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“It’s not far to walk, no need to trouble the stablemaster,” Eivor had insisted, the necessity of stealth in faraway Jorvik meaning they brought neither the longship nor their horses from Ravensthorpe.
Following a suggestion from Hjorr, they set their sights on a farmhouse not far from the city’s walls, a potential hideout for an Order member - unfortunately one of several - currently plaguing Jorvik. Basim, bundled in the heavy leather of his cloak and several additional layers for warmth and to obscure the many instruments of death he carried on his person, looked at the road ahead of them, wet with mud and the slush of snow, the ruts of wagon wheels carved through it. “Very well, Eivor.”
“Brisk walk will get the blood pumping,” said Eivor, chipper as a songbird, himself flushed pleasantly with the chill. Basim made a noncommittal noise and nodded as someone does when pretending to listen to a conversation, before setting off. “You have dealt with snow like this before, of course?”
“As I recall, you were there when Hytham and I visited Norway, were you not?” Basim turned his head a little as Eivor caught up to him, and beneath his hood, Eivor caught the hint of a cat’s petulant smile. Abashed, Eivor coughed and adjusted his cloak. “I have known heavy snows, but never for a great deal of time. I heard stories from my father of a snow in Baghdad in his childhood, but never saw it myself.
“The winter before we met Sigurd, it snowed for a week in Constantinople, and in those evenings I was veritably required to drag Hytham back inside,” he smiled crookedly, a fondness in his voice. “He had never seen it before, and in courtyards away from prying eyes, spent hours stomping about and building things in it.
“My own longest exposure I think were the several weeks I spent in the mountains above Nepal. Regrettably a Thakuri general fell in with the Order, and the Hidden Ones dispatched me to resolve the issue. He expected to disappear temporarily into the snow. I made it permanent.”
“Snows and mountains have made and broken many men, whether they walked alone or in the step of an army. As children, we’re taught by our parents to respect the ferocity of Norway’s weather; and failing that, the elements themselves provide their own lessons.”
As the city shrank behind them and the thatched roof of their destination rose ahead, a fresh flurry of snow began to fall. From beneath the enveloping bell of his cloak, Basim raised his hand, and admired the fleeting flakes as they melted against the dark of his glove. “Yet for all of its treachery, it remains very beautiful.”
For a moment overlong, Eivor remained quiet in admiration, considering the varied applications for Basim’s observation. He took Basim’s glance at him as a startling cue to say something, and said with some haste, “Suppose you could get used to seeing it regularly?”
Basim subjected him to another curious look, retracting his hand beneath his cloak, and looked around them, across the valleys and distant mountains swaddled in the silencing blanket of snow. “One of course does not only ‘see’ snow; one must also work and ride in it, or walk, as some vikingr insist upon.” Eivor innocently looked away. “It is a pretty nuisance, yet as I know it, far from worthy of hate. I would miss summer were I required to live in it all the time, though as you suggest seasons, I believe I could withstand regular and brief winters.”
“Hm.”
“And yourself? Would you return to Norway and the ferocity of its frigid mountains?”
“Gods, no.” Eivor replied automatically, thinking more of the mess Styrbjorn had made and being subject to Harald’s rule than the weather. After a moment’s reconsideration, “Well, there are some things I miss of it, though I confess the temperate climate here makes many things easier. Farming, trade… survival. I do not miss hearing that a clansman perished from exposure, even if he earned it with his foolhardiness.
“... Winters weren’t all wretched, of course. Why, as children, Sigurd and I and other children would build entire villages of snow in the daylight, walls and forts and the odd castle or two, dividing sides between Norse and Saxon or Aesir and Jotnar.” Eivor, distracted by the warm feeling of his memories, did not notice the kindly study Basim paid him as they walked - a certain wistfulness pinched the corners of his eyes. “Playing out Ragnarök was a favorite game of ours. Sigurd as Styrbjorn’s son always had first pick of roles; he favored being Oðin or Thor, and usually left me the other, or Tyr usually. I would say he relegated many of our friends to Surtr, Fenrir, and Loki, though several were quite joyous to lead the legions of inglorious dead.
“Once we’d drawn lines - if we’d even gotten that far - we’d spend hours in our little battlefield pelting one another with snowballs or charging to break the great walls of Asgard or wreck Naglfar. If our lines of defense fell far enough, often we’d break into single combat or- less even odds, tossing one another into snowbanks and shoving snow down one another’s shirts.
“Like Hytham, our elders would have to drag us inside to keep from freezing, though from time to time we’d consider them the greatest of the giants, and bring them down into the snow with us.”
A faraway look akin to that which clouded Eivor’s eyes, creased Basim’s face. “Neither my brothers and I nor… Fahim,” Basim always winced when he mentioned his son by name, the word having grown a painful edge with the whetting of loss and years, “knew snow for such battles, of course, though the city provided ample space for elaborate games of hiding and seeking. In my youth I excelled at hoop driving, and taught Fahim what I knew, though he liked best the counting and capturing of seeds.”
