Title: The Left Hand Hound, part 1/3 
Author: Brigantine 
Pairing: Vig/Bean 
Rating: NC-17 
Warnings: AU.  Some rough going. 
Feedback: We loves it, my precioussss! 
Disclaimer: When I say Alternate Universe I really mean that. 
Summary: Under the shadow of war, a family living on the 
border takes in a stranger.  
  
A/N: A failed attempt at dark!fic.  The first time I tried to write 
this I was in a pretty foul and twisted mood, and figured I'd try 
my hand at writing a story starring Evil!Viggo. I got about half a 
page into the effort and ran out of evil. Cursing and looking 
agitatedly to my RPS Delivery Bunny for assistance I found him 
crouched nearby on my bookshelf, attempting somewhat 
desperately to fashion the sign of the cross at me using my dvd 
of "Sharpe's Rifles" and a pocket-size edition of "Persuasion."  
  
########################## 
 
Viggo can hear his youngest brother quite clearly. Just outside 
the great, sagging door of the abandoned barn Orlando crouches, 
sobbing and retching up what's left of his afternoon meal. Viggo's 
middle brother managed to keep his stomach under control until 
the wind took an unlucky shift, and now Karl is around the 
corner, where their foreman finds him no better off than Orlando. 
 
Ed comes to a dead stop just inside the shadow of the barn, and 
all the color drains from his weathered face as he stares and 
chokes, "By the Horse Lord and all his daughters, what devils' 
carnival is this?" 
 
The little that is left of the corpses of seven men dangle from the 
barn's heavy old rafters. Their condition is clearly not a 
consequence of time and natural progress after a proper criminal 
hanging, but rather of something done for private reasons, a 
precise and recent butchery; fingers and hands, toes and feet, 
the puzzle parts of faces, loops of intestines drawn out and piled 
neatly together on the barren floor near each slowly creaking 
noose, neck and shoulders, each yawning cavity of backbone and 
pelvis; a just old barn turned to a heresy of shelter. Small 
parades of flies swirl out of shadows, through dull gold shafts of 
late afternoon sun that highlight craft far beyond that of a simple 
hangman's, and Viggo stands morbidly transfixed beneath a far 
rafter, staring upward. 
 
Damaged but intact, the eighth body is suspended from the 
barn's framework by its arms pulled wide, wrapped in tight knots 
of rope from biceps to wrists. The still hands, fingers splayed like 
the tips of a hawk's wings are abraded, bloodied. A fighter. Was. 
The heavy stone hobbled between its ankles draws the body taut 
in mid-air, an angelic mockery in blood and silence. Viggo pulls 
another drink from his canteen, determined to conquer his 
rebellious belly and he thinks, with a forced detachment that he 
knows will fail him eventually, that the blood-encrusted hair 
might be blonde. He notes where the whip wrapped around from 
behind and repeatedly cut open the skin over the right side of the 
ribcage, and down over the belly. The wounds are ugly. His eyes 
automatically follow the uneven tracks of dried crimson 
tributaries that have meandered down naked skin, over back and 
ribs and belly and hips, veered into the valleys between hips and 
thighs, trickled down the deeply bruised shins and backs of the 
legs toward the heels, all narrowed at last at the ankles into a 
slow flood, to finally spill over the dam of rope, and spread into 
rich, red deltas over bare feet. Viggo traces a single, heavy 
droplet of blood as it travels down the outside of the left foot, 
clings gleaming to the smallest toe for a moment, and then falls, 
shimmering briefly in the dying daylight like a red glass bead 
before it shatters on the hard-packed floor. Viggo feels himself 
make a noise that he is unfamiliar with, and then he wonders, 
"Ed, for how long does a dead man bleed?" 
 
 
When they're two miles or so out they send Orlando ahead, 
riding fast on his buckskin mare to let the house know that a 
wounded man is on the way, and to warn that Mederan soldiers 
have crossed the border as close as three days slow riding. 
 
