Fable - Ask The Butcher's Bill

[Kjaran Mak Aodha]

Kjaran wept.

He'd awoken with a start to find himself on his knees amidst the dead. Some of the bodies still squirmed and moaned, the sounds pitiful. The aftermath of a battle was a terrible thing.

They'd left Ulrikstead two days ago, a collection of the local huscarls and mercenaries hired on to bolster the force while the levies stayed behind. The local jarl was finally settling a generation long feud with the tree-folk. The painted people had clashed with them since they'd picked this long rocky shore to settle. Farmers came to blows and what started as feuds turned to endemic warfare and slaughter.

They'd been waiting for them just off the peninsula, close to the shore. The entire clan must have been there, outnumbering the northmen at least two to one. They'd bayed their war cries, the voices like carrion before charging at the shieldwall. The arrows had killed many, the blades even more but all day long they'd charged, again and again, like waves crashing against a cliff.

It was only afternoon now but the morning seemed years ago. He had fragments of it now. The shieldwall dwindling in size against each charge until at last it was a small knot of survivors fighting back to back. Kjaran had fought with calm deliberation all day, keeping the Beast within but desperation had unleashed it. He gave in, his jaw chattering until he gnawed on his shield rim to ease the rage.

From there he only had flashes of it. He'd hewed about him with both hands, helmless and shieldless. The last of it had ended with him killing another man with his bare hands.

Kjaran hadn't turned the tide but his was one of several desperate acts of heroism. The Treefolk had finally wilted. There'd be keening around their fires tonight and dirges sang but they'd fought with courage and honour. Over six score dead lay scattered around the battlefield. Not much more than half a dozen were still on their feet and the carrion birds gathered now to feed.

The mercenary steadied himself and took in a breath, staggering to his feet. His mail was rent but he managed to find his sword a few steps away, still buried in the shoulder of a man. He wrenched it free with a grunt before letting out a laugh. He hung his head, staggering towards the other survivors.

 

[Ivar]

Ivar lay over the top of Willa like a corpse, his form shifting only when things had finally died down and silence reigned on the battlefield.

The silence after a battle was always deafening.

It told a story beyond what most bards could have hoped for. The quiet of dead men, the silence of lives that would no longer get to be lived. Ivar had heard it before, yet it did not get any easier. His fingers tightened, and slowly he drew himself back and away from Willa. "Are you alright?"

The Barbarian asked quietly.

His face was splattered in blood, his clothes soaked in crimson. He did not know where his ax had gone, did not know where his sword had left him.

A dozen men lay frozen around them, put in place by Willa's magic in a final gambit to keep them both safe. His head slowly turned, eyes wandering across the field of battle. He spotted a man standing, a laugh echoing from his lips as he relished in their survival.

He recognized him as part of the warband, but Ivar did not share his mirth.

Instead his gaze slowly flickered back towards Willa. Pain wrenched across his features, hand slowly shifting beneath the thick leather hide of his armor. A hiss escaped his lips a second later, fingers probing against a gash that had been left in his side.

His hand drew back, revealing skin soaked in crimson. Lips thinned for a brief moment, and he fell back onto his haunches.

 

[Dhara]

The song of battle thrummed through her veins like a pulsing, beating drum as Dhara strode across the bloodied battlefield like the angel of death herself. Her sword lashed out with a viper quick swipe every time she heard a man or woman whimper in the throws of death, helping them on to the Great Beyond. A twisted smile split her face despite their loss. For her these dead were just weak limbs that had needed hacking off sooner or later. There would be worse battles to come, stronger foes, if they could not survive this then they were useless to her. Better they die now by her hand, robbed of their glory of dying with a sword in their hand, than be allowed to live.

Another bloodied smile opened upon the neck of some pathetic, mewling pup and sprayed across her face. Dhara ran her tongue across her lip then spat onto the dead man's open eyes.

"Weak," she said of the man who had followed her from her tribe then turned away in disgust towards the survivors only pausing when she spotted one of her finely made javelins buried in some wretched souls body to yank it free. Dhara was rather pleased to have found six of them by the time she joined the sorry looking group.

