Work Text:
Hē hæfde gōd ġeþanc
þā hwīle þe hē mid handum healdan mihte
bord and brād swurd; bēot hē ġelǣste
þā hē ætforan his frēan feohtan sceolde.
He had a dauntless spirit
as long as he with hands might be able to grasp
shield and broad sword: the vow he would carry out
that he had made before his lord saying he would fight.
-- The Battle of Maldon; trans. Douglas B. Killings
𓊝
When he releases Siegfried and watches his brother grasp him, Uhtred knows that Alfred will not be happy. When he picks up the detached hand and tosses it into a bag, as the blood seeps through and drips a rain trail behind his horse as they ride the road to Eoferwic, he knows that the king who has for so long demanded negotiation and silver ransoms to be paid will not be pleased with the exchange of this pound of flesh.
‘Only I will speak to Guthred,’ he tells the party, and he can feel the apprehension rolling off of them – more precisely, off of Beocca, with Sihtric’s quiet approval and Steapa’s careful watch to accompany – in waves.
Guthred’s flinch when he throws it into his bowl, and it lies like some cursed transubstantiated thing amid the bread, makes him think only of Alfred’s great stillness. Guthred’s shaking cowardice, reeking and rearing the deep ugly rage and repulsion of the shuttered memory of the slave ship, is the dark shadow of Alfred seated in his throne, overseeing the careful outreach of Wessex into the heart of England from his hall.
They take Loidis like it’s as easy as breathing– they sweep in, Ragnar and his men choke the fortress’ throat, and Kjartan bleeds into the mud. Thyra is a ghost in white with her dogs, a Freja with bloodied fangs, and for a moment, Uhtred can hear the laughter of Ragnar’s hall once again, Sigrid and Brida and Thyra and Young Ragnar before the fire burnt the heart out of their lives.
The moment passes, fleeting on the breeze.
They leave Ragnar and Brida at Loidis, and make the long ride back to Wessex. It should feel victorious, but the slow plod of the procession has a funereal air hanging over it. Uhtred looks behind him to remind himself that Thyra rides with Hild, that they are all alive still, but the exhaustion of the definitive knowledge of no end in sight to the longer, greater journey he is on has long set in.
Alfred haunts him the whole way, as he has for a long time. Uhtred wonders when he stopped noticing, and started letting the resentment brew and curdle like split milk in his stomach.
𓊝
Alfred is not happy. He watches them all, stood before him, as though they have brought news of a defeat.
‘You let them live?’ He asks, tone surprised and simultaneously annoyed at itself for even affecting surprise. Uhtred knows he seeks to run circles about even himself.
‘My Lord,’ Steapa says, in his low, rare voice. ‘We did not have much choice.’
‘They had us surrounded, Lord,’ Beocca adds, always imploring for them before himself, ‘We would have been slaughtered. And Erik would have laid Eoferwic to ruin.’
Alfred sighs, looking between each of them, before his gaze comes to rest upon Uhtred. He waits. Uhtred swallows, trying to push down the weight that had first settled when he had been discovered in that tent, when their ambush had collapsed: the weight of, before any other thought, that of Alfred’s overarching disappointment.
‘You wish me to have died?’ Uhtred says, hearing his voice grow louder, and knowing that Alfred will not hear it. ‘I and my party? And the brothers still at Guthred’s door?’
Alfred’s eyes narrow, fingers tapping against the arm of the throne. ‘You would not have liked to kill them, I am sure.’
‘Why Lord,’ Uhtred asks, his head falling a little to the side, ‘because they are Danes? Because I hold loyalty to them?’
Alfred just watches him. Uhtred feels Beocca shuffle a little behind him, and can tell Æthelwold is grinning to himself, as he always does. Uhtred has never known quite what he can ever say to let Alfred know precisely what he means.