For the last three days the north man, for by the damaged tattoo 
covering most of his left shoulder, and the lean grace of him that 
is what Viggo guesses he is, has lain on his belly, rattling along in 
the back of the camp wagon with what is left of the dry goods 
after a two-week roundup. In all those hours, though Viggo is 
certain every sway and jolt has been agony, the north man has 
made no complaint. He has hardly, in fact, made any noise at all, 
though twice at night Viggo caught him awake, watching Viggo 
with fathomless green eyes as they lay together in the darkness 
in the back of the wagon. He did the best he could for the north 
man on the trail, which wasn't much. Viggo swaddled him like an 
infant, using three of his own shirts, but though the stranger has 
taken a little water, he has passed hardly any of it, and Viggo 
worries that he may lack the will to go on, may have left it back 
there in the embers of a barn turned pyre.  
 
All hands agreed that the north man needed rescuing, in the 
same way that the barn needed burning, but Karl pointed out 
with some amusement and a hint of concern that while Viggo has 
attached himself to this bloodied stranger as though he were a 
lost colt, the north man has neither offered information nor 
asked any. Viggo replied, steadfastly ignoring the difference, "My 
horse didn't have a name until I gave him one, and he still 
doesn't care after mine." 
 
Viggo's horse is a tall, angry roan named Roland, who routinely 
bites and kicks and would carry Viggo to the edge of the world, 
were Viggo to ask it of him. He still bears the scars of a doomed 
and violent attempt by their neighbor Droka's son to tame him. 
Viggo paid the youth three times the stallion's original price, 
brought him home exhausted, bloody and defiant, and now, as 
they follow the road's curve along the last half mile towards 
home, Roland's steps quicken, and he tosses his head eagerly, 
his stride long and sure even after two hard weeks on the trail.  
 
Viggo watches the north man, dozing fitfully in the back of the 
wagon as the family's villa comes into view, the low hills around 
it green with late spring grass and washed in swathes of pink and 
white sweet clover. A roil of hounds, noisy and joyful, bound up 
to meet them. They keep well clear of Roland, yapping and 
whining for Viggo to come down to them for a proper mauling. 
Orlando, olive-skinned and doe-eyed like Viggo's mother, and 
their father Bernard, whose amber-blonde hair and cool regard 
were passed along to Viggo and his sister, walk behind them. 
Bernard's older brother Ian is here as well, which in these days 
could mean anything. 
 
 
 
Karl and Orlando are in the main house, eating supper with their 
mother and their father, reporting to Bernard their observations 
over the last couple of weeks; the state of the grazing and the 
herds, and anything else they've noticed for good or for tending 
including, Viggo expects, the horror at the old farm. He wonders 
if Orlando can recall it all without turning green again. At 
Orlando's alarm Viggo's younger sister Miranda brought 
necessary hospital goods into his bungalow; an extra bed with a 
deep feather mattress and multiple changes of white cotton 
sheets; medicinal herbs, extra food, and a parade of hired 
servants to heat and haul extra water, and now that the crowd 
has been sent away to other duties and her mother's supervision, 
she sits on the little bench in Viggo's bathing room and leans 
against their uncle's shoulder. She tells Viggo, "The sorrel mare 
delivered a pretty filly four days after you left. She's got milk to 
spare." 
 
Ian watches with cool blue eyes, his dispassionate expression a 
Parliamentarian's habitual lie as Viggo and Ian's servant, Eric 
carefully minister to the north man, kneeling with him in the 
marble tub set into the rough stone floor of the bathing room. 
Eric is broad and softly dark-eyed to Viggo's intent grey stare 
and lean frame, and between them they bathe the silent north 
man, first of all to gently sponge away layers of blood, sweat and 
dust. Gradually fine, dark blonde hair has been revealed in the 
warm lantern light of the room, along with fair skin, badly 
bruised, lashed and bleeding slowly afresh. Now they are bathing 
his wounds again, this time in a fragrant mix of antiseptics--
knitbone, goldenseal and southernwood.  
 