"Make camp," the brute wasn't the leader of the band but her tone brooked no argument. "We need a count of numbers and food. Giggles," she slapped Kjaran on the shoulder. "Find me my horse," and then she was off towards the trees which would offer the most protection to build their camp. "Kill those that cannot walk, they are useless to us now," she called over her shoulder.

 

[Gal]

A pirate made a poor mercenary, and Gal was too good a pirate to throw her life away in some pointless spat. When she raised her blade, it was to cut down a mariner who would sound the alarm as they pillaged his ship. Battle seemed to her a much better prospect if you did it before letting your enemy arm himself.

Where was the fun in a fair fight, after all? If she set her boots on solid ground, it was to make business or fuck away her coin, not to roll around in the mud.

Her order to ‘bring her round’ came only after the sounds of battle died out beyond the cliff. Wind billowed the unfurled sails of her brigantine, and the ship slowly crested the top of the coast she’d hidden behind. Her tall masts appeared first, followed by the slim silhouette of her hull, where sailors busied themselves with minute maneuvers to keep them hugging the shore.

It was there the nazrani stood, braced against the gunwale between two ballistae oiled to ward off the biting northern cold. They sailed close as only a pirate ship with a pirate crew could, and Gal flashed her cat smile at the tired warband picking their way through the field of the dead.

“Ulrik sayd ta’ me ye need ryde after ol dis,” she called out. “More treefolk dere,” the pirate gestured over the hill where she’d waited out the battle, “you make quick time.”

As her crew sent two boats for the survivors, her sharp coal eyes scoured the bodies to see if Skad lay among them. Even if she had been cut down in the fighting, it was only a matter of time before she found her feet again.

 

[Willa]

"I think so.." Willa groaned quietly as Ivar shifted, but when the colour had returned to her eyes and her sight was regained, she cast her silvery gaze across the dead men who now lay frozen in shock around them both. There had been too many. She had been bruised and battered and it had only been a matter of time before she found herself at the wrong end of a blade or axe. But her magic had come at a cost, and the ice cold had taken hold of her bones and frailty set in. Her eyes blinked heavily at Ivar's blood-spattered face and her head nodded forward as she fought the urge to give in to sleep.

"Kill those that cannot walk, they are useless to us now," she called over her shoulder.

Willa winced at the cruelty of those words. She very much doubted she could stand let alone walk. A tremulous hand pressed against the sting of the wound on her temple with a slight wince, recalling the moment she'd fallen, of how close she'd come to death through before Ivar had come to her aid. She could still hear the battle ringing in her ears even now the silence had fallen.

Her elbows shook, threatening to buckle as she pushed herself up onto her side and lifted her diffident gaze to the others who'd survived, hoping they weren't about to pick her off as a weakling. The accented voice from the ship drew her attention, and she followed the figure's pointing toward the hill. They wouldn't survive another attack. "We have to move.." she frowned and looked back to the man beside her.

"Are y--?.." she'd been in the midst of returning Ivar's question when she noticed the pain on his face, and her focus shifted to the glisten of blood on his hand. Willa had nobody else in this world, she needed nobody else, and so the panic that rushed through her as Ivar fell back gave her the adrenaline she needed to move.

"How bad is it?" she demanded the honest truth with a shiver of mingled cold and dread as she managed to pull herself onto her knees and shuffle closer, her freezing hands reaching toward his armour.

 

[Kjaran Mak Aodha]

Kjaran ignored the slap to the shoulder and the order. He was deaf to the world for now, his body numb after the hours of fighting. Dull eyes turned to the boats coming into shore. The voice came across and it snapped to into his brain.

Eyes probed the treeline, maybe a half mile distant. Nothing moved but that was sure a sign as any. "She's right" he declared, "They're watching us. Even now. We should go". Could be late arrivals or even a rival clan come to get their share of the pickings before the carrion did.

He reached down to take a shield less damaged than the others. His own was shattered and splintered somewhere on the battlefield. Sheathing his sword, he started rooting through the corpse's pockets for anything else valuable.

"If you wish to stay, talk to the coillteach, I'm sure they'll take you in"

 

[Skad]

“Fyrir Haraudur.”

