He was captured at Seaf in the year 1012 and taken on the Norsemen’s ship across the sea. Afterwards he could never remember the sacking of his hamlet. It all drowned in flashes of steel and pain. He knew that he had become a thing and that they merely fed him to sell him later, back in their own country, but he was hungry so he ate.
The men mocked him when he was seasick and took his crucifix from him but they only beat him once because he had tried to escape. He didn’t try again after that.
He was taken to a village where there was some sort of court, his captors figuring that they would be able to sell off their human commodities before returning home.
The one who had lain claim to Sean, Ulf, a huge man with a greying beard, had found a buyer and Sean was now being prodded by a tall stranger whose gaze he refused to meet.
I am a thing.
But apparently the man would not settle for this, for he asked Ulf a question and when the answer was negative he prodded Sean hard and asked: “What is your name?” in Saxon. This startled Sean so much that he answered without thinking, and then the stranger laughed and his eyes crinkled and Sean felt the heat in his groin, the wrong heat, the bad heat, and his face coloured. This made the stranger laugh even harder and Ulf laughed too and said something Sean didn’t understand about the stranger and his use for Sean; and then the deal was done and Sean got dragged away. He studied the stranger from under lowered lashes. He was tall and his tunic was the bluest cloth Sean had ever seen. Everybody greeted him as they went but the looks he received were not all friendly. A powerful man then. He took Sean to his house and turned to him, speaking in Saxon again.
”You belong to me now, do you understand?”
Sean nodded.
He was someone’s property now.
It stung.
The man was looking at him, a small smile curving his lips. “You do not like that?”
He didn’t answer and received a cuff around the ear.
“No.”
“There are things that are wrong for a free man but that do not matter when one is owned. You no longer have honour, but that can be a good thing too.”
The treacherous words snake inside his mind, their touch so soft that he hardly notices the hands touching him, before it is too late. He twists away and the man laughs.
“Ulf was right. You are willful. But that is good.” He comes closer, his eyes gleaming in the dark. “I shall enjoy breaking you in.”
Sean tries to move away, to get to the door – it is useless, he knows this, but he has to try, has to know that he tried – but the low-spoken words of the man stop him.
“Stalden er brændt.
Bonden er hængt.
Konen er faren galen til skovs;
Og du går her.”
He cannot move. And when the hands take hold of him, he almost sighs. He tried. Nobody can do more than that.
“That is how I keep my cattle,” the man says. “And now that is how I am keeping you.”
He turns Sean around and looks him in the eye while he says: “I am Viggo called Tungu-Viga or Skald Viga. I sailed with Svend Konge , as part of his hird. I am a skjald and people say of me that I can sing the wind and make the wild beasts do my bidding.” Then he smiles and against his will Sean falls into that smile, drowns deep in it, feels it wrap around his soul.
“And maybe I can.”
Sean hears the unspoken words clearly. This is no lesser man that owns you. And so he seals his fate – for what else can he do – against strong word charms – and the treason of his own heart – and bows his head as he says: “Herre.”
Viggo laughs, loudly this time, and calls him clever – “For they also call me Brundabeitil” - and he grabs his crotch and says “stallion” while he winks, and Sean blushes a fierce red. Then a woman comes and Viggo leaves, leaving her to explain to Sean what he is to do. A difficult thing since he knows little of her tongue and she less of his.
She keeps looking at him, an odd measuring gaze, and although it is as his herre said - slaves have no honour - he still feels the sting of her unvoiced words. Not a real man.
He does not see Viggo until late that night when he returns, waking Sean. He smells of mead and when he yanks Sean up to a kneeling position, he can feel how his shoulders are used as support, keeping Viggo upright while he opens his belt and lets his trousers fall down. Then Viggo’s cock is in his face, and though he doesn’t understand what he is saying – sut på den, Sean– the sentiment is clear and he does it, choking down shame and tears and lust.
Viggo’s cum floods his mouth and makes him gag, but Viggo crashing down on him, kissing his face and pushing his tongue into his mouth, shatters his world and leaves him in a daze that lasts for days.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is wrong. It is a sin. And he longs for it all the time, while he is chopping
wood and moving logs, while he is fetching water It has never been like this before and his master seems unconcerned, although the looks he’s getting from the others in the village are clear and open, as if what happens at night is visible on both him and Sean.
And the coupling is one thing, he can understand why his master does that – just like dogs showing who is the leader – the largest male riding the others – but he does not understand the kisses, and every time he tries his gut clenches and he has to stop thinking about it again so his heart won’t jump out of his chest. And the nights when he is not told to come to sleep next to his master he lies alone and fears that he will never feel his master’s tongue inside his mouth again. And that thought is surely sinful.
But not only does his master kiss him, he also talks to Sean and teaches him words so he can understand what Hild, Viggo’s sister-daughter says to him. And he tells him of great things, battles and heroes and of the time he sailed one of the longships across the sea. He also tells of those he call gods but this frightens Sean, for he knows that eternal torment awaits the unbeliever and he doesn’t want any torment to come to his master. Viggo merely laughs at him and says that he doesn’t fear Hvide Krist – White Christ – for he has pledged himself to Odinn and is thus secured a place at the high table in Asgård.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sean never forgets that he is no longer his own, a man, for Viggo will look at him and call him “min lille hors” and it doesn’t sting. And it should, if he was a man. And when he asks one day if it isn’t wrong to do what they do, Viggo smiles at him and says that he is fucking Sean and that is fine. It is only wrong to be fucked, like a woman, and when Sean turns his head away Viggo says, as if to soothe: “Du er jo min at gøre med, som jeg vil. Er du ikke, min lille hors?” and Sean nods and no more is said of it.
