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They send him to the village on the cusp of autumn, hooded and cloaked and blending in to the before-dawn dark as he walks away, footsteps light as a cat’s.
He hasn’t complain once, if he had any worry about the journey ahead he kept it to himself. Though Ragnar figures most of the things that go on inside that curly head are kept hidden. His hunched little form resembles a turtle with its empty pack – soon to be filled with things they need from the market.
Of course, the priest would be a fool if he was worried. He’s got more than enough food. And he and Ragnar have gone together, time to time. He knows the way now. It’s Kattegat, not Niflheim.
Worry or not, even if he was quiet to begin with his absence makes the house feel strangely empty.
The rest of the day is spent in the fields, harvesting the beginnings of the last crops. With Gyda’s help, Lagertha pulls up almost more onions than they have room for. A good year. At the end of the day Ragnar watches the sun dip below the horizon, eyes searching beyond that western sky he itches to see more of.
That night Ragnar’s eyes are drawn to the empty bed in the corner, neatly made up by precise hands though it’s hardly more than a couple blankets and a wooden board beneath. Now the house is as it used to be; before the raids, before he came to them. It should feel comfortable. Normal. But it doesn’t.
With any luck, he will return on the morrow. Perhaps if he finished early he’ll even have begun his journey right then, and by dawn Ragnar will see his now familiar silhouette coming up the road towards him.
Why can’t he stop his thoughts from going back to the priest? There isn’t any more to think. He’s gone, and he’ll be back soon. And that’s all.
But then in the blink of an eye the next day is gone and it’s evening again, and Athelstan still hasn’t returned. When Ragnar looks outside at the darkening world he sees ominous clouds gathering, lightning flaring in the distance as Thor’s hammer begins its striking. Maybe he’s on his way still, and will get inside just before they’re hit by the storm proper. Maybe he’s on the streets of Kattegat, watching the thunderclouds roll in and knowing he’ll have to find somewhere to bed down for the night rather than face the rain and wind.
There are plenty of other things worth his time and attention. But he can’t help wondering when he’ll finally hear a knock at the door, the familiar soft tread...
Night falls, the rain comes down in a rush like a man’s last breath, and those footsteps don’t come.
All night the wind shrieks over the chimney, rattles the walls. Ragnar can swear he hears the boards on the roof rattling too, and knows he’ll have to replace them if they manage to fly off. Sometimes the door shakes violently in its frame and he has to listen close to make sure it’s not the priest outside, begging to be let in.
At some point in the night Gyda creeps over from her own bed and crawls in between her parents, curling up in a ball with her hands over her ears. Ragnar tosses a spare blanket over the child and she snuggles up closer to her mother. Their quiet sleep-breathing soon fills the room, but he can’t sleep himself. He would say it’s the storm distracting him, tugging his thoughts left and right, except he’s never been made restless by storms like this before.
The priest would have been. The last time they had a rainstorm he got very quiet and very still, letting his face betray nothing, but jumped like a startled cat with each clap of thunder. Ragnar would have laughed at him if it weren’t for the flashes of genuine fear that crossed his face.
(He did laugh at him, privately, when he wasn’t looking. He couldn’t help it.)
Thor’s hammer strikes again. And again.
In the morning his wife and daughter still lie close together asleep, one of Lagertha’s arms wrapped around Gyda’s shoulders. The world outside is wet and windy, gusts rattling the barn door and wrenching leaves from their branches. The sky remains grey and heavy, more rain surely not far away.
Lagertha only frowns when he expresses his concerns about their slave. “I told you not to send him alone. He will have gotten lost, or forgotten what we needed and gone wandering about the market all day.”
But what they need isn’t too hard to find, not that hard. A length of sturdy leather, new onion bulbs to store over winter, some salt fish.
Her frown deepens over the wheat she’s grinding. “Or he may have left us. He could have taken the chance to run away, Ragnar. You know it is possible.”
“He wouldn’t,” Ragnar says instantly. “Where would he go?”
“Wherever he can. Why shouldn’t he?”
But he catches the faintest line of worry between her brows. “Why should he? He has never tried before. We have left him alone on our raids – he might have, then, and did not. Why now?” There is a sharp feeling along the back of his neck, the feeling he knows from the end of a battle when an enemy thought to be dead prepares to attack from behind. A crow flies overhead, croaking. Something is wrong, and he knows it.
“He hasn’t run,” he says. “Wherever he has gone, whatever has befallen him...it was not his own doing.”
But he has gone somewhere. Lagertha is wrong, he can’t have become lost, he’s smarter than that. Something has gone wrong, and now Ragnar is certain of it.
Noon passes, and still he hasn’t come home. Ragnar visits other farms nearby, asking anyone he sees if they’ve seen his slave, describing him as best he can. None of them have.
He walks up and down the road – twice – scanning the horizon and seeing nothing but fields and hills and woods. Twice he calls out Athelstan’s name. There’s no response but the whistling wind. He wants to kick something.
He’ll ride out, that very day. By the time he returns to the farm his very bones feel twitchy; if he doesn’t do something soon they might tear out of his skin.
