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♫ Grimm örlög ♫
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I enter the corridor. The hunters are already searching for me here as well. Before they can pounce on me, I dart aside. A long staircase begins here, for which my four legs are actually too short, but mortal terror propels me upward. The warriors are following me. In front of me, I see a man opening a heavy timber door. I follow him, run between his feet, knock him over unintentionally, and huddle in a corner of the room, trembling.
“Close the door, cook!” thunders a voice. Obediently, the man rises from the floor. Outside the door, a few of the Einherjar stand silently, staring in. The cook closes the door and turns around. His face is blackened by soot. I recognize him! He’s the cook who set the hunters on me and wants to throw me into his cauldron.
I do not know the other man, the one standing by the window opening. Two ravens sit on his shoulder, but now they flap their wings and fly off, croaking into the open air.
“My Lord, the boar…” the cook begins and falls silent.
“I see.” The man at the window has just one healthy eye. It fixes on me. My entire body trembles as I try to make myself as small as possible.
“The boar didn’t want to go into the forest today to be hunted. It ran back to the fortress, and then… obviously…” Again, the cook falls silent.
“Obviously straight to me. Spare me explanations for things that are plain to see. Maybe the boar doesn’t want to be hunted; maybe he doesn’t like that?” The cook nods.
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be butchered and cooked? Only to rise again from his bones the next morning, only to be hunted, butchered, cooked, and devoured again by warriors, valkyries, and my wolves? Day after day, week after week, year after year?” The cook stands motionless.
“Or would you, perhaps, find pleasure in such a fate, cook?” The man with the soot-blackened face shakes his head. He, too, seems to want to make himself as small as possible.
“So let us deliver him from his fate.” The man at the window steps aside and takes a gleaming spear from the wall.
“But my Lord!” the cook interjects. “What am I to serve at the feast tomorrow? What are the Einherjar supposed to eat in the future? And what should your wolves feed on?” He ventures forward, but suddenly realizes whom he’s reprimanding and bows deeply, moving backward until he backs into the double doors.
The man by the window laughs. “Tomorrow, cook, when he is restored to life, the boar will know nothing of the fact that his god had promised him deliverance.”
And with that, he throws the spear. Everything happens too quickly for pain. Suddenly, I am entirely weightless, and I gaze down on the world from far above. I can see everything from up here. It seems a massive feast is approaching, where rivers of mead will flow. And under a large cauldron, the cook stokes the fire…
Sæhrímnir: 