Hello reader! This is one of my first few fanfic pieces and I hope you'll enjoy it. This story picks up after the end of Vikings Season 6 and follows the story of Hvitserk.
Disclaimer: I do not own Vikings. This story is not very well researched but I'm looking to improve it further in the next chapters. Mature content ahead!
Mise croí cloiche Inis Fáil
An croí a bhfuil rúin ar eolas ann i bhfolach
An croí a aithníonn gach dúíl is díth
An file nach gcanann ach, faoi dhá sháil fhíor-rí
I am the stone heart of Inis Fáil
The heart that knows secrets that it hides away
The heart that knows all it desires and needs
The singer that only sings under two heels of true kings
Chapter 1
A curious smile played upon the lips of a sleeping Hvitserk. In his dream, the goddess Idun visited him once more. Lady of spring, of rebirth. She was not so generous this time, and did not come to soothe his worries with her tender touch. Instead, she came to him in a field of carnations and sung him a most wondrous and foreign tune, neither English nor Norse. As the melody that escaped her came to an end, she knelt down before him, plucked a single flower from the earth and presented it to him.
"Eittsvat, Hvitserk. A certain one shall come to you."
And just like that, she vanished. The dream ceased to be as he opened his eyes to the light of dawn streaming through the slat of the inn window. It was time to continue his journey--just a day's ride left to reach Dunwich, home of Lord Ceowulf.
One year has passed since the defeat of Ivar the Boneless' army in Wessex, one year since the baptism of Hvitserk and his rebirth as Athelstan. And nary a day has passed where he hasn't thought about Ivar, his baby brother. Cruelest, most ruthless of the sons of Ragnar Loðbrok. Most feared, yet most beloved by him.
'Do we only live for the gods' amusement?'
'No, God's.'
Hvitserk made ready for the day's journey, in the hopes that he'd reach the settlement of Lord Ceowulf by nightfall.
The journey was a pleasant one. He rode ahead of his men, the company King Alfred bestowed upon him. After his acceptance of the one true god, he was bequeathed the title of Lord as well as lands in East Anglia, one of which was Dunwich, a village overlooking the North Sea. Little does Lord Ceowulf know of the King's real intentions for this meeting.
Hvitserk scratched his beard in apprehension. 'This will go one of two ways. Either Ceowulf does the smart thing and steps down as Lord of Dunwich or he will put up a fight. Either way, it is decided. Alfred cannot have him maintain control over Dunwich after failing to provide taxes and aid for the many wars over the many years. The county shall not fall into ruin.'
The last rays of sunlight coloured the sky a deep orange, contrasting against the rich greens of the hills and fields, reflecting gold everywhere. And there it was over the horizon, Dunwich.
--
The town was bleaker than he imagined, unlike other settlements he'd visited in England. Although its shabbiness lent a certain charm, reminding him of simpler times in Kattegat, the town stank of filth and was littered with it too. All save for Castle Dunwich. Another contrast of sorts.
'This should be interesting,' he mused.
He and his company of 20 armed men approached the castle gates. Hvitserk held up his arm at the sight of archers along the parapets.
"I am Athelstan, Lord of Dereham. I'm come to see Lord Ceowulf at the behest of King Alfred."
Moments later, the castle drawbridge came down and a troupe of guards stood on either side of its entrance. Hvitserk urged his horse, Sigurd, forward and his men followed suit.
The castle was far grander than he expected, with intricate tapestries and accents of gold lining the walls of the castle's interior leading up to the main hall where Lord Ceowulf was seated at the head of a long table. He stood up, a rotund yet muscular man whose looks suggest that he was once a fighter, perhaps even a warrior--in another life. There was an arrogant glint in his leering face as he greeted Hvitserk.
"Brother Athelstan! Welcome to Dunwich." Lord Ceowulf bellowed. We have been anticipating your arrival this week and are pleased to see you here now. Come, let us sup and drink. You and your men must be tired from your long journey I'm sure. I welcome you to rest and take in the comforts and pleasures of my most humble abode."
"My men and I thank you for your hospitality, Lord Ceowulf. Indeed, let us sup, drink, and talk."
As his men dispersed and took their seats, so did Hvitserk, seating himself to the left of the Lord, facing his wife--a small and sickly looking woman with kind eyes, her face mostly veiled by the headdress commonly worn by noble ladies. He put his hand to his heart and nodded at her in respect. "My Lady Agnes."
She gave the smallest of smiles, it looked pained. "Lord Athelstan, I trust you will find your stay here to be a pleasant one. How fares our Lord King?"