He doesn’t bother to grab food before he goes, only a skin of water. And a knife. He may need it before the day is done.
Lagertha protests when he tells her what he means to do, but he isn’t asking anyone’s permission.
“If Athelstan is out there, I will find him,” he tells her. “I won’t rest until I have.”
“You will feel a fool if you ride out less than a mile and see him coming up the road towards you.”
Ragnar gives a half shrug. He would much rather risk feeling a fool than finding him dead in a ditch.
A mile passes, then two. And Athelstan is nowhere to be seen. Ragnar rides as fast as he dares along the familiar road, pausing only when he must. The sky darkens threateningly with each passing hour, and he worries Thor’s fury will envelope them all once again.
Instead of letting it consume him, he allows the threat of thunder to fill his veins as he urges the horse onward. If that fury is to come again, let it be through him. He may need it before the sun is up.
It’s late evening by the time he reaches the village outskirts. He ties his horse at a tree and makes sure the knife is secured at his belt. Tempted though he is to keep one hand on its hilt, he doesn’t – the last thing he wants it so make more trouble than he needs to. Not when trouble might already be on its way for him.
At the marketplace many stalls are closing up for the night, but those that remain open he visits, every single one. Anyone he sees he gives Athelstan’s description to, but they haven’t seen him. Most of them recognize him, though, and wonder aloud why Ragnar Lothbrok would have so much concern for a Christian slave.
Those he doesn’t respond to with anything more than a look. He’ll find him. No matter what he has to do, he will find him and with any hope he will do so tonight.
The streets darken, then empty. The sight of the Earl’s hall makes him pause, but he continues on. There would be no reason for Athelstan to have spent any time there – and if he did for whatever reason, surely he would have been returned to the farm.
Unless Haaraldson himself had something to do with it. Vengeance for travelling west in the form of taking the thing he had brought back.
No, he can’t go down the road of thinking that. Not yet. There are still people to ask, darkened corners to search. Not until the last resort will he visit the Earl.
It’s when the sun has already gone down and a nightly chill has swept the air that finally, finally, Ragnar finds a man near the fish market who knows the face he describes.
“A small man. Dark haired, and quiet.” He’s barely finished talking when the other man nods his head. “This slave of yours bought salt fish from me, yesterday evening,” he says.
“And then?”
“And then? He left, didn’t he? Went on his way.”
Ragner’s impatience is reaching a boiling point, but he fights to keep his tone civil. “Which way would that be? He has not come home.”
The fishmonger gives a round-shouldered shrug, gesturing down toward the docks. “Hard to recall. But that way, I think. I glimpsed that head of his by the water.”
By the water. A dozen new fears rise up; Athelstan might have slipped and fallen in, either drowning or emerging soaked and frozen and gone – where?
Or...could it be as Lagertha had said? Had he traded the wares he was sent to fetch for passage on a ship, taking him the furthest place he could find?
No, he doesn’t believe it.
Ragnar searches the strand and the docks until long after the sun has set. The footprints there are many, and near impossible to tell apart. But he searches anyway, praying for any sign at all.
A few alleys reach out from the village’s edge, opening to where he stands now. From the depths of one he hears the muttering of a few voices together and makes a mental note to ask whoever it is if they know anything once he’s finished his own search. Anyone hiding in dark corners after sundown could be a shifty type, but shifty types often see and hear more than they let on.
Just as he’s about to admit defeat, a glint catches his eye. A splash of something dark and wet on the dock, catching in the light of the half moon above. He doesn’t need to touch it to know it’s blood.
Just as he knows that, does he know it could have belonged to anyone. Or anything. Still, he follows what quickly becomes a trail, splotches here and there along the sand and the grass.
Likely it isn’t what he thinks. If it is, he doesn’t want to know what that means.
Several minutes into his search, Ragnar has that feeling again; the one he feels only when an enemy is approaching. He stands and turns slowly, and isn’t surprised to hear the voices he heard from the alley – this time given a trio of faces. They lurk at the edges of the docks, eyes shifting between him and the ground.
“My friends,” he says, “can I help you?”
Two of the three glance at each other. Ragnar takes stock of them; one tall but narrowly built, another stockier, the third smaller than the other two but with a face like broken knife blade and covered in scars.
“What do you need here?” asks the tallest. Ragnar doesn’t miss the hint of fear in his sharp voice.
“What do you need?” he counters. “I’ve seen you skulking around after me for a while now – come out of there and face me in the light.”
His hand is on the hilt of his knife, an action he doesn’t bother to disguise. These folk want trouble, that’s easy enough for him to tell. Better to get this over with before it starts, then.
“You’re Ragnar Lothbrok,” says the tallest, suspicion clouding his face.
Suspicion is good. Fear would be better. “I am.”
“And you’re wandering the docks at night? What’s a man like you doing out here?”
For a moment he isn’t sure whether to tell them the truth or not. “I’m searching for someone. A slave. He left for Kattegat two mornings ago and hasn’t been seen since. If he’s still here, I intend to find him tonight.”
He isn’t certain, but he thinks he sees the three of them exchange a startled look. In response he raises his eyebrows. “You don’t know anything about where he might be, do you?”
