#armod

“Come on, keep up.”

The small figure stumbled through the snow. His father walked - no, prowled ahead in a way that would make Snow Leopard jealous. He always wondered how the man could move so effortlessly through the snow, move so quickly and stealthily, not breaking ice. Clearly whatever Armod was doing wasn’t it.

Stefnir paused in his tracks. He turned to the huffing boy with such a sluggish look sprawled across his face and body that the words which came out of his mouth next were simply filler. “Leopard’s tits, you expect me to hold your hand through everything? Your brain’s the most important tool - use it.” Armod caught his breath and looked up for a reply, but it was too late - his father was already ten, fifteen meters in front of him. With an angered huff, the boy set off once again. 

It was approximately midday when the two neared the top of the hill. Stefnir stopped moving and lightly tugged on his back-strap; Armod sat back in a pile of snow with a soft thump, his chest heaving. As his breathing slowed, his attention returned to the details around him. A scattered handful of short pines obscured the two at nearly three sides, buried in a river of taller trees reaching upwards. Imprinted on the snow under him were the tracks of a small mammal, perhaps a rabbit. Another larger, clawed set of prints trailed not far behind. 

A white speck drifted down onto Armod’s thick wrist, then another. He looked up. Clouds had begun to obscure the sun, following with it a small amount of snow. The boy’s gaze began drifting upwards when a slight movement in the treetops caught his eye. Far up in the pines was a nesting bird, its tawny-white feathers puffed up in anticipation for the cold. Under it, perhaps some chicks...

“Tell me what you see.” 

Armod blinked in silence. His father turned to him and gestured to the forest.

He bit his lip, then looked around. “It’s... secretive.”

“Go on.”

“Nobody could see us here. The smaller pines give this place the illusion of one-way glass: we can see outwards, but none can see in.”

“Correct.” Stefnir offered a crooked smile. “But you’re getting caught up in the details again. Look.” He raised one furry arm to a stretch of road not far off in the distance. Armod met this response with a puzzled face as his dad slowly crouched down. “What does this have to do with ‘hunting’?”

In one fluid motion, the hunter took out his rifle.

“Patience.”

---

Armod leaned back. After a moment, he set back up. He then leaned back again.

Letting out an irritated sigh, he began to stack his nails under one another, longer over shorter, though that wasn’t saying much considering his father’s failed attempts at beating the nail-biting out of him. This, too, bored him, and he turned his attention back to the bird. Or where it was. In its place were several chicks, old enough to have feathers, young enough to not yet fly. The mother flapped back to the nest as if on cue.

“Say, da,” Armod piped up. “How do birds get food for their babes in weather like this?”

Stefnir did not look up from his rifle scope. “Shut up,” he replied, bluntly.

Armod rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to his feathered friend. It was now tirelessly feeding the hungry mouths, one after another, until the chicks were full. Then, it turned towards the direction of the norn. Its head tilted; Armod couldn’t speak bird, but he didn’t need to in order to recognize curiosity. It flitted down to a lower branch and tilted its head again. A smile crept along the boy’s lips as he scooted closer.

“Get over here! Quick!” 

His father’s hissing voice caused Armod’s temples to pound; he jolted forward through the snow. Falling prone in suit, he turned towards the hunter with an animalistic ferocity. “What is it?”

Stefnir only inched away from the rifle and nodded sharply in reply. The small norn picked it up. It took only a second for the target to come into focus: a caravan. 

Three people and a yak, but the details didn’t matter. Adrenaline was already pumping through Armod’s veins. His breathing became deeper, his smell sharper.

And the throbbing in his temples had turned into a primal drumbeat.

“Remember what I taught you.”

The nod he gave was so small, his father did not even notice.

“Do it.”

His finger squeezed the trigger. 

With it came a flash of light and a silence in the forest.

---

“Wolf’s balls, this is heavy!” The dolyak’s body makes an audible scratching noise as the two hunters drag it through the snow. Placing his feet on a cemented boulder, Stefnir tugs with all his might on the bovine’s legs, and through the force of its own weight, it slides down the hill. The highwayman barely dodges out of the way of the corpse and watches in fear and annoyance as the corpse rolls down to the frozen creekside.

“Well, if that’s where it’s gonna rest, that’s where it’s gonna rest.”

Usually, Armod would find such a situation humorous. The only thing he feels now is the euphoric, ever-so-noxious combination of adrenaline and pride. And perhaps the remnants of something more primal.

“Loot the travelers.” Stefnir reaches into his coat, pulling out three parchment drawings of the same runelike symbol. “Put this on them.”

Armod takes the papers hesitantly.

“...And remember what I said about invisible pockets.”

Armod nods.

---

The snow clears up. Stefnir nurses a pipe, watching his recently-built fire.

“Could hear you coming from a mile away.”

Armod places down a large sack, then follows suit. “Shut up.”

“What do we have here, anyway?” Stefnir looks puzzled. Armod reaches into the sack and pulls out a smaller one, then opens it to reveal produce inside. 

“Potatoes.” The adolescent replied. “You?”

“Potatoes.”

“The wolf doesn’t hunt far from the den.”

“I don’t suppose this ‘wolf’ found any gold.”

“Might have.”

“How much we talking here?”

“Five.” Armod hesitates. “Mostly in copper.”

Stefnir scoffs, glancing at the bags of vegetables. “Figures.”

Armod reaches into his bag and pulls out a couple of potatoes. He then props himself up with his knees and awkwardly jerks his head around at the yak’s corpse. His father looks behind him, as well.

“Pan?” 

“Get it yourself.”

“You’re the one lying against the thing.”

Stefnir hesitantly flips over, peering over the corpse behind him. He unhooks a pan and hands it to the boy who is now busy slicing the vegetables. Armod takes the utensil, nodding. “We gonna kill those men up there or what?”

“Kill them? No,” Stefnir chuckles. “Spirits, no.”

The other norn places the potatoes on the pan, then the pan on the fire. “They could tell on us.”

“They could tell our legend.”

Armod slowly nods, then turns back to the fire.

Several minutes pass. Armod tends to the potatoes, Stefnir tends to his rapidly emptying pipe. The boy removes the pan from the fire and they both skewer browned slices with their bootknives. In a few tufts of steam, the first of the slices disappears in Stefnir’s mouth.

“It’s the greatest.”

Armod cracked a smile. “Could use more seasoning.”

“Not the potatoes. Earlier you asked how a bird got food for its chicks in the winter snow.” Armod sits back, listening to his father inquisitively. “The answer for that is that it makes sure it’s the greatest. That it’s the best that ever damn-will lived.”