Viggo details to his uncle everything they found at the 
abandoned homestead: stolen horses, rustled cattle; some 
belonging to Bernard's family, a few from Droka's and others 
from further north and east. He tells Ian about the Mederan 
soldiers--the three dead near the old house, and those unknown, 
who must have fled well before the three brothers' arrival. Viggo 
focuses on the gentleness of his own hands working across the 
breadth of the north man's shoulders, traces blue horses and 
black and red dragons entwined over a broad handspan of the 
pale skin, curling over part of the north man's upper arm. He 
describes to his uncle what he and Karl and Orlando stumbled 
into in the barn. Miranda makes a small, distressed sound, and 
Eric stares wide-eyed at Viggo, as though not quite able to 
comprehend, while one large hand curves up the back of the 
north man's neck and into his wet hair and Eric pulls him a little 
closer, perhaps to protect him from something that has already 
happened. The north man leans into the curve of Eric's neck, and 
says nothing.  
 
Ian points out thoughtfully, "You know as well as I do, horse 
thieves and cattle rustlers are either sold as slaves in the town 
market, or hanged by the side of the nearest road. Going to the 
trouble of taking a man apart a piece at a time... that sort of 
effort is generally reserved for politics, Viggo." 
 
When they put the north man to bed at last, Viggo sits on the 
soft bed with the man in his arms, and holds a cup of the sorrel 
mare's milk to his lips. At first he turns away, but Viggo dips his 
fingers in the milk and traces the seam of the northerner's 
mouth. He licks at his lips, tastes the mare's milk, and begins to 
suck at Viggo's fingers, reminding Viggo of Karl's teasing about a 
lost colt. When Viggo holds the cup to his lips again he lets Viggo 
help him drink, and when the milk is gone and the north man's 
eyelids are closing and he's leaning heavily against Viggo's 
shoulders it's everything Viggo can do not to kiss the top if his 
head, which is an odd thing, he thinks, to want to do to a 
stranger. 
 
The north man falls to exhaustion on the feather bed only 
moments after he's sunk into it. Miranda has left behind a warm, 
damp poultice of white willow, black birch, and knitbone, and 
Viggo lays it over the north man's back. Just the two of them in 
Viggo's quiet house now, Viggo warms medicinal oil in his hands; 
fine olive oil steeped with arnica and yarrow for the heavy 
bruising on the north man's legs. Viggo works deftly, accustomed 
to years of working out his own hurts and bruises from a lifetime 
of ranch work. His callused hands move from heel to knee to hip, 
caressing slowly and thoroughly over the damaged limbs, not 
wanting to wake the wounded man.  
 
When he's finished, Viggo sits watching the northerner's sleeping 
face. High cheekbones. Aquiline nose. Strong chin. North man. 
It's remarkable, how familiar Viggo already is with this body. 
During the first night after they cut him down from the rafters 
Viggo tended to him in the supply wagon, gently cleaning him as 
well as he could, trying to catalog the damage he'd sustained; 
checking his sex for signs of having been pierced with a slave 
ring, searching for signs of rape. He found no evidence of either 
bondage or violation, but what he remembers vividly now is how 
the north man never protested his invasions, but merely 
accepted Viggo's touch, no matter how intimate; sometimes 
blacked-out and unaware, but just as often consciously pliant, 
watching Viggo silently as he worked.  
 
Viggo covers the north man's legs, just to the dip of his lower 
back, with the top sheet and a single, light blanket. He adds to 
the going fire to bring up the heat in the bedroom. The nights are 
warming slowly as spring glides into summer, but Viggo wants 
the north man as comfortable as wounds such as his will allow, 
and his weakened body needs all the assistance it can get. When 
Viggo finally settles himself down, after two weeks of sleeping on 
the ground and eating trail rations, his first night back in his own 
bed, cleaned up, and his belly full, he drops off into a black and 
dreamless sleep. 
 
