The mud of the Lowlands did not just cling; it sought to consume. It was a thick, viscous slurry of churned earth, rainwater, and the copper-tang of spilled life. To a man lying face-down in it, the world was reduced to the smell of wet iron and the rhythmic, distant thud of dying hearts.
Ragnar lay perfectly still. He did not breathe. He did not blink. A single muscle twitch would be a death sentence. Above him, the battlefield of Gallow's Field was transitioning from the cacophony of slaughter to the eerie, heavy silence of the aftermath.
Clink. Clank. Clink.
The sound was heavy. Rhythmic. Expensive. These were the boots of men who had never known hunger, protected by steel that cost more than a barbarian village's entire winter harvest.
"Check the ones in fur," a voice commanded. It was a refined Southern accent, sharp and cold as a winter frost. "If they breathe, end it. I want no gutter-rats crawling back to the steppes to tell tales of how they almost held the line."
Ragnar tightened his grip on the mud beneath his fingernails. His lungs burned, a fire spreading from his chest to his throat, but he suppressed the urge to gasp. He was a "White Wolf" of the North; they were taught from birth that the wind was their mother and the silence was their father. He had spent days in the snow waiting for elk; he could spend minutes in the muck waiting for killers.
One man approaching from the left. Heavy breathing—he's tired. The plate on his thighs is rubbing against the tassets. His left foot drags slightly. An old injury or fatigue? Likely fatigue, Ragnar analyzed. Two more behind him. They are relaxed. Their guard is down because they think the 'savages' are all dead.
A spear tip thrust into the earth barely three inches from Ragnar's ear. The vibration traveled through the mud and into his jawbone. He remained a statue.
"Nothing but meat here, Sir Julian," the soldier grunted, pulling his spear back with a wet shloop. "The mud has taken them."
"Good," the leader replied. "Let's move to the ridge. The Baron expects a report before sundown."
The footsteps receded. Ragnar waited. He counted to a thousand, heartbeat by heartbeat, until the only sound left was the pathetic, wet rattle of a dying horse nearby.
The Opportunity of the Dead
Ragnar pushed himself up. The mud peeled away from his face like a second skin. He looked around the graveyard of his kin. The White Wolves had fought with the ferocity of cornered beasts, but courage was a poor shield against a cavalry charge. His chieftain lay decapitated near a broken standard. His friends—men he had hunted with since childhood—were unrecognizable heaps of fur and blood.
He felt no grief. Grief was a luxury for those with a future. Ragnar only felt a cold, hollow vacuum in his chest. The North was gone. The tribes were broken. To flee back to the steppes was to starve in the shadows.
He turned his gaze toward a jagged outcropping of rock. There, slumped against the stone, sat a masterpiece of engineering.
A knight.
The man was encased in fluted, silver-tinted steel. The chestplate bore the engraving of a howling gale—the sigil of House Valerius. This was Sir Alaric, the man who had led the vanguard. A "Golden Gale" of the Empire. Now, he looked like a discarded toy. A large splinter of a shattered pike had bypassed the gorget and pierced the soft tissue of his neck.
Ragnar approached with the fluid, low-profile gait of a predator. He didn't walk like a man; he moved like a shadow. He knelt beside the dying noble.
Sir Alaric was still conscious. His eyes, visible through the narrow horizontal slit of his great-helm, were clouded with the haze of impending death. He saw Ragnar—a "savage" covered in filth—and tried to raise a gauntleted hand. It fell limp, clattering against the stones.
"Help... me..." Alaric wheezed. Red foam bubbled at the edges of his visor. "The... the scroll... deliver it..."
Ragnar didn't look for a scroll. He looked at the armor. He saw the way the pauldrons were articulated with leather sliding scales. He saw the intricate rivets at the elbows. He saw the perfection of the fit.
"You Southern lords always talk about the 'divine right' of your blood," Ragnar said. His Southern tongue was thick and rusty, learned from captured scouts and merchants, but it was intelligible. "You say your steel is a gift from the heavens. But I see it now. It's just a cage. A very, very expensive cage."
"I... can... give you... gold..." Alaric gasped, his chest heaving.