Guttural invocation accompanied the wet sound of steel upon flesh, the skinning blade kissing the throat of another dying body upon the field of battle. Hands so slick and slippery with crimson shouldn't have held such steady grip but this motion of tribute was oh-so practised.

The battle was over, the festivity of fury and frenzy had come to its end and so Skad did what she always did and swept over the wounded to finish them off in an offering to the Dark Gods, to her Blood God.

His was a goblet that never ran over, always thirsting for more.

As the Nordwiir stepped over the dead and dying she could feel the twinge of discomfort in every bruise and cut, from split lip to steel-bitten side.

Once more, however, she had evaded death, evident in darkened cloth stained from the thigh all the way down to wrappings on her feet. It had been a deep slice that drank from the thickest of arteries upon her right thigh, a death blow for all who were not blessed by dark favours. The one-eyed Nordwiir still savoured the look upon her opponent's face as she remained among the living, a maiden of blood and death whose advance never ceased. That horror, that dread. Fuck. It made her teeth grit just to revel in the memory.

A glance was taken over the shoulder at those who survived, a single-eyed stare taking in those who still stood and what they seemed to be concerned with for a moment. Not that it mattered, they were not her people, they did not stand among the ranks of those chosen. They could have pissed off to go fuck their blades for all Skad cared.

With that in mind, the Nordwiir continued scouring the fallen, for more throats to cut.

 

[Ivar]

Gently he grabbed her hand with his own, guiding it away from his wounds. "It's alright."

He told her.

The pain was bad, but he could feel from how the wound bled that it would not put him in mortal danger. A few bandages when they were safe, that would be enough. He could see the weariness in Willa's face, the way she was half slumped.

Magic had a price, something that he had learned from her. The price she had paid today was already more than he would have wanted for her. Ivar did not want Willa collapsing into the ground and burning herself out before they could get out of here.

"Save your strength." He said quietly, motioning towards the boats that were coming.

His eyes caught the one eyed woman for a moment. She was of the north as well, but a place Ivar nor Willa had ever seen. She was Nordwiir.

A shiver ran up his spine.

Ivar did not exactly...trust, any of his companions. They had joined up with this warband as a means of earning a little more coin, gaining experiencing, and hopefully eventually making their way back up to Kjos. This battle had been a disaster though, and now they needed to worry more about survival.

"We're coming." Ivar called, then leaned into Willa to whisper. "The Blizzard is more familiar than a sandstorm."

Meaning it would be better to stick with the evil they already knew.

 

[Dhara]

Ulrik always was a paranoid fucker.

At least on this occasion he had been right to be, Dhara admitted begrudgingly. She would have preferred to have had the shore secure and be rubbing it in his smug little piggy eyes that they had won but she couldn't win a war on her own. Sometimes, though, it felt she might be better off attempting it. She cast another disgusted look at the man who lay at her feet. The last of her seven javelins protruded from his eye. His face was frozen in the last scream he would ever shriek, though his jaw was slackening the more death claimed his muted flesh. She cast one more fond look over her handiwork then ripped the javelin free. Brains, sinew and shards of broken skull sprayed across her boots which she absentmindedly wiped against his limp arm. She was more interested in the bit of eye that still clung to the tip; it must have hit him with such force the thing had been pushed through brain and bone.

She pulled it off and popped it in her mouth; the soul could wander blind through the afterlife in atonement for his disgrace.

The warmonger didn't bother to glance back to see if the others were going to take advantage of the boats that were heading to shore. She raised her fingers to her lips and gave a shrill, sharp whistle. Dhara had of course never thought that anyone would attempt to find her horse. Bastyrd was exactly what his name suggested and the warhorse would have probably bitten off half the soldiers face if he had dared lay a hand on him. Said great grey beast came galloping from the tree line at his mistresses call streaked in blood.

The rest of them could fit in the other boat; Dhara would never leave her horse.

"And did the ugly cunt say anything else?" she called over to the ship-mistress across the choppy waves.

 

[Gal]

There was a literal undying one-eyed servant of the death-god on her ship – and Skad had, of course, survived. There were Blightorcs among her crew, as broad as they were wide, and twice as cruel besides. There was herself, soul splintered and sold sevenfold to the nameless spirits of the sunless sea.