The leader looks shiftily at the ground at first, but then meets Ragnar’s eyes. “A lot of effort you’re making for one lost slave.”
“Well. He’s the only one I’ve got.”
The others eye him for a long moment, giving away nothing. “Give me your name, will you?” Ragnar says to the leader. “You’ve got mine, after all.”
A frown. A pair of wiry shoulders tensing. “Hadthar,” he says.
“Hadthar. I’ll tell you this – if you and your friends want to help me search for the man I’m searching for, then do it. If not, keep away from me while I search.”
Hadthar’s eyes narrow even further. Ragnar’s hand tightens on his knife. The creeping, dreadful suspicion that started at the back of his neck is swiftly spreading. Either he or they will be getting out of this unscathed, not both.
Ragnar approaches the three, drawing the knife. It almost impresses him to see the other man not flinch even the slightest. He’s young, barely bearded. Not as young as Bjorn, but no more than a few years older by the looks of him. “Tell me what you know.” The pounding in his chest is the kind that proceeds the first taste of battle, a new kill. “What have you done with my slave?”
“Nothing,” says one of Hadthar’s companions, the one with a face like a boulder. “But if we did, what would it matter? Word is you treat that slave like family. You care far too much for a Saxon coward like him – “
The last word barely leaves his mouth before Ragnar’s fist slams into it. He staggers backward, his fellows letting out cries of anger and shock. Hadthar whips around, his own blade jumping from his belt to his hand – but Ragnar’s knife is already at his throat.
“I’ll ask you again,” he says, all pretend friendliness gone. “What have you done with him?”
To his credit, the other man doesn’t flinch, keeps looking him straight in the eye. “Nothing the Christian worm didn’t deserve.”
Ragnar flips the knife to his other hand and punches Hadthar in the nose. The next thing he feels is one arm being twisted behind his back by one of the companions, but his knife is already deep in his captor’s arm. Two more stabs and a knee to the groin later, the boulder-faced man slumps to the ground in a groaning heap.
Hadthar faces him, his nose a bloody mess, rage flooding his face. His second companion stumbles to his feet, spitting out a broken tooth. Knuckles burning, blood pounding up in his ears, Ragnar grabs him by the collar and slams his back into the nearest hut.
“Do I need to ask one more time? What have you done with that man?”
The other man bares his bloody teeth. “He’s dead,” he spits out, “is that what you want to hear? That we killed your precious Christian and came back to get rid of the body when we – when we – “
A sense of numbness spreads from somewhere near his heart out to everything and everywhere else, as if he’s just dived into icy water. He doesn’t like that. Doesn’t like it at all.
That feeling can’t stay there. So he slams his forehead into Hadthar’s already shattered nose, a fist into his ribs, again and again in a cold and blind kind of fury. It’s only when the sounds of pain get too loud to ignore, that some sense comes back into him and he knows it’s only a matter of time before they’re all discovered, and he tilts Hadthar’s battered face up to his own. “He’s not dead,” he says, barely hearing himself. “You’re lying scum. Where is he and what did you do to him?”
For the first time he sees true panic in the other man’s face. Another day it might have brought him satisfaction. “He’s dead. He wasn’t meant to be. We only wanted to have our fun – found him wandering the alleys and thought we’d rough him a little...we stopped beating him when he stopped moving...”
He weakly spits blood from his mouth. “But we knew you’d come. After. Came back to get him, before you came looking.”
Ragnar can feel his hand shaking against the other man’s shoulder. “Where is he? Where did you put him?”
The hand tightens. He has to stop himself from strangling the other man, but the want to do so is so strong he’s almost unable to fight it.
“There’s a boat house. It’s old – never used. That way – “ Hadthar nods down the darkening beach to where it fades into the countryside, where the village ends. With a heavy blow to his heart Ragnar can see the edge of a wooden structure near the water.
“He’s in there?” he asks, his voice a knife blade. “You brought him there tonight?”
Despite the firm grip on his collar, Hadthar nods. “Not tonight. Last night. We – we didn’t know – we didn’t want him dead – “
Ragnar strikes him again, letting him drop to the ground. A second later his knife is at his throat. Like – the memory is like a knife itself – how he had laid it to Athelstan’s throat months ago, at their first meeting.
“I will let you go tonight,” he hears himself say, as if from a great distance, “but if things are as you claim, I will find you. I will hunt you down like an animal, and you will be dead when I am done with you. You had no right.”
A hundred reasonings and excuses run through his head; that Athelstan is – was? – his family’s slave, and any slight to him is a slight to he and Lagertha; that to touch another man’s property is to face that man’s wrath; that there was no good reason for it, none at all, none at all.
But none of those say the truth of what longs to rip out of his chest – that Athelstan cannot, must not, be dead because if he is Ragnar will have lost a part of himself. His left hand, the part of his mind that admires caution and thoughtfulness and mild manners, a whole bloody scoop of his heart.
It has been a few months, not years, not decades. If it were allowed to be years, how much more would this hurt? If this man – this Hadthar – has stolen that potential hurt from him, if he has stolen years with a person Ragnar has just begun to decide he cares for enough to grieve, that will never be forgiven.
