by T S Florence
“To go where?” Ivar scratched at his beard.
“You damn well know where,” Ragnar growled.
“She left yesterday without a word,” Isla said, her face showing her sadness.
“How can I know you’ll come back,” Ivar asked.
“You can’t know, not until I’m back,” Ragnar replied.
“You won’t come back,” Ivar said.
“Maybe,” Ragnar said.
“Then we will go with him. And we can return with the ships,” Isla said to Ivar.
“What?” Ivar turned to his queen with a frown.
“I want to see where she grew up. I want to see what your northern lands are like,” Isla said.
“The northern lands will make you believe in the old gods. The true gods,” Ragnar said.
“That much is true,” Ivar said.
“How so?” Isla said.
“Our mountains could not grow like that without the help of Odin himself,” Ivar said.
“We are wasting time,” Ragnar growled, “We must leave. We can catch them before they reach Fyrkat if we leave today. Your boats are faster than the trading ships they left with,” Ragnar said.
“Very well,” Ivar stood and stretched. “It has been a while since I went on an adventure.”
Present day
Rose
“It’s that bastard,” one of the Fyrkat’s warriors yelled.
“Grim,” Elder Ragnar growled.
“Shield wall,” Ragnar’s voice boomed over the sound of the waves, and men began to fall into formation.
“Why should we listen to an old drunk?” A formidable warrior with tattoos on his face shaped up to Ragnar.
Ragnar did not even care to look into the man’s eyes. His huge bear-like paw flashed through the air, and the back of his hand cracked across the man’s face like a sack filled with sand. The man fell to his knees and put his hand out to steady himself from falling.
“Shield wall or die,” Ragnar walked towards the shoreline. Three boats approached. At least two hundred vikings were coming for revenge. The boats had the same colours as the ones that had come on that fateful day she was taken from their farmstead.
Ragnar had saved her life for a second time, following that event. Three times in total he had saved her life. She knew that luck came in threes. She also knew that her Christian god thought luck to be a thing of the devil, and that all his followers needed was faith. And so she prayed to her Christian god, despite sleeping out of wedlock. Despite fellow Christians attempting to take her life back in her home country. She prayed that she would live long enough to see her child take its first breath.
One day earlier
Ragnar
“Every damn boat,” Ivar growled.
“You still have your queen and all your men. We can build you new damned boats,” Ragnar growled as they marched through the rocky terrain, dwarfed by the immense cliffs that surrounded them. It was one of the few things in life that made Ragnar feel small. The mountains of his home country. He felt nearer to the gods when he walked among them.
They had been caught in a storm and lost all of their boats. Fortunately, no men were lost in the chaos, and the entire party had managed to get ashore. Ragnar was relentless. He commenced marching as soon as the last man had made it to dry land.
“Are we much further?” Isla asked.
“We will rest soon,” Ragnar said.
“Will we?” Ivar questioned him.
“I am an Earl in these lands,” Ragnar warned.
“And I am a king in my own,” Ivar returned.
“And I’m a queen,” Isla said sweetly, trying to defuse the tension between the two men.
“We can rest when you are tired, my lady,” Ragnar said, more softly.
They led an immense party of five hundred men, for when the queen travelled, she travelled with protection. Ragnar and Ivar could protect her from fifty men alone, but this was not an ordinary expedition.
Rose
The spikes that had been lodged in the ocean impaled Dag’s boats. He was still no better of a viking than he had been the last time he had taken them. Such a basic defence had already rendered two of his three boat’s unusable, at least not without significant repairs.
But the spikes did not harm the men. Slowly, they began to climb down into the water, carefully, not to impale themselves on the spikes that jutted out of the water.
Rose huddled with Brenna, hidden away in a fortified building. They watched from a small window as the Fyrkat warriors prepared for battle. They sang songs of war and beat their weapons against their shields. They displayed courage, but they were outnumbered. Fyrkat was still a small village.
Grim’s men had climbed from the sinking boats and made their shield wall opposite Elder Ragnar’s. Fyrkat was outnumbered 2:1. After a war cry, Grim’s men began marching forward, one step at a time.
Ragnar
They had only slept half of the night, and rose again before daylight. Ivar had asked Ragnar why he felt the need to continue travelling so early. Ragnar could not explain himself, but something was not sitting right.
“Faster,” Ragnar said to the slowing troops.
They had grown lazy during the quiet times in England. Not enough fighting. It made men slow and weak. Even in training, they were not treating it like the training would save their lives one day. They were not Viking.
Finally, they reached a waterfall. The water fell from a cliff so high that it seemed as though the water came from the gods themselves.
“We are close,” Ragnar said.
“You know this place?” Ivar asked.
