righteously to his Auntie Earth, Receiver of the Countless Unworthy.

Yes, a song.

He walked on down the Great Processional Road singing his favorite battle hymn. He had forgotten its name, and could not understand the lyrics as it was sung in a dead ancient tongue, but he liked its spirit, and belted it out as he strode on through the night, drowning out the moans and cries of the punished blasphemers behind him.