“I will kill you,” he says again, pressing the blade to Hadthar’s neck until a bead of blood appears. “Mark what I say – I am a man of my word.”
Despite his instincts telling him to do otherwise, he lets the other man go, stalking back along the alley past the staggering form of one of the others – the third seems to have fled. Now the blood of battle is on him, and the terror that follows. Dread drags behind him as he goes to the old boathouse, half blinding him where he stands. He knows he has to, that if he never sees what lies within he will never forgive himself. That if there’s even a sliver of a chance that Athelstan lives and he doesn’t go to him now, he is a monster.
I am afraid. He doesn’t want to think that, or admits he thinks it. But once it invades, Ragnar can’t keep it out. It floods through him, and he lets it, lets fear strengthen him as the lightning did. He lets it run through his veins until the whole of his skeleton shakes. I am afraid.
The boathouse has rotting wood walls, half crumbling down the kelp-covered stones and into the water. Ragnar’s skin bristles when he reaches the fallen-in door. He knows very well what may await him inside.
He gets a moment of reprieve, there in the pitch darkness. In that brief space of time he sends a prayer to whichever of the gods will listen. Clenching his fists so tight the nails cut slivers into his palms, he goes on.
So deep are the shadows he almost can’t see the figure curled on the floor even once his eyes have adjusted. Hidden, tucked away in a corner like some unwanted thing. There’s a second where even Ragnar feels repulsed by the vague outline of it – only a second, and then he’s in that corner on his knees beside the figure.
He can make out the shape of a face, pallid in the dark, and the edge of an arm. His heart drums so hard and fast against every inch of his skin that when he slides a hand along the pale neck and under the chin he can hardly tell the difference – for a moment his life’s blood and his are one and the same.
But he forces himself to still, to focus, to feel, and after an eternity his fingers find a faint pulse of life. When they do he nearly collapses in relief, in disbelief. His shaking hand finds the face, stained with something that can only be blood, the hair matted, the head limp in his hand.
“Athelstan.” Ragnar taps his cheek, calls his name again until he gets the faintest sound of pain in response. He can’t help it – he’s shaking head to foot now and he’s trying to stop, to pull himself back together but he can’t. When he imagines Athelstan lying here hurt with that wild storm all around him, rage stabs him so violently his head grows light.
Out of instinct alone he tries to turn Athelstan over, to roll him onto his back, but the awful pained sound he makes at the attempt shoots a knife through Ragnar’s heart. But he’s bleeding badly from somewhere, and soon those same instincts shift to the next thing of importance – Athelstan is not dead, but he is hurt, and Ragnar is the only one there to do anything about it. Not bothering to try tending any injuries in the dark, he scoops one arm under the priest’s knees and the other behind his shoulders, lifting him as carefully as he can while still making haste.
His head falls against Ragnar’s shoulder as he walks, but even then Ragnar doesn’t want to set eyes on his face. He’s seen plenty of beaten and bloody men before – but seeing this one is different. He can’t say why it’s different, but it is.
There’s no sign of the three accosters on the way back to where Ragnar left his horse tied; a stroke of luck he wasn’t sure the gods were willing to give.
Once outside the abandoned shack he can’t help but see the truth of Athelstan’s face. Knife cuts score his skin, dark bruises and dirt alike mottling his cheeks, one eyelid swollen shut. The whole of his face resembles some slab of meat that once was something, that in no world could belong to a living person. The hands that hang limp are purple with bruises too, the knuckles raw. And more blood flows from somewhere under his tunic – Ragnar can only pray that if the wound meant his death, it would have killed him already.
“You’re all right,” he mutters, knowing it means nothing, that it words will not put any of this right. “The gods don’t want you yet. Your god doesn’t want you yet. They’d have to rip you away from me, wouldn’t they? And believe me – no god or man would want to fight me now.”
It’s some struggle to get Athelstan onto the horse, but Ragnar manages. He clambours up behind him, one arm firmly around his chest and the other on the reins. The smaller body slumps heavily against him, breaths shallow and ragged.
“Time to go home,” he says. And Athelstan doesn’t say anything.
It takes the whole night to reach the farm again. Somehow Ragnar does not tire, his body and mind and heart all full of fire. He cannot get revenge, not now, though there’s an ache in his hands where he wishes he’d ripped those men’s hearts out. But all he can do is bring Athelstan home. He lets the feelings be one and the same.
Dawn has just begun to break when they finally arrive. Still Athelstan hangs limp in the saddle, asleep or unconscious, and Ragnar lifts him again, hurrying him to the house. Burdened with the dead weight, he kicks the base of the door.
It opens almost instantly, Lagertha’s face appearing so swiftly he wonders if she has been waiting by the door all night.
Her eyes widen when she sees the crumpled figure in his arms. “Alive,” is all he can say.
With that one word her face turns steely, and right away she gets to work – widening the door and kneeling swiftly at the hearth, piling more wood on the dying coals. “Bring him here,” she says in a hushed voice. The children are still in bed – what will they say when they see the priest laid out still as a corpse on their floor?
