Chapter Two: Siggy
Queen Aslaug had called her a plaything, but Rúna didn't play with Ivar for the first month of knowing him. Instead, she was more his servant, pulling his cart or retrieving his spent arrows and thrown axes. Rúna was not big enough, Ubbe decided, to shoot arrows and throw axes herself.
"You intend to make a little shieldmaiden of her, then?" King Ragnar asked over their night meal one evening. His blue eyes shined in the firelight, dancing as they fixed their gaze on the young girl. Rúna liked the evenings when Queen Aslaug brought her to table at the great hall rather than sending her home to Helga and Floki. Though the child had come to love the boat builder and his wife, she had taken a quick liking to the king as well.
Where Queen Aslaug was all scowls and hard edges, King Ragnar was teasing smiles and playful winks.
"She'll be little use training with us, besides fetching things for Ivar, if we don't. Floki is teaching her to be Viking."
This was true. She sat in on Ivar's lessons with Floki, learning how Thor's hammer was formed and how it caused thunder during a storm and how Asgard became guarded; how the Vikings in Midgard can learn from the tales of the gods to live lives that pleased them. They learned runes together, Floki teasing Rúna for her name during those lessons.
Sitting together at Helga's table, they ate midday meals. Floki recruited Rúna to help with Ivar's 'practices', which mostly involved Floki testing the mobility of the young boy's twisted legs. One of the practices involved Rúna helping to support Ivar while he tried to stand for as long as he could. He was taller than her, despite his twisted legs, one arm slung over Rúna's shoulders while her own supported him about the waist.
In the heart of Kattegat, though, Ivar no longer treated Rúna as his equal. She would have worried over this, had it not been for King Ragnar.
One afternoon, while the king watched his sons run and pull Ivar's cart in a game of chase, he bid Rúna to approach his high seat. "Come, little child."
Obediently, Rúna climbed the dais, stopping demurely a few feet from Ragnar's throne. The king had other ideas, though, gifting the little redheaded girl a mischievous grin before catching her about the waist and settling her on his lap. Even in summer, King Ragnar wore his furs. Rúna felt as if she were being hugged by a great bear, between the furs and the king's long beard.
"I had a daughter once," he whispered to her, "before I had all these wild boys. See how they run? They will tip Ivar's cart and anger their mother. I would bet my whole kingdom of Kattegat on that."
They were quiet for a moment, watching Ubbe catch the wheels of Ivar's cart in a hole. A sharp tug pulled the cart free, jostling Ivar all around and making him laugh.
He chucked her under the chin, making her giggle. "I hear you are helping Floki teach Ivar, is that right?"
"Floki teaches me, too," Rúna answered demurely. When King Ragnar smiled, it seemed sad, his blue eyes dark as the heavy clouds over head.
"Ivar says you are a fast learner. He is smart and he will be strong, but he must make himself that way. Can you help Ivar be strong?"
"Yes, King Ragnar." His sad smile returned again at her obedience. The king settled her more securely on his lap. The boys had gone out of sight, but their laughter rang through the heart of Kattegat.
"Her name was Gyda, my daughter. Sweet as summer sunshine. Too sweet for Midgard, so that the gods called her back when she was little more than a girl. I often wonder who she would grow to be, the only girl in this mess of boys."
King Ragnar lifted her under her arms, setting her back on the ground with a quiet groan as he bent at the waist. "Perhaps now I will get to see. You had best go help Ivar weigh that cart down before all of you get yourselves in trouble with the queen."
But it was not until midsummer that Ivar asked to play a game with Rúna.
"Mother!" Ivar called from his seat, sitting across from Rúna at the big, heavy table in the great hall. King Ragnar took three of Ivar's older brothers to Paris, for raiding. Only Sigurd and Ivar were left behind; Sigurd would rather play with Siggy, their niece from their oldest brother Björn, than play with Ivar. This left Rúna as Ivar's only option. Helga and Floki had brought her to Aslaug and the younger boys, placing her in the queen's care while they sailed with King Ragnar.
He had tired of carving runes into hunks of wood, work Floki had left behind for them. Queen Aslaug came into the hall from her bedroom, swaying as she moved toward them. "What?"
"Bring us hnefatafl. I will teach Rúna to play…if she is not too stupid."
The queen sighed, but fulfilled Ivar's request, dropping the game board on the table with a heavy thunk. "You two stay inside. I will return later."
With a great sweep of her cloak, Aslaug hooded herself before slipping quietly through the front door.
"Where does she go?" Rúna asked, watching Ivar's quick fingers nimbly set up the shiny wooden pieces on the checkered board. Ivar looked up at her, blue eyes burning above his flushed cheeks.
