Eaters of the Dead

Now Abu Kassim determines to burn the slippers, but they are still wet, so he sets them on the balcony to dry. A dog sees them and plays with them; one of the slippers falls from his jaws and drops to the street far below, where it strikes a woman passing by. The woman is pregnant, and the force of the blow causes a miscarriage. Her husband runs to the court to seek damages, which are awarded plentifully, and Abu Kassim, now a broken and impoverished man, is obliged to pay.

The slyly literal Arabic moral states that this story illustrates what evils can befall a man who does not change his slippers often enough. But undoubtedly the undercurrent to the tale, the idea of a man who cannot shake off some burden, was what disturbed the Northmen.

Now the night passed with further celebrations, and all the warriors of Buliwyf disported in a carefree fashion. I saw the son Wiglif glaring at Buliwyf before leaving the hall, but Buliwyf paid no attention, preferring the ministrations of slave girls and freeborn women. After a time I slept.

In the morning, I awoke to the sounds of hammering and, venturing from the great hall of Hurot, I found all the peoples of the kingdom of Rothgar at work on defenses. These were being laid out in preliminary fashion: horses drew up quantities of fence posts, which warriors sharpened to points; Buliwyf himself directed the placement of defense works, by marking scratches in the ground with the tip of his sword. For this he did not use his great sword Runding, but rather some other sword; I do not know if there was a reason for this.

Upon the middle portion of the day, the woman who was called the angel of death  came and cast bones on the ground, and made incantations over them, and announced that the mist would come that night. Upon hearing this, Buliwyf called for all work to cease, and a great banquet to be prepared. In this matter, all the people concurred, and ceased their efforts. I inquired of Herger why there should be a banquet, but he replied to me that I had too many questions. It is also true that I had timed my inquiry badly, for he was posturing before a blond slave girl who smiled warmly in his direction.

Now, in the later part of the day, Buliwyf called together all his warriors and said to them, "Prepare for battle," and they agreed, and wished luck one to another, while all about us the banquet was being made ready.

The night banquet was much as the previous one, although there were fewer of Rothgar’s nobles and earls. Indeed, I learned that many nobles would not attend at all, for fear of what would happen in the Hurot Hall that night, for it seemed that this place was the center of the fiend’s interest in the area; that he coveted Hurot Hall, or some similar thing – I could not be sure of the meaning.

This banquet was not enjoyable to me, for reason of my apprehension of coming events. However, this event occurred: one of the elderly nobles spoke some Latin, and also some of the Iberian dialects, for he had traveled to the region of the caliphate of Cordova as a younger man, and I engaged him in conversation. In this circumstance, I feigned knowledge that I did not have, as you shall see.

He spoke to me thus: "So you are the foreigner who shall be the number thirteen?" And I said that I was such. "You must be exceedingly brave," the old man said, "and for your bravery I salute you." To this I made some trifling polite response, of the sense that I was a coward compared to the others of Buliwyf’s company; which indeed was more than true.

"No matter," said the old man, who was deep in his cups, having drunk the liquor of the region – a vile substance they call mead, yet it is potent – "you are still a brave man to face the wendol."

Now I sensed that I might finally learn some matters of substance. I repeated to this old man a saying of the Northmen, which Herger had once said to me. I said, "Animals die, friends die, and I shall die, but one thing never dies, and that is the reputation we leave behind at our death."

The old man cackled toothlessly at this; he was pleased I knew a Northman proverb. He said, "That is so, but the wendol have a reputation, too." And I replied, with the utmost indifference: "Truly? I am not aware of it."

At this the old man said that I was a foreigner, and he would consent to enlighten me, and he told me this: the name of "wendol," or "windon," is a very ancient name, as old as any of the peoples of the North country, and it means "the black mist." To the Northmen, this means a mist that brings, under cover of night, black fiends who murder and kill and eat the flesh of human beings.  The fiends are hairy and loathsome to touch and smell; they are fierce and cunning; they speak no language of any man and yet converse among themselves; they come with the night fog, and disappear by day-to where, no man durst follow.

The old man said to me thus: "You can know the regions where dwell the fiends of the black mist by many ways. From time to time, warriors on horse may hunt a stag with dogs, chasing the stag over hill and dale for many miles of forest and open land. And then the stag comes to some marshy tarn or brackish swamp, and here it will halt, preferring to be torn to bits by the hounds rather than enter that loathsome region. Thus we know of the areas where the wendol live, and we know that even the animals will not enter thence."

I expressed over-great wonderment at his tale, in order to draw further words from the old man. Herger saw me then, gave me a menacing look, but I paid him no heed.

The old man continued thus: "In olden days, the black mist was feared by all the Northmen of every region. Since my father and his father and his father before, no Northman has seen the black mist, and some of the young warriors counted us old fools to remember the ancient tales of their horror and depredations. Yet the chiefs of the Northmen in all the kingdoms, even in Norway, have always been prepared for the return of the black mist. All of our towns and our fortresses are protected and defended from the land. Since the time of the father of my father’s father, our peoples have thus acted, and never have we seen the black mist. Now it has returned."