The first night at Hrothgar's hall:

Buliwyf leaned against the deck-railing in Hrothgar's hall and looked over the land spread before him. Day had surrendered; the last bright echoes of the sun hung in the firs on the west side of the valley and lent colour to the otherwise sombre view.

He had missed this place.

The warrior's grey eyes thoughtfully considered the clear night. There would be fog tonight: hundreds of stars winked into view even before the vestiges of stubborn gold faded from the tree-line, and suddenly the night sky became a vast and solidly touchable thing.

Then the wind lifted and stirred string-like clouds across the sky and he wondered in surprise if they might avoid the mist after all. Tapestries billowed out from wooden walls and thudded back into them, and somewhere small bells rang in the wind. The change in weather was so abrupt that he briefly considered returning to the hall to tell the others, but instead he kept his eyes on the forest.

Brushing his loose hair from his face, he focused his gaze on the edge of the clearing where he saw nothing, not even the movement of deer or the faint silhouette of a bird winging in the dark. There was something there nonetheless. Its presence was a foreboding weight which the leader recognized as a heavy tension. It settled somewhere under his ribs: it was not fear, this weight, but it was wariness, and yet it hardly felt equal to the weight of the sword on his back. He was not so easily stifled by the shadow that held sway over the people in the hall behind him.

He caught himself hoping the wind would die down. He knew the women with their children to protect and even the men in their weariness and the heaviness of long years all silently kept a hopeful watch on the night and prayed for clear skies; but for his part he could hardly help them keep their lives if he never had occasion to lift his sword. At least if the fog came he could touch such shadows in some tangible way.

The air current shifted behind him as a servant came with their torch-light spreading over the deck while they lit the sconces at last. He turned rather quickly when he felt the servant's touch on his arm. It was not a servant after all, but Weilow, Hrothgar's queen, who surveyed him calmly from strong brown eyes. He felt her reserve as he had from the first and he was almost glad for it.

Whatever her reason for coming she didn't speak, but took her hand from his arm and leaned over the rail next to him instead.

"I thought you were a boy who had come to light the sconces," he said after a moment of quiet. He saw the silhouette of her smile.

"I did light them," she replied seriously, and he saw that she had.

The quiet returned; he wondered what it was the woman beside him was working up to say or if she really did intend to speak much at all; she looked perfectly at ease with her elbows on the smoothed wood railing, her silver dress sleeves rolled up to reveal fairly muscular tanned forearms. Her hands were rough – that much he could see even in firelight. It occurred to him her life thus far had probably not been easy.

She had aged well in hardship if that were the case; there was no stoop of sorrow to her shoulders and her eyes were bright and keen and proud and heavily lined by laughter. The only real difference separating her from the woman in his memory was in all these things, though it was one thing all the same; she held herself apart from him in some intangible way and he felt that this road, in particular, was closed off from him. Even her smile seemed weighted before-hand.

He realised too late that his thoughtful and preoccupied gaze was directed at her face. Her own thoughtful look came into focus and the intensity of it startled him; but then her eyes softened immeasurably and she sighed.

"He knew what he was doing when he took me as his wife," she said. Her words were nearly stolen on the wind and he leaned in to hear, her purposefully quiet voice low and honest. She did not look at him and he wondered at her words and her meaning.

"He knew about you," Weilow said, in answer, and he understood.

She breathed deeply beside him and straightened, pressing her palms down against the railing. "He is a good man, not without compassion, but he believed I would be a good queen, for him. For his hall and people." She paused, clearly wondering what more she should say. She looked up at him over her shoulder: "I convinced him to send for you, but he did not wish to, for he believes he has already cost you enough."

That Hrothgar had taken her even in awareness of Buliwyf's intentions did not surprise the warrior overmuch; he had long suspected it. That the man still felt ashamed of it after all these years surprised him more than anything – had the pick of any maiden not been a king's due? But as he looked at Weilow beside him he saw that Hrothgar had not been the only one reluctant to send for him. It was the horrible and steady threat of annihilation that had pushed her to it. He wondered how long they had waited, and if in the following months they feared he would come too late to an empty and rotting hall, a pyre-hall for all their people.

And he saw, too, that she was proud.

Buliwyf thought suddenly of the carved chair in her husband's hall in which she sat near his throne; of Hrothgar's trusting glances in her direction; of Wulfgar, her son. He thought of her strong dark arms and the lines of joy around her eyes. There was peace in these things.

He turned to her slowly and shook his head, almost imperceptibly. "He owes me nothing."

Weilow regarded his words curiously, but then her face smoothed out into a true smile. He watched the transformation with only a touch of sadness in the midst of his great respect; she was as resilient as the land around her – the land which tugged at him still, even when he was far south of it.

As she did.

As he suspected she always might.

Something in him wanted her to know that he understood and did not begrudge her any happiness she had found. He bent his head toward her and his face was largely masked by a thick fringe of white hair.

"What you have... is enough for me to be glad." He smiled back at her, his voice low; she could barely hear. "I am proud."

He felt her lift his hand and press a kiss to the palm against the calluses that would always be rougher than any of her own. She released her hold just as quickly and faced him tall and straight.

"Thank you," she said softly, and then she was gone.

He had not missed the shine of her unshed tears.

xxx

Some minutes passed. The wind died down, leaving the crisp touch of an early summer's night, and a mist rose up to meet the settling chill. Buliwyf returned to the fire in the hall. His sword was a welcome weight against his spine as he walked to Herger's side and sat next to him.

"So?" asked the slender blond man, his cheeks flushed from the fire and not drink.

Buliwyf looked at the throne some feet away where Hrothgar sat, his wife's hand on his arm as she leaned in to speak to him. When his gaze returned to Herger he was almost smiling, but for what reasons Herger couldn't discern.

"There is fog," he said at last, and he was glad.

I love this movie; every time I watch it, I see something new. Thanks to Mlyn of the 13th Warrior LJ community (13 underscore warrior), I realized I wasn't the only one who felt there might be a relationship between Buliwyf and Queen Weilow. Buliwyf is respectful of Hrothgar but it is often the King's wife who he looks to for advice; and when he dies she is the one who carries his sword. I also tend to think he has too much esteem for Hrothgar to mess with his wife, but maybe there was something between the two before she married. Mlyn has a lovely fic on this which everyone should read, over at LJ.