Bjorn Ironbraid's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Bjorn Ironbraid had sworn to carve his name into the peak of Maelstrom Mountain, where every Viking before him had frozen or fallen. He stood now at its frozen foot, and his bare feet told him the truth. The ice under his soles was smooth as wet glass. He took one step. His heel shot sideways. He dropped hard onto the slope and slid, clawing, before a rock stopped him. He lay there, breathing. His braids scraped the ice. The tattoos on his arms meant nothing here. Strength could not grip frozen stone. His leather shoes had worn to rags on the long walk from the coast, and now the lower slopes rose ahead like a polished wall. One more step and the mountain would take him, the way it had taken all the others. So he turned back. He limped down to Northwind Village, its steep thatched roofs bright with snow. Smoke curled from stone hearths. He needed gear built for ice, and he had no coin, only a name and a foolish oath. He found his sister in the family longhouse beside the water. Astrid Ironbraid knelt at the hearth, driving a bone awl through thick sole leather. She did not look up. "You came back with your feet still attached," she said. "Better than I expected." "The ice threw me," Bjorn said. "I need boots that bite." Astrid set down the awl. She reached behind her and pulled a pair of boots into the firelight. The soles bristled with iron cleats, each spike hammered and filed sharp. She had been making them for days. "You think I didn't know where you were going?" she said. "You've talked of that peak since we were children. Every man who tried it is under the snow." She held the boots out but did not release them. "These will hold your weight on the ice. The cleats dig in. But they won't save you higher up, where the rock turns to nothing." Bjorn took the boots. The iron was cold and heavy in his hands. He sat and forced his raw feet inside. The leather gripped his ankles. He stood and pressed a cleat against the stone floor. It bit and held. "You could come," he said. "One fool in the family is enough," Astrid said. But she pushed a fur cloak and a coil of rope across the floor to him. Bjorn walked out into the snow. He climbed back to the frozen slope and set one cleated foot on the ice. It held. He set the other. It held. He climbed, step by biting step, until the smooth ice gave way to a sheer face of black rock above him. The boots gripped stone no longer. The rope hung at his hip, and there was no one to hold the other end.