So this is a scene that doesn’t work anymore in my book, but I think it’s cool.
There was no privacy to be found anywhere on the longboat. It was crowded with orcs, supplies, and the weapons they would need for their raid. The little ship had been sailing for the last couple of days. They were close to the small fishing village of Mousehole at the mouth of the river Exe. The sun had not even began to rise yet but Astrid lay awake with Hallbajorn’s cloak over her body. She felt nervous and excited about her participation in this raid.
However, as she lay there her thoughts were with her new husband beside her and her new clan. She was the daughter of the Jarl of the the Ylfing Clan. Ylfling and the Scyld Clan, feuding for generations. With her marriage to a son of their Jarl, it was hoped to be the end of the feud. However, she had not married him out of love or even a liking for the tall strong orc beside her. She had done it because it was what her clan needed. She hadn’t even met Hallbajorn before the wedding. Their first night together had been fumbling and clumsy from the mead. This night together was much more about staying warm and having a less uncomfortable place to sleep. Even after a full month and a half, she still didn’t feel like she knew Hallbjorn or his father, Hafthor, very well.
She stirred as she lay awake, waking Hallbjorn. “Ugh, what is it?” He asked groggily.
Astrid shook her head. “It’s nothing.” She insisted as Hallbjorn’s head went up, looking up and down the longboat.
“It looks like it’s almost time to get up anyway.” He said, rising to his feet and offering her a hand.
Astrid took it, looking back along the longboat at the other warriors and shield maidens sleeping on the ship. Only a pilot and a watchman were awake at the moment. Above them the stars shone brightly in the night. She looked for Tjasse’s eyes, and found them. She found them comforting, someone else sharing in how she was able to see the world. She took out her comb, a gift from her mother, and started to straighen her hair. Astrid felt Hallbjorn’s hands on her shoulders. “Let me.” He said, taking the comb and starting to comb her hair for her. She let him and they stood there in silence together as he combed her hair and took a few more moments to tie her black hair into a crown braid.
“Good, your awake. Are you ready?” Hafthor said from behind them, wasting no words.
Astrid startled a bit as she turned with Hallbajorn to face his father. The older orc’s black hair was sprinkled with grey, his body covered in scars, and one of his tusks was broken off at the tip. Hafthor was what she imagined Hallbajorn would look like when he was older. The old that was strong certainly did’nt wither. “I am.”
Hafthor grunted in approval. “It’s a scouting mission, fly over the town and tell us what you see.”
Astrid felt her blood surge, she didn’t like the idea of a purely passive mission. “I’ll do what I need to do.” She growled.
Halfthor motioned to the three ships he had managed to scrape together. “I’m sure you will. But if they are on alert then this whole fleet may be for nothing. Remember what is at stake, If these raids fail because the army is warned, our clan will starve this winter.” His green eyes bored into Astrid.
Astrid looked at Halfthor with defiance in her green eyes, “So everything is ready?” She asked.
Hafthor nodded, “We will expect you back here in two hours. That should be more than enough time to scout the village and make sure that the guards are as light as we think they are. Get going.” Hafthor turned away and left the couple standing at the prow.
Hallbjorn turned to her so that they were face to face. In the dark, she couldn’t see his face clearly. However, she knew it as a younger version of his father’s with fewer scars from the rough and tumble life of Orcs. She heard a smile in his words, “Good luck, my little bird.”
Astrid picked up the Orngjord that had been her father’s wedding gift to her and put it on. The Orngjord was a belt made from the leather of a Eagle and decorated with feathers and talons. The magic of the belt was to allow her to take the form and powers of the eagle. She tapped into its power and felt the change begin. Her skin shifted from a beautiful emerald to a almost humanish pink before the feathers started to grow from her skin. Her bones crunched as they changed shape, she tried to lean against Hallbajorn to steady herself from the pain, but found that it had already partly turned into a wing. She took a breath through her nose that was already becoming a beak. It wasn’t orclike to ackloedge the pain of transformation. The sensations of her organs rearranging themselves and bones lightening were unsettling to the untrained. The pain was a part of the price they paid for the power to change their shape. It didn’t hurt as much as it might seem to someone watching as her feet were twisted into talons, but that wasn’t the same thing as not hurting at all. The transformation took a couple of minutes as her body was transformed into that of a Golden Eagle. The only part of her that hadn’t appeared to change were her eyes. She took a moment to let the pain fade and the mind of the golden eagle join her. It’s instincts were now hers, and she found being at the bottom of the longboat disconcerting. She let out a chirping whistle to let Hallbajorn know that she was ready to take flight.
