“What?” Tam Nok didn’t pause, nor did she even look at him.
Ragnarok waved the war-ax. “I said I will call it Bone Cutter. It has a good feel and that Saxon oaf did a good job with the edge. It is much sharper than my last one. It will slice through flesh and bone.”
“Is a name for your weapon important?”
Ragnarok was mystified that she would even ask such a question. “Of course. In battle a good weapon is a man’s closest friend.”
“I have been in battle and I have killed,” Tam Nok said, “but I do not view my weapons as my friends.”
Ragnarok shrugged, the gesture lost in the dark. “That is because you do not see battle for what it really is.”
He waited for her to ask the inevitable question but the next couple of miles passed in silence. Tam Nok was the strangest woman he’d ever met. Not only because of her dark skin and strange eyes, but even more so because of her actions. Viking women were strong and well-respected, but even they did not travel by themselves or wield weapons except when absolutely necessary. A Viking woman was most concerned with family and children, yet there was no sense about Tam Nok of that.
The moon was full, making the traveling at night easier, but also making them more vulnerable to being spotted. Ragnarok was not overly concerned at being found at night. Most men did not seek out trouble in the dark and unless they had the misfortune to encounter a large armed force he felt they would be left alone.
They crested a small hill and Ragnarok scanned the terrain ahead. A large plain extended to the horizon, but sparks of light in the distance caught his eye.
“Torches,” he said, pointing. They were too far away to tell how many lights there were, or what the holders of the lights were doing.
“I see them,” Tam Nok didn’t break stride.
Ragnarok noticed something else unusual. “I do not like this,” he said tapping Tam Nok on the arm and pointing. Large, unnatural mounds dotted the plain in front of them, most around a hundred feet long, by seventy in width by ten in height.
“What don’t you like?” Tam Nok asked.
“Those are burial mounds. This entire plain is a graveyard. It brings bad fortune to walk through such a place.”
Tam Nok spared him a glance. “We cannot go around. They are between us and where we wish to go.”
“The place with the torches?” Ragnarok asked.
“Yes,” Tam Nok’s voice held an edge of irritation. “The person I must talk to is there. We do not have much time.”
“How can you know we don’t have much time?” Ragnarok asked, not at all impressed with her pronouncements after strolling across England for over two days. “How can you know that is the place we are to go and the person you want to meet is there?”
Tam Nok paused. “The people we are to meet are like me. They are priests and priestesses. Not of the new religions- Christian or Muslim- but of the old religions. Ones who worship the old Gods- the Ones Before whom the ancient ones worshipped. Your legends, your Gods, they came out of the legends of the Ones Before. You must let me deal with these people. I understand them. You will have nothing to fear if you do what I say.”
“Since you answer none of my questions,” Ragnarok said, “I have little choice but to follow your lead. But there is nothing I fear,” he added.
“There are things you have not seen yet,” Tam Nok said, “so it is not good to boast.”
“I am not boasting,” Ragnarok said.
“We shall see.”
“I fought the Valkyries and their creatures,” Ragnarok noted.
Without a reply, Tam Nok strode off into the dark and Ragnarok followed, frustrated at her lack of acknowledgment.
They passed several of the large burial mounds. They were somewhat different than the burial mounds Ragnarok was used to. Vikings also interned their dead in mounds, usually shaped in the form of a ship, with rocks to delineate the edges. A Viking leader would be buried with his favorite ship inside of a mound, a truly extravagant arrangement that indicated the honor owed that leader by his people. A slave girl might also be slain and put in the ship with him to make his journey to Valhalla more pleasant. Certainly more pleasant than this journey he was on, Ragnarok reflected. These English mounds were larger and the tops were not decorated with stones. He also sensed they were old, very old.
Death was but a new beginning for a Viking who had led a life of honor and glory. It was the journey to Valhalla, where more battles, even more glorious than those on Earth awaited the warrior. That was why it was essential that a warrior be buried with his weapons. Ragnarok knew the strange woman, even though she claimed to be a Disir, would not understand. It was the reason his ax had a name and why regaining the weapon had been the most important thing for him to do as soon as they landed.
The lights were growing closer, numerous torches glittering in the crystal clear night under the bright moon. There was a noise now, something Ragnarok couldn’t quite make out. Almost like the cry of the Valkyries he had heard just before meeting Tam Nok, but different, of the earth, although how he knew that he could not say.
The silhouette of two objects began to take form on the horizon, about a mile away. One was a towering tree, as large as any pine Ragnarok had ever seen, but this one stood alone on the plain and had leaves and many, many branches. The torch bearers were gathered all around the base of the tree in a wide circle.
The other, a quarter mile to the right, was not a tree- that was all Ragnarok could tell- although it was as tall as the tree. The sound seemed to be coming from the direction. Peer as much as he could, Ragnarok could not make it out, although it might have been some sort of guard or siege tower, rising sixty feet into the sky.
“There is someone just ahead,” Tam Nok said. “Do not attack.”
“What do you-” Ragnarok began but then a figure- sword raised- suddenly loomed out of the dark, as if spit out of the earth itself, ten feet in front of them. The man barked out something in a strange tongue Ragnarok had never heard, obviously a challenge.
Ragnarok hefted his ax and prepared to strike but Tam Nok stepped between. She spoke rapidly in the same tongue. It occurred to him that it was strange she spoke his tongue, coming from so far away. He wondered how many languages she knew and how she had learned them.
Those thoughts were brushed away as the stranger lowered his sword and replied to Tam Nok in the same tongue, then turned and pointed them toward the tree. The man disappeared into a fold in the ground, pulling a cloak over his body to help conceal his location. Ragnarok was not impressed- hiding in a hole in the ground to ambush strangers did not seem very honorable.
The strange noise grew louder and Ragnarok could now discern that there were two noises intermingled. One was coming from the tree ahead, a chanting of human voices, lower pitched than the other sound, which was a terrible keening, worse than the cries of Viking women upon learning the ship their mates sailed out on would never be coming back.
“What is going on?” Ragnarok hissed at Tam Nok, but she waved a hand, hushing him.
He could see now that the torches were carried by white-robed men and women standing in a circle around the tree. There were about sixty of these. Inside of that outer circle, was a second group of twenty, also holding torches, these robed in green.
Near the massive trunk of the tree the light from the outer torches illuminated a group of ten people, eight robed in blue, and two others, one in black and one in red. They were all facing toward the tree and chanting. The red robed figure turned toward Ragnarok and Tam Nok, as if waiting for them.