Moché’s Reviews > The Pale Horseman > Status Update

The first ravens came 🐦‍⬛ I have often wondered if ravens smell blood, for the sky can be clear of them all day, but when a man dies they come from nowhere on their shining black wings. Perhaps Odin sends them, for the ravens are his birds, and now they flapped down to start feasting on eyes and lips, the first course of every raven feast. The dogs and foxes would soon follow.

Hoder is the god of the night and I prayed to him. I threw my old helmet overboard as a gift because all of us were scared of the dark that swallowed us, and it was a complete dark because clouds had come from the west to smother the sky. No moon, no stars. We were blind. The wind rose, the seas heaved us, and we brought the oars inboard and let the air and water carry us for we could neither see nor steer.

Deep under the earth, where the corpse serpent gnaws at the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree of life, there are three spinners. Three women. We might believe we make choices - in truth our lives are in the spinners’ fingers. They make our lives, and destiny is everything. The Danes know that, and even the Christians know it. Wyrd bið ful aræd, we Saxons say, fate is inexorable, and the spinners had decided my fate.

Ac her forlo beraỗ; fugelas singaỗ, gylled groghama.

For here starts war, carrion birds sing, and grey wolves howl.

From The Fight at Finnsburh ⚔️