She stank of blood and liquor, of sweat and smoke from last night's fire, of horse piss and the forest she'd ridden through all last night just to climb the steps of her foster father's castle. She could barely feel the ache in her thighs, or her feet, as she soldiered forward, arms weighed down with the heavy gifts she'd sworn she'd bring to Ivan. Succeeded in bringing him, where all others had failed. Proof of the progress in his campaign. Those who attended on him pulled themselves from her wake as quickly as possible, heads bowing though their eyes were blown wide at the spectacle Natasha had created. She swallowed their surprise whole, grinning, feeling the chapped skin of her lips split as her blood joined that which had been caked on. Her hair hung ragged around her face, yet nothing could deter the look of triumph on Ivan's face, could hide the slashed wide open grin as her king caught sight of her, the doors having opened to allow her in without issue.
"What tribute is this?" Ivan murmured, sitting forward in his throne, fingers, once steepled, clutching the edges of the armrest till his knuckles whitened. His brown eyes brightened to watch her raise the heads of the kings who'd offended him, never minding how her arms ached or her chest swelled with emotion from the way he stared at her, as though there wasn't anyone else in the world. Even his advisors, those naysayers who urged him to seek peace-peace!-were silent with wonder. How was it she had accomplished so much yet had only taken the month?
"These imbeciles defied you, my king," Natasha intoned, voice near emotionless as she stared up at him, eyes for no one but him. His approval fed the ache in her bones and her chest, the same that had been there since he'd found her as a youth five years ago, blank-eyed and broken from the way the men of her past had used and abused her. Now she knelt in front of her foster father, her King, exonerated and lighter, more fulfilled than she had been in her whole. Ivan rose in his chair and stepped down to stand before her. His fingers moved to her chin, raising her to face him, then further prompting her to stand.
"You have made me very proud, Natasha," he assured her, voice filled with a strange affection akin to pride. It made her heart thrum, her joy magnified by his. His thumb brushed her cheek, and had she been willing to break her silence or her stoic facade she'd have rubbed against his palm out of affection.
"I am happy to be of service to you, my king," she assured him, voice gravel from not having used it for so long. No need to speak to dead men, even if they hadn't been dead when she'd first met them. He released her chin, stepping back as he deposited the heads at the foot of his chair. His servants would mount them to the gates of the city soon enough, a warning to anyone who dared defy Ivan.
"Their cities are leaderless now, my king," on of Ivan's generals said with a wide grin from the side, as if he, alone, was intelligent enough to arrive at that conclusion. Why Ivan surrounded himself with these idiots was beyond Natasha, she could barely keep from rolling her eyes.
Ivan smirked. "Yes, they are. Natasha. How soon can you be ready to be on the move?"
She stiffened, her gaze snapping onto him. She'd expected him to speak to his generals, consult those around him. That he addressed her? Well. She beamed internally.
"How soon do you need me, my king?"
"Ivan you cannot be serious-."
"She knows nothing-."
"A handful of victories-."
"Is more than you buffoons have put together. Natasha, you will ride tomorrow to the north, to meet up with our allies. There you will meet with their king, Loki, and discuss our terms of engagement. He will provide troops and you will lead them into battle to finish conquering the city-states without a system of government."
Ivan's voice offered no alternative to the affronted looking men beside him, and Natasha couldn't help the pride that clouded her brain for a moment. Her. A general picked above all others. It was about damn time, and so long as this business with Loki went well enough, well, it ought to have led the way to more.
Ivan sent her out the very next morning, traveling without any sort of retinue as the men who followed her father would have. All of them were pompous swine as far as she was concerned, unfit to lick the mud from her foster father's boots, and the sooner she could secure King Loki's assistance with furthering Ivan's campaign, then the sooner she could make her way back. She didn't wish to leave him with those idiots for too long, never certain just how deep their loyalties lay. Hell, she didn't trust much of anyone but Ivan, and so spurred her horse all the faster. Not that she had any clue as to what Loki needed her for, but she was certain it wouldn't take too long.
