The scent of cardamom wafted from Father. Mother wore a liripipe of azure silk that drew out her narrow chin, hazel eyes, and the grey streaks in her hair. I watched Father’s gaze dart among the hills. Columns of smoke crept through a windless sky.
 
“The mines,” my father lamented. “They have broken out from the mines.”
 
I watched a mob army thronging over the plains from their hovels on the steppes, the swelling band feared and loathed by Mother and Father. Unlike my parents, however, I held these dim figures from the pits, with their leather caps and makeshift weapons, as symbolic of an impending uprising we may have deserved but were not doomed to accept or repeat. Compassion. Oversight. Guidance. The future was forked, and infinite, and might contain any of these. In the guise of self-imposed rebellion, I feigned nameless psychopathy, lounging about the manor, refusing to bathe, flinging myself to the ground at the slightest provocation. I quoted nonsense and pretended not to understand the most straightforward questions. I fasted inordinately.
 
Father sent for the lawgiver from Grimke to speak to me. The man wore a merry jerkin embroidered with tulips and river barges and a tall black cap with a single white feather. Evidently, he had been warned of my mood.
 
“Your grace,” he swept his plumed hat to his breast.
 
I sneered. “Lawgiver, are you here to break into the coffers of our women and steal the goldenrod?”
 
“No, lad, I come to give, not take.”
 
“You should have brought jesters. Fiddlers. Carnival masks with beaks and felt moustaches. Or, are you the jester? Where is your paper crown?”
 
The lawgiver coughed an artificial cough into the knuckles of his hand, “My liege, festivities would jeopardize the calm that is essential for your health.”
 
“My health?”
 
“You have grown thin. Dark pockets under your eyes. You must eat.” From his jerkin, he withdrew a green leek and fell to one knee to present it. “I shall roast this vegetable for you. It has magnificent nourishing properties.”
 
I sniffed the leek. “It smells of death.”
 
“How so?”
 
“Blood. Stench. Rotten as the stew of earth from which it sprang. Where was it grown?”
 
The lawgiver indicated a nearby peasant farm known for the large ash at the edge of its fields. I replied it was no wonder this harvest tasted of death.
 
“No wonder?”
 
“That ash was a gallows tree. A gang of highwaymen came riding. They were caught and hung from its boughs. Vultures perched on the napes of their necks and tore their flesh. It is their blood I taste.”
 
The lawgiver retrieved his leek from my hands and bowed his big oblong head many times over as he backed away. His cheeks had gone pale. “Lad, I beg pardon, you are right. You are indeed right. I have failed and am a miserable wretch. I ask forbearance…” Etcetera. At last, he disappeared out the heavy oaken door, the plume in his cap dancing with shame.
 

~

 
Mother, Father, and I bickered through half our days. “You think this mask of silliness will help you gain your so-called freedom. Well, it shall not.” Mother tossed another empty mead bottle into the garden pond, where it bobbed on the rippling water before it sank.
 
She tested her theory of my mental state by bringing a highborn maiden to sport with me. When the girl arrived, I was alone in the garden practicing my fencing: right foot forward, hand down. Left foot forward, blade extended, sweep and feint, and so on, through the exercises. I heard a rustling behind me and swung about, my weapon poised.
 
Her teeth were the color of almonds, and her hair had all the ribbons of a maypole. I smiled but offered no greeting before turning back and saluting my invisible fencing opponent, bringing my saber up. I then turned my torso to the right, and the blade pointed diagonally to the ground.
 
“A gallant weapon,” said the maiden. “You move smartly.”
 
“Your name?”
 
“Freja.”
 
Her eyes were violet; her lips made the pallor of her skin almost startling. I replied without altering my guard, “Mother thinks that having a pretty girl near me will prove my phlegmatic state is simply an act, that I will reveal my sanity by the earnest pursuit of you.”
 
“Eccchhh. We all act.” She hesitated. “You are not of this world.”
 
“And you are as a mermaid longing for the sea.”
 
“Am I pretty?”
 
“Delightful. Am I mad?”
 
“You are rude.”
 
“You are haughty.”
 
I raised the tip of my saber to a ribbon above the maiden’s left ear and flicked it gently, so the silk separated and fell among the stems of grass. I will admit my blade struck closer than I had intended, and the lobe issued a tiny drop of blood. The shocked maiden fled, shouting protest.
 
My parents descended on me with magnificent outrage. “Wicked fiend,” my mother shouted.
 
Father’s velvet robe swirled as he tromped along the granite balustrade. “Do you not want to enjoy our peaceful existence? You are not to be trusted.”
 
I replied with the unwavering gusto of youth, “If it is fated that we must clash with that horde, then let us do so. Give me war over occupation.”
 
My father snorted, “Occupation would be a mercy in this age of swords, this age of axes when betrayal is certain.” Father stared as if transfixed. “Devilish rationalism has kicked the stilts out from under everything. No certainty, none. In the absence of certainty, they will kill each other over a minor slight. They will seethe with resentment and oppress the tiniest difference. A warm pot and strong drink is the answer for them.”
 
