Viking Girl

Chapter 4

841AD

The journal of Brynhild the Bold

It has now been 4 days since I wrote last and we are almost to the mountains. They are looming up in front of us like ancient stone guards of the pass between them. We know that we must go through the pass to get to the region of vallies beond. It is there that we will be able to find our cities and begin to do the job that we were sent here to do. Once again we had to walk for many hours before we came upon this place. Tere is a stream of fresh water and there are also some wild amimals that we should be able to hunt. I hope that I am chsen to do some of the hunting. My limbs are itching for a good fight, as I'm sure everyone elses are. Hopefully we will be able to catch at least 4 or 5 of the boars that we can see, but the problem is tat they are already wary of us, and when thay are trapped they fight with desperate strength. It is always a great struggle to overcome one of these beasts so we will have to have several parties each targeting a different beast. I can also see some young ones, so they should be a fair bit easier to kill.

It is now about an hour later, and the smell of roasting boar is nearly driving me insane. I can hardly wait for it to be done. I got my wish and was chosen for one of the hunting parties. All of us spread out and surrounded the herd and then we split up and each group argeted a different beast. With my luck, we got the largest male. It took a long time to finally bring it to its knees. In the end, while the rest of my group distracted it, it had to jump on its back and repeatedly drive my sword into its neck. I got chosen for that job because I am the youngest, quickest and lightest. It means I get teased a little by some of the larger males my age, but it also means that I get to do dangerous stunts like that. Unfortunately, as the beast gave its last shudder, it threw me off and I landed on my arm. Luckily it wasn't my sword arm, but it still needs attention so I had to sit there for 10 minutes while one of the older warriors put it in a splint. It is such a pain! I just hope it will be better by the time we have to attack the cities.

The further into this country we get, the more amazing and beautiful it gets. There have been rivers of crystal clear water, gently flowing along, great rushing ones that are beautiful yet deadly. There have been exotic coloured flowers and strange creatures. It is like nothing I've ever seen before. It truly is a land of beauty and I can see why we want to invade it and call it our own. I just hope that in the process of doing that we don't destroy it.

The air is beginning to get colder, the closer to the mountains we get. If it continues to get colder we shall have to sew coats out of our blankets, as we left most of our warm clothing on the ship because where we docked it was very warm. I will have to go now, as we are about to start our march once again. This is by far the most gruelling task I have ever had to face, but every day brings me closer to our attack.

Time to go.

Brynhild the Bold