Chapter 12 - Village VII
Eira came to Arroch with her questions. Arroch quietly walked Eira around and explained what he had gathered and surmised about Ryeamund's environment. The two of them got to thinking about how they all figured out when Ryeamund had seen big-men before. They had thought themselves quite clever at the time. Not as clever as they had figured, as it turned out.
What was more important now, once Eira explained how woodcutters were all so individualistic, and even known for it. Why would one of them want to dye his fair hair dark, which was the more she thought about it, almost certainly what was going on. Arroch remembered the tale about the man that made fun of Ryeamund's mother, and them not having kids for so long, then boom.
When you went back, the age of Ryeamund? You then had to ask, once again, what big-men were around. Because if Ryeamund meticulously stained his light hair to dark, it was for only one reason… to better fit in with his surroundings. The village kid that had not fit in, had seen walnut oil and who but a woodcutter would have it available and to use it for staining hair as well as ax handles.
Woodcutters in their first few grays will sometimes out of vanity try to hold onto that last year or three of youthful appearance. But Rye was far too young for that. And once you put fair hair on him, his lighter body hair made suddenly a lot more sense. He had been a fair haired sleek muscular young man. Surrounded by taller, fatter, hairier barbarians. Dark haired and dark-eyed, with thick rich body hair that some women preferred, and others did not.
When you did the math, there actually in point of fact were not any big-men around that area in that time frame. This was just several years after the high king had forged the nation. The varying peoples of the already unruly south-lands were fighting each other, raids from without, as well as fighting the kingsmen from time to time. The south-lands from day one, had never been the quiet neighborhood.
The king assembled his own all-star cast of hard asses for the task, which seemed even bigger a task than forging the nation in the first place. He needed not men, he needed great men. Men came. Wanted the honor of being picked out to go. Rhyshia had responded, with the very best they had to offer. Large numbers of Rhyshian men of renown went and were picked out.
The Rhyshians were a large segment of the RavinLunden. They were happy to be invited to stay in the kingdom, after helping in the last great corridor incident. When living with the far north-men, to be accepted as one of their own, as the Rhyshian RavinLunden certainly were, well… that said something.
The RavinLunden hunters and fighters were known for their cold blooded ruthlessness. They felt they always needed to impress their far north-men kin. Their great-men they picked out to represent them at such an important event, that they not be embarrassed? Well, they cared enough that they found and sent the very best.
The whole concept of VinterBluden, the cold blood… came primarily from the RavinLunden people themselves. They were rumored to have a streak of cold blooded ruthlessness in their very nature. In their souls. In their blood. They were said to have certain lines of people that were notably dispassionate, whether they put it to good use or not.
Eira realized they were most likely seeing the result of an errant seedling of the time. It would have been certainly and surely, one of what was informally referred to as the Dark Lords. Men that were from long lines of VinterBluden. Educated in the Gartens even more than usual, because more was expected from those of higher birth.
Those men and women were expected to not only participate in all of the Gartens, it was simply assumed they would excel. They were after all the end product of as careful of human animal husbandry as their people could manage to oversee and put into practice. The tallest, the strongest, the most agile, the smartest. When called on to represent the soul of the people, to their bigger, stronger hosts?
You simply went around all the Gartens. You whittled your pool from each of the BladdenMeisters down. You wanted those that were the coldest, and the most intelligent and agile.
If this was the case, Ryeamund's actual father was obviously one of these men.
Eira and Arroch got Theyer and Sooth in on it all, to try to decide what to do next. In the end, first things first. Eira's next job was to figure out how to wash Ryeamund's hair. A high reckoner with Practical Alchemy instruction was the right choice. Eira started out with a strong base of peppermint oil.
Ryeamund wondered why his wench was everyd ay pampering him in the bathhouse. Not that he terribly minded the whole procedure. The strong smelling peppermint oil that she would rub his hair down with, knead his scalp.
Once that was routine, she slowly added herbs. A little fine soft clay. Some fine wood-ashes, not much. A few drops of vinegar, a dollop of rendered pine tar resin, again hardly any. Working slowly. A drop at a time, a pinch more each time… she finally got his hair stain out and gone. Up here? There was no walnut staining. The land of pine and softwoods.
