I.

Bandit Meets Viking

She could have left him there

No, she should have left him there. And yet, for one reason or another, she didn't. She had brought him back to the tribe, dressed his wounds, changed his clothes, and even let him rest on her very own bed. Her daughter was probably around the same age as the boy right now. Perhaps that had something to do with it? A bunch of sentimental nonsense that Summer and Tai had managed to worm into her psyche?

Raven let out a sigh as she watched the boy's chest rise and fall back down with every breath he took.

Playing house with Taiyang all those years had made her soft. It wasn't supposed to be in her nature, to help anyone like that, much less a stranger. Summer had rubbed off on her more than she thought.

It was just another reason as to why she had left them all behind in the first place.

It was a dog eat dog world out there, and playing house with Taiyang and the rest of them all only made her weak, made her soft. The strong survived and the weak perished, that was how the world worked and how it always would be. And since she didn't have any plans on dying anytime soon, she needed to be strong. But the strong didn't waste their time rescuing strays out of the goodness of their own heart.

Raven clicked her tongue in annoyance.

A one time blunder, she whispered to herself. There would be no more playing the part of the good Samaritan after this, child or not. Resources were scarce out in the Wildlands of Anima, and she had no intention of taking care of the boy for any longer than necessary. As soon as he woke up, that was the end of her generosity and he was on his own.

Even if the boy's scraggly blonde hair reminded her of a younger Taiyang and happier days past.

Thorfinn's eyes slowly fluttered open.

A fire was burning nearby, or so he thought. He wasn't quite sure, as his mind was still in a bit of haze. His shoulder also hurt like hell, so it might have been dislocated. The bed that he was lying on was soft, comfortable even, and for a moment, he could feel his eyes begin to droop once more.

And then he remembered.

Askeladd.

His eyes shot awake and they quickly scanned around the room. Rather than a room, however, it looked to be a small little tent. A lone candle stood on a table, providing the only source of light in the vicinity. It was a little dark, but he didn't fail to notice a woman that was sitting down on the other side of the tent. A large sword laid in her lap as she went to work sharpening it, while eerily colored red eyes constantly jumped between him and the sword.

She said nothing, and for a moment, the only sounds in the tent came from the sharpening of her sword.

Thorfinn swallowed, his mouth feeling quite dry. "Where am I?" His voice hoarsely came out.

The woman stopped sharpening her sword and he could see her brow furrow for a moment. She opened her mouth, and what came out was a strange language that sounded like utter nonsense to him. For a brief moment, he thought that she was a witch, with her strange red eyes and bizarre words, but then thought better of it. Witches and their ilk didn't exist, those were just stories that Ylva used to tell him to scare him.

"Can you not speak Norse?" Thorfinn eventually asked with a scowl. It was going to be a problem if they couldn't understand each other at all.

The woman's face morphed into a scowl as well as she spoke in that bizarre tongue of hers again. The woman's words were still lost to him, however, and he just frowned in response. Just where in the world had he ended up? And where was Askeladd?

Thorfinn tried to think back and could recall the weather taking a turn for the worse while they were sailing. He could remember his ship getting separated from the rest of Askeladd's fleet. They had been along the coast of Normandy before the storm hit, so had he washed up somewhere nearby?

Wherever he was, it didn't matter.

The only thing that was important right now was finding Askeladd. He tested his shoulder a bit, rolling it around a little before hopping off the bed. It still stung like hell, but nothing was broken so it wouldn't hinder him in battle too much. He looked around the tent, ignoring the woman's stare and tried to find his father's dagger instead.

The red-eyed woman suddenly stood up and headed towards the table. Thorfinn's eyes widened as he saw her hold up his father's dagger and say something in that strange language of hers again. He walked over towards her and held out his hand expectantly. She stared at him for a moment, before she tossed him his weapon, which he deftly caught out of the air.

Pulling his father's dagger out of its sheath, he took a good look at it before he resheathed it. Thankfully, his father's heirloom was still in satisfactory condition. It was the last memento that he had of his father, so he couldn't bear having it damaged.

