Title: Runic Fortunes
Author's note: This is my first foray into the world of King Arthur. Any historical inaccuracies or otherwise are to be put down to writers license.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters associated with King Arthur though I do own Aelfheah, Hilla, Alric, Dathan, Kaleb, Bruinen, and Ymma.
Summary: Ymma's a Saxon who was sold as a child to a stranger travelling through her land. Brought to England she lives a nomadic lifestyle until she helps a young woman trapped in a Roman's dungeon and her whole life changes.
Don't forget! All translations are given at the bottom of the page.
The rain continued to plummet down in thick drops.
Fat black clouds rolled in and it steadily grew darker and darker until it was as though it was night instead of day. Torches were brought out by the villagers and we all grabbed one, setting out to see if we could find any survivors. I took hold of Alric's hand and headed back to where I'd left the dozen or so woad men and women I'd managed to treat, finding them still lying unconscious where I'd left them, the rune magik still weaving it's way through their bodies. I pushed the torch into the soggy ground so that I could have both hands free, and knelt down next to the man whose arm I had reattached. It seemed to be progressing well and there were no signs of infection, but the next few days would be crucial. If I had not attached it properly then he might have to lose his arm anyway due to disease.
"What shall we do with them?" asked Alric but I knew he wasn't really concentrating on the woads, his eyes were out scanning the darkness for any signs of his fallen comrades.
"Go to them," I said softly. His eyes found mine and I gave him a small smile. "You are no use to me here when your mind is somewhere else."
"Ic þe þancas do," and with that he left, heading across the battlefield to find what was left of the people who he had called friends.
I turned back to my patients and found Tristan standing silently next to me. I jumped in surprise; once more he had managed to walk up without making a sound.
"Can you please make more noise when you do that," I snapped, a hand held over my pounding heart. "Sing or stamp your feet, or…just do something!"
Tristan's eyes met mine. "But that would defeat the object of the exercise."
"Which was?" He smirked but said nothing and I sighed irritably.
"Well if you're going to just stand there you might as well be of some use. Help me carry them inside."
The inn was noisy but warm as people were carried inside and laid on any available table or surface, and I had my work cut out for me trying to deal with each person's injuries. I hadn't realised so many people had managed to cling onto life, and all in all there were about sixty or so people lying in varying states of consciousness in the room.
Vanora and two servant girls were helping as much as they could and Dagonet too, as well Merlin and half a dozen woad healers who had come with bearing salves and pastes which smelt atrocious but worked quite effectively at knitting skin back together.
But this much healing was taking its toll on me and my strength was beginning to wane. My hands had begun to tremble now almost constantly from having to channel so much wild rune magik into bodies at the rate that I was being required to perform at and my head was beginning to ache from concentrating on what I was doing whilst blocking out everything around me.
I rubbed my eyes tiredly and dipped a cloth into the bowl of mead next to the young woman's body I was tending to. Ringing it out I wiped carefully over where I had just healed a gash dangerously close to her throat, making sure to get rid of any drying blood or mud left from the battle.
One of Merlin's woad healers came to stand the other side of her and began to apply some of the green paste to two vicious red gouges which ran across her left shoulder, as if someone had hacked at her body with an axe or a sword. The young healer looked up as though he sensed my eyes on him and smiled warmly at me.
"I'm Kay," he said, raising a paste covered hand to his chest.
"Ymma."
We worked in comfortable silence until one of the servant girls came over and I handed her the cloth so that she could finish where I had left off. Feeling a bit dizzy from the heat and the smell of blood and that horrible paste – what had Merlin put in it to make it stink so horribly?- I decided to get a breath of fresh air.
I headed outside where the rain had lessened a little but was still coming down heavily. I picked up a torch that was staked into the ground and decided to go and look for Alric, who I hadn't seen since I'd told him to look for his friends. It took me a good ten minutes to find him, kneeling next to the side of a thin faced man with burnished red hair. The rain had washed off the remnants of the battle and for all intents and purposes he looked like he could have been sleeping. I sank down next to him and slid my hand into his.
"Raed was a good man." Alric didn't look at me as he said this, his eyes fixed on the warrior's peaceful face and a lump rose in my throat as I realised just how much my brother had lost.
"Gods, I'm sorry," I murmured. "I'm so, so sorry."
"What for?" He asked, still staring at the body, though I wondered if he was actually seeing the body in front of him – I had the funny feeling he was lost in memories.
"You didn't kill him," he said. "You didn't end his life."
I squeezed his hand, trying to give comfort as best I could and he blinked and looked at me as if he had forgotten I was there.
