Fargoer by Petteri Hannila Page B

want,” she said and poured the stein’s contents down her throat.
    Ambjorn hesitated, as Alf and Oder prepared to leave. Silently they gathered their gear and stepped to the door.
    “This is your last chance,” Oder warned Ambjorn.
    He stood up, but Vierra gripped his hand tightly and said: “Believe me, if you want to live.” Ambjorn stayed there, standing.
    Alf and Oder opened the door and disappeared to the dark of the night. There were no goodbyes left behind nor yelled after.
    Ambjorn sat to the table and took a pint. He filled it to the brink and while keeping his eyes tightly on its foamy top, drank all of it with one gulp.
    “Do you remember what happened when you drank with the master?” Vierra asked.
    Ambjorn did not answer immediately.
    “No.”
    Second pint followed the first one, and third one the second. Where before Ambjorn had become more talkative because of the drink, now it turned both of the imbibers inward, and no more words were traded in the night that surrendered slowly to the morning.
    Vierra’s head was shaking and she got up to try if she could still stay on her feet.
    “Shall we go?” asked Ambjorn. He held the edge of the table tightly as he got up.
    “We shall,” Vierra answered curtly. “Should we burn the house?” she added.
    “Yes. Let it burn.”
    They took with them their steins and the cask, and stepped out the door. The impenetrable night had given way on the eastern sky, from where the daybreak was making its arrival. The forest waited for them looming dark and threatening, and the Oak Vierra did not dare to look at.
    They had spread the fire from the fireplace with wood and soon, dried with decades of smoke, the old longhouse was ablaze. As a yellow torch it lighted their way when they turned toward the dark forest. The strong drink churned inside Vierra, driving waves confusion and nausea over her. Even despite that she could not ignore the forest. Its challenge rose against them, gloomy and ancient.
    Instinctively a hand found another hand, body another body; as if to find safety. Lifelong friends wouldn’t have walked closer to each other than they did. Fear, greater than just that of death, drove them together. Vierra and Ambjorn looked at each other for a moment, and aiming toward the glimmer of sun’s first light they then stepped into the forest, in unison, one step at a time.
    The journey was a nightmare filled with confusion, where strange tree-like shapes reached to grope them in the dark. Everywhere around them the forest was whispering in its own secret language, scheming and plotting against them.
    Often a branch or a root tripped one of the travelers, and, then, the other dragged him or her back up immediately. Like this continued their desperate trek toward the dawn of the next day. They did not know at all if they were moving in a circle but, whenever their confusion allowed, they tried to move toward the sun which was rising painfully slow. The sounds of the forest grew from whispers to yells and from malevolence to hostility.
    “Here you will stay, in the ground you will lay, join us you shall, the ranks of the gray”.
    A thick fog started to intertwine. It was so heavy they couldn’t see the rising sun anymore. The nearest trees just gleamed like foggy shadows amid a gray mass. Having lost their direction and glancing around, they stopped and leaned against one another.
    There were darker figures than the fog moving around them. Vierra blinked her eyes anxiously, thinking she was seeing visions coming out of her exhaustion, but the shapes didn’t disappear. Instead there were soon more and more of them, everywhere, surrounding them. When they came closer, Vierra and Ambjorn could see that they were shaped like men, like figures of people made out of fog. No artist could have built such a lively character, they resembled real people, even down to the slightest detail. On every gray walker’s eyes burned a white, milky shine which drilled into the