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“Who is he to you, Uhtred? Who is this man that turns you from me, from your family, your people?”
To Ragnar’s eyes, Uhtred appeared possessed, his eyes wild and his body nearly vibrating with restless energy. He seemed about to crawl out of his skin or perhaps run someone through. He panted, chest heaving, as though he had fought for hours.
“Who is….Who is Alfred? Who…” Abruptly, Uhtred stopped, his gaze turned out over the landscape. “He is the man who took my freedom from me. He is the man who manipulates me and lies to me and abandons me to fate. He is the man who treats me no better than a dog at his table, there to kick and to do his bidding. Who watches me with eyes like ice and sees nothing. Sees a pagan, a heathen, who is worth nothing but the next battle, the next chore, the next task to be thrown at my feet. He hates me and he needs me and he hates needing me. I am…He is the man who traps me with a word and chains me to him whenever it suits him. He lives inside my veins and if I bled every single last drop of blood in my body I would never be rid of him. He is a poison, a sickness. I…”
Ragnar took a steadying breath, trying think through the cascade of words, the agony in Uhtred’s voice. He watched as Uhtred’s hands curled into fists, pressed in tight to his chest in a gesture that was both supplication and protection. He had thought many thinks through years about Uhtred and his relationship with Wessex, none of it kind, but this was something he never imagined. “You are in love with him.”
Uhtred swung around at the sound of his voice, reeling like a drunken man, his eyes were glossy and mad with some great unnameable thing that seemed to live instead him. “Is that what this is? Is that what you call this madness inside me? I have never felt like this before, Ragnar. Not with Brida nor my wife nor any other woman or man I have humped. Not as a youth or a child, not as a man. I feel…like a zealot and it is Alfred who I can do nothing but worship. He is weak, fragile in his illness, and yet if he commanded it, I would hand him my sword and impale myself upon it.”
Nausea roiled in Ragnar’s guts, a creeping cold soaking into his bones. This was not the gentle love that one shared with a woman, no the warm kind of love one shared with a man. This love was twisted for being so denied, so subsumed beneath all the oaths and betrayals, the mistreatment and praise. If Ragnar could march down to Winchester himself, he would take Alfred’s head from his shoulders for what that king had done to his brother. But of course, he would have to go through Uhtred first and that was a battle that he knew he would never win.
Instead, he opened his arms and Uhtred collapsed against him. He was weeping silently, seemingly unaware of it. Ragnar pulled him close and cupped a hand over Uhtred’s head. “You are my brother and you know if you ever have need of me, that you need only send word and I will be there. But…” He pulled back enough to look Uhtred in the face, to meet his eyes. “Let me give you a warning: this love you have for Alfred, it would destroy you. There is nothing but pain for you on this road you are choosing. I would spare you this pain if I could. It is not of a kind that any man should bear.”
Uhtred inhaled, taking a deep breath, and finally, the madness in his eyes and the vibrating energy in his body dissipated. “I know you would, Ragnar. I know you would. And I thank you for it, but…I can do nothing else. I am bound to him as surely as he is to me. Even if I go with you now, there will only come a day when I cannot stand it any longer. Leaving then will hurt us both, and perhaps break what is between us. I cannot place myself across a battlefield from him. I cannot raise my sword against him. I will be no use to you.”
Ragnar nodded, melancholy rising in him. “Go then, to your man. Do what you must. But know this. You will always have a place by my side and food at my table, should you ever free yourself of the chains that you wear so gladly. I will always welcome you.”
Uhtred swallowed hard, his throat bobbing. “I love you, brother. You are always better to me than I deserve.”
Ragnar laughed, though his ribs ached at the waiver in Uhtred’s voice. “And you had better remember it, arseling. But, Uhtred…Perhaps, the best way to deal with this sickness in you is to drain it. Tell Alfred.”
Uhtred blinked at him, blank for a long moment, before all the color drained from his face. “Alfred is Christian before he is anything else, even King. Ragnar, what I feel for him, what I want from him, it is a sin to the Christians. Even if he…He would never…He would send me away. Or perhaps finally have me executed.”
Ragnar scoffed, feeling bewildered. “I will never understand these Christians. Their ideas of proper and right are…stupid.”
Uhtred laughed, hollow and short. “You are not wrong. But no. I will take this with me into death, wherever that might lead.”
Ragnar shook his head. “I will see you in Valhalla.”
Uhtred smiled, small, but real.