Sacrifice

A young woman from a Nordic village is offered up as sacrifice

Sacrifice

 

     All around the clearing at the village’s edge, people milled about. The Earl himself sat far back from the front of the throng, flanked by armed guards in their half-helms and chain-mail hauberks. The common people were in a wide semi-circle, hugging the protective cover of the trees around what on any other day would be the village’s green. A place for festivity and joy. Not this day.
     Hilde strained against the restraints one more futile time. The thick leather cords lashing her wrists behind her back and around the tall wooden pole creaked, but again did not give.
     She was alone, tied to the great towering shaft embedded deep in the earth beneath her. The fine, white silken dress she was garbed in had been crafted especially for the occasion, just as so many had before. In her anger, she would have torn in off in an instant, if she were free. And all around, her friends and family watched her struggle.
     She would not cry out to them. She would not plead for their help. They had been the ones who put her here in the first place. Crying, apologizing. It made no difference.
      They’d come in the night just gone, just after supper. A surprise visit, so they’d said. They’d offered her treats, sweetcakes, which she’d accepted, bemused but happy. It was only after the herbs, buried in the food had taken effect that she’d known something was wrong. And that had been when they’d produced the dress. The horrible, wretched dress.
     Hilde struggled against her bonds, scowling at the memory. Betrayers. Kinslayers. She would have their heads. If only she could get free. The leather only cut deeper into the flesh of her wrists, where it had already rubbed raw from long hours of struggle.
     Across the green before her, the great Cliffs of Wodan rose. Carved by the gods, the massive limestone landscape was still wreathed in the mists of the morning. The tall grey-white monoliths of worn stone formations, larger than any hill, stood apart from each other by mere meters. Great channels seemed to be cloven through them, winding like a maze �" and out of sight. Some of the village seers whispered that the alleys and passages through the cliffs were hewn by Baldr himself, one of the great sons of Odin. Now, bathed in the shadow of the rising suns light, they looked menacing in their moss-coated glory. Shadowy and labyrinthine. Did the mist seem to be getting thicker?
     Hilde had witnessed what was about to happen countless times before. Her father had made her watch. Deprived of sons, he’d raised her in the arts of shield and sword and axe like any blooded young man. She was to be a sheildmaiden. Or at least she had planned to be.
     He had made her watch, as countless sacrifices lashed to this same wooden pole were ravaged mercilessly, torn apart and consumed. Just as she was the sacrifice now. Her long golden hair, perfectly braided, slung over one shoulder in a long tail. Angrily, she shoved it off and behind her, lifting her alabaster white chin upwards in a defiant expression. Again she tugged at the tight bonds, this time not with anger. This time with something approaching fear.
     Gathered about her were other offerings. Bushels of fruit and baskets of produce. A huge salted ham, roasted mutton. A small bowl of shimmering, golden coins. There were arms and weapons too, and great painted round shields, piled about a trio of standing spears, alongside several axes and swords. Offerings, lesser than she. The main gift, the sacrifice. The maiden. If only she could get free…
     The sun reached high above the cliffs before her, casting them into stark shadow, brilliant rays defined by the gathered mists slanting down at her. From somewhere behind, in the midst of the gathered crowd, a huge, booming note from a greathorn sounded out. Its bellow shook the rising shaft of wood behind her. The milling people of the village fell utterly silent. Utterly still. Somewhere an infant began to wail, and was hurriedly silenced.
     Hilde breathed deep.
     From deep within the carved channels of the cliffs came a huge, thundering roar. It eclipsed the horn in sheer volume and Hilde felt her breastbone vibrate with its sheer power. Something came out from the mists.
     She had seen it before of course. Every year on the same day, for eleven years now, since her father deemed her old enough to watch. Every time, like the others she’d huddled in fear on the villages edge and looked on, helpless as bound sacrifices, young girls like her, were torn apart by this thing.
     It moved on many legs, and was shelled like a giant beetle. The carapace was a deep burnished purple, darker than the night. Its legs were horrible, segmented things that spidered across the ground towards her as it lurched across the green to claim its prize once again.