‘Will you never accept that I fight for you?’ His voice is plaintive, and a pulse of rage throbs in his stomach– at Alfred, at himself, at all those watching as he rises to Alfred’s bait once more. ‘What could I ever do to prove it? I could–’ He bites off, fists clenching, unclenching. He feels Beocca’s hand at his shoulder, sees Steapa eye him. He shakes them off. ‘I could drive my blade into my own chest right before you, and you wouldn’t even blink. The blood in the stones would be a burden to you.’
‘Uhtred!’ Beocca admonishes; Alfred holds up one hand.
Uhtred breathes, tries to ease his shoulders. He fails. ‘It is true. He knows it is.’
‘Do not presume to know me,’ Alfred snaps. ‘You will all leave.’ Before Uhtred can even turn– ‘Not you, Uhtred.’
Uhtred does not turn to meet the worried gazes of his companions. He hears them turn and bustle away, boots on the stone. Alfred nods to the door guards, and the bang of the door being closed behind them rings out through the hall.
Dimly, he wonders when he was last alone, completely alone, with Alfred. The silence weighs heavy as silver, and he feels pinned to his spot on the floor in the wide space, with the light shifting through the windows. The husk of candle smoke whisps close the stone, a smell far from the spice of woodsmoke that clung to Gisela’s hair.
He stares at the tiles for a few moments, and dismisses both her and his guilt from his mind. Then he looks up, and tries to pin down the monolith of Alfred. ‘Yes, Lord?’
‘Uhtred.’
Uhtred does not know how long he stands there, before Alfred, as he waits for a reply he has heard a thousand time over before. Alfred stands, slowly, moves away from the throne just a little, to its side, like a ship about its anchor. He turns his chin up, gazing to the tops of the windows, at the heavy grey of the clouds beyond.
‘What do you call that?’ Alfred asks, lowly, ‘When you bite back at me so? When I give you all you want and you bark? I took your sword when you asked me to. I gave you the title you demanded. Land, a name beyond Ragnarsson.’
‘You do not give it, you resign it. I’m nothing but your hound,’ Uhtred says, shoulders heavy, locked. ‘That’s what you’ve made me.’
Alfred watches him, like he always does, eyes narrowed, trying to draw up the lines of him. ‘And you’ve never had the decency to be a good dog, have you?’
Uhtred wonders if the wound shows, as it slices into the meat of his pride. A thousand tiny cuts, and the river of blood between them. The truth of Alfred’s hands always dripping from Uhtred’s blade.
‘Running about,’ Alfred says, ‘In laps. Where I send you, but always whining. You’ll never serve happily. You’ll never give me your blade without showing it first.’
‘It would be wrong to promise something without demonstration,’ Uhtred bites, almost a laugh. ‘You ask too much.’
‘I am your king,’ Alfred says, so quietly the words are hardly a swallow’s brush. ‘I can never ask too much of you.’
‘You are king under your god.’
‘I am king under the God,’ he snaps, laying a hand on the edge of the throne; Uhtred barely notices it, how Alfred weight seems to heavy for his own bones. The anger clouds it all, sharp in the backs of his hands, at the base of his throat. ‘The one you refuse to take, to spite me.’
Uhtred does laugh, at that. ‘To spite you? Is that what you think?’
‘You were baptised.’ Alfred’s voice is cold. ‘Or at least Beocca claims. I think you’re the devil, but I suppose God would not have let you rise from the waters if that were so. And childish, spiteful? That I know you to be.’
‘You are the child,’ Uhtred snaps, ‘throwing his toys about when they do not play as he wishes.’
‘Those toys are my men, sworn to me– like you claim to be.’
‘When have I ever gone against you?’ Uhtred says, words getting louder as he moves closer, step by step, towards the king made of stone. ‘When have I ever let you down?’
‘Everything you do goes against me.’ Alfred’s voice is still so quiet, with its steel edge glinting. ‘Your disobedience. Your disrespect. Your heathen inhibition.’
‘I never watch myself as carefully as I do with you.’ He is close, now, on the second step of the dais, looking up just a little. Alfred always looks down. ‘I could not say or do anything that would let you trust me. You resent me in my differences.’
‘And you never change.’
