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Norway is a desolate wasteland of darkness and impenetrable cold, with frost biting into the very bones of the soul. Only the smouldering fires glowing throughout the night made existence in such an unforgiving land less miserable.
Or, at the very least, that is how Hytham saw it.
There was beauty in it, of course, even if little excused the cold. The snow-covered tundras reminded him briefly of the deserts back home, yet so crystal white that it almost seemed uncannily unreal, with thick forests unlike any of the clusters of olive trees or tropical vegetation of home, teeming with fauna like a distorted echos of the animals of the Caliphate. And when the sun rose, the normally dark land of Norway shone with a glistening light unlike anything he had ever seen before, unlike anything he could ever describe. The snowbanks sparkled like a white night sky, and for a moment, he could forget the darkness a few hours away.
That was not even to mention the surreal green lights which lit up the sky at night.
It had greeted them when they had sailed towards the coast of Fornburg, nearly dancing across the sky like flowing fabrics. He had been absolutely mesmerised, standing by the prow of the ship together with Basim and Sigurd. His mentor had no snarky remarks over his childish amazement; on the contrary, he seemed quite amused—or perhaps he was merely equally taken aback by the sight before them. Sigurd had taken great enjoyment in explaining the phenomena to them. It was the glow of Valkyrie armour, he had said, brightening up the night sky as they descended from their flight to take the worthy souls to Valhalla.
He supposed it had been a positive, then, when he had been thrown against the cliff wall and, lying on the ground, looked up towards the northern lights. He had been sure of an imminent death, he was unsure if he even still was alive, but as the sounds of Kjotve’s final scream died in his ears, as the sounds of battle and war-cries turned further and further away, and as he had seen his mentor’s face peering over him, he had realized that Fate, or God, or the Valkyries, had other plans. He had failed, but he was alive.
He had not died that day, although he had yet to decide if that was a good thing. Basim had been by his side for the majority of it, even if he had been silent. His ribs had been broken, the healer said. It would be nearly impossible for them to be set correctly, heal correctly, this would be a wound that would remain. Just like that, he had thrown his life away. Perhaps Basim knew.
The northern lights were a comfort, though.
The healer was away for the evening, the sun had long since set and his restlessness had won over the pain, so he had put on his robes, his boots, and taken the furs that had been wrapped around him and with careful, limping steps made his way outside. He couldn’t say that he had experienced any worse injuries in his life, but he had experienced similar pain, and he had learned to grit his teeth and continue, even when his body howled in despair. A log had been placed close to the hut, a perfect place for respite until his mentor or healer came back. At least it would be, once he had brushed off the snow.
From here, near the mountain peaks, far away from the village itself, he could see the shoreline and the water, the sea, perhaps the ocean, a glistening mirror for the sky to reflect upon, dancing lights covering every surface of this part of the world. A vast shimmering nothingness where the tracks of their travel had disappeared just as soon as the ripples had been made. He should be grateful, of course, to travel. He got to see much more of the world than any of the other initiates and apprentices back in Alamut got, and yet...
“Are you supposed to be out in the cold like this?”
Hytham flinched. He looked towards the new voice; for some reason, Eivor was merely smiling at him, as if he was teasing a long-known friend. It seemed like the drengr decided that the log was big enough for both of them, as Eivor soon sat down next to him. Hytham didn’t even think to ask what the Wolf-Kissed was doing so far away from the rest of the village. Perhaps he knew what awaited him now.
As a Hidden One, one of the first things that he had been taught was the disguise. Not a physical one, although he had learned that as well, but a mental fortification to mask emotions and fear. A way to make one’s expression perfectly blank, intentions unclear, to never give an enemy a clue about the thoughts in one’s head. Eivor was not necessarily an enemy, but either way, said disguise seemed lost as they sat next to each other. Hytham felt a sort of embarrassment, humiliation, or simple nervousness taking hold of him. Perhaps Eivor was noticing.
You should apologise, the little voice in his head said. He saved your life, you attempted to take his honour. Yet he merely opened and closed his mouth, unsure what to say, like a gaping fish.
Eivor, to his credit, seemed to be more amused than anything else.
“Relax, friend,” Eivor spoke, voice kind and easy. “I did not mean to startle you.”
Friend. After such a short amount of time, after everything, friend.
“My apologies,” the Hidden One finally said. “For... Ah, everything.”
A crude consolation after what he had done. Had their threads in this tapestry been weaved any differently, switched in place, had it been Eivor keeping him from avenging the unrightful death of his parents, he was not sure if he would have been able to forgive him. And yet, as the tapestry currently stood, Eivor merely shook his head. While Hytham was hunched, unable to uncurl or move his torso more than necessary, Eivor stretched his legs out in front of them and leaned back, arms crossed over his chest. It was not a pose of irritation, more... Nonchalance, in a way, as he took in the view before them. On his lips played a small smile. A gentle tug from the corner of his mouth.