"To have sex with Harbard. Sigurd has seen them." He said it plainly, with the same tone of voice he went on with to explain the rules of hnefatafl to her. Rúna knew what sex was; all the girls had slept in the same room at the hut, and it wasn't uncommon for the older girls to have sex with travelling men.
"But King Ragnar is her husband," she said, brows furrowing together. Ivar slammed his game piece down with enough force that it was a wonder it didn't crack in his grip.
"She does not care! My father knows, but he does not stop her. If he wanted it to stop, he would have made her."
The rules of hnefatafl were confusing for Rúna, but she had already made Ivar mad. Try very hard not to make him mad on purpose, Helga's voice sounded in her head. Her cheeks heated and tears began to prick at her eyes, but Ivar didn't notice. Rúna fumbled through the game, much to Ivar's amusement. He won easily, capturing the king piece she was supposed to be defending. "You'll need to get better than that. Bring my cart, let's go outside."
Rúna was on her feet before she thought to question the young prince. "Queen Aslaug told us to stay inside." She pointed this out, yet she still retrieved Ivar's cart from where it sat at just inside the doors of the great hall. The wheels rumbled over the floorboards as she pulled it toward the table.
A smile was starting to spread on her face. "We might get in trouble."
Ivar pouted, lips pursing and brow lowering before he smiled, too. "No. I am never in trouble with Mother. You might get in trouble, but not myself."
It was Rúna's turn to pout, even as Ivar wrapped an arm around her shoulders and she did the same around his waist. Though head and shoulders taller than her when on his feet, Helga had not exaggerated Rúna's strength. So long as Ivar was willing to help hold his weight, he was not too heavy for her to lift and assist into his cart.
Sometimes when he was mad during their lessons with Floki, Ivar would let his weight slack so that he and Rúna fell in a heap to the floor. Helga always fussed over them then, checking the both of them over for bruises and scrapes.
Outside, the day was humid and warm. Summer rains had held in the heavy, bruised clouds overhead for days now, foretelling a terrible storm. They played outside for hours, despite the foreboding sky. Ivar made a game of throwing his ball as far as he could, trying to keep it out of Rúna's reach when possible. He bested her more often than not; he was already quite strong, given that his form of mobility outside of his cart was crawling. When Sigurd and Siggy returned from their own playing, it became a competition between the three to catch the ball and throw it back to Ivar.
"I've got it!" one of the children would call, pushing at the others to get to the ball first. Sigurd was the oldest, and strong, but Siggy was small and fast. Ivar laughed every time, watching the three scramble about.
Siggy was too little to throw the ball back to Ivar. She was little more than a toddler. A side game was made where Sigurd and Rúna tried to convince the smaller girl to give up the ball to be thrown. Sigurd was more successful in this.
"I am your uncle, Siggy. You should be giving the ball to me, not to Rúna. What is she, but Ivar's plaything?"
At some point in the game, Ivar decided they should keep score for teams: Siggy and Sigurd against himself and Rúna.
"You will cheat!" Sigurd shouted, not at all enthused by Ivar's idea.
"Are you too scared to play against a cripple boy, brother?"
Sigurd threw the ball at the ground, hands curled into tight fists at his side. He stormed to Ivar's cart, looming over the younger boy. Ivar tilted his head back, a challenging look settling over his features. Siggy slipped her hand into Rúna's, huddling against the older girl's skirts.
"Don't fight!" Rúna shouted, just as Sigurd raised a hand to strike Ivar. "Please. Let's just play. Who cares who wins? Ivar beat me at hnefatafl, and we are still playing together."
Both boys turned to glare at Rúna, but she made herself smile. The travelling men that would come to the hut were often in dark moods, but Rúna had learned young that smiles helped more often than not.
"Fine," Sigurd finally relented, pushing away from Ivar. "But if you cheat, little Ivar, I will not take it easy on you just because you are a cripple."
The game continued, the pushing and yelling and laughing all returning. Afternoon bled into evening without any let up in the playing.
Aslaug returned just before nightfall, her hair not nearly so neatly coifed as it had been when she left. She smiled at Ivar and patted him on the head before breezing past the rest of the children into the great hall. Sigurd tossed the ball one more time before taking up Ivar's cart handle. "We should go inside now that Mother is home. Come, Rúna, Siggy."
Ivar pouted, hands tightening around his ball. But he was happy again soon enough when Aslaug lifted him from his cart. She didn't pay any mind to the other three children, gliding past them while murmuring softly to Ivar. Mother and son disappeared behind the curtain to Aslaug's bedroom.
Sigurd glared after them before turning his burning gaze on Rúna. She had heard Ivar call this brother Sigurd-Snake-in-the-Eye, but this was the first time she could see the snake herself. One eye was a deeper shade of blue than the other, with a dark ring on the outside that curled into the center. The effect looked like a snake curling into itself within that depth of blue.
"Bring Siggy. We will have to find our own meal."
