#mortalspart1

She learnt it’s deadly dance, how it would appear on the edge of town and wait in the shadows. There in the darkness it chose it’s victim, stalked their steps and slept under their bed. No one survived once marked, and no one save Ylva could see it. When a stumble in the street had brushed her hand against another's, a woman recently marked by the beast, visions of the woman’s death had knocked Ylva to her knees. She understood then: the hound did not deal death - it warned of it. The lady had fallen through the ice while fishing the lake and the naive girl had tried to save her. She’d almost drowned in the attempt. Whether they met their end by sword, sickness or other means, those poor souls were caught in the clutches of fate. She couldn’t free them. She was just a woman - cursed with knowledge and bound to watch.

Word of her talents soon spread, and naturally, the great shield-maiden Lagertha wanted to benefit from this asset living in her kingdom. So the girl, now a young woman, had trained to be merciless with her shield and axes. Despite years of visits from death’s messenger, she kept it’s darkness at bay. She learnt to wield her curse like a weapon: regaling Lagertha with every glimpse, anything she saw in the blurred backdrop behind the premature demises. Anything that could sway the future in their favour. While that one death was set the rest was fluid, and sometimes, others could be warned of the circumstances, such as a sinking ship or burning home. Just as the bite of her axe helped her fell foes in battle, this weapon too helped her defend herself against her greatest enemy: her own fear. Using the visions gave her a semblance of control over the madness that thing had brought into her life. 

Yesterday she had seen the hound, blending with the shadows that hugged the docks. She could feel its anticipation to mark someone. And death was coming, there was no doubt of that. Lagertha had killed Aslaug and taken Kattegat back, but for long would she hold it? Her enemies were poised and waiting. The coming war would pit viking against viking, brother against brother. The sons of Ragnar were divided. King Harald and his brother Halfdan too found themselves on opposite sides of the gulf. Halfdan and Bjorn had returned from the Mediterranean, and a roaring feast in their honour was the root of Ylva’s drinking that night. 

Halfdan the Black was enough to pull her from her own contemplations. His presence made no sense. She simply couldn’t reconcile her memory of him with his choice to oppose his brother. 

He may have been the lighter brother in appearance but he was the darker in nature. He was a more reserved man than his brother, never one to waste words with flamboyancy. A maker of cool observations, alertness than verged on caution when around a potential threat - which he saw everywhere. For his cool manner off of the battlefield, when he fought he was wreathed in flame. As ruthless as any Viking, there was something vicious about him when he killed, something unhinged. As if he relished the chance to shake off all and any humanity. The only person she’d even seen him show any affection for was Harald. Watching them fight side by side during the Second Siege of Paris, their sibling bond looked unbreakable. Both men seemed to love sparingly, and with great intensity. And now they were ready to stare each other down across a field of blood, ready to end each other’s lives?

The man talking with Lagertha was one of two things. A different man to the one Ylva remembered, or a traitor. Curiosity piqued, concern building, she was determined to find out which. Letting ale flow across the floor like tributaries into a great lake she watched, waiting until Halfdan had drank enough to relax. Or relax as much as he seemed able to.

Only when his posture held less rigidity, one arm propped on the back of his chair, did Ylva approach. Two drinks in hand, she took the seat opposite and offered one to him. The warrior hesitated before he took the ale, watching her over it’s rim as he drank. Sharp eyes studied her from behind a tousled forelock. 

Slowly he lowered the horn, still observing her with an intensity that neared unnerving. “I know you.” 

“I fought during the Second Siege of Paris.”

Recognition dawned across his face. “You are Lagertha’s seer?”

“I am the woman you remember, yes. But I am no seer.” 

Halfdan frowned, mouth forming a straight line. “You knew what would happen that day. You warned the French had a fleet strong enough to challenge us.”

He remembered the day’s bitter loss well. But he didn’t know her, and like everyone else, he was quick to assume and slow to accept he was wrong. 

“Foresight is not limited to seers.”

“Then what are you?” 

Using the arm still draped across his chair, he pushed himself upright with the fluid grace of a cat. Ylva pulled her auburn braid over her shoulder. Fiddling with the end, she answered with a nonchalant tip of her head. 

“A mystery.”

