Matt the Knife

The Three Shades wove their intricate weave of threads together into the cloth that was the life and fate of Matt the Knife, murderous rager.

He touched the tiny mjolnir that hung from his neck and spoke to Thor, his god, and cursed the peace that had wrapped his world in a warm blanket of girlish congeniality. 

“Back in the day…” he began, but he couldn’t go on. 

The sullen darkness and steady, drizzling rain matched Matt’s black mood.  Someone would die tonight that’s for sure, someone would go to Hel tonight and Matt would notch his tiny mjolnir, Thor’s hammer, again. 

“Damn punks…”  Matt began as he crossed the alleyway where he saw hoodlums gathered about like so many traps set for the weak and unwary, danger hanging like a sudden mist that flattened all sound and light, till the alleyway looked like a van Gogh on crack.

“Yes Me!” called a childlike voice from the grayness.

“Wha..?”  Matt started.

“Yes Me!”  Louder now, and frantic, a man’s voice, filled with panic.

Without thinking Matt charged down the alley, enraged that someone called his secret name, his killing name.  He could just make out the form of someone fleeing him, leading him into the darkness, the grey mist.

He rounded into a street in full rain, and became part of an exodus of huge bearded men running toward the docks, where a war horn was blowing a call to arms.  He worried that his armor would rust, being an oath-taker and not a gold-giver, he wore steel, not silver. 

“Wha…?”  he thought.  Armor?  Steel?  Silver?

“Shield Wall!” bellowed the voice of his Lord, and he fell into line with others, shoulder to shoulder, shield to shield, and pulled his short sword.  This would be close fighting, precious work, and long swords were kept in scabbards for later, when the shield wall broke.

Matt’s mind churned with confusion but his body obeyed years of intense training, training that Matt’s mind knew he never had.  His wealth was in his many arm-rings, rings of gold that covered his forearms, which told his enemies that he was a formidable warrior.  Each arm ring was a dead enemy of worth.  Matt sent them to Valhalla and would meet them there if he died a warrior with his sword in his hand.  Then they would drink and fight each other to the death merrily each day, until Ragnarok, the end of things.