Gal still gaped when one of the survivors plucked an eye from her spear and… ate it. Like an olive at a rich man’s buffet.

The nazrani swallowed and wiped her lips on the back of her hand.

“He say he pay after da fight, but I ne see him none, so I think the ugly cunt die and leave you all with da bill, ne?” she yelled back at the stranger who took to slaughter like her blood took to the waves.

“Da rest o’ ye, hurry op. Yer friends come soon!” True to her words, the far ridge of the coast had sprung a thicket of spears while Dhara had been wrangling her horse into one of the boats. At the swift bidding of her hand, the remainder of her crew began arming the ballistae, sighting them for raining hell down on that hill when the carrion birds decided to descend.

In her experience, it was only a matter of time.

 

[Willa]

Willa followed Ivar's gaze toward the one-eye'd woman dutifully cutting the throats of the dying, though it didn't seem to be out of mercy at all. Her focus shifted then to the man looting the valuables of the dead, to the woman collecting her weapon from the skull of one unfortunate body.

"Did she just....?" Willa breathed out, her mouth gaping as she watched the woman chew the eyeball she'd just plucked from the end of her spear. She looked back to Ivar as he called out to them, and she nodded with a deepening frown as she took his meaning, but these people caused her unease.

She was safe with him, she told herself. The trauma she had suffered had ended the day she'd met him, and no further harm had befallen her in his company, and so she trusted him that this decision was the right one. Not that there was really much choice in the matter, it was certainly better than death.. Perhaps not, she thought as she glanced back to the woman chewing the dead man's eye. She sighed, listening to the woman calling from the water's edge.

"Come on, lets go." she nodded to Ivar, unsure who would be leaning on who, but she had to make herself move despite how much it hurt or how weak she was. She would not be a hinderance, and she would try her best to hide her weaknesses.

 

[Kjaran Mak Aodha]

Kjaran paused in his looting as the sound of singing grew louder. The warning shout from the pirate showed that he hadn't been imagining it though he'd been thinking of the song from a different place, over twenty years ago.

A line of warriors, men and women, was emerging from the treeline. Most wore no armour though some carried shields. Spears and swords were clutched tight in their hands and a sad slow song was coming from over a hundred throats.

He'd not heard the words in a long time and then it had been him singing it. He slung the sword over his back and patted the bow of the boat. "Time to go" he insisted, looking to any still standing on the shore. "They'll keep coming until they're all dead or we are. They've already told the gods to expect their arrival".

What was the poem they still sang near Ryt? The words came to him and he spoke aloud, more to himself than any of the others "They're the men the gods made mad. For all their wars are merry. And all their songs are sad".

They were walking at an unhurried pace, spread out and with eyes fixed on their prey. Maybe if they killed a dozen each then the survivors would break even. His eyes flickered to the northerner with his woman "Come on" he tried in a halting effort at their tongue, "Get in and I'll push us out"

 

[Skad]

Skad's head lifted from ritual, her beady eye taking in the sight of fresh quarry stood in their sharpened rows. A fresh promise of blood. There was never enough to sate divine tastes but she would relish the fresh challenge.

Unfortunately, a glance to the rest of the makeshift warband denied the Nordwiir any notion of a second battle in quick succession as the fuckers were leaving.

The Nordwiir had to stay her throat, remembering swiftly that this was not her warband. If Kol and a good handful of their own weathered bastards were stood here instead then a different, far bloodier tapestry could have been painted. The soft southern cunts wouldn't know they were dead until the whites of their eyes reflected the fury of unyielding steel.

Not her cause, not her care.

With a soft sigh she rejoined the others, the sight of a horse in a rowboat was of great amusement to Skad but did little to soothe the true disappointment in her soul.

In practised motion, she barged past one of the men attempting to shepherd everybody into the boats and shoved one of the small vessels (the one with the horse, because, of course) off the shore and back into the choppy waters before clambering in herself.

Fuck, she was starving.

Skad stared at the horse.

 

[Ivar]

Ivar and Willa piled themselves into the rowboat, each helping the other just seconds apart as they scrambled to find their place.