“Tell me.” Halfdan’s eyes flashed. This man may have moved like a feline, but he was no tamed house creature. Something wild simmered beneath the surface. “I am a curious man.” 

“Your curiosity will fade,” she dismissed with a wave of her hand. 

“No it will not. And I have far less patience,.” 

As he spoke he grabbed the wrist she swung between them, long fingers curling around the joint. His grip was unyielding, not painful but too tight for comfort. Ylva wasn’t stupid. She heard the warning in the harder edge his already raspy voice had taken. Bright blue eyes flickering across his face, she saw it too in the firm set of his features. 

Quite unintentionally, she had caught this man’s interest. A man who was accustomed to having whatever he wanted. A man who never heard ‘no’, and when he did, likely took matters into his own hands to change that answer. That had not been part of her plan to find out his true motives for being in Kattegat. But perhaps she could use it? She could tend that spark of curiosity; make him yearn for her truth enough to tell her a little something in exchange. 

Slowly she spoke, choosing her words carefully. Halfdan the Black was not a man she wanted to push too far. Danger glittered in blue depths behind a messy shock of blonde. And that danger’s hand currently had a rigid hold around her pulse-point.  

“I have never told Lagertha, and I have fought for her for many years. As for you, Halfdan, I do not even know if I can trust where your loyalties lie.” 

For a moment he neither moved nor spoke, some emotion flickering too briefly across his face to be named. She’d tried to toe the line between inciting his curiosity and his ire - perhaps she’d fallen to the wrong side? 

“I will fight for Bjorn,” he responded at last. 

Ylva watched him steadily, working to keep the relief from showing across her face. She sensed her fear was a weakness he would use. Tilting her chin up, she asked, “will you? Convince me.”

“I owe your leader an explanation. Not you, seer.”

The pressure on her wrist increased enough to set off a dull throb beneath his fingers. 

“And I owe one to no one,” she snapped, eyes narrowing into a glare. A fierceness slipped into her voice, a far cry from the careful cool she had maintained so far. “My name is Ylva, you will use it.”

He’d poked a raw nerve one too many times. 

Seers could cast their mind’s eye forward and read the words of the world that hadn’t yet been written. Their gift showed them both good and ill. Her curse showed her naught but doomed souls whose destiny was already written in blood. The guilt of watching friends die not once but twice had festered in her, and soon she’d found herself stood at the edge of that great cliff. The one she’d felt the hound pushing her towards since the very first sighting. It had been a simple choice - harden her heart, or fall, and break. 

So when she declared she wasn’t a seer, she meant it. She was a woman who predicted death without feeling. A woman who wasn’t sure she had any soul left. 

“Are you threatening me?” 

A sharp tug on the limb he still held brought her hurtling back to the present. Her stomach smacked into the table rim, her upper body tilting precariously, following the path of her outstretched arm. And Ylva had thought he’d felt menacing before. She would have laughed at her naivety if the situation wasn’t so serious. 

Head tilted, lips twisted into a dark smirk, Halfdan’s expression was amused disbelief. He was watching her like she was prey. Entertained in the way a wolf would be, to see a rabbit show defiance. Oh, what a deadly game she had started by drawing him into conversation. Her heart hammered wildly in her chest, icy cold trickling down her spine. He was no doubt armed, and strong enough that she could not free herself. If the mood took him he could kill her then and there. And yet, hemmed in by his intoxicating presence, she had never felt more alive. He had a hypnotic allure that set her body humming. The lethal mix of icy calm and fiery peril that seemed to wage a war in his eyes called to her. It was enough that she hesitated, considering the risk of pushing him further, just to see what he would do. Her self-preservation instincts, however, would not allow her to quench that thirst to know. 

Swallowing her pride, she shook her head. “No. I’m asking you.” 

“I name you as I see you.” 

The warrior sought an explanation - he wanted her to lay her secrets out for him, and was unaccustomed to people denying him. But he had given her nothing. He hadn’t budged an inch - and neither would she.

“And you have given me no reason to trust you with the knowledge you want.” 