“Yes. It’s only a short walk now. We must not stop,” Ragnar said.
“If your instinct is wrong I’ll have you scrubbing boat hulls for an entire winter,” Ivar said.
“You have no boats,” Ragnar retorted.
Rose
The fighting was vicious. Elder Ragnar was at the front of the shield wall. He was immensely strong, but he was also old. Too old to be in a shield wall, let alone the front. And too inexperienced. Despite his position, he had spent most of his life as a farmer. His strength made up for his shortcomings. He swung a mighty axe that crushed a shield in front of him, but as his opponent fell, so did a warrior besides him. The gap in the wall was not filled quickly enough, and Grim’s men took advantage.
Men pushed around their Earl, protecting him from the onslaught. But it was hopeless; there was no way Elder Ragnar and his men could win now.
The sound of shouting erupted from the woods behind Fyrkat. More of Grim’s men, Rose thought. They had circled around the village to create an ambush, just in case. Rose’s hand instinctively went to her stomach.
“Where is Torsten?” Brenna shrieked, as she looked for the red-haired viking.
“Stop watching, it will do us no good,” Rose said, taking Brenna’s hand.
“He’s taken everything from me. Grim killed my family, and now he’s going to kill Torsten,” She cried.
Men ran past their fortified building and into the fighting soldiers. English men. English men with two terrifyingly huge vikings leading them. Ragnar and Ivar. But how?
Ragnar
It was over almost as soon as they had arrived. Most of Grim’s men surrendered the moment they saw the approaching soldiers. But this time, they were not spared. Ragnar and Ivar had every one of Grim’s men put to the sword, and Ragnar took Grim’s life himself.
Jack was covered in blood, as well as his father, Elder Ragnar, when he had arrived.
“Where’s Rose?” Ragnar growled.
“In the fortified building, with the rest of the women and children,” Elder Ragnar nodded.
Rose
Rose watched, hardly believing the scene. The fighting was over almost immediately. Torsten was standing and talking to his two commanding Vikings, Ivar and Ragnar. She watched Ragnar grab one of the local seers by the scruff of his neck and drag him towards their shelter.
�
��Open the door,” Ragnar bellowed.
An old man pulled the heavy oak plan that barred the door shut, and let the door swing open.
“Rose,” Ragnar called.
“Ragnar?” She asked, more than said, still in a state of shock.
“You will marry me now,” Ragnar dragged let go of the man and stormed towards Rose.
“Over my dead body, I will have a say in this,” Rose said, indignation replacing her confusion and shock.
“Not today,” Ragnar took her wrist, “I’ve let you make enough decisions, and they end with me saving your life,” Ragnar growled.
“I will not be yours, just like that,” Rose clipped, as she stumbled along besides him, his hands till firmly around her wrist.
“Every man, woman, and child into the great hall, now,” Ragnar bellowed.
“Ragnar,” Rose said, seeing that he was not going to be convinced.
“You can be my wife or my slave,” Ragnar growled.
“Will there be any difference?” Rose clipped.
“You will boss me around regardless of your title,” Ragnar responded, which earned a laugh from the men.
The hall filled quickly, with people of all different races, gender, and age lining out the doors, eager to watch what was to happen. Elder Ragnar was at the bottom of the stairs.
“Wait,” Isla called, surprising Rose.
“Isla?” Rose gasped, “What on earth is going on?” She said.
“Only Ragnar can answer that. I have a priest here. He can marry you. I won’t have some scary looking viking priest marry you,” Isla said.
“A seer,” Ivar corrected her, mildly.
“A seer,” Isla repeated, correcting herself.
A priest, with all his priestly robes and gold and chains was pushed towards the stand.
“This is hardly how the Lord-” the priest began.
“I am speaking on the Lord’s behalf right now, marry them,” Isla ordered, her tone surprising Rose.
“I don’t know-” Ragnar said.
“It’s the priest or I’ll be your slave. And don’t expect me to be a happy one,” Rose clipped.
And so the priest married Ragnar and Rose. And again, Ragnar had claimed Rose as his own, with everyone to witness, for the last time.
One year later
Rose rolled off Ragnar, panting, covered in sweat. “I didn’t think it would keep getting better,” She said, between deep breaths.
“We should have been doing this instead of arguing so much,” Ragnar laughed.
A small child started to cry outside their door.
“Ash is hungry,” Ragnar said.
“I’ll go feed him,” Rose said happily, getting to her feet.
Ragnar followed her out, and took a seat at the high table. The noise of people in the nearby markets was impossibly loud. Fyrkat’s harbour had grown immeasurably since Ragnar had re-claimed the township. With Isla’s guidance from her own experience, Fyrkat had grown into more than just an oceanside fishing village, and into a large town. At the rate it was growing, it would soon be a city. The port was now a centre of trading, with numerous boats using it year round.
