Tales From The Forge

Not man-made. Not in the way he understood it. Stones, stacked in a spiral, half-covered in moss and snow. In the center, a post—tall, dark, carved with markings he could not read. A kind of totem. At its base, bones.

At first light, he stepped from his shelter. A clean layer of powder covered the forest floor. Already it held tales—the path of a fox, low and zigzagging toward the river; a broader print, perhaps deer, pacing near the ridge before retreating again. But one trail caught him still.

He gathered slender saplings and a length of corded sinew from the deer’s remains. A snare trap. The same kind he’d used outside Hedeby. He bent a branch, tested the tension, then set the loop carefully. The trigger stick he carved with his seax. He dusted the area with pine needles to hide his scent.

With stone and fire, he drilled through the base and burned a channel to seat a blade. The laminated steel knife from the satchel—still sharp—fit snugly when wedged and bound. He wrapped the base in sinew and sealed it with tree resin. Crude. Durable. His own.

Ragnar stood at the edge of his camp, scanning the horizon. The hills beyond the hollow were veiled in low mist, but something in it curled unnaturally—a darker ribbon, too slow to be fog. Smoke. Not his fire. His fire had burned low and clean.

He chose a straight sapling no thicker than his thumb and shaped it with his seax, notching the end and wedging in a sliver of rock to split the tip. He bound it with fiber pulled from long grasses, then charred the end in fire until it hardened to his liking.

He packed his firestone and blade, checked the bindings on his boots, and stepped out into the open. The grass glistened faintly. Dew. He ran his fingers through it, lifted the moisture to his lips. It would not do. He needed more.

He sat beside the flames, sharpening his seax on a flat stone. The rhythm of steel against grit soothed his thoughts.

“I will learn this place,” he murmured, not in prayer, but in promise.

Somewhere far off, a coyote yipped. Ragnar did not flinch.