THE BUBBLY VIKING CREW
PROLOGUE SAGA
THE GREAT ENGLISH DISASTER ARC
Chapter I: The Seven Threats to Christendom
The year was 867.
Europe was a mess.
Kings were murdering brothers. Brothers were murdering kings. Priests were insisting everything was God's plan while Vikings kept showing up uninvited to test that theory.
And somewhere upon the cold northern seas, a crew was about to form that would become legendary.
Not because they were noble.
Not because they were brave.
But because collectively they possessed perhaps three functioning brain cells.
I. Jens Odgaard, Son of Nobody Particular
The Danes called him Jens Odinson.
Not because he was actually Odin's son. His last name was Odgaard. A perfectly unremarkable name from a perfectly unremarkable farm outside Ribe, where his mother grew cabbages and his father repaired fishing nets and absolutely nothing mythological had ever occurred.
But people kept exaggerating.
Every time someone told the story of Jens Odgaard, he became slightly larger and slightly more divine. By the time rumors reached England he was apparently nine feet tall, immune to arrows, blessed personally by Odin at birth, capable of wrestling bears with one hand, and directly responsible for thunderstorms.
The truth was simpler.
He was merely enormous.
Born on the shores of the Jutland peninsula in the kingdom of the Danes, Jens spent most of his youth swinging axes at trees and accidentally destroying things. The destroying was never intentional. He simply did not understand the relationship between his own size and the structural integrity of objects.
At twelve he leaned against the village gate. The gate collapsed.
At fourteen he patted a horse on the back in greeting. The horse sat down and refused to stand for three days.
At sixteen he tried to shake another Viking's hand in a welcoming gesture. The Viking's wrist made a sound that concerned everyone present.
His father eventually looked at him across the dinner table one evening with the expression of a man who had been thinking about something for a very long time.
"Boy."
"Yes?"
"You need to leave."
"Leave where?"
"Anywhere that isn't here."
Jens looked around at the small farmhouse. At the cracked beam he had accidentally headbutted last winter. At the door that no longer closed properly because he had opened it too enthusiastically in the spring.
"Why?"
"Because every year you get larger."
"Thank you."
"That wasn't a compliment. We are running out of house."
His father had a point. Jens had to fold himself in half just to fit through the doorway. He had not slept in a bed that accommodated his full length since he was fourteen. He ate more than the family's two goats combined and contributed proportionally more to the structural damage of the property.
He also owned, by this point, an almost unreasonable quantity of weapons. Three axes. Four swords. Seven shields. A spear. Two hunting knives. Something that a traveling merchant had described as a Frankish cavalry sword which Jens had acquired by trading three silver coins and, inadvertently, his horse, because the merchant had driven a very good deal and Jens had not been paying attention.
His mother had watched him loading the weapons onto a cart once and said nothing for a very long time.
"Jens."
"Yes Mama."
"Why do you have seven shields."
"In case."
"In case of what."
"In case I need six more."
She had gone back inside without another word. This was her primary coping mechanism.
At twenty-one Jens used the accumulated silver he had earned through two summers of mercenary work along the Jutland coast — raiding season was excellent employment for someone of his dimensions — to purchase a longship. Not a large one. Not a dragonship with forty oars and gilded prow and the kind of terrifying carved serpent that made abbots weep on sight. A solid, respectable knarr, broad-hulled and reliable, built in a Ribe boatyard by craftsmen who knew what they were doing. Good Baltic oak. Clinker-built, overlapping planks caulked with tarred wool, sixteen oars, a single square sail dyed a deep and slightly uneven red because the dye merchant had given him a discount. It was not beautiful. It was seaworthy. For Jens, this was sufficient.
He named her Bøllebåden. The Bubbly.
His father stood at the dock and watched him prepare to depart.
"Where will you go?"
"I don't know."
"What will you do?"
"I'm not sure."
"Do you have a plan."
Jens thought about this seriously for a moment.
"I have seven shields."
His father nodded slowly. "May Odin watch over you."
"And if not Odin then probably someone else."
"Yes. Goodbye son."
"Goodbye Papa."
The Bubbly pulled away from the dock. Jens rowed it himself because he was, functionally, his own crew. The morning mist was cold and grey and smelled of salt and dead fish and the North Sea, and somewhere out past the horizon, Europe was waiting.
It had no idea what was coming.
II. Jesper Karlsson, Prince of Svealand, Escapee
Far to the north, in the kingdom of Svealand, disaster was occurring.
Not military disaster. Those were manageable. Svealand had armies for those. Walls. Warriors. Strategists who knew what to do when foreign ships appeared on the horizon with hostile intentions.
This disaster was domestic.
Specifically: a wedding.
Prince Jesper Karl Karlsson was, by any reasonable measure, the most beautiful person in Svealand. Possibly in all of Scandinavia. Poets composed verses about his eyes, which were ocean blue and distressingly well-framed by cheekbones that had no business existing in a climate this cold. His hair was golden and he wore it in elaborate braids that he redid every morning with a patience that other men reserved for sharpening weapons. He was slender and elegant and he moved like he was perpetually being painted.
Women adored him.
Men adored him.
The local bishop, on his one visit to the Swedish court, found him so inexplicably unsettling that he mentioned it in three separate letters to Rome, though he could not explain why.
The king and queen of Svealand had, over many years, maintained a careful policy of not thinking too hard about their son. He was their only child. He was charming. He was well-liked. He excelled at riding, navigation, swordsmanship, and the composition of poetry, which he pursued with genuine talent and then deliberately did nothing with because it seemed like effort.
When he was nineteen his parents had a conversation they had been avoiding.
The queen opened it.
"Jesper must marry."
"Yes," said the king.
"He must produce heirs."
"Yes," said the king.
"He must take a wife."
"Yes," said the king.
They both stared out the window at their son, who was in the courtyard below engaged in a long and apparently very enjoyable conversation with the captain of the guard while ignoring a visiting noblewoman who had been brought specifically for his inspection.
"Do you think he—" the king began.
"Yes," said the queen.
"Has he ever—"
"No."
"Has there been any indication—"
"Several."
A long silence.
"Well," said the king.
"Well," said the queen.
"We will find him a nice girl."
"Yes we will."
They announced the engagement to Princess Astrid of the Götar three days later. Astrid was, by all reports, sensible, even-tempered, capable of running an estate, and deeply skeptical of the entire arrangement, though she kept this to herself.
Jesper received the news the way he received most unwelcome information: by saying "no" in a flat voice and then leaving the room.
The wedding was scheduled for the following autumn. Jesper spent the intervening months being unhelpful.