His gaze cast towards the shore as the laughing warrior pointed out their foe, the Nordwiir stepping passed him and climbing onto the other boat with that woman and her...horse. Lips thinned for a moment as he watched them, an unease settling in his stomach.

He drew himself slightly closer to Willa, then motioned towards the other warrior. "Let's go."

The Northman said, waiting for the other man to push them out and readying himself to grab onto the man and drag him into the boat.

No leaving someone behind this time.

 

[Dhara]

Bastyrd stared right back.

Dhara wasn't sure how much clearer she could have made it that she hadn't desired company in her boat than sticking a literal shitting horse on it, and yet she found herself sitting opposite someone. Her ice-chipped eyes ran over her in a slow, assessing glance as her fingers tightened on her sword hilt. She had seen the woman on the field during battle and she had admired her ... enthusiasm and skill. She also hadn't died or seemed to have got herself injured unlike the whelps in the other boat.

With a grunt she sat back and released her grip on her sword, though her fingers still played across the blood soaked steel.

"If you touch my fucking horse," the northerner said with an accent that was certainly not from these parts of the winterlands. "I will slit your fucking throat quicker than you could utter your Gods names," the horse snorted and plumes of steam left his nostrils, a testament to just how cold it was out on the sea even this close to shore. The two men who had rowed the boats out to them glanced at each other, kept their heads down, and rowed as fast as their arms allowed them to.

When their little row boat bobbed up against the side of the ship Dhara stood and took the makeshift sling that was lowered down to the boat for her horse, rigged him up, then clambered up the netting on board.

"Who do you have to kill here to get a drink?" she cracked her neck and rolled a shoulder.

 

[Gal]

There was a lot of faffing about and a general dragging of feet that could’ve been anything from exhaustion to uncertainty to fear. Unfortunately, the time for deliberation had passed as soon as the reinforcements had appeared atop the not-so-distant hill.

“Chop chop,” Gal snapped at her rowers as the survivors piled into the boats at long last. Much as the locals seemed more keen on spears than bows, she didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out just how far they could throw them.

Soon enough, the four warbandeers (+ one horse) had all scrambled aboard one way or another (‘another’ being by means of a sling, of all things).

“You ne kill nobody, sugartits, or I throw you an’ yer filthy caval’ into da sea.” She raised her brows and patted Dhara’s cheek. Turning away with a smirk, Gal raised her voice to a strong, ship-wide bellow: “Weigh da anchor! Unfurl da courses an jibs an’ get ready ta haul da spanker ta starboard!”

Tacking out of such a narrow strait would’ve been a nightmare for another captain, but the pirate had grown up on a healthy diet of ridged coastlines and atolls of the ’Āina o Ka Lā.

And besides, you didn’t bring a galley to do a brigantine’s job.

 

[Kjaran Mak Aodha]

Kjaran stumbled a little as a broad shouldered northern woman shoved past him, pushing the other boat out and clambering in herself. He took a deep breath and kept calm. Sighing, he forced a sad smile on his face and nodded at Ivar "I will" he said, grunting as he put his weight on it, shoving the boat out deeper.

Moving with nimble grace (for his size), Kjaran managed to get in, helped by Ivar half dragging him before he sank into the deeper water. "I thank you" he told him simply before he rested on the stern and let his gaze turn back to the shore. The keening had begun over the dead and he watched in silence, remembering the sounds. "Slán a chairde" he murmured, raising his hand in acknowledgement.

Climbing aboard the brigatine was easy enough. Kjaran felt weary but couldn't relax with so many unknowns. He held his sheathe in both hands, trying not get in the way, let them sail their own ship, he'd done enough for one day.

"Where are ye sailing for?" he asked quietly, "What are our options?"

 

[Willa]

Willa stuck as close to Ivar as she could, for warmth as well as safety. She was glad the other two woman had wound up with the horse in the other boat. She'd rather avoid sitting at such close proximity to either of them. Her grey eyes settled on Kjaran wordlessly as he climbed aboard, and she tried as hard as she could to stop shaking. A northerner affected this badly by cold had no right to call themselves a northerner, but it was not simply cold, and she didn't care to explain that this cold came from the inside. Cold air, frost and blizzards, she could handle. This however, she'd never get used to.