Three forgotten children, sitting around the hearth rather than at the table, bowls in their laps. Sigurd had led them into the yard, where he had Rúna help hold a chicken still to butcher it. The older boy had plucked the feathers and spitted it over the hearth flames. Now the three sat before it, watching the skin brown.
"Father took Yidu with him. She was Mother's slave, but now she is in Paris with Father, Björn, Ubbe, and Hvitserk."
"Did Yidu take care of you?"
"She tried. Mother does not. She only cares for Ivar and Harbard. It's easier when Ubbe and Hvitserk are here. Father took them, because last time he went raiding, Harbard came and Mother was not watching us. Ubbe and Hvitserk fell through the ice and nearly drowned."
Sigurd's unusual eyes glared into the flames. He spoke all of this plainly, not bothering to whisper, not caring if his mother heard. When the chicken was done, he pulled it from the flames and cut chunks for their dinner with his axe.
They ate mostly in silence, Rúna cutting Siggy's meat and cleaning her face for her.
"Who took care of you?" Sigurd asked, watching the girls. "Before Helga and Floki."
"The other girls," Rúna explained. "There were a lot of girls at the hut."
"The brothel," he corrected. "You were bought from a brothel, Mother told us."
Rúna only shrugged, setting aside Siggy's bowl when the smaller girl's eyes began to drift shut. She lifted Siggy into her arms, intent on taking her to bed. "So? You're a prince, but here we are in the same place, no?"
Ivar never called Rúna a servant. He never called her anything, actually, other than her own name and sometimes 'stupid' when he was angry with her. Though Ivar did not label her so, that didn't stop Aslaug from using her as one.
The day after the great playing adventure with Sigurd, Ivar, and Siggy, heavy rains came to Kattegat. It kept Ivar inside—meaning Rúna must stay inside as well. Sigurd and Siggy had dared the rains, though, neither wanting to stay inside with the queen and Ivar.
Queen Aslaug was drunk. Again. She drank honeyed wine from the time she rose from bed to the time she fell back into it at night. Despite her drunken state, she was amusing Ivar with a game of hnefatafl. Rúna sat on the floor beside Ivar's chair, mending tears in his clothing at Aslaug's behest.
"That was stupid of you," she heard Ivar say from above. There came a click of wood-on-wood as he moved another game piece.
"Don't call me stupid," Queen Aslaug slurred.
"Why not?" He asked in a biting tone. Rúna flinched from her seat on the floor, wishing she were outside in the summer rain with Sigurd and Siggy. Instead, she made herself focus on her needle, on her hemming the torn seam in a pair of Ivar's pants.
"Because I am the only reason you are here."
She said it in a hateful tone yet laughed right after. Ivar laughed, too, but neither of them sounded happy. Rúna wished she could block her ears rather than hear the sound of their angry laughter. It was short lived, anyway, that laughter, for Sigurd came running in with his blonde hair wet and dripping.
"Siggy is dead."
Rúna's head sprung up, wide eyes locking on the boy. Aslaug had a considerably slower reaction, her head swinging lazily atop her long neck. "Who?"
"Björn's daughter. I found her drowned in the river."
Like the day before, when he was mad at Ivar during the game, Sigurd's hands fisted at his sides at her mother's response. "Oh. Her."
At Rúna's back, Ivar laughed. Her head shot up again, eyebrows crinkling as tears pricked at her eyes. Across the room, Sigurd's face flushed pink and then red as Aslaug began to laugh as well. He crossed the room in quick, angry steps. Ivar flinched as if Sigurd might hit him, but rather, the older boy reached down and hauled Rúna to her feet.
"We will bury her, since you two do not care."
"Why should we care?" Ivar called after them. "She was nothing to us."
Sigurd pulled Siggy's little body from the river. She was as pale as her flaxen hair, face already bloated from being in the water. Rúna carried the shovel, dogging the boy's steps. He led her to a cabin not far from the sprawl of the great hall, one she guessed belonged to Björn.
"Sit with her while I dig."
Rúna couldn't believe the smaller girl she had tucked into bed the night before was dead. She reached out to smooth the tangled hair off her forehead, but shrank back when her fingers brushed the cold, pale skin. When Sigurd began talking, she jumped as if it were Siggy's corpse who had spoken.
"You must not go to the water while Harbard is here." The man's name left Sigurd's mouth as if it were a curse. "Do not take Ivar, either. Children always drown when Harbard is in Kattegat. Ubbe and Hvitserk only survived the last time because our aunt pulled them from the ice and drowned in their place. Ivar cannot swim, Rúna. Do not take him to the water."
He looked at her with such intensity shining from his young face that it almost seemed like the snake curled around his eye would lash out at her. Rúna nodded meekly, watching in silence as Sigurd completed digging Siggy's grave.