“No need,” Eivor said easily. “If I am entirely honest, I might have done the same in your shoes.”
The younger man took a moment to process Eivor’s words. It was... Comforting, actually. To know, or perhaps assume, that their threads would be knotted the same way regardless of who had taken the leap. It made him feel slightly less guilty, slightly less foolish.
Still, Hytham said nothing, and instead adjusted the furs he had wrapped around him. He wondered momentarily how many creatures were skinned for such a large cloak. Maybe he was just small in comparison to the Nordic fauna.
“What is important,” Eivor continued, “is that Kjotve is dead, and that we can put all of this behind us.”
His head tilted slightly, not properly turning, but he glanced back at Hytham again. His smile widened. It was quite wolf-like, in a way, ironic considering the moniker he bore. His mentor had a certain habit of looking like a predator on the hunt, eyes peering as if always planning the most efficient way to tear his enemies apart, despite his facial expression remaining entirely neutral, wolf-like. But Eivor’s smiles and grins were little else than teeth, the physical manifestation of fangs bared. It was hard to know what was friendliness and what was threats when it felt like he was looking into the face of a hungry wolf. Eivor could tear someone apart with his maws if he wished.
Now, why did that make his cheeks turn warm? Yet, he just cleared his throat, tried to shake whatever that feeling was.
“Indeed.”
As Eivor turned back to the view, neither looked at each other, and they sat in silence for a moment. It had not been too hard to learn Sigurd’s language, at the very least verbally, yet he could not say that he knew anything about how to socially traverse in this moment. None of the many languages he knew could make up for the barrier between two strangers, and the aches within his soul made everything harder. Eventually, his gaze travelled from the shoreline to the sky once more.
It was different tonight, not a mere green or blue against the dark night sky, but like a rainbow of hues merging into one as the lights travelled and moved throughout the horizon; bright blues and vivid greens, as it always were, but also strong pinks and soothing purples moving as if in a dance. No one back home would ever believe such a sight. It was... Otherworldly. Indescribable, in a sense.
“I see you like our norðrljós,” the drengr spoke then. “I suppose you don’t have that further south?”
Hytham almost laughed. Perhaps he would have, if his ribs did not poke threateningly into his lungs. Every movement was a warning.
“No, nothing as such. Back home, we can see all the colours of the night sky, but never anything so...” He shifted slightly, momentarily forgetting that both hands were hidden under the furs, and hand gestures did nothing. “Fantastical?”
Eivor chuckled. Hytham couldn’t help but feel the corners of his lips tug into a soft smile, too. It was fascinating how at ease he felt next to Eivor, despite everything.
“I hope it makes up for the harsh climate,” Eivor joked, “Sigurd told me your land was hotter than the fires of Ragnarǫk itself. I cannot imagine dealing with such heat.”
Hytham couldn’t help but snort.
“He made that opinion quite known during our travels.” He shifted slightly, relaxed slightly, and straightened a tiny bit. “In our defence, we did tell him his furs were not suited for our climate. It is hardly our fault he didn’t listen.”
Eivor laughed again, loud and bright and warm. It was as if the sound itself warmed up Hytham’s cold, aching limbs, cradling him. He had missed gentle company.
“He has always been particular,” he agreed. “And exaggeration has always been in his nature.”
Oh yes, Hytham had noticed that many years ago, when he had first met the red-headed vikingr. The bravado was exasperating and amusing at the same time. Hytham offered Eivor a few inessential words in reply; they smiled, and then sat in silence once more.
The assassin began to realise that he started to like the other’s company. It wasn’t necessarily hard to understand why. Eivor echoed the tales Sigurd had told of him and they remained largely true; he was kind, despite everything. And as Eivor sat close to him, barely an inch of space between them, a single adjustment of their thighs would have their knees pressed together, despite all the space on either side of them. Back home, physical touch was nothing that was shied away from, but the Norsemen didn’t seem to even have a concept of personal space. The Norsemen clung together, shifting and bumping like bees in a hive.
“I trust Sigurd told you the story of the northern lights?” Eivor asked then, steering back to the conversation from before and turning back to look at Hytham, seemingly set on steering the ship to this specific fjord. The southerner met his gaze for a moment, although he just as quickly looked away, as if looking at each other in such a moment, with the entire fjord in front of them, was too intimate.
He is a stranger. Hytham attempted to remind himself. Whatever he says, we are not friends.
Yet he just swallowed dryly.