A cloud of memories thickened the air and dampened the conversation for a time, the snow beginning to fall more heavily and stick to their cloaks. Eivor waged a small battle from within on what to say; he yearned for a greater closeness to Basim, though the knowledge of where the barriers lay, guarded by the memories of Basim’s wife and son, still escaped Eivor. Recalling Canterbury, he gently pressed an old conversation that had not gone poorly. “I do miss many things of Norway, but a great deal of them are memories, attached to people that have moved on as I did. … I deem England tolerably more hospitable in terms of weather - its people are a far different story - and it is pleasant enough to call home.” Eivor hesitated for a moment. “Though, I do still wonder of your city, which I expect is far removed from anything I have known before.”
Basim shook his head, dissipating a private reverie, and offered a small but sincere laugh. “You would, I think, appreciate many of the remarkable things Baghdad has to offer, and the greater caliphate as well. However, it is imperative you are aware our summers are sweltering, and I am sure Sigurd would have my head if I melted his favorite drengr.”
Impudent, Eivor - who had never seen a strip of sand bigger than a beach - snorted. “I am not some poorly-tempered Saxon; I can respect and endure the heat as much as the cold.”
“Hmm.” For his part, Basim did not push Eivor further, though he offered one of his many small smirks and quickened his pace as Eivor’s slowed, turning off the main road and into deeper, untouched snow, the farmhouse drawing near.
Eivor usually considered himself fairly level-headed, at least more than Sigurd could be over matters of pride. Still, though he knew Basim knew best in this matter, he struggled whether or not to feel insulted. Ultimately, he didn’t really, though the opportunity for revenge and their conversation sparked an awful, brilliant plan, and he came to a thoughtful stop. Sýnin hadn’t noticed any movement around or outside prior to or during their approach, and after all, with two hidden blades, what harm could it be…? Basim himself said he had never enjoyed snow in this way...
For the benefit of better molding his chosen artistic medium, Eivor took off his gloves and tucked them away into a bag on his belt, before bending down and grabbing a measured handful of snow.
To his natural advantage, unlike Basim, he’d spent a lifetime perfecting these wretched and wonderful little missiles.
He took a few quick steps forward to close the distance between them, and struggling to contain his glee, innocently called, “Basim!”
The master assassin a few lengths ahead of him turned, still wearing his little smile, which soon melted into wide-eyed horror at the snowball already inches from his face.
With no time to dodge or cognitively process what was even happening, the snowball burst apart with a ridiculously satisfying ‘shlop’ against his face, and Eivor cackled like a raven, Sýnin echoing him as she circled overhead.
Basim recovered the half-step he’d taken back, standing quite tall and still as he blinked, raising a hand to help dislocate the melting chunks of snow sloughing down his cheeks. He took one lump in hand, as if weighing it, before looking back up at Eivor. Sigurd, of course, or Vili, or any other Norse child with a reasonable sense of humor would have ducked down and grabbed more snow for a retaliating blow.
Unsettlingly, Basim simply stood there for several awful seconds, and the laughter of Eivor and his raven died. Sýnin darted to the safety of a tree’s bare branches, and Eivor offered a nervous laugh, his hands raised in a gesture of peace. “Basim- Basim- please don’t kill me.”
“No,” Basim cleared his throat and tossed the remains of the snowball aside, “I’m only going to maim you a little.”
Still half-expecting Basim to throw a snowball in kind, Eivor found himself at a moment’s disadvantage when Basim broke into a dead run, charging squarely at him.
The proud son of Varin shrieked a curse to Oðin and turned tail, sprinting with all the speed of a deer for its life, a wolf close on its heels. “NononONOBASIMI’MSORRY!”
Things in Eivor’s favor included his practice with running through and across snow, honed over a lifetime, and the sturdy, strong build of a drengr. These he quickly, sadly, found insufficient compared to the slightly longer legs of the Hidden One and his intense thirst for revenge.
It took a matter of seconds for the fast, snow-crunching footsteps behind him to die, and momentarily Eivor realized Basim had leaped; a heartbeat later he felt Basim’s full weight land on him, as if with the force of a battering ram, and in slow motion they both fell into the snow and landed with a resounding ‘thud’. Eivor spat and sputtered, writhing like a hooked fish, chest and back pounding with the force of impact and bare skin freezing where it scrabbled unceremoniously in the snow. Basim - quite smugly, Eivor had to imagine, being stuck face-down, wheezing on ice crystals - sat on his back, a knee digging pointedly into his spine.
“Smothered by snow,” surprisingly more a help than a hindrance, Basim tugged on one of Eivor’s braids and kept his face out of the freezing wet, “Eivor, do you think that would be a form of suffocation or drowning?”
“Bacraut!” Eivor sputtered and struggled to push himself up, only to be met with Basim’s weight continually shifting just so to frustrate his efforts.
“ Me? I hardly think I’m at fault for this,” Eivor struggled to turn his head when Basim released his hair, and proceeded to yelp when he saw Basim’s purpose, “ I , of course, did not deliver the instigating blow.”
With that, before Eivor could wrestle him off, Basim had dug beneath the folds of his cloak to find the neck of his gambeson, yanked it up and away from his neck, and shoved a messy heap of snow down his bare back. Perhaps he should not have recounted the chilly escapades of his childhood so thoroughly.
