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.ficsnippet 2: self-indulgent medieval AU, aka viking!John
The life, she is back to some semblance of calm after two days of great peril and upset, and I shall be giving thanks for that tomorrow. In the meantime, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dogeared and I are in complete agreement we should not have been made to work today, and I was telling her how something I'm working on for a paper is so much more interesting when thought about in terms of Rodney and John.
So I present you with an AU snippet, to be filed under "self-indulgent." Also "procrastination."
The wind whistling down the cloister usually irritates Rodney, because it blows parchment around and makes him lose his place in his copying or calculations, and even worse, gives him terrible colds even in the summer. Right now, it’s picked up some of Byrhtnoth’s idiot poetry and is swirling it down the stone walk, which Byrhtnoth would usually fume about, but Byrhtnoth is dead, lying there with his habit drenched in blood and ink.
They’ve gone through almost everything by now, the screams and shouts dying down. Rodney can smell smoke from the wooden outbuildings, even burnt stone.
“Please don’t kill me,” Rodney whispers, clutching his copies of Bede and his own work to his chest, as though it’s going to protect him from the spear and sword pointed at him. He’d seen the raiders take the jeweled paten, chalice, and the gold-decorated psalter and gospels from the treasury, but they aren’t going to be terribly interested in what he has, worn and with no decorations at all.
They won’t be interested in him, because he’s worn and undecorated, and fortunately he isn’t a woman – he’s heard stories – but the raider who’d stopped him while he’d been frantically packing up his books (and where would he have run to, anyway?) is looking at him like he is, is interesting, or like he’s trying to figure out the most interesting way to kill him.
It occurs to him he should probably pray, but that didn’t help Byrhtnoth, or Odda, or Abbot Wulfsige, and Rodney’s never been the model of piety Wulfsige had always wanted.
The raider’s still standing there staring at him, eyes shadowed by his helmet. Rodney tightens his grip on his books.
“If I don’t kill you, what the hell am I going to do with you?” the raider asks in horrifically accented English.
“Oh, I don’t know... let me go, maybe?” Rodney snaps. He should probably sound a bit more subservient, but really, when has that done anything for anyone? Ever since the raids started a few years ago, Aethelred’s yearly tributes haven’t done much – or, really, anything – to convince the Danes to stop. And why bother? Rodney draws a breath to keep from ranting about that, too. “Seriously, I’m a monk. What am I going to do, find a sword and kill you? Run barefoot across the fen to raise an army? I could maybe beat you to death with this,” he nods at the book in his arms, “but seeing as you have a spear, I don’t think it’s all that likely.”
The raider shrugs shoulders weighed down by a bear-fur collared cloak.
“I could take you with me,” he says after a moment.
“Why?” Rodney snaps. “Do you honestly think you could get a ransom for me?”
The raider shrugs again and grins, false and more than a bit menacing behind a screen of dark, grey-peppered beard. “Could I?”
“Maybe,” Rodney snaps. “How the hell should I know? If this benighted nation knew what was good for it, they’d pay you anything to get me back.” He thinks, briefly, of Wulfsige’s complaints about his recalcitrance, the impossibility of waking him up for matins or keeping his mind from wandering back to his books while reciting the offices, and doesn’t mention this.
“Really.”
“Yes, really.”
The raider manages to slouch underneath his armor, and yet Rodney knows if he even twitches to run down the cloister walk, he’ll end up like Byrhtnoth and the others. Strangely, despite all the saints’ lives he’s ever read, Rodney’s never found martyrdom appealing.
“I’m short on men, ever since Spear-Thorkell fell overboard, the idiot,” the raider says slowly, eyeing Rodney in a way Rodney really doesn’t like. “And you don’t look completely useless.”
Rodney doesn’t quite know whether to make himself look small and weak, or as capable as possible. Small and weak might get him killed, but capable might end in something that would make him want to have been killed in the relative comfort of his monastery. His habit doesn’t do much to hide his shoulders, the legacy of a youth spent working the monastery’s fields for the grain it can’t get from local tithes. He straightens, though his work-bent spine protests it.
“I’m taking you with me,” the raider says at last. The spear doesn’t waver, and neither does the sword. “You’ll work for your passage across the sea and then maybe, if you aren’t too annoying or too useless, I’ll keep you on or let you go.”
“Sounds good,” Rodney says weakly. He hopes for the second option; Hrothney has a sister house in northern Gaul, so he could go there. And the continent... more libraries, more books, fewer clouds so he could stay up to watch the stars and improve his calculations.