The only thing left, was who would tell him. Nobody volunteered for the task. No one would accept the task. For one thing, nobody really wanted to be the guy that swung a dead cat around they found in the woods. For a second thing, in the course of easy campfire tales… the oxen knew that there were a couple of people that Ryeamund seemed to have made a particular example of.
A few woodcutters. Some drunken blacksmiths. And the village boys that had it in for him. Of particular note, were his mentioning the one guy that made fun of his dead mother the wrong way, too many times. Now they all saw the connection of all of it.
His father had not been able to make any kids for a long time. The wife had suddenly been with child around the time the father prayed to Odin for a fine strong son. The boy had fair hair in a land of dark everything. Those southern people would have had a very quick glance at a gaggle of Rhyshian Great-men, they would have stood out in battle, no doubt about it.
It would have been fairly obvious where the boy had come from. The father raised him as well as he could. He had always wanted a son. He finally had a big strong one. Fuck it, right? Pity the wife had to die to give birth to this son.
Some village kids were assholes. The south-lands had more than their fair share of them. Even the Bears came back with entertaining tales about just how drunk and ornery the southern lowlands were. Growing up there, he would have been a target. Visibly targeted.
One of the targets of his bear-level violence, had been reserved for the man responsible about never shutting up about his dead mother's questionable moral virtues. Ryeamund had to make it clear that spreading woodcutter and farmer and blacksmith teeth around was one thing. But if you really insisted on deliberately making him mad, that he had a special kind of caress for just such an occasion.
No one wanted to be the person that told Ryeamund the truth. For some it was likely simple, and very reasonable fear. After his demonstration on the Bear, after trying to talk the Bear out of the bad idea he was having… well, in the people's favorite phrase of their own time? No one really wanted to grease that pig up.
For others, it wasn't even true fear, it was pure respect. For his abilities, surely… but more for what growing up in some rough, coarse, southern border shit-hole was surely like. Everyone knew, and it was no secret at all. That was the lands of the original big north-men that first came out and settled there, and got mixed in over generations with more north men coming down, and breeding with the local barbarians that were around the outer areas.
It had a well-earned reputation, the entire area in general, as barely what passed for civilization. When the day finally comes that the descendants of the true original bloodthirsty raiding barbarians, finally take a look around them and declare something barely passing for civilization? Well, it takes one to know one. What would later become known as Vikings down through the ages, were having problems in certain areas. They even had to send in the goon squads every now and again around the taverns as a gentle reminder.
Surely, a fun place to grow up. Appearing to clearly look just like the invaders. Out of nothing so much as respect, those people pitied him that didn't fear him. No one was going to be able to explain it to him and it not be destructive one way or the other.
In the end, Eira decided she had to come up with some kind of process. If it were a matter of simply telling him the information, and getting away with it? Wulfgar would be the man for the job. He could simply back off ten paces, point his sword at the man, and tell him what he wished him to know. Then walk away from him, having bidden him well.
That would give him the information in the worst possible and most abrupt way. Eira was a Gentle Woman. A true Gentle Woman of high reckoning, should surely be able to construct some ploy to help. It was no sin if the ploy was to aid, not to injure. This was how mischief was turned into virtue.
Plus, Odin himself perish the thought, but she wanted him to no longer think of who and what he must surely be… as a bad thing. He had for his entire life, obviously. She wondered what it must be like to grow up, knowing you were different. Having the fortitude to silently endure it. Then to slowly construct a do or die plan to fix it. To survive. Finally? In the end, you had to extract your revenge. Ruthlessly, there was no finer way.
How was she going to take that very thing, and try to turn it into a pleasant thought. The man had gotten this far, on little more than grit, determination and luck. The Rhyshian seeds? Really can take root anywhere.
Then, she remembered Theyer and Sooth both talking idly about the time they first came into the villages. The RavinLunden was the first village anyone would see coming from the south. They talked about how Rye had run around playing touch and go with the village children. That might have been the first time Rye ever ran around with the village children in his life, and it was a fun event. The village children had taken sticks to him as a little kid and driven him home to his own tiny lease farm.
If they were going to winter anyways, The RavinLunden village wasn't far away. The thing she could not show him or tell him, in any direct way? Would then become intuitively obvious. Then, all her hints and suggestions and little smirks would all come together. He would see the thing for himself.
Then the thing, once seen? Could no longer be unseen.