“He did.” Sigurd shared many tales during their two or so years of travel. Myths and legends were equally intertwined with history and science. Hytham never made a point of trying to distinguish between what was what when it came to the beliefs of the northern people. “The glow of Valkyrie armour, if I am not mistaken?”
Eivor nodded. When the other glanced over, he saw a smile tug on the drengr’s lips again, or perhaps still.
“Or the breath of the newly deceased drengir, depending on who you ask.”
“An omen of death, regardless.”
Eivor snorted.
“It sounds quite miserable when you put it that way, friend.”
Friend again. Did the Norsemen merely throw that term around, regardless of who it was spoken to? Was it sarcasm that his ears could not yet distinguish from their foreign language? He didn’t know, and so he just shook that growing, warm feeling off, masking it as a shrug. If the blush showed on his face, perhaps he could explain it away as the cold.
“Death doesn’t have to be a bad thing, I believe that is a philosophy you are well acquainted with.” He said instead. “Sigurd told me you celebrate death more than you mourn it.”
That gentle smile still rested easily over Eivor’s lips.
“True.”
Another moment of silence. Whatever effort Eivor seemed to be putting into keeping the conversation going was once more wasted, it seemed. Hytham saw from the corner of his eye how the drengr shifted... Was he leaning closer?
“I think you would have gone there, y’know,” Eivor said then, quieter than before. This time, he did not look at the other, but merely stared at the slowly dancing lights. “Valhalla, I mean.”
Hytham could not help but feel the surprise take over his facial expression as he looked at the other, eyes wide. Yet Eivor merely looked at him from the corner of his eye and smiled again, eyes glistening with something puzzling.
He had been told of Valhalla, of course. The All-Father’s hall where those who fell in noble battle had their eternal feast and their eternal battles, the end that the majority of the Norsemen and Danes seemed to wish for themselves. Far from the heaven he had been told about back in the Caliphate. Yet he could not help but furrow his eyebrows, knitting them tightly on his forehead. Just... Confused.
“You think so?”
“Mmhm.”
Eivor said nothing else and did not attempt to explain his reasoning.
“I...” Hytham blinked. “I am afraid I don’t follow..?”
Eivor seemed actually surprised for a moment, looking once more at his companion.
“You haven’t been told of Valhalla?” he asked, as if that was the most logical conclusion to Hytham’s confusion.
“I-I have, but I am unsure how…” Hytham tried to explain, but he hesitated. Basim had always been the one who knew exactly what to say, while Hytham often stuttered and struggled. Perhaps he could not blame himself too much, considering the state he was in, who he was talking to, what they were talking about. “... I am unsure how I would qualify?”
That puzzling, puzzled look in Eivor’s eyes returned, as if the southerner was an enigma he was trying to solve. It was not merely Hytham struggling to figure out the mystery next to him.
“You might have disrespected the rules of Holmgang,” Eivor started, slowly, hoping Hytham understood, “but that is because your own duty also called for Kjotve’s blood. You fought valiantly when you could.”
Hytham’s eyebrows furrowed even further, and the words came tumbling out of his mouth faster than he could think.
“But I didn’t fight at all, Eivor.” He hadn’t gotten a single stab in that day, the first casualty of battle. “He threw me like a sack of flour —”
Ah, Eivor thought silently, he is like that.
“But you fought,” the drengr argued. “You leapt for the throat of a man three times your size for a battle larger than yourself.”
He let his words linger for a moment. Then, he placed his large hand over Hytham’s knee, hoping the smaller man would process his words. The Norseman watched the furrow in his brow, listened to the raspy breathing.
“...Why are you defending what I did?” Hytham asked then. “You should be mad.”
Eivor raised an eyebrow.
“Do you wish for me to be?”
“No— but I...” The younger man sighed in defeat. “Forgive me, but I do not understand.”
Forgiving is what I have been doing, Eivor thought. Still, he squeezed Hytham’s knee, a gesture he hoped would bring some comfort.
“I did not wish for you to get hurt, Hytham.” There was something eerily serious in the drengr’s tone as he spoke this time, not the easy, gentle one used for the conversation about the weather they had just had a few minutes earlier. “I have forgiven you, and I hope you forgive yourself.”
The simple words and their clear intention felt like an enigma, a riddle, a puzzle. Hytham cowered slightly. He felt... Small. Perhaps it was the physical, imposing size of Eivor next to him, amplified by his own hunched position, or perhaps it was the strange words that left his mouth and got his cheeks to flare with warmth. Perhaps it was the words themselves, the meanings he was forced to reckon with. Perhaps it was just the cold. Perhaps it was the fact that he was hearing such words from a stranger, one who had saved his life, even after he had disrespected him. The words that said he was forgiven.