“You look far too happy for a man being taken hostage,” the raider says skeptically. He gestures with his spearpoint to indicate Rodney should precede him out. Rodney tries to wipe the smile from his face and hustles down the stone walk.
He tries not to shiver once they’re out the gate; he hasn’t set foot outside Hrothney for two years, not since the disastrous visit to Winchester – his last visit, Wulfsige, vibrating with unmonk-like fury, had assured him – and more than that, the fearsome longship is floating at anchor, its swan-like neck cresting into a dragon’s head. He’s heard stories about these ships, and read the chronicles, where their appearance always heralds disaster, and stories brought by Ingwine and Cynefrith, traders who had been visiting Wulfsige while the vikings had been busy burning their town.
“Keep moving,” the raider snarls, and Rodney keeps moving. They’re close enough now to see movement on the ship, other warriors with more weapons and all the treasure they’ve taken from Hrothney and wherever else they’ve been lately. He’s not even on the boat and already he feels sick.
“If you puke, it had damn well better not be on my ship.” The raider prods him up the gangway and into a chaos of hugely sweating men, couched oars and tied-off rigging. A tide of Danish submerges him, and Rodney can pick out the occasional word, a lot of cursing, a truly gigantic man asking Rodney’s captor if they’re trading in pasty-faced scholars now, and Rodney draws himself up in indignation before he remembers that he is a pasty-faced scholar and also is half this man’s size, and already in a great deal of trouble.
The raider smirks at him and hustles him forward. Rodney almost trips over a badly-stowed bag; the silver and emerald paten, one of the abbey's most treasured possessions, glints up at him from the wrapping of Wulfsige’s chausible. He swallows thickly, not sure whether it’s bile or tears he’s keeping back.
“What’s your name, brother?” the raider asks once he’s made sure Rodney is as uncomfortable as possible, crammed into the bow of the ship.
“Meredith of Hrothney,” Rodney says automatically, though he hates the name, but it’s how he’s been forced to sign all his correspondence and the few texts Wulfsige has let him send out into the wider world. “You can call me Rodney, though.”
“Well, Meredith of Hrothney,” the raider says, pulling off his helmet, “you can call me John.”
I have, perhaps, thought more about this than the actual paper. *sigh*
dogeared and I are in complete agreement we should not have been made to work today, and I was telling her how something I'm working on for a paper is so much more interesting when thought about in terms of Rodney and John.So I present you with an AU snippet, to be filed under "self-indulgent." Also "procrastination."
The wind whistling down the cloister usually irritates Rodney, because it blows parchment around and makes him lose his place in his copying or calculations, and even worse, gives him terrible colds even in the summer. Right now, it’s picked up some of Byrhtnoth’s idiot poetry and is swirling it down the stone walk, which Byrhtnoth would usually fume about, but Byrhtnoth is dead, lying there with his habit drenched in blood and ink.
They’ve gone through almost everything by now, the screams and shouts dying down. Rodney can smell smoke from the wooden outbuildings, even burnt stone.
“Please don’t kill me,” Rodney whispers, clutching his copies of Bede and his own work to his chest, as though it’s going to protect him from the spear and sword pointed at him. He’d seen the raiders take the jeweled paten, chalice, and the gold-decorated psalter and gospels from the treasury, but they aren’t going to be terribly interested in what he has, worn and with no decorations at all.
They won’t be interested in him, because he’s worn and undecorated, and fortunately he isn’t a woman – he’s heard stories – but the raider who’d stopped him while he’d been frantically packing up his books (and where would he have run to, anyway?) is looking at him like he is, is interesting, or like he’s trying to figure out the most interesting way to kill him.
It occurs to him he should probably pray, but that didn’t help Byrhtnoth, or Odda, or Abbot Wulfsige, and Rodney’s never been the model of piety Wulfsige had always wanted.
The raider’s still standing there staring at him, eyes shadowed by his helmet. Rodney tightens his grip on his books.
“If I don’t kill you, what the hell am I going to do with you?” the raider asks in horrifically accented English.
“Oh, I don’t know... let me go, maybe?” Rodney snaps. He should probably sound a bit more subservient, but really, when has that done anything for anyone? Ever since the raids started a few years ago, Aethelred’s yearly tributes haven’t done much – or, really, anything – to convince the Danes to stop. And why bother? Rodney draws a breath to keep from ranting about that, too. “Seriously, I’m a monk. What am I going to do, find a sword and kill you? Run barefoot across the fen to raise an army? I could maybe beat you to death with this,” he nods at the book in his arms, “but seeing as you have a spear, I don’t think it’s all that likely.”