"Gold is heavy. Gold is loud," Ragnar whispered, leaning closer. The smell of the knight's expensive lavender oil vied with the stench of his blood. "But a name? A name is weightless. A name can get a man through a gate that a thousand axes couldn't break."
Ragnar pulled a slim, bone-handled knife from his belt. It wasn't a weapon of war; it was a tool for skinning.
"I am going to take your cage, Sir Alaric. And then, I am going to take your life. In that order."
The Ritual of Iron
The next hour was a grueling, clinical operation. Stripping a knight was not like undressing a man; it was like dismantling a fortress.
Ragnar worked with terrifying focus. He started with the external straps, his nimble fingers unbuckling the mud-caked leather. He had to learn the logic of the suit as he went. The weight isn't on the shoulders; it's anchored at the waist. The arming points are tucked behind the joints. The gambeson—the padded cloth beneath—is the true foundation.
Every time Alaric groaned, Ragnar paused, his knife hovering over the man's throat, not out of mercy, but to ensure no patrolling guards heard the sound.
Finally, the plate was off. Ragnar stood over the noble, who now lay in his sweat-soaked undergarments, shivering in the cold rain. Without the steel, Alaric looked small. Pathetic.
Ragnar began his own transformation.
He discarded his wolf-fur cloak. He threw away his bone charms—the teeth of a mountain lion he had killed at fourteen. He stepped into the damp, blood-stained gambeson. It was too large in the chest, but he could pad it. He pulled on the chainmail hauberk. It felt like a heavy, cold curtain of rain pressing down on his soul.
Then came the plate.
As he buckled the greaves onto his shins, Ragnar felt his center of gravity shift. He felt cumbersome. Slow. He tried to take a step, and the metal screamed—a sharp screech of steel on steel.
Friction, Ragnar thought. I need grease. And I need to adjust the leather laces on the left side. If I walk like this, they'll hear me from the next county.
He spent twenty minutes adjusting the fit, using Alaric's own tools. He used the knight's discarded cloak to muff the sound of the metal joints. He moved, walked, crouched, and lunged until the armor was no longer an obstacle, but an extension of his body.
He picked up the great-helm. It was a terrifying object—a face of cold, unfeeling silver.
"One last thing," Ragnar said, looking down at the dying Alaric.
He reached into the knight's discarded satchel and found a signet ring and a wax-sealed letter. He broke the seal.
"My Dearest Elara," the letter began. "The barbarians are but beasts, mindless and driven by hunger. They have no concept of the finer things—of music, of chess, of the quiet dignity of a sunlit garden. I shall return to you soon, having cleared these lands of their filth..."
Ragnar let out a short, dry bark of a laugh. "Music? Chess? You died because you were looking for 'dignity' in a mud-pit, Alaric."
He took the signet ring and jammed it onto his finger. Then, with a practiced flick of his wrist, he drove his skinning knife through Alaric's eye.
The knight's body gave one final, violent shudder and went still.
The Mirror of the Soul
Ragnar walked to a nearby pool of stagnant water. He knelt—careful to keep his balance in the sixty pounds of steel—and looked at his reflection.
Through the vertical slit of the visor, he saw a monster. He didn't see a barbarian. He saw a Southern lord. A Golden Gale.
He practiced the voice.
"I am Sir Alaric of House Valerius," he whispered. It was too deep. Too Northern. He tightened his throat, imitating the nasal, arrogant drawl of the Southern commanders. "I am Sir Alaric. The vanguard is lost. I am the only one who remains."
He said it again. And again. A hundred times, until the words felt natural. Until the lie felt like the truth.
He picked up the knight's longsword. It was a beautiful weapon, balanced for the thrust. It was nothing like the heavy, top-weighted axes of his people. He swung it once. The wind whistled through the air.
"Too light," Ragnar muttered. "But it will do."
He gathered the knight's shield—a massive heater shield painted with the gale sigil. He slung it over his shoulder.
As he walked away from the clearing, leaving the real Alaric to be eaten by crows, Ragnar didn't look back. He wasn't just a man in armor. He was a wolf who had found a skin made of iron.
Ahead of him lay the Empire. A world of towers, of libraries, of courts, and of secrets. A world that looked down on his people as animals.
"I'm coming," Ragnar said into the darkness of his helmet. "And I'm bringing the hunger of the North with me."