Her eyes closed for only a short moment before they reached the ship, climbing aboard with joints and muscles so rigid wasn't without its difficulty, but as always, she had Ivar's help. Willa cast her gaze across the bloody shore, the bodies they were leaving behind, the carrion birds that were already taking their pickings. Silently, she thanked her Gods for seeing her and Ivar through before she turned to regard the Captain as she bellowed her orders.

"Thank you." she offered up after Kjaran's questions. Regardless of where they were sailing, it was in the right direction, away from death, and the woman deserved their gratitude before questions were asked. Now that she had it however.. "D-do..you have a-any healers on board?.." she asked, doubting very much she'd be able to stop shivering for long enough to sew a wound.

 

[Skad]

Skad’s grasp on the common tongue, while somewhat improved, was still not the greatest. Intent was easier to study upon a face than a sentence was to string together, and so the Nordwiir’s single eye flitted to settle upon the face of the other uncompromising woman. Studying. Appraising. Her blemished face still void of any real feeling, giving away very little as per usual.

Of course, single words could always be plucked out of thin air. Horse. Fucking. Slit. Throat. Gods.

The one-eyed blonde gave a simple blink at the threat as if barbarian mechanisms were calculating the risk and the reward of such a scenario. Skad really did want to eat that horse. Who didn’t crave the taste of a post-battle feast? Those of weak constitutions, lunatics and those who had not shed enough crimson.

Skad chose not to respond, upsetting Gal by having a skirmish on the rowboat with this cunt and her pony didn’t seem like the wisest course of action. Wouldn’t want to wear out the hospitality of her Captain, after all. Her boat, her rules.

Besides, it didn’t rule out throat-slitting in the future.

Once they were back on board, the Nordwiir got a gleaming sense of the lip being exchanged between the two before it was all hands on deck and Skad fucked off to help raise the anchor. No rest for the wicked. At least she had been honest in her promise of work.

<”If you kill her I want to eat the horse!”> the Nordwiir called over in her own native tongue, it was important to stake her claim in the event that everything devolved into such wonderful violence.

 

[Ivar]

He could read Willa's unease, and if he could that meant the others likely could as well.

Things had been okay when they had been part of a larger group, more anonymity in numbers. Now though? Now he was getting a distinct feeling that they no longer fit in with this lot. He doubted any of them would disagree.

Especially the one that ate the eyeball. "Just someone to stitch me up, nothing fancy."

Ivar said as he stepped up behind Willa.

He glanced back over the side of the ship for a moment, frowning at the bodies and those quickly swarming over the lands. Lips thinned and his head shook as he thought out their next move. Looking up at the ships sails for a moment before calling out.

"We should head to Asar." Ivar called out. "It's a port east of here, settled by Northmen."

Out of the reach of Menalus and situated on an island just out of the Drawa River. The Nordwiir would likely know it if she had come south of the Tundra before. It was close enough, and the people there were friendly as long as you were friendly with them. Ivar and Willa could get off there and these others...well these others could do whatever they wanted from there.

 

[Gal]

The deckhands and sailors scrambled all over the ship like ants, and though they bore no uniform, they displayed better discipline at maneuvers than many a merchant crew. It followed quite naturally from paying your men and women their due share, and hearing their concerns and opinions on the future of their journeys.

All of them things that neither merchants nor navies did not do.

Gal watched them with tight pride in her eyes as the brigantine left the bloody coast to port, swallowed quickly by the mists that clung to the surface of the sea here like a jealous lover. She nodded at her new passengers, glad they had the sense to stay out of the way as her people went about their business, bracing and heaving every once in a while as they changed tack.

“Agneszka.” At the request for a healer, she gestured to stairs leading below deck. “White mouth, like dis,” she added, dragging a finger across her lip and down her chin. “Go.”

As the wounded pair (hopefully) took themselves to the ship sawbones, the captain swiveled her gaze to monitor the situation between Skad and eye-candy. The nordwiir had presumed well – a brawl here and now would see Gal throw both of them overboard.

Later, though… pursing her lips, she turned to the older warrior at last. “Da other nordi has reason. Asar has water and food.”

And slavers she could sell them to if they failed to produce her payment, but that needn’t be said out loud.