The night before the ceremony, in the longhouse guest quarters that had been prepared for the princess, the two of them finally met properly. Not at dinner, surrounded by court, with the king watching and the queen smiling the smile of someone who had decided to be optimistic. Alone. Jesper had found his way there not entirely sure what he was going to say, carrying a jug of wine, and Astrid had opened the door before he knocked as though she had been expecting him.
"Sit," she said. She was already holding a cup. She was clearly already several cups in. This seemed promising.
They sat. They drank. Outside the longhouse, the settlement was quiet. A dog barked somewhere. The fire crackled.
Astrid said: "So."
"So," said Jesper.
"Tomorrow."
"Yes. Tomorrow."
"Are you pleased?"
Jesper looked at her. She was looking back at him with very direct grey eyes and the expression of someone who had decided to simply get to the point.
"No," he said.
"Mm." She refilled her cup. "Me neither, if we're being honest."
More wine. More fire. Outside the wind picked up, as it tended to do on the Swedish coast in October, and rattled the shutters.
"Can I ask you something?" Astrid said.
"Yes."
"Are you—" She paused, chose her words. "Do you prefer men?"
Jesper put his cup down very carefully on the table.
"What gave it away."
"You spent the entire engagement feast complimenting my dress and then got into a twenty-minute conversation with the blacksmith's apprentice about his arms."
"He had excellent arms."
"He did," Astrid agreed. "He really did."
They sat in silence for a moment that was somehow more comfortable than anything that had come before it.
"I don't want to marry anyone," Astrid said eventually. "Not you, not anybody. I want to run my father's trade routes. I've been doing it for three years. I'm very good at it. But apparently that's not—" she waved her hand vaguely — "appropriate."
Jesper looked at her for a long moment.
She looked at him.
"Do you want to escape?" she asked.
He nearly cried. He managed not to, because his eyelashes were done and he didn't want to ruin them.
"Yes," he said. "Yes I would like that very much."
They planned it that night, over the rest of the jug and a second one that Astrid had apparently had the foresight to acquire. Jesper would take the small boat kept at the southern dock. He would go — somewhere. Anywhere. He would figure it out. Astrid would cover for him until morning, at which point she would invent a story, return to her own people, and live her life.
"Will you be alright?" Jesper asked, at the door, in the early grey hours before dawn.
"I'll be fine," Astrid said. "Your parents will be furious. But they can't make me marry someone who isn't here."
"No. That's true."
"Can you sail?"
"Yes."
"Can you fight?"
"Yes."
"Then go."
He kissed her on both cheeks. She squeezed his hands. He left.
By the time the wedding guests assembled in the morning he was already twelve miles out to sea.
His possessions: one dagger, the clothes he stood in, which were very nice, a small purse of silver he had taken from his own chamber, his extremely impractical hair, and absolutely no survival strategy.
Behind him, Svealand erupted in the precise kind of chaos he found extremely satisfying to imagine.
He sailed south. Because south was where things happened. Everyone knew this.
III. Sam Beukema, Richest Man on Any Boat He Was Currently On
Far to the southwest, in the coastal lowlands that the Franks called Frisia, lived Sam Beukema.
Who had never experienced hardship.
Ever.
Not once.
Not a single day.
His family were merchants of the first order, the kind of Frisian trading family that had been quietly accumulating wealth since before Charlemagne and had managed to continue doing so through Charlemagne and after Charlemagne, because they were very good at reading which way power was moving and positioning themselves immediately adjacent to it. They owned ships — real ships, cargo ships, not longships, the kind that carried wool and amber and silver and barrels of Rhenish wine across the North Sea and the Baltic and down the Rhine. They owned warehouses in Dorestad. They owned land. They owned more money than was, in Sam's personal opinion, entirely interesting.
Sam was eighteen when he announced that he wished to seek adventure.
His father, a broad, bearded, extremely practical man named Menno, who had spent forty years building the family business through a combination of ruthless negotiation and strategic generosity, looked at his son across the counting table.
"Why."
"I want to discover myself," Sam said.
"You're right here," his father said.
"I want to see the world."
"I have maps."
"I want to experience the world."
His father looked at him for a long moment. Then he reached under the table, produced a chest, and set it on the counting table. It was not a small chest.
"What is that," Sam said.
"Silver."
"Why."
"Because you're going to need it."
"But I haven't left yet."
"Exactly. Take the chest."
Sam took the chest. He also took, because he had been raised well, his father's fastest and best-provisioned knarr, a crew of eight experienced Frisian sailors, enough food for two months, several changes of extremely good clothes, and a letter of introduction to trading contacts in Hedeby that his father pressed on him at the last moment because Menno Beukema was constitutionally incapable of sending anything anywhere without commercial upside.
"Come back in one year," his father said at the dock.
"What if I find something interesting."
"Then come back in two years."
"What if I—"
"Sam."
"Yes."
"Come back eventually."
"Yes Papa."
He sailed north.
Not because he needed anything. He had everything. Silver, connections, a good ship, excellent clothes — his traveling coat was lined with sable fur from the Baltic trade and his belt buckle was cast silver from the Harz mines and several people in Dorestad had stopped to stare at him as he walked to the dock, which he had found deeply satisfying.
He wanted, more than gold, more than land, more than any of the things his family had spent generations accumulating: something to happen.
He wanted to be in the room where things went sideways. He wanted the drama of history unfolding around him. He wanted to meet people who did not know how to calculate a profit margin. He wanted, in short, to be entertained.
He was very good at three things: spending money effectively, convincing people of things that were not strictly in their interest, and identifying exactly who in any room had the most power and making sure they felt warmly toward him. He did not think of these as manipulation, exactly. He thought of them as applied charisma and strategic generosity and he was very good at both.
He sailed north.
He would find something interesting or he would make something interesting. Either way, he was dressed for it.
IV. Tijjani Reijnders, the Unsettlingly Charismatic Problem
Nobody knew exactly where Tijjani Reijnders came from.
He was from Frisia, that much seemed clear, or at least he had been in Frisia long enough that people assumed it. But before Frisia there were stories, and the stories did not agree with each other. Some said he had been born to a noble family fallen on hard times. Others said he had arrived in the trading port of Dorestad on a Frankish merchant ship with no luggage and no explanation and simply never left. A priest in Utrecht, when asked, described him as "an unsettlingly charismatic problem that has not yet resolved itself."
The priest was not wrong.