"Aye, I thank you, my lady. King Alfred and his family are well. He is currently in talks with the other kingdoms. He wants us ready and prepared for any impending attacks on our land."
"Our land." Lord Ceowulf chuckled mirthlessly. "I say, it is as if you were never born a heathen."
Hvitserk smiled, "The only birth I recognize now is that of my acceptance of our Lord Jesus Christ into my heart."
Lord Ceowulf considered this for a moment. "Good answer. And King Alfred I assume would like us to pay tribute for this cause, yes?"
"That is why I'm here." Hvitserk replied. "To ask you for aid, to implore you to provide men and money for our army."
Just then, the doors to the great hall opened. And in came a group of women, serving maids carrying the night's feast. They set each platter on the table one by one. A dish of roasted pheasant was placed before him, adorned with a wreath of carnations.
'Carnations?' Hvitserk looked up from his plate, his eyes landing on a pale, almost translucent complexion, a face the likes of which he has never seen and yet...so familiar.
"Thank you." The words left his mouth strangely, as if it were not he who uttered them, his gaze still locked on the beautiful face. It turned to look up at him with eyes as deep a grey as Ivar's was the deepest blue. She was mesmerizing, her hair the darkest brown it almost glinted black, tied in a confluence of braids that merged to form a single long braid, draped on her right shoulder. Her emerald dress, though in the style worn by common folk, made her appear almost ethereal, the shade of green enhancing the paleness of her skin and the rich thundercloud grey of her irises.
'She has Thor in her eyes,' he thought.
The woman before him lowered herself into a curtsey, "My lord." She said in a voice so delicate. She rose, her gaze fixed on him with equal measures of curiosity and intrigue--but with a touch of defiance.
"Ah, my Rhiannon!" Lord Ceowulf exclaimed. "Slavers found this gentle flower along the Irish coast, living with her barbarian tribe. I plucked her and saved her from those wretches." He said, very proud of himself before smacking the girl tightly on her buttocks. She flinched from the shock of it, but her face was unmoving, her eyes resting on the ground in front of her feet like it was when she came into the hall.
"Sing us a song, little bird. An English one if you may, not any of those cursed heathen tunes."
"As you wish, my lord." She replied, and proceeded to make her way to the front of the hall where the musicians were. All the while, Hvitserk stalked her every movement, watching her glide across the room, there was a strength to her gait. She was tall compared to most of the English women he had met, and bedded. Her long braid now laid against her back now, falling just below the dip of her cinched waist, swaying gently from side to side with every step she took.
He felt a long-forgotten ache in his loins. It was not as if he had not had the pleasure of a woman in his bed, he had that quite a fair bit. But there was something that was telling him he had not yet experienced the full depth of intimacy--the closest he had reached to that point was in dreamlike states with the goddess Idun.
"Better put some food in that mouth, milord. It's been hanging open for a while now." Whispered Leofric, one of his most trusted men and companions. A playful smirk lit up his mostly gruff and pensive face. Hvitserk acknowledged his man with a small chuckle and returned his gaze to Rhiannon--more mindful of his mouth this time--staring a hole into her back, wondering if she could feel it burning her.
Her long fingers reached to pick up a harp. She started strumming the first few notes of a song and proceeded to vocalise them. The room, which was still bustling and lively with conversation, went silent. All eyes were on the maiden before them, her voice ringing with clarity, pulling at the harp strings with strings with fervor. The melody carried across the hall, a gentle Saxon jig that Hvitserk had heard once or twice before, but never like this.
He examined her more closely now. Though from a distance, he could see how her mouth curved and moved to form the song's words. He admired how her high cheekbones and thick brows framed her face, imagining her full lips planting kisses down his neck and abdomen. She was simply captivating. Her eyes seemed to soften in this moment, the firmness and slight defiance replaced with a vacant stare, looking neither here nor there, seemingly immersed in the present task and yet her mind gone somewhere else entirely. She stretched the melody of each verse in a sound so beautiful and so sad it almost sounded like weeping.
Before he could lose himself further in the song and in the songstress, Lord Ceowulf leaned into him and said, "In her language, Rhiannon means 'queen'. Though it is not her destiny to be queen of anything, she is queen of my cock." Ceowulf smacked the table with his hand and bellowed.
Hvitserk gave him a polite smile in return. He felt himself needing to resist the urge to gut this sad excuse of a man like the squealing pig he was. Perhaps he can--later on.
--
"So," Lord Ceowulf fiddled with his wine goblet. "I saw you eyeing my servant, Rhiannon. Pretty little thing, that one. Don't you agree?"
"She is pleasing to the eye." Hvitserk replied.
