That being said I am, of course, not new to writing. I've plently tales brewing in my mind and on paper, some in the due process of being completed, some yet in their planning stages. However, that is all off topic. I'm here today, and for several days (at uneven intervals, for personal duty is as yet more important) to post what I claim to be a fable (a short story with a moral, or lesson, at the end). I post it in the historical-fiction section because it is just that, a fictional tale set within a historical timeframe (dates manipulated to the stories need, if and when it calls for it-but then, the exact dates are not known for sure, so...I have some leeway there! 
). There is naught much else to make clear as what I will post of the tale now pretty much sums up the first part pretty well. Constructive criticism is of course accepted, but it must be noted that this is by no means a final draft of what there is (unless of course it turns out to be...That is up to your discretion )! And here it is:
The Curse of the Cross: A Heathen Fable
In the year of 793 A.D. a gang of plundering Vikings raided seven monasteries and churches about the coasts of Europe. The seventh raid occured on a monastery on the Isle of Lindisfarne, right off the coast of England. This was a particularily terrible raid in which most of the monks and brothers of the monastery were cruely slain save a few who fled with the body of St. Cuthbert, the patron saint of Northumberland. This was the beginning of the Viking Age, an Age dominated by the violent acts of Nordic pirates and heathens.
These particular Vikings, seventy-five strong, filling three longboats, were to drop off the loot from Lindisfarne in their lair. The pride of the hoard was a fine gold crucifix of formidable size. However, on their way a wild wind swept that ship bearing the crucifix off course, taking it into waters unknown to the crew; were the stars were different, and often veiled. How many sunsets and rises went by none of the crew of that damned longboat knew, for in the midst of that accursed water time, it seemed, had little meaning. All cursed the cross, which they saw as the cause of the whole mess. Even the captain of the boat, a particularily violent, and devout worshipper of Thor, subsequently believing not at all in Christianity which many of his kin had turned to, and its God, looked ill upon it.
Their food stock began to drop, their fresh water and mead aswell, and sooner than later their crew of twenty-five strong dropped to twenty-four, then to twenty-three, until who knows how many days later,in the westerning sun, the raiders spotted land in the distance, and rowed particularily hard towards it. It must be told now that the crucifix of Lindisfarne survived their accursed journey in those waters, despite many a plea to cast it overboard. The captain, who was appropriately named Ulf the Wicked, resisted all pleas and attempts to do so.
Once on land they made quick camp, hoarding their loot into a great hole they dug, and on command of the captain placed the cross on top, so, as the captain said, to 'remember where the loot was'. They then set out to sleep, which they gladly did on dry land.
The morning, and the subsequent days following, was the beginning of an ironic sequence of events leading to the eventual systematic butchery of the crew.
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