Northern sisters
Year 982, outside Novgorod:
While Anshu could have traveled with just a few of the current Saints to act as his bodyguards in the disguise of them being a merchant group traveling towards the city, there was a good reason as to why they had brought a smaller ship for easier travel.
"No way the family is going to give up their twin daughters without protests. It is only going to look strange to request the girls to become "shieldmaidens to act as protectors" for Athena if we did not offer a good-sized payment in return for taking them. A little exchange of what should have been their dowry in marriage."
Of course, the Saints knew that the Pope had a point, but some of them were still surprised at the amount of money they had brought in the ship.
"Where does all this come from, anyway, sir?"
While Anshu did know, he pulled out a small list from a pocket inside his robe to make fun of the younger men.
"Old gold and silver coins from the Roman Empire that were just collecting dust because they are not used anymore, silver dirhams from the Abbasid Caliphate, and a few objects in the same metals that the parents can melt down for jewelry or whatever they want to use them for. If we have to pay the parents in order for those twin girls to come along to the Sanctuary, we better give proper money and not some trash that turns out to be worthless."
Suddenly, there was some screaming in the distance, up on the ground.
"That sounds like children?!"
Pulling out a few Bloody Roses from his robes which was then removed to reveal the Pisces Cloth underneath, Anshu jumped from the boat to see if this needed them as defenders of humankind when Athena was not around in her human incarnations.
"Grand Pope Anshu! Wait on us!"
But even as he ran, the ancient Pisces Saint could sense something else.
Not one, but two different Cosmo that had just started to awake.
"Amari, Sade…are this the awakening of your successors as the Gemini Saint in the Holy War?" he wondered for himself.
On a meadow further away from the river:
"Get lost, you fucking mutts!"
A few foot soldiers of Hades had gotten a rather harsh lesson in not underestimating children, as two orange-haired girls were showing that their weapons were made of real steel. A battle ax, a sword, two separate shields, all made in the classical Viking style.
"Brazen stray dogs!"
It was the sister with her long hair in twin braids who proved herself to have quite the foul mouth, sending the battle ax into the head of one foot soldier with an unaware use of Cosmo. The other twin was also showing that in Viking culture, it would fall upon the wives to defend the family farm from attackers while their men were on raids, and how this was the cause of them being trained in weapons just like their brothers.
"Daria! Irina!"
When their father and his men came to personally kill this threat to the twin girls as well the boys who had run for help, several bodies were lying on the ground, the sisters unharmed but covered in blood.
"Girls! Have you been harmed anywhere?!"
As much as their father was relieved that they were unharmed, it was still disturbing that his daughters and their friends had been attacked by those strange-dressed soldiers.
"I am going to have a talk with the fathers of those boys about running away and leaving you two to do all the fighting."
From a safe distance, Anshu had seen the whole scene, and he was impressed with how the twin sisters had been using their respective Cosmo to get in a stronger attack despite those foot soldiers of Hades being fully grown adults.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Carding the washed and dried wool before spinning it thread on a drop spindle and then weaving it into fabric on a loom, was a skill that Daria and Irina had been taught by their mother almost as soon as they were old enough to help out. After all, this was the usual way of getting enough fabric to make clothing for the family, even if they were wealthy enough to buy fabric on markets.
"Girls, we have guests from far away."
Not that this was anything strange, and their mother was already preparing the dinner meal with the help of their female servants, but rather that this group of guests clearly came from the far south, because quite a few of them had dark skin that was not the result of working outdoors in the summer sun from dawn to dusk.
"I wonder if they have stuff for trade…" Daria whispered to Irina, who nodded;
"I would like to see if they have some other writing than the Latin letters, because surely there can not be the same letters everywhere in the known world? I mean, our runes are different from the Latin letters, after all."
As the daughters of a merchant, Daria and Irina had a shared interest in items that could not be found or made here in Novgorod. After all, there was a high chance that they would be married off to such husbands, and use what they had learned now during childhood.
"So, you want our girls to serve your young lady as shieldmaidens?"
One skill that came with being the Pope, was the necessity of learning about different cultures in the wider world and knowing how to show respect even if there were some customs and traditions that one personally felt abhorrence or repugnance towards. Such as that the Viking culture could sometimes offer humans as sacrifice to their gods, but that did not stand out too much when looking deeper into the darker sides of humankind.