As it was, she found the king to be rather lax and his defenses sorely lacking by themselves. Why Ivan would send her here was obvious-the bastard needed all the help he could et. Nat had at least a dozen chances to jump his paltry five guards leading her forward, and half a dozen more to slip away from them undetected. Perhaps he enjoyed the challenge a warrior might bring, and so left them open to look forward for a fight or an attempt on his life. She could understand that.
The man sitting with legs akimbo on the throne, however, did not strike her as such a man. He sat with a woman perched on his lap, sucking a liquid that looked like wine from the hollow of her collarbone, and already Natasha felt the bile rise in her throat. This was what she had to work with?
"Natasha Romanov, sent by King Ivan Petrovich, your grace," one of her guards said, looking apologetic for interrupting. Why, Nat didn't understand. It wasn't as if he was doing anything important. The King, if that's what he wanted to call himself, jolted, shoving the woman off of his lap and setting th goblet to the side as he rose.
"Ah, the infamous Natasha Welcome." He opened his arms, as though expecting her to run into them and embrace him. Did he honestly think she would? "I had not expected you for another day, the ride can be so long."
"I made time well enough," she assured him, her voice dripping with a confidence many were surprised to find she had. She wasn't afraid of demonstrating just how strong she was, never hid behind her femininity, only embraced it and used it to her advantage. To any man who thought she couldn't unleash hell upon them at her whim, they found themselves very quickly on their back.
"Yes, you did," he said with an easy grin. "I'm surprised by it. Don't you know a thing about relaxing?"
"No." She said simply, keeping her voice curt and her eyes narrowed as she stared at him. That took him aback, and he stared at her with an open mouth for a half moment. She doubted anyone had ever talked to him like this, but the more frank she was then perhaps the better off they'd be. Anything to get this meeting over with as soon as she could.
"Well perhaps I ought to teach you."
Ah, now came the lines Natasha was familiar with. She wasn't unaware of the effect she had. She was a woman who fought, a woman in shape, shapely if the bawdy tales the other men told one another were anything to be going off of. She carried herself with the same confidence men seemed to prefer, yet when confronted she was nothing like what they seemed to have expected. She was not some passive maiden to lie on her back because of sweet, useless words, nor was she keen to put a child in her belly and ruin everything she'd been fighting towards. And no matter how often she said no, the only word that was understood was 'yes.'
Most men that tried to press themselves on her further ended up a few pints of blood, or even appendages, lighter. Loki, if he was not the prince that he was, was not as necessary to Ivan as he was, would've suffered the same fate. "I don't think you understand quite why I was brought here," Natasha said, keeping her voice quiet as the grave while staring him down. He blinked, and the volume she'd reduced herself to forced him to lean closer, obviously taken by surprise by her lack of a response. "King Loki, I am here to assist you in bringing your brother's kingdom to heel, or to the ground depending on how the situation goes, under the pact and promise that when the kingdom is yours you will assist my king in his own campaign. If you wish for a harlot to warm your bed and croon between your thighs at how mighty and powerful you are then I am not the woman you wish to attempt to court." She gritted her teeth with the force of her words, hoping he might at least begin to take her seriously.
Her hopes, it seemed, were far too high. Though his flirtations diminished in the sense that he adhered to laws of propriety and discretion they were no less as frequent as the first day she met him. Each day they met at the war council, and he would subtly take the seat beside her, no matter where it was she'd settled, as though he needed her there at his side, as though his dependency on her wasn't going to change. She would sit there and force herself to remain calm, even as his leg would bump up against hers and her mind raced with the many ways in which he could still rule and be somewhat useful after she removed it. Maybe. There was an artery or two that she could cut and he wouldn't bleed to death from it, though he might wish it. Every so often, when Natasha would make a suggestion at the table and point to a place on the map he would skim his hand over hers in order to charter a certain distance or make a note about the land, enlightening her as best he could without being condescending. Sometimes, at least. Then, after council, when she would return to her rooms he would escort her there, ask that she visit with him in the evening so they could discuss further war tactics. She stopped going after the first one, having hoped he'd be taking her advice seriously if he wished to speak in private. Instead he attempted to woo her into his bed, and it took everything that she had to keep from throttling him until he died.