Eivor’s gentle smile soon returned to his lips. A comforting smile. It made his entire body tingle with an undeniable, consoling warmth.
“Oh.”
‘Oh’. That was the only sound that came from Hytham. It was all he managed to say. By the way the drengr’s supposed gentle smile only widened, almost a little teasingly, he suspected he knew that he was flustered. He could do little else but tighten the grip around the furs again. He wanted to say something — anything — attempt to show Eivor the kindness he had shown him—
“Hytham!”
Whatever words he would have attempted to speak were as lost at the call of his name. He flinched again, as he had when Eivor had found him on this log, wincing as he turned towards the sound of his mentor. He seemed less than pleased, standing by the door of the healing hut. How he had managed to place himself there without either of them noticing went beyond the apprentice. Basim made a sharp motion with his head, bidding Hytham inside.
The apprentice swallowed dryly and hurried off the log, or hurried to the best of his ability, what with his injuries and frozen body, letting Eivor’s hand fall off of him. He murmured an apology to his companion, who merely watched as he limped towards the older assassin. Basim held the door open for him, letting him slink inside. He stared at Eivor for a short moment.
“Good night, Eivor.”
The drengr felt no need to accept the obvious cue to leave, yet he still smiled at the other.
“Good night, Basim.”
Basim continued to look at him, then turned and took a deep breath, although he himself was unsure if it was in relief or an attempt to calm down. Either way, he stepped inside the little cabin and closed the door behind him.
This Basim was quite unlike the one he had met in the longhouse just a few weeks earlier. Eivor couldn’t help but wonder if Basim had always been so strict.
As Basim looked into the room of the hut where his apprentice was staying, he saw that Hytham was back on the bed where he had been ordered to rest for the last few days, and the days to come. Whatever bubbling feeling — the anger or relief, whatever it was — subsided easily, and for a moment, he felt a little guilty over his harsh behaviour, seeing the way Hytham cowered as he came closer. He had been scolded enough the last few days to know what to expect.
“Hytham— ”
“I’m sorry.”
Hytham’s interjection was quiet and mellow, although both knew he was not necessarily sure what he was apologising for. Be it having spoken to Eivor — why now that would not be allowed — or venturing into the cold night when he was supposed to be resting, sleeping. Basim sighed again.
“Don’t be.” His tone was the best he could muster to be gentle, although his lips were pursed thin whenever he wasn’t speaking. “But do not risk your health any further.”
He felt like he was scolding a child, quite fittingly, because Hytham felt like a child being scolded. He looked like one, too. Once he nodded, Basim turned away from him, towards the fireplace where the embers had begun to cool off, slowly poking into it, agitating the smoldering fire, before taking a few of the logs placed by the side. It was not until the fire was crackling again that he felt like he could calm down fully. Hytham avoided watching his mentor as much as he could.
“You will do yourself no service by getting smitten by the Wolf-Kissed,” the older spoke again. “Keep your distance.”
Hytham’s face flared with heat, embarrassment sending sparks over his skin and ringing in his ears. In shock, his eyes turned to the older man, the one who was still not looking at him.
“We— I wasn’t— ”
“Of course you weren’t.” There was no venom in his words, none that Hytham could detect, anyway. It almost sounded comforting, like he actually trusted him. But he saw the way Basim watched him from the corner of his eye. “But remember the oaths you have sworn to.”
The silence settled. The acolyte swallowed dryly, turning his gaze back to the floor. He had never feared Basim, but he feared the implications of his words. He feared what his mentor thought he had been doing.
“...Yes, Mentor.”
Basim nodded, just to show his apprentice that he had heard him. Then, he sighed once more.
“Rest,” he said. “Tomorrow, we will follow the brothers to Alrekstad and see where the althing leads. You will need to be up early.”
“Yes, Mentor.”
Basim nodded once more, still turned away from the younger man. When he said nothing else, the apprentice began to disrobe from the furs and clothes still wrapped around him, preparing for another night filled with pain and nervousness. The mentor merely stood there, letting his gaze travel across the room until his acolyte was back in bed, furs covering his meagre body, head resting against the crude pillows. For the first time since entering the hut, Basim properly looked at him. Hytham kept his eyes closed, even as he heard Basim’s footsteps come closer, even as he flinched when he felt his mentor’s cold fingers stroking his hair for just a moment. One of those small comforts occasionally allowed between them.
“Goodnight, Hytham...” Basim murmured. “Sleep well.”
The younger one pulled the furs tighter around him, murmuring his own quiet, barely audible ‘good night’. It satisfied him enough. With that, the mentor stepped out of the healing hut, knowing the seer would be back soon.
Eivor had disappeared into the night again, as seemed to be his habit. Above the mountain peaks glimmered the northern lights still.