Ragnar lays him by the fire, the new light throwing his mangled skin into sharp relief. Lagertha lets out a hiss of breath. Both eyes are blackened, the right one little more than a mess of swollen skin. Dried blood mats the dark curls, runs from a gash on his forehead, from the grazes on his temples. His lip is split, another black bruise clouding his jaw. The last thing Ragnar wants to do is look at him, but he has to. Or else that fire will disappear, and what will he be without it?
This is his family’s slave by law. The protector of his children. His friend.
No one can do this to someone he has claimed. Least of all this man with such innocent eyes, who speaks and walks so softly that sometimes he’s barely noticed, who Ragnar has never seen be anything but gentle. No one can expect to do this to him and live.
Near silently, he and his wife get to work. With wet cloths they clean the blood from his face, from his hair. Lagertha smears the cuts with a sharp-smelling paste that Ragnar knows will speed their healing. She holds a rag dipped in the coldest water she can find to the bruised eye, with a tenderness Ragnar rarely sees from her, and orders him to remove Athelstan’s shirt.
Underneath is a mess of black and blue. A long gash runs down his side, the one staining his tunic. Lagertha silently gathers a needle and thread, and begins to stich the skin back together. Ragnar watches her, watches her face. A Valkyrie, a weaver. One who takes life and mends it.
When the wound is closed, she binds a pad of cloth against ribs that can only be cracked, while Ragnar does the same to one battered wrist, a swollen ankle. The cracks beneath the door and through the slits of windows lighten steadily, as the world outside comes to life.
They work in tandem, knowing what needs to be done without having to say so. In an hour Athelstan is bandaged heavily, swallowed up in one of Ragnar’s old tunics and tucked under a wool blanket by the fire. Still he hasn’t opened the eye not hidden by a cold compress. He’s hardly moved at all, except for a faint wrinkling of his forehead and a few semiconscious whimpers of pain when Ragnar bandaged his wrist. A few times Ragnar’s had to lay a hand gently on his chest just to make sure he still feels the slow and shallow breaths beneath.
He can’t take his eyes off him, even for a second. If he does, there might come a time when those breaths stop, and he’ll have missed his chance to do something about it.
Until the sun rises completely, Ragnar paces. His blood is so close to the surface of his skin he feels it might start to burst out of him. Thoughts circle his head, inside and out.
With each loop of the room he makes himself look down at his friend, half alive there on the hearth. So much blood, he and Lagertha had washed away that night. His life, on both their hands. How could so small a person spill that much blood?
Somehow with his skin clouded with bruises he looks even smaller than normal. The thought has crossed Ragnar’s mind that perhaps, one day, he will make a true Viking out of him. But now...now he looks more the part of a timid priest than ever. A battered and delicate creature, barely held together. Ragnar remembers all too well how he felt in his arms – like he might break apart right there.
He wants to hit something and break it. He wants to hold Athelstan tight and not let go, as if that will put him back together. He wants to draw blood – someone else’s or his own. Something has to happen. If he continues to do nothing he will lose his mind.
“Stop pacing,” Lagertha says from the hearth. The outline of her face is stained gold in the firelight. One hand still holds a cold rag over Athelstan’s eye. In the last hour she’s hardly taken her eyes from him. “You’re like a bull in a pen.”
That is what I am, he thinks. A trapped beast.
His wife’s hands tremble slightly, her voice that of a knife’s edge. She, too, is a creature of blood and fists and sharp things – surely she too is filled with the urge to kill.
But killing something will not knit back together the wounds that cover Athelstan’s body. Or, maybe they will.
He pauses in his pacing, turning instead towards the door. “Where are you going?” says Lagertha from behind him.
“The goats,” is his only response.
Cock-crow splits the early morning blanket of humming insects and awakening birds. Ragnar’s blood is still boiling as he crosses the dim yard, axe in hand. It’s not rage towards the goats, of course, that will send one of them to the gods this morning. Still, it feels good to know he’ll get to kill something.
He’s gentle with the goat, though – as gentle as he can be before the blade enters its throat. Maybe that gentleness is for Athelstan’s sake too. As he kneels by it, watching its life drain away, he speaks to the gods longer than he has in a very long time.
When he enters the house again his hands are still stained from its blood. The children are awake, Gyda standing wide-eyed near the priest’s head, Bjorn with one leg restlessly jangling at the knee.
Lagertha stands stirring a pot of porridge over the fire, giving him only a spare glance when he walks in. She knows already what he’s been doing.
Between them Athelstan still lies battered and weakened, the face nearly unrecognizable. But Ragnar knows him well. Well enough to see the familiar young man beneath the bruises.
He isn’t dead. That’s all he needs to think about right now.
With a sigh he kneels down beside his friend, hands that just minutes ago slit the throat of a living creature now longing to heal the wounds he sees before him.
“He’ll be all right,” he says aloud, to himself or to his wife or children, or all three. Unwillingly he tears his eyes from the bloodied face and rests them on his son and daughter. He manages a smile. “A few blows could hardly be the end of him. We of all people know he’s stronger than he looks.”
