Superlight Vikings

"Your position... is untenable."

His voice was the dry scrape of metal on stone, choked with thousands of years of tomb-dust. Little black insects skittered out from between his dry lips, disappearing into the contours of his ceremonial armor. The fury of countless battles smoldered in his beady black eyes, now purposeless and weary. The years had been unkind to him, a caustic form of misery that had built up in his withered body. Despite everything I knew, I could not find it in myself to despise him. Big Chumbo, victor of a thousand battles, reduced now to a bitter old curmudgeon trapped in his own embalmed husk. Those who revered him as Prince of the Dead had no clue as to the truth of his fate, and looking upon him then I wished that I could still share in their ignorance.