He didn’t know why he had left, one morning he woke up and felt a powerful pull on his bones calling him home. quickly he had taking all of his worldly goods and threw them in a bag on his back after a few short goodbyes was away. He had walked to Portofino and bartered a passage till the end of the river, from there he had hugged the coast north till the mountains had rose before him. Then he climbed the rugged mountains using at first deer trails and streams to guide him up the dangerous ridges, higher and higher and more north he climb till at times he was clinging on the sides mountains with his fingertips all the while the feeling in his bones pulling him harder and harder north.
After 3 weeks of grueling place he crossed the border of Njordr, but the pull was just as strong. Bjorn had hit a plateau and was thankful for the short break of flatness. Bjorn was collecting food and other supplies for his continued journey, when he realized that he wasn’t alone anymore. A large pack of dire wolves had found their next meal when they first caught the Ironbreakers scent, and was quickly closing the distance, so he did what any sane man of the north would do, He ran.
Crashing through the undergrowth and the fallen pine needles he could see the flanking members of the pack on his left and right as the main body of the beast closed in on his flank. he could hear their many feet gliding along the forest floor and their hot breath on the high mountain air pressing into his back and for a split second he almost could swear that he heard laughter coming from the pack. He could tell that a clearing was up ahead and was hoping that in an open space he could at least have a small chance of scaring off the pack after killing a few of it members, but to his shock an horror he realized that the pack had been guiding him to their killing ground this entire time, a cliff were a ravine dropped into a valley after hundreds of feet of steep cliff.
Getting to the edge and looking over he turned around and with a grimace, drew his axe. “time to make myself a fine wolf blanket for the winter” he said to himself, seeing the dozens of hungry eyes in the woods drawing need and knowing their was no where else to go he prepared for this fight and the last fight at the gates. He raised his shield and yelled as the wolves charged the very first one leaped at his throat but Bjorn raised his shield just in time to see the large wolf lowering its held to crash its full weight into the blow shoving him past the edge and in the frantic move he grasped the edge of the cliff and with all this might and tried to pull himself up. He had managed to get his head back over the edge when he thought he saw something moving in the woods a large as the great ship that had taken him down the river, then the earth he so desperately clinging to gave way and gravity took over.
With shock and horror knowing it was all over he felt the first blow from the fall then an endless procession of twisting and falling landing on rocks and being caught for a moment by trees but carried by his weight and speed, spinning and spinning, the glint of a stream at the bottom the ravine catching his eye for a moment before being replaced by a pine in his line of site that he cracked his head on. the world when white and still he fell. The color and sound returned to him as the spinning started to slow down then he hit with full force the bottom of the valley with a crash of metal and meat.
Bjorn didn’t move and wondered how many things he had just broken and how and more importantly why he was still alive. then for the first time in weeks he felt like he had done the thing that was required of him his bones no longer felt the pulling, that brought a smile to his face. Then he smelled the smell of fire and cooking food, his hunger rose up in him and reminded him that falling down and almost dying was very hungry work, he looked over and saw a women not ten feet away from him walking over to him and another man tied up with chains and rope by a fire and a cooking meal. The women dressed in rotting furs and covered in tattoos walked up to him with a smile and said the last friendly words he would hear in a very very long time. “Ironbreaker, right on time, they said you would be coming” she then drew a wicked looking knife. For the next few hours nothing but screams came from the valley.