 

[Dhara]

It was pure shock that meant Gal was not a bleeding out corpse at her feet in that moment. Nobody touched her without her express permission and even then they were often too afraid to unless Dhara acted first, which was not something she minded. Her jaw clenched and her eyes narrowed as she watched the woman walk away shouting orders. Her fingers ran over the shaft of one of her javelins and for a moment, she contemplated the satisfaction of killing. Most would have thought such a thirst quenched with the amount of blood they had left behind on that sodden field but the truth was that song never left her. Like a sirens song it lingered and called to her even in the depths of sleep.

It was Bastyrd who brought her out of her red mist haze. Some fool had gotten a little too close to him and found himself on his arse clutching at the bruise spreading across his shoulder.

"Nobody touches him," she said calmly and stepped over the writhing man with horse in tow to set up a pen of sorts. The one example was all it needed to keep the rest of the crew away from them both. Once the horse was hobbled and penned in she stole a wineskin off some cabin boys belt and found a spot to lounge in out of the way and drink.

 

[Kjaran Mak Aodha]

"Healing's easy, bandage them if they're bleeding, carry them back on their shields if they're dead".

They'd probably burn their own dead and leave the northerners for the wolves and carrion. The bodies would be stripped of mail and weapons, a fortune in barren lands like these. He wasn't sure how to feel about leaving them there. He hoped the coillteach at least raised a cairn to remember the battle.

He gave the horse the space it needed, the beast aptly demonstrating why that was necessary. "Asar it is then" he agreed. He'd sleep better in a place with some walls. He spat over the side and commended the spirits of the fallen to the all-mother.

 

[Skad]

Contrary to superstition and myth, Skad was not in fact, an uncontrollable northern behemoth of impulse and fury. The woman was aware of her people’s reputation, and how the lines had been blurred between the northern races to create an amalgam of rage-induced spittle and lack of composure.

Not quite the truth (although the violence was gratuitous).

As the Nordwiir mucked in with the rest of the crew in their tasks aboard the ships her dull eye never lingered far from the others, impassive features frigid and empty as she watched through her grunts of exertion.

No, she was chosen, devout and driven by darkened duty. Nails that scraped across the surface would find only base violence, but they didn’t understand. They couldn’t. They wouldn’t. For what was perceived as wicked savagery was practised devotion. Every southern march, every soul cast asunder, every drop of crimson spilt, every fuck, every meal, every last thing was done in either tribute or gratitude to their Dark Gods.

Calloused hands grappled with ropes, old stains flaking off onto the coarse fibres as the blonde helped adjust the sails until they caught the wind just right. An eyebrow raised as that fucking horse taught a lesson on personal space.

The Nordwiir liked that they didn’t know, didn’t understand.

She had never ventured south to seek converts, after all.

 

[Ivar]

The journey to Asar was a surprisingly swift one.

Ivar got himself stitched up, insisting that Willa stay by his side even as the strange 'doctor' did his work. She was so tired that she practically passed out just a few moments after the work on Ivar's wound begun. It did not take long to stitch up the wound, and after that things had settled into a routine.

Through the swift current of the river it took only a day and a little more to actually reach the island town.

Asar came into view mid-day.

The town was nothing truly remarkable. Not a fortress like Vel Anir nor a city like Alliria. It sat directly at the forefront of the small island, ringed by a large wooden palisade with an open cove that held multiple docks. Half a dozen ships sat within, and one could see watch towers ringing the entire settlement.

It was clear that the Northmen of Asar were no easy target, a mark of where they had chosen to make their home. One could see guards as the Kraken's Maw made it's way into the Harbor. The clear mark of a society prepared for battle hanging in the air.

Strangely, it made Ivar feel at home. "We'll catch a ship back to the Tundra here."

He told Willa who nodded at him a second later.

"Drop a few silvers for the others, and then go." It was the option they had decided upon, and from their previous work Ivar had enough coin to at least get them a part of the way back home. As for the others? They would have to find their own path.

Almost as soon as the gangplank was lowered Ivar and Willa stepped up to it, a few words had been whispered to the Pirate Captain, some coins slipped into her palm, and before anyone knew what had happened to them...Ivar and Willa disappeared into Asar.