Tijjani was tall and dark-featured with the kind of presence that made rooms notice him without him doing anything to cause it. He moved economically, the way men who knew how to fight moved, which was to say: not like someone showing off, but like someone who had stopped needing to. His weapons — a long Frankish sword and a shorter blade he wore at his left hip and a small axe that he could and did throw with accuracy that seemed almost offensive — were always clean. He maintained them with the focused attention of a man who considered them tools, not trophies.
He was also extraordinarily intelligent. This was, unfortunately for everyone including himself, not entirely a good thing.
He had an ability to read people that bordered on the uncanny — to see what they wanted, what they feared, what they believed, and to position himself in relation to all three with a precision that should have made him unstoppable. And it did, frequently. He had talked his way out of a Frankish prison in Cologne by convincing the guard captain that releasing him was the guard captain's own idea. He had negotiated a trade deal so favorable to himself that the other party had congratulated him afterward. He had ended a feud between two Frisian clans entirely by getting both chieftains so confused about who had wronged whom first that they both apologized.
The problem was that the same mechanism that let him understand other people also made him, under the right conditions, susceptible to being understood in return. And once someone understood what Tijjani actually wanted — which was, at its core, to matter, to be part of something that meant something, to be recognized as the formidable and unusual person he was — they could move him almost as easily as he moved others. He had been hired as a strategist by a village chief and three weeks later found himself fighting for the opposing side, and when he tried to reconstruct the chain of conversations that had led to this outcome he couldn't quite locate where he had made the turn. It had felt like his idea at every step.
He had left Frisia because the Frisian lowlands were, in his considered opinion, too small and too flat for someone of his particular qualities. He needed somewhere larger. He needed, if he was honest, to find the kind of situation that was already chaotic enough that his particular talent for adding complexity would fit right in.
He was sailing north.
He had a feeling something interesting was happening up there.
V. Sven Mijnans, the Worst Viking His Family Had Ever Produced
Sven Mijnans was a Viking.
Technically.
He was from Frisia. He was enormous — not Jens-enormous, not people-think-he's-Odin's-son enormous, but still easily the largest man in any settlement he entered, broad-shouldered and long-limbed with hands like boat paddles and a reach that had made every opponent in his brief fighting career deeply regret their life choices. He owned an axe and a shield. He knew how to row. He had been on two raids.
He had hated both of them.
Not because he was afraid. Fear wasn't really Sven's problem. His problem was something more fundamental: he simply did not believe that taking things from people who didn't want you to take them was a particularly useful way to spend an afternoon. There were so many other things you could do. You could help people. You could fix things. You could build things. You could have a conversation. You could provide assistance to someone who needed it.
On his first raid, on a monastery on the Frisian coast, he had helped carry an elderly monk's belongings out of the burning scriptorium before anyone set it alight. He had then felt so bad about the burning scriptorium that he had helped put it out. The raid leader had screamed at him for twenty minutes about this. Sven had apologized sincerely and meant it.
On his second raid he had interrupted an active battle because one of the defenders looked like he had been fighting for four hours and might be dehydrated. He had offered the man water. The man had stared at him. Sven had said "drink, you look tired" in his best attempt at the local dialect. The man had, in fact, drunk, and then Sven had gotten hit over the head from the side by someone else who was not in the mood for a humanitarian interlude.
His family had sat him down after that.
"You are," his oldest brother said carefully, "the worst Viking we have ever produced."
"Thank you," Sven said.
"That wasn't a compliment."
"I know. I just don't think raiding is for me."
"What is for you."
Sven thought about it. "Helping people."
His family exchanged the particular look of a family that had been exchanging this look for twenty-three years and had not yet found a response to it.
"Go then," his father said finally. "Go help people somewhere else. Before you apologize to the next raid and get yourself killed being friendly at the wrong moment."
Sven packed his axe, which he preferred not to use but carried because leaving it felt rude to the axe, and his shield, and left.
He was not sure where he was going. He was sure that wherever he ended up, someone would need something done. They usually did.
VI. Milos Kerkez, the Magyar Who Had Never Once Thought Before Acting
Then there was Milos.
The Magyars were, in 867, a nomadic warrior people from the Pontic steppe, mounted archers who had been migrating westward through the Carpathian basin for generations, fierce and mobile and deeply unsentimental about violence. They were not people who lacked for courage.
Milos was, even among the Magyars, a problem.
Not because he lacked skill. He had skill. He was fast and he was savage and he had the specific quality of terrifying unpredictability that made experienced fighters nervous, because experienced fighters had learned to read opponents and Milos did not behave like someone who could be read. He behaved like someone who had never considered that there might be a wrong way to fight and was therefore free to do absolutely anything.
He had attempted to fistfight a boar at sixteen because the boar had looked at him in a way he found disrespectful. He won. This was, in retrospect, the beginning of a pattern.
At seventeen he had decided to race a horse. On foot. For twelve miles. He lost, technically, but he ran the whole thing and the horse was more tired than he was at the end, which he considered a moral victory.
At eighteen, separated from his unit during a skirmish on the Morava river, he had been surrounded by five armed men. The tactical options were: surrender, or attempt to escape through the gap in the encirclement to the east, or — and this was the option that literally no one who has ever studied warfare would recommend — simply attack all five of them at once.
He attacked all five of them at once.
He survived. He had a spectacular scar along his left jawline from the encounter and no memory whatsoever of the middle part because he had entered the specific state that his own people called keseredés and that northern warriors called the berserker fury, the combat madness, the thing that came when you stopped thinking entirely and let your body do what it knew.
The problem was that Milos had this reaction to any sufficiently exciting situation. He did not need to be cornered. He just needed to be interested.
He had drifted west with a loose band of Magyar outriders who were ranging ahead of the main migration, scouting the lands beyond the Carpathians. The outriders eventually decided to turn back. Milos did not turn back, because something had caught his attention — a rumor, a story told by a Moravian trader about the great northern sea and the ship-warriors who sailed it — and once Milos's attention was caught, his body was already moving before his mind had formed an intention.
He spoke almost no Germanic language, fragmentary Latin from a missionary who had briefly and unsuccessfully attempted to civilize him at fifteen, and excellent Magyar, which was useful to exactly no one he had met in the past three months.
He communicated primarily through enthusiasm, which crossed all borders.
He was moving north and west. He wasn't sure why. He had a feeling something was about to happen and he wanted to be there when it did, specifically at the front of it, specifically going very fast.
VII. Sugawara Yukinari, and the Question Nobody Could Answer
And then there was Yuki.
Nobody knew.
That was the entire answer to every question about Yuki. Nobody knew where he had come from. Nobody knew how he had gotten here. Nobody knew how long he had been traveling. Nobody knew why he had ended up on a dock in Hedeby on a cold morning in late October standing on the hull of a Frisian-built knarr eating smoked herring with the calm expression of a man who had arrived exactly where he intended to be.