The raider shrugs shoulders weighed down by a bear-fur collared cloak.
“I could take you with me,” he says after a moment.
“Why?” Rodney snaps. “Do you honestly think you could get a ransom for me?”
The raider shrugs again and grins, false and more than a bit menacing behind a screen of dark, grey-peppered beard. “Could I?”
“Maybe,” Rodney snaps. “How the hell should I know? If this benighted nation knew what was good for it, they’d pay you anything to get me back.” He thinks, briefly, of Wulfsige’s complaints about his recalcitrance, the impossibility of waking him up for matins or keeping his mind from wandering back to his books while reciting the offices, and doesn’t mention this.
“Really.”
“Yes, really.”
The raider manages to slouch underneath his armor, and yet Rodney knows if he even twitches to run down the cloister walk, he’ll end up like Byrhtnoth and the others. Strangely, despite all the saints’ lives he’s ever read, Rodney’s never found martyrdom appealing.
“I’m short on men, ever since Spear-Thorkell fell overboard, the idiot,” the raider says slowly, eyeing Rodney in a way Rodney really doesn’t like. “And you don’t look completely useless.”
Rodney doesn’t quite know whether to make himself look small and weak, or as capable as possible. Small and weak might get him killed, but capable might end in something that would make him want to have been killed in the relative comfort of his monastery. His habit doesn’t do much to hide his shoulders, the legacy of a youth spent working the monastery’s fields for the grain it can’t get from local tithes. He straightens, though his work-bent spine protests it.
“I’m taking you with me,” the raider says at last. The spear doesn’t waver, and neither does the sword. “You’ll work for your passage across the sea and then maybe, if you aren’t too annoying or too useless, I’ll keep you on or let you go.”
“Sounds good,” Rodney says weakly. He hopes for the second option; Hrothney has a sister house in northern Gaul, so he could go there. And the continent... more libraries, more books, fewer clouds so he could stay up to watch the stars and improve his calculations.
“You look far too happy for a man being taken hostage,” the raider says skeptically. He gestures with his spearpoint to indicate Rodney should precede him out. Rodney tries to wipe the smile from his face and hustles down the stone walk.
He tries not to shiver once they’re out the gate; he hasn’t set foot outside Hrothney for two years, not since the disastrous visit to Winchester – his last visit, Wulfsige, vibrating with unmonk-like fury, had assured him – and more than that, the fearsome longship is floating at anchor, its swan-like neck cresting into a dragon’s head. He’s heard stories about these ships, and read the chronicles, where their appearance always heralds disaster, and stories brought by Ingwine and Cynefrith, traders who had been visiting Wulfsige while the vikings had been busy burning their town.
“Keep moving,” the raider snarls, and Rodney keeps moving. They’re close enough now to see movement on the ship, other warriors with more weapons and all the treasure they’ve taken from Hrothney and wherever else they’ve been lately. He’s not even on the boat and already he feels sick.
“If you puke, it had damn well better not be on my ship.” The raider prods him up the gangway and into a chaos of hugely sweating men, couched oars and tied-off rigging. A tide of Danish submerges him, and Rodney can pick out the occasional word, a lot of cursing, a truly gigantic man asking Rodney’s captor if they’re trading in pasty-faced scholars now, and Rodney draws himself up in indignation before he remembers that he is a pasty-faced scholar and also is half this man’s size, and already in a great deal of trouble.
The raider smirks at him and hustles him forward. Rodney almost trips over a badly-stowed bag; the silver and emerald paten, one of the abbey's most treasured possessions, glints up at him from the wrapping of Wulfsige’s chausible. He swallows thickly, not sure whether it’s bile or tears he’s keeping back.
“What’s your name, brother?” the raider asks once he’s made sure Rodney is as uncomfortable as possible, crammed into the bow of the ship.
“Meredith of Hrothney,” Rodney says automatically, though he hates the name, but it’s how he’s been forced to sign all his correspondence and the few texts Wulfsige has let him send out into the wider world. “You can call me Rodney, though.”
“Well, Meredith of Hrothney,” the raider says, pulling off his helmet, “you can call me John.”
I have, perhaps, thought more about this than the actual paper. *sigh*