(As recounted by Aurelio)
The old man chuckled, a dry, rustling sound. "To understand the trap, you must first understand the cage it was sprung from. We were not an army. We were a sty of misery, tucked away in the ass-end of the Italian border."
He opened Gerald's journal, his finger landing on a page with a frantic, angry sketch of a longship.
"Gerald titled this 'The Coward's Trap.' He always had a way with words, didn't he? But let me paint you the full picture, boy. The one he was too furious to see."
— Memory —
The outpost was called "Il Nido del Corvo"—The Crow's Nest. It was a fitting name. Perched high in the wind-scoured crags of the border mountains, it was a place of stones, cold mist, and forgotten men. The barracks were little more than a leaky longhouse of rough-hewn timber, stinking of damp wool, unwashed bodies, and despair.
Aurelio, seventeen and thin from months of hard rations, sharpened his spear-tip with a numb, repetitive motion. The stone whispered against the cheap iron. Around him, the life of the outpost festered.
"Another letter from your mamma, grove-rat?" sneered Marco, a thick-necked brute with a broken nose, kicking Aurelio's boot. "She sending you sweets while we starve?"
Aurelio didn't look up. "No, Marco."
"Good. A man doesn't need sweets. He needs a strong arm." Marco cuffed the back of Aurelio's head, not quite hard enough to be a challenge, but hard enough to sting. "Something you're short on."
This was the hierarchy. At the top: men like Marco, who had survived a season and now wore their minor authority like a crown of thorns, bullying the newer conscripts for their bread, their wine, any scrap of comfort.
From the command hut, voices, sharp and carrying, cut through the evening air.
"..a disgrace! The French court is in uproar, I hear. King Louis dead, his daughter missing… and we are left here to rot, guarding a goat path!" It was the voice of Sergeant Vittorio, a man whose ambition was forever soured by his posting.
A calmer, colder voice answered. Commander Giovanni. "The chaos in France is not our concern, Sergeant. Our orders are to hold this pass. The Spanish dogs probe the southern coasts, and the Norse… the Norse are a pestilence. We are the flypaper."
"Flypaper for wolves, you mean," Vittorio grumbled.
"Then we shall be sticky," Giovanni replied, his tone final.
Aurelio shivered. He was here because his family's small vineyard lay just south of here. The tax collector had given him a choice: conscription, or his family forfeits their land to the crown to pay the war-tax. It was no choice at all.
Later, as dusk bled into a starless night, an older soldier named Silvio settled beside him by the fire. Silvio had a kind, weary face, but his eyes held a desperate loneliness.
"You are too pretty for this place, boy," Silvio murmured, his breath smelling of sour wine. He placed a hand, heavy and calloused, on Aurelio's thigh. "A cold night… a man needs warmth. We could share a blanket. It doesn't have to be… unfriendly."
Aurelio's stomach clenched. He carefully moved his leg away. "I'm fine, Silvio."
The man's face hardened for a moment, then slumped into resignation. "Suit yourself. Freeze alone, then."
(The Scholar, looking up from his notes, clears his throat, a faint blush on his cheeks. "He… he tried to…?")
Aurelio laughed, a genuine, rumbling sound. "Boy, after a year not seeing a woman, a man might start aiming his spear at any warm target. It was a desperate time. Poor Silvio… he didn't make it to the next moon."
The memory sobered him.
"The night it happened," he continued, "the mist was so thick you could drink it. We heard them before we saw them. Not marching. A rhythmic, guttural chanting, like beasts praying to a blood-soaked god."
They emerged from the gloom not as an army, but as a horde of wraiths. The Norsemen. They were bigger than the Italians, built like barrels of ale, their faces hidden by beards braided with bones and metal. They wore thick furs over ring-mail, and the smell that rolled off them was a physical blow—of rancid fat, of salt, of a wild, untamed life. They laughed as they advanced, a sound with no joy in it, only a promise of ruin.
"Tíð til að blæða!" one roared, hefting a massive axe. Time to bleed!
"Sjáðu litlu mennin!" another laughed, pointing at the terrified Italian boys forming a shivering line. Look at the little men!
Panic was a living thing. The line broke before the first axe fell. Benito, the silent one, died in the initial charge, his shield splintering like kindling. Luca screamed, a high, piercing sound of pure terror, before a Dane silenced him with a brutal swing that opened him from shoulder to belly.
Aurelio froze. His spear felt like a useless twig. His blood turned to ice water in his veins. This was not a battle; it was a slaughterhouse, and he was a lamb.
And then he saw him. A young Viking, his face less bearded but no less fierce, his eyes burning with a pure, uncomplicated hate. This was Gerald. He was Aurelio's age, but built with the raw, thick muscle of a northern bull. He moved with a feral grace, his axe a whirlwind of splintered wood and shattered bone.
"Fáðu þér hann!" Gerald bellowed, his eyes locking on Aurelio. Get him!
He charged, his axe swinging in a murderous arc aimed at Aurelio's neck. Aurelio stumbled backward, falling hard onto the muddy, blood-slicked ground. The axe whistled inches from his face. He was going to die. He closed his eyes, waiting for the end.
Thwip.
A sound, clean and sharp. A grunt of surprise.
Aurelio opened his eyes. Gerald stood over him, snarling, an arrow now embedded in the meat of his shoulder. Not a killing shot. A marker.
Then, the horn. A single, clear note that cut through the Norse roars.
From the darkness behind the barracks, from hidden pits and the very rocks themselves, men rose. Giovanni's men. They were silent, their faces hard and professional beneath their helmets. Their bows sang, and Vikings fell, their triumph turned to cries of shock and agony. The trap, so cunningly laid, had sprung.
Giovanni himself stepped into the firelight, his sword clean, his expression one of cold satisfaction. The surviving Norsemen were cut down with ruthless efficiency. In minutes, the only sound was the moaning of the wounded and the crackle of the fire.
Only Gerald was left standing, wounded, surrounded, his chest heaving. He spat a wad of blood and curses at the Italians. "Drepið mig! Drepið mig núna!" Kill me! Kill me now!
Giovanni ignored him, his gaze sweeping the carnage. It fell upon Aurelio, still trembling in the mud, spared by sheer, dumb luck.
He walked over, his boots making no sound in the churned earth. He looked from Aurelio to the dead Luca, then back.
"You are alive," Giovanni stated, his voice devoid of warmth. "The gods, or fate, have spared you." He nudged the spear lying next to Aurelio. "You have no skill. But you have now seen the true face of war. It is not a song. It is cunning, and it is cruel."
He glanced back at the captured, seething Gerald, then down at Aurelio.
"Get up," Giovanni commanded, his voice leaving no room for refusal. "You are done being the worm on the hook. It is time you learned to be the hook itself."
— Present —
Aurelio fell silent, the memory settling in the room like dust.
"The hook," he repeated softly, a grim smile touching his lips. "He had a way with words too, that one. Gerald's hate was born that night. He thought we were all deceitful snakes." He looked at the journal, then at me. "In a world of wolves and lambs, Giovanni taught us to become the hunters. And that… that is where our story truly begins."