"If you wish to take me somewhere then bring me to the practice ring," she snarled. "If you can make me yield to you there then I will yield to you in your bed."
She ought not to have goaded him, she thought with a scowl on her face. Giving him hope or some semblance of an idea was the very worst, and it wasn't long before he took her up on the offer. They'd just come from yet another meeting, having gathered their final numbers and tallied the number of men they would be able to bring with them, where would be the better place to rest in the evenings and where they ought to attack from to start, then to finish, when he caught her by the shoulder. The others were filing out, and though she ripped herself from his grip he beckoned her to follow him anyway.
Though she as a subject in her father's kingdom she could not decline it, and with a furious beat in her chest and fire in her eyes she followed him down and out of the palace, to the training rings she'd watched many of his men practice in. More than once she'd taken her own turn in the ring against his best fighters, and more than once she found herself disappointed by how pathetic most of his soldiers were. It was as though they'd been trained by milkmaids rather than knights and soldiers, by doting mothers who told them that their best was all that anyone could ask for rather than by a trainer who accepted nothing but perfection, and craftiness when perfection was not enough to get them out of a life or death situation.
It was here that she was placed opposite him and watched as he removed his tunic, nimble fingers undoing the many clasps and buckles that covered his shoulders and chest to keep his cloaks and other weapons in place. She'd yet to see him use any of them. Doubted if he could, to be honest. But still, she'd offer him the chance. As he removed his knives and sword from his side so she did the same, tossing them to the corner of the ring, far from her own grip and his, though she knew she could get there far before he did if she needed to defend herself. She certainly wasn't afraid to. Never again would she be at the mercy of another man, king or not.
"You promised if I could make you yield to me in the field then you would yield to me in bed." He said wtih a smirk on his lips. Was he an imbecile?
She would assume yes, at least until proven otherwise. "I did."
"Then I challenge you to a match. Three blows marks a victory?"
That made the corners of her lips twist upwards, a laugh actually leaving her mouth at how pathetic that sounded. "We fight until you make me yield, or I you. There are no negotiations other than that." She smirked as she removed one of her over shirts, revealing the short sleeved tunic she wore underneath it. If he'd been taken aback by the fact that she prefered to wear trousers than the skirts that the rest of the female population favored, then this positively had his eyes popping out of his sockets. The more distracted he was, the easier it would be.
She hardly needed the extra help, as it turned out. A king he might have been, but she was right in thinking that his true strengths did not lie in the realm of the battlefield, and her understanding of why Loki requested the help of a general on the field was made plain to her. She whirled around him, a blur of red of her hair and the black of her clothing, until he got too dizzy to keep up, stilling in his place as he waited for her to tire herself out. She struck him hard from behind, bringing him to his knees momentarily, affording her just a moment enough to kick him down to the ground. Her boot sank into his gut and kept him pressed to the ground, putting just enough pressure on it as she bent down to smirk at him.
"That's really all you've got? Perhaps if your brother was a pretty princess with a wet cunt you could win the battle against him with your sweet words and your cock. But this?" She shoved off him, watched his face contort with surprised pain. "This isn't good enough."
"You cannot speak to me that way-."
"I'll speak to you however I wish," she snapped. She'd had enough, Loki's bruised ego be damned. She'd been trodden on all her life, ripped to pieces because she hadn't been able to fight and save herself, and now that she had won, had another victory and validation of her own, she found she didn't give a damn what Loki thought.
He, however, seemed to be enjoying it all very much. His cheeks were flushed and he was struggling to get up and adjust himself, but not before she caught sight of the way his trousers had tented. So. Either her speech about imagining his brother as a woman had gotten to him (a possibility) or for all his grandeur and the tricks he employed to try and get her into his bed, he really just wanted someone else to take control. To lead.
Why hadn't he simply said so in the first place?
She left it at that, though, for the day, retiring to her bedroom and promising him that they'd get to work on practicing his fighting skills the next day. She was not going to put her life in jeopardy to defend and aid a king who could hardly defend himself.
A/N: Finally updated, right? Good lord this took forever and a year to write, I swear. Hope it's worth it, and thanks for reading!