Hallbajorn had put on a thick leather glove so that she could climb onto his arm without leaving claw marks. “I love your eyes.” He told her as he lifted her up. She opened her wings to steadying herself. He held her up and she flapped her wings, taking off into the sky and leaving the small boat behind. Gaining altitude, the lights of the three ships of the fleet shrank into pinpoints. Getting higher was hard at night with no thermals to take advantage of. She traveled towards where she could see the dark outline of the coast, looking for the landmarks of the river entrance that would signal where she needed to look. In her Ornhamir, her eagle shape, she could see much better than she could as a orc. Below her, there were only a few lights on in the fishing village, but it was enough. She sacrified her altitude for speed, diving towards the ground.
Astrid rushed through the street a silent dark object in the night. The houses rushed by and for a moment she forgot her duty of scouting the village and just enjoyed the rush of speeding along the ground and having the buildings rush past her. She had to suppress a whoop of joy as she finished her run through the village. With a flap of her wings, she gained altitude again and landed on the top of the tallest building. There were few candles lit this late at night. Her Ornhamir’s vision wasn’t much better than a humans at night, but what she could see was much sharper. She flew over the silent and dark town, listening for anyone moving and looking for the lights she had seen from above. There were a couple of guards talking to each other, but not as many as one might expect for a fishing town this size.
Astrid perched on a ledge near them to listen in to their conversation. She was careful to stay out of the way of the light so they wouldn’t catch her snooping on their conversation. “-through here a couple of days ago. Said that he was going up the river to help Brindlethorpe with their dragon problem.”
“Is that so? I’ll be glad if he doesn’t scare that dragon down this way. We don’t need no dragon problems.” The other guard replied.
Both of the guards seemed to be agreed that they didn’t want dragon problems and then proceeded to talk about local gossip. None of it seemed important, but Astrid listened anyway for several moments. Then took back off to sweep silently through the streets looking for more guards. When the sleepy little fishing village was starting to come awake with people who needed the time in the morning to prepare their nets and load their boats for the day’s work. Astrid decided it was time to head back to the boats.
With the early light of dawn, she spotted Hallbajorn and his longboat. Swooping down, Astrid landed on the top of the mast and let out a chittering whistle. Harold turned towards her with a smile, motioning her down to the deck where she could transform back and tell them of what she had seen. She landed on the leather glove. “Who’s got the prettiest green eyes?” He asked as he put her down to the deck. Changing back to her normal body was the same process in reverse with the familiar pain of her feathers shrinking back inside of her with her talons and wings becoming feet and arms again. It was never exactly the same twice.
“So what did you see? Is the town protected?” Hafthor asked as he helped her off the floor of the longboat.
She shook her head, “It’s a small fishing village. There isn’t much to say, they had a couple of guards but they didn’t seem enough to be able to resist us. I did hear one interesting thing, up river there is a town with a Dragon problem. We can slip past mousehole and raid it. Perhaps we can kill the dragon, that would more than pay for everything we need this winter. If not, then we can raid back down the river and still bring back more than enough.”
Hafthor grunted in acknoledgement, considering what she said. “Dragons are dangerous, but profitable.” Hafthor looked at Hallbjorn, “What do you think?”
Hallbjorn considered, “Out clan has never made a dracogjord. Even if we can’t make it, slaying a dragon will put our clan in a good posion to make larger raids. Our future would be secure. I say we do it.”
Hafthor nodded with a grin, agreeing with his son’s anaylasis. The early morning fog that rose off the river provided a perfect cover for the three longboats to slip past Mousehole and up the river towards Brindlethorp without trouble.