 
In the morning, Viggo wakes before the north man, and lies abed 
for a time watching him sleep. He guesses that the two of them 
are close to the same age, someplace where Viggo might have a 
teenager ranging about the place, if he'd ever been the marrying 
sort. He wonders why this man left the north; if there are 
children or a mother and father waiting. He finds himself staring 
at the lines of the north man's shoulder, the deltoid muscles 
Viggo kneaded into life when the north man could barely lower 
his arms that first day; how fine that curve is, how it leads into 
his upper arm, the relaxed biceps, down into the soft crook of the 
elbow, then to the long bones of the forearm, and the way the 
north man's long hand rests on the mattress next to the pillow, 
the arch of his fingertips and the heel of his palm, and how the 
bruises from the ropes that had been twined around his arm 
have started to green a little, and to dim beneath the pale skin. 
Viggo rises quietly and goes in search of food. 
 
He brings the north man warmed mare's milk with honey, and 
bread with sweet butter, and helps him to sit up on his bed to eat 
it. There is blood on the sheets, darkened swipes and dried 
splotches, but a search with gentle hands shows Viggo that the 
wounds are healing cleanly so far. The north man eyes the bread 
and butter, but leaves it, as though he can't quite reconcile his 
belly to it yet.  
 
Now that Viggo has had a look at the tattoo mostly free of blood 
and in the morning light, the horses and the dragons writhing 
over the north man's left shoulder seem to be doing something 
together that he had never imagined horses and dragons doing--
assuming, for the sake of argument, that dragons exist, 
somewhere in the far, wild north. He noticed this in the supply 
wagon back on the trail, but assumed his imagination was 
playing tricks. Now he knows. He wonders if maybe, to the 
northern people, that is a natural relationship for horses and 
dragons. Viggo wonders how much of that relationship they 
might see as natural for people, as well, and it starts his mind 
turning in a direction that sets him back a bit. The north man 
clasps the little tankard of mare's milk and honey in both hands 
and nurses it, while Viggo sips at a mug of strong tea and 
watches over the rim, hoping the north man won't catch him 
staring.  
 
Viggo has work to do today. He's tired, and he needs a 
substantial breakfast, but he will eat a little later, in the main 
house, with his brothers and sister. Ian has promised Eric to look 
after the north man while Viggo is away. Eric is tall for a 
southerner; strong-boned, muscular, once infibulated with a 
cheap brass slave's ring to remind him of what he wasn't, and 
sold and bought and sold and bought again for rough labor, until 
Ian found him, quite by chance, ragged and resigned to proving 
profitable in the market in Branton. Ian is, Eric once confided to 
Viggo, the one decent thing that ever happened to him in a slave 
market. Or up to that moment ever, really, which is a shame, 
because Eric is one of the kindest people Viggo knows. 
 
 
 
Viggo and Karl are digging fence posts on the eastern side of the 
southern pasture. Orlando and Ed are working nearly two miles 
away on the western side. Some of the hired hands have been 
cutting and trimming ash saplings since Viggo and Ed and the 
others went off to gather the northern herd, and right now there 
are two hands unloading a wagon of split rails for Karl and Viggo 
to string between the posts. This is the first time Bernard's family 
has ever felt the need to fence in pasture or field. There's 
nothing for it now, though. Banditry has increased this close to 
the wildlands of the border, increasing chaos inspired by a war 
still undeclared. The Stathan foot sent to replenish the old 
garrisons have so far been as much trouble as good.  
 
If he squints Viggo can spot his sister's bright blonde hair among 
the dozen men cutting cattle for branding, just off to the 
southwest. Karl's eldest child, a slender girl of twelve, is 
apprenticing with Miranda today. She'll be tall, like her mother, 
but has the dark look of Karl and his mother's quiet ferocity. 
Viggo catches Karl wiping sweat off his forehead and watching 
his daughter ride, and ride well, and Viggo knows what he's 
thinking. "Remember," he says, "Ian has room for the family in 
the capitol, if it comes to that."  
 
Karl nods gloomily, "The ranch will be lost. Seven generations, 
we've tended this land, Viggo." 
 
Viggo drags over a top rail, and insists, "As long as the family 
remains intact, we can start over. That's all that matters, Karl." 
 
His brother sighs sharply, nods at his elder; doesn't point out 
that all of this is pretty much pointless, if Mederan regiments 
march across the border; doesn't call Viggo on the heartbreak 
threatening just there, behind his brother's grey eyes. "Yeah. 
Yeah, you're right." 
 
