From Kaerls to Huscarls.

[aleifr]

Aleifr's fingers flexed a little as the shuttle began to rumble with the thrum of it's engines, digging into his harness as he felt the thing lift off the ground. He still wasn't used to this. Even after months of serving the Rout and seeing the wonders that they had at their disposal, riding in the belly of one of their flying ships still made him vaguely uneasy - at least until they'd hit the point where they were flying smoothly.

Once they were, he unbuckled the harness strapping him into his seat and made his way to the viewport at the back of the ship. Thick, white clouds filled up most of the view, but he could see little scraps of Fenris through the gaps. Mountains, ice, braces of pine trees and the endless expanse of Asaheim. As they climbed, the details grew harder to make out and his perpetual scowl deepened.

He was grateful to Jarl Ironwolf for the honor he'd given him - him and Aila both. He'd be a fucking idiot not to considering he's to be serving one of the Allfather's agents directly ... but it was strange to think that he might not see this place again. Their world. Their home. He didn't like that thought.

But his jarl had given him a task, and he'd see it through.

Comments

[letitallout]

Aila shared Aleifr's unease about takeoff and about their departure, but eventually you get married and leave your parents' tent. Like a good parent, Fenris had taught them what it could, and it was time to move on. The jarl wouldn't have sent them otherwise.

The howl of the winds accompanying their passage started to die away as the air thinned, leaving only the roar of the engines, and Aila extricated herself from the safety harness to join him at his spot by the viewport. The curvature of the planet had grown visible with altitude, the clouds pure white when seen from above, and she laid a hand on Aleifr's arm as they gazed out at Fenris.

[aleifr]

He feels Aila's touch and his gaze moves from the viewport to her and lets out a long exhale through his nose. His arm shifts under her fingers, pulling itself free so that he can drape it over her shoulders. He doesn't doubt that they're more than capable of this, but there's a difference between leaving your parents' tent and leaving your planet.

"Strange, isn't it?"

[letitallout]

"Sometimes it feels like we only left the tribe yesterday." She leans against Aleifr, resting her head on his chest, the smooth, even fabric of his uniform rustling in her ear, clothing that men would kill over where they had grown up, casually handed out even to the rawest recruit. "Now we're leaving Fenris."

[aleifr]

"Leaving Fenris to serve the Allfather."

It's hard to muster any meaningful enthusiasm at the moment, but ... that does bring the hint of a smile to his lips. That they'd earned that distinction, the two of them, out of all the other kaerls. They would be sworn thanes to an agent of the Allfather's will, and they were picked for it by Jarl Ironwolf himself.

[letitallout]

"And you only have me to be smug at about it, poor thing," Aila says in mock sympathy, wrapping an arm around his waist.

[aleifr]

She gets a snort of laughter out of him with that. That little half-smile of his curls into a lop-sided grin and he looks down at her, shaking his head. She might be expecting some sarcastic remark, some tease about how she'd been the one walking a foot taller after their audience with Jarl Ironwolf, but ... no.

Instead, his smirk softens into something warmer and he leans down and presses a kiss to her forehead. She's an ass - fucking insufferable at times - but she's his, and he'd be miserable without her.

Fenris is a miserable ball of snow and rock, where you either become as hard and cold as long-winter ice or you die. But it's home. It's his home, the home of his people, and it's all he'd known before the Rout showed him there was more. Leaving it behind is bittersweet, despite its hardships.

She made it less so.

[letitallout]

Well, if he'd been walking a foot taller, someone might have mistaken him for an Astartes and that would have been awkward.

Aila tips her head up toward the kiss, closing her eyes and feeling Aleifr's whiskers tickle her skin. No one ever guesses he's the sentimental one. Hell, they don't even believe her when she outright tells them.

"Ah, hjartath mitt." Aila's not without sentiment herself, but very few other people have heard her call Aleifr my heart. "Home is wherever you are."

[aleifr]

"I know, elskr."

He lingers there for a moment longer, breathing in her scent, and he feels better. Good enough that he's done staring out the viewport and feeling melancholic. He's got work to do - they have work to do.

Back across the hold he goes, retrieving his axe from the compartment next to his seat. He pulls a whetstone out of a pouch on his tunic and draws it across the blade.

[letitallout]

Aila stays at the port for a while longer, noticing the red-orange glow of a minor eruption through a break in the clouds. Bad day for someone's tribe...but not theirs, she hopes. It's not her problem anymore regardless. After a moment, she follows Aleifr, settling back into her own seat beside his and watching with affectionate amusement as he works on the already gleaming and razor-sharp edge of his axe. "Oh? Has it gotten blunted since this morning?"

[aleifr]

Aleifr glances up, snorts, and rolls his eyes. For a moment, as his attention goes back to his axe, it looks as if that's all she's going to get as a response. But, after another scrape of his whetstone, he speaks.

"The fuck else am I supposed to do?"

He lifts up his axe towards the dim light strips recessed into the ceiling of the hold.

"My axe, your aim." He says, turning the axe around to inspect it. "That's what's been promised to her."

Evidently satisfied he lowers his axe back across his lap.

"Leave a good impression with that, figure out whatever else an offworld thane expects from her huscarls when we deal with it."

[letitallout]

Now that she knows such a thing exists, they'll have to pry the bolt pistol out of Aila's cold, dead hands, and she drums her fingers absently on the butt when Aleifr mentions her specialty.

