You got the will of a wild
A wild bird
You got the faith of a child
Before the world gets in
The Killers, "Some Kind Of Love"
–
Faster. I have to go faster.
Her parents were gone. Her sister was gone. The castle had been taken as well, although it had been no easy feat for the armored brutes who had crossed the North Sea to lay siege to her kingdom. The men under her father's employ, as well as those who followed his leadership of their own volition, had put up a damn good fight to protect their home. Anna muttered a prayer under her breath for those who had fallen.
Faster. I have to go faster.
The princess had been awakened from a dead sleep by Gerda, her handmaiden's mother and the Queen's personal advisor, who informed her in hushed, panicked tones that Northern invaders had come to the capitol to attack the Franks.
"This far inland?" Anna had stammered in disbelief, shocked; the Northerners normally raided coastal settlements. "Are you sure?"
The elderly woman had ushered her through the hallowed halls of the palace and out into the April night; they made it to the stables, undetected, and Gerda threw a cloak over the trembling girl's shoulders. Although the princess' shift was thin, the Spring air was warm– and filled with the distant sounds of screams and clanking metal that caused icy cold fear to course through Anna's body.
When Anna had insisted that she stay and fight alongside her family, instead of running away like a coward, Gerda had slapped her clear across the face.
"Stupid girl," she spat, but her voice quavered with concern, betraying her callous words. "Go westward until you reach Tournai. You'll be safe there. And keep your eyes straight ahead!"
Reluctantly, Anna mounted her steed and started off towards the West.
Faster. Go faster.
Anna squeezed the equine's side with her thighs as she rode west, tighter, faster, urging her horse onward. Her braid came undone from the force of the ride, her ginger curls flapping out behind her like the feathers of a flying bird, her cloak waving like a war banner. The greenery on either side passed in a blur; the bitter smell of smoke tainted the air, stinging the inside of her nostrils. Although she had already been riding for a quarter-hour or more, a red glow was still visible on the Northern horizon to her right, and hellish sounds continued to be heard.
She wasn't out of danger yet.
The white-haired beast bid as its mistress commanded when she clamped her legs even tighter and cried out to go faster, racing through the woods at a breakneck speed, quicker than lightning.
Then, a dull roar steadily rose up from behind the princess as she rode; first the sound of another set of hooves, then a man's voice, shouting something in a guttural tongue so harsh that it made Anna wince. She gripped her horse's mane until the blood drained from her knuckles.
Faster.
She was almost to the edge of the forest, less than a hundred paces away. Her heart hammered between her ears. If she could only go faster, she could get there in time to find a place to hide…
Something metallic whizzed past her head, landing in a nearby tree. Despite Gerda's warning about keeping her eyes forward, Anna dared a glance over her shoulder, to steal a look at her pursuer; he was a lanky man, with a scraggly red beard and piercing green eyes illuminated by the light of the full moon that reflected off of his helmet. Anna realized that he was riding on the back of her elder sister's own dove gray mare– her heart breaking for Gerda at the realization that the older woman may not have been spared in the taking of the beast– and he was catching up to her.
He snarled something menacing that Anna didn't understand, but she turned her eyes straight ahead again in time to see a hunter's shack come into view at the edge of the forest, where the trees met the plain.
Something heavy collided with the side of Anna's horse, knocking the beast off-kilter and sending both Anna and animal tumbling to the dirt. A sharp, stabbing pain arrowed through the princess' head and her vision darkened, but she gritted her teeth and stumbled to her feet, making her way as quickly as she could to the leanto at the end of the woods, the hem of her shift catching on underbrush as she went. Behind her she could hear her pursuer dismount his own horse and stalk towards her.
I have to go faster.
Huffing and crying all the way, Anna made it to the shack and let out a sob when she realized that the shack was bare, void of any possible weapons or means with which to defend herself. Thinking quickly, Anna scrambled towards a pile of hay at the back of the small room, planning to try to hide, but before she could dive beneath it a hand was fisting painfully in her hair and yanking her backwards.
"Let me go!" Anna shrieked, grabbing at her own locks in a desperate bid to ease the pain. "Get your hands off of me!"
The brutish man behind her only laughed and snickered something in his native tongue; Anna had an inclination of the meaning behind the words by the threat of his tone. One hand wound tighter in her hair while the other moved to her stomach, fingers working to bunch the fabric of her ivory shift upward and brushing grotesquely over her hip.
"Ert þú búin (Are you ready)?"
Bile rose in Anna's throat; she would not let this foreign invader take her virtue by force in her own land– not in this life nor the next. She kicked her foot back and up, and felt her heel make contact with something soft. The Northerner groaned and cursed, pulling on Anna's hair so strongly that she yelped and her eyes welled with tears; he pushed her face to the back wall of the leanto and her head throbbed with fresh pain, still smarting from her fall. His other hand moved from her navel to draw the sword at his waist.
"Ek man vega þik eins ok svín (I will slay you like a pig)," he hissed in her ear.
Another man's voice sounded in the hut then, the deep timbre of it booming off of the poorly-built walls, shaking the room. The man holding Anna hostage addressed the newcomer.
"Fífl (Fool)!" he spat. Distracted, his hold on Anna's hair loosened ever so slightly.
He uttered an additional threatening phrase that caused the newcomer to draw his sword, evident by the sound of metal sliding on metal from behind Anna as it slid from a sheath. In an instant, Anna was freed as the man who had pursued her lunged for the other man. The princess turned in time to see the other warrior– a towering, burly man with blond locs, dressed in leather armor and reindeer furs– deflect the smaller man easily. He tumbled to the ground, losing his helmet in the process, revealing a head of russet-colored hair and a pointed nose. Blood began to seep from the fallen man's side, blossoming outward from where he'd been sliced by the burly man's blade.
