Sea Change
Prompt: "How do you stop loving someone when they stop loving you?
"This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter." —The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
oOo
A.D. 793, Northumbria
The news had travelled unusually fast, the harried, terrified chatters of the villagers bringing the word that the heathens had crossed the misty seas down to the Holy Island like spectres in the night bringing the fires of hell. The villages dotting the gentle curve of the sand near the breaking waves are no more. The numbers of those who walk inland increase by the day, their terrifying tales of the savage heathens growing taller and dribblingly foolish in proportion to the amount of mead that they imbibe.
It takes a week for Jane to hear that Lindisfarena had fallen. That its broken, burning walls can be glimpsed from the broad, sandy stretch across the sea at its lowest, as the dawning sun heralds a new age of the Northmen in Northumbria.
They are more animals than men, it seems, spawned by heathen gods that propagate their own kind. Tall, long-haired and filthy beasts who plunder and rape, yet build the most beautiful ships that glide weightless through the water as they move their oars in silent, synchronistic rhythms attuned to the bobbing waves led by the fierce sea serpents carved high into their sterns and prows.
Every visit is fleeting, but brutal. Slaughtered blood already marks the rocks a permanent, deep red.
Jane heaves the bucket of water that she is carrying and walks the two-mile journey back to the village. Quelling the growing unease is futile, as each leaden step brings her closer to the possibility of falling to the same fate as the women in the other villages had.
oOo
The next raid begins a few months later, burning their earnest hopes of peace to ashes.
Jane turns tail and runs, not stopping to calibrate the myths of the pagan Northmen in her mind with the reality of the thundering hooves of horses, propelled only by the screams of the children who come to know the meaning of separation and death in the cruellest way. Suddenly, she is thankful that her own parents had died long before the pagans had ever stepped foot on their shores.
Thankful that she is alone in a hearth gone cold when her ailing aunt fell into a feverish fit that ended the only way as their healer had solemnly predicted.
In the stables, the horses whinny, panicked by the heat from the fire on the thatched roofs. She is frantically untying the rope that secures Orvyn to his stall when the fragile walls crumple in on themselves.
oOo
She is mounted awkwardly on a horse when her eyes flutter open, held roughly against a surreal composite of metal, dripping blood and exposed flesh. Her face is close enough to the Northman's sword for her to see its patterned welding and labyrinthine lines.
Dimly, Jane hears the harsh, rolling tongue of the marauders interspersed with their laughter, recognising a few words and phrases that seem to indicate the success of their recent plunder. She notices the long, golden hair that streams out beneath the man's helmet and the easy strength that surrounds him like an impenetrable shield. Beneath the chainmail, his woollen shirt is tattered and stained, the pungent scent of stale blood permeating the air.
She closes her eyes again, thinking of the comforting smoke of a cooking fire in her hearth.
Thor Odinsson, as Jane learns later, is the name of the warlord whose horse she's found herself on, the fearsome leader of the langskips that had most recently pushed their way up the Northumbrian coast. Perhaps she should be grateful that she has yet to be sold as a slave in the market or brought back to the North to be one of the many women who will serve him solely in the bedroom— a fate that is surely worse than death.
oOo
The weeks living and working with the other women captured on the raids had taught her to keep her head down, and in that, the language barrier is easily overcome enough, with a few tweaks of the pronunciation and active listening of the conversations around her.
What is most surprising of all is the unexpected affection that Thor shows her, making her reluctantly reconsider her once-belligerent stance towards the heathen Northmen. He seeks her out more than he should for a man of his social standing, sharing his meat and mead with her whenever he deems appropriate, his bulky, tall, golden form an incongruous mark against the dreary landscape and even drearier living conditions.
Jane is under no illusion that the seeming goodwill of the rest of his men will only endure as long as she remains under Odinsson's protection. But as vague as Thor Odinsson's intentions are, it does not take too long before she harbours the short-lived and forbidden thought that a life with the heathen men — with Thor Odinsson at her side — might be a possibility.
oOo
Their temporary camp along the northern portion of the Northumbria coast lasts longer than usual and Jane's naïve elation that they might have found a permanent place of settlement is dashed to the rocks when it becomes clear that Odinsson is merely awaiting the next fleet of longships to crest the horizon.
The glint of triumph in Odinsson's eyes and the frenzied shouts of his men late one summer morning send her running to the shore along with the rest.
She sees it for herself this time — the large fleet of eight longships that appear as miniscule specks backlit by the summer sun, led by the ship in the middle that sweeps effortlessly across the sea by the swinging oars that slice deep into the shimmering waves.
"Svo hefirkominn bróðir mín."
Odinsson's low murmur of satisfaction is a jolt to her own heart. The increment of the Northmen's numbers will upset the delicate balance of the camp, which at its status quo, consists of an uneasy truce between the Northumbrians and their truculent invaders because of the sheer force of Odinsson's charismatic presence amongst them.
The clouds roll over the heavens and the coastal winds turn unusually cold by the time Loki Odinsson's longship rides up the hard shingle beach.
The women cross themselves and beg the saints for mercy and timely intervention.
Jane simply looks upwards and tastes the first of the bitter raindrops on her tongue.
oOo
It is not until the evening meal when she finally sees and recognises that Loki is the opposite of his brother in every conceivable way.
Dark to Thor's golden colouring and just as tall, made of soft, compelling ambiguous speech that runs seductive lines from her throat to sternum. Jötunn, the giant one, as he is laughingly called by Thor, a constant reminder of his heritage of being the orphaned son of the fallen warrior Laufeyson whom Odin Borson had taken under his wing as a bairn.
Whether it is the amount of ale consumed that night or the atypical late hour after which the men had finally passed out in front of the cooking fires, Jane cannot fathom the circumstances in which she finds herself surrounded by the lean, compact strength of Loki and the sharp, intelligent greenness of his gaze. And then she is lying on the warm furs that he has already spread in his own tent shelter away from the rest of the men, gasping her strangled pleasure in his insistent mouth.
oOo
Jane hears Loki Laufeyson's mocking laugh outside his shelter tent the morning after and the sounds of a scuffle not far away. She creeps out of tent quietly, ashamed of the boundaries that Loki had crossed without a single thought, wincing at the smear of blood on his jaw as he bears the punishment of Thor's fury.
He gets up laboriously after a short roll in the mud, the speed of his return swing of his fist into his brother's face making her bite her lip until the flesh — already made sore and delicate by his own questing lips — rends apart.
The brief flash of anguish in Thor's eyes tells her more than she needs to know. That his brother had operated under no pretence of wooing or sweet words had made him the easy victor of the spoils and in turn, fashioned her a loose woman for the taking.
But their world is hard cast that way — of broad swords and shed blood and endless fighting and to accept the measure of violence and quick punishment that is ever present is to accept that Loki had easily accomplished all that Thor had never managed to do. Brothers will always fight as they do but their tenuous bond will hold, as long as there is land for the taking, where the scent of blood stays fresh and stimulating.
It is more than both of them deserve as they have taken too much, too soon.
So she stays put even as tears lash her face, at the entrance to his shelter, letting the men see her that way until Loki returns, waiting for the sweet lies he will continue to whisper into her ears.
A/N: I'm (mis)using Old Norse based on what I know of modern Icelandic. Apologies to the linguists purists who think this is rubbish.
Svo hefirkominn bróðir mín – Thus has my brother arrived.