IT WAS GETTING DARK, and he had fled the raiders for most of the evening. A frigid wind came from the north, biting through his worn homespun wool tunic, through his patched leather boots. He told himself he had left them behind, that he was safe, but his thoughts kept returning to the events of the day.
It was the day of the Feast of Autumn. The harvest was finally in, cellars full of potatoes and turnips and carrots, the mill grinding grain to flour at all bells, the hearth fires at the bake oven roaring. He could smell the pig being roasted on the spit at Hans Muller’s house, and his mother baking the bread with the nuts in her kitchen.
“Lothar,” she called to him from the open window, “Come inside, and carry up a barrel of flour from the cellar. Be quick about it!”
Lothar could remember what happened next all too vividly. He tried to burrow into the leaves and curled into a fetal ball. Try as he might, he could not stop the recollection.
Suddenly, he heard a fearsome whoop from the river. “Aus dem Boot, den Fackeln und den Klingen am betriebsbereiten heraus. Brennen Sie die Häuser, beenden Sie die Männer, halten Sie die Mengen und die Frauen. Für den Norden!” roared a man in a deep voice, in an almost unfamiliar tongue. Lothar, however, recognized the last phrase. Für den Norden. For the North. He stood frozen in fear for a moment that felt like an eternity, then cried out “Northmen! The Northmen raiders are here. RUN!” He then followed his own advice and ran. He leapt over a fence of piled rocks, and dashed for the wooded hills south of town. But one of the raiders saw him and came after him. And he fled in mortal terror even as his village was razed to the ground by the merciless raiders from the north.
Lothar was shivering from the awful cold, his teeth chattering, his uncovered fingers and face already broken out into gooseflesh. He tried to cover his ears to block out the sounds, close his eyes to block out the sights, but it was no use. He could not run from himself, from his own mind, and what had happened to his village and his family.
A piercing scream echoed from the eastern fields. Then another, followed by a harsh, cruel laugh. His sister mentioned she was going to the eastern fields with Suza Angermeier, earlier. But he had to keep running at breakneck speeds through the light forest, up hills and down. At the top of the hill Lothar risked a quick glance over his shoulder. The Northman, clad in a boiled leather breastplate under an iron chainmail shirt, had a grey fur pelt slung across his shoulders, and held a bloodied longsword in one hand, a flaming brand pouring greasy smoke in the other. He was near the bottom of the hill, Lothar at the top. He looked out over what was once his home. Fourteen columns of dark, roiling smoke came from the bonfires that had once been homes. There were twenty buildings in the village, and he knew that his own was probably among those torched, and if it was not, it would soon join them. From the bottom of the hill, the Northman raider called up to him mockingly, “Sind Sie, kleiner Junge verloren? Unten hier gekommen, helfe ich Ihnen, Ihr Haus zu finden. Sorgen Sie sich nicht, ich verletzt Sie nicht... viel!” He then grinned and began to climb the hill rapidly. Lothar ran on.
Lothar could barely sleep that night, haunted by recurring dreams of the razing of his village and the death of his family. It was all his fault, they were dead because he was a coward, and he didn’t warn them in time. If he were a man like the Baron des Eisenberges, he would not have been afraid. He would take up his warhammer, Kreighammer, with a laugh and tell a joke to each Northman before he smashed them to death. But he was not the Baron. And the Baron was not there. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. The Baron wasn’t there. My village was in his fief from the King. He vowed to be there to guard us from harm, and in return we paid a portion of our year’s harvest in taxes to him. Now my family is dead. It was near daybreak when he awoke with this revelation. He stood up and screamed into the morning mists, “It’s all your fault, Baron des Eisenberges! My family would be alive, I would be home. You said you would be here to keep us from harm, behind an iron mountain of warriors and knights. Now my family is dead, they’re all dead, it’s all because of you! I hate you, and the Northmen, and I’ll have an answer from you. Why!?!”