The golden-haired man shouted something in the Víkingr language that seemed to offend the russet-headed warrior, who shouted back with equal vigor from his spot on the floor before retrieving his sword and jumping to his feet. He seemed to pause, as though considering whether or not another attempt at attacking the larger man would be worth his while, before sheathing his sword and muttering a curse under his breath.
"Hvar er hjálmr minn (Where is my helmet)?"
The blond Viking scooped the other man's helmet from the floor and held it out to him, clearly not amused. The redhead glared back at Anna and moved towards the front of the shack, snatching his outstretched helmet and storming out without another word, leaving the Frankish princess alone with the Viking who had rescued her.
But was "rescued" the correct word?
Did he save me?
Should I thank him?
What if he simply plans on taking me for himself?
The man took a step forward and Anna flinched; when she recovered from the sudden movement, she dared to look up into his face. Even in the dark, she could see that he was handsome, with deep amber eyes and a large, shapely nose. He appeared young– maybe only a few years older than Anna herself– despite the shadows of lines that had begun to form on his forehead. His thin mouth, framed by a short, reddish beard, seemed to be frowning at her; his eyes flickered with something akin to recognition upon seeing her face and he recoiled slightly.
"Man ek þik (I remember you)." His gravelly voice was soft.
"What?" Anna felt the hot tears that threatened to resurface creep along her lashline. "I don't know what that means."
The man grunted; to Anna, it sounded like a harrumph.
"Mun þú mik (Remember me)," came his response. Although Anna couldn't decipher the meaning, she could detect the finality of the words in his tone.
The man turned as if to leave her, but before he could take a step he was halted in his tracks by the commotion of an approaching horde from the forest beyond the shack. His face scrunched in disdain, and when he turned to look at Anna again she could pick up on the regret in his eyes.
"Fyrirgef mik (Forgive me)."
"I told you, I don't under– ah!"
In one swift movement, he lifted her up as easily as one might a small child and slung her over his back like a sack of potatoes. His strong arm hooked around her legs, holding her tightly to him, as he marched outside to face his fellow Vikings; Anna found that he was surprisingly warm, but the fact did little to deter her heart from hammering like a caged bird against her breast.
She was left facing the shack from atop his shoulder when he trudged outside, her long auburn hair dangling in her face as he shouted something that elicited a round of cheers and halloos from the crowd; the men banged their swords against their shields in a nightmarish symphony that caused Anna's head to throb even more painfully.
Her parents were gone.
Her sister was gone.
The castle had been taken.
The city of Aachen, capital of the Kingdom of Francia, had fallen.
And now Anna, the beloved daughter of King Agnarr I, was to be a Northern savage's prize. His concubine. His whore.
The ache in Anna's skull reached a breaking point, and, overwhelmed with emotion, the princess slipped into the dark bliss of unconsciousness.
–
The elder daughter of Agnarr I, King of the Franks, slunk along the castle wall, sheathed in darkness. Her telltale silver hair was concealed by the hood of her cape, so as not to be visible by the light of the moon. She did her damnedest to steady her breathing, focused all of her will into it, to be as silent as possible; whenever a twig or dry leaf snapped underfoot as she went along, she winced and froze in her tracks, making sure no one was around before continuing onward. In the distance, she could still hear the tragic, pleading screams of her people.
The horrendous sounds wrenched at Elsa's heart. She didn't want to listen, but she knew that she must; should she succeed in reaching the tunnel beneath the castle, she and she alone would have to be the one to remember them– to tell the story of what had happened to Aachen, the capital city of the Frankish kingdom– on the night it was plundered and reduced to ashes.
I must be strong.
She slunk as close to the stone wall as possible, pressing herself back against it as though– if she tried hard enough– she could melt into it, become one with it, disappear from this cursed world.
It was then, when she rounded the next corner, that she saw him; one of them, a Norseman, slumped lifelessly against the wall, the upturned palm of his hand smeared with bright scarlet blood. Something in his other hand glinted in the moonlight; Elsa recognized it immediately as the hilt of a sword.
A sword she could use to protect herself.
Although she had never held a sword in her life, it would be better than nothing. Crouching forward, Elsa approached the man as silently as possible. By all accounts, he appeared dead; no visible breath ghosted from between his parted lips, and his skin had a sickly, green pallor to it. Upon closer inspection, Elsa could see the deep, damp gash that ran the length of his side. He must have lost a fight and thereby lost his life.
She almost felt sympathy for the man: he looked young, not much older than Elsa herself. The color of his hair reminded the princess of her sister, although his was a starker, redder shade of auburn, like rusted iron, the fire of it visible even in the darkness of night. But unlike Anna, this young man was one of them.
The enemy.
Despite the fact, Elsa found herself pitying the young warrior; violence may have been all he'd ever known. Perhaps he had never asked for this life, just as Elsa had never asked for her own. Two victims of their own cruel, respective fates, and– in an odd way– that made them kindred spirits.
The Frankish princess shook her head to straighten her thoughts.
The sword.
It felt wrong to rob a corpse, but she could use it. Plus, a sword was of no use to a dead man, and so Elsa figured she should take it.
However, when she reached a hand out and tentatively grasped the handle, the man gasped to life and grabbed Elsa's wrist in his vice-like grip. His bright green eyes bore into hers with an intensity that shot straight to Elsa's toes, filling her with dread.
"Svá vel (Please)," he rasped.