What could be observed was this: he was not from anywhere in the known world of the north. His features were eastern in a way that went beyond the eastern peoples who occasionally appeared in the Baltic trade. His clothes, when he arrived, had been extraordinary — a dark robe of heavy silk that had been roughly treated but not destroyed, with a construction that no tailor in Frisia or Denmark or Sweden would have recognized. He carried a sword that was curved in a way that made every sword-carrying person who saw it stop and look at it a second time, because the curve was wrong and also somehow clearly correct, and the blade was folded steel of a quality that Sven, who could not help admiring fine craftsmanship even in weapons, described as "that's a very nice sword" in a hushed voice.
He had brown eyes that were very still and very watchful. He was perhaps thirty, perhaps older, in the way that some people's faces did not give information freely. He was quiet. He did not waste movement. He ate whatever was available without complaint and slept anywhere in a manner suggesting he had slept in worse places than a longship deck and found all of it roughly equivalent.
He had appeared in Hedeby, according to the dock merchant who had witnessed this, sometime in the night. Had sat down on the hull of the Bubbly, which was moored there while Jens spent three days buying supplies and trading two of his seven shields for smoked meat and rope. Had been sitting there eating herring when Jens returned in the morning.
Jens had stopped walking.
The stranger had looked up.
A very long silence.
"...who are you," Jens said.
"Hello," said the stranger.
"Hello," said Jens. Because this was the obvious response.
"Me Yuki."
"What are you doing on my ship."
"Me stay."
Jens looked at him for a long time. Jens was not, to be honest, an extremely complicated thinker. He worked best with concrete information — things he could see, or lift, or hit with an axe. Philosophy was not his strength. This situation contained almost no concrete information that he could work with.
The stranger looked back at him. Calm. Eating herring.
"Okay," Jens said.
That was the entire negotiation.
Later, when people asked Jens why he had simply accepted a stranger from the far east onto his longship with no questions and no conditions, he would think about it and say: "He looked like he belonged there."
Which was true. He did.
To this day, nobody on the ship knew exactly where land of the rising sun was. Tijjani estimated it was somewhere beyond the Silk Road terminus. Sam had heard traders mention the Chinese empire, which was impossibly far east. Sven didn't know but thought it sounded beautiful. Milos didn't care. Jesper said "it sounds exhausting to get here from there" and Yuki, when this was relayed to him through a laborious process of pointing and mime, smiled slightly and said nothing.
He never explained.
He merely made himself useful. He never started fights. He finished them. He never gave advice loudly but somehow when he indicated something quietly and indirectly, it tended to turn out to be correct, and people slowly noticed this and began paying attention.
Within two weeks everyone on the ship had started going to him with their problems.
Jens didn't know what to call this.
Tijjani called it wisdom.
Sven called it good sense.
Milos called it weird and also excellent.
Jesper called it "suspicious, frankly, nobody is that composed."
Yuki had no opinion about any of their opinions. He was usually on the prow, looking east, in the mornings. Then he would turn around, and the day would begin.
VIII. The Gathering at Hedeby
They did not all arrive at once. That would have been organized, and there was nothing organized about any of these people.
Sam was first, because Sam had excellent navigation and a fast ship and had sailed into Hedeby — the great trading port at the neck of the Jutland peninsula, where Norse and Frank and Saxon and Frisian and Slav and Arab trader all met in the organized chaos of the most important commercial hub in the north — looking for interesting people and a reason to keep moving.
He found Jens at the dockside market, attempting to trade an axe for a quantity of rope. The axe was objectively worth more than the rope. The rope merchant knew this and was proceeding carefully. Jens knew it too but had gotten interested in the rope and was now emotionally committed to owning it at any price.
Sam watched this negotiation for about thirty seconds and then walked over and resolved it in four sentences, leaving both parties satisfied, which was the mark of either a very good deal or a slightly questionable one depending on how you looked at it.
Jens looked at him.
"You're good at that," Jens said.
"Yes," Sam said.
"Do you want to come on my ship."
"Where are you going."
"I haven't decided."
Sam thought about this for exactly as long as it took him to look at the Bubbly, at Jens, and at the general extremely promising chaos of the horizon.
"Yes," he said.
Tijjani appeared the next day, having heard through three separate conversations in two days that a Danish giant was assembling a crew and might be planning something that had not been entirely thought through. Tijjani liked situations that had not been entirely thought through. He walked up to the Bubbly, looked at Jens, and said: "I hear you're going somewhere. I'm coming."
Jens said: "I didn't invite you."
Tijjani said: "You should."
Then he described, in ten concise minutes, exactly how his strategic and diplomatic abilities would benefit whatever it was Jens was planning, including three specific scenarios in which having Tijjani present would be the difference between success and disaster.
Jens said: "Fine."
Neither of them would be able to explain later whose idea it had actually been.
Sven found them because Sven found everyone. He had heard there was a large ship needing crew, had arrived at the dock, had immediately helped carry several heavy supply crates onto the hull before anyone introduced themselves, had declined payment, and was simply there by the time anyone thought to question it.
"Can you fight?" Jens asked.
"Yes," Sven said. "But I prefer not to."
"Then why are you here."
"Someone has to make sure you all eat properly."
Nobody could argue with this.
Milos erupted out of nowhere.
This was the only way to describe it. One moment there were four men standing on a dock discussing provisions and the next moment there was a fifth man who appeared to have been standing slightly too close this entire time, vibrating with unspent energy.
"Warriors," Jens had said, the previous evening, to no one in particular and also to the general area of the dockside tavern where he had been eating. "We need warriors."
He had apparently said it loud enough that it traveled.
Milos said: "Me."
Jens said: "Where did you come from."
Milos said: "I can fight."
"Yes but—"
"I fight very god damn well."
"I'm sure but—"
"I will come."
"You're Magyar."
Milos grinned. It was not a reassuring grin. It was the grin of someone who had once fistfought a boar and considered this a fond memory.
Jens decided that arguing was probably more effort than accepting.
"Fine," he said.
Milos had already jumped onto the ship.
Jesper they found on a cliff.
This was, on reflection, inevitable. Jesper had been in Hedeby for two days, having arrived by a combination of paid passage on a Frisian merchant vessel and the willingness to navigate when the ship's pilot got drunk, though he had only done this because the alternative was dying. He had been observed by several people around the town, always at a distance, always at some slightly elevated vantage point, looking beautiful and vaguely tragic.
Jens spotted him from the water while rowing the Bubbly around the headland to check the hull caulking.
