Our friends from the north

I can clearly remember the night I died.

It was a dull and foggy - we didn't have watches then, but if we did it
would have been about ten past eight. The others had left me to go
rampaging through the nearby village one last time before we jumped
back aboard our long boat to head for the North lands - our home.

It had been a successful trip. We raped and pillaged our way across the
torn landscape leaving death and destruction in our wake. We had a
ball. We took no prisoners. We split lots of skulls. We defiled
virgins, and their mothers, and their grandmothers - even their
dogs.

And amidst all of this wanton carnage, I stubbed my toe.

I tripped over a recently deceased monk and was sent flying, my ill
gotten gains clattering on the cold stone floor as I lay prostrate
before a burning cross on a smashed altar. My fellow marauders burst
out laughing and did the decent thing by kicking me in the sides - our
way of showing affection and admonishing a naughty child. I pulled
myself up, made a great show of brushing the dust off my favourite hide
(the one I kept for plundering monasteries and noble houses) and stood
forcefully on the monk's head which caved in remarkably easily and
joined in the general guffawing before setting alight to the prostrate
cleric - who, it must be said, really wasn't having the best of
days.

I made for what was left of the door and noticed the slight pain in my
left big toe - nothing to worry about - don't cry, you're a big boy
now, mother would have said. Needless to say, I was thankful that she
stayed at home on these occasions.

We made back for camp with our haul, each boasting how much he had
stolen and arguing over who killed whom.

Happy days indeed.

Over the next week my slight hobble turned into a limp and I began to
hold the others back - no room for passengers here so I was left to
guard our booty while my chums ravaged the surrounding countryside and
generally had a fine old time. Oh well, I thought, there would be other
monasteries, other villages, other girls - my time would come, and
indeed it did, sooner than I thought.

They were lost in the dark and stumbled over something moving in the
foggy gloom. So they did what was expected of any decent norseman -
they hacked and hacked until the something stopped moving and became
nothing at all. Then they realised that up until very recently that
something was me - one of the old gang. Someone laughed - more out of
embarrassment than malice, someone else noted that there would be more
to share around now that I had gone. Everyone agreed that they should
keep it to themselves and not tell my mother what had really happened.
She wouldn't be very happy. Not happy at all. And she had an extremely
bad temper.

Extremely bad.