Gyda lets out a small sound like a held-back sob. Ragnar wants to comfort her, but all the thoughts he has left are for the man in front of him.
“Help your mother with breakfast,” he hears himself say. “And be ready to eat.”
He doesn’t eat with them. Instead he stays at Athelstan’s side, watching each breath rise and fall. He starts to mutter in his sleep; something about golden bees and waves and bread-making. Ragnar lays one hand on the top of his head, not wanting to hurt him. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere he can touch that would not hurt.
Eventually – he can’t say how long it’s been – he feels a hand on his shoulder. Lagertha is there, her eyes on him as his eyes remain on Athelstan. “Let him be,” she says. “I will watch him for a time. That goat – were you going to strip the hide?”
“Yes.” He stands, surprising himself. He doesn’t give a final glance to the little figure by the fire.
It takes him the next hour to butcher the goat properly. After the sacrifice he’d nearly forgotten about the poor creature, leaving its body hanging. He never forgot, normally. His mind is elsewhere, wandering through tunnels that he should never have had to bore.
If he hadn’t sent Athelstan on his own. If he’d thought about it –
No. That particular tunnel must remain sealed off. He cannot afford to blame himself. Instead he gets a firm grip on all the rage he’d felt at the sight of Athelstan’s mangled body, at the knowledge that someone had dared do that to him, holding it tight in his hands. The goat is butchered by some wild creature that lives in him, that normally emerges only in the height of battle.
He does other things. He carves a new post for a fence that collapsed in the storm. He repairs a fishing net. His hands blister in places he thought were too callused for it. It rains, on and off.
It’s near evening when he goes back inside, finding his wife and daughter weaving together. Lagertha catches his eye and says something to Gyda about the animals, giving her a light pat on the shoulder and sending her off. Now it’s the two of them, alone with the still sleeping figure between them.
“How has it been here?” he asks. He cannot say Athelstan’s name.
Lagertha shrugs. “He woke enough to take some water, but not completely.” At Ragnar’s alarmed look she adds, “he needs rest. All that matters now is that his heart beats.”
He doesn’t have anything to say to that. Instead he kneels down beside his friend, adjusts the wool cover tucked around him. His right eye – the whole half of his face, really – is no longer so red but still swollen, the bandage around his brow stained with blood. It’s hard to keep still, to sit there quietly and do nothing while Athelstan lies before him bleeding and twitching in his sleep, but he does what he must.
Once again, his family eats without him. Eventually Lagertha comes to his side and hands him a bowl of stew, squeezing his shoulder once before walking away. He craves her, always. But now even that craving seems like it’s something far away, hidden as if behind a wall.
Ragnar doesn’t eat. He watches the flames, rolls the handle of his knife between his fingers. It hasn’t been cleaned since that filth’s blood stained it.
His son sits in the corner, whittling away at some piece of wood, eyes flicking occasionally to the prone figure across the fire. Ragnar’s mind clings to the rhythmic sweep-sounds of the knife, to the yellow shavings that flutter to the ground.
They go to their beds, one by one. For a long time Lagertha stands watching him quietly, working at her loom. But then she too, goes. They are two parts of one being – not needing to say to one another what they need and desire.
For a long while he sits with his eyes on the flames, deep in thought. He figures he should send a prayer to whoever might be listening, but he’s done all he can. Instead his mind is wending through the tunnels of rage and revenge. No one touches his family. Perhaps they thought they could get away with it, if the person in question was a slave and not a wife or son or daughter, but they were mistaken. No one touches anyone he has claimed.
It’s late into the night when a small moan emerges from the bundle by the fire. Ragnar is on his feet immediately, bending low over the beaten man. Athelstan is stirring feebly, brows creased in pain. In the dim light it’s too hard to see just how dark the bruises are, how deep the cuts run. One pale eye opens, the swollen lid barely able to manage, and widens in alarm the moment it rests on Ragnar.
“Easy,” he says in a low voice as Athelstan tries to struggle upwards, yelping in pain in the process. Ragnar pushes him back down, harder than he means to. “Best you lie still, priest.”
He finds it difficult to say his name. It sticks in his throat.
Athelstan blinks hard, with the one eye that can do so. Now that he’s awake, Ragnar doesn’t know that to do. All that’s coming over him is the absolute desire to not hurt, to not frighten, as though instead of the priest a small and wounded creature lies before him. And Ragnar is not someone used to comforting small and wounded creatures.
He keeps one hand firmly on Athelstan’s shoulder. “You’re alive,” he says, more to himself than anyone else. “We’ve got you back. You’ll be all right. A little torn up, but nothing you won’t be able to manage.”
He tries hard to keep the words casual, but the words stick in his throat.
Recognition sparks in the bruised and bleary eyes. To Ragnar’s surprise, one hand reaches weakly out from under the covers and gropes towards him. He takes it, hating how delicate his fingers feel under the bandages. Athelstan might not be a fighter, but time has proved he isn’t weak, either. Seeing him so sends another stab of anger through his heart towards the men who did it.