"Steinar says most offworld warriors couldn't best a beardless boy from his tribe. That Fenris would kill all but a few of their finest within a day." Aila shrugs and shakes her head, pursing her lips. It's incredible to her, the thought of worlds upon worlds as soft as that. "If that's what she thinks a mortal warrior is, she might not know what to expect."

[aleifr]

Aleifr snorts again.

"You think an agent of the Allfather's will is going to surround herself with milksops?"

He doesn't doubt Steinar's right, but he's sure there have to be some offworlders worth a fuck in a fight.

[letitallout]

"Why would she need us if she already had warriors worth a damn?"

It doesn't make sense to her, either, but why come to Fenris if you didn't want something you couldn't get anywhere else?

[aleifr]

"You're going to lose warriors in battle no matter how good they are."

You could be big as a thunderwolf, strong as an ox, and fast as the wind itself, but enough whoresons with axes and guns against you and eventually those things don't matter. Whether you get tired or they get lucky, it happens.

"Besides," He shrugs. "I just said they weren't useless, not that we weren't better."

[letitallout]

It's Aila's turn to snort. "Fair point."

She sighs and shifts in her seat, her knuckles brushing the bulkhead behind them as she stretches her arms above her head.

"I imagine she can handle herself." What with being the Allfather's chosen and all. That's not a job anyone gets if they can't win their fair share of fights.

[aleifr]

"I imagine you're right." He nods. "But the Allfather himself made Russ and his brothers to wage war among the stars."

In plainer terms, even people of immense power have warriors underneath them, ready to aid in their battles.

[letitallout]

"We're a bit of a step down from that," Aila says with a chuckle, but she she takes his point. "Ah, well. We'll just have to take things as they come. If we weren't worthy of the honor, Jarl Ironwolf would have chosen someone else."

[aleifr]

"I know."

Whether or not they were worthy was never in question to him. Short of the brothers of the Rout, he'd take the two of them against just about anyone on Fenris.

He'd still like to know more of what's expected of them, though.

"Docking with the Arbiter Elegantiae in two minutes." The pilot's voice echoes from the cockpit.

[letitallout]

Minutes. Aila still isn't entirely accustomed to such small divisions of time, or such precise ones, but two of them isn't long at all.

She fishes around in her own storage compartment for her own axes, smaller, single-handed weapons that she can switch out quickly for a pistol or a rifle. Sharpshooter she may be, but Aila is not about to insult her new thane by appearing before her without an axe. She buffs out a smudge with her sleeve, decides that's good enough, and rises to clip them to their mountings on her back, the harness grabbing them of its own accord. Attempted explanations by their trainers notwithstanding, she's still not quite sure what a magnet is, but she's also not complaining about how useful they are.

[aleifr]

Aleifr grunts out a curse under his breath and moves to do the same. His arsenal's a little less extensive - his axe, a bolt pistol, and a pair of wicked, long-bladed knive - and he has everything in the appropriate holster or 'magnetic' mounting in short order.

He throws a glance up in the direction of the cockpit. There's a sliver of the pilot's viewport visible from where he sits. He can see the Inquisitor's ship. It's too far to make out details, but ...

"Not as big as the Jarl's barge." He says, brow furrowing because that's ... unexpected, to him.

[letitallout]

"Hmm?" Aila looks up from checking the safety on her autorifle, following Aleifr's gaze to the cockpit.

"The Jarl brings a lot of tanks with him," she points out. "Maybe the Inquisitor likes lighter units."

[aleifr]

He'll concede that with a small shrug. Entirely possible the Inquisitor prefers to run light.

"Still seems small."

He'd only been aboard the barge once, but the crew for the thing was ... massive. More bodies than you'd have in a hundred tribes just to man it. Only a relatively small part of the titanic bulk of the ship stored the jarl's warriors and their tools.

If the ship he was looking at was laid out the same way, it could hold maybe forty warriors. Maybe sixty if they were packed tight, with lighter equipment.

[letitallout]

"We'll see soon enough." Aila adds the rifle to her already large assortment of tools for killing things, then switches to double-checking the various knives sheathed in various places to ensure she's able to draw one from just about any position. She can get by with one or two, but why would she want to?

[aleifr]

Whereas the only thing he needs at that point is his autorifle, which he'll slap onto it's magnetic mount before giving his armor one final once-over.

Everything seems in order, and the pilot's voice comes in from the cockpit again. "Final approach."

Aleifr feels the shuttle lurch slightly as it begins to decelerate.

"Five, four, three, two ..."

He can see the cavernous interior of the hangar outside the rear viewport as the shuttle arrests its momentum and drops to the deck with a commendably smooth touchdown. The seals on the rear hatch pop with a pneumatic hiss and the ramp begins to lower ...

[letitallout]

...revealing a single man of about Aila's height, dark-haired and stocky of build, wearing robes embroidered with the staff and serpent sigil of a medicae. When he sees the pair starting down the ramp, his expression switches from the neutrality of waiting to a friendly smile.

"The newest additions to our merry band." He spreads his hands in an expansive gesture. "Welcome aboard the Arbiter Elegantiae. I'm Doctor Henry McCoy, in charge of information both profound and trivial, and of keeping you battle-ready sorts in more or less one piece."

Aila's so taken aback by his manner she almost misses that he's speaking flawless juvyk. "Your juvyk is very good," she says, in lieu of what the hell.