Now, truly armed for a main-battle encounter, Yule once again gained the Great Processional Road on his iron-horse and began cresting its pleasing rises and plunging into its shaded vales at great speed, passing by those who rode in mere carriages, and growing accustomed to the weight of the fire-axe on his steed’s shinning flank. His maunderings over the use of the axe and of the go-grip had him vexed. Recalling from his youth among men that the go-grip was called a “strangle” he vexed over the process of riding and cleaving as one. He dearly wanted to go fast as he cleaved—this was so invigorating—but would be required to stop strangling the iron horse go grip.

“Oh blast, it shall come to me, the god powers will well up as they always have.”

And so, tired of all of this mortally unseemly vexing over details, he drifted into reverie…

A little, bald boy walked along a fence top while his older brother played the game of swatting at his ankles and the boy always landed in stride, continuing along the fence top…

He was once made to fight a feral cat of great size with a sharpened ice-eating stick, earning his first kill in a place of castoff mortal goods, a weed-grown graveyard of painted steel and rusted iron…

A man who sold mind poison to would-be warriors had certain guard dogs loose behind his fence to guard his property. The older brother of the budding war god tutored his kin by sending him into the dog pen and directing him to steal the dogs’ beef bones, which he did without the need to harm these beasts—except for kicking one over the fence and back—for they were kindred spirits and he a faster dog than they…

There was a surrogate father, a teacher of men’s ways, who the brother resented. The boy learned to hunt and parlay from this man—then Mother took him away, his task done, the boy not his son.

Yule had learned much among mortal men and was keen to put these ways to the test.

I should take my battle-prize from among those who yet venerate the Old Gods, so that they might rise to the Eternal Hall and give notice to my Brother at the feasting board that The First Warrior has reasserted the Rule of Heaven among men.

Mother, I pray to overtake a rally of Pagans so that I might send you worthy attendants for your Stark Lair rather than just another shivering meal.

As he thought his payer to Mother he rose upon the steel stirrups of his iron-horse and howled to Heaven’s Hall as he took flight over the crest of the next hill and left a goodwife and her whelps running for their massive and well-painted hovel…

What a pity, a world where there is only honor and piety among the nomads and tradesmen. How have they fallen so far from grace?

Out ahead of him the Worldgird Wyrme’s lava tongue stretched toward sunset, where the forested mountains kissed the sky and the blasted prophet he hunted kept his hide. The Wyrme’s tongue grew tacky in the hot morning sun and aided his iron horse’s grip upon this infernal road—the crackle of its belly thundering across the land.

In answer a distant crackle—no, a cacophony of iron horses, snorting thunder—muted by intervening hills, beckoned, called to him of strife long ago brought near to hand.

His mechanical steed belched and crackled and his heart knew the silence before the storm.

Men would tell of this day, when the axe in heavenly hand cleaved its way.

The dream of a god guided him across the land, sleep curtaining his brow, restoring his powers for the reaping of War’s heavy hand.