 
Bernard and Ian have been working in the barn since after 
breakfast. He rarely has the time or opportunity for it now, but 
Ian has always enjoyed the calm and intimacy of grooming a 
horse. He doesn't mind cleaning mud and dung from their 
hooves. He creaks a little these days, kneeling and bending so 
much, but his hands remember what to do, how he was brought 
up. This is where he learned the value of patience. It was the 
horses who taught him when to push, when to pull, and when it 
is better to simply stand back and pay attention. 
 
"I've heard rumor," Bernard says from the stall next to Ian, 
where he rakes out the straw of a sturdy chestnut gelding, "that 
the young prince is fled, rather than dead. Anything about that in 
the capitol?" 
 
"I've heard the rumor," his elder brother admits. "The latest 
version is that one of his friends from the warrens got wind of a 
proposed assassination and warned him off. Gaius kept some 
fairly colorful company in his youth." 
 
"And what do you think?" 
 
Ian recognizes the fear and the hope in his brother's voice. "I 
wouldn't put any credence in it, except that what survived of his 
friends in the Mederan Senate--representatives, their families--
they all disappeared on the same night, and not a single dead 
body has washed up anywhere. They have entirely vanished." 
 
"So either there was a swift mass murder that night, and they're 
all lying together in a common grave, or Gaius might be alive 
somewhere," Bernard considers. "Gods, I hope so!" 
 
Ian shrugs. He hates the truth, sometimes. "Quintus is a 
grasping bastard, and a defiler of underage females, that's all 
given, and his middle brother has a nasty reputation for making 
people disappear. Not the most beloved monarchs in Medera's 
history. Still, if Gaius lives and vies for the throne it will mean 
civil war in Medera, and heaven only knows who else will be 
drawn into it." 
 
Bernard sighs and leans on his straw-rake. "Then we're fucked 
either way. A civil war will spill over the border, of course." 
 
"They always seem to," Ian concedes, leaving the big grey with 
an affectionate scratch between the ears. He takes the handles of 
the barrow Bernard has just filled. "We could get lucky." 
 
"Odds?" 
 
"Not really very good, I'm afraid." 
 
As Ian trundles his barrow full of old straw out of the barn and 
into the late morning light, he notices that Eric has brought the 
north man out to sit in the shade of Viggo's modest porch. Eric, 
more specifically, is sitting on the long bench at the front of the 
bungalow, while the north man has stretched out on the seat 
beside him, lying atop a folded-over blanket and wrapped in a 
clean sheet to protect him from dust and opportunistic horse 
flies. He rests his head on Eric's substantial thigh and quietly 
watches the workings of the ranch. 
 
Ian makes his way toward the pile of straw and horse droppings 
already at the rear of the barn. There, it will all slowly age into 
fertilizer for orchards and kitchen gardens. As he passes Viggo's 
house he sets the barrow down and squints into the shade of 
Viggo's porch. 
 
"Here I am," he complains, "a member in good standing of the 
Stathan Parliament, and there you sit, a great, strapping young 
fellow like you, playing nursemaid while I shovel horse shit." 
 
"But Master," Eric points out, grinning back, "isn't that what you 
do all day in the Parliament, anyway?" 
 
"Cheeky young devil! You're going to pay for that." 
 
Eric bounces, just a little. "Oh I hope so, Master!" 
 
Bernard's laughter rings out from inside the barn, and Ian takes 
up his barrow again, griping unconvincingly, "This is what 
happens when I come home. No respect at all." 
 
He flicks an affectionate half-grin at his boy. Eric can't see from 
his angle, but Ian notices the north man's smile. It's faint, hardly 
more than a softening of his features, and Ian doesn't let on that 
he's noticed, but he thinks to himself that the north man must be 
feeling a bit better, and perhaps soon he'll trust them well 
enough to start talking and give the family that has taken him in 
some answers. Or maybe he won't. If the man's kept his secret 
this long, there's little enough reason for him to let it go now. 
 
"Bugger," Ian mutters. 
 