They laid her in the ground together before pushing handfuls of dirt over the lip of the grave. Slowly, the earth swallowed Siggy.
The evening meal beside the hearth was solemn and silent that night. Sigurd filled Rúna's cup with ale rather than water and didn't make fun of her for the errant tears that kept rolling down her face.
Ivar's laugh played through Rúna's head late into the night as she lay in her borrowed bed. Queen Aslaug's laugh chased behind, creating a terrible loop that even appeared in her dreams. She wished fervently that it had been a bad dream.
Morning, however, revealed it had been real. Sigurd slept in the same room as the girls; Siggy in her own tiny bed and Rúna in Hvitserk's while he was gone. But when she opened her eyes to pale morning light, Rúna realized Sigurd was the only one in the room with her.
She changed her wish, then, hoping and praying to the gods that Floki and Helga would return, and she could go back to their happy seaside cabin.
Floki and Helga did not return that day, as was Rúna's desperate, secret wish. Sigurd ran off to play with anyone he could find after breaking his fast, leaving the two younger children alone with Aslaug.
As she had the day before, the queen wrapped herself in her cloak and kissed the top of Ivar's head. She bid him to stay inside once more, then turned her attentions to Rúna. Cupping the little girl's jaw in her hand, Aslaug forced her to look up and meet her eye. Fingernails cut into the skin of Rúna's cheeks, and she tried not to whimper as she gazed into the fire the queen's eyes held.
"I mean what I say, girl. Do not think I did not notice you children outside yesterday. Neither of you are to leave the great hall, and if you do, I will sell you back to the whorehouse you came from."
Her cold hand dropped, releasing the child from the vice grip, and the queen smiled once more at her youngest child. "I know you will make good choices, Ivar."
After the heavy door to the great hall slammed shut behind the retreating queen, Ivar turned to Rúna with a smirk on his face, his blue eyes dancing with mirth. "I told you. I am never in trouble with Mother."
Rúna rubbed at her cheeks, trying to get rid of the feel of Queen Aslaug's cold, hard fingers on her skin. "Why weren't you sad about Siggy yesterday?"
"She was nothing to me. Björn did not even care for her. He left her here, didn't he? You saw how dirty she was. Mother said she was unwanted. She says you were, too, that's why Helga bought you so easily."
His words made Rúna's cheeks heat where once they were chilled from Aslaug's touch. She couldn't argue with Ivar, not because he was a prince, but because he was right. There was nothing she could say in retort. Before she realized what was happening, Rúna's hand lashed out and struck Ivar across the face.
Blue eyes went wide in a face paled with shock. Ivar's own hand raised to touch the red welt Rúna's had left. The little girl held her breath, thinking of Floki's words she had overheard her first night in Kattegat.
… her child buries an axe in your child's head…
Ivar always carried an axe in his cart with him, for his protection, Aslaug said. Just when Rúna was certain Ivar would use that axe on her, his laughter broke the tense, cold silence that had settled over the room. Rúna jumped back from him, shocked at the unanticipated sound. Ivar laughed until he was breathless and holding his sides, but once he was somber, he stuck Rúna with a cold, blue stare.
"You are funny, Rúna." His own hand was quick as a serpent strike. Ivar was strong, she knew, but Rúna did not understand just how strong until his palm met her cheek. Where Aslaug's touch had been frighteningly cold, her son's burned like an open flame, swelling her skin immediately. "Do not ever do that again, hmm?"
For reasons Rúna could not begin to understand, Ivar was nicer to her after the day she hit him. He pestered Aslaug until she gave the girl a poultice for the bruises Ivar's hand had stained her cheek with.
Ivar no longer called her stupid.
He refused both Aslaug and Sigurd when they insisted Ivar name her a slave.
"That's the only way she'll keep playing with you, is if you make it so she has no choice," Sigurd would insist, even as Rúna shook her head. He had been mad to learn Ivar struck Rúna, but hadn't dared retaliated lest he anger Aslaug.
"What good is a friend if they do not choose to be your friend?" Ivar would counter.
Sigurd would turn his unusual stare on Rúna, and she would become consumed with the irrational fear that the serpentine shape in his eye would strike out at her. She would try not to shrink under this glare, and insist, "I like to play with Ivar and do my lessons with him. He is my friend."
After she hit him, that statement became true. He helped her with the runes she struggled with and no longer resisted their practices. Ivar began standing for longer and longer periods, sometimes even for a few seconds alone if Rúna pulled away from him.
He did not raise his hand to her again, either, though he made no effort to hide the origin of Rúna's bruising from his mother. She only smirked then he told her how he had hit Rúna hard enough to bruise, leaving out how it was her own strike that prompted him.
Rúna was not stupid, despite what Ivar had said in the past.
She recognized his odd extension of friendship for what it was, even if she did not understand it.