I surveyed the plain. The evening seemed to have lurched forward unexpectedly; a bright moon showed upon the gloom. The clattering masses had encamped for the night. Their cooking flames danced among broken tumbrils and staves as they boiled stews of chaff and scavenged meat. A rancid fetor drifted down from the tents.
 

~

 
I resolved to escape. The moon had lifted, a milky lozenge glimmering through the boughs. I slipped my spurs over my bootheels and crept to the stable to find a mount, a grey stallion with muscular hocks. The painted birchwood saddle chafed my thighs; I dropped my steed’s pace to a canter. By dawn, I arrived at Grimke, a metropolis compared to the villages scattered about our estate. By afternoon I was stumbling from one public house to another, adamant about spending my final hours in a hedonic blur. I ended in an establishment with the unfortunate name of The Vole’s Head Inn, a lamplit cave with hams and ropes of garlic strung from the rafters. A carboy of cognac found its way to my elbow and a plump redhead to my knee.
 
“You are darling, Love,” the redhead whispered, her voice rough as coals scraping on a grate. “Such a comely face, with your flowing dark hair and skinny arms, hands always twitching. I bet you can work magic with those fingers. Shall we go upstairs, Sweet?”
 
A man of late middle-age with a pocked nose stood aloof by the belching hearth throughout my cavorting. A hairy cap on his head, he had laced his hands behind his back in a posture of restraint. What he thought as he watched remained uncertain since he showed neither patience nor impatience.
 
I dropped my voice to the lass. “Who is our friend?”
 
The redhead was half-turned to him. “Never seen that old runestone before.”
 
I portioned a drink from the carboy, extending the goblet to the stranger. “Mister, you look hard, as if hewn from a block of granite. Split by great forces, were you? Come, sit on our plank and tell us a tale.”
 
I jiggled the redhead on my knee to make the invitation more inviting.
 
The visitor received my cup with a curt, “Tak.”
 
Yet soon enough, he was on the bench, with us elbow deep in cards and cognac. Hangers-on collected about our table, filching drink, and harvesting fallen coins. “Let’s play that old game so popular deep in the forests of the West.” Before I knew it, the stranger was dealing a game with a deck not familiar to me, cards backed with an assortment of boars, wreaths of flowers, knights on horseback, and skeletal harlequins. The rogues took positions on the benches on every side. I made my way about the table, asking names.
 
“Who are you?” I asked.
 
One held his clay pipe with tongs. “Dirk Dogstoerd,” he replied.
 
“Jan van Hogspuew,” offered the second, having staggered in after pissing in the dark.
 
The last, an ancient geezer, sat in silence, his skull fire-lit, and opened mussels in a bowl. “And him?” I asked upon hearing nothing from the man himself.
 
Dirk Dogstoerd gobbed at the grate. “Old Prijk,” he said.
 
The dealer shuffled out cards. I understood none of the rules if there were any. Round after round, I declared my losses and spread my cards face up.
 
“Rain, wind, fire. A secret bestial peace,” Old Prijk cried at last as if summoning a forgotten prophecy.
 
The others stared at him as if he was mad.
 
I had forfeited my gold within an hour. Finally, the card dealer slid back on the bench and tugged his hairy cap.
 
“Do you want to break the curse?” he asked.
 
His eyes looked as if they had been dredged from the bottom of the sea.
 
Redhead tugged the small hairs on my neck. “Be still; he does not mean losing at cards,” I muttered, tracing my fingers under her skirt. Her eyes fluttered, welcoming, and I pulled back my caress and turned to the visitor. My voice rose at the man, perhaps overdoing my incomprehension. “The curse?”
 
As if at a signal, the rogues cleared from the darkened room, my coins jingling in their pockets. The dealer removed his hairy cap and produced a silver flask from deep in its folds. “There is one certain remedy against rabble.”
 
By now, Redhead had her lips very tightly set. The toes of her feet pointed under the table toward the staircase, as if readying to leap away. My heart was pounding, the thick blue tendons of my hands went taut. “And what is it, you say, that will beat back a mob?”
 
He seemed surprised I had asked and paused before responding, “A good memory, lad.”
 
Redhead snorted laughter. “That’s your secret, old cuss. That’s really your secret.”
 
A burning hearth log popped and reported like a pistol shot. Misconstruing the noise, Redhead squalled indignation. Her clogs slapped the bottoms of her heels as she disappeared up the steps alone.
 
The card dealer cackled and sucked at his teeth. “A mob has no memory. It only acts. But an individual with a certain immortal gift could surely hold the brutes at bay.”
 
I stood and buckled my saber to my waist. “Show me now.”
 
“Come into the hearth light. I have the most delicious liquor, a dream of a dram summoned from a thousand lost ages, and summoning those ages too.”
 
“Drink, again,” I murmured to myself. “Why all the magical drink?”
 
The man intruded upon my thoughts, “Impossible to say; this drink, however, is liquid poetry. Sweet yet bitter, musky yet clear as starlight. Taste, oh, taste, and see.” The ancient brute unhooked a drinking horn from its peg in the hearth board, steadily filling the vessel. “There is a price, lad.”
 
