Kandurell Family/Euran Yetisbane/First Footsteps on Foreign Soil
Euran closed his eyes, attempting to will himself into silence. His back was against a rough and hard cliff wall; while numb hands clung fervently to a spiked hammer, his ears were assailed by the slicing icy shards of a winter blizzard. His thick fleeced leather clothing could barely muffle the pain. Eyes wrenched open - one a sparkling green, the other a deep brown - Euran dared to glance out from under his sheltering rocky outcrop into the blinding sleet.
A shape loomed out of the white panorama. Shaggy head hunched, furry shoulders bowed and massive arms clinging itself, a fully grown Mountain Yeti made its slow and steady way towards Euran. The young man, not quite yet full grown, gripped the wooden handle of his weapon tightly. His gloves were not thick enough to keep out the cold, but the carved surface of the grips on his hammer allowed him to maintain a good hold with both hands. In the pitch white of the blizzard the Yeti had not seem him. His face was frozen into a snarl; Euran shivered as he waited.
The monster was ten paces away from him. Now nine. Eight. Any moment now it would have to see him, despite his clothing which was camouflaged against the rock. His agonised arms raised the hammer above his head. The Yeti, eyes scrunched against the cold, blinked, becoming aware of a small creature standing where it had intended to take shelter. Before it could raise a muscled shaggy arm however, Euran had brought his heavy two handed spiked warhammer down upon it. Red blood flashed out onto the snow from a foot long diagonal gash across its belly. Staggering backwards the Yeti roared in pain, raising an arm to ward off further blows; but Euran was determined. He dealt it a blow to the leg, barely lacking the momentum to penetrate the thick skin, and followed up by hurling himself bodily at the creature.
Still on the back foot, the Yeti was stunned by the ferocity of the attack. Who would have imagined such a small creature to have such suicidal aggression? But now Euran had foolishly positioned himself between the monster's two colossal arms, and it squeezed. Pain blossomed in Euran's side as a rib cracked loudly. Deperately scrabbling at the Yeti's side, he managed to slip loose, darting between the creature's legs to escape the swift blow that pulverised the snow where he had been standing. Now, however, he was behind his quarry, and while it searched in vain for him with desperate beady eyes, he hoisted his hammer above his head.
"Euran Kandurell!" he yelled, bringing his spiked hammer down with such force that the Yeti's head was almost parted from its shoulders.
Exhaustion began to overwhelm him. He had been out in the snow for too long, the relentless blizzard was almost too much - and fighting a Yeti was no easy thing. Dropping his hammer to the floor Euran fell into oily darkness, but not before he had huddled up amongst the hot pooling blood and warm matted fur of the dead Yeti.
Smoky fumes filled the cramped tent, evoking coughs from the leathery skinned old man who beckoned Euran towards him. A sacred knife in one hand and a gnarled walking stick in the other, with light from the fire playing across his creased and shadowed face, the magician looked like some demon from a hellish dimension. Euran stepped forwards, unafraid. His left ear was missing a large section of its upper half; lost to frostbite since the confrontation with the Yeti.
"Euran Kandurell is no more!" the hunchbacked old man intoned, "It is Euran Yetisbane who stands amongst us!" The shadowy figures of elders lurking at the back of the tent mumbled their agreement. Dropping his stick the magician siezed Euran's forearm and carved a Y shape into it with his wickedly sharp dagger. Euran blinked, water welling in his eyes, but remained silent. With a grunt of approval, the magician swabbed some paste over the wound, causing it to burn with pain worse than it already did, before letting Euran's arm drop. "You are a true man now, Euran. A Yeti slayer, and one born of noble blood. You shall go far... but the mountains of Moramroth are not the place for you. You must leave Norland entirely! I see... waves... a ship... and lands far off to the East. You shall go far indeed!"
Forgiving the cackle that came next, Euran Yetisbane Kandurell ducked under the tent flap and into the dark night. The pain in his arm did not matter. He was a Yeti slayer, and all of his destiny lay before him. Euran knotted his fingers through the tough curled fur of the dirty white Yeti pelt around his neck, and smiled.
A very different Euran stood at the prow of a ship, with a more weathered look. It was obvious that he had gone far since his Yetislaying feat. The cry of "Land!" had been given minutes before, and in the distance, just coming into view, was an island of another continent.
"Captain," roared Euran, "We've found Arcachon."
It had been an interesting day for Euran. His Yeti Slayers had conducted a devastating raid upon a military outpost, moving in swiftly and silently to burn most of it to the ground. Unfortunately, they hadn't realised that while they had been overwhelming the small force garrisoning the watchtower, the rest of the local militia had been raising the local peasantry to the region's defence. Euran had exited the burning outpost's main gates at speed, followed by the rest of his men, only to be confronted with an angry mob ten times their size.
He'd cut his way free - actually, the locals hadn't been all that keen to fight armed men - but it had been a close run thing. Returning to camp, he'd visited his two wounded soldiers - Errol was holding up well, but Euran wouldn't have staked much on Wenn's chances.
Now Euran was standing outside his small encampment, not twenty metres away from the camp of a fellow Arcachonian noble, watching his troops picking through the pile of bodies left over from the last batch of peasants to try themselves against trained soldiers.
"Sir Euran!" called one of the men, "I've found something!"
In three strides the Viking was standing next to his man.
"What, what is it?"
The man stood up grinning, holding a rusty sickle. "A weapon, m'lord!" Euran gave him a clout over the head that sent him staggering.
"Idiot! The foolish peasants used those, and it got them killed. You never been on a farm before, lad? That's a tool, not a weapon!"
Sighing impatiently, he walked away from the man and shook his head. The fools that were recruited these days. He ran his hands over the warm Yeti pelt that adorned his shoulders. It kept out the cold most efficiently. With another glance at his men, Euran decided that he really was yearning for someone with a bit more intelligence to talk to!
