V
With each step into the darkening woods, the bottom of Kai’s feet fell deeper and deeper into wild terrain as the brown and yellow leaves now began to reach up to his mid-shins and the path he was on became less pronounced and more rugged. The crunching of leaves underneath his feet made him nervous. Nervous for what? He could not say. The road in this part of the forest was restricted to any and all villagers and permitted only for those on their Path. Violation of this law was punishable by death without exception.
In approaching the deeply entrenched woods Kai expected the darkness to greet him with cold indifference, or worse punishment, like his people viciously did at times with Thralls who made simple mistakes. The smell of pine hit his senses with enough force it could be said to have almost punched his nostrils. As he made his way forward peering down the road, he noticed the path begin to widen and the growing dark scenery surrounding him gradually lighten up with each step he took. The smell of pine was quickly morphed with the scent of smoke.
“Smoke...” Kai wondered. Something in his mind told him to return, to turn back now, to leave and never return to the forest. But another thought, a single word, pressed in with equal weight: “Skogarmaðr.”
Failing to carry out one’s Path meant skóggangr, the punishment of exile, and being labeled a skogarmaðr, a forest man. Men who violated the Path custom had to live out the rest of their lives as social outcasts and outlaws in the wild, that is if someone didn’t first take it on themselves to enact a more severe punishment than banishment.
In his lifetime Kai lived through two exiles. The first he was too young to recall, but the second he never forgot. Ebbe was four years Kai’s senior and displayed defiance towards not just his Path, but much of the Viking customs and traditions, often causing him to be ostracized in public. Many considered him to have been haunted by draugrs. Kai could recall a Thing being called the same day Ebbe failed to take his Path, to which he was tried in front of a quiet crowd that quickly turned into a vicious mob. As the King’s Jarls escorted him out of the village and into the forest blindfolded on a small horse, various Karls and even Thralls threw rotted vegetables and rocks at him.
“If I return now, I will only return later in shame,” Kai nervously muttered under his breath.
Then something in him changed and in almost the flash of a second a switch seemed to flip. Whether it was Kai, or the gods or Odin himself who inspired the thought leading to the change, he could not say. Only he knew that the thought, random like many are, led to a change in his thinking, leading him to then take fuller and more direct control of his ongoing thoughts.
“I may be Odin’s choice, I may not be,” he thought, “but my choice actions now reveal Odin’s choice. Fate is fate and the more I stand by idly choosing not to act, the more I choose to be acted upon by outside forces inhibiting my path forward. This stalling only shows the reality of a predetermined bad fate that the gods have chosen. Fear is innate, it’s the default setting for the unfamiliar, for the unknown. But I embrace the unfamiliar. I embrace the unknown.”
“Who am I?” he firmly questioned.
“You are a man on the Path to Viking,” his thought responded.
Moving closer and closer to the widening opening of the path, he came to a glade. In the center of it was a fire with figures around it in a half circle. He stepped into the light.
Kai was in the Known Unknown.
Immediately his attention turned towards Bard standing in the front of a massive oak tree with 11 figures, who stood staring forward. The men spoke no words but maintained a deafening silence. It was hard for Kai to see their faces entirely, as the brightness of the fire they surrounded only cast enough light for mere glimpses or half appearances of shadow. The parts of their faces he did see were expressionless.
As Kai moved into the glade, visible now to everyone, he immediately took notice of their attire. These warriors were not dressed like normal drengrs; wolf skins covered their backs and heads with faces covered in black and red war paint. These skins were reserved for only the most elite warriors of the Langr tribe: Berserkers.
