Savage Flame

Part 1 - Chapter 1

"Sire. You must consider producing an heir. The fate of the kingdom is at stake if you are to perish in battle!"

Leoric Edmund Einarsson sighed. This wasn't the first time the chief advisor had brought this to his king's attention. "Aelfraed, I've told you! I will only marry for love, not a forced arrangement! I will not be my father who, from his deathbed, forced my sister to marry that bastard from England!"

The older man cleared his throat and collected his inkstone and scrolls. "I understand, my Lord, but the counsel's leniency has expired." Leoric's head raised from its stoop upon his clasped knuckles.

"What do you mean?"

"Invitations have been sent out to all the eligible royals across the world: ladies of high- and low-born status in anywhere from mountains to plains, and desert to sea!" Aelfraed placed a bound scroll with a wax, lion-branded seal in front of Leoric. "The contest will take place nine months from now in the Spring, allowing our guests time to accept or decline the invitation, and prepare to travel here. Our preparations are in order; we should be expecting about four hundred royals-"

"Four hundred?!" Aelfraed chuckled at the look of astonishment on his king's face.

"Indeed, Sire! Your insistence on marrying for love will only fuel this contest for the better! Whomever you choose to be your bride wins the contest, and our kingdom will finally experience hope once again!"

"It seems you're just excited to hear sounds of real love-making instead of fucking whores. Am I correct?"

Aelfraed went green as a pickled fish and then red like the crimson of his robe. "Your Majesty!" he squawked.

"The knights jest, Aelfraed. You couldn't possibly expect your nightly rendezvouses outside my chambers to go undiscovered now, would you?" Aelfraed gulped, and then fell to his knees to beg forgiveness.

"Odin smite me, and King kill me, if he so pleases!" he cried in anguish.

The grand hall suddenly roared with Leoric's laughter, and the king rose from his chair to observe his advisor, the older man's position crumpled on the stone floor. As if Loki was playing tricks, in strolled the honorable knights of the king. The men watched the distraught man hang his head in embarrassed shame, and then joined their king in their own fit of laughter. Only Sir Baard was silent, tenderly helping the trembling Aelfraed from the floor.

"Aelfraed!" Sir Njal, a true Icelandic Viking with his signature platinum blonde hair and icy blue eyes, smirked. "You must forgive our king. He jests too much!" Leoric shook his head, hands planted on his tunic-belted hips.

"I jest, Njal?" His gaze turned boyishly sly. "You insisted on using my chambers to fuck that scandalous whore, just to confuse Aelfraed's eavesdropping!"

"You?!" Aelfraed shrieked, his face purple with anger.

"I think you should rest," Sir Baard suggested to the counselor. "You've been toiling away under the sun without proper care of yourself."

"Yes, Sir Baard is correct. I'll see to it myself, Aelfraed," Leoric declared, the kind knight's brown head of hair bowing to his king, and escorting the frazzled man away. The King swept his gaze over his friends and frowned. "Where is Amund? And Vidar?"

A rough, booming voice echoed from behind the shadows of Leoric's throne. "Amund drank his weight in mead last night." Steel-blue eyes flashed from the sunlight streaming into the throne room, and an outline of the figure became more visible. The tallest and stockiest of Leoric's knights emerged finally, his long blonde hair braided in its traditional Viking plaits and his various plethora of scars pulled taunt against his tanned skin. The man's very aura filled the hall with ominous shadow.

"Vidar's in a mood," Njal whispered with a snort to Leoric.

"I can hear your annoyingly obnoxious prattle from here, Njal."

"Stop brooding and get your ass over here!" Vidar rolled his eyes, but obeyed, halting at Leoric's side.

"Amund's at the tavern again?" the king inquired with a laugh.

"Indubitably." On cue, Sir Amund barged in, his official knight garments wrinkled and unkept, along with his mussed, dark blonde hair and wild, brown eyes. Amund was an orphan found in Italia on Leoric's expeditions across the Mediterranean when his mother was still alive. Amund was eight years Leoric's junior, but they'd been raised like brothers. Leoric always considered Amund to be his youngest brother, exempt from blood. However, while Leoric was the first born in the royal, Norwegian-Viking family and kingly-molded by two influential (good and bad) parents, Amund was the rebel, always getting into trouble and wreaking havoc in every nook and cranny of the kingdom. It wasn't until Leoric's mother sent Amund into the intense Knight Training camp in the harsher regions of the mountains that loomed high above the horizon of the Einarsson Kingdom, that the young man finally outgrew his immaturity, and was shaped into an exceptional knight, one of The Four of the newly-crowned king. Yet, even after the discipline of his ten-year time span in the camp, Amund slowly fell back into his old habits. He was the youngest of the knights, but the oldest -Sir Vidar- forced him back into place relentlessly, his deadly spirit behind his shiver-inducing gaze something not to be trifled with.

"Ah! My finest friends! You see," he panted, puffing out his chest to deflect from the events everyone in the room painstakingly knew about, "I-"

"Always tits deep in mead, my friend?" Njal offered sarcastically. Amund made a face and ran a hand through his hair in an attempt to straighten it. Sir Baard appeared behind him, having disposed of the counselor.

"Ah! Amund! How goes the tavern?" And yet, even the gentle and tender Sir Baard had his own sense of humor. The rest of the knights howled again in laughter and Amund grumbled, adjusting his uniform properly.

"Alas, my friends," Leoric chuckled, his diaphragm aching from the previous episode of cacophonous laughter, "Amund's... intoxicated adventures-" There were a few snorts from the knights surrounding him, save for Amund's glare. "-Are not the subject that I need to discuss with you." The king broke the seal of the scroll that Aelfraed had given him, and unfurled it to read the contents within. "In nine months' time, the Einarsson Kingdom will accommodate about four hundred royals from across the world."

"Four hundred?!" Amund gasped.

"My thoughts exactly." Njal's eyebrows raised.

"The counsel is fed up with my stubbornness in marrying for love, so they've decided to hold a contest for all the eligible ladies to participate in-"

"THERE WILL BE FOUR HUNDRED WOMEN HERE?!" Njal bellowed. Baard pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed; Vidar's expression vaguely displayed signs of curiosity. 

Leoric snorted and continued, "Whomever I am enraptured by, despite the contest's requirements and competition, wins my hand in marriage, and our wedding will be held after the contest's two-month time span. As much as I've tried to veto the notion, the preparations are already underway and there's nothing I can do."

"Perhaps you can see this as an opportunity, Leoric," Sir Baard expressed softly. "Once you're married, you can follow your reservations of love in close quarters. When she is living here permanently, while giving her space and time to adjust, you can proceed to woo her from a distance. Over time, she will fall in love with you; it's guaranteed."

Leoric felt the burden upon his heart and shoulders lift from his knight's advice, and his eyes brightened. "Yes. Thank you, Baard, for your words of counsel."

"He's a better counselor than Aelfraed!" Njal jested, and then yelped as Vidar smacked him upside the head.