The Jarl stood up from the high-backed, ornate chair at the front of the hall and lifted a ringed finger, gesturing for silence. 

One by one, the mouths of shouting kinsmen and women closed, as if a hand had reached out and laid itself over them. Only the fires in the hearths continued to speak, crackling and casting their dancing light over the embroidery and gold. 

"We shall side with Norway in this dispute," said the Jarl. "From this moment on, the king of Sweden is no longer our king. The men of Sunnar will term this treason and come to harry us into submission. Sweden will offer them gold, no doubt. Therefore, every homestead must arm itself and prepare to fight. This is my decision. May Odin protect us and lead us to victory."

Hrothgar's eyes closed, and his head lowered onto his chest as cheers were screamed and cups drummed onto table tops in approval.

Who was he to speak against the Jarl's decision? The second son of a minor warrior who held his chin too high, fancying himself a man of rank and importance. A boy, a farmer.

The Jarl and the kinsmen of his clan were misguided and arrogant in their decision -- Hrothgar knew it in his bones. Greed, that was the sole motivation, and he saw it shimmering through the fancy words and the inflated talk like a silver river through the trunks and branches of winter-bare trees. 

Norway was giving land to those who sided with her. Land with forests full of animals to hunt, fields to plant, homesteads to found, slaves to trade and gold to be given to men brave enough to stand on, and hold, the side of traitors. Land their clan could expand out on and take for themselves, to increase their power and influence in the kingdom. Land that would carry the name of the Jarl to the gates of Asgard itself.

Odin would not protect them. Even now, Hrothgar could feel the sacred ravens winging their course back to the All Father, carrying the news of their treachery in their craws. But who was he to say so? His tongue was useless. His thoughts even more so. 

Hrothgar rose from the shadowy corner in which he'd crouched, listening to the arguments, to the rush of opinion as it tumbled from consideration into fantasies of wealth, land and power, and filed towards the open doors with the rest of the less important.   

He had not heard one single genuinely dissenting voice during the entire audience with the Jarl. Only his own steadily repeating rhythm had spoken against the tribe: wrong, wrong, wrong, you are all so very wrong. 

Neither wit nor cunning was in his possession, his father never seemed to tire of grumbling. And, much worse, he was bad at riddles. He would stay a farmer it had been concluded, nothing more. He lacked the attributes for anything better. Farming was his future. A future his father saw for him swimming in the mead that floated at the bottom of the drinking horn when he peered into it long enough, and Hrothgar knew it could have been a more bitter one. 

He would never gain fame in battle or bring back slaves and wondrous, foreign objects from raids to decorate the walls of the family's homestead. He would till and sow and reap. He would have earth-blackened hands and be scarred by tools, not the tips of swords. So, who was he to speak?

Outside the hall, his father and older brother stood broad-legged and broad-shouldered in the milling groups of minor members of the clan. Smiles broadened their faces, and their elbows jutted out, as cocky as boar's tusks. A wise decision, they said. The Jarl had once again proven himself a far-sighted, capable leader. Sweden had nothing to offer them. They were better off with Norway. 

A leaden weight was in his belly as he stood with them, as if he'd swallowed a curved and broken grave sword. 

A loud voice echoed over the courtyard, causing heads to turn towards the black maw of the hall. The Jarl's man shouted for messengers. Who would volunteer a man to carry the news of the Jarl's decision, or carry it himself? 

His father's eyes flicked first to Sven, his older brother, but then moved on and found him. A critical gaze wandered over his face, the plain embroidery on his shirt, the emptiness of his hands. Then his father turned his bulk, golden torque around his neck flashing, and shouted "My son Hrothgar will take the news!" 

A sneer appeared on Sven's face, and his muscular arms crossed over his chest. "Are you sure he won't get lost along the way? We wouldn't want the message to get accidentally lost in a wheat field." 

Laughter rang in Hrothgar's ears and hands clapped his shoulders good naturedly. He stared past Sven at the calculating expression on his father's face, and for not the first time in his life, he felt the urge to turn tail and hide himself somewhere small and tight as a closed fist. 

"Why me, father? Why not Sven?" he asked. "He is the boldest of us all. Certainly the honour belongs to him." 