The figure on the cliff had golden hair. His cloak was whipping dramatically in the wind. He was looking out to sea with the expression of someone who was either profoundly sad or profoundly bored and had decided to make it picturesque.
Jens rowed toward the base of the cliff.
"Hey!"
The figure looked down.
"Can you fight?"
A pause.
"Yes."
"Can you navigate?"
"Yes."
"Do you want to join my crew?"
A longer pause. The figure looked back out to sea. Looked down at Jens.
"No," said Jesper.
"Why not."
"I don't feel like it."
"You're standing on a cliff alone."
"I'm thinking."
"About what."
"Things."
Jens stared up at him. Jesper stared down at Jens.
"You look like you have nowhere to go," Jens said.
"I have many places I could go."
"Name one."
Silence.
"...come on my ship," Jens said.
"Will I have to do work."
"Yes."
"Unpleasant work?"
"Possibly."
"Is there anyone interesting."
Jens thought about Sam, who was interesting in the way that well-dressed merchants were interesting. Tijjani, who was interesting in the way that controlled explosions were interesting. Sven, who was interesting in the way that a very large and unexpectedly kind dog was interesting. Milos, who was interesting in the way that natural disasters were interesting. Yuki, who was interesting in ways Jens had not yet fully processed.
"Yes," he said.
Jesper looked out to sea one more time. Looked at his hands. Looked at the boat.
He came down from the cliff.
He stepped onto the Bubbly with the precise careful grace of someone protecting good boots. He looked at the assembled crew. The assembled crew looked at him.
Sam immediately assessed and approved of his coat.
Tijjani assessed him for approximately four seconds and then looked away with the expression of someone filing information.
Sven smiled at him.
Milos pointed at his hair and said something in Magyar that was probably a compliment based on his tone but nobody could verify.
Yuki gave him a small nod.
Jens immediately found him irritating.
Jesper immediately found Jens brutish and exhausting.
This was, in the specific way of things that turn out to matter enormously, the beginning of a very long problem.
They set sail on the fourth morning.
Seven people on one broad-hulled knarr, pointed more or less south because Tijjani had argued that England was where opportunity currently lived, and England was south and west, and nobody had produced a better argument, and Jens had wanted to go somewhere and anywhere qualified.
The morning was grey and cold. Seabirds circled the harbor mouth. The smell of Hedeby — iron and fish and woodsmoke and the particular smell of a market town that has been accumulating commerce for seventy years — fell away behind them as the sail filled.
Jens stood at the stern.
Seven people. Seven different reasons to be here. Seven nations represented in this extremely cramped hull, which was going to be a logistical problem in approximately twelve hours when everyone needed to sleep.
He looked at his crew.
Sam was already conducting an inventory of their supplies and making notes in a wax tablet. Tijjani was watching the horizon with the intent expression of a man planning something. Sven was checking whether the water barrels were properly sealed. Milos had climbed halfway up the mast for no apparent reason and was looking around with the expression of a dog hanging out a moving cart window. Jesper was sitting at the prow looking windswept and doing it extremely well. Yuki was on the port side, watching the water go by, calm as a stone.
Jens turned back to the sea.
He had no plan. No specific destination. No particular mission. He had seven people who had absolutely no business being on the same boat, a knarr loaded with provisions and far too many weapons, and the entire northern coastline of Europe in front of him.
Somewhere behind them, in the monasteries of Northumbria and the abbeys of Frankia and the market towns of the Saxon shore, people were going about their mornings in perfect peace.
They didn't know.
The Bubbly cleared the harbor mouth and turned west.
The saga had begun.
---# THE BUBBLY VIKING CREW
Chapter II: The Great English Disaster
The plan was simple.
Invade England. Acquire riches. Become legends. Leave.
The plan failed immediately.
I. The Arrival
They hit the Northumbrian coast on a morning so grey and miserable that even the seagulls looked offended. The beach was rocky and cold and smelled of seaweed and wet dog, the latter being Sven's fault because he had, somewhere between Hedeby and England, adopted a stray dog from a fishing settlement they had passed, and the dog had decided the Bubbly was its permanent home, and Jens had decided that arguing with Sven about the dog was more exhausting than just having a dog.
The dog was named Bjarni.
Bjarni was not a good dog. He was a medium-sized grey dog of indeterminate heritage who barked at seabirds, stole food, had already chewed through one of Sam's belts, and seemed to believe that Milos was a large toy. But Sven loved him so nobody said anything, except Jesper who said "I hate that dog" every morning and then fed him scraps every evening when he thought nobody was watching.
Yuki watched.
Yuki noticed everything.
They dragged the Bubbly up the beach and Jens looked at his crew and said: "England."
Everyone looked at England.
England looked back. Specifically England looked like rain and distant hills and a handful of fishing huts and a smoking farmstead and the general expression of a place that had already been raided twice this decade and was tired.
"Right," Jens said. "We make camp. Then we plan."
"I have already planned," Tijjani said.
"I have financial projections," Sam said.
"I will find firewood," Sven said, already moving.
"I will find enemies," Milos said, already looking.
"I will find somewhere to sit," Jesper said, already sitting.
Jens stared at the sky.
The sky provided no comfort.
II. The Strategy Meeting Nobody Wanted
Three days they spent making camp. Three days of hauling supplies off the ship, building shelters, scouting the immediate terrain, and arguing about what exactly they were doing here and how they intended to do it.
By the fourth morning Jens had had enough arguing and convened what he called a war council around the map he had acquired in Hedeby, which was drawn by someone who had clearly never been to England but had heard several confident rumors about it.
"We raid the monastery at—" Jens squinted at the map. The monk who had drawn it had an idiosyncratic hand. "—somewhere north of here. Two days' march. It has gold."
"How do you know it has gold?" Tijjani asked.
"It's a monastery."
"Fair."
Sam raised a hand.
"Alternative proposal."
"What?"
"We trade with them."
Jens put down the map. Slowly. "They're monks."
"Monks have silver. Monks have connections. Monks have relationships with every lord in a hundred miles and a working knowledge of local politics that would take us months to develop independently." Sam spread his hands. "I'm not saying don't take the silver. I'm saying there are more interesting ways to take the silver."
"I want to take it the regular way," Jens said.
"The regular way is so inefficient."
"Has anyone seen Sven?" Tijjani asked.
Nobody had seen Sven.
They found him a quarter mile down the coast helping an elderly English farmer repair a fence. The farmer did not appear to speak Norse. Sven did not appear to speak English. They were communicating through a combination of pointing, nodding, and the universal language of two large men examining a broken piece of wood and reaching the same structural conclusions.