 
 
Viggo wakes, staring up into the flame-shadows on the ceiling, 
and listening carefully. In his weariness, it takes him a moment 
to remember the north man in the narrower bed nearby, and he 
turns, frowning. He slips out of bed, hoisting briefly at the waist 
of loose trousers, and crouches at the side of the bed where the 
north man writhes, the herbal poultice slid to the floor, the 
bedclothes kicked off, and Viggo realizes that he is still asleep, 
though he whimpers and moans, and presses fiercely against his 
ears. Viggo grasps one arm, speaks softly to wake the man from 
his nightmare, and the north man starts in a panic, drawing 
quickly back with an expression of such grief and despair that all 
the horror of the abandoned farm floods back into Viggo's 
memory at once, and it occurs to him for the first time how much 
helpless screaming went on in that barn before he and his 
brothers arrived, what the noise must have been like. He 
understands that his imagination falls far short of the north 
man's reality. 
 
Viggo crawls up onto the bed and pulls the north man to him, 
holding him tight against his chest by the only unscored places 
he can find, there at the back of his neck, and here, at the hip, 
and the north man clings to him as they kneel there, rocking 
slowly together, the north man wrenched by mourning while 
Viggo hears himself crooning a lullaby he hasn't heard since 
Orlando was a toddler. Viggo's voice isn't much for singing, but 
that's beside the point. What surprises him is that he 
remembers. 
 
Eventually the tears subside, and Viggo wonders if the north man 
has fallen asleep, but when he pulls away a little to look into the 
tear-streaked face, the man's green eyes are dark and intent on 
his own. Viggo brushes at his forehead, nudging aside fine locks 
of hair skewed one way and another, and it occurs to him, oddly, 
that though his hair is shaggy about his ears, and his beard has 
grown rough in recent days, this north man has seen a proper 
barber more recently than Viggo has. Not fresh from the stern 
crags of the mountains in the remote, cold northwest, then. Not 
newly journeyed from the half-passable border between Medera 
and Turin. Here is a city dweller. 
 
The north man hiccups and wipes at his nose, turning away as 
though embarrassed. He has the look of a falcon about his eyes, 
but there is a softness behind his look, something in the way he 
shies away now, as though he holds himself responsible. Viggo 
wonders if he is ashamed to have survived.  
 
Viggo cajoles and settles him once more into bed, dabs a dry 
cloth at the slow ooze of blood here and there, and goes into his 
small kitchen to brew a herbal tea for both of them. He begins to 
fix a new poultice. Things he wishes desperately to forget flicker 
redly in his mind's eye, color his fears for the future. He wonders 
whether and how much the north man screamed, tries to push 
the image away, but can't, quite. He wonders if this is truly the 
foreshadow of war, if this is only the beginning. "White willow 
and black birch for the pain," he chants softly to himself, 
clenches his teeth against a shriek of denial trying to claw its way 
free, and he gasps, "Knitbone to keep it clean."  
 
 
Later that same night Viggo wakes again into darkness, thinking 
he's heard something, but his mind is bleary. He rubs at his face 
and turns to see if the north man is all right, only to find the bed 
empty. He waits for a little while, listening for sounds of someone 
in the kitchen, or in the bathing room, perhaps using the latrine, 
but all he finds is silence in the house, and the sound of a fox 
barking some way off east. One of the horses in the corral snorts 
and kicks at the turf, and then there's nothing. 
 
Frowning, Viggo rises, checks the bathing room, the kitchen, the 
little back porch, his anxiety increasing. He searches the disused 
garden, comes back through the bungalow, through the sitting 
room, out onto the front porch. He gets dressed, checks the 
corral nearest, then the barn. No north man. Viggo throws a 
riding pad onto a sleepy and rather confused Roland, buckles on 
a light bridle, and they take off into the dark. Viggo chooses the 
west road, because the east road is where the abandoned farm 
lies, and he really doesn't think the northerner would want to go 
that way. 
 
It's the small hours of the morning, and the air is cool, quiet, and 
a declining half-moon is bright in the sky. It would be a nice ride, 
except that Viggo is worried, and annoyed, and he could use a 
decent night's sleep, which he hasn't had in quite a while, and it's 
starting to affect him. He clucks Roland into an easy canter. 
 
