Tove | A Viking Tale

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"Hello, Oathbreaker," my nerves are just as strained as the bow string I have pulled tautly. Each step I take into the chamber room is methodical. Toe, heel, toe, heel, shuffling my boots slowly against the flattened wood floor. The arrow fletching feathers stiff and tingling my parted lips, the hard nimble shaft between my fingers pulsing along with my heartbeat.

Ivan's eye is wide, his pupil dotted like a needle prick. "Hravn(Raven)-born?" His astonished gaze drops down the front of me then snaps back up, "The black hair...The stone grey eyes... Tove Ubbedottir (Ubbe's daughter)."

I am my father's daughter. We're nearly identical. Tall, hair as black as coal, eyes grey like moonstone. If I were born a man I'd pass for his ghost. "Good, now you know why I am here," I grit out between my clenched teeth.

The thick cords in Ivan's neck and bare shoulders, banded in black tattoos, relax. He scoffs a silent chuckle checking his woman beside him. Estrid, a woman of hair as orange as the sun and no older than myself clings onto their son. A young boy, who should be drinking ale, not milk from his mother's breast.

Then, Ivan The Cruel concludes, "Honor."

Such a simple word, but perhaps the most important in the eyes of a true Viking.

"You've taken my father, my throne, and my place beside Odin*, Oathbreaker. It is time I take it back."

Suddenly, swift movement locks my sights on Estrid who has seized a concealed seax beneath her pillow. Her arm is cocked back, her hand moments away from sending the dagger straight into me. But my arrow is faster. Before an eyelash is batted, the arrow that had been itching with impatience on the shelf of my bow is lodged between the eyes of Estrid.

With a thud, she falls backward onto her pelt-clad bed, now holding her screaming son to her dead body.

Plucking another arrow from the quiver on my back I reload it into the shelf, as Ivan stands from the bed the furs falling from his half-dressed body, revealing a mountain of a man adorned in black tattoos, battle scars, and muscle.

Ivan lifts his gaze from Estrid, then tilts his head back to laugh loudly like cracking thunder.

I keep the arrow point trained on Ivan, aware his son has scurried off to the corner of the bed chamber. Fear laced in his eyes, matching the expression of the archer's from outside on the tower.

"I suspect you've come for this as well?" Ivan asks stepping over to the curved timber-wall adorned with long-axes, saexes, a shield, a spear, and the hand-axe that killed my father as well as many of my people. He grins, giving me his back, unafraid of an arrow finding him with his back turned. He turns the axe over once then his single sea-blue eye pins mine.

"I've come only for my honor and your head." I deadpan, dropping the sight of my arrow and tossing the bow, the quiver, and arrow to the floor, "Nothing more." I retrieve the stolen hand-axe from the waist-belt and grip it tightly.

He lets out another skin-crawling cackle. "A jokester! I will surely enjoy slicing you from ear to ear, just as I enjoyed it ten winters ago with your father." His huge arm lifts and he holds the blade out towards me in a taunt.

We begin to circle each other within the confines of his room. His son sniveling in the corner and my time to escape dwindling with each passing second.

A bead of sweat rolls down my back and a growl builds deep in my throat, all my muscles flex and I am the first to take a swing.

The clash of iron from our axes clanging together fills the room as well as a growl from me and a laugh from Ivan. He deflects my axe and I follow my momentum leaping onto the bed, gaining the height to match him. Before a moment passes his axe swings low, meaning to take my ankles, but I clear the blade and strike upwards. The slicing of flesh is felt through the smooth vibrations of my axe blade and I breathe out a controlled smile.