I drew back. “All my gold was not enough?”
 
“Alas, it was not.”
 
The silver liquor lapped at the rim of the horn. I thought of my parents, and then of my scorn for them. Perhaps there was something that could potentially become momentous. Perhaps I could persuade my father to shed his ire and my mother her taste for afternoon mead. Perhaps I would shed my feigned madness. Perhaps the bargain would lead to a united front against the chaotic legion. Perhaps. I said, “This magic drink will dispel that inhuman concourse forever, and we may live in our great hall, unmolested?”
 
The card-sharp cackled and sucked at a tooth. “Ever after. Straight from my well, lad, the finest liquor in heaven or on earth.”
 
“Liquor from a well,” I scoffed. I had to prevent my fingers from leaping at the drink. “What is your price, mister?”
 
“Vision.”
 
“Do not speak in riddles.”
 
“No kenning, lad. Vision for vision, sight for sight.”
 
Impatient with his puzzles, I seized the horn from that miserable carcass. The drink was icy and stung my throat. It was as if a shard of a glacier had pierced me; yet, simultaneously, as if I had licked honey straight from the comb. The taste was richer even than the herbs of the grove my mother crushed into her mead. Thus, I expected the tributaries of the ages to mix and eddy. Did I expect to regain something—time? A new life?
 
But I remained as I was—in place, at that hour—with no wave of the hours drawing me back. I said, “I shall not be enamored and held hostage by false promises.”
 
“You shall not be.”
 
Thus, swifter than I could have supposed, the old corpse made a poniard appear in his claw and thrust it at my face. I threw my forearm up in what was a useless gesture. The steel slit the flesh of my left eye. I fell to the floorboards. The liquor winked silver on the hearthstones. Blood ran between my fingers.
 
“You wanted release?” the mad stranger hissed. “This is your release. The vast cycle of ages will advance without disruption. The price? Sight for sight; vision for vision. You will remember everything, and see everything, and you shall wander haunted among mortals, seeking meaning.”
 
I managed to spit out an insensible reply, “The future is forked and infinite.”
 
“Yes. And you shall know every possible path on the way to your mad destiny.” Flat on all fours, I saw, with my remaining eye, the pointed toe of his narrow leather shoe rising to strike my ribs. Nauseated with the extreme pain, I collapsed again to the hearthstone. He said, “Your wisdom shall be vast. Call this vision and this curse what it is: a gift.”
 

~

 
My foe disappeared out the inn door, a wraith into the moonlight. Redhead bounded down the staircase at my howls and wrapped my ravaged face in linen undergarments retrieved from the loft. What a fool I had been, she chided, for not only was I missing an eye, my gold was gone, and she would not see another kroner of it.
 
Once I was out of mortal danger enough to think and bandaged sufficiently by my nurse to ride, I ordered my stallion to be saddled. My spurs clattered on the stair as I descended. When the lackeys had finished their task, I leaped onto the back of my mount and made off at a gallop. The horse’s shoes sparked on the cobblestones. Women screamed, and windows slammed shut as I escaped. Farmers stabbed their forks into the turf and made foul cries. I hurtled through the thick forest, covering more than thirty leagues in six hours, spurring and whipping the beast until it reared in misery. Occasionally, I stopped to listen, only to hear the laughter of my thieving companions haunting the glades. My determination grew into a fury. Dawn advanced, and soon, a fiery spot of orange hovered low in a hidden sky. At last, the forest’s darkness broke and a meadow opened before me.
 
I wiped the dripping sweat from my brow. The horse was entirely winded from the long crossing. I may have killed the poor beast, I thought, dismounting, and followed the path from the trees’ edge. My spurs clattered on the stones. The wall of my family compound emerged; the ravaged palace grounds were scored with buckshot. Broken hafts of farm tools and wooden helmets littered the way. I threw open the splintered wooden front door. The interior was a ruin. Rust showed on the iron fireplace, the spit caked with half an inch of char, and the once-gleaming ancestral table bore the scars of crude knives. I strode down long passages until I reached the small paved courtyard, ever the last sanctuary of my parents. Rank shoots wilted in a corner garden bed; the wind caught the scent of rot and cast it in eddies about the space. Light played on the shattered lead windows.
 
I immediately recognized their forms, impossibly hardened into statues of glass. Clear, shimmering glass, glowing with a misted light from within. Deliquescing. Father in his opera hat, worn too low, the corners of his thin mouth sloped down toward the folds of his cheeks. Mother, liripipe framing her face, clutching a sprig, staring off into an unpeopled country.
 
A black raven perched on the head of each statue. One had a white feather in its tail; her companion was black as onyx. Summoning the ravens to my shoulders, I bid them tear strips from my neck. Yet the birds seemed to refuse my imprecations, cawing to me instead.
 
“Min-min-minne,” the raven with the white tailfeather chided.
 
“Tak-tak-tanke,” her mate echoed.
 
 
© Vic Peterson 2022
 
This is an excerpt from the novel, The Berserkers by Vic Peterson, Hawkwood Books, 2022. The novel is also available as an ebook, Recital Publishing, 2023.