"Sven," Jens said.
"One moment," Sven said. He hammered a post into the ground with his fist, because he didn't have a mallet and his fist was a reasonable substitute. The post went in straight. The farmer nodded approvingly.
"Sven."
"Yes?"
"We're invading England."
Sven looked at the fence. Looked at the farmer. Looked at Jens with the expression of a man who was about to say something reasonable and had correctly identified that it would not be received as such.
"Are we still doing that?"
"YES."
"It's just—" Sven gestured at the fence. "He really needed help with—"
"NOW, SVEN."
Sven said something apologetic to the farmer in Norse. The farmer understood none of it but seemed to appreciate the tone. They parted on what appeared to be genuinely warm terms. Bjarni, who had followed Sven, was reluctantly collected.
Back at camp Jens returned to the map.
And became aware, with the specific awareness of a man who has been annoyed by the same person for four days and is becoming structurally incapable of thinking about anything else, that Jesper was not paying attention.
III. The Swedish Problem
The thing about Jesper was that he was genuinely infuriating in a way Jens had never previously encountered and could not fully explain.
He had met useless people before. Every crew had them — the man who couldn't row in a straight line, the warrior who panicked in a real fight, the navigator who misread stars in the second month. Uselessness was familiar. Jens knew how to handle it. You gave the useless person a simple task and you did not ask them to do complicated ones.
This was different.
Jesper wasn't useless. He demonstrably wasn't useless. He could sail — Jens had watched him take the rudder in the third night crossing when the wind turned ugly, and the ease with which he had read the swell and adjusted course had been, against Jens's will, impressive. He spoke at minimum four languages, possibly more, because he occasionally said things in what Tijjani identified as Frankish and what Yuki appeared to understand and respond to with hand gestures. He was clearly educated. He was clearly strategic. He had on two separate occasions made offhand observations about the English coastline that Tijjani had immediately incorporated into his planning and later said, privately, were the most useful geographical assessments he'd heard.
But whenever asked directly to contribute, Jesper said no.
Casually.
Without explanation.
And then went back to whatever he was doing, which was usually nothing, done beautifully.
He was sitting on a rock right now. At the edge of the camp. Perfect hair, which was an offense in itself — three days of sea wind and English weather and the man's hair looked like a saga poem. His cloak was somehow still clean. He appeared to be watching a beetle cross a stone with the focused attention another man might give to a genuine problem.
Jens walked over.
"You haven't done anything," Jens said.
Jesper did not look up from the beetle. "I have."
"No."
"I improve morale."
Jens looked around at the crew. Sam was arguing with Tijjani about supply lines with the specific frustrated energy of two people who were both right about different things. Milos was somewhere in the woods for reasons nobody had inquired about and that everyone felt was better not known. Sven was sitting on the ground with Bjarni and apparently having a real conversation with the dog. Yuki was sharpening his curved sword by the fire with the quiet focus of a man who did not need to perform busyness.
Nobody's morale had noticeably improved.
"How," Jens said.
"Just by being here."
"That is," Jens said carefully, "the most arrogant thing I have ever heard. And I have met earls."
Jesper finally looked up. His expression was perfectly pleasant. "I literally want to hit you," Jens said.
Jesper blinked. "Get in line."
Sam, passing behind Jens carrying a bundle of rope, choked on nothing.
"Are you," Jens said, "telling me that there is a queue of people who want to hit you."
"I'm saying I'm not uniquely concerning to you."
"You are uniquely concerning to me."
"Oh?"
Jens heard how that sounded. His jaw tightened. "Because you're useless. Specifically. In a unique way."
Jesper looked at him for a long moment. Then he lay back on the rock, folded his arms behind his head, and closed his eyes.
"Wake me when something interesting happens," he said.
Nearby, Tijjani had drifted close enough to hear the conversation. He looked at Jens. Then at Jesper. Then back at Jens with the expression of a man who had reached a conclusion.
He did not share the conclusion yet. He was saving it. It would be funnier later.
IV. The Evening Around the Fire
The nights in England were cold and damp and smelled of peat smoke and wet grass. The crew gathered at the fire because the alternative was sitting in the dark alone and everyone, even people who would not admit it, preferred not to sit in the dark alone in a foreign country.
Sam counted silver, moving coins from hand to hand with the quick automatic movements of a man who had done this since childhood. Tijjani cleaned his weapons, which he did with the methodical focus of someone who was also thinking about something else entirely. Sven had fallen asleep sitting up, which he could do anywhere at any time, with Bjarni across his feet. Milos had returned from wherever he had been, looked satisfied in a way that discouraged questioning, and was eating something that might have been a mushroom and might have been several other things.
Yuki was watching the stars.
Jesper was lying on his back with his arms spread, doing absolutely nothing, looking at the sky with the expression of someone who found the sky adequately interesting and had no particular feelings about anything else.
Jens lasted until approximately the second hour before he couldn't take it anymore.
"Are you incapable," Jens said, "of feeling shame?"
Jesper opened one eye. "Are you incapable of minding your own business?"
"You have contributed nothing for four days."
"I told you. Morale."
"I'm going to—"
"Going to what?"
Jens stopped.
He actually didn't know how to finish the sentence. He couldn't hit the man. He couldn't throw him off the ship, they were on land. He couldn't make him work because Jesper had demonstrated a complete and cheerful immunity to authority. He couldn't ignore him because ignoring him somehow required more active effort than paying attention to him, which was its own kind of insanity.
"FIGHT," said Milos, sitting up immediately, mushroom forgotten.
"No," Jens said.
"Please?"
"No."
"Just a small fight. Friendly."
"NO."
Milos subsided, disappointed. He looked at Tijjani, who was watching the exchange with the specific expression of someone working something out.
"I think," Tijjani said, in the tone of someone who had been thinking this for a while and had decided the moment had arrived, "that they're flirting."
The camp stopped.
Not gradually. Suddenly. The way a held breath stops.
Sam's coin-counting stopped.
The sword-cleaning stopped.
Even the fire seemed to hold still for a moment.
Except Yuki. Who continued eating a piece of dried fish with complete serenity.
Jens said: "What."
"Just an observation."
"That is—" Jens paused. "That is not— we hate each other."
"Sure," Tijjani said.
"We absolutely hate each other."
"Completely."
"This is—" Jens gestured between himself and Jesper. "This is mutual hatred. That's what this is."
Jesper had sat up. He looked at Tijjani with an expression that was working very hard to be amused and was not entirely succeeding. "He is," Jesper said, "genuinely the most exhausting person I have ever met. And I grew up in a royal court. Which is saying something."