"I personally witnessed their battle skills against those strange men today on a distance, and believe them to be ideal for this task, as I am the chosen guardian of this young lady and would like her to not merely be guarded by the male soldiers in the household. Shieldmaidens can pose as normal maids, and take attackers by surprise since quite a lot of southern men are brought up to not realize that women can be dangerous as well in their own manner."
Despite the fact that they were supposed to focus on making more cloth, both Daria and Irina did try to eavesdrop on what the adults said. They could not understand what Anshu said, but the female Saint acted as an interpreter in Old Norse, as her home village had been near York and she herself was a Viking descendant thanks to York being the capital of Viking territory in England and at its peak having 10,000 inhabitants. This was a population second only to London, and York, under its Viking name Jorvik, proved an important economic and trade centre for the Vikings.
"It has to be some very important trade, they talk about! Look at how Father acts!"
"That old man clearly knows how to bargain, he is very firm in not giving in!"
Eventually, Anshu brought out a trump card:
"Such skilled warriors as the Norse would be excellent soldiers in the Byzantine Army. Perhaps spreading the word to young men in the area that are not going to inherit their family farm due to not being the oldest son and want to make a living out of fighting as well as getting paid for it? Pretty sure that it will be easier to buy land and make their own farms with enough money steadily collected as payment over the years, and perhaps useful contacts in the big city as well. Not to mention the honor of having a son or nephew serving the Emperor himself because the native Byzantine guardsmen, whose loyalties often shifts with fatal consequences, will really come off as less loyal compared to men who have come a long way to find work in the distant city and thus have little reason to betray the person who pays them well."
The deal was struck, then, as the merchant realized that yes, there was a lot of profit to be made outside the trade between his homeland and the mighty empire in the south. With the amount of gold and silver coins for both of them, Daria and Irina would follow the Saints back to Greece.
"Are there others like us there, and not merely Christians?" Irina asked, hoping that there would not be a demand for them to convert to the other faith just because they were "pagans".
"I am personally from a distant land where Christianity is known but not the dominant faith among the people. There are two Norwegian sisters who would love to have their fellow Norse serving the young Lady Athena. They have felt a little lonely in being among the very few Norse among the protectors of the young lady and will be very happy to befriend you," Anshu responded in a manner that eased that fear for the younger twin sister, and he was also referring to the eighteen-year-old Aquarius Saint named Skadi and her four years younger sister Ragnhild, who had just became the new Scorpio Saint.
"Systrar, precis som vi?!" Daria asked with the native Swedish of her parents in an eager voice, and Anshu had to explain it quickly:
"Not twins, I am afraid, but I believe that you four ladies will be a powerful force together in times of need."
~X~X~X~X~X~X
A few days later:
Greece was a far cry from their northern homeland, indeed, which the twin sisters noticed at coming to the Sanctuary. The landscape was different, the language and customs…
"Anshu! Welcome back!" the five-year-old Athena called when spotting the Pope leading the group towards the Twelve Temples, where she had just been playing together with some similar-aged children under the watchful eyes of two young women, who used the time to spin woolen thread on their drop spindles. But it was their clothing, hangerok dresses in strongly dyed fabric with its belonging brooches to fasten it over the white underdress, which revealed them to come from the same Viking culture as the twins.
"Skadi, Ragnhild. I would like you two to show Daria and Irina around the Sanctuary, since your native Norwegian is closer to their Swedish."
"Yes, Your Holiness. Storesøster, can you take a short break from spinning?" Ragnhild said, addressing Skadi with the Norwegian word for "big sister" which Daria and Irina could hear to be similar to how Irina could address Daria as the older twin.
"Storasyster," they agreed on as one, using the Swedish word. With the two Norwegian sisters bowing to the Grand Pope and the young Goddess before bringing Daria and Irina with them, the era of the 10th century Gemini twins in the Sanctuary had started.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Author note: "Systrar, precis som vi" means "Sisters, precise like us" in Swedish
Aquarius Skadi and Scorpio Ragnhild are the second sister-duo of female Gold Saints referred to in the title of "Saints and Sisters", a fanfic of mine that focuses on them as well Daria and Irina as adult women in the Holy War of 996 AD.
Being born in India to parents that was following Hinduism prior to becoming a orphan, it is quite natural that Anshu identify himself as a Hindu but also knows about Christianity, Islam and Buddism
The hangerok (sometimes spelled hangerock or hangeroc) was a type of dress worn by Viking women and some other early medieval northern European cultures. The garment was shaped somewhat like a pinafore, with two straps over the shoulders secured by brooches. It would usually be worn over a tunic-dress called a særk or a kirtle (underdress)