Christos stood in a pool of blood, up to his ankles, buck naked, in some creeped-out version of The Mountain. The trees were so damned big he noticed the soaring trunks and distant canopy above before he bothered to consider the nearer things. There were a lot of big black birds, “Big damned crows,” he griped.
To this, the slightly leaner version of Norman before him, also standing buck naked in the middle of a blood pond, answered, “Not crows, ravens. Woton does not entertain mere crows at his board.”
Christos sneered up into that block head set on that 24 inch neck, “More of your pagan bullshit—as if that shit is even real, or if it was, is gone?”
Norman smiled a wide, wide smile, and looked up behind Christos. The smaller man noted that Norman’s throat had really been cut, that there was fresh scar along the Nordic rune necklace, that they both wore a necklace of iron charms. Norman’s neck, as thick as ever, was girded with alternating wolves and ravens. He began to look down at his own necklace, to be interrupted by Norman, who seemed mentally slower—not stupid—but missing a beat, pointing with his now brown-bearded chin up behind Christos, in answer to the ‘pagan bullshit’ charge, “That is essentially what they said, when they came here, to wipe out Thor’s exiles.” [1]
Alex turned in the puddle of blood, an actual pond of gore pooling between the roots of a massive oak, and looked up behind him, into the arms of the biggest tree he had ever been near. The trunk would barely fit in a boxing ring. Staked to the bark at the great tree’s base was a medieval catholic bishop, not too different from the likeness of Jerome he had seen in Ian’s Traditional Catholic Bible. The man had been tall, and still was, thanks to the wicked stake stamped on its back end with an iron ax and hammer ensign, and hammered through the breast bone. The roots rose as high as the man’s hooded head. All about the lower branches, each one as massive as the greatest oak trunk on His Mountain, were hung crusaders in armor, dead eyes bugging out through the Gothic Cross face guards of the helmets worn over their bloody and rent mail, many arrows protruding from their bodies. The red crusader crosses were more red in many places. Twelve of these men so hung. Then, as the tree seemed to breathe, swung gently as the mountain sighed.
“Fuck you, Norman—get out of my nightmare. It’s bad enough that I’ve been doped up by that weird-ass plant doctor with shithead mushrooms—I hope Grudge Girl has already beat his ass and staked him out for the coyotes.”
“No. Christos—I called him after a fashion, to focus your for extraction—but he doesn’t know. His a fumble bum folklorist.”
That big hand came on his shoulder, “Christos, we need you?”
“Norman, we’re naked, this is fucking gay—step the fuck away! Now! Good, got it—I can still kick your ass!”
“Exactly,” agreed Norman, speaking kind of slow for Norman. “I, I’m… Not as mentally sharp here as I am back in our time… er, ah, ahead in the time we met. I’m sped up there, slowed down here. I was instructed to find you in the Ware Ago—had forgot, I was sped up to… like a… load stone… what is it called in the… magma? That’s right, like a magma…”
“Have you gone fucking retard, Norman, magnet, like a magnet.”
“See, Christos, we need you.”
“Norman,” he shook the man’s meat wall shoulders, tattooed in pagan imagery, “you fucking need Jesus Christ, not BJJ Christos—you know you’re going to Hell, right?”
“Been back and forth to there… a whole world ruled by a bitch… its terrible bro…”
Norman drooled and stemmed a bit. Sick of standing in medieval Christian blood, even if in a mushroom trip, Christos heaved Norman over his shoulder and carried him out of the reeking pond of gore.
As soon as he stepped out, the woods around him were scattered with dead, dying, wounded, and handful of weird-ass Viking/Indians. The Indians/Vikings were standing over a number of crusader dead as Norman swooned on his shoulders.
“What the fuck!” he groused and the seven men about him, some wounded, one with a bad sword cut across the chest, went to one knee, bowed their heads, and looked back up to him, like a bunch of white belts eager for the next technique. He had enough of this dream, “Is this Last of the Mohicans or The Northman—make up your dream people mind!”
The smartest looking blond injun with an ax looked up to him, “He say you no believe. Think, people know not come in dream?”
“What, Tarzan?”
“If dream, people known, dead, o’ live long day.”
The man handed him a wicked curved long knife hilt first and, pointing to his own red-black painted face, said, “Cut, see.”
“Fuck that. Get up, all of you. Take his big ass—my knee is killing me… no it is not, feels perfect…”
Three men rushed in and took Norman and three more, began wiping off Christos’ legs and feat.
“This is fucking gay—alright, get me a rag for my dick at least!”
A loin cloth was handed to him by Blond Tarzan. “I, Nightside Bragson. Me woman, white wolf you,” and so said handing over the white kilt and vest. “Moccasins, two moose. No armor, God say.”
“What would you know of God, you fuckin’ heathen?”
The man pointed with his free hand, “God Tree o’ Know, call Christos.”
“You sacrificed those men to call me?”
Nightside nodded, ‘Yes,’
“End of dream, asshole,” snared Christos, as he cut that heathen’s ear off with his own knife, the lack of hair on the side of the head making the Mohawk image friendly to the method.
The man caught his own ear, kissed it, and threw it into the pool of gore, “No dream, me?”
To his right, Norman was being dressed up in a great black wolf hide, bare foot, with wolf paws for anklets. Front left approached a tall, thin man, wasted, but still mobile, with many owl feathers hanging from his white Mohawk, stepped forward and handed him an ax and a hammer. Without thought he took both in his left hand, keeping the knife. The brutal instruments were lighter than he would have thought. The man was dressed in bird bones and feathers, and held a raven feather wand, which he blessed Christos with, speaking in another language.
Blond Tarzan without the Ear, blood running down his neck, translated, “Light-the-Sky see you run—good run you, need run soon, stop Jayzuse-kill-men.”
“So you savages are Christians and heathens?”
“No,” answered One Ear Tarzan, “Thunder we God,” pointing to the hammer in his hand and the tiny hammers and axes hanging from his necklace.
The old man then pointed to a Crusader head and spoke gibberish. One Ear then knelt, took off the helmet, pulled back the mailed coif from the head of the red-haired, clean shaven Crusader, and pointed to a small round cap, woven to the top of the shock of curly red hair, “See Christos—you foe, we foe, come poison wyrd.”
“Okay,” grinned Christos, “dream or not, I’m in!”
…
Notes
1.) The actual Norman dismisses the author’s pet theory of a Gothic Crusade against Thor holdouts in North America.