"You'd like to fuck her, wouldn't you?" he leered at him. "I know you do, you're not the only one." Ceowulf stood up from his chair and walked over to the fireplace, his frame casting a long ominous shadow across the room. "But I have to tell you now, she is mine. Her cunt is mine." He said very matter-of-factly.
'This man is clearly unhinged,' thought Hvitserk. He didn't have time for this. "She is your slave, is she not?"
Ceowulf turned his head sharply to look at guest, "Yes, she bloody well is."
Hvitserk reclined further into his seat opposite Ceowulf, "Slaves can be bought," he said while looking down at his cross, twisting it in his fingers. He turned his face toward Ceowulf, "If the price is right."
Ceowulf fixed a quizzical stare on Hvitserk, and ultimately replied, "I wouldn't sell her to you even if you paid me her entire weight in gold and silver."
"How about my entire weight worth of gold and silver?"
Ceowulf seemed to consider this for a moment, but before he could say anything else, Hvitserk continued, "But that is not important now. We need to discuss the matter of your payment to the King in gold," he took his wine glass from the table and took a sip, he gulped, "and men."
"The King knows I am loyal to him in many other ways, I've given him gifts, and I am faithful to a fault. I even denied my brother aid when Northumbria was under the Viking siege."
"And so it seems you deny everyone your help and faithfulness." Hvitserk set his glass on the table once more. Before he could respond, he drove the conversation on, "But I suppose none of that matters as the King no longer sees you as Lord of Dunwich." He gave Ceowulf a side-eyed look, then fished around in his breast pocket and produced a letter with the King's seal on the table, tapping on it twice.
Lord Ceowulf lurched over to where Hvitserk was and grasped the letter, tore it open and read its contents with delirious eyes. He crumpled the paper after a few moments and threw it across the room in a rage. "You're telling me that my land, my property," he sidled up to Hvitserk and leaned down on him, trapping him in with his hands on either side of the chair's armrests. "Is to be given to a bastard, heathen Northman--You?"
Hvitserk looked up into Ceowulf's face, his own cool and unmoving, "Why, of course." He said rather confidently, "Who else would the King trust to protect East Anglia's borders from another Viking invasion than a bastard, heathen Northman?" he ended with a smile.
"May God smite you and strike you down this instant for what an abomination you and your kind are." He grabbed a hold of Hvitserk's neck, "I ought to just kill you right now and do everyone a favor and send you to Hell, you godforsaken--", he stopped short as the cold surface of a blade touched his skin.
"You wouldn't want to do that," Hvitserk pressed the knife into his clumsy assailant's throat. "I have 20 men down here who are on orders to execute you and your men should any harm befall me or my companions under your roof."
Lord Ceowulf dropped his hands from Hvitserk's neck.
"I've been told to convey to you that should you react with aggression upon receiving this message, I'm allowed to kill you." That stunned Ceowulf into a deeper silence. Hvitserk let go of his grip on the knife and on Ceowulf, who then stepped back a few paces.
He continued, "Now, I don't necessarily want to do that." He straightened up in his seat before standing up rather jauntily. "If…" He closed the distance between himself and Ceowulf in a single stride, "you agree to leave in peace and settle in another part of East Anglia, or anywhere else you'd like really, live a quiet and humble life, as you say."
"The King also knows you are responsible for letting the raid on Beodericsworth happen." He looked Ceowulf up and down, a look of mild disgust on his face. "You opened your borders to them so they could proceed to attack other towns while sparing your own."
"You cannot kill me!" Ceowulf huffed, his eyes red and nearly bulging out of his sockets. "The King would never allow one of his loyal lords to be slaughtered by your kind, Viking swine."
"You read the letter," Hvitserk played with the tip of his knife, lightly pricking his palm, letting a trickle of blood run down his sleeve. "The King said, should any harm befall me or one of my company, he will not hesitate to close one eye should something..harmful befall you."
Lord Ceowulf looked like he was about to explode in a fit of rage, "GUARDS! GUARDS!" Ceowulf ran to the door, which opened to reveal Hvitserk's crew. He turned around to face Hvitserk, shock colouring his face.
"You should have known this by now, your people don't love you. You have been a tyrant in your own land and have forsaken their needs and that of your country."
In a matter of seconds, Ceowulf somehow managed to unsheath his dagger, roaring and running at full speed to meet Hvitserk with the tip of his blade. Hvitserk turned sideways in a swift motion, propelling Ceowulf further than his target, before pulling him into an embrace--Hvitserk's knife now in his back.
He whispered in Ceowulf's ear, "By the way, I won't be paying for Rhiannon. She's a prize no amount of wealth can buy."