“Rest, my friend,” he says, squeezing the hand as tight as he dares. “And I swear I will bring you the justice you deserve.”
Athelstan doesn’t say anything. Whether from shock or pain he can’t seem to form words, but his eyes remain trained on Ragnar’s face, and his hand squeezes back feebly.
An impulse takes him, and Ragnar presses the hand to his lips. “You had us worried, priest. It’s good to have you back.”
This time Athelstan’s eyes fall shut and he curls onto one side, his fingers and Ragnar’s still entwined. For a long while they remain like that; the priest-slave and the warrior. It’s one of the only times since he came to them that Ragnar feels the little man trusts him at all.
He doesn’t get much sleep that night. But in the morning he’s out of the house early, before the sun makes an appearance. He has a plan.
The fire in his blood has cooled somewhat, but still he feels more than able to crush a man’s skull if he has to –and feel no remorse whatsoever. As he rides he probes the thoughts of Athelstan lying bloodied on their hearth, of the words spat at him by that maggot of a man near the docks; you care far too much for a Saxon coward like him...
Maybe I do care too much , Ragnar thinks, but I care. And that means he’s mine, not yours.
He digs his teeth into his own knuckles, hoping for pain and blood. Something to spur him onward. This is good. Revenge is what he was built for, not anxiously waiting at an injured man’s bedside.
By the time he arrives in Kattegat, the sky has lightened. He ties his horse and makes for the docks, pulling a hood as much over his face as it will go, and then he waits. They will come, he knows that much. They will want to meet, to check if their victim escaped or not.
Ragnar waits. He bites his knuckles. He thinks of the words they said. His hand tightens on the axe blade at his side. It would not be hard to kill them, not hard at all. And Athelstan deserves to have their skulls as trophies.
But when they appear (and they do), Ragnar makes himself wait. He waits until they go to investigate the shack, one by one disappearing into the doorway. It’s then that he creeps up behind the last one and grabs him roughly, the blade of his axe swiftly sliding to his neck from behind.
Two sets of eyes whip around to him, two knives frantically unsheathing. “One sound from any of you,” he tells them, “and I slit his throat. Either of you strike at me, and I slit his throat. You scum – “ he knees the man he’s holding, he can tell by the bruises that it’s Hadthar himself, “you try to move, and I slit your throat. Is there an understanding here?”
Judging by their silence, Ragnar guesses that there is, in fact, understanding.
With his captive held tightly against him he reaches the edge of the village, taking a grim pleasure at the rapid, fearful pulse in the other man’s neck. It takes every ounce of will he possesses not to cut out that throb of life here and now. But a dead man will only show he himself is a killer –a living one may still confess, or at least try to speak his innocence and end up incriminating himself in the process. Ragnar hopes for either.
People move out of his way as he moves through the streets. The words are just there on his tongue – that this man is a criminal, a villain, and he is taking him to the Earl – but he finds he does not need to speak them. He is Ragnar Lothbrok, the man who brought the first riches from England, the man it’s said the Earl himself sees as a threat. People do not question him anymore.
He drags his prey through the doors, and into the wolf’s den.
It takes a long time, from when he passes through the doors of the Earl’s hall to when he exits, empty handed, but no minute is wasted. He wants to stay, to ensure the sentence will be carried out, but Athelstan’s beaten face tugs at his thoughts. Home is where he is needed now, despite whatever he might want. It’s the least he can do, after his failure.
It had surprised him the Earl listened in the first place. But in the end he did, after listening to Ragnar’s tale and watching him with those unreadable hawk-eyes. It isn’t easy to ignore the tale of a man dragging another by the collar with a knife to his throat.
But death, it seemed, was not an appropriate punishment for beating another man’s slave. If it had been Lagertha, perhaps. If Athelstan had been killed, perhaps as well. Ragnar thanks the gods it was neither of those things, but still wishes he could have killed the man who did it.
He’d tried to argue that, as a slave and member of their house, Athelstan was family. Certainly the attempted murder of a kinsman, blood or no, would constitute execution by vengeance?
The Earl had judged that no, it would not. Whatever Ragnar said, Athelstan was neither true kin nor dead, and the murder of his attackers would only bring trouble to himself and his family.
But it was a crime none the less. Damage to another man’s slave is still punishable. And Ragnar had ensured this case would be.
I wanted his head, he thinks, digging his fingernails into his palm once again. Athelstan deserves his head.
It’s evening again by the time he reaches the farm. This time a cloak of weariness is draped about his shoulders; revenge for the past few sleepless nights, he supposes. But in the moment it’s the good kind of weariness, the kind that comes when a long battle is done and an enemy vanquished.
Inside the house, the first thing he sees is that Athelstan is sitting up by the fire, still bruised and bloodied but hunched and sipping from a bowl in his hands. Lagertha kneels beside him with one steadying hand between his shoulders. Both of them look up when Ragnar enters the room.
Right away his wife is stomping up to him, and he can’t help grinning tiredly at the fierce look on her face. “Where have you been?” she says. He knows that look – she is very close to slapping him. “You left before dawn without saying a word of where you were going – do you know how much I have worried?”