‘Neither do you.’
There’s no more than an arm’s length between them, but it feels like an eternity, like a kingdom laid down. Like grey seas and green land. The hall around them is silent in its ageless stone, indifferent walls looking in.
Alfred moves towards him, by half a step, hand trailing from the throne’s back to its arm. A bird’s touch. Uhtred does not know, has never known, how to fight this threat that is neither wolf nor blade nor man. Alfred is all of them at once, a statue that refuses to bleed.
His eyes are grey, like the sky the day Uhtred returned to find his first son dead in the earth. The son he’d given for Alfred’s; his flesh rendered for the England of Alfred’s dreams, for Alfred’s pride.
‘Who do you serve?’ Alfred asks, hardly above a whisper. ‘Do you serve me, Uhtred Ragnarsson?’
Uhtred stares into those eyes.
‘Do you serve me?’ He asks again. They are all alone in the hall, maybe the only two people left in the world. Uhtred thinks of the beasts of battle, of the wolf and the raven; the wolf’s red teeth, the raven’s cold eye, the carrion in their wake. Uhtred imagines every other person in the world dead. He imagines slaughtering them all for Alfred, blood soaking his skin, gristle in his teeth. He imagines Alfred with a skull in one hand, the other on the back of Uhtred’s neck.
‘Do you want me to serve?’ He asks, each word short. ‘You hate me.’
‘I–’ Alfred’s jaw works, implicitly. ‘I hate that I keep needing you. I resent you for not failing where you should fail.’
‘If I failed,’ Uhtred says, ‘You would have reason to get rid of me.’
‘Is that how you do it?’ Alfred is disbelieving, angry at sounding so. ‘By sheer force of will? To stay close by me?’
Uhtred grins with his teeth. ‘Where else shall I go?’
‘So,’ Alfred says, ‘you spite me.’
‘You kick me every time I return.’
‘And yet you return.’
‘We are going round,’ Uhtred grits, ‘in circles.’
‘I pray to God,’ Alfred says, as if he has not heard him, ‘about you. Asking him whether I can trust you.’
‘Has he replied?’
Alfred’s hand, the one that does not brace him against the throne, reaches slowly, calculatedly, to Uhtred’s neck. Uhtred doesn’t move, not as his thumb braces at the line of his jaw, as he tightens his grip, nails digging into his skin. He turns Uhtred’s head away, ever so slightly, gaze slicing down the line of his face, his neck, down over his body.
Uhtred does not move. He has never turned from a fight he could not win.
Alfred’s hand is cold at his throat, holding him at arm’s length while his eyes bore into Uhtred’s body. He looks at him like he’d look at a piece of meat upon his plate– something he resents for getting too close. Something he can’t touch.
‘You will never leave me,’ Alfred whispers. ‘I know it every time you leave Winchester. I know you will return when I call.’
Uhtred does not speak.
Alfred kisses his forehead, pulling him in further than he leans. Uhtred moves as if his body were an extension of Alfred’s; two forms of the same flesh, like he is not alone within his own bones.
When Alfred draws back, his eyes are low, looking down, down. Uhtred’s throat feels full of dust and ash: a dry road in summer, the wind whipping off the ocean. His hand itches for the hilt of his sword. His body never feels fully his when it is not on a battlefield, bloodied, and even there he supposes it is Alfred’s. Alfred watches him, eyes boring, for as long as it takes for Uhtred to act before he can question what he is doing, while all he knows is that he has to do something, anything, that can let him bite against the leash Alfred has wound, tight, at his throat.
When Uhtred kisses him, kisses his mouth, it is the first warmth he has ever felt from Alfred.
It is not like kissing a statue. It is also not like kissing a woman.
Alfred waits a moment to open for him, like he’s pushing Uhtred as far as he can before he gives in, like he’s making sure Uhtred knows it was his decision for this to happen, even after Uhtred was the one who leaned in. Alfred would peel back the flayed layers of Uhtred’s own self-flaggelation and take credit for the way his bones break. He keeps him there for a long breath, and then–
His mouth is hot, moving on Uhtred’s, and he bites when Uhtred traces along his lip with his tongue; he licks into Uhtred’s mouth, and it tastes of anger.