Eventually he spots the northerner ahead of him on the road, 
walking steadily, if favoring his right leg a little. For heaven's 
sake, he's barefoot. Viggo is surprised at how far he's managed 
to get in a short time. He's dressed in the clothes Viggo gave 
him; soft and simple so as not to chafe him, and too light weight 
for traveling. Those loose trousers are for sleeping in, and won't 
hold up over many miles of wear. The north man hears Roland 
behind him while they're still at a little distance, and at first looks 
as though he might run, but Viggo calls out to him, and the north 
man turns briefly in acknowledgement, but keeps walking. Viggo 
steers Roland along side him, noting that he carries a little bag of 
something with him, but nothing else. Viggo nudges Roland in 
front of the man, and he stops with a sigh. 
 
"Where do you think you're going?" 
 
North man merely looks up at him, shrugging one shoulder. 
 
"If you follow the road by day," Viggo admonishes, "whoever 
you're running from is likely to find you, but if you leave the road 
your feet will never manage it, nor will those trousers." 
 
Roland starts snuffling at the north man's hair, and North takes 
hold of his bridle, which should be a dangerous move for anyone 
but Viggo, who reminds himself that north men are infamous for 
having a way with horses--one of the reasons they make such 
good horse thieves. Roland insists on lipping the north man's ear, 
and it makes him laugh. The sound is low and entirely ingenuous 
and the sudden, bright smile behind a week of beard stubble is 
unexpected and devastating. Viggo shunts aside his unreasoning 
disappointment that the laughter and the smile are meant only 
for Roland, and he scolds, "Do you think we can't protect you?" 
 
North nuzzles at the big stallion's cheek, studiously ignoring 
Viggo.  
 
"Are you afraid whoever hurt you will harm the family if they find 
you with us? Come up here."  
 
The north man hesitates, staring west along the road, and Viggo 
knees Roland, who bumps into North. He looks up at Viggo with 
some exasperation. Viggo offers his hand. "Get. Up. Here." He's 
using his best *I'm your older brother, now do what I say before 
I smack your head* voice, and North sighs, and accepts the hand 
up. Viggo hears him grunt and hiss sharply as he swings up 
behind, and he knows that had to hurt pretty much everywhere. 
The north man wraps his arms around Viggo's waist, and Viggo 
tells him, as he steers Roland for home, "Father and Ian agree 
that it's unlikely my brothers and I were identified. They probably 
saw the dust we were raising from miles off, and had plenty of 
time to leave. We could have been anyone from anywhere, and I 
hardly think those... people are going to start murdering 
everybody for miles around just to get to you. It would attract 
too much attention, especially with border patrols all over the 
damn place these days. So if you're running because you're 
worried about being found, don't. And if you're worried about us, 
also don't." 
 
North leans forward, resting his head on Viggo's shoulder, and 
though it's a little awkward Viggo feels him relax, letting Viggo 
take some of his weight. While Roland ambles steadily along in 
the night Viggo listens to the north man's breathing even out as 
he sleeps, warm against Viggo's back. The old forest nudges up 
against the road to the left, silvered now by moonlight, purple 
fireweed and hellebores, yellow tansy and foxgloves growing in 
the verges between the road and the trees; birch, and alder, 
hemlock, fir, and deeper into ancient shadow, the oak and beech. 
Near the villa, the family raises forest mushrooms, goldenseal 
and sweet woodruff in the shaded edges of the trees. The other 
half of the land owned and tended by Viggo's family sprawls 
away to the south, acres of open range followed by alfalfa and 
oats as they get closer to the house, the land rolling softly down 
toward the dark, blurred line of willows along the river as it runs 
west toward the sea. 
 
Now and then the horse's steady rhythm sets North's bare foot to 
tapping lightly against the back of Viggo's left heel, and he gets 
to wondering if the stories are true, that the north men teach 
their children to ride before they're weaned. He wonders if it's 
true that herds of half-wild horses roam the cold hills in the 
north, watched over by lean, rough men on fast mounts, living 
off the land as they go. He can't help trying to imagine what 
North's life was like before he moved south, and why. 
 