“The boats are almost finished,” Ivar said, without happiness.
He and Isla had enjoyed their time in Fyrkat, despite not having an option to leave. Rose was surprised to learn that they had survived a shipwreck, and had marched for two days to reach Fyrkat, all on a hunch that Ragnar had.
“Will you come visit? You won’t have to ever leave the castle, you will be safe” Isla asked, approaching Rose.
“I will come as soon as the next winter is over,” Rose smiled.
“Your men have finished loading their supplies,” Torsten walked into the great hall, with a baby in his arms. Brenna was by his side, her belly already swelling with another child.
Times were good.
The End
Slavers Bay
Baron
Rusted shackles rubbed the already raw skin of my ankles as I shuffled from the boat. My feet, soggy from the inch-deep pool of water that they had been sitting in for the last day felt strange on dry land. Sensitive. I had been fed well on the voyage, but only because I was one of the biggest men on board. Tied to an oar and forced to row for every waking minute of the journey, only to be taken to the end of the world. Slavers Bay, otherwise known as Berkeley. You can’t get much further south in this god forsaken land they call England. I only knew this, because I had overheard our captors on the boat. The muscles in my back ached with exhaustion as I stood on the wharf and watched my countrymen struggle to climb from the boat. They looked more exhausted than I felt.
A tall, lean and well-dressed man with unruly red hair approached. He, unlike the men disembarking from the boat, had not recently been in a savage battle that left wives without their husbands, children without fathers, and fathers without their sons. Sloan Mayflower, inheritor of the Mayflower empire. Though I had never seen him, his reputation preceded him and his distinctive eyes made him recognizable; one blue, one green. Word travels fast when you are well connected, and word made it to Scotland that Sloan poisoned his own father. The man was senile in his old age, and under his weakening hand, the Mayflower empire was weakening as well. Sloan did what he had to do in order to preserve his position in this cold and unforgiving world. That didn’t mean I agreed with his actions.
Men knew of how they made their money. A great mine that went hundreds of yards into the earth, pulling crude iron, with which was then turned into weapons. Profiteers of war. Profiteers of violence, yet the men who profited from war took no part in the violence themselves.
I listened to Sloan as he spoke with the captain from the boat.
“By god, some of these Scots look like they’d give the Welsh a fair go of it if they were given a sword to fight with, the damned savages” Sloan gestured towards me, specifically. “Where did you find this one,” He asked.
“I found him crying by his dead King, Lord,” the cruel captain said. The memory came crashing back into my consciousness, hitting me like a mace to the head. Iain O’Sullivan, my closest friend, to whom I had made a solemn oath that I would protect him with my very own life. His body, battered and lifeless lay in the blood-soaked field. One of Scotland’s most important men, dead. Dead, because I failed to protect him. The dislike I felt for the captain was not easily expressed in words. To put it plainly, I anticipated a brief pleasure when the opportunity to put his head on a spike presented itself. And then, I would eliminate his existence from my own mind.
“So it’s true, the King of Scots is dead?” Sloan asked.
“It’s true, I saw his body myself,” the captain responded.
“Was he as fearsome as they say?” Sloan asked.
“Smaller than I thought, not like this one,” the captain slapped the back of my head. The captain pulled out a dark red coat with gold embroidery. “I have his coat,” the captain boasted. The god damned coat. I had told Iain not to wear it, that it would draw unnecessary attention in battle, but he had not listened.
“Give it here,” Sloan held out his hand, “I have no doubt King Edward would greatly enjoy this token of our victory,” Sloan spoke as if he had some part in the killing of my childhood friend. Good luck keeping that coat, I’ll have it back within a week.
“So, the O’Sullivan leader, the King of Scots, is dead,” Sloan said, with a smug satisfaction that made the veins in my neck pulse, something that only happened before I took a man’s life. “The rest of the Scots should fall into line easily. We will have a steady stream of men to work the mine now, and we need them, for God’s sake, with how quickly the Welsh are killing them,” Sloan laughed.
“Aye, the Scots wailed like banshees when they saw the dead corpse. It was our luck that we were already on our way with this lot. The Scots are like a ship without a sail now that they don’t have their precious O’Sullivan, King of Scots,” the captain said.
“When shall we transport them to the Fores
t of Dean?” The captain asked.
“The King will be here on the morrow; we will leave at first light. I will be taking the King to see the mine; he has a great interest as to the stability of the Mayflower’s source of income before he will consider marrying my dear sister, Lillian,” Sloan gestured to a face that was still sitting inside a sturdy looking carriage.