D11.doc

Ragnarsson Rock

I woke up, bolting upright in my bed. Another nightmare. That night had burned itself into my mind and once again it had revisited me in form of a horrid dream. The blood, the screams of pain from my mother as she tried to shield me and the growls of rage from my father. My mother died that night a little more than six years ago. As always I could no longer sleep. I never was able to go back to bed after such a dream,. So I went to my small desk by the drafty window and sat down to put my thoughts into a little PDD my Grandfather had given me. It was the only Off World high-tech thing I owned and If father knew I had it, he would have taken it away from me, I was certain. It was my first grade teacher Mr. Atkins who suggested I keep a diary of my thoughts and of daily events. He said thinking things over and writing them down would help to get a different perspective about things. My father had killed my mother with his steel cable whip that fateful night. He had beaten me as well right after my mother no longer moved. The steel whip had almost cut me in half and I almost died that night. I was not sure who it was who stopped him, but I was certain I remembered the red dress of Gretel through my bloody haze. They had flown me to the Union Clinic, they had saved my life even tough I wished I had died that night as well, I missed her so much! While I was still a kid and not supposed to understand it all, I knew the reason  why father killed mother and why he hate me so much. Midril, the cook had explained it to me more than once, and she knew every rumor, gossip and local story there was to know. Father, so she had explained to me one morning, was the oldest heir to the Olafson Clan. It was an old Clan and its linage reached back to the time when the first settlers arrived on Nilfeheim. Lineage and being of the Old Clans had great value in our society, but the Olafson Clan was poor and had very little resources. They had to hire their men out to other clans because they could not afford their own Hunt Subs or fishing boats. My mother on the other hand was of the Ragnarsson Clan, also one of the Old Clans and perhaps the richest off them all. Her father and my Grandfather was credited with increasing the wealth and influence of the Ragnarsson Clan even beyond Nilfeheim. Grandfather's only son, my mother's older brother had died training for the Ancient Rite of Passage, he and was crushed by an angry Tyranno Fin so the story went. There were no other sons only a daughter, my mother. While it would be perfectly normal for a woman to inherit on almost any other world in the Union, here on Nilfeheim, it was the First Born son that got everything and he alone decided what share his mother, brothers and sisters would get from an inheritance. Marriages between Clans were arranged by Clan Chiefs and daughters were given a dowry by their fathers and then given away to seal alliances and pacts between Clans, the young people had no  choice in who they were allowed to date, love or marry. Dating someone else against the wishes of the Clan Chiefs usually ended in the death of the girl by the hand of her own father. The boy was often also punished but rarely killed. Now the old clan chief of the Olafson's, my  late grandfather Volund had made such an arrangement with the old clan chief of the Ragnarsson Clan, Erik Gustav Ragnarsson. The oldest Son of the Olafson Clan, my father was to marry Ilva Ragnarsson and since there were no other male children in the line of the Ragnarsson Clan, it would cease to exist and all its riches and all its possessions would become Olafson. This was a tremendous deal and fortune for the poor Olafson Clan of course, but my father was in love with another woman and secretly dated and loved her against all traditions. This other woman was the daughter of a Nubhir herder, a lowly Freeman named Hemstead who was as poor as one could be. Her name was Gretel and she had worked as a Nubhir skin scrubber in our burgs Tanneries. A union between a Nubhir herder' daughter  and  future clan chief would have met the end of the Olafson Clan in terms of relevance, however it was her, Father wanted. Father and Gretel kept seeing each other in secret. Not that such secrets could really be kept  in a Clan burg where eyes and ears were everywhere and their inappropriate liaison was the source of much whispered gossip. Midril told me that everyone knew how, father hated my mother from the start and  that he hated everything the Ragnarsson Clans stood for. Matters turned worse when Grandfather standing at my crib making a sacred Viking oath and proclaiming me and not father heir to all, as I was the first born in the line of the merging Clans and the first male child carrying Ragnarsson and Olafson blood. Of course, as long as my mother's father lived, the Ragnarsson Clan existed and only on his death I would inherit. Father hated me and would have loved to kill me but the fact that the very Burg we lived in would not be his if I died before Grandfather passed away kept me relative safe. If I died before my Grandfather, he was free of any obligations to the Olafson clan. Father would have to move back to the small and half crumbled burg that was the Olafson Rock, about 160 kilometers to the east. I put the PDD down. I was tired and I glanced over to the bed, but there was no rest for me in a night like this. I could not go back to sleep without seeing the lifeless bloody heap that had been my mother, being awake was better. It was almost time for the kitchen servants to get up and prepare breakfast. Our Burg was home to about eighty families, almost a hundred servants and low men and most of them got up very early to tend to their daily chores. Breakfast was served in the High Hall for members of the first families and in the common hall for everyone else. The High Hall was where my father and the exalted members of the clan would eat. Of course I was not part of that since mother died, as I was barred from setting foot into the High Halls. I dressed and headed down to the kitchens. That early there was little chance I would run into Isegrim or my brothers and I could sit by the hearth and Midril would give me some hot rolls in exchange for hauling supplies from the under croft and the store rooms. As I reached the backyard where the entrance to the kitchen was I could already smell the fresh bread Midril was baking. Isegrim was the head of the Clan, but Midril was in charge of the kitchen and her staff. She ruled over it with her ever present long wooden cooking spoon. She wielded it like a club or sword and she had knocked me over the head with it on more than one occasion. Admittedly in her defense I usually earned it for stealing a hot cake or a