"And you are the most useless," Jens said.
"Exactly," Jesper said, pointing at Tijjani. "You see? We can't stand each other."
Tijjani nodded thoughtfully. "Mm. Very romantic."
The camp exploded.
Sam dropped his coins. Milos fell over. Sven woke up with a sharp inhale, looked around confused, and then understood the situation from the expressions alone with the accuracy of a man raised around a lot of people and said "oh" very quietly and tried to go back to sleep. Bjarni barked once at the chaos and then settled.
Jens looked ready to start a war. Specifically a war with Tijjani. Specifically right now.
Jesper was standing. He had the expression of someone who was not going to give Tijjani the satisfaction of reacting, who was going to remain perfectly composed, and who was in fact reacting significantly.
"That was not funny," Jesper said.
"I'm not joking," Tijjani said pleasantly.
"I'm going to sleep," Jesper said.
"Good night."
"Enjoy dying."
"Sleep well."
Jesper picked up his cloak and walked to the far side of the camp and lay down with his back very firmly to everyone, which was the most effective way he had of communicating that a conversation was finished.
Jens sat down heavily by the fire. He looked at Tijjani with a long and dangerous expression.
Tijjani looked back with complete serenity.
"I hate you," Jens said.
"Sure," said Tijjani.
"Both of you," said Jens, to include the absent Jesper.
Yuki, without looking up from his fish, said something very quietly. In Japanese. Nobody understood the words.
But Tijjani, who was very good at reading tones, got the gist.
He pressed his lips together to keep from smiling.
V. The Night
The camp slept.
Most of it.
Jens lay on his back and stared at the English sky, which was overcast and dark and provided absolutely nothing to look at, and thought about Jesper, which was not what he wanted to be doing.
He had spent his entire life being interested in women. This was not in question. It had never been complicated. He had liked women in Ribe and women in Hedeby and women in the settlement at the mouth of the Eider and a particularly memorable woman in a trading post near Birka who had beaten him at arm wrestling and he had found this the most attractive thing that had ever happened to him.
He was interested in women. This was a settled fact.
Jesper was not a woman.
Jesper was an infuriating Swedish prince with impossible hair and a complete refusal to take anything seriously and an ability to be beautiful while being actively unhelpful that Jens found, against every instinct he possessed, absolutely maddening in a direction he could not keep calling anger.
He had called it anger for four days.
He was running out of conviction.
It wasn't that Jesper was kind. He wasn't. He was sharp and lazy and he aimed his sharpness at whoever was closest, which was usually Jens, because Jens was the largest target. It wasn't that Jesper was easy to be around. He was the opposite. Every conversation with him required twice the energy a conversation with Sven required and produced three times the frustration.
It was the thing Tijjani had said, which Jens had absolutely not been thinking about and was currently thinking about with total focus.
The way Jesper looked at him.
Not like he was Jens Odinson, son of thunder, the man who broke horses by accident. Not like he was a legend. Not like he was enormous and probably divine and definitely dangerous. Like he was a Danish idiot who happened to be large, and Jesper had met large Danish idiots before, and this one was not particularly impressing him yet.
No one looked at Jens like that.
Every other man either wanted to fight him or was afraid of him or both simultaneously. Women were interested or cautious or occasionally both. Jens had moved through the world for twenty-one years in the comfortable certainty that he was legible to people. They saw him and they understood what they were dealing with.
Jesper looked at him and seemed to find the assessment still open.
This was, against all reason, the most interesting thing anyone had ever done.
Jens stared at the sky.
This is a problem, he thought.
This is a significant problem.
This is an extremely blond, deeply annoying, probably going to get me killed problem.
He closed his eyes.
Across the fire, Jesper was not asleep either.
He was lying very still, the way he had learned to lie still when he was young and shared a longhouse with twenty people and privacy was a philosophical concept, and he was thinking about Jens with the specific unwilling focus of a man thinking about a problem he has correctly identified as bad for him.
Jens was exactly his type. This was catastrophic. He had spent years in Svealand developing preferences and those preferences had been for men who were large and decisive and seemed unlikely to collapse when circumstances became difficult, which the Svealand court had been full of, which had been its own ongoing catastrophe, and which he had managed by being extremely unavailable and deeply sarcastic and never, under any circumstances, allowing anyone to see anything real.
And now here was a Danish giant who was large and decisive and seemed constitutionally incapable of being anything other than exactly what he was, which was the most infuriating quality Jesper had ever encountered in another person.
Because Jens wasn't performing it. He wasn't being large and decisive because it made people respect him or fear him or because he had decided this was the most useful version of himself to present. He was just like that. Continuously. Even when nobody was watching. Even when it wasn't useful. He was just Jens, enormous and direct and completely unafraid of Jesper's sharpness, which meant Jens kept walking straight into the sharpness and refusing to bleed from it, and this was, Jesper recognized with cold clarity, exactly the kind of person he would not be able to dismiss.
He had spent four days becoming more annoying specifically to compensate for this.
He was aware that this strategy was not working.
He closed his eyes.
Yuki, who was still awake, who was always still awake at this hour, watched the fire burn down and said nothing and knew everything.
VI. The Axe in the Tree
Jens woke up and his axe was gone.
Not just any axe. His axe. The one he'd had for three years, iron head, ash handle, perfectly balanced from a thousand hours of use, the handle worn smooth exactly where his grip fell. It was not in its place beside his bedroll. It was not under the bedroll. It was not anywhere in the immediate camp.
Jens said something that would have made his mother wash his mouth with seawater.
"My axe."
Everyone looked up.
"My axe is gone."
Milos brightened immediately. "Can I look for it? I like looking for things."
"Yes—"
"Can I fight whoever took it?"
"YES—"
"Oh this is great."
The search took forty minutes and covered the entire camp and its surroundings. Tijjani conducted it with efficient frustration. Sven looked carefully and apologetically, as though he was sorry the axe was missing and also sorry for the axe. Sam continued his inventory with the attitude of a man who has already concluded this is not his problem. Milos searched enthusiastically and incorrectly, which meant he covered a lot of ground and found nothing.
It was Tijjani who looked up.
"There," he said.
Twenty feet above the ground. Wedged into the fork of an oak tree, handle up, blade down, wrapped with a bit of cloth to protect the edge, which was thoughtful in a way that made Jens furious. Tied to the handle by a short cord: a small piece of leather with scratched runes.
They got it down with significant effort and a lot of language.
The runes read: Good morning.
Jesper was sitting twenty feet away on a fallen log, drinking warm water with a handful of dried herbs steeped in it, which he called tea and which everyone else called ridiculous. He was watching the retrieval operation with the polite attention of a man who has no particular feelings about anything happening.