     Half its long body raised from the ground as it approached, rear legs continuing their gait forward as its hideous head was revealed, with twitching, clawing limbs beneath. Thus stood, it towered above her, eight feet of insectoid horror, still coming on.
     In the middle of its sickening, purple fleshy face, thick mandibles chittered and clicked around a maw that showed even more horrid black teeth. Slobber and spittle drooled from its mouth as it keened shrilly.
     Most terrible of all were its eyes. Not insect-like as would be suspected, but human and small in its wide head, glaring and wild, showing too much white around startlingly blue iris’s.
     No one knew it’s real name. The Seers told of thousands of years passing before where each spring, with the breaking of winter, the village would gather and make offering to the hideous thing. In return, it would spare their lives, and it was said, influence their harvest for the better.
     In the face of its oncoming wrath, Hilde could only believe the thing capable of mindless destruction and death. Namely, hers.
     It stopped its galloping rush and came up on her in a gust of fetid, hot air issued from its maw. It stood, gazing over her and towering, huffing its stench and staring into her eyes with its too-human ones.
     Hilde didn’t look away. Hers was a warrior culture. The heroes were those who stared down death, no matter win or lose. The songs and fables were full of heroes who’d died nonetheless, and, fearless, had ascended to those golden halls of Valhalla. So her father had taught her. So while her hands shook where they were tied behind her, Hilde glared up at the horror, right into its eyes. Unblinking.
      A huge segmented limb drew up on its right side as it prepared to strike. Hilde was ready. Ready for the end.
     The limb scythed forward, a blow that would have crushed the bones in any full grown man.
      Hilde dropped like a stone.
      The crashing arm smashed through the thick wooden beam above her crouching form, through where she had been but moments before.
     Again she stood. The bonds behind her went slack, coming off and over the splintered end of the shaft. The loose leather dropped from her wrists and she was free.
     Wasting no time, Hilde rolled aside. Two more segmented limbs destroyed the ground where she’d just been. The monster screamed in rage, robbed of its prize. She sprang to her feet, and whirled to face her attacker. There was a long, naked blade of steel in her right hand.
     To her left, an empty scabbard lay across the piled painted roundsheilds where she’d cast it.
      The sword was heavy, but her arm was strong. After years of training and sparring with her father, Hilde slipped into the perfect unconscious calm he had taught her. The unfeeling, unflinching void of war. The mindstate of the warrior.
     The thing came at her, lashing out again with a great segmented limb. But Hilde was ready. The sword came up, as if to parry an oncoming blow from an opponent.
      In a gout of blueish blood, the limb came away from its owner.
      The scream turned from one of rage to pain, as the creature was confronted with something it had never seen before. Something that was not prey.
      Bellowing still its high-pitched insectoid screech, it rushed her, head brought low in a frenzied charge. Hilde was bowled over, but not before her thrust struck true.
      In the centre of the village green, before the entire assembled townsfolk, Hilde rose to her feet. Her pristine white dress, the dress of the sacrifice, was ruined. Dark blue blood streaked along its breast in a wide splatter. It was smeared too, over her face. Her hands were empty, the sword gone.
      Behind her, the terrible thing lay. The hilt of the longsword was protruding where the rest of the bare sharp blade had thrust straight into its face and out the other side of its head.
      Before her, the crowd roiled. Screams echoed around the green. In the distance, she could make out the Earl shouting, red in the face. But she couldn’t hear him. She was alive. All else was secondary.
      A colossal, deafening Boom of splitting stone cannoned through the air. Hilde spun, expecting the monster to have risen once again. Her fists were balled and ready.
     But it lay there, still and dead.
     The centre of the cliffs erupted into an explosion of dust and stone shards. They rained down in a massive avalanche around where something forced its way through the solid stone.
     Another monster thundered forth. This one was the size of a mountain, all but dwarfing the smaller one dead upon the green.
     A hundred feet tall, it bellowed a deafening roar of infernal rage that shook the trees. The villagers began to run.
     Hilde strode forth. In two hands she drew forth the sword from the face of the slain monster.