He wonders, if he had brought North bloody and exhausted into 
the sorrel mare's stall that first evening, and put him alongside 
her newborn filly, would he have instinctively gone to her for 
strength, and would she have accepted him, nursed him... and 
that's a strange path his thoughts are taking, Viggo realizes, but 
he is tired, the north man has turned his world a bit cock-eyed, 
and he can't seem to help the peculiar ways his brain is tending. 
The setting half-moon throws their shadows ahead of them along 
the road, and the smell of damp grass rises, sweet and cool into 
a deep, velvet indigo sky, the stars pale against the moon behind 
them, but bright ahead. Viggo feels a sudden, powerful yearning 
to turn Roland around and just keep riding west, until they reach 
the sea. 
 
They reach the family compound just before sunrise. Viggo 
wakes North and helps him down, more worried about how the 
north man might have reopened his wounds than he's willing to 
let on, because he's *supposed* to be annoyed with the man. 
The two of them lead Roland into the barn. The north man moves 
to help Viggo brush down the big roan, but Viggo orders him 
back to the house and reminds him, like some wayward child, to 
wash his feet and get straight into bed, and Viggo will be in 
directly to put something on his back and his bruises. 
 
When Viggo walks into his house he finds his own bed turned 
down, and the kettle put on for hot water, and the wooden 
bucket, damp inside from where North washed himself, is sitting 
on the kitchen floor near a chair pulled up near the stove. There 
is a dry towel draped over the arm. North is sacked out on top of 
his bed, face down and buck naked, and Viggo shakes his head 
at tonight's whole mess and lets him alone while he goes and 
washes himself. It's not so much, he realizes with a little laugh at 
himself, that he actually needs to wash as because North went to 
all the trouble. This is when he realizes he has given the fellow a 
temporary name--North. Not much of a name for a grown man, 
Viggo supposes, but he has to call him something, and he's sure 
as hell not going to keep calling him "north man" all the time. 
 
When he has finished washing himself, Viggo half-heartedly tidies 
the kitchen. He finds the small canvas bag North had brought 
with him lying on the counter next to the sink. He empties it onto 
the counter, finding a little hard cheese, a couple of carrots, two 
heavy slices of bread stuck together with butter in the middle, 
and a small, sturdy knife. It's funny, he thinks as he puts the 
things away, that the north man didn't bring along a bigger knife. 
But Viggo supposes it was more for eating than for protection, 
anyway. North isn't in any shape for a fight just now. 
 
Viggo brings the jar of the salve Miranda made into the bedroom 
and sits on the bed next to the sleeping man, and very gently 
checks his back. He traces the tattoo, what Eric has taken to 
calling the "Ode to fornication," and he grins. The welts across 
North's skin have broken open a little bit in a few places, and 
Viggo wishes he could check the wraparound wounds on the 
north man's front, but on the whole things are looking pretty 
good, considering. He spreads a layer of the salve--yarrow, white 
willow and knitbone--over North's wounds, his touch light and 
slow. North's pale skin is cool and soft where it is unbroken, 
while the welts where the whip bruised and cut are red and hot, 
and Viggo lingers over the taut heat of the damaged skin, the 
roughness of the scabs as this body heals itself.  
 
Viggo trades medicines, working the oil of yarrow and arnica 
gently into North's legs; heel to knees, knees to hips, skimming 
crisp blonde hair over calves and shins, smoother skin as Viggo 
works up the north man's thighs. Viggo's touch rises a little high, 
rubbing softly at the lower portion of the north man's backside. 
He pulls himself out of his reverie before his hand wanders where 
it needn't, and pulls the covers over the sleeping man. Viggo 
stretches, tilts his head hard to one side to crackle his neck, and 
he gazes longingly at his comfortable bed. He rises, puts the 
salves on the bedside table, and gets dressed. There is work to 
be done, and it's not as though Eric, hale as he is, knows how to 
run fence. Viggo sighs wearily. If only. 
 
--tbc--