"And his sword arm is a hundred time more useful to me at home. When you return, we'll see what use you can be put to. For now, see that you at least gain yourself a little bit of respect from the Jarl. It may be your only chance. Don't disappoint me."  

Hrothgar nodded and left the cluster of kinsmen behind, the grave sword in his stomach gouging him sharply in the ribs. He crossed the courtyard with laboured steps to present himself as solidly as he could before the Jarl's man. 

And that's when the first snowflakes, powdery and filigreed, begin to fall. 

Hrothgar was given a small silver brooch with the Jarl's name worked into the metal and made to repeat the exact words of the message, each one of them scalding his tongue and his conscience, until the Jarl's man was satisfied. Then he was sent home to collect pack and horse.  

Large, lumpy flakes swirled down from the sky, melting into dark spots on the earth the moment they laid themselves on the ground to rest. 

The horse saddled and waiting for him at the earthen wall encircling the homestead was Jossi, the oldest, most docile of all his father's animals, and the one his little sisters rode most. 

"Wouldn't want you to have an accident," Sven said, thrusting a leather pouch with a loaf of oat bread and a half a roundel of cheese inside violently into Hrothgar's chest. They were of equal height, their shoulders equally broad and their eyes of the same unrelenting blue, but Sven had always maintained his advantage, often with punches and kicks, later slights and insults.  

Their father stepped from the long house, their mother following as she dried her hands on a cloth. 

"May Freya protect you, my son." She smiled, and stepped forward to give him a kiss on the cheek. She smelled of smoke and stew from the cooking fire, of home and earth and what was right. 

"The Jarl's news is of great importance. Get to your destination and back as fast as you can, Hrothgar, no dallying," his father said, tones of reprimand swinging in the words, as if his second son was a lay-about who never worked until dusk in the fields, never repaired and improved or took care.  Hrothgar watched the individual snowflakes falling from the skies catching on the horse's course straw-coloured mane, decorating the hairs with ice crystals. 

Without a word, he hefted himself up onto the horse's back and attached the leather pouch to the saddle rings. Sven handed him a travelling cloak and a pair of gloves, and his father a long dagger on a belt before slapping Jossi on the rump.  

Hrothgar had been commanded to ride north-west to the landholding of Eiknar Haraldsson to give the message. From there on, he was to ride in the same direction, stopping at all large landholdings, until he came to the end of the Jarl's domain where he was to turn and ride back, stopping at smaller landholdings and individual settlements. 

He'd never been so far away from his own homestead. And now he had no choice but to go. As he repeated aloud the words he had been forced to memorise, the insane and dangerous message he was to deliver, soft moans of discomfort floated out of his mouth and Jossi swivelled her ears towards him. Unable to understand any commands in the noise, she swivelled them back towards the road ahead, and trotted onwards.

The snowflakes had shrunk in size, falling in swirling patterns and with greater speed. Soon, horse and rider were gliding over thin patches of white forming on the grass like icy moss on the bark of a tree. 

Hrothgar drew on the gloves and opened the heavy, leather travelling cloak, setting it around his shoulders and letting the end of it drape over the horse's rump like a blanket.

The grave sword returned to jab at his ribs and unsettle his insides, making him feel as if he'd eaten a handful of rotten meat. What would Odin's judgement of this be? And of himself, Hrothgar? Would the All-Father hold him accountable for the message he was to deliver, or would he see he was not in agreement, not at all in agreement, and withhold his anger?   

One never knew with Old Greybeard. 

It was just past mid-day, but the sky was low and wet like what Hrothgar imagined the surface of a lake looked like from the muddy bottom.  

The ground grew whiter and whiter as they trotted onwards, mile after mile, snowflakes swirling in front of Jossi's hooves. 

He couldn't steal away. Through Norway and onto a ship bound for Iceland where he had heard tales that men were free to speak their minds. Prince, warrior or farmer, it mattered little on that island in the middle of the wild ocean. But then the wrath of the Jarl, the wrath of his own father, would put a price on his head if he turned down that road, and even in distant Iceland, it would certainly roll from his shoulders eventually.