When Jens turned to look at him he met the gaze with complete innocence.
"Jesper," Jens said.
"Good morning."
"Did you put my axe in a tree."
Jesper tilted his head slightly. "Have some tea."
"I don't want tea."
"You seem stressed."
"I am going to—"
"Stressed people often benefit from warm beverages."
"—put you in the tree—"
"I'm not sure you can reach."
Jens actually stepped toward him.
Jesper did not move. He looked up at Jens from where he sat, hands around the cup, with the calm expression of someone who had correctly calculated that Jens wasn't going to actually do it. Which was, Jens realized with fresh outrage, correct. He wasn't going to do it. The man was insufferable and he was somehow safe being insufferable, because Jens wasn't going to hurt him, and they both knew it, and Jesper was using this knowledge actively.
Jesper smiled. Not the lazy smile. Not the teasing performance of a smile. A real one, small and crooked, just for a moment.
"Here," Jesper said, and held out the cup.
Jens stared at it.
He took it.
He drank the tea.
It was, against his will, quite good.
He handed it back and walked away and did not look at Jesper and was furious about everything, and somewhere behind him he heard the sound of a man succeeding at not laughing out loud, which was somehow worse than if he had just laughed.
Tijjani, who had watched the entire exchange, went and found Yuki.
"Tell me I'm right," Tijjani said.
Yuki looked at him steadily.
"I know you understand me," Tijjani said. "You understand everything. Don't pretend."
Yuki said nothing for a long moment. Then he made a small gesture with one hand. Two things, side by side, moving toward each other.
"Yes," Tijjani said. "Exactly."
He sighed. He was going to have to watch this unfold in real time for what was probably going to be months.
The things he endured.
VII. The Scouts Arrive
They came in the late afternoon of the fifth day. Two of Jens's Dane-companions who had been ranging ahead, hard-riding men on good horses, and the news they brought was this:
An English lord. Name of Æthelred. Something of a reputation — not the great men of Northumbria, not the heirs of the ancient kingdoms, but a local power with local resources and local grievances, and the Viking presence on his coast was apparently one of them. He had gathered his household warriors and his fyrd — the local levy, farmers and freeholders called up for defense — and he was marching. Possibly three hundred men. Coming from the north.
One day out.
The camp changed.
Not in the dramatic way of saga poetry, not in the grand righteous way of men seized by noble purpose. More specifically: Sam immediately began calculating what three hundred men's worth of equipment was worth in ransom and salvage. Tijjani went straight to the map with a focused expression and started making marks. Sven sat down and breathed slowly through his nose, the technique of a large man who found conflict stressful and had learned to pre-process it. Milos made a sound that was not words, not quite, more like a sound a fire makes when you give it more air.
"Oh my god," Milos said. Then: "Oh MY GOD." Then, quietly, to himself, in Magyar, something that sounded reverent. He looked at Jens with wide eyes. "Battle tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow," Jens said.
Milos sat down on the ground. Stood back up. Sat down again.
"This," he said, "is exactly why I left my country."
Jens turned to Tijjani. "The ground."
"Valley mouth," Tijjani said immediately, already thinking. "We want them coming downhill toward us, not uphill. Their cavalry is useless if we take position at the narrows."
"Agreed. Archers on the—"
"High ground on the left, yes, I've already—" Tijjani paused. Looked sideways. Then said, as though it cost him something: "...we should put archers on the ridge to the east as well."
"Why?"
"Because the English cavalry will break left when the center holds and the east ridge catches the flank." He paused again. "That's what I would do. If I were their commander."
"Then do it."
"I'll need someone who knows archery to manage the ridge position." Tijjani said it to the air. To nobody in particular. But his eyes moved briefly, just briefly, toward where Jesper was sitting.
He didn't say it.
He just thought it loudly enough.
VIII. The Night Before
They slept in armor.
Or most of them did. Sven lay awake watching the stars and thinking about the farmer whose fence they'd fixed, wondering if he'd be caught up in tomorrow's fight, if he was one of the men in the fyrd, if he'd understood when Sven had tried to say "we mean you no harm individually" in extremely improvised English. Milos did not sleep at all, though not from fear — he simply seemed incapable of being still enough. He sat and cleaned his weapons and then cleaned them again and at one point went and ran a circle around the camp perimeter for no reason that he explained.
Jens sat by the last of the fire and sharpened the recovered axe and tried to think about the battle and mostly succeeded.
Jesper appeared out of the dark and sat down on the other side of the fire, which was unexpected.
Jens looked at him.
Jesper looked at the fire.
He had changed. Not obviously. The same face, same posture, same quality of taking up exactly the space he wanted to take up. But something was different in the way he was sitting — less performance in it, less careful arrangement. He just sat.
"You should sleep," Jens said.
"So should you."
"I'm used to it."
"So am I," Jesper said, which was the first thing he had said that contained something true in it without any angle attached.
Jens looked at him for a moment. "What are you doing on my ship."
Jesper smiled faintly. "Which one of us is asking."
"I am."
"Then I'm doing what you're doing." Jesper picked up a twig from the ground and turned it in his fingers. "Going somewhere that isn't where I was."
"You escaped a marriage."
"That's the short version."
"What's the long version."
Jesper was quiet for a moment. Long enough that Jens thought he wasn't going to answer. Then: "The long version is that I was going to spend my whole life in a place where everyone knew exactly who I was supposed to be, and none of it was anything I wanted." He threw the twig into the fire. "The short version is nicer."
Jens said nothing. He had not been expecting something real.
He wasn't good at something real. He was good at axes and orders and rowing into headwinds. He was not good at this — at sitting across a fire from someone and knowing that they had just shown him something and not knowing what to do with it.
What he said, eventually, was: "My father told me I was too large to stay home."
Jesper looked at him.
"That's also the short version," Jens said.
Jesper made a sound that was almost a laugh. Not quite. Softer.
They sat by the fire until it was almost out. Not talking much. Not needing to, particularly.
Eventually Jesper stood. "Get some sleep, Dane."
"Stop calling me that."
"It's what you are."
"It's not my name."
Jesper looked at him across the dying fire, and Jens thought for a moment he was going to say something. His expression did the thing it occasionally did where the performance slipped and there was a person underneath it, actual and unguarded.
"Jens," Jesper said.
Just that. Just his name. And then he went back to his bedroll.
Jens stared at the embers for a long time after that.
He had absolutely no idea what was happening to him.
He did not like it.
He also did not stop thinking about it, which was the part that worried him.