"Why did you take this?" he asked.
Svea grunted and turned her head. She had never been asked such a ridiculous question before.
"I wanted it," she replied shortly, then pursed her lips to the side. "The craftsmanship is simple, but I could tell. . . it was the most important thing in their home. Candles, beads, food. . . they had all been placed before this. Is this one of your gods?"
Shaking his head, the veins on his hand stood out as he held the cross tighter, trusting it would not splinter.
"No. This is a symbol of our only God - the one true God," Alaric said firmly. "In our belief, this cross represents the greatest sacrifice our savior made for us."
Considering what he had said, she took the artifact back and turned it in her hands, unimpressed.
"It's made from poor wood."
"So was the cross he died on," Alaric replied, unoffended. He knew she didn't understand the gravity of what she held, or the humility of their savior - that he had walked among them as one of them.
"He hung from it for six hours with nails through his hands and feet, a crown of thorns upon his brow. He died in the ninth hour. He did this for our sins."
Crossing her arms when he took the cross back again, Svea listened.
"Odin hung from Yggdrasil, the World Tree, for nine days and nights. The mighty spear Gungnir pierced his feet to the wood, hanging him upside down. They say runes were carved upon the spear itself, that is why they cut so deep." She tilted her head, intrigued by the comparison. "Nine is the number of Odin."
"Why did he do it?"
"For knowledge," she answered.
Alaric gave a short laugh. "The pursuit of knowledge was one of humanity's first sins. . . disobedience, really. But. . ." He trailed off.
"How could knowledge be a sin?" Svea demanded.
The skin around her eyes crinkled slightly as she thought about it. Among her people, knowledge was celebrated, shared freely, even in hardship.
In Alaric's world, it was something forbidden. Girls like Modwenna were denied it in favor of sons sent away to study as monks or priests. Svea wondered whether common folk ever held such privilege, or if wisdom itself had become a guarded treasure.
"The Tree of Knowledge was forbidden to the first two people," Alaric explained. "God is not against learning, but against how it was taken. Even through this disobedience, He sacrificed His only Son for us - to forgive our sins. He rose three days after He died upon the crucifix, this cross."
He looked down at it, his thumb tracing the wood tenderly.
"He died praying for those who condemned Him. But with His sacrifice, with this cross and His resurrection, humanity was given a new chance to redeem itself. The promise that none are beyond saving, and that death is not the end."
Svea blinked, startled by the resemblance to a story she knew.
"Baldr," she murmured.
"Pardon?"
"Baldr, beloved son of Odin, the All-Father," Svea began. "He is loved by all for he is
gentle, beautiful. He creates the most marvelous things. His death was the first crack in
the world itself. We are told he was killed though it should never have happened. When he fell. . . it was said nothing would be right again until he returned. But he cannot. Not until the end of the world. Not until Ragnarok. Then he will return to create a new life for all."
Alaric didn't know the word Ragnarok, but her grave tone told him enough.
She traced the edge of the cross with her thumb as she took it back once more. "Yours rose after three days. Mine will rise when the sky is torn apart, when the ground devours itself and all things burn. Then, and only then, does Baldr return."
Alaric wet his lips. "The Great Judgement?"
Unfamiliar with what the Christian soldier meant, Svea didn't answer. She continued instead, her gaze steady on the horizon. "Even then, someone must fall. . . for him to rise."
For a while, only the crashing of the waves filled the space between them. Then Alaric asked quietly, "Do you believe that's mercy. . . or cruelty?"
Svea's eyes flicked toward him.. "I think it's a question only those who survive get to ask." She confessed this so effortlessly, it made him wonder as well.
The desire to pry further into her belief warred against his own convictions. When he saw how the single merciful Viking aboard refused to leave his side during the journey, Alaric realized there was more she wanted to as well. Their time together was uncertain, and there was too much to learn - from each other, about each other - each as fascinated as the other.
"Why do you and the other -" Alaric began, making a motion with his hand to mimic Asvoria's hair, as he hadn't caught her name, "speak the common tongue? The others we met did not, nor do any aboard these boats, from what I can tell." He sought a gentler topic.
Leaning back on her hands, Svea nodded. "They don't. Asvoria learned from her mother, who was well traveled," she explained as she bit into one of the blue berries she had taken, immediately pulling it from her mouth. Curling her lip and sticking out her tongue, she turned her head away from Alaric to hide her expression. He laughed, taking the rest of them from her.
"I learned from my closest friend, Ulfinna," she went on, thinking of how Herja, Asovria's mother, had exposed her to enough of the southern sounds that they stopped being so harsh on her ears. That had been helpful.
"Sloes," he named her stolen fruit, "are bitter on their own. Normally we add a spice, such as cinnamon, to them," Alaric explained before eating some of his own. Comfort from home in each unloved bite. With the memories of his first time eating sloes, along with the clear disgust on Svea's face for them as the taste still lingered faintly on her tongue, it made him chuckle. His wrist rested lazily across his bent knee as he leaned back, watching as she leaned on her palms, lifting her face toward the wind that whipped off the sea.
Her hair, he noted, was different from its usual style. She had let it down but had pulled part of it back into a ponytail that rested against the loose mass of her hair, a braid sectioning it and two more falling down within the locks. Although it may have been impractical for sailing, the sun itself had been captured in the light tinges that surfaced whenever the clouds parted. He couldn't lift his gaze from her; he was not a man studying his captor, but a man who'd found something rare amongst enemy waters.