"Eala! Æghwa hac it mæl. Aeghwa gefarans." The soft words of grief left his lips and he turned to me, his thumb reaching out to wipe away the tears I hadn't realised were running down my face. He pulled me into a bear hug, and I buried my head in his shoulder, weeping for the men and women who had been lost on both sides. People who would now never go home to their families, to their loved ones.
The words the god's messenger had spoken to me the night that it had foretold of the Saxon's impending doom rang in my head:
The Saxons have forgotten those who created them and revel in their own glory.
Only a few still remember the old ways.
This will be an example to them not to boast proudly of their own achievements.
And I realised with a sudden bitterness what a high price so many good men had paid to appease the jealousy of their gods.
We burned the bodies.
So many bodies. One after another, in a seemingly endless procession, until I became numbed to the sight of another nameless corpse. Then Alric would whisper the name of a body he recognised, someone who had been his friend, a fellow warrior, someone who he had grown up with from a boy and then suddenly they would become all too horrifyingly real.
Each time I touched one of them, each time my palms touched their skin I felt the cold embers of what had once been a soul, a living person, and how the rune magik wanted to get out and sink into their skin, heal them of this sleeping disease, only to recoil in horror at the coldness, the emptiness... It didn't understand; it had no concept of death, only of life and its differing levels of health. Magik couldn't help the dead and yet it didn't stop it from trying, each time shrinking back like a frightened animal, to curl up in my chest around my soul where it was warm and living.
It took us perhaps a week to completely clear the battlefield of corpses. Pyres burned all day, all night, until finally there was just one left burning, one last body to burn and send onto the afterlife. This was another unrecognised body, another warrior with shield and sword but no name. We stood silently, watching as the flames leapt higher and higher, throwing out glowing embers in the dark night whispered the words of part of an epic poem that had been recited at our village campsite years before, when I had been a little girl.
"Ongunnon þa on beorge bælfyra mæst, wigend weccan; wudurec astah, sweart ofer swioðole, swogende leg wope bewunden. Higum unrote, modceare mændon, ond betimbredon on tyn dagum."
The warriors then began to kindle, on the cliff, the greatest of funeral fires; wood-smoke ascended, black above the flames, the roaring fire mingling with the weeping. With sad spirits, they uttered their sorrow of soul, A monument of the one who was bold in battle.
His voice cracked and I finished for him.
"Cwædon þæt he wære manna mildust ond monðwærust."
They said that he was the kindest of men, and the gentlest.
The last words left my lips and once again there was nothing but the crackle of the fire in the cool night air and at last an empty battlefield. A plain of scrub grass and mud, the blood washed away by the rain, leaving no remainder that anything had happened here at all, save for the new dirt mounds in the cemetery where the Woads had buried their dead.
Having dealt with the dead for so long, it was a relief to be amongst living, breathing people once more. I collapsed into a chair in the inn, those who were still wounded having been moved long ago to their own homes. Alric had gone to our room upstairs to sleep and I had been tempted to close my eyes myself, but first I needed to be amongst warm blooded people again. To remind myself that death wasn't my constant companion. I was pulled out of my musing by someone setting a mug of mead down in front of me.
I looked up into the warm, friendly face of Kay, who sat down in the available seat opposite mine. Grasping the mug gratefully, I let the warm drink slide down my throat and managed a murmur of thanks, leaning back in the chair and running my tongue over my lips, savouring the taste of honey. The healer smiled.
"You looked like you needed that."
I nodded. "You have no idea."
He ran a hand through his messy blonde hair and snorted. "I might."
We drank in silence for a moment and then I tilted my head quizzically to look at him.
"Something's different about you," I said trying to figure out what it was.
He smiled bemusedly."What?"
It clicked and I slammed my mug down triumphantly."You're not covered in green paste!"
The comment was so unexpected and the look on his face so priceless I immediately burst into laughter. He joined in, and as the pressure of the last few days gradually lifted, I found myself unable to control myself, till there were tears rolling down my face, this time though from a bout of the giggles.
Finally I managed to calm myself down, and I rubbed the moisture from my eyes, still chuckling to myself.
"Oh, I think I needed that more than the drink," I said, more to myself than to Kay, who toasted me with his cup, his eyes shining with amusement.
"You are a very strange woman," he said and I raised an eyebrow.
"Thanks a lot."
"No, no," he hurriedly tried to explain, reaching across the table to grasp my free hand, "I mean you are unlike any other woman I know."
"I'll take that as a compliment then, shall I?" I smiled to show that I wasn't offended and he twined his fingers with mine.