"Thanks…" He muttered to the woman, who only looked at him with a blank expression. He bowed his head a bit as if to convey his gratitude before he ran out of the tent. He heard the woman say something in return, but he didn't understand her anyway, so he kept running instead.

He needed to find Askeladd, nothing else mattered.

There were people outside the woman's tent, as well as other tents and even some makeshift buildings. A few people gave him strange looks as he ran past them, even sometimes calling after him in that strange language of theirs. Thorfinn didn't pay them any mind however and only continued running.

Eventually, he found himself reaching a wall made out of wooden logs. The entire campsite was walled off, which meant that this place was probably more like a base of operations, rather than a simple camp. Either way, it didn't matter to him as he kept running, making sure to pick up speed as he ran towards the wall before leaping over it. The guards at the gate yelled something at him, but since he couldn't understand them anyway, he just kept running.

He needed to find the ocean, to see if he could find Askeladd's ship.

He couldn't help but notice that the land here was lush with vegetation. There were trees and grasslands as far as the eye could see. It wasn't like Iceland, where there was nothing but snow and ice. The fertile land here reminded him of the stories about Vinland that old man Lief used to tell.

Thorfinn soon slowed his running to a walk, as he began to feel a bit winded.

He tried to listen for the sounds of the ocean, but only heard the chirping of wildlife instead. It seemed that the strange woman had dragged him off to somewhere far, far away from the shores. While he was grateful that the woman had saved his life, it still annoyed him that she might have cost him a chance at finding Askeladd by taking him so far away from the ocean.

A low growl soon caught his attention and he stopped walking.

Thorfinn tried to listen for the sound again before he drew his dagger in response. The bushes in front of him rustled a bit and then out came the strangest creature he had ever seen. It almost looked like a wolf, but wolves didn't have red eyes along with the strange bone-like exterior these creatures possessed. It was almost like he was staring at a monster straight out of the stories his sister use to tell in order to scare him.

The creature only growled once more before it attacked.

The boy was interesting.

Raven couldn't understand a single word of that boy's strange language, but she didn't need to. She could see it in his eyes, he had the same eyes that she did. They were the eyes of the strong, of someone that had survived through hell and back. They were the eyes of a survivor.

Those eyes reminded her of herself, and a rotten childhood filled with misery and blood.

Bad experiences and tough situations only made you stronger, she knew that from first-hand experience. That boy looked like he had been through the wringer, and that meant that he had potential. The tribe could always use more warriors, there was a certain kind of strength to be found in numbers after all. Perhaps saving the boy hadn't been a complete waste of her time.

That was only if the boy didn't get himself killed by running out into the dark in Grimm infested lands, however.

It didn't take Raven too long to track the boy down after he had dashed out of her tent. People from the tribe had pointed her towards the direction that the boy had run in, and that was all that she needed to know. When she finally found the boy, it was in the middle of a small battlefield.

Corpses of recently killed Grimm were littered throughout the small clearing. The young boy that she had sought stood in the middle of the clearing, blood dripping from his arms and other various small scratches throughout his body. His breathing was labored, and it looked as if he was going to fall over at any second.

And yet, that determination to survive, that fire never left his eyes the entire time.

The boy had only proven that her judgment on his character was correct. That he was a survivor, and that he was strong. He met her eyes, and even if she couldn't understand his words, Raven could read the expression on his face.

I don't need your help.

Raven just laughed in response.

Children would always be stubborn, she had been the same when she was his age. She silently strode over towards the boy, stopping just as she was right in front of him and dropped down to one knee until they were eye level with one another.

"Tell me, boy, what is your name?"

The boy didn't understand of course, so Raven simply took matters into her own hands.

"Raven." She simply said, while pointing to herself. "Now, what is your name?" She asked again, pointing towards the boy this time.

The boy's brow furrowed for a moment, and Raven thought that she would have to repeat the question before the boy finally opened his mouth.

"Thorfinn."

Author's Note- Written solely because I didn't get my weekly Vinland fix this week and because I'm a hopeless addict. Also, I wanted to read Vinland fics, but there weren't any so I wrote one.