At times Sean will wake in the night, trembling with fears he cannot name, and if it is a good night, a night where he sleeps nestled against his master, Viggo will sing to him, powerful songs that make the fears go, and he never mocks Sean in the morning.
“Maren, maren, minde
Du får ej blive herinde
Hvor meget du end bider
Fugl i skov
Og fisk i hav
Alle egetræer s
Og den Højes ord”
At night he teaches Sean other things than words, sweeping him away from himself in wild currents of pleasure and pain, making him cry out and beg. He shows him how to use his tongue and hands and one night – a full two years after he bought Sean – he tells him to stay still while he lightly carves runes on Sean’s chest, bloody markings that bind Sean to him and Sean cannot breathe when they are done, so full is he of sweet pain that leaves no room for breath.
And then the world turns cold.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Viggo slept and dreamed of crashing waves of blood and screeching ravens and when he awoke he knew his death was upon him. Svend had died in England and now the carrion crows were fighting over the spoils at home.
Sean had gone out to fetch water and when he came back his master was standing, battle-ready, helmet in one hand.
Neither noticed the pallet falling to the floor, soaking the straw.
“Let me come.”
“No.”
“I belong with you.”
“Yes.”
Sean could feel the fierce stinging in his eyes as he tried to find the words for what was inside him. The thing inside so big that there was no room for him at times. But he didn’t know those words and so he merely stood there, helplessly repeating, “Let me come.”
Viggo came closer and let his fingers trail gently down Sean’s cheek. “They would hew you down and I don’t want that to happen.” He smiled at Sean and kissed him, tasting the saltiness of tears hiding in Sean’s mouth.
“You are the sun to me, and I shall sing your name while I die.”
There was a fierce light in Viggo’s eyes and he looked so happy that Sean could not bear to look at him, joyous madness turning his smile too radiant. And so he hid his eyes and did not see the sun gilding his master’s helmet, the strength of his back as he went to fetch his horse and rode off, singing. Instead he gathered the soaked straw and threw them away, chopped wood for the fire, fetched more water, and then lay down in front of the cold, black fire pit and wept himself to sleep. Except that no tears marked his cheeks and no rest came to him.
When Hild came to the house five days later he knew what had happened the moment he saw her face.
Viggo was dead.
Hild went back to her father’s house and brought Sean with her. And there he worked and slept and ate but he tasted nothing but ashes and the sun never shone.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The leaves had turned to gold twice when the frost came so hard upon the village that people started speaking of Fimbul and the end of days.
Sean has come to the Hall to talk with her father and Hild realizes then that he walks as a dead man. And she feels guilty.
He had asked her once, where Viggo was now, and she had told him that because he had died in battle, as a true warrior should, he was now in Odinn’s Hall, Valhalla.
“I shall see him again,” he’d said and she had told him no.
Valhalla was for warriors. Common men and women went to bleak Hel, where the bedspread is named Nightmare and the plates are all called Hunger for the Dead are ever restless and food is for the living. She had not told him that she didn’t know whether a træl would be allowed to cross the bridge to Hel at all.
He had looked so desolate that she had said: ”But the priests of your Hvide Krist, don’t they say that his followers go to a good place when they die, for having stayed true?” and he looked at her with eyes like lightless windows and said: “I care not.” -If I cannot be with him- was left unsaid but as easily heard as a scream.
Now he stands before her father, head bowed, and tells in his halting words that Viggo had spoken of the Great Winter in Uppsala and how they had fought it off, bringing great sacrifices to the Lord of Battle. Her father dismisses the thought of giving up any of the livestock – they are hard enough pressed as it is, too many mouths and hardly any grain left – and the next words drop like stones in water, causing ripples through all the Hall until all have turned, their eyes on the unfree.
“There could be a man given.”
“And I suppose that you would volunteer,” her father says, and she knows the answer before it is said.
She understands better now why her uncle was so fond of the Saxon. He is clever, positioning himself as the willing victim, given to the High One who ever was a friend of her uncle’s, gaining entrance into an Afterlife that should be closed to him. And he deserves it too, she thinks, unflinching when the enclosure is prepared, the light finally back in his eyes. She knows not what charms her uncle put on him ere he went to his death but she cannot help feeling that it was unkindly done. No living thing should be so tied to another that life loses all meaning.
It is better this way.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The torches throw but little light on the wooden enclosure behind the house but the snow grabs it eagerly and shines with stolen light in the darkness. He cannot feel his feet for he is barefoot and numb from the cup he emptied before he was taken outside. His head is spinning and he is not so much walking as being pushed into the enclosure where goden stands. When he is told to kneel he can feel the smile spread on his face - yes, this is the way it should be – how I should come to you - and he hardly feels the cord tightening around his throat, so intent is he on the pale blue eyes looking into his, the strong hands reaching out for him, catching him as he falls forward into the darkness.
The corpse is tied onto the branches of the great aspen tree next to the enclosure and they all walk back after having toasted one last time.
That night the storm tears at the roof like a mad thing and the following morning there is not a trace left of the Saxon, neither in the branches nor on the snow-covered ground. All agree that this is good indeed, for did they not hear the High One’s horse neighing in the night?
Soon the winter will end.
And it does.
Summary: The time is 1012 till 1014. Svend Tveskaeg (Forkbeard) is king of Denmark and has conquered England. The place is Ringsted, a ting-sted (place where official business is conducted) and village on the island of Sjaelland, Denmark.
Rated: NC-17
Categories: Actor RPS Pairing: Sean/Viggo
Warnings: AUChallenges:
Series: But the Night Must FallChapters: 7 Completed: Yes
Word count: 9294 Read: 8692
Published: 30 Jul 2009 Updated: 30 Jul 2009