by Mark Coakley
21: A HIDDEN FOE
Now we shall tell of Venn the Coward. Shocked by Halfdan's cruel execution of his older brother, Torvald, and by the gruesome events of battle, Venn's character had changed. There was almost always a clanging noise deep in his ears. Sometimes, when he was alone, he also heard mocking voices. Venn always felt tired. He tried to avoid his fellow veterans. When somebody tried to start conversation with him, their words often seemed irrelevant and irritating. Many things irritated him. At night, trying to sleep in a Sogndal-house that had been turned into a fighters-barracks, the sound of other Fjordane-men talking sounded like the grunting of dumb, annoying beasts.
Any noise made it hard for Venn to sleep, so he was sometimes too tired to do his military duties properly. He was lucky that no officer inspected him closely, because the tip of his spear was starting to rust from lack of oiling and sharpening. Once, when guarding the caged camp outside Sogndal where political prisoners were crammed, Venn fell into a deep sleep; luckily, he was woken up by another farm-boy recruit, not by an officer.
Venn's right arm hurt, especially when he remembered the battle and belly-stabbing that Sogn-man. Sometimes, his right hand would go limp and whatever was in it would fall to the ground.
Sometimes, random laughter would burst from Venn's lips. Sometimes, he told jokes that nobody else found even slightly funny. The jokes were senseless or childish. Venn had never been popular; now, when he was so strange, some fighters started to actively avoid him.
Venn paid less and less attention to folk and the world around him -- obsessed with memories of wet training and battle and the CLANGING! in his ears and the invisible, mocking voices in his mind. And he was obsessed with Halfdan, full of wanting revenge on that ugly, black-faced, bloody-handed tyrant.
Nobody in Sogn knew that Torvald had been his brother. Nobody knew that Venn wanted revenge -- was aching to kill Halfdan. But Venn knew that there were obstacles to revenge. First, there were usually many bodyguards near Halfdan at all times. Second, even if he had a chance to strike Halfdan, Venn did not know if he would be able to do it. His disturbed mind might go blank, or his arm might freeze or go limp. Venn still hated violence, and did not know if he would be able to hurt somebody again, even his brother's killer. Third, if Venn was able to get close enough to Halfdan and was able to kill him, what then? Venn would be caught. He had heard about cruel ways of killing: the blood-worm (guts pulled out and wrapped around a tree-trunk), the blood-eagle (lungs pulled out from cuts in the back), and even worse ends.
When his mind was quiet enough for him to think, Venn would try to imagine a way to both kill Halfdan and escape slow death by torture himself.