piece of roast. Most of the commoners and most of the servants, especially those that came from the Ragnarsson clan treated me well and I knew some felt sorry for my fate and they all knew what ad happened to my mother, although no one ever really talked about it, everyone was afraid of Isegrim. The kitchen yard was on the eastern side of the burg, a small cobblestone yard bordered by the high sea wall onto the west side and the entrance to my tower to the south. There was a small gate on the opposite site from where you could reach the old tunnels that used to be an escape passage from the days of the Clan wars. Parts of this was now converted as storage space, were we kept barrels of Tyranno oil and bales of sea weed. A long forgotten secret corridor was there as well complete with a concealed door that led right between the walls of the Great Hall where you could sneak in and listen to everything that went on, and through a concealed crack you could even see some of it. Just as I had reached the yard, Midril opened the door and sloshed a bucket of hot liquid onto the cobblestones. She saw me and stemmed her fists in her wide hips." Why am I carrying the mop water outside if you are already up and linger around like a starving Snapperfish? Get your behind in the kitchen and finish mopping the Common Hall and when you're done the bread and the breakfast ham will be ready." The kitchen was big and warm and always spotless clean. She would not have it any other way. The kitchen was pretty much the same since they rebuild the burg over 1000 years ago. The only modern equipment was the large convection oven, the big bread dough mixer and water heater. Everything else was traditional and old-fashioned, Thickgrass-seaweed compressed in into dense bricks served as fuel for the main stove, not that there was need to use fossil fuels as the Burg had a power generator running on hydrogen, but that was not traditional. Food had to be cooked over fire. I grabbed the mob and headed for the still empty Common Hall, the stone floor was gleaming clean but that did not matter to Midril who wanted it mopped never the less. The common hall had rows of stone slab benches and tables. Wood was incredibly expensive on a world without forests and had to be imported. Suddenly there was loud screaming and horrible noise of crashing and breaking from the kitchen. Something not human shrieking with an ear piercing sound. I ran towards the noise, slipped and fell on the slick floor as I reached the kitchen. The tidy kitchen was now a tumbled mess. The liquid I slipped in and  that covered the floor right by the door was thick dark and red,. It was blood! In the center of the gory puddle a badly mangled body I only recognized it as Gudrun, one of the cooks by the frilled apron the mangled corpse wore. A large Fangsnapper tore through the kitchen, smashing furniture and throwing utensils everywhere. It was about to attack Midril again. She already had lost an arm, bleeding heavily, still on her feet, brandished her wooden spoon against the dagger sharp rows of teeth of the furious beast. The back door was smashed to pieces and marked the way were the animal gained entrance to the kitchen. Despite all the confusion and horror I wondered how the beast got here. I could not understand how the Fangsnapper managed to get through the steel gates or get over the high outer walls. Our burg was in the middle of the ocean and far away from the hunting grounds of these beasts usually only found in the southern pole region. I struggled to my feet, slipping twice again. There not far from the dead cooks hand lay a big cooking knife. I did not think much and what I did then was more instinct than any planned course of action. I grabbed that knife and with a jump was on one of the big stainless steel kitchen tables and catapulted myself brandishing the knife with both hands onto the back of the beast and plunged the razor sharp steel into its back right behind the skull. The Snapper screamed even louder tried to shake me off. I didn't have a very good hold. With my left hand cramped around the left head fin, my legs clamping as hard as I could to the still moist body of the beast and plunged the knife as often as I could deep into the same wound. Hot blood sprayed from the wound gushing all over me. It stank sickly sweet and the odor mingled with the moldy fish scent Fangsnappers were famous for. As much as I was in danger of getting seriously hurt and maimed, as much as I was afraid there was a part of me deep down that enjoyed every moment of it. The Fangsnapper collapsed literally inches from Midril. Only now I saw she was protecting little Elena the daughter of Gudrun. I remembered that she was six or seven years old and always in the kitchen either playing or helping with small chores but never saying a single word. The beast, in its death throes twitched to the side and I flew of its back and hit the stove. Before I felt the actual pain of being burned I could hear the hissing sound my skin as it made connecting to the hot steel. Now men came rushing in, servants and workers that were about to get breakfast and alarmed by the noise. Greifen, who was the Burg Master took charge of the situation. He bandaged Midril wound and she was rushed away, most likely to be flown to town where she would get help at the Union Clinic. I heard my father coming. His bellowing voice heralded him long before he appeared. He then appeared in the door glancing over the mess. Greifen said." Your son Eric has bravely attacked the Fangsnapper with a kitchen knife and killed it. He saved the lives of Midril and the young girl. He is badly burned and he too should go to the Union Clinic." My father growled. "It must have been the doings of the  cursed Elhir Clan. They dropped that Fangsnapper into our yard, no doubt! They can't stand the fact that we are now merging with the Ragnarssons." Greifen nodded. "Yes, Sire, I was thinking the same. There is no other way that Fangsnapper could have made it up here into the Kitchen yard. Sigmund, one of our harpooners and Clan warrior appeared next to father and said. “I was sure the Elhir were planning something ever since we got into a fight with them at the wharf last week I and broke Hilfheim Elhir's leg, as you know Sire." "We will discuss how we retaliate on the table tonight! Now I expect this kitchen to be cleaned by this failure of a son! If he had kept watch in the tower as I expected him to do, he would have seen who did this. If he would be a real son of mine I would look upon the bodies of the intruders and not some worthless beast." He turned to leave." Let him tend to his own wounds. If I hear that anyone wasted time helping that whelp I will break every bone in their bodies!"