El Dorado- the forgotten city - first chapter

Untitled Part 1

Chapter I - Bjorn

The 8th day of Harpa, (21st April) 1003

"You will die beyond the veil of the sea. Your flesh will leak off your bones and your mind will turn to steel. You will not feast in Valhalla, until Odin falls from the heavens and claims you himself."

Bjorn snapped awake, his scarred, sweaty four fingered hand gripping the bronze hilt of the knife by his side. Once again he remembered in avid detail the night of his departure. The Oracle's grim warning festered in his mind, like a disease. Not a disease that caused fear, gods no. He knew that fear was just a joke. A 'thing' concocted by wives during long winters to help turn young lads into men. It was a concept that was unknown to him presently.

After all, who would dare follow in his footsteps to sail beyond the veil of the sea? He felt the words emitting anger within him. A wave, more powerful than the colossal storm Gails that devastate the coast when Thor hits his Anvil. How dare that old fool condemn him, the Storm breaker to suffer after death? How dare he, prophesizes that the man who killed the great bear khan, and the same man, who planted his war axe, Bani, so deep into the Pale Giant of the Far East that the beast's bone shattered and became permanently lodged in the handle itself should be forbidden from entering the halls of Valhalla? "I will rewrite the prophesy." He whispered, under a mountain of thick, disheveled beard.

Bjorn rose from his slumber, the musty smell of sweat and ocean water on wood once again greeting him. He straightened his massive 320 pound, six foot seven inch frame, noticing how his stone like muscles bulged and contracted. The network of veins and equally numerous scars running across his hulking frame signified the many times death was too afraid to take him.

Indeed, Bjorn welcomed it, he never wore any armor into battle, (as if to mock deaths failed attempts to ensnare him) and would often bite his tongue or induce himself into a state where he could feel his father's fire burning in him as he lunged into battle. Bjorn scarred tongue, created a slurred speech pattern, which was notorious when coupled with his inherent berserker rage. He was quick to temper, especially when unfamiliar faces attempted to mock his stutter, he only tolerated jokes from his companions.

Bjorn exhaled deeply as he recalled an event 5 snows past, when two lads in the Mediterranean though it fit to mock him in their drunken stupor. He keenly remembered snapping the arms and legs of the first one so that the shattered bone protruded through the skin, and then tearing the lad's "manhood" from his body before shoving it down the lad's throat to watch him suffocate on it. The second lad tried to fight, stupid fool. After beating the boy bloody, Bjorn dealt a blow to the lad's chest, cracking several ribs. He made a small incision and then plunged his hand into the wound, effectively ripping the wound open, rapidly increasing its size. He snapped off several ribs based on rummaging around the boy's inside alone, but he himself was dealt a nasty gash to his index finger from a bone from the boy's shattered ribcage, still inside the lad when he was ripping out the still beating heart. He eventually sliced off his finger upon the wound festering.

The morning was still young and chilly. Not even the sun dared to greet Bjorn, it hid itself among a great mass of black clouds, heavy and ripe, ready to empty their bowels upon the area. The sea did not take kindly to this thought, Bjorn looked on as the waves battered the sides of the vessel, as a mad dog batters the cage door, vicious to tear it down, in the distance he saw one of his sister ships, rolling and swaying abreast the violent waters. Despite the adverse weather, majority of his men lay still in rest. He remembered, when he went to slumber one night, and arose the next morn, to see great cracks and crevices in the ground, apparently the earth had trembled the very night, unbeknown to him. Bjorn chuckled as he noticed Freda, one of his shield maidens, naked, but under a straw blanket, next to Rastner.