"But it is treason!" he shouted, causing Jossi to dance to the side and onto the snow-drowned grass in surprise. "How can we go against our king? How can we call ourselves men when we sell our loyalty for a few more acres?"

It was unconscionable, short-sighted and blasphemous. The men of Sunnar would come and burn their homesteads, slaughter and take their livestock, murder their women and children. They would be left with nothing. They would starve -- if they survived. They would be enslaved. 

A strong wind rose, blowing snow into his face. He lifted the hood of the cloak and pulled it over his head.  "It is wrong. It is wrong. It is wrong," he murmured to himself, his face twisting up in a grimace of fear and unease as trees rose on either side of the track, and they entered the forest that would take them to the first of the larger lakes. 

After a while, Hrothgar's face began to freeze in the cold. 

The grimace deepened, welling out his cheeks as his mouth distorted, parting his lips so that the incisors showed in the corners like the snarl of a wolf or a bear. He reached up with one hand to feel the hardened flesh, and at once attempted to relax the muscles, but they would not obey. 

The graceful swirls of individual snowflakes were long gone, having given way to a direct onslaught from above. The road they were following had completely disappeared from sight under the rising whiteness. 

Jossi seemed not to mind, keeping up her same pace as clouds of steam rose from her muzzle. Hrothgar knew the snow would slow them down soon and slowing down meant it would be much longer until they reached the first homestead. 

He reached up and felt his frozen face again, cursing. 

It should have been warmer in the dense embrace of the forest, the trees offering some respite, but it only seemed to grow colder. His own cloak, layered with the travelling cloak, had kept him warm, but now the chill began to creep up his arms and down his neck, into the folds of cloth, fur and leather. 

Abruptly, the trees released them from their grasp and the first lake lay before them like a flat grey shield through the rapidly falling flecks of white. Jossi began to slow, moving towards the water in search of a drink. Hrothgar let the reigns fall slack and slipped from the saddle, his boots sinking into a feathery lightness that came up over his ankles. 

The horse dipped her head and drank from the lake, as if icy gust after icy gust was not rushing over the water at them like howling, deadly spirits released from Niflheim. Hrothgar pulled the cloaks tighter, but was shaking badly by time Jossi lifted her head and came towards him, ready to continue their journey. He crawled back into the saddle, gathered up the reigns in his aching hands and clicked his tongue. Jossi moved forward, somehow finding the road, and they trotted along the curving lakeside towards the next stretch of forest. 

Should he turn back?  No one would expect him to keep going in freezing conditions like his. Or would they? Images of his father and the beating and ridicule he would surely receive if he returned to the homestead caused him to involuntarily press his thighs against Jossi, urging her into a faster pace. 

The trees engulfed them, cutting the wind down but not the snow and not the cold. Hrothgar looked down at his hands. He couldn't hardly feel them anymore, and, curiously, the longer he gazed at them, the more bizarrely they seemed to be shaped. 

Prying his jaws apart, he raised his right hand and bit into the finger of the leather glove, pulling it off with a jerk of his head. 

His hand was virtually blue with streaks of purple marbling the skin. The fingers curled like claws, the nails longer and darker, and the knuckles jutting out at odd angles. Hrothgar stared at it in horror, letting the reigns go slack and Jossi have her head. Then, in one swift movement, he shoved the misshapen hand under the cloaks and his arm, to the warmest part of him, in an attempt to heat it back into its original shape.

It did no good. The hand --  both hands -- had turned into discoloured, muscular claws. After a short struggle, Hrothgar managed to pull the glove back on, again using his teeth to bite into the leather of the palm, and pull. 

The horse underneath him jogged on, unaware. 

Soon, the snow was falling in torrents, rushing towards them, stinging every exposed bit of skin. Hrothgar narrowed his eyes to slits, pulled the hood of his cloak down further, and hunched forward in the saddle, the reigns bunched loosely in his claws. 

Slowly, the balance of light and dark shifted, indicating that they must have reached the end of the forest and were nearing the next lake. When he opened his eyes fully and looked up, dark trees still lined either side of the road, yet a white sheen seemed to have laid itself over everything, blanking out the colours and bleeding them into a monochrome palette of greys and blacks.  

The snow was almost up to Jossi's knees. 

