After I cleared my throat he addressed me thus: "Ah, brother, God's blessing it is you who has found me deep in thought and not some miscreant landed from the ships of Fergus mac Urnach." I asked if he waited on a hound which hunted in the forest, but he shook his troubled head. "Brother, do you remember last May eve when Odd Brynjarsson's raiders burned the old church, but one of his men we captured before the rogue put to sea again?"
This was hardly an event that I would soon forget. "And I also remember that the wretch was himself burned to death in imitation of his desecration of God's house," I said, hoping that reminding Eadric of this happy post-script to those events might cheer him. But still his brow remained furrowed.
"The man was kept secure in my hall before his death," he said, "and I spoke at length with him." Oh, how like Eadric, this! "He felt no guilt or shame for his actions, but rather an impious pride. He told me that he gave no heed to the calamity that awaited his soul on death, as he gave a church as much importance as a milking parlour." Now it was my turn to scowl into the gloom, but Eadric continued. "He told me a great tale, about his gods and their fate, bound for destruction at the hands of a great wolf and a wyrm that encircles the earth."
"Pagan nonsense, lord," I passed sentence with confidence, but Eadric was of a questing mind and not to be dissuaded by rhetoric when gripped by convoluted thoughts.
"Brother," he said and gestured to the darkness within the forest,"the world is vast and so little of it known. Can anyone say with a certainty what lies within the dark places of the earth? Are we so sure of ourselves that we can say what lurks in the waste places from which such men as Odd Brynjarsson hail?"
As Eadric's confessor I had no desire to see his mind lead him into falsehoods or apostasy. I gave a silent thanks to God, therefore, for the cast-iron argument I had to dissuade him from his darkening thoughts. "Lord," I said, "such fantastic beasts as you speculate on do not exist, and I say this with absolute certainty. Our own abbot (God send aid for his debilitating pustulence) has calculated with some exactitude the precise and exact measurements of Noah's ark, and having done so we now know that the space afforded in that noble vessel was sufficient only for those creatures with which we are familiar - cattle, swine, deer and such like - and none other. So you see that it is an impossibility for giant wolves or wyrms to exist, as well as those fanciful creatures of the orient the gullible are apt to believe in, such as elephants and hippopotami."
Eadric gave the matter some thought whilst staring at me. At last he rose and thanked me for my words and said that he was much comforted by them. I must admit I was not convinced by the sincerity of his response and fear still for him - speculations of this sort are not conducive to soundness and quietude of the mind - such peace can only by found in facts and logic."
I bought this giant wolf, sold by Bad Squiddo Games as Fenrir, the great wolf from Norse mythology. Although I spent quite a lot of time trying to get an authentic wolf-like colour scheme on the pelt I made the mistake of shading it afterwards with Army Painter Strong Tone Ink which basically made the whole thing go brown.
I tried to rescue it with drybrushing with only limited success, but at the time I just said, "fuck it," and moved on. However, Australian dark age enthusiast Jack Sarge did a smashing job on his wolves so I was inspired to do a bit of repainting. I painted in a more varied pelt colour and then shaded it with oil washes.
I think he looks a lot better now, but I'm not sure that he's really big enough to swallow Odin whole.
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