"You're not like the others," he muttered, taking another bite.
Glancing sideways, with most of her face out of his sight, she asked, "Do you say this because I speak your tongue?"
"No." He shook his head, amused. "I say this because you ask questions no warrior is meant to ask. You ask about mercy, about gods - even those foreign to yours - about little girls with stolen parchment. You, Svea of the North, fight like the stories tell. . . with the thoughts of a scholar."
She turned her face back to the sea, blinking once, slowly. "And you are the poor bastard upon an enemy ship who speaks like a priest and looks at me like a man."
With the truth spoken between them - only that had been silently sworn never to surface, for he was doomed and she was married - they looked away. Yet eventually, their eyes met again. It wasn't the flash of lust or the wild desire of conquest, but something quieter that lived in their mutual appreciation for the limits they pushed in their own world. He saw the grief in her gaze, heavy and still fresh, and she saw the ache in his: of something far more than fear. Reverence, she considered.
They were two people clinging to shreds of dignity in a world that been soaked with death before they had been born.
"You speak of gods and war as if they're lovers you've already tasted," Alaric said, trying to clear the air of her accusation regarding his longing for her.
While she wouldn't smile for this, there was a curve to her lip that threatened to. "And you speak as if you've never been kissed by the burn of ice," she mused, thinking of their frozen winters.
She reached for a nearby bucket to rinse her hands, the saltwater biting against a scrape across her palm. She wanted a clean break from their conversation before it became something too real. Alaric reached to pour a little of it for her from his own flask of clean drinking water instead, saying nothing as he did.
Their hands touched. Brief, unintentional. . . but enough.
He watched her draw back without flinching. Finally, through her inhale, she looked up to him with a tenderness that he had not expected.
"You shouldn't do that," she told him.
"What is it I'm doing?" His voice was low now, knowing that a line was too close to being crossed, especially with their predicament in mind.
"Make your death harder for me." Svea stood, wiping her hand against her pant leg. "When we arrive, you will only have two options, Alaric. One will be to live as a slave, the other to accept your execution."
Although they hadn't spent much time together, she knew him. She knew the kind of man he was, where his dignity and values lay. She understood the choice he would make.
The call of all he could teach her about the world that was still unexplored gave her the faintest hope that somehow, a life condemned in servitude was worth the pursuit of knowledge.
Their gods, however, were not the same; hers would give up everything for knowledge, his already possessed it.
Letting out a dry chuckle, Alaric pressed his tired head against his shoulder as though he could ever consider it. "I think you are many things, Svea. . . but not enough to sway me from my Lord and Savior."
She leaned in just slightly, her hair falling forward for him to catch the scent of the salt mingled with something he didn't quite know the name of. What he did know was that when he met his final moments, he would ache for it just as he did for the grass of his father's farm whenever it rained.
"I have no intention of swaying you, Saxon," she said with that same half-smile, though now it carried a purr. "Only to tempt you."
Their eyes locked.
The distance between them was no longer a battlefield, but a confession.
She leaned back, not cold but decisive. Quickly enough, she caught the shift of color in his eyes. Then she walked away, her hand brushing the dragon's head of the ship like a tether, leaving him to sit still with his heart thudding against his ribs as though he had heard a prophecy.
There was no changing his fate, for there was no changing the man.
Further down the deck, Dragmall watched her carefully as the oars he managed slipped in and out of the water. He didn't speak at first, but he had seen it all. He understood that even the strongest men would always look at her that way - like she was an answer to a question they weren't brave enough to ask. He didn't mind. He understood their culture, but beyond that, he understood Svea.
"The suðr-maðr will choose death, Svea." he warned his wife.
At times, he wished he could spare her from her own curiosity or at least from her heart.
* Suðr-maðr: Old Norse term meaning "Southerner" to refer to groups of people such as the Saxons
"Yes." Svea agreed, rubbing his back in a reassurance he did not seek. He knew his wife.
She was fascinated by the lives she had yet to live, even more so by the ones she might never. It was only natural she'd be drawn to a man who could speak to her for hours about a world he would again be part of.
"I will comfort you when he does."
—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Svea's eyes flicked up to meet Aeneas's, her hands and arms still marked with Alaric's blood.
He had given Alaric the options Svea had expected.
I will give you two options," Aeneas had begun, quieting when Alaric shook his head and took a single step forward. The Saxon turned his chin over his shoulder to glance at Svea as he answered.
"I choose execution. I choose to die. I will not serve you, nor your gods."
Aeneas studied him, his gaze shifting between them before he nodded slowly. "Very well. Svea?"
Svea's weary eyes had searched for the Jarl's true reason behind his choice but couldn't find one. She nodded once, permitting it to continue.
Alaric had chosen his god; in turn, Svea had to choose hers - her way.
Their gods bled, and on that day Svea would learn that if even Odin could bleed, so could her heart.
"You will be his executioner," Aeneas declared. "A reward for your work."
"Asvoria, you may. . ."
Svea's grip on her axe tightened. She made sure it did not slip as she stepped back from the fallen body, holding her head high. No one, not even she herself, heard the small, stifled sniff she buried beneath the roar of celebration. Around her, they cheered the death of the Saxon, her keeper of knowledge.
Dragmall reached for her arm, guiding her away from the body. She finally let the axe fall, her focus slipping, the world dimming around her.
"For Odin," Aeneas toasted, raising his mug. He leaned back on his wooden throne with a smirk, watching his people rejoice beneath the weight of his false victory.