The close quartered-quiet wasn’t ideal for the shield-maiden. She could not deny her attraction to the man when she was close enough to count the lashes on one eye. Lithe and tall, though not enough to tower over her as Bjorn did, his body didn’t flaunt his strength. But she had seen him hack men to pieces. She knew the power that shifted beneath his skin. His unkempt blonde hair gave him a feral look his nature did nothing to negate. This was the first time she’d been close enough to study his eyes. She found intertwining brown hues, like mighty dragons fighting in the sky. As with every part of him, body and beyond, they were captivating. 

In silence they sat, pinning each other under stubborn glares. Their obstinate dispositions had brought them to a stalemate. Each wanted to draw the information they craved from the other, without divulging anything about themselves. All Ylva’s attempts to manipulate the situation had failed. They’d spoken about her more than she’d like - Halfdan kept spinning the conversation until she was the one answering questions. Her approach had been all wrong, and had set him on the defensive. 

Dropping all pretense and veiling from her voice, she spoke plainly. “I am sorry for talking in riddles, and implying you are not to be trusted. I saw you fight at Harald’s side in Paris. I simply find it difficult to understand why you are not by his side still.” 

The warrior considered her for so long she feared he would keep her in his bruising grip indefinitely, and say nothing. But he didn’t. He released her, and the feeling rushed back into her hand like water from behind a broken dam. She eased herself back into her seat, body stiff, waiting in earnest for his answer. 

“Bjorn saved my life.” 

She’d overheard him say as much to Lagertha - she wanted more. Drawing details he didn’t want to give was like drawing blood from a stone. 

“Surely you and your brother have saved each other many times over?” 

Taking a sip of his neglected ale, he shrugged enigmatically. He held the answer over her like a bone over a dog. But his reticence begged the question: what could possibly have happened in the Mediterranean between Bjorn and Halfdan?

“I overheard you telling Lagertha about the Mediterranean. Would you tell me something?” 

Halfdan drained his horn before replying, contemplating his words.  “A wanderer named Sinric was our guide. He may have been a God, walking among men.” 

“That…” Ylva trailed off, eyes wide.. Of all the things she’d thought he would say, that was not one of them. “I hardly have the words. What made you think him a God?” 

“He has this way of appearing somewhere, without seeming to travel there. And he is always at home, wherever he is.”

“That is incredible! To be in the presence of a God… I cannot imagine it. Did he share in your adventures?”

“You could call it that,” he shook his head ruefully. “He was nearly executed alongside Bjorn and I.”   

“Executed?” Ylva echoed, enthralled. 

“By an Arab, on plains of sand that stretched as far as the eye could see.” 

When speaking about his travels he was lighter. The heavy tone, laced with warnings and implications was replaced by something natural. His eyes captured wonder, an appreciation for what the world could hold, beyond his desire to take it. A brief smile tugged at his lips, and Ylva swallowed hard, taken aback by how it transformed his face. Even his posture was different, some of the tension draining from his shoulders. 

“I would like to see this desert for myself,” she admitted, the truthful words coming with unusual ease. Pale hands gripped the worn table-edge. “But there is always another battle to fight.”  

Halfdan furrowed his brow, disagreeing quietly. “There is more to life than fighting for glory.” 

Hadn’t this man spent his life fighting alongside his brother for little reason other than power, glory, and the thrill of it? 

That was when she understood. He was no traitor; indeed it was the other, less likely option. 

Halfdan’s experiences had subtly changed him. What he’d witnessed she hardly understood - he’d surely fed her only the scraps of his escapades. But those days in a world of sand had resulted in a man who could side against his brother. 

Ylva wasn’t sure what to say, but he didn’t seem to mind. Ale may have loosened his tongue, but he had never been the most loquacious of men. Shortly after he stood. With a quiet, “seer,” he bade her farewell, inclined his head, and left. 

She watched him brazenly as he walked, people parting from his path. A few clapped his shoulders as he passed through. 

Their conversation had allayed most of her concerns over his loyalties - that should have been the end of it. But she couldn’t help but turn his words over in her mind, hearing him deliver them again in that throaty voice. He’d stolen her attention with his unexpected arrival. Now they’d spoken, her interest was heightened like the waxing of the moon. Except she already doubted this feeling would wane. From the darkness she’d anticipated to the lightness she hadn’t, he was a puzzle. Complicated in a way that made her want to figure him out.  

There was time yet before the defenders of Kattegat and her intended conquerors would meet. Halfdan would find she too had curiosity to burn.