"You should," he said, the spark back in his eyes. "I don't say that to a lot of girls."
I shook my head. "You are insufferable."
It was at that moment that I suddenly became aware of someone standing behind me. I turned slowly to find Tristan there, his arms folded, his face looking distinctly unimpressed. His eyes weren't on me though and I realised he was staring at mine and Kay's joined hands. I hurriedly snatched my hand back, and shame of all shames I actually started to blush, like a naughty child caught doing something wrong.
I raised an eyebrow and tried to remain as calm as possible."Yes?"
But he ignored me and instead spoke to Kay.
"I think it's time you went home."
A look of wariness crossed the healer's face and he swallowed the last remains of his drink, before getting up and setting his glass on the table.
"Ymma," he nodded at me and then more coldly at the glowering warrior behind me, before turning and stalking out of the tavern.
"What did you go and do that for?" I cried exasperatedly as he went and sat down where Kay had been sitting moments earlier. "He wasn't doing any harm."
"That boy," said Tristan softly. "Should know his place."
I rolled my eyes "And what is that? Beneath you, oh mighty warrior?"
"Well it certainly shouldn't be underneath you," he retorted.
I gaped in shock at his insinuation and furious, slapped him. Or I would have if he had not deftly caught my wrist in a vicelike grip, before it even got anywhere near his face.
"I would not do that if I were you," he said softly, but the undercurrent was dangerous and something glinted in his eyes which I didn't want to identify.
"Can I have my hand back please?" I asked grumpily, my earlier good mood now vanished.
He did so, but slowly, allowing it to slip out of his grip so that his thumb grazed the inside of my palm, his rough calloused fingers grazing along the soft sensitive skin. I hastily retrieved my hand, the skin where he had touched it felt like it was burning, and as a matter of fact so did my cheeks, which were once again a healthy rosy glow.
He smirked and I muttered Saxon curse words under my breath and waited for the serving girl to refill my mug, which was now woefully empty. I needed the drink to keep me sane I decided and it would probably make the company seem a lot better as well. I think I accidentally said the last bit out loud because Tristan was suddenly giving me one of his dark, piercing looks.
I ignored him.
I'm not sure how much I had to drink after that, because to be honest it all became a bit of a hazy blur. One moment I was sitting on my chair, tipping the mead down my throat, the next I was being hauled upstairs by Tristan. And unfortunately drink seemed to make everything seem hilarious.
"Tristan!" I giggled. "What do you think you are doing!"
He heaved a sigh as the stairs decided to tilt awkwardly and my legs gave way, causing me to stumble into the wall and slide down it, sprawling on one of the wooden steps.
He shook his head in exasperation. "You are much easier to handle when you are sober," he said, reaching down to slide one arm under my legs and one bracing my back, before picking me up.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and laughed. "Yes, but you don't get to do this!"
His lips curved though he didn't say anything and his grip tightened on me.
We arrived at my room and he set me down gently, though my arms seemed to want to stay where they were, around his neck. My fingers fiddled with his dark hair and I stared at him, his eyes serious and intent.
"You should go in," he said, voice flat.
"Mmh," I mumbled. "But not before I do this first."
And then I was kissing him, my lips ghosting across his, the lightest of touches, teasing, before he grew impatient and pulled me closer, his lips pressing firmly against mine, my tongue darting out to taste the honey on his lips. I stifled a moan as his hands slid under my tunic top, his fingers tracing patterns up and down my back.
I pulled away abruptly, my heart racing and with one final look I swiftly entered my room and closed the door, resting my back against it. I touched my lips which were now pleasantly swollen and if I had been sober I would have realised how much trouble my heart was currently falling into.
Instead, and I blame the alcohol completely, all I could think about was how sweet his kiss tasted.
Please read and review!
Everyone who does gets their own reply of happy cheeryness (at least if it's a nice review). Bad ones get sent a lump of coal. So there :p
General information:
Ic þe þancas do: I give you thanks
Eala. Æghwa hac it mæl. Aeghwa gefarans: Alas. Everything has it's time. Everything dies.
Part of the epic poem Beowulf was used which seemed rather suitable for this particular point (and yes I know that the oldest surviving manuscript dates from 1100, and that the poem was probably composed as early as the 8th century, which is approx. 4 centuries after the Romans left Britain, which is when this film is set, but this is Fanfiction right? So I thought I'd use a bit of artistic license). The form it takes in my story is heavily edited from what it actually is in the poem, but hopefully none of the essential essence of the poem has been taken away from it.
