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With Fire in their Hearts


TheShammySocialist

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[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb1m1gUfjxE]Frozen Embers[/url]

 

The snow that greeted the man that stepped out of the partially-destroyed peasant hovel was nothing that perturbed or annoyed him, the white blanket covering the land was a touch of home that he didn't see as much in these lands. The lands of the north were known for their short summers and long winters, where families lay with their animals inside their house, covered in drifts, for weeks at a time. The lands of the south, of where ancient tribes like the Dacians and Goths originated from, these lands knew shorter, wetter winters, with mud that could swallow a mans' legs whole, where the rain and snow mixed together could soak a man, and kill him if he were not prudent to find shelter.

 

These were lands once ruled by people such as the Romans, their grasp had weakened over centuries of their rule, where they came to depend on the very people they had conquered, and eventually, were snuffed out with hardly more than a whimper. Their cousins to the East, of Byzantium, they had survived much longer, but they too had, as he had heard only a fortnight previous, succumb to an eventuality; the eventuality that glory and victory would eventually lead to complacence, complacence led to vanity and weakness, and eventually death. He had sought out to follow the path his brother had taken, to go to the halls of Constantinople, nothing had been left for him in the north with the death of his wife, and with her, his first born. War was something that came naturally to men like Godric Aenstane, he and his brother had fought and wrestled with other boys of the village when they were young, had raided towns in the land of the Rus.

 

It seemed as though whomever guided the men in the heavens above, though, would look unkindly to this sort of lifestyle, when he lost the first and second loves of his life in a single eve, and he mourned their loss with a heavy heart. He had not seen his brother for nearly ten years when he left to join the fabled men who guarded an Emperor, he having chosen out of religion, a religion he had found and adopted. He had left behind Godric to march to the halls of Constantinople, forsaking the ideas and ways of his people. He had heard stories about the great city, but for all that he had heard of the great civilization of the Byzantines, he would not find any greatness in these lands, lands wracked by the ruin of the Turks who had conquered the great city, and snuffed out the life of the "last of the Romans" forever.

 

He ran a hand through his blonde hair, haphazardly cut short in a dishevelled manner by his own hand and knife, he wrapped the bearskin around himself to warm himself against the bitter wind, a few snowflakes still falling. The smell of burnt wood and even carnage could be sensed here, the snow was lumped over forms in the snow he knew to be corpses, left behind by the Turkic raiders that had passed through the small town. His deep blue eyes surveyed the destruction they had left behind in their wake, much like he had laid waste to a few Rus villages when he was younger. After his discovery of the fall of Constantinople, he had found no solace in these lands, lands that had once been part of the cradle of civilization, lands that had become rife with anarchy, he had left the north to leave such a haphazard way of life behind, only to come to a land that had gone from stability into unruly remission.

 

His eyes looked to the small chapel that had been the center of the village, the burned hulk and the blackened orthodox cross at the top spoke of a time when people here peacefully conducted their lives, sowing the fields with their crops, building families, and discovering faith in otherworldly bodies. Now that was gone, the place that he had heard so much good come from, now laid into ruin; he almost thought of giving up on the world since his discovery of Constantinople's fall, and his brother certainly dead. At one point the night before, he had knelt down on one knee as he journeyed through the forests, evading patrols of marauding Turkic horsemen who brought terror to the countryside, and thought about laying down in the snow, and letting the cold overtake him.

 

His attention would be drawn to the glow of the fires of the village he now stood in, and instead of lying down to die from exposure to the cold winds and snow that would surely overtake him in a night, he would walk into a scene of carnage and destruction. There had been no one left to greet him there, besides the corpses of the townspeople, cleaved as they ran to and fro to try to save their lives. It was in that moment he felt a sense of camaraderie with the Turks who plundered this town, but those thoughts turned to ash as soon as they entered his mind, as he remembered it was these men and men like them that had taken the lives of his brother, and his hopes for finding what might have been a normal life from him.

 

It were those thoughts from last night that made his blood warm him against the cool air of the early morning, and he ground his teeth together, as he shouldered his battleaxe and his satchel of meager belongings he had brought along. He looked at the forms that lay in the snow around him, lives that had been extinguished, life with his wife and expecting a child had changed him from the ways of his youth. But it was in that moment, in the ruined village somewhere in the lands of Bulgarians, that he resolved that his lifestyle when he was a younger man, albeit more foolish, was one that could be channeled with a purpose. He had a blood score to settle, and he whispered a prayer to the Gods above, that his hand would remain steady and unyielding, when he found another flock of Turkic horsemen ravaging a defenseless village.

 

It had been said that the Varangians were feared by the Turks who had faced them before, their imposing figures and relentless energy when faced with adversity of almost insurmountable odds was legendary. Such a fear was one that needed to be struck again...

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