Eivor screeched like a dying raven, and the shock of frozen and rapidly-melting water sluicing down his back and sides to soak him and his clothes from the inside out, gave enough his flailing power enough to knock Basim aside. Seeing the turn of the tide, Basim attempted to scrabble away backwards, and Eivor stumbled to his feet faster, almost tripping over Basim in the attempt to grab the collar of his robes. “Eivor,” Basim frantically attempted to weasel out of his cloak, which Eivor held fast, “surely we can negotiate this-”
“Bacraut,” Eivor repeated, spitting snow from his beard as with one hand he hauled Basim to a sitting position, and the other, grabbed a large handful of snow.
Basim’s hands - one gloved and the other bare - scrabbled across Eivor’s which held him, prying at his fingers. In recalling the event later, this moment came back to Eivor routinely, Basim’s breathy laughter and the realization the Hidden One easily could have made him let go if he had wanted to. Instead, Basim stopped struggling, relaxed a little even, plaintive and resigned to his fate, sighing the name of his god, before he shouted and squirmed when Eivor dumped the generous helping of snow down the front of his robes. In a subsequent moment of clever clarity on his part, he grabbed Eivor’s hair again and knocked their heads together, with force enough to stagger Eivor and tackle him back to the ground.
The next several minutes consisted of shouted curses to various gods and at one another, the latter primarily insults, as the two struggled and wrestled in the snow, flipping one another again and again as feet and hands scrabbled for secure holds and found none in the slick snow. Intermittently, still, they shoved and smeared one another’s faces with and into the frigid crystals, and their flailing left great divots and streaks in the banks around them, sometimes scraped away even to dead grass and mud, which stained their boots and the bottoms of their robes.
“No better than a Norse child, eh?” Eivor puffed, for the moment on top and pinning Basim at the chest. “Beaten by a bit of wet and chill a babe would shake off?”
“I think there’s been a drengr somewhere, in the midst of the cold, aiding it,” Basim commented, equally breathless, though his chest heaved admirably under Eivor’s weight, “who claims victory far too quickly.”
Suddenly Basim’s legs seized around Eivor’s middle like a vice, and with Eivor’s weight centered so much on Basim, he had no counterbalance to prevent being flipped, their positions again reversed and Basim on top of him, knees neatly and safely resting on his either side, skillfully not trapped beneath Eivor, retaining control of their arrangement. The breath taken from him again, Eivor didn’t resist Basim gathering up his arms and pinning his wrists overhead, sinking deeply into the snow.
“Perhaps,” said Eivor, as they both panted, “we might call a truce for today?” He had never seen Basim look this disheveled, his normally tidy, brushed-back hair now a streaked and tangled snarl, chunks of snow hanging from it in various places like ornaments. Similarly snow had been smeared and scattered his beard, and made the silver hairs that wove through it all the more apparent. Beneath the unusual chaos of his appearance, Eivor also saw for the first time an almost childish humor gleaming in Basim’s eyes, and for the laboriousness of his breath, he couldn’t stop smiling.
Eivor thanked the fortune of being covered in snow to explain the redness of his face, as he thoughtlessly licked his lips and realized how easy it would be to raise his head and kiss Basim. He tried to smother the desire as Basim tentatively released his hold of Eivor’s arms and sat back, still bracing a hand on Eivor’s chest. “I am willing to discuss terms, Wolf-Kissed.”
“Terms?” Eivor pushed himself up onto his elbows. “And what could I, a simple member of the Raven Clan, humbled by your equal might and mettle, have to offer in appeasement?”
Basim held a breath for a moment, studying Eivor with those bright eyes. Smile sobering just a little, he said, “Promise you will do something like this with me again, sometime when we have finished here. I… have not enjoyed myself in this way for many years.”
Eivor laughed heartily. “As long as you don’t mind me trouncing you next time, I agree.”
He saw Basim’s right hand twitch towards more snow, considering breaking the truce for the cheek of Eivor’s comment, and then he let it go. “Until next we meet on the field of battle, Wolf-Kissed.”
He slipped off Eivor then, who missed his weight, and offered a hand to help him stand up. Eivor took it, and they began the lengthy process of dusting themselves off as best they could, bedraggled and soaked as they were. Eivor leaned against a nearby fencepost as he dumped snow from his boots and dug more from beneath his gambeson, while Basim awkwardly fumbled with his various belts and shook out his robes in his best attempt to dislodge excess and clinging snow. Finally he shook out his hair and combed it back with his fingers, making a few passes to ensure moderate order had been restored.
It still looked beautifully messy, though Eivor made no comment besides a smile - which Basim returned. As he raised his hood again, he said, “Thank you, Eivor.”
“This was a delight for me as well - I look forward to our next bout.”
Together, the snow left in utter chaos in their wake, they resumed the walk to the farmhouse. Eivor meant as he said, appreciating the lighter shift in the air now between them. Basim playfully bumped into him once as they approached the front yard, and Eivor’s heart nearly burst.