His eyes turn to the priest, anxiously watching their conversation. The tight look of shielded pain on his face does something funny to Ragnar’s heart. “I wanted justice.”
Something in Lagertha’s eyes shifts. She grips his elbow. “Is anyone dead?” she asks in a low voice.
“No.” He speaks openly to both of them now. “But they are gone. Banished. It was discussed with the Earl.”
“You held a trial?”
Ragnar shrugs. “It wasn’t a very official one.”
He looks past his wife and to the figure hunched by the fire, watching him warily. Approaching him empty handed feels all wrong, but it’s what he has to do. “They won’t harm you again, priest,” he says, kneeling beside him.
Athelstan shifts the blanket around his shoulders and winces. “You didn’t have to do that,” he says quietly, bruised eyes shifting to the floor. His voice rasps, muffled by pain. “I didn’t want – “ he winces again, one hand jumping to his ribs.
Ragnar grips him by the shoulder, steadying him as he hisses in a painful breath. “I wanted to bring you his head. All their heads. I tried to get the Earl to let me kill them , but he denied me. But I would have done without question. For you.”
Athelstan watches him uncertainly, glancing up at Lagertha. “You – you didn’t have to. I’m glad you didn’t. Don’t – don’t kill for me, Ragnar.”
“But I would.” He angles his face down so he can look Athelstan in the eye. “I’d kill for you – any man who did you harm I would kill. Make no mistake of it, priest.”
The look on the priest’s face is hard to read behind the welts. Ragnar doesn’t care if it’s fear, or distaste. Soon enough he will have to learn the necessity of death, the times when killing is a thing that must be done – that there may be times when he will have to do so himself.
“Talk to me,” he says, trying not to let his voice shake. “Tell me what they did.”
Athelstan looks down, his breath coming quicker under Ragnar’s steady hand. That is wrong already– it’s him with the quick temper and fidgeting hands, and it’s Athelstan whose mere presence can steady him. The priest is not supposed to be the one who requires calming.
But eventually he takes several deep breaths, steels himself, and speaks. “I had to find lodgings my first night. It was too late, none of the market stalls were open. And the next day...”
His breath catches. Ragnar wants to hold him, to not let him fall apart. “They found me in the market. I was only trying to leave, I – I turned the wrong way on my way out. One of them grabbed me near the docks. They recognized me. They said – “ he takes in a sharp breath, glancing up at Ragnar with a fearful look. “They told me I wasn’t worth half of what you thought I was. That you were – were a fool to keep me.”
The bruised face twists. “They said other things, vile things. I don’t...I’d rather not repeat them...”
Though his own voice is beginning to waver, he still speaks with the greatest dignity he can muster, sitting up straight as he can. “I tried to fight back,” he mutters. “I did try – but I’m no fighter. I’m not strong. They beat me. Used their blades on me – I think. I must have lost consciousness. It was...too much to bear.”
He breathes shakily and sways where he sits, Lagertha on his other side tightening her grip on his shoulder. His eyes close. “I woke up bleeding, in pain. I was somewhere dark. There was...thunder. I’m not sure how long I was there; it was evening when they attacked me and the next thing I remember it was dark...I don’t know where I was...”
Ragnar, too, tightens his grip on Athelstan’s shoulder. “Do you remember me finding you?”
The pale blue eyes open, flicker over to him. “Not much. I remember someone coming, and I knew...” He shakes his head, a faint flush staining his cheeks.
“I – I lost the things I traded for,” he says. “I’m sorry. When they left me in the alley, I must have...”
“Don’t think about that,” Ragnar says immediately. “That doesn’t matter.”
“I did get it. Everything you asked for. I got it – “
“Hush, priest. Enough.”
Once again the strangeness of it comes over him; this timid, wide-eyed little man who somehow has the strength of several – he would have to, or else he would have been dead many times over. Including this time.
And he’s here, in Ragnar’s home. Wheedling his way into his heart like a burrowing beetle. Nothing he meant to do, surely. But he’s done it and he’s there now, stuck. And sometimes it’s going to hurt like a dozen wounds but it’s worth it. It won’t ever not be worth it.
Gently, trying to recall how he once held Bjorn, a too-small infant he could carry in one hand, Ragnar cups Athelstan’s cheek, turning his face towards him. “You are home,” he says, “and you are safe. And we will protect you. Never fear us.”
Before he has to hear any more humble protests, Ragnar kisses the thick curls over his forehead. He feels his wife come closer, kneeling at Athelstan’s other side. They’re all here. His wife, his children, whatever and whoever Athelstan is. So all is well.
Athelstan still wears a dazed, bewildered look that Ragnar can’t help but laugh at. He gives him a lighter tap on the cheek. “Rest now, little man. No one will take you from us tonight.”
He can’t look at him anymore after that. There’s something tight behind his eyes that he doesn’t want to acknowledge. Athelstan is home; they are all home, where he can see them. Where he knows nothing will harm them. And he wonders how it is that their house ever felt whole before the arrival of that quiet, brave little monk who sits recovering by the hearth.
It feels whole now. He feels whole, and that’s all that matters.