Alfred’s hand at his cheek, not caressing but holding, a thumb pressing hard at the hinge of his jaw. Uhtred’s own hands at his sides, limp, because it is accepted to kiss one’s king, as one kisses the foot of the cross, but not to hold him. He cannot pull Alfred down to his level; he must always remain like this: one step above him on the dais, holding him where he wishes to be.
Uhtred falls into him, like this: pressing in, and in, and in, and always held out at the door. It tastes of ashes. He pants against Alfred’s cheek when he’s pushed back, just by a breath, and he wonders if he will ever, could ever, get ahead of this all. His mouth is spit-slick, bitten, like a blackberry split into reddened flesh in the late summer.
He feels out of his own body, suspended by strings. He laughs before he can think about it; he cannot think, in this moment.
‘You will not tell me this is sinful?’ The words are too harried, too accusatory, too soft when they leave his mouth. He wants to chew them and spit them back at Alfred, wants them to be poisonous. He can’t muster it.
‘I fear you have already ruined me,’ Alfred says, and Uhtred flickers briefly over the thought, all I have done is kiss you, and he sees the weariness in Alfred’s eyes, in the soft turn of the corner of his mouth, and thinks, ah. I have haunted you too.
𓊝
There is a bolt on the library door. Uhtred had noticed it when he first stood in the room, years ago, when he and Brida had nothing to offer but their swords. Now, he pulls it across, and the weight of the iron slides like a seal into hot wax.
He does not think of Ælswith waiting for her husband in their bedchamber, or Gisela in his. He thinks of wolves and ravens and blood, and sinks into his own anger as he pushes Alfred up against the door and falls to his knees. Somewhere, far away, the pain registers.
Alfred’s hand weaves into his hair and pulls. Uhtred feels cornered, like he’s leashed. He tries to remember he tied the knot himself; his whole being is alight, vibrating. He’s anchored by the sharp pain at his head, by the cold stone beneath him, by Alfred’s dark, dark eyes piercing him like iron when he looks up at him through his lashes. He has done this before, in the harried and hot dark; he does not want Alfred to know that, partly because he knows it would only nail further the blood-cursed effigy of Uhtred he knows Alfred carries around in his mind. Also, in a smaller and darker part of his mind, because he wants Alfred to believe that he is the first man Uhtred has kneeled for, like this: in a way in which he means, heart-rended and open.
‘Good,’ Alfred says, quiet even against the dark room.
Uhtred opens his mouth.
𓊝
‘Go with Æthelred,’ Alfred murmurs, thumbnail tracing over the jut of Uhtred’s cheekbone. His words are a blanket rustle, the wind through hair. In the moonlight slitting through the tall windows, the shelves of scrolls look skeletal. Alfred’s eyes swallow the stars. ‘Take Lundene back. And then return.’
Uhtred imagines Alfred slicing where his thumb rests, and the blood pouring like tears. In the furs, upon the stone floor, they are wolves in a den, all alone once more. The night outside is silent.
He leans into the touch, leeching the leftover warmth from Alfred’s palm. ‘Yes, Lord.’
Alfred’s smile is barely there, but Uhtred knows where to look. ‘Good.’
He feels Alfred’s eyes upon his back, stroking like cold fingers down his spine, as he dresses. It’s a gaze that feels as familiar as an old lover. When he turns to meet it, Alfred is leaning against the wall, and there’s a sense about him of something older, some power that Uhtred has only ever seen in the autumn winds carrying golden leaves, or the gasp of a blade before it slices flesh. Without his crown, the weight that Alfred always bears seems lesser. It is from here, the library of his great works, that he rules, just as it is upon the battlefield that Uhtred carves that written will in blood.
He pauses at the door, a hound waiting for approval. Alfred smiles again.
‘Go.’
Uhtred goes.