"I'm going blind," Hrothgar said, turning his head this way and that, looking up, looking around, but it made no difference. The world had lost its colour and sharpness.

Jossi trotted onwards. 

The cold had become so brittle that Hrothgar could no longer stir the grim thoughts that had occupied his mind. It was as if they were iced in place and covered over with snow, so that he could only guess at their shape. They had angered him. He had been in strong opposition, but why? He couldn't remember. The snow had driven itself through his skin and into his mind, and was now swirling and drifting inside him, shifting the known into curious, bizarre shapes.

He didn't know long he'd had been underway, nor how long it would be till dusk, or even if dusk had come and gone and it wasn't already the next morning. The words of the message he'd memorised came floating up from the snow banks inside him, but he was no longer sure if they were correct, or if he was creating them, bending the words into some nonsense about Norway and preparing for a fight. 

It made no real sense. 

His eyes were closed when they broke from the tree line and rounded the next lake. He neither saw nor felt the change in temperature nor the shift in the light. Jossi shook her head and snorted a few times, but did not stop her steady pace. 

When Hrothgar finally did open his eyes, he found he could no longer straighten his back. He tried and cried out, only then noticing something hard had formed on either side of his mouth, making his teeth ache. His entire body seemed to be nothing but dull pain mixing with the snow that continued to fall, rising, rising higher to the knees of his horse. 

"What's happening to me?" he said, but the words only echoed in his mind. He saw the white puffs of air as he spoke, but didn't hear anything. "WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?" he yelled, and Jossi, startled, broke into a canter for a few yards before dropping back into a trot. She had heard him, but he had only heard the words faintly, as if whispered. 

Hrothgar shook himself in frustration and anger. He was deaf, his hearing dimming as his sight had done. What was he doing out here? Where was he going?

Hrothgar closed his eyes and slumped over the front of the saddle. 

Jossi trotted onwards. 

And then slowed to a walk. 

And then stopped. 

Hrothgar opened his eyes and saw the earthen ring wall of a homestead, smoke ringing up from the holes in the middle of the thatch. Men stared at him through the sharpened wooden stakes at the top of the wall. 

This must be Haraldsson's landholding, Hrothgar thought, his memory coming back in fits and starts. He reached into his cloak and pulled out the Jarl's silver brooch before slipping from the saddle and onto the ground to scuttle and limp his way towards the gate, his malformed hands dragging the ground. If he showed the silver brooch, they would certainly let him sit by a fire  then, perhaps, the pain would go away and he would be himself again. 

Miraculously, the snow had completely melted away here, leaving only puddles in the mud. Jossi followed him, leaning down to pull up a mouthful of the grass as she did. 

In one of the puddles, Hrothgar spied his reflection and halted. 

The face of a goblin, a monster, tusks growing from his lower jaw, skin black and wrinkled, met him and he stumbled back, losing his balance and falling over into warm rain water. 

The gate opened, and a man appeared, calling something to him. 

Hrothgar rolled out of the mud and stood up as straight as he could, then lifted the silver brooch. "I come from the Jarl." 

"Do you have news? Then speak it," the man said, in a suspicious tone. "And it better be the one we've been waiting for, or you can climb right back on your horse and ride on, Jarlman." The man crossed his arms over his chest, and stared at him.  

Hrothgar moved his jaws a few times, the pain radiating through his neck and down into his twisted limbs. Cold, he was so very cold. Would he make it to the next landholding?

Slowly, the words came falling out through his tusks, one by one, like leaves falling from a autumn tree. The man expression slowly changed the longer he spoke, until he laughed and clapped Hrothgar on the shoulder. 

"Of course we shall side with Norway! Come in and have a horn of mead, Jarlman, you must be tired from your journey." 

Hrothgar grunted his acceptance and followed the man inside the earth walls, his claws and tusks clicking, his cloak dragging the ground behind his slumped form like the body of a slain animal.

Jossi followed in the wake of the young man who she'd carried through the pleasant green landscape all afternoon, the exciting smells of the forest and the cool lake water a welcome change from the stall and meadow of home.

Her reigns dragged through the early autumn grass as she followed the men through the gate